Chapter 1
You don’t know anything about me. I was perfectly happy before you and your friends ruined what I built!
I don’t know what happened that led you to make your village without cutie marks. And I’m sorry my friends and I had to take it away.
You want to know what happened to me? I’ll show you!
“What is this place?”
Starlight Glimmer gazed confused at the scene before her. Twilight Sparkle and her little dragon pet were gone, having disappeared after she opened up the time portal. Gone were the howling winds of the lifeless desert. The devastation brought on by her temporal ventures seemed pastoral indeed when compared to what she now saw.
She was in a void of perpetual gloom, an empty space where the only source of light came from her own horn. The light seemed meager indeed, a pinprick of aquamarine in an ocean of black. Starlight felt cold, but there was no wind, no air to speak of. Her lungs inhaled what felt like utter emptiness—the best way to describe it would be trying to breath without the benefit of lungs. Her chest heaved out of instinct and nothing more.
There was nothing to breathe. There was absolutely…nothing.
“Twilight Sparkle?” Her voice did not carry far. It echoed somewhat before falling silent, struck dead by the gloom around her. Starlight attempted to increase the light, to see how far the tunnel—for it sounded like she was in a tunnel—went. Her globe of light didn’t extend very far, about a few meters at least. It seemed the more Starlight tried, the weaker she became. Her energy, her magic was being sapped.
Staggering on legs suddenly too weak to hold her, Starlight allowed herself to fall back onto her rump. She cried out and stood up. “Cold!” She turned suddenly as if attacked. There was no warmth anywhere. No air and no heat. How was she still alive?
“Maybe,” her words were almost inaudible, “maybe I’m not.” Fear gripped her at her like reaching talons and for the first time in a very long time Starlight Glimmer, one of the most powerful unicorn mages in Equestria, one was able to hold her own against an alicorn princess, was afraid.
“Am I…am I dead?”
“Not quite,” a baritone voice said around her. “But you’re close.”
“Who said that?” Starlight searched for signs of the voice’s origins, turning her head this way and that. She may as well have been trying to see through the earth itself. So deep was the pitch, so completely devoid of anything that resembled anything, that her eyes were all but useless.
“Show yourself!” She commanded. A bit of her usual haughtiness returning to her and Starlight began to feel like her herself again. “Is that you, Twilight Sparkle?”
“Do I sound like a mare?” The voice asked. Now that it said that, Starlight caught the deep tremor of the vocals, a dirge that could only have been made by the deep voice of a stallion.
“W-Who are you?” She stammered a little. “What have you done with Twilight?”
“Why,” the stallion asked. “Don’t you hate her?”
“Yes!” Starlight snapped. Craning her head from side to side, Starlight began relying less on her eyes and more on her ears. He had to be somewhere. The acoustics of the cave made his voice bounce around so that it came from everywhere at once. No matter where she turned there was only the blackness. “Are you an ally of hers? One of her…friends.” She spoke that word with utter venom. It left a bitter taste in her mouth and she almost spat.
“There was a time you loved that word,” the stallion’s cantor softened. He sounded remorseful. “You understood what it meant.”
Starlight’s nostrils flared. She stamped her hoof on the frigid ground. “You don’t know me! How dare you presume,”
“I do know you, Starlight,” the stallion cut her off.
Feeling her magic weaken, for it took everything she had just to keep her horn aglow, Starlight blinked as beads of sweat began to worm their way over her eyelids. They began to fall to the ground in very audible drops. All sound was amplified in this void to ridiculous levels. “Who are you?” Starlight asked. “Is this your doing?”
“No,” he said. “It is yours, Starlight.”
“What?”
“As to your first question,” the stallion went on. “You know who I am.”
Starlight shook her head. “No I…” she thought a moment. “Are you from the Equalist Village?”
“You know me better than that, Starlight. Don’t think with your head. Listen to your heart. You used to listen to it all the time.”
“My heart?” Starlight suddenly realized something. Despite the lack of air and light, her heart was still beating. It was more than beating, actually. It pounded in her chest like a prisoner in a cage, desperate to get out, to be heard so that it would not be forgotten in the darkness. This was proof enough that she was alive, and for that she was grateful.
Then her heartbeats began to reverberate all around her, the acoustics amplifying the sound to headache-inducing levels. Starlight winced. “Ugh! Stop it!”
“Listen, Starlight. You know who I am.”
“I said shut up!” Starlight stomped her hoof as if to crush the stallion beneath it like some bothersome insect. Her heartbeat continued. It was now slamming the corners of her skull, a battering ram attempting to break down the gates of a besieged castle. It was too much for the unicorn to handle. She groaned in pain. “Stop it. Please,” she begged. Starlight Glimmer didn’t beg. She never begged for anything in all her life.
“You did once,” the stallion told her.
How was he doing this? Was he reaching into her mind, stealing her secrets right from under her? Finally, the pounding became too much to bear. Starlight was on the cold floor, writhing in pain. “Stop it! I can’t….I can’t!”
She screamed.
All was silent.
A warmth began to fill the void. Her horn light had died out, spent as if all the magic in her had gone. This was a different glow altogether—brighter, stronger.
She knew this magic.
Slowly, she looked up. A pair of white hooves stood before her. They ended just at the calves before becoming an orange-red, the color of the dawn. Her eyes journeyed over a pair of strong legs, a muscular chest, a strong neck, and finally to a face that was as beautiful as it was hauntingly familiar. The stallion stood over her, his horn a brilliant blaze of gold, his Mohawk hair a brilliant red. And of course, she could never forget the tell-tale white strip across his snout.
“S-Sunburst?” Even the magnificent glow of his horn couldn’t take away from the shine of his eyes, the purest of blue. Starlight fumbled to her hooves. “Sunburst Radiant?”
Sunburst smiled. “Hello, Starlight. Long time no see.” His smile was genuine and was far warmer than the heat emanating from his horn. “I’ve missed you, Glim.”
“Don’t call me that!” She snapped, her voice a whip in the dark. “You know I hate that.”
“I know.” Sunburst’s smile widened. Then he laughed. “That’s why I said it.”
Despite all that had happened, despite being trapped in the void with her magic gone, Starlight felt the traces of a smile sneaking their way on her exhausted face. She blinked as new tears filled her eyes. “Is it…is it really you?”
“It’s me, Starlight. Are you okay?” There was concern in his voice.
“Am I okay?” Starlight touched her chest. There was a pain there that had not been there a moment before. Joy became grief, which became anger. “Am I okay?” Her voice raised. Starlight put some distance between them and lowered her horn as if she meant to run him through. “How dare you ask me that?” She raged. “After all this time, now you come back as if you’re concerned? Don’t patronize me!”
Sunburst appeared genuinely hurt by her outburst. “Please, Starlight. I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Then why did you come here? Where is here?” She looked at the darkness. “Where in Tartarus is this?”
“It’s you, Starlight.”
The unicorn blanched. “What did you say?”
Sunburst shut his eyes for a moment. He dipped his head and the light from his horn dimmed. It was then that she noticed something fluttering about him…a cape perhaps? No. Whatever it was, it was a part of him. She couldn’t make it out and right now she didn’t much care.
“You know what this is, don’t you?” She asked Sunburst. “Tell me,” she demanded, almost threateningly so.
“It’s your soul.” Sunburst opened his eyes. They glittered like stars. “What’s left of it.” He looked around. “There used to be so much light in this place. You were full of so much love. But now…” his voice trailed off. When it came back it was barely above a whisper. “You’ve changed. There is so much pain. So much anger and hatred. And…it’s all my fault.” He gazed into her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Starlight.”
“No!” Starlight barked. “You don’t get to apologize to me. Not now! NOT NOW!” Starlight turned to one side, her foreleg up as if she’d kick him if he got any closer. “You ruined my life!”
“I didn’t mean to leave,” he began, “not without saying goodbye.”
“You left me!” Her eyes bleeding tears, the pain of years of solitude, hammered onto the floor. “You were my best friend and you turned your back on me. You have no idea what that was like. You may as well have ripped out my heart and stomped on it before my eyes. You…” Starlight bit back a whimper. “You are a traitor, Sunset. The lowest depths of Tartarus are too good for you.”
“But I,”
She wouldn’t have it. Starlight had too much pent up to give Sunburst room for excuses. Like a tidal wave of hate, the emotions came pouring out. She didn’t care where she was anymore. She only wanted one thing: to tell him off. “I wish I’d never met you, Sunburst Radiant! I trusted you. I…I loved you more than life itself. We were supposed to be best friends forever. Now you come back begging for my forgiveness? I spit on your apology!”
Sunburst remained silent, allowing her to get it all out.
“You say this is my soul? Well take a good look, Sunburst. All this hate, all this rage is because of you. You made me this way. There was a time I’d have given anything, even my own cutie mark, if it meant I could see you again. Now I’d give anything to have never known you. I wish,” she couldn’t fight the tears anymore. “I wish you’d just die!”
The grief overcame her and Starlight Glimmer began crying. She slumped to the floor, not caring for the cold, and wept, her body wracked with sobs. Sunburst approached her, reaching out to comfort her with a hoof. She smacked it away. “Don’t touch me.”
The hoof hung in the air. Finally, Sunburst stepped back. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. As Starlight cried, Sunburst gritted his teeth against the pain. “You’re wrong, Starlight.”
Trembling with sadness, Starlight looked up.
“Your soul isn’t dark because it’s angry. It’s dark because you’ve nothing left to give. You’ve emptied it of all love, all friendship. You’ve hardened yourself to such a degree that nothing can get in, not even light.” Sunburst looked up at the invisible ceiling. “Even my magic, which allows me to venture into souls, cannot shine a line strong enough to lift the gloom. Only you can do that, Starlight. I came here to help you. I wanted…I wanted to show you that there is still good in you.”
“Shut up,” she cried, or tried to. Her voice was so weak right now, hoarse from all the screaming and the crying.
“Please!” Sunburst begged. “Starlight, don’t ruin yourself on account of me. Don’t let my mistakes prevent you from being happy. Don’t shut yourself to friendship.”
“To the Nine Hells with friendship!” Starlight, finding her voice, spat at him. “I deny it. I deny you!”
“Starlight Glimmer!” Sunburst’s voice boomed and his horn blazed like hellfire. Starlight was blinded. She cringed as the fiery wave overcame her, consuming her. So this was it. Sunburst had come back to finish her off. A part of Starlight welcomed it. She didn’t want to live with this pain anymore. That time she’d met Double Diamond on the outskirts of the Equalist Village, bringing the ponies under her control…her sole drive had been the pain of losing her best friend. Destroying cutie marks, the symbol of that lost friendship, was the only thing that had given her a sense of purpose, of being.
Then Princess Twilight and her friends took it all away.
The heat was overwhelming. Sunburst lived up to his name. He was going to destroy her in holy fire. He would burn her away and Starlight, for all her rage, was grateful. Anything to avoid seeing him, Princess Twilight, or the world again. She didn’t care about the future anymore. She didn’t care about anything. She…
…was running. No, she realized. Not her. She was watching a Sunburst Radiant run. Only it wasn’t him as he is now. This was a younger Sunburst Radiant, a colt. He was running through the streets of their old home, the village of multi-colored unicorns on the outskirts of Mustangnia.
“What is this?” Starlight asked. It was like having an out-of-body experience. Starlight couldn’t see or feel her own body. She was floating in the air beside the little Sunburst as he dashed about, his fresh cutie mark displaying a radiant sun with rays and stars. “We’re home?” She asked, confused.
“This is my memory,” Sunburst’s voice, invisible but omnipresent, said into her mind. “You’re in my soul now, Starlight. I’m showing you what happened that fateful day. This was right after I got my cutie mark. My parents wanted to ship me off to Canterlot to begin my studies. I was so excited that I went back to tell you the great news. I was so happy for myself that I didn’t stop to think about what that would have meant to you.”
The young colt returned to Starlight’s house. “Glim!” He shouted. “I’m going to Canterlot’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Isn’t that great?” Sunburst looked around. “Glim?” The room was empty. There was no sign of Starlight Glimmer. “Starlight?” He searched room by room, downstairs and up. “Starlight?” No matter where he looked, no matter how loud he called out, Sunburst couldn’t find her.
In her room, Sunburst approached the window, left wide open. He gazed outside and the rolling fields. “Starlight?” A wind entered the room and for a moment, Sunset felt the caress of something beloved leaving him forever. “Starlight?”
“I didn’t know where you went.” Adult Sunburst’s voice said to Starlight. “Nopony knew what happened to you. It’s like you just disappeared, never to return.”
“I ran away,” Starlight said. “Not long after you left me, I just ran away from home. It was too painful to stay. My parents worked so much that I almost never saw them. You were the only real family I had and when you left…there was no reason for me to stay.” Looking into the heartbroken eyes of a young Sunburst Radiant, Starlight felt pain like she hadn’t felt since that terrible day. For all her belief, that it had been Sunburst who abandoned her, seeing the colt’s face as he searched for his missing friend made her realize that it had been the other way around.
She had abandoned him.
The vision ended and they were back in the void that was her soul. Sunburst Radiant stood before her, his eyes glowing momentarily before dimming. He looked at her again with those same blue eyes. “I never meant to cause you such pain, Starlight. Had I known what it would have done to you, I’d never have left.”
Shamed, Starlight could not look at him anymore. Her eyes fell to the floor. “You were going to be a great unicorn. Who was I to get in your way?”
“You were my best friend.”
“I was.” She wiped a tear from her eye.
“You still are,” he said warmly.
But Starlight would have nothing of it. “No. Our friendship ended long ago. You left me, I left you. It’s over.” She stood up. “Nothing can be done about it now.”
Sunburst asked, “So you’ll just destroy everything instead? Is that how you’ll deal with the pain?”
“Don’t judge me,” she scolded. “You have no right.”
“I’m not judging you. But my actions were responsible for setting you on this path. All friendships are connected. Had I gotten back sooner, had you not left, there’s no telling how things might have turned out.”
“That stupid cutie mark,” Starlight grumbled.
“No!” Sunburst said. “Don’t blame cutie marks. They’re just fancy tattoos, Starlight. They don’t decide who we are. We do.”
“They drove us apart.”
“We did that. If I tried looking for you instead of studying at Canterlot. If you returned home instead of moving from one place to the other. We could have written to each other. Who knows? Your parents might have sent you to Canterlot too when you got your cutie mark. You’re one of the most powerful unicorns of the age, Starlight. You could have done wonders!”
She lifted her head in a show of pride. “I did do wonders.” It sounded weak, almost as if she didn’t believe her own rhetoric.
Sunburst shook his head. “Tampering with the fabric of space and time, altering history to suit your own ends, is not a wonder. It’s a crime. You’ve destroyed so many friendships because of it.”
“But I don’t have any friends. Why should I care what happens to others?” She looked away. “I became a powerful mage on my own. I didn’t need anyone else’s help.” Glaring, she turned to him. “I was able to steal cutie marks. I deciphered and altered one of Starswirl the Bearded’s legendary spells. I defied Twilight Sparkle and changed the course of an entire nation.”
“And what do you have to show for it?”
The silence was even louder than Starlight’s heartbeat had been earlier before. Nothing was said between them. Nothing needed to be said. The answer was all around them. The dark…the perpetual dark. Her victory.
Slowly, Starlight asked, “Where is Twilight Sparkle?”
“Around,” Sunburst answered after a moment’s hesitation. “You two are still traveling through time.”
She blinked at him. “For how long?”
“From your point of view, it will seem instantaneous. You’re about to show her the same memory, the moment when I got my cutie mark and you decided to leave.” The unicorn stallion sighed. “I was able to catch you before you arrived. I wanted to speak with you before the princess had a chance.”
“How?” She asked. “Where? Why?”
“How doesn’t matter. Let’s just say you and Princess Twilight are not the only ones with a mission to complete. Where is equally pointless as you wouldn’t believe me. Why?” Sunburst shrugged as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Because I care, Starlight. No matter how much time has passed, I still care about you.”
“Stop.” She shook her head in denial of his proclamation. “Please don’t. I can’t do this again. I can’t look at you without feeling so much…pain.”
“Then don’t look at me. Look at yourself.” He waved his hoof around. “Look at what you’ve become. This isn’t you, Starlight. You have so much to give. So much to offer the world. Don’t let your past become the end of everyone’s future.”
She looked at him, eyes saddened.
He returned her gaze, but with a smile. “Promise me you’ll listen to what she has to say. She can be a powerful ally, and an even greater friend. In the end, you two will need each other. Who knows, your friendship might prove more consequential to Equestria than ours ever did.” He turned around. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. You may not remember everything we talked about when you arrive at your destination, but in your heart, in here, we will always have this moment. Time travel is funny that way.”
“Wait!” Starlight called out as he began to walk away.
Sunburst stopped.
“Don’t go.” She hated him. She still hated him. And yet…she couldn’t bear to lose him again.
Sunburst remained still. He looked to mulling whether or not he should leave her in this state. He’d lied of course. Starlight could tell he had so much more he wanted to say and yet something was holding him back. Where had he been all this time? How had he learned to enter ponies’ souls? Why did he decide to reveal himself now? So many questions.
“I can’t stay here. This isn’t my place. It isn’t yours either.”
“Where can I find you?” Starlight asked. “So that we can meet when this is all over.”
Sunburst sighed. “That’s not important now. What’s important is that you listen to Twilight Sparkle. She can help you. She can help all of us. And you must help her. She will need it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sunburst said, “You will.” He began to walk away. “See you around, Glim.” The light from his horn disappeared and there was nothing but the dark.
Starlight Glimmer was alone again. She trembled.
A new light began to illuminate the darkness. This time, the color was purple.
In the swirling vortex that was time and space, a chaotic universe that was ever in motion, there was an archipelago of floating islands. On one of these islands, a lone figure watched as a tear opened up in the “sky.” From this tear, a small parchment materialized, surrounded by an aura of immense magical power. The tear sealed shut and the parchment, its magic spent, came floating down.
A hoof caught it in midair.
“There you are,” said the wizened mage. “I was wondering where I’d put you.” He opened it up and noticed with pity the tear running down the middle, almost cutting the parchment in half. “Dear, dear. Kids these days have no respect for the things of others. That Starlight is such a hothead.”
“You’re wrong about her.” A strong stallion walked up behind the mage, his alicorn wings retracting as he came in for a landing. His horn like a burning torch, Sunburst stared hard at the unicorn he’d come to call his mentor and friend. “She’s stronger than you know.”
“It’s not her strength I question, Prince Sunburst,” the mage said, “But her will.”
“That is the strongest thing about her.” Moving up beside him, Sunburst watched the unicorn wizard tuck the temporal scroll into his robes, themselves a majestic display of stars and celestial bodies that moved as if he’d somehow trapped the night within its fabric. “The princess will help her realize who she was meant to be, but Starlight Glimmer will always be the kind pony I remember. When next we meet,”
“If you meet again, my boy. If.” The mage winked at him. “The future is not written. I should know.” He tapped the sleeve where he’d placed the parchment. “I have not written it yet.”
Sunburst sighed. “I wish you’d take this more seriously.”
“On the contrary, I am very serious. I should think you learned by now that I always hope for the best. Experience, however, has taught me to expect the worst. We have much work to do before we are ready. Ensuring Starlight’s reformation was only a small part in a much bigger play.”
“It wasn’t small to me,” Sunburst muttered.
“Of course not. I do not mean to make light of your feelings, good prince. But you mustn’t let personal attachment get in the way of your own destiny. Come. The others are waiting.” With that, the bearded wizard turned to walk away.
Staring at the chaos of time itself, Sunburst Radiant, the Prince of Souls, closed his eyes. “Take care, my dear Glim.”
If you’re willing to learn, I’m willing to teach you what I know. You’ll have the power to make Equestria an even better place.
But how do I start?
Starting is easy. All you have to do is make a friend. And you’ve got seven of them right here.