> Ancient Twilight
>  by demonbaker
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1 (edited)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

This battle had gone on for far too long. It was taking all her magic to destroy it. It all began so simply, too: destroy all the planets as they form at the beginning of time, and find out if life can still evolve.Turned out it could.

Dodging a tentacle the size of a planet, Time channeled magic into her horn, severing the limb as it moved past her with a brilliant purple beam. This was taking too long—how many years had she been fighting this thing? Must have been a few millenia at least. At first, it was just a collection of cells, but soon enough it had begun to realize that someone was manipulating the time stream.

Raising a hoof, a brilliant copper beam shot forth, severing one of the many tentacles that were trying to grab hold of her. She sighed in vexation, floating among space with a brilliant copper aura around her. She went on the attack; searching deep inside her, she made a decision.

Several hundred duplicates slipped into existence, and each fire a beam of magic into the morass.

She burned it. With a lot of fire.

When it was over, she took a few decades to stabilize the timeline, absorbing all her fragmented selves. She needed a vacation.

It was time to go back to Equestria.

Sighing grimly, Time channeled her magic once more, rewinding the universe back to the beginning. A process she’d done countless times before.

Now was the small matter of waiting a few billion years for Celestia and Luna to create the planet she’d grown up on, so many years ago. Back when she’d been known as Twilight Sparkle.

Not long at all, really.







The thing about deities is that they are fickle. And when they make mistakes, they make BIG ones.Time had just made one of those aforementioned mistakes.

Chaos smiled as he felt Time’s magic flare as she destroyed his little pet project; it had worked far better than he had hoped. Few if any other deities were aware of her constant experimentation with the timeline, but Chaos knew. And the moment she created those books, he wanted one.

A very specific one.

Problem was, Time kept the books in her tower. The tower that existed outside of time.

The other small hurdle is that the books can only be removed by Time herself.

That is…unless she were forced to use most of her magic to destroy a horror of her own creation.

“Silly God…You should know better than to tamper with life. Life is chaotic and random. Not at all what a deity of order should be messing with.”

Chaos walked among the countless shelves that lined the inside of Time’s tower. Books on dark magic...books on ice magic...books on every type of magic, really.

Except these were no ordinary books. They were written by Time herself. A normal being would write a book and you’d understand what the author understood. But what happens when the author understands everything about the subject? The answer is a Grimoire—a tome of complete understanding.

Chaos sauntered past tomes of madness that jibbered insanely to anyone who would listen, much to the annoyance of the other tomes nearby. He finally stopped before a shelf full of black-bound books, some made out of the skin of ponies themselves.

“Such a naughty Deity you’ve been. For each act of supreme kindness you’ve performed, you’ve done the opposite, an act of unparalleled evil. Gods of neutrality sure are crazy. Not that you’re actually neutral.”

Chaos patently ignored the fact that he, himself, was quite insane.

As soon as he felt Time’s magic fade from the Tomes momentarily, he grabbed one from the shelf, vanishing back into the timestream once again.

Things were going to be interesting in Equestria. The focal point of all the gods.

With the book tucked safely in a single claw, Chaos waits for Equestria to be formed once again

Not long at all, really.







Watching planets form was rarely very interesting.

Watching two gods MAKE a planet out of nearby material, on the other hoof, was.

Time silently watched as Celestia and Luna used magic more powerful than she’d ever witnessed them use when she was a student, collapsing rocks into a circular shape, cooling it down, adding the oceans and raising the continents.

She was, of course, taking notes—this was only the three hundredth time she'd seen it done, and there were things she’d missed the first few hundred times, apparently.

Luna, taking a break to rest, moved over to time, observing her as she wrote everything down on a scroll that never seemed to run out. "Are you going to simply write and not assist us? With you helping we could have finished centuries ago!"

Time ceased writing and looked up at Luna, confused, summoning her notes of the previous times this conversation had happened. 

Sure enough, Luna's words were different. That only happened when someone interfered...and Time was the only one who interfered.

What was going on? It clearly stated that Luna said "Going to help or just observe as usual, Time?"

Not one to take being ignored, Luna spoke again. "Alicorn to Alicorn, are you home?" Luna was waving a blue hoof in front of Times face rather annoyingly.

Banishing her previous notes, Time looked back at Luna. She was supposed to be on vacation; mysteries could wait.

"It would defeat the purpose if I assisted, wouldn't it? All of us agreed on the planet—this is your world, not mine. Besides…" Waving a hoof in a circle in front of herself, a circular viewing portal appeared between the two. Inside, a view of a planet being made appeared, with lots of asteroids being gathered together and formed into a perfectly spherical shape, and perfectly round continents slowly rising out of the ocean.

"My worlds are too...perfect. I keep everything in precise ratios." Sure enough, the ocean was exactly 70% of the surface, the continents the exact same size and evenly spaced around the globe. It looked more like a toy ball than a beautiful world. Unless one finds mathematical perfection on large scales beautiful.

Nobody else ever did.

Luna nodded, her horn glowing as she absently examined Time's magic. As usual, she can detect nothing out of the ordinary. "One of these days, Time, you must tell me how you create pockets of isolated time like that." 

Time simply shook her head. "No, I won't bother explaining the problems with more than one being creating bubbles of time. I already get enough people trapped in infinite time loops—I don't need more things impeding the timestream."

Luna sighed and returned to her task, conversing with her sister as they put the finishing touches on Equus.

Odd; it had taken them three fewer years to complete than last time she’d watched. Shaking her head, she banished her scroll to her tower. "No, bad Deity. Vacation means no experimentation; just observe, speak with friends, and relax."

Doing the ancient breathing exercises Cadence had taught her long, long ago, she prepared for the first ponies to walk Equestria.
> Chapter 2 (edited)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Watching the three pony tribes learn to work to together or perish was always fascinating, and filled Time's chest with a pulsing warmth.

She walked among the ponies as they discovered the method to banish the wendigos. Alicorns have a rather imposing presence, and have a reputation for being the center of attention. Memories of how Celestia dominated a room simply by showing up flashed in Time’s mind.

Good thing she took precautions. A simple ‘notice me not’ enchantment worked wonders.

Though, Time could’ve sworn Clover the Clever looked her way a few times. And, surprisingly, chancellor Puddinghead seemed to be aware of her presence as well.

Stranger and stranger… this hadn't happened before either.

Time had to make a supreme effort not to document the differences in this version of history. The small changes were starting to add up.

No. You're on vacation. Stop worrying, just relax.

As Time wandered around the area, memories of her putting on a play at Hearth's Warming filled her mind. Smiling, she finally relaxed with the memories of her friends.

Shame she missed their passing the first time. A goodbye would have been nice.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she decided she wanted some conversation.

Slipping through the timestream, she disappeared from her location and reappeared above Celestia's sun. This wasn't teleportation, it's faster. She simply stopped existing in her previous location and reappeared elsewhere.

That had taken while to master.

The heat didn't phase her in the slightest as she looked down at the glowing orb beneath her.  Celestia and Luna had yet to return to Equestria after finishing up the planet. Making an entire planet was tiring, especially when you worked so hard to make it beautiful.

I still think mathematical perfection is better. And far less effort.

Time began prodding a sleepy Celestia with her magic to get her to wake up. It took a while, but eventually a white Alicorn wreathed in flames appeared on the surface of the sun. Her mane and tail were red like molten metal, her wings more fire than feather, spread out as she gave a mighty yawn. 

"Hmm?" Slowly, her body cooled down, becoming less of her true form and more the familiar white Alicorn with pink hair that Time saw a few centuries ago. Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, Celestia smiled."Now, isn't this an unexpected visit. What can I do for you, Time?"

Returning the soft smile, Time gestured toward the planet some distance away. "I was observing the mortals and needed someone to speak to. You did an efficient job with Equestria."

"A compliment from the one who sees all potential outcomes? That is high praise indeed."

Time looked away rubbing the back of her head with a hoof. "Not exactly. Every decision we make splits the timeline into a fork, the river running equally down each of its new paths. I've just gone down each path enough times to know the most likely ones that will occur.

Time decided not to inform Celestia about the many times she'd destroyed civilizations to see how it affected the timestream. 

Like her last experiment, which went so very very wrong.

Celestia nodded. "I do say, this might be the most anyone's ever gotten out of you—you're usually quite tight-lipped about your domain." Horseapples. Leave it to Celestia to notice something like that.

Time sighed. "Yes, because talking about what may happen affects the decisions that are made afterward. Not every decision is world-altering, but a select few beings can completely change the world with a few small changes.”

Male laughter echoed around them, a very familiar voice interrupting the two. “I don’t suppose I could get a list of those beings, Time? I know you keep it somewhere. In the desk on the thirteenth story, perhaps?"

Both Celestia and Time groaned. "No, Chaos, I'm not going to give you a list of chess-pieces you can manipulate to cause the most chaos."

The being of good and the being of neutrality both turned to a familiar draconequus as he appeared on a lawn chair with sunglasses. "Spoilsport, you wound me." He held his hands over his heart and promptly caught fire. "Oh, wait...that's the sun that's wounding me, false alarm."

Time's eyes narrowed at his choice of seating; those wouldn't be invented for millennia...

His chair also burned to ashes a moment later, leaving Time to wonder how he’d thought of something so specific.

No, bad Alicorn. You're on— 

"Vacation?" Startled, Time looked at Chaos, who's offering her a brochure on Equestria's best vacation spots. The title read, ‘The best places for the being in charge of all time to unwind.’

"How did..."

Discord gave Time a smirk, and Celestia a wink. "Now that would be telling!" He promptly burst into confetti, which of course also caught fire, before he reappeared leaning against Time's body, reading a book.

This wouldn't normally be an issue. But only if you ignored the small fact that Time cannot be touched by beings inside time. There was also the fact that the book looked an awful lot like a Grimoire.

"Chaos is such a funny thing, don't you agree?" Time's mind was buzzing with so many different conflicting thoughts she was almost frozen as her mind frantically tried to rein itself in.

As with all things, a checklist was the answer.

First, Discord was touching her: that shouldn't have been possible. Grabbing Chaos with her hoof, they seemed to implode as she pulled them both out of time.

They appeared in a nearly completely white void. The only notable features were a large tower that floated almost ominously nearby. Purple with stripes of red. A single door at the bottom granted entry, and no windows or other adornments besides the color graced its sides.

Time always was very spartan when it came to designing things.

The second feature dominated the space above them—some distance away, the timestream flowed endlessly. On the left was what appeared to be a single river of rainbow colors. As it moved across the zone it split into infinite branches and side paths, each technically a parallel universe. Most were very similar to the original, but several came from significant changes. Twilight's flare in the school for gifted unicorns was a particular focus for diverging timelines.

The whole thing resembled a rainbow-colored tree if viewed from the proper perspective.

The second item on the checklist: Chaos was holding a Grimoire. Specifically, he was holding Disharmony and the Magic of Strife and Conflict.

Splitting herself into three versions of herself with a simple decision, Time tried to solve these problems. She sent one copy into the nearby tower to check the bookshelves. She sent the other copy to grab the book Chaos was holding.

The original glared at Chaos and almost growled. "Explain yourself!"

Chaos simply laughed and snapped his claw, the Grimoire turning into a cooked fish before Time Beta could lay her hooves on it. "No, you've had quite enough fun, dear. It’s my turn now to spice things up."

Time Gamma returned and confirmed that the book was indeed missing from her tower.

"Give it back, Chaos." The three copies of Time simply merged together, Time Beta sparing the effort to incinerate the cooked fish in exasperation before she rejoined the original.

Chaos's grin grew wider than should’ve been possible as he laughed in Time’s face, his body bursting into multiple smaller copies of himself that run around the void outside time.

The tiny versions of Chaos spoke in unison. Which was far more creepy than it should’ve been. "I waited a long time for you to get distracted enough to lower the protection on those books you covet so much. Reset after reset after reset. Experiment after experiment. Watching you toy with existence itself simply to see what would happen."

Chaos slowly reformed from his countless tiny versions into one large one, looming over Time like a dragon over a chicken. "No, my dear, its high time you took the back seat for once. I'm going to be doing my own experiments. And trust me, they are much more interesting than observing a tree for a thousand years.”

Chaos gave one final laugh and snapped his fingers. A cloud of grey mist poured from his body, flowing up into the timestream above.

The changes set in almost instantly, entire sections of the vibrant rainbow color dulling to grey and monochrome.

With a final sardonic laugh, Chaos himself dissolved into mist and flowed upward, rejoining the timestream without the aid of Time's magic.

Again, that shouldn't have been possible, but that list was growing by the moment.

Floating in the void outside of time, the only thing she could do was mutter a long string of flavorful curses.

So much for being on vacation.
> Chapter 3
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time is staring up at the timestream, the rainbow of colors moving across the white void. It's her domain. her charge.

her failure.

As she watches, she can see the long stretches of grey coloring tainting the stream. It's Chaos' influence on the normally vibrant flow of time.

For the first time since her ascension, something has changed the timestream.

And it wasn't her.

That sounded arrogant, but up until know Time has been viewing the timestream as a toy. Like a dollhouse she could arrange however she saw fit. 

She was wrong, she wasn't the only one who could tweak things.

The streaks of Grey are growing more prominent, Chaos is destabilizing the magic of harmony, changing the nature of the universe.

The balance is tipping in his favor.

He underestimates her. This is a challenge, and as with all challenges, it is one she shall overcome. So what if she's not the only one outside of time anymore. So what Chaos has one of the most destructive artifacts shes ever created. 

So what she failed.

Time adds 'work on pep talk skills' to her mental checklist. That was far more depressing than it helped.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Time slips back into the timestream After what appears to Celestia as mere moments after she pulled Chaos out of it. Time is awfully subjective to those inside the timestream.

Looking glumly at a confused Celestia She sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose with a free hoof.

Celestia for her part simply waits for Time to compose herself before asking her question. "Tell me, what was that book that Chaos was taunting you with?"

Again, leave it to Celestia to ask the worst possible question. She's far too perceptive for her own good, having a knack for finding the crux of an issue.

It will serve her well in the coming millennia.

Breathing from her nose. "That is a Grimoire." Time summons one of her simpler ones from her shelf and shows it to Celestia. The title reads Pyromancy and the eternal magic of fire and heat. It's one of my artifacts." 

Celestia nods, artifacts are items that the gods create and imbue with power from their domain. Casting a quick spell she checks the enchantments around the tome with a critical eye. An anchor to seal it to Time's domain, a tracker so she can know where it is at all times, a very complicated spell designed so that it can only be opened by those Time deems worthy. Enchantments to make the book near invulnerable.

"I find it hard to believe you would show that much...emotion, on something like this." Celestia waves a hoof toward the book. "I sense no magic inside other than the usual protection spells."

Time nods as if she expected that reaction and simply opens the tome to the first page, causing Celestia to blanch and stare at it dumbly. Moving closer she grabs the book in her magic and begins scanning the first page. 

The glyphs on the page appear to be a series of runic circles, connected by chains to form a simple pattern. She finds that she can read the circle both left and right. Each direction changing the meaning, moving out a layer of rings she finds that they combine with the previous rings through the small 'chains' to provide even more information, each time with tweaks and changes to the concepts shown in the ring before it, and with each progressive ring the applications of the spell listed in the previous rings are given new purposes, different uses. Reading the whole thing backwards provides various counter-spells. only when she finishes with the final ring does the whole thing finally make sense. Like her mind was pushing against a brick wall, but only now did she break through, the resistance shattering and simple understanding filling her.

And the whole page was devoted to one spell. But that single spell behaves like thousands. 

Once Celestia's mind quits buzzing with the many new applications of the spell she turns her focus back toward her guest after what feels like ages. Now that her focus isn't on the tome she notices a glowing golden barrier around them along with a patient Time waiting for her to finish. "Great Sun...how could fireball of all things have this many variations?"

Time simply nods. "Congratulations, you have achieved the understanding of a spell in record time."

Celestia eventually shakes off the feeling of awe, looking down at the tome, no the Grimoire floating in her golden magic with a lot more respect. "It is one of the simplest and easiest applications of fire, how...how can something so simple be used so many different ways?" While she waits for Times response she studies the barrier around her. She can't feel it in her magic, a trait most of Time's magic shares. Whatever it is, It's making her internal clock go haywire. She can't feel the passing of the day.

For the god of the sun...that's a big deal.

"The simpler a tool, the more things you can use it for, spells are no different. Each one we have is made of untapped potential. I simply tested everything you can do with the spell, and wrote it all down." Nodding in the direction of the Grimoire Time explains. "The pattern varies based on the type of magic, concentric circles work best for fire. As it is in fires very nature it consumes and propagates. It also has similarities to Life magic." A Green tome appears, its cover open to the first page, the glyphs shaped to resemble a large tree with an expansive root system. "Ice magic is the same pattern, but in reverse." Another tome appears this one blue and sharing the same concentric circular pattern as fire magic. "Most magic is connected to other types that share certain traits." Slowly the golden barrier around them begins to dissolve.  "I should have known you would make it past the first page in only Six months. One twentieth as fast as an intelligent mortal."

When the barrier fades her inner clock stabilizes and informs her its only been a few moments. Knowing that Time doesn't lie it solves the riddle of the golden barrier. "Thanks for the barrier, I haven't studied like that since..." She frowns, when was the last time she studied magic that fiercely? Not since she was young and seeking her place in the pantheon. 

"I understand, I have the benefit of being able to do things at my own pace...mostly. The timestream is already corrupted enough, I don't need your return to the world to be delayed even further."

Making a mental note about that surprising revelation something is nagging at her, Seeing the Grimoires floating in Time's magic none of them resemble the black tome that Discord was holding in his claw. A sense of foreboding fills her as she looks at Time, her voice carefully neutral. "Exactly how many branches of magic have you made Grimoires of?"

Times expression goes carefully neutral. "All of them."

"All?" The implications hit Celestia almost instantly, her neutral expression growing strained as she struggles to keep anger out of her voice "That implies you've also created them on dark magic." A hint of anger fills Celestia's voice. "You also said you 'tested' each version of a spell in order to understand it."

"Yes, that means I've cast dark magic on mortals, immortals, and animals alike."  Expecting the attack Time shifts her form halfway out of the timestream, knowing that her Grimoires are nearly indestructible, the end result is the first blast of pure magic passes right through her body.

For her part, Celestia's form is wreathed in flame. Wings of fire adorn her back as her mane and tail ignite with a fury to match the sun beneath them as she hurls bolt after bolt at the unphased Time. 

Realizing the danger of the gods' anger Time raises another golden barrier around them as Celestia fires blast after blast, trying every spell she knows to do something to the being standing right before her.

Left unchecked Celestia's power is easily enough to turn the young planet beneath them into a barren wasteland. The barrier causes Celestia's magic to remain contained in the space around them, shuddering with each blast from the angry solar goddess. Requiring more and more of Time's power to keep the raging energies trapped within the small time bubble she's made.

Eventually, Celestia is too tired to continue, panting as she glares at Time. When her mind finally catches up with what she was just doing her eyes widen at the mistake she made, looking up at the planet and relieved to see the barrier keeping it safe.

Of course Time would think about that even when facing the fires of her anger.

Looking at Time once again, her body slowly losing its blazing form as the fatigue of using so much of her magic hits her. "Explain." Her voice is tired, and her wings are drooping low to the blazing inferno beneath them. Her voice however still has the steel of anger behind it, the simple word being spoken with as much command as Celestia could muster, her tired form doing nothing to hinder her natural authority.

"I've done unquestionable evil, Celestia, that much is true. But I've also done unparalleled good. I exist in between, neither good nor evil." Seeing that no further blasts are incoming Time lowers the barrier around them, using the task of stabilizing the potent magic still around them to collect her thoughts. 

"Now is not the time Celestia, you need your rest. I shall answer any questions you have later when the time is right. I've already extended your slumber enough." Time looks up at the planet floating serenely above them. "The world will need you soon, I don't know what Chaos is planning with the Grimoire he stole. But he's changed the timeline, his influence is spreading across it from the small things he changes. I'm going to need your help to stop him.

"This wouldn't have happened if you never created tomes of dark magic in the first place." Time winces at that, Celestia was right. It never occurred to Time that her books could be stolen. She would feel if her tower was breached by anyone powerful enough. Which has happened a few times as mortals figure out spells to pierce the timeline and move outside it.

Unless she was distracted, and her last failure was a big distraction.

Time floats over the Grimoire Pyromancy and the eternal magic of fire and heat to Celestia, waiting for the god of the sun to grab it in her magic. Celestia understands a bit more about what kind of deity Time is. Though she hates to admit it, there is a reason Time is considered a god of neutrality.

Celestia has much to think of, and many questions the elusive deity will be answering when she wakes up again.

She also has a Grimoire to read. Perhaps hidden in the tome is a way to actually hurt Time. at least enough to punish her evil actions.

For now, though, expending that much energy has drained her. It is mildly frustrating, but she's not back to her full power yet.

Celestia slowly sinks into the surface of her charge, returning to her deep slumber and taking the tome with her. The last thing Time see's of her mentor is the tired, but steely glare of the fire goddess. 

She may never be fully forgiven.

Time returns to the surface of Equestria, looking at the glowing orb in the skies that almost seems to be still glaring at her angrily. Channeling her own magic She weaves a different cage around the solar body, Calling upon her domain to accelerate time for the sun above.

Angry or not, Time isn't going to let that confrontation mess with the scheduled appearance of the sisters. The world doesn't have the time to wait a few extra centuries for their shining light of hope to appear. As she works even though Time's emotions are bordering on depression, slowly,  an idea is beginning to form. Amid all the fatalistic thoughts swirling around her mind a spark of something ignites inside her. 

Chaos thinks he can win, but now that Celestia knows one of her secrets, its no longer a card he can play at an inopportune time. A slow smile spreads across her face as she pulls a Grimoire from her shelf outside of time. Twilight's eyes roam over the cover of the tome. Ice, the magic of cold and freezing. . Not as destructive as fire, but much more manipulative. Focusing more on controlling than using overwhelming force. 

Time thinks the world is ready for the Grimoires. She's waited long enough. She's going to give the gift of knowledge to those who can make the most use of it. 

The book held aloft in her magic Time makes her way back to The cave where the tribes learned the magic of friendship.

She has a meeting with Clover the Clever.
> Chapter 4
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time slowly makes her way back to what she has decided to call 'The Cave of Harmony' The snow is melting from the windagoes banishment and she takes the time to enjoy the scenery. Celestia's sun is dipping below the horizon, and Luna's moon soon takes its sister's place in the sky above. 

With the tome of ice magic in tow Time happens upon a clearing as a very familiar voice reaches her ears. 

"Just think about it, do you really think one little light show will magically make everyone stop fighting?"

Chaos! What is he doing here? Picking up her pace Time's eyes lock on a very familiar dragonequus speaking to a robed mare.

"That book just feels...wrong to me, why should I trust you? What do you gain from giving me something like this?"

Well, she is called clover the clever for a reason. not that it stops Chaos from changing his approach.

"That may be, but you're a strong mare. Why not learn the magic of strife and channel it into good ends? With Starswirl the bearded missing you're the only one who can lead this little fledgling alliance. With a head like that on your shoulders, you could benefit everyone." Discord moves closer, caressing Clover's cheek with a claw. "Aren't you tired of everyone ignoring you? Like that pompous unicorn ruler..."

Normally Time is a passive mare by nature. If her current experiment isn't affected by your actions, you can generally rely on the fact that in most cases, she will do nothing to you.

There are exceptions to this, one of them being Chaos tampering with one of the key individuals that lead to Equestria's founding. The moment Time see's that not only is Clover's mane and tail becoming grey, but the young unicorn's magic is reaching for the Grimoire too...

Neither of them saw it coming. Time's blast of magic incinerates Chaos' and a good portion of the surrounding forest. After all snow can only protect so much. All that remains is Time's grimoire, floating in Clover's magic and a swirling mass of ash that was formerly the deity of Chaos and Discord.

As with all things, the satisfaction was fleeting. Chaos' voice echoes from around them "Drat, I was hoping Celestia would keep you for longer. Sorry dear, but I steer clear from her when she's angry." A disembodied claw snatches the tome from Colver's magic and they both vanish into Chaos' domain.

Time's breathing is haggard, her eyes full of rage as she glares with intensity where her book just was. 

It was right there! She could have taken it back and this whole mess would be over. Of course, Chaos would simply take it before she can retrieve it from the mortal.

Speaking of said mortal, Clover is looking at Time with an expression of fear, taking a tentative step backward her eyes instinctively looking left and right for an escape route.

Oh, right.

Looking down at herself Time notices that she is glowing a bright coppery orange, flooding the clearing with her distinctive magical aura. With a conscious effort, she returns her wings to her side. A few more deep breaths later and her glow vanishes. leaving her looking like nothing other than a tall purple alicorn.

The mortal is looking less afraid now, instead, she is simply staring at Time curiously, her horn glowing with a faint aura.

A detection spell, good choice. "Apologies, me and Chaos are currently at odds." 

For her part, Clover simply glances at the section of the forest I vaporized along with Chaos' body. "A bit much for 'being at odds'." At Time's sheepish expression Clover continues. "My spell is having a very difficult time identifying you. Logic says that you would be an alicorn...but any unicorn can give herself wings with a polymorph spell." Staring intently at my form she channels more magic into her spell, a slight tingle passing over Time's body.

"But that's impossible, alicorns are but a myth. An old belief by ancient ponies about how the world came to be. There has been no proof...or sightings of alicorns in millennia."

Time winces at that. Celestia and Luna were supposed to be done resting by now. "My apologies, being the first to see one in awhile must be...surprising." Time rubs the bridge of her nose in exasperation. 

"Perhaps we can start over. My name is Time, the thing I just incinerated is Chaos. but, he usually prefers to be called 'Discord' by mortals." Time offers her hoof to clover who looks at it oddly, her horn still alight with the detection spell she's casting.

Not taking the hoof clover asks. "Why were you hiding among us earlier? I admit it took a lot for me to finally see you, but the signs were there. An absent step to the left, the eyes seeming to want to avoid looking in a particular location....and your name. Surely you don't expect me to believe your name is 'Time', implying you are time itself. which I know is impossible. time is just a concept ponies came up with to measure the passage of days."

Was I this bad when I was mortal? thinking back on it...no, I wasn't.

I was much worse.

"Deities...pardon, alicorns refer to each other by our domain. My domain is time."

Clover simply increases the intensity of her spell in reply, focusing on my wings.

Understandable, polymorph spells leave noticeable traces if you knew how to look.

Feeling my wings begin to tingle I simply smile. "I'm impressed, magic has a hard time affecting me, because of my domain my interaction with the world is...odd."

"'Odd' is an understatement." Clover frowns in concentration. "I have to focus very hard to even get any feeling. its like you're...not even here."

Smiling I absently adopt a lecturing tone. "Tell me, Cover the Clever. Can you feel each minute as it passes? can you feel time as a physical thing? I'm roughly the same way, I exist differently than you, I can force myself to manifest fully, to become one with the world, but that is not my natural state. It takes...focus." Time decides the best way to demonstrate this is to walk over to a tree. She lessens her grip on the world slightly and reaches out to touch it.

Her hoof passes right through it as if it was merely an illusion. The tree seems to flow over her leg like water as she moves. eventually, she removes it and the tree goes back to normal a few moments later.

"That's impossible." Clover is simply staring at me, her magic has stopped its scan of me as she looks at the tree with a dumbfounded expression. Walking up she confirms that the tree is unchanged, poking it a few times with a hoof.

"You'll figure this out when the other alicorns arrive, but alicorns are...weird." Time is gazing at clover intently. Seems she's shaken some of the ponies doubt. Good.

"Clover the clever, I'm about to do for you, what I've not done for any pony since I became the guardian of the timestream." Time lets the severity of her words sink in before she raises her hoof again, this time she begins slowly drawing a circle in the air, a distortion appearing where her foreleg travels until she completes the circle. With a small snap a portal appears. On the other side is a comfy looking room, a pair of high backed chairs in front of a crackling fireplace. The walls are surrounded by books which instantly gets clover's attention. Even with the small view through the portal, she can see there are a lot of tomes lining the walls. 

"I invite you to my domain, for now, you can reside in my tower. But I shall allow you to observe the Timestream for a brief moment. This should prove who I say I am." Time gestures toward the portal she just summoned.

"After you, Clover the clever."

The pony looks hesitant, looking back at the cave for a moment. 

"Don't worry about being gone for long, I'll bring us back around this time. no matter how long we remain, it will be but a moment to your new friends."

It only just occurs to Time that she's asking a pony to take a lot on faith.

There's probably some irony in there somewhere.

Clover is going through some kind of debate, but her curiosity eventually wins out, moving forward and poking the portal with a hoof. She almost falls into it, expecting there to be resistance when there was none. Standing back up Clover looks at me one final time before fully stepping into my study.

I close the portal behind her and follow her a moment later, using my own means to travel to my tower. When I arrive She is looking at the bookshelves around her, absently trying to remove them from the shelves.

Needless to say, they aren't moving. They seem no more than immovable objects to her, and its obviously frustrating her.

"Care, those are my precious artifacts." My voice causes her to jump, looking at me sheepishly. and muttering an apology. "I only allow specific beings to access any one of them at a time. But I made a promise, I shall allow you to observe the timestream. But only for an instant, staring too long at it is the gateway to madness and depression to most.

Clover visibly swallows at that but nods. Seems many of her doubts are slowly being shaken. This is good, but Time is a mare of her word, she promises something, she keeps that promise.

Motioning to Clover with a 'follow me' gesture Time walks toward the door on the far side of the room. Stopping before opening it. "To the left, is the past, to the right the future. I will shield you from what I can, but don't stare too long into the future." Opening the door the white void outside her tower is revealed.

Time focuses and creates a metal platform for them to step on, pulling the matter from one of her many pockets of space and forging the metal into a small disc. She waits for clover to follow her before she moves the disc from the tower, bringing the timestream into view above them.

The rainbow ribbon of the timestream flows through the void. Flashes of things that happened in the past coloring the flow in a near constant hue of vibrant colors. There are duplicates of Time entering and leaving the timestream at various points, seeming to congregate near specific areas. Clover's gaze moves to them for a moment but it is taken in by the vibrant beauty of the timestream.

As before, the right side forks into a mind-numbing number of branches, the vibrant rainbow colors grey and diseased with chaos as he alters the timeline in ways Time never thought possible. When Time notices Clover's gaze going toward the right She steps forward, blocking the ponies view with a wing. "I warn you, staring into the many potential futures of the world is not something you wish to do, madness lies beyond that path without proper mental training.

Clover flattens her ears against her head, looking down at the white void sheepishly. "Apologies. It...appears my assumptions were wrong. I would have noticed an illusion, though part of me wishes this was." she looks above, looking into the past and seeing a small scene of herself studying with Starswirl the Bearded. "I have so many questions I want to ask." Remembering Starswirl she once again feels like a student, taking her first steps to understanding magic. Getting a big giddy she absently prances in place. "I can see the true history of the world. possibly even see history in the making in pony!" Realizing she's doing a little dance she clears her throat and stops.

"Ignore that. it never happened." The perfectly straight face that clover gives to that statement sets Time to chuckling softly. Moving them back toward the tower Time waits for Clover to enter before collapsing the metal into a small sphere and sending it back to the pocket it came from. Inside the tower once again Time takes a seat in one of the high backed chairs. 

Time's mirth disappears immediately when she remembers why she came in the first place. "For bucks sake, I completely forgot about the Grimoire." Face hoofing Time summons her ice tome to her side again. Having left it floating back at the cave of harmony.

Seeing Chaos about to prevent Equestria from being founded could do that to the best of us. 

Floating the blue tome closer to the unicorn Time looks at Clover severely, making the pony fidget in place, glancing at the book curiously. 

"This is what I call a Grimoire. They are artifacts that I have created as I studied magic in its entirety. I'm sure you see the similarities to the one that Chaos tried to give you." Clover is looking at the book, her eyes reading its title and stopping at the authors initial at the bottom. -T

Before clover can speak Time continues. "That tome would have destroyed you, it would take those values you hold dear, and corrupt them to be a mockery of what they once were." Time waves a hoof in front of her, a glowing set of scales appearing in front of both of them, shimmering with bronze light before them.

"This scale represents Harmony." Time gestures to the floating scales before them. "In a broad sense, there are two types of magic. Keep in mind, this is oversimplified for easy understanding. First, we have Light magic, which includes all magic that flows with harmony." One the left side of the scale a glowing white orb appears.

"Second, we have Dark magic." A black flame surrounded by purple mist appears on the right side of the scale. "This encompasses all magic that goes against harmony, this includes the tome that Cha-" Ahem. "Discord was trying to give you." time points a hoof at Clover. "You are a being of Harmony, your natural alignment is that of the light. Were you to delve into Dark magic the results would be...dire."

Clover nods at this, giving time her full attention. It was similar to what Starswirl theorized but coming from an alicorn it carries greater weight. 

"Light and dark are constantly at odds, one cannot exist without the other, but each seeks to overtake its opposite all the same. For every Light being, there is a Dark one. when these forces are even Harmony reigns in the world. A good example of this is the windigoes. The three tribes weren't cooperating in harmony, so to reset the scales the Harmony gave a good reason to get along."

Time looks at clover, a hint of anger in her eyes. "Had you fallen to Darkness I shudder to think what Harmony would have done to reset the scales, it would be a war like no other."

Clover looks puzzled. "Are you trying to tell me Harmony is sentient?"

"Not in any way that you would understand. It has a purpose that drives it forward. would you consider a river to be sentient if you observed it eroding a stone that obstructed its path?"

From high above a black tome flies from its shelf and descends toward them, the room getting colder and colder as the Grimoire moves closer. Soon a sound fills the air, discordant whispers of insane babble can be heard coming from the book. Just being close to it makes Clover shiver. The title Madness. The magic of insanity and instability. graces its front page in jagged, uneven lettering.

Clover shivers this close to the black Grimoire. "That book feels....wrong." She can clearly see the madness contained within, a deep sense of dread filling her.

"As a being of Light, using something against your alignment is not to be done lightly. With Dark magic, any power you think you gain from it only serves to corrupt you further. you may think you control your power, but really, your power controls you."

Clover seems to take this to heart, Shying away from the black tome until Time floats it back to its proper shelf at the top of the tower. This leaves the blue tome floating before Clover. "You probably saw that me and chaos are at odds at the moment, so I decided to do some changing of my own. I've deemed you worthy to hold the Grimoire of Ice." time floats Ice, the magic of cold and freezing to clover who opens it and is instantly dumbstruck by the complexity of the runes on the first page, her eyes eagerly scanning the lines of runes and growing more impressed by the second.

"I must warn you though." Clover pauses in her reading and looks up at Time sitting across from her. "A grimoire contains a complete understanding of ice, if you finish the tome you will be changed. A Frost Mage has certain...traits that come with it. Your magic will begin to change you as you progress, and the tome will take a lifetime to understand."

Clover Looks around her, the rows upon rows of tomes lining the shelves, each one pertaining to an aspect of magic. The amount of accumulated knowledge was staggering.

Being surrounded by such knowledge, and the Alicorn who created it all brings back memories of Clover's teacher Starswirl the bearded, she looks down at the tome she's been given, absently rubbing her hoof over the smooth surface.

she doesn't have the time to fully understand this tome, but maybe.

"Time." Clover looks up at the alicorn expectantly.

"Make me your apprentice."
> Chapter 5
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No."

The crackle of the fire is the only sound that accompanies Time's declaration. The deity reclines in her chair and summons a small tea set fit for two, going about making a fresh batch while Clover simply stares at her in shock. A door slammed shut in her face before she could even fully realize the knowledge that resides on the other side.

Clover regains her composure when the tea is about halfway done. "What do you mean no? I have plenty of experience learning from masters of magic. I-" Time stops her by holding up a single hoof. 

"Spare me the spiel, I am not a teacher, I haven't been for a long time. And besides." Time's gaze narrows as she looks Clover up and down. "Your soul is that of the Light, while mine dwells between both light and darkness. It would not be agreeable for you to learn everything I can teach... I Apologize if this is insensitive, but you won't even live long enough to learn even a fraction of what I know anyway." Pointing a hoof a the blue tome Clover is holding Time continues "The single grimoire you now possess will take an average pony their entire lives to learn, be happy with at least that much."

When the tea kettle begins to whistle Time pours a few cups of the liquid and stirs some sugar into it with a thought, taking a sip before continuing. "You have but a finite amount of time. That tome will take all of your remaining years to master. What makes you think you could master this" Raising a hoof a glowing orange light forms above Time and begins to climb into the tower. Row after row after row of Grimoires line the outer walls of the tower, stretching high above them.

When time returns her gaze to Clover, instead of the disheartened pony she was expecting, she finds a determined gaze set upon Time's teacup. Her gaze changing from the moving spoon to Times horn, to the light glowing above their heads and back. 

Crap.

"How did you do that? I've yet to see your horn light up once when performing magic." Clover's determined gaze is boring into Time's eyes. "Can anypony learn to do that?"

Only now does the resemblance between Time and Clover become apparent to the alicorn. The determination to get what she wants, the drive to seek knowledge heedless of the risks.

Even the ignoring of problems that get in the way of knowledge. Such as Time's previous denial of teaching Clover anything. 

All that is forgotten when something new is discovered

Honestly, Time's beginning to wonder of Celestia made her play as Clover in that play for a good reason.

Bringing her focus back to the question at hoof Time sighs. On one side, it's not exactly a secret of magic, anypony looking at the right things could notice it. On the other hoof...this knowledge is extremely dangerous as it can blow out your bodies mana flow.

Not to mention the advantage it gives to the magic user.

Seeing that her tea done Time takes a small sip. "The short answer is 'yes', but my refusal still stands."

Clover's gaze is just as determined as before. "Well, why the buck not! I'm more than qualified, I can tackle anything you send at me."

Time almost misses being that naive.

Almost.

Floating the teacup back to its saucer Time looks at Clover sternly. "What if I asked you to destroy yourself?" Clover flinches at that but continues staring defiantly at Time. "What if I sent you to end the suffering of someone who trapped themselves in a time loop?" Clover's expression wavers at the thought of ending someponys life.

Seeing a way to nip this in the bud Time presses on. "Could you watch with me as a small village starves to death? Could you witness me Kill some foals parents because that foal eventually comes back in time to save them? My role is not pretty Clover the clever, but it is necessary." Gesturing toward the shelves at the top with the black tomes Time presses on. "I am not a good pony. I do whatever is asked of me to preserve time. If that means I have to kill you and every one of your friends to set history on the right course I would not hesitate." 

Clover's eyes widen in shock, seeing the cold, determined look in Time's eyes she knows with absolute certainty that the alicorn is not bluffing.

Thinking about ending another ponies life for the sake of the Timeline fills Clover with dread, and seeing Time's expression is obvious it happened before. Her mind balks at the idea of seriously ending another life. Clover's ears droop as the fight rushes out of her. Opening her mouth to agree that Time is correct a thought strikes her with such intensity she is stunned. Unbidden the Scales that Time showed her move to the front of her mind.

She can't teach me because I'm of the light

Time's words echo inside Clover's head. What if I ask you to destroy yourself?

The golden scales of harmony shine in her mind's eye. Her gaze moving up to the top of the tower locking onto the section of dark tomes. Darkness is a necessary part of Harmony. Her eyes shift to the glowing orb of light hanging above them. But so is Light. Neither can exist without the other.  Gasping for air as the pain in her chest grows stronger, a faint glow coming from her as she feels the pain moving through her body, spreading like vines inside her body.

Instead of Shrinking away from the dark thoughts, Clover embraces them, making them part of herself.

Destroy yourself

The last thing she sees before she passes out is her color leaving her body and a purple alicorn moving toward her to catch her as her world is consumed by darkness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Looking down at the unicorn Time heaves a heavy sigh, casting a quick arcane sight spell her eyes glow a white color as she traces the flow of magic inside Clover's body. Seeing the presence of Dark magic slowly spreading through a system that was dominated by Light up until a few moments ago confirms her fears.

"Stupid stupid stupid stupid" Stomping her hoof with enough force to crack the bottom of her spire Time works quickly. Focusing and touching a hoof to the fevered ponies forehead she does what she hasn't done to any mortal in a long time.

It isn't elegant, She simply forces the pony outside of time, effectively removing the effects of aging from the pony. There are many reasons Time doesn't do this often. Mainly because if mortals knew she could make them ageless she would be pestered nonstop to make ponies 'immortal'

It's happened before.

Eventually, Time pulls them to one of her spare planets, laying the unicorn on a soft bed and sighing watching as the pony tosses and turns in pain.

Time expected many things from Clover. 

A shift wasn't among them.

"You really continue to surprise me. I haven't seen a mortal of your caliber in a very long time. I probably should have looked harder at those ponies right in front of me." 

Taking a seat in a nearby chair, she resolves to wait. Many things await clover when she finishes this process. 

If she doesn't succumb to the darkness inside her first.

A few hours later The changes to Clover's body are becoming more pronounced. Her color is now grey, streaks of green mist are coming from her eyes as the magic in her body is at war with itself. Chaos's method of corrupting ponies is simple but effective. this process is similar to what she's going through. Except in his case, he just destabilizes the ponies soul to force the change upon someone who isn't prepared.

Clover triggered this change all on her own, whether she's ready for it or not is the important question.

A few minutes later Clover Slowly fights her way to consciousness and looks around, seeing Time seated nearby she forces herself to speak, though it takes her several tries before she manages to make anything above a whisper. 

"What...Is...happening."

Looking over Clover's body Time see's that the process is only just beginning. "You triggered a Shift." Raising a hoof into the air Time draws a glowing outline of a pony, filling the inside with lines. The final image is that of a unicorn with a glowing white orb in the center surrounded by streaks of white light that moves through the entire body, focusing on the horn. "A ponies magic stems from their soul, and a soul is...'colored' by a ponies thoughts and convictions." 

Seeing  Clover's Green eyes locked on the image of the pony Time continues. "This means that if your convictions or morals are changed, so does your soul." The White orb inside the image slowly turns red, then black, the flows of white light darkening and becoming tinted green. "Any number of reasons could corrupt a ponies convictions and let them give in to Darkness.  A loss of a loved one, witnessing a gruesome crime, etcetera. When this happens their soul fills their body with dark magic, triggering a number of changes." Dispelling the image of the pony Time points at Clover. "Right now your body is fighting a war between Light and Dark magic. Your soul is teetering on the brink between the two. You must resist the call of the Dark magic trying to take over."

Time pauses to look at clover, Violet eyes locking onto the green ones. "You have to accept that Darkness is a part of your soul. Acknowledge it, but give it no power over you. If you succeed in balancing out the two types of magic inside you, the result is you will be a being that stands between good and evil. Should you fail, it will be the end of you."

Observing Clover as she goes through the various changes caused by her shift Time silently takes notes.

If things go poorly She may have to kill the young pony. Time is already dealing with Chaos toying with the strings of harmony like a bad harp player. She's not dealing with another Dark pony like Sombra. Things look bleak in the near future for the foundling Equestria that Clover put into motion.

Ugh, Time isn't looking forward to taking Clovers place to keep history on the right track, that's a century or two of constant work.

Slowly Clover's changes begin to complete, A shift in the flow of magic is occurring. The dark magic flowing through her system is being absorbed instead of rejected. Finding a balance and merging with the light to form something that is neither fully dark or wholly pure.

Good, instead of rejecting her inner darkness, she accepted it's a part of her, That's an important step.

Now that her magic is no longer at war with itself the physical changes brought upon by the new type of magic begin to occur.

Time probably should have warned her that different types of magic change a pony in different ways.

Clover's horn grows a bit longer and becomes slightly sharper. Her small frame Thickening up a little bit as more muscle builds upon her. becoming a bit tougher as well.

Documenting the slow changes to Clover as the hours pass is interesting in its own right and when the changes finally stop and Clover seems to be simply sleeping Time is going over the many pages of new notes on this process she has obtained.

She learned a great deal.

She is so engrossed in reviewing her notes Time doesn't immediately notice that Clover has regained consciousness and is attempting to rise from her bed, much to the protests of her body which is still adjusting to the changes it went through.

"Where am I?" The voice cuts through the silence and makes Time lose focus for a moment, nearly dropping a dozen scrolls of parchment she has floating about her before she recollects herself. Looking to an awake Clover Time replies. "One of my spare planets I keep just in case I want to relax. It doesn't compare to Celestia's and Luna's work though." Time sighs. "I never did have the eye for art or beauty that the sisters possess."

Curious Clover climbs down from the bed and trots to the door and tries to slowly open it.

The door is so much lighter than she was expecting that she ends up ripping it off of its hinges with a loud snap. Looking in shock at the floating piece of wood in her magic she is slow to notice that Time is behind her.

"Your magic is a mixture of Dark and Light now. You got a small power boost from the dark magic you absorbed. It will take some time to learn proper control again." Before clover could say anything in apology she is herded outside the small cottage and Time absently rips the door from her magic so forcefully she's left with a minor magical backlash. When she recovers she sees the door slowly rewinding in time to fit perfectly in its frame.

Finishing repairing the door Time looks at Clover and gives a small smile. "First things first, Clover the Clever" Time looks at the grey unicorn with a serious expression. 

"You can now become my apprentice."
> Chapter 6
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

About 50 years later.

"Faster." Bolts of magic hammer into Clover's shield of ice, whittling down the barrier a little at a time. "Ice magic excels at control, limit the options of the opponent." 

This little 'sparring match' was meant to test how much she has learned.

So far all clover has learned is that she is no match for the might of an alicorn.

Seems that reading the grimoire and understanding it are two very different things. Her mind is full of too many possible spells to try and gets bogged down with indecision.

And despite her best efforts Time has yet to move from the spot she started from, a series of small craters and patches of frozen ground surround her as she fires blast after blast of golden energy into Clover's wall of ice.

Slowly the bolts begin to wear down the barrier as Clover dives to the side, summoning a path of ice ahead of her to slide on. Her horn glows icy blue as she summons four large icicles and sends them flying toward Time, seeking to impale the Alicorn.

They didn't even reach halfway, controlled bursts of flame melt them into the lukewarm water that splashes harmlessly at the alicorn's feet. "Faster." Time waves a hoof and summons dozens of icicles in the time it took Clover to make four, with a flick of her hoof she sends them after Clover who opts to make a small ramp, flying over them as she fires a blast of cold at the Alicorn.

Time simply flicks a wing and deflects the bolt to the side, making a new crater while Clover lands and sighs in exasperation. Panting from the magical exertion Clover glares at the newly made crater. "You have got to teach me how to use magic without a horn. So far this seems like an unfair advantage."

"That is the point, my student." Time's expression changes to a smirk. "This was never a fair match, even after I gave myself numerous handicaps."

Time absently draws a rune in the ground with a hoof, looking at it Clover sees that its the spell rune for 'Ice'. "You grasp the core concepts of Ice, but you need to work on your speed. There are millions of applications of ice magic, you simply have to be able to choose the best one for the situation your in."

Seeing that Clover is on the verge of getting frustrated Time holds up a hoof to placate her. "I will show you how to use magic without a horn." Taking a step she finally moves from the spot she was 'sparring' with clover from, a well-worn indentation in the ground serving as a reminder that she wasn't even forced back a single step.

Choosing to ignore the evidence of her failure Clover turns her full attention to her mentor. For her part Time gives a simple explanation. " Although it's easier for alicorns to manage this, any race is capable of it." Time begins to pace as she gets into 'lecture mode', something that Clover is quite used to at this point. "For unicorns, the horn is the easiest place to channel magic from, it has the most connections to their manaflow, and it serves as our primary focus." Conjuring a floating image of a pony with lines of light moving through it. "You are well acquainted with how one's magic can change them over time."

Clover nods, looking down at her body, she now looks almost pale, her fur colored grey at the base only to slowly shift to a light blue near the tip, she's also noticed that even when she's not actively focusing her magic she has an aura of cold around her that lowers the ambient temperature near her. Even her magic's color now resembles a light blue after so long channeling ice magic.

"Before I continue, I'm going to require that you never teach another how to use this without my permission. It sets ponies too far apart, this knowledge in the wrong hands can make them a nearly unstoppable foe for the rest of Equestria to handle.

"Yes, teacher." Normally, that is enough but Time pauses and shakes her head this time. "Not this time. You're going to have to do more than just agree." Time's eyes lock onto Clover's "You will have to accept a Geass."

Clover is shocked at this, her limited knowledge of dark magic only giving her the most basic understanding of the 'king's command' spell. Looking at Time with a confused expression she simply asks. "Why?"

Time begins pacing. "I've noticed that you've changed over the years I've taught you. While you've only mastered a small portion of it so far, I've derailed history quite a bit already. This will ensure you play your part without changing too much."

For Clover it's a no-brainer, she was already convinced she wouldn't be allowed to share much of what she learned, giving up a bit of freedom to learn another fundamental aspect of magic doesn't phase her in the least. Looking Time deep in the eyes to show her determination she nods. "Do it."

As soon as she says this she regrets staring into Time's eyes so closely, she's given a first-hand view as Time's eyes begin to darken, turning noxious green. Purple mist begins to flow from her eyes giving her a more 'Evil' appearance as Time steps closer. "Very well." Time's horn begins to glow a copper color but that slowly darkens to a black, tarlike magic.  Black lightning sparks into the air around her. When the spell is complete a blast of black magic strikes Clover in the chest, causing her to wince in pain as a rune begins to glow above her skin. The rune appears to be a complex binding glyph written in Old Unicornan...a language long thought to be dead.

"First, unless your life is in danger you are not to share any magic past the tenth page of the Grimoire without my permission." A sound similar to that of a lock clicking shut comes from the rune as it shifts slightly, growing more complex as a line of glyphs explaining the first command in ancient unicornian appears on the outer ring. "Second, You are not to take any action that will prevent the timeline from following its correct course." Another twist of the rune floating above her chest accompanies this one, the second line of glyphs appearing inside one of the inner rings. "And third, You are not to use Hornless magic without permission unless your life is in immediate danger. It shall be a complete last resort." A final lock twists the rune and the final command appears in the center, flashing with black lightning and sinking past Clover's fur and fusing with the skin beneath. Clover's mind is filled with the distinct sound of shackles locking into place. Testing the limits of the spell she finds that she feels minor pain whenever she even THINKS about breaking the commands. As she gets used to it she notices the rune is no longer glowing, though by moving her grey-blue fur she can still see it on her skin, now fused permanently to her body. 

Giving her student time to grow accustomed to the Geass, Time goes back to her image of a pony. "A unicorn's horn is a focal point for their manaflow. But since the manaflow moves through the entire body, you can use other parts to focus the magic." Holding up one hoof Time forces magic to gather in it. nothing happens for several moments but soon enough her hoof is glowing the distinct coppery color that Time's magic possesses.  "This is the first step, gathering enough magic to cast a spell. The hard part is weaving it into a spell matrix. The final step is to do it fast before the gathering magic begins to glow. Master this final step and you will be doing true hornless magic."

Clover is looking at her hoof and trying to focus, so far her manaflow refuses to change, simply flowing past the limb instead of infusing it with magic. Time softly places her hoof on top of Clover's, breaking her concentration and forcing her to stop. "I'll show you the trick later, just know that this comes with risk, you can blow out your manaflow, causing your magic to leak out into the world before you can harness it. The result is that you will be without magic until it naturally heals."

of course it wouldn't be that easy.

Time releases clover's hoof and heads back to their humble home for fifty years. "Come, I'm sure you're hungry after all that work."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clover heaves a great sigh of relief as she leaves the cave of harmony. Her friends had asked questions about her changed appearance, but she was able to reassure them it was simply a side effect of learning ice magic. Walking back to the clearing where she met Time all those years ago she looks around.

Not finding what she seeks at first glance she looks again, this time much slower, letting her eyes roam over the clearing at a slow pace.

There! a spot near the edge of the clearing that her eyes skip over, a telltale sign of a 'notice me not' charm. Channeling magic into her horn she pierces the spell. A few moments later she's suddenly aware of a Purple alicorn looking intently at a small colony of bugs that have made a nest. She's got a notepad floating next to her, the glow of magic absent from the air as usual.

Clearing her throat she gets her mentor's attention, the alicorn seeming to vanish and reappear directly in front of Clover making her jump back. "Aaah!" 

At least Time has the decency to look apologetic as she waits for Clover to recollect herself.

When she's ready Clover smiles. "It went fantastically! they were worried something had cursed me, but I managed to convince them I'm fine. We even told stories for a few hours." Thinking back on it Clover notices something that was bugging her inside the cave. "I seem to be more sensitive to heat, the campfire we had going was making me too hot and It didn't even look like that big of a fire."

Time nods. "Your body and magic are attuned to cold, it will take some time to get used to warmer temperatures." Looking clover's grey/blue body over Time sighs. "I'm afraid that you will never be fully comfortable in warm rooms again. A frost aura spell will work for that though." Clover nods to this as another voice comes across the clearing.

"Clover? Where have you gone to dear?" Turning into the direction of the voice Clover sees Princess Platinum heading toward her. 

"Ah! There you are, who is it you're talking...too...." Looking around the clearing the Unicorn rulers' eye twitches slightly. "SHOW yourself!" The princess stands proud as she scans the clearing. "I will not have anyone I cannot observe in my presence!" She stamps her hoof with authority as she begins channeling a counterspell.

Time sees the danger and begins to slip out of time, but a gentle pull on her mane causes her to stop. looking over she sees clover's magic gripping her softly. "Stay, Teacher. You know the other two are going to wake up soon, its best the secret get out so that they can make a smooth transition." Pointing to the sun above them she emphasizes her point by bringing attention to the moon that was rising slowly over the horizon as the sun remains at its apex.

I'ts going to happen sooner or later Nodding Time acquiesces to Clover's demand and stops trying to vanish. Meanwhile Platinum is staring at Clover, her mouth forming the word 'teacher'. Even before Time can consider where the unicorns thoughts will take her she jumps to the worst case scenario.

"Starswirl! It is so nice to finally meet you, do forgive my boldness, but I wish to gaze upon you. " Gritting her teeth Time patiently waits for the storm that is about to break as Platinum finishes her spell.

"I do believe we have not had the opportunity to meet, I am Princess Plaaaaaa" The white unicorn's eyes are locked on Time, her mouth hanging open and continuing to produce sound as her mind plays catch up with what she's seeing. Her gaze moves from Time's face to the wings resting comfortably at her side.

Platinum is known to be many things,  a fair ruler, her elegant poise, not to mention her undeniable dignity.

She also happens to be a VERY well known alicornite.

The gears finally stop grinding to a halt in her mind and she drops into a bow so suddenly her crown falls from her head. "Aaaaaalicorn! I'm so sorry, please forgive my rudeness! I-I didn't mean to gaze upon your form without permission! I just assumed that when Clover said 'Master'...." Her spiel runs to another grinding halt as she realizes that Clover was speaking to an alicorn of all things. She glares at Clover and askes in a harsh whisper. "Why are you not bowing! that is an Alicorn! one of the creators of everything!"

And this is why I wanted to leave, she reminds me so much of Rarity. Doing her best to not grimace Time clears her throat. "There is no need to bow Princess Platinum, you will ruin your crown." The object in question lifts from the ground and lands on the bowing unicorn's head. Eventually, she works up the nerve to rise from her prostrate position and look's at Time, her eyes shining with pure joy.

Time never did enjoy hero worship, even back when she was just a simple princess. "My..."She looks to clover who gives her a nod of encouragement. "Student here convinced me to show myself and let you finish your spell." Time gives a rueful smile. "And, while I was present for the creation of the world, I took no part in creating it. That was left to the other two." Time points a hoof at the moon rising on the horizon. "The other two are about to wake up from their long sleep, They should be here shortly."

The look of pure happiness from Platinum is enough to give Time a twinge of uneasiness. She has to remind herself she just confirmed a long-held belief that alicorns created the world, and told the princess that there were two more coming.

Probably shouldn't mention Life and Death to her.

Time pointedly looks up at the sky, probing the magic of the sun and the moon...of course, touching the sun gives Time a twinge of pain, the glowing orb's anger still apparent. The moon for her part simply felt like she appreciates the company.

It wouldn't be long now. 

"I do believe it's time my student and I go greet the other two when they wake." Time decides it is best to not give platinum the opportunity to ask for an audience as well, simply pulling herself and her student through the timestream to a point in space above them. Casting a small spell so that her student can breathe this far from Equus, she waits with her student for the appearance of the other alicorns.

Far in the skies above Equestria, something happens that hasn't occurred in the entire history of the planet. The moon rises from its side and enters its sister's daytime domain, climbing into the sky to coincide with the Sun's path. A long shadow covers the planet as the sun's light is all but blocked by the moon.

A solar eclipse. The first in Equestria's recorded history leaves the world confused and afraid. Far above the planet, standing in the shadow cast by the moon Time and her student wait for the alicorns to appear. The first one to appear is Celestia, rising from her charge wreathed in flame. Her mane and tail ablaze with light and wings of fire spread wide in her wake. She gives a heated glare at Time but flaps her firey wings and flies toward the shadow that Time and Clover are in. She gives a curious glance to the Unicorn by Time's side but files it away for later review.

The next to appear is Luna. A ball of pure shadow rises from the surface and launches toward Celestia. When the black orb finally begins to fade the menacing true form of Luna is revealed.

A mane made of blue stars flows around her, bat-like wings spread out from her black-furred body. Soon enough  Luna's eyes open to reveal they are draconic slits, she smiles at her sister a pair of fangs peeking over her lower lip.

When time turns to her student to introduce her student to the alicorns she sees a flash as seven large icicles fly toward Luna, catching the alicorn by surprise and impaling the dark alicorn, a spray of blood fills the space around her as she coughs in pain, blood leaking from her lips as she looks down to see her chest is full of frozen pillars of ice.

Horseapples.

She taught clover a bit too well.
> Chapter 7
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clover was getting quite used to being Time's student. She's been learning from this alicorn for a long time. And in the process, her instincts have been honed to avoid danger and keep herself alive. Too many times has Time sprung some form of a trap on her to make her think on her toes or be grievously injured.

If I was a real Dark alicorn you would be dead, Clover the clever. She can recall it clearly, the few times Time showed her dark magic.

The sight of Time when she uses dark magic will always give her shivers. Time likes to say 'Experience is the best teacher'. She's had to contend with any manner of dark magic and come out on top.

Waiting patiently by her teachers' side Clover looks forward to meeting the other alicorns. She wasn't told much about them, Time has only very briefly spoken about them. Clover knows there are seven in total. But beyond that, she's never met any of the others

Well, besides Chaos, but he's not an alicorn.

"Life wouldn't be comfortable in your presence, she dislikes dark magic. I doubt you could handle meeting Death, very few can see him and survive unscathed.  Love hasn't been formed yet, and Hate is best left alone."

She knows next to nothing about Sol and Lun, or Celestia and Luna as they have named themselves.

Seeing the moon so close to her as it rises up and blocks out the sun Clover feels a shiver of excitement, Using magic to protect her sight she patiently observes the two orbs, waiting for the alicorns to rise from their celestial bodies.

She gets the privilege of being the first 'mortal' to meet them.

It was a bigger honor than she could have ever imagined previously.

The first to awaken is Celestia, The alicorn of the sun, her body wreathed in flames like a phoenix as she gracefully flies from her orb. She glares at Time for a moment before standing next to Clover, giving a serene smile to the unicorn. Time said she isn't on the best terms with Celestia right now, I better be respectful. Clover gives a small bow to Celestia, the smile on the white alicorn's face widening in genuine love and affection.

Before she can even speak her horn begins to ache with the telltale signature of dark magic, her body screaming at her that something is close...something dangerous. Following her unease she see's a dark orb flying from the surface of the moon toward Celestia. Taking a ready stance, She watches the orb cautiously as it slowly fades.

And a nightmare steps out of it.

You wouldn't last a second against a true dark alicorn. The best bet is to surprise them. Attack them before they even know you're there. The geas prevents her from using hornless magic unless her life is in danger.

She is definitely in danger. Wasting no time she forces the manaflow in her body into a spell matrix, summoning several foot long spears of ice before her, sending them toward the nightmare with a flick of her hoof without hesitation.

Strike first and strike true, alicorns are difficult to kill, but they still feel pain.

It works! She's taken the nightmare completely by surprise, she begins weaving another spell, one designed to cause the Icicles to explode, seeking to incapacitate before the monster has a chance to retaliate.

Suddenly her entire world is engulphed in searing hot pain, her spell faltering as her mind struggles to catch up with what just happened. Looking over the last thing she see's is Celestia's angry expression looking down at her, her long elegant horn ablaze with fire and Time blinking to appear between her and Celestia, who's channeling another spell.

There is a bright flash, and Clover doesn't feel anything after that.


~~~~~


A deep voice chuckles as he looks into the shimmering orb of chaos magic.

"Oh my, and here I thought it wouldn't get any better!" A chorus of other versions of Chaos are running about behind him, getting ready for the upcoming show. Though several of them take the time to stop and cheer for Clover trying to kill Luna.

A familiar voice inturrupts the impromtu applause. 

"Don't you have anything better to do? like...you know...the plan?"

Chaos rolls his eyes out of his head and over the cave floor, stopping at the bubble of chaos magic that surrounds the purple alicorn so they can look up at her and give a wink.

Somehow, even without a face Chaos' eyes manage to look smug.

"Now now Twilight Everything is nearly ready."

The purple alicorn rolls her eyes (albeit in a less dramatic fashion). "Please don't call me that, I haven't gone by that name in..." She stops and shakes her head. "No distracting me. what's  stopping me from simply leaving and informing myself about what you're doing?"

Chaos snaps his fingers and the orb vanishes, the tiny images of two alicorns and one crispy unicorn disappearing. "And if you did that, all this work will be for nothing. You agreed to this yourself, all those years ago." He reaches a claw into the sphere surrounding the irritated alicorn and caresses her cheek.

For her part, she simply shudders but doesn't shy away. "That doesn't mean you can slack off. What if it doesn't work? have you thought about what will happen if you fail?"

Chaos absently waves a claw at the 'trapped' alicorn. "Yea yea, the destruction of harmony, end of the universe,  blah blah blah." In his paw, a small image of Time's head appears and speaks in a mocking voice. "Do this, do that, don't do this, do that differently." Tossing the head at her it pops like a balloon and fills the air with confetti. "You really have to learn to loosen up Beta, its no wonder you turned out so rotten."

Time Beta simply huffs at him and conjures a scrying mirror to watch the commotion Time Alpha has caused. "Do you think she'll do it? I don't even know if I would do it, but I've been separated from her for so long I'm not sure what her motivations are anymore."

Chaos's expression changes from a simple smirk to one of complete seriousness. "Look at her. so arrogant...so sure. Nothing is as dangerous as somepony that has been knocked off their pedestal. This is the ultimate gamble, the highest stakes one can imagine."

the alicorn sighs. "You're right, she's almost unrecognizable now, so different from who I once was. I may be just a copy but I am functionally no different than her." She looks at The commotion, seeing a standoff between her other self and Celestia.

"Now now my dear Beta, don't worry that head of yours, we're going to need it if we are to succeed."

Time Beta looks up at Chaos and sighs, taking a look at the cage surrounding her. Yes, she could easily escape these confines, and the temptation to rejoin herself and become one being again is strong...but she knows her thoughts and convictions would be ignored by the First version of herself.

Seeing that Beta is placated Chaos is informed by a smaller version of himself sitting on his shoulder that the preparations are complete. Smirking he lifts up his claw and slashes through reality, exposing a thin ribbon that seems to be made out of rainbow. Reaching into the breach he puts a claw on it.

As usual, it doesn't like his touch and complains wordlessly to be left alone. "Now now Harmony, you know this must be done." He doesn't receive a reply as usual but the complaints slow down and eventually stop, the slight recoiling from his grasp fading to nothingness. Accepting Harmony's wordless acceptance (more or less) he pulls the ribbon, distorting harmony and letting it go, causing the world around him to shake as one of the very binding forces of the world is shifted Closing the breach he looks up and smiles as shadowy shapes rush through the tunnels around him, rising to the surface. 

"Check, your move Time."


~~~~~~~~~~


Princess platinum is looking at the heavens, a look of rapture on her face. 

alicorns are coming!

She's positively giddy with excitement. She blinks in awe as the moon flickers a bit and the sun flares outward...almost angrily.

"They will usurp your throne"

One of her ears flicks a bit at the whispered words. Blinking and looking around, she channels magic to her horn, ready to pierce another 'notice me not' charm once more. "Who's there?" From the shadow of a tree near the edge of the clearing, she can see a pair of glowing red eyes looking at her intently.

"They will love them more than you." 

Platinum frowns at the voice, it sounds a lot like hers, moving closer and channeling her magic into a soft glow she shines a white light on the shadow, revealing a grey version of herself standing in the tree's shadow. She gasps a bit as the copy moves toward her, the same intent red eyes bore into hers.

The copy opens its mouth and a slightly distorted version of platinum's voice comes from it. "Unicorns are the true rulers of this world, we've lived for centuries at the top. Why do we have to step down now that some 'alicorns' are arriving? Didn't we earn our right to rule?"

The initial shock of seeing a copy of herself fading Platinum opens her mouth to refute this... doppelgangers words, only to find that they struck a chord with her. The grey version offers her hoof to Platinum with a soft smile 

"Come, we don't have much time to prepare, they will be here soon." Nodding at the other version of herself she accepts the offered hoof. 

"Not much time at all." A blinding flash of light erases all shadows from the clearing for a moment, nearly rivaling that of the glowing orb above.

All around the world similar flashes of light brighten the skies of Equestria.


~~~~~~~~~


Time channels magic to her horn and the world seems to blur slightly, taking a few steps to the right she positions herself between Celestia and her student, giving the angry alicorn a soft push she restarts the flow of time and takes a ready stance.

Celestia's angry eyes go unfocused for a moment as she gets used to Time suddenly appearing between her and the unicorn who hurt her sister and she says softly. "Move aside." The venom in her voice is almost palpable, and from her expression, she's only a hair's breadth away from blaming Time for this.

Taking a deep breath and glancing at Luna's ruined chest Time works on casting a warming spell, melting the Spikes of ice into lukewarm water. The dark alicorn gasps a bit at the sensation but the wounds slowly begin to close, flesh stitching itself together to leave no trace of the damage. Luna nods in thanks and walks over to the prone Unicorn, looking down at her with a curious expression.

Bowing deeply "I'm sorry on behalf of my student, I trained her to fight against dark magic, and my methods were a bit....odd." Bowing low, but keeping an eye on Celestia. "It slipped my mind to warn her about Lun's... appearance."

"Slipped your mind? Our first interaction with the mortals of this world is now marred by violence." Celestia's fiery wings flare out in anger "Move aside. I shall not let such an infraction against my sister stand."

Luna speaks up as she moves closer to the hurt unicorn. "Be still sol, I'm sure my appearance is likely the cause of this." The Dark alicorn looks down and frowns. "It seems you've done a fair bit of damage already." Kneeling down Luna's horn glows, a dark aura flowing from it and slowly enveloping Clover's unconscious form. "She's an ice mage, your flames have wounded her deeply." Lun inspects the prone form of Clover and frowns. "I didn't think that Equestria would be magically advanced enough to cause such a pronounced magical shift." 

Time simply replies. "It's not." Looking at Celestia and seeing that she is calming down slightly she releases the spell she was channeling, causing a noticeable spike in the ambient magic around them as the mana flows back into the world, something easily noticeable to the other two alicorns present. Frowning Luna looks at Time intently. "She is truly that important to you? I've never seen you care about anypony that much, let alone a mere mortal. 

Time nods. "I gave her a grimoire, and taught her as much about ice as possible to learn." Looking down at the Unicorn in question. "She impressed me enough that I agreed to train her, she is to be my weapon against Chaos." Luna's spell finally ends, the wounds on Clover's body fading. "Her manaflow isn't rejecting my dark magic either." Seeing that Clover is slowly regaining consciousness Luna steps back a bit. "You have found a remarkable student Time." When Clover is fully awake Time blinks between her and Luna. "Clover the clever, I would like you to meet Luna, Celestia's opposite." Attempting to make up for lost time she explains alicorns a bit. "Alicorns come in pairs, each covering either Light magic or Dark magic." 

Seeing The shocked expression on Clover's face Time continues. "Celestia, meet Clover the Clever, my personal student, and an Ice Mage." 

The tension is thick enough to be cut with a knife but Clover scrambles to her hooves and bows to Luna. "I am terribly sorry for the way I treated you. I was...shocked by your appearance." Time places a hoof on Clover's shoulders. "This is more my failing than it is yours, Clover the Clever." Time sighs. "I should have told you about the alicorns before today."

Standing straight Clover forces herself to look at Luna's nightmarish form, ignoring her bodies many protests to get away. Looking from time to Luna Clover sighs. "I can't let you take all the blame for my actions." Channeling a quick spell a floating blue tome appearing before her. "As an apology, I think it would be best if I gave you my Grimoire." Clover floats it in front of Luna, who grabs it in her magic after a few moments.

The shocked expressions on Celestia's and Time's faces go largely ignored as Luna inspects the tome, her blue eyes roaming over the simple cover, paying extra attention to the small authors signature at the bottom. -T Looking up at Clover Curiously Luna asks. "What is a Grimoire?"

Time opens her mouth to explain the gravity of what is being offered but gasps as a Lance of pain shoots through her head, causing her to stagger and nearly fall over, Luna and Clover move toward Time in concern, Clover offering a hoof to help steady the purple alicorn. "What's Wrong?"

Time gives clover a serious look, her head throbbing with one of the worst headaches she's ever had. "Something has happened, something bad." Clutching her head Time takes some deep breaths. "I've never felt something like this, it's like Harmony itself is screaming at me." Time's attention is almost physically dragged toward the Planet below them, several bright flashes of light illuminating the world in various places. The others follow her gaze with concern.

"I'm sorry Celestia, but we can discuss my many failings later...I think something just tampered with Harmony itself."

The list of beings capable of doing such a thing is small.

very small.

Her expression going from curious to shocked Celestia gives one last glare at Clover before moving next to luna. "We can settle the matter of her punishment later, and we will have that discussion you've been dreading, Time." Pausing long enough to give the cause of her ire a pointed glare to She Lights up her horn, her magic flickering like flame and slowly encompassing her body, Luna does the same a few moments later, floating the tome back to clover as her body is enveloped in shadow.

Several long moments later the moments the effects fade, the two alicorns are looking different.

Celestia's mane and tail are now pink instead of flickering flames like before, her wings now resembling regular (if a bit large) pegasus wings.

Luna for her part is a bit smaller than she was previously, standing a bit shorter than her sister. The bat-like wings and fanged mouth are gone,  replaced by much friendlier face than before, her mane and tail now a light blue compared to the floating concentration of stars it resembled previously, even her draconic eyes are gone.

At clover's shocked expression Luna smiles. "Twould not do to be seen as our true selves to the mortals, I'm afraid we are already going to make an impression. let's see if we can make it the right one." Her gaze is still friendly but the reminder of her failure makes Clover fold her ears to her head in shame.

After waiting for the alicorns to change their shapes Time projects a copper-colored field around them, a lance of pain shooting through her as she focuses on the spell. 

my abilities are going to be severely limited for awhile until I Figure out the cause of this. Gritting her teeth she blinks them all down to the familiar clearing outside the Cave of Harmony. 

Once the spell completes, the throbbing headache gets worse, making her gasp as she waits for her body recover naturally. 

A wing wraps around her and she looks over to see Luna smiling at her. "Do not push yourself on our account, the sooner we figure out the problem the better."

Time goes to thank her but is interrupted by a regal voice. "Oh, we know exactly what the problem is." Ahead of them at the entrance to the cave is Princess Platinum, her regal expression turned downward into a snarl. On Platinum's left is Chancellor Puddinghead, and on her right is commander hurricane.

All three of them have no color at all in their coats, the normally friendly expressions on their faces filled with disdain and...hatred.

They've been Chaos touched. Or as the inventor of that little trick likes to call it.

The founders of Equestria have been discorded.
> Chapter 8
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are three ways to deal with a discorded pony.

The first is to forcefully realign their destabilized soul, purging the chaos magic in the process.

The second is a memory spell, pulling select memories from the pony to realign their soul with the light. The issue with this is that you need a intimate connection with the pony in question to know exactly which memories to pull.

The third is to kill them and let Harmony sort out their soul after they are gone.

The problem with this is that whatever Chaos just did to the fabric of harmony, it's seriously fucking with her essence. Light and Darkness next to her seem affected, but for some reason, Time is the most affected—her head feels like it might split open. She can feel the strings of harmony vibrating to a discordant beat.

Time looks to Light. "Purge their souls, I'm too...affected by whatever chaos did to fix this elegantly. A blast of pure light should do it." Time shudders. "Please hurry.”

Both alicorns seem ready to object, but the obvious distress in Time’s eyes quiets them. Dark summons a shimmering portal of shadow and steps through while Light gathers energy inside her horn.

Clover takes cover behind Time as the Discorded ponies rush them, faces contorted with anger. Right before they arrived at the quartet, a deafening blast of pure magic slams into everypony present. Clover's body spasms in pain as some of her color comes back for a brief moment, her soul's darkness forcefully purged for a single instant. By the time that Clover recovers she notices that all the other ponies (excluding Time and Light) were on the ground, unconscious.

A quick look at their souls shows that the chaos magic is no longer tainting their manaflows, and even though the timeline will likely never fully recover from whatever it was Chaos just did, the founders of Equestria are safe and protected. 

With that taken care of, Time returns her focus to helping Clover recover from the blast of magic. Time takes a deep breath just in time to see Luna return. Nodding at her, she and Time help Clover's body recover back to its natural equilibrium.

When all is said and done, Time simply sighs and looks at Celestia and Luna. "You two can take it from here; the worst of the pain seems to have gone. My..." Time looks at the slowly recovering Clover. "…Student and I have some work to do. These aren't the only discorded ponies Chaos created." Bowing and pulling Clover outside of time before the other two could react, she heads back to her tower.

There is a lot of work to be done, and she's going to need to prepare.


~~~~~


"And why should I believe you? If what you say is true, then she serves me far more than I ever thought, and if it isn't, nothing changes. I see no reason to be a part of your...scheme." The words are spoken by a deep voice, which comes from a frail and sickly looking alicorn. Thin skin stretched so tightly over the bones you can clearly see them, listless milky eyes that seem to focus on something far in the distance, ignoring Chaos's pacing from a moth-eaten high backed chair. If it weren't for the devastating aura of sheer terror the specter exudes, it would be easy to write off this alicorn as a sickly Stallion nearing death.

As with most things in the world, all is not as it appears.

Chaos shakes his head slowly, his pacing beginning to wear down the already quite worn rug he's standing on. "Now now, Death, no need to be that way. You have a limited ability to see into the future, do you not?"

The frail pony scoffs. "Of course I do, though much of what I know changed suddenly within the last few minutes. A lot of lifespans just got cut drastically short. The longest being a few hundred years from now, and the shortest only have minutes remaining. That stunt you pulled gave me a lot of work to do." The frail pony flicks a bony hoof toward Chaos. "Begone, I’m busy. I'll have no part in your pranks." The word seems to practically ooze disdain, the last syllable ending in a hiss.

Many mortals (and some immortals too) would quake in terror at this demand, but Chaos simply sighs and looks Death in the eyes. "I'm afraid I can't do that. She's been doing this for far too long." Chaos snaps his fingers and waits. The change comes not even fifteen seconds later, and Death hisses in a deep breath. "What have you done! You've killed us all, you fool!" Death's ragged breathing fills the air for several moments. "You incompetent buffoon! You dare to mess with the very magic that binds the world together?"

Chaos simply continues to stare into deaths eyes, waiting. Once Death's anger passes he seems to get lost in thought. "I understand. What I see now is your failure. This is no trifling matter, Chaos. Harmony is not something that appreciates being toyed with—you're tipping the scales, scales that have existed far longer than anyone realizes."

Chaos nods. "I know the stakes; I'm putting the very core of my being on the line here."

Death scoffs. "You doom us all. I shall give you what you require, but should you fail, I'll make sure your final moments will be in such torment that the release of the void shall be a welcome sight."

Death waves his bony hoof at Chaos once more. "Begone, I have work to do. Fear not about my sister; I shall be speaking to Life quite a bit about this stunt." Death pauses for a moment. "Ah, she's already begun. I admit it's an effective strategy." Death's eyes grow softer, almost kind. "But I fear for her student. Too much darkness can taint one forever. I hope she's up to the task—killing that many would weigh on even the strongest of minds."

Chaos gives a grand bow and vanishes from Death’s domain, leaving a small scale where he was standing. One half is white, while the other is black. Death stares at it for a long time with his milky eyes, observing as the scales slowly move toward darkness. Sighing he gets up from his chair and shuffles over to the small toy. Knocking it over completely, he sighs. "That buffoon dooms us all, and he has time for tricks." Pulling a worn cloak from a stand he sets off on his way.

He's got an Alicorn to appease, and a very old book to dig up from where the last owner left it.
> Chapter 9
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sound of a shovel breaking earth softly fills the air.

"I still don't see why we must remove this...thing." The female voice drips with contempt, the glowing white Alicorn staring at the nondescript grave that Death is slowly but patiently digging up.

"That fool's plan has to succeed." The sound of the shovel digging into the ground emphasizes Death's words. Looking up at Life, he sighs. "Tell me, what is the demand for new souls fifteen hundred years from now?"

Life begins to look inward, feeling her connection to the world. "The same as usual, old souls are recycled and..." She pauses, reaching for something that isn't there. "What? That's impossible." Digging deeper and deeper, Life searches for something, anything, past fifteen hundred years.

A sound of annoyance comes from Death. "Do you mind? You're making this even harder." Life blinks and realizes she’d forgotten herself and caused the small clearing to bud and grow, a soft blanket of grass now covering the formerly barren ground beneath them. "My apologies, but what is going on? What could cause everything to suddenly...stop?"

Death resumes his work, the plant life slowly withering and dying around him as Life's presence diminishes and the curse placed upon the land activates once again.

"Chaos is going to die." The sound of Death's slow work fills the air once again.

"You can't be serious, one of the immortals dying is unthinkable. Without one of the fundamental forces the universe itself would cease, and..." Life's words slowly die out, refusing to finish that statement. 

Soft laughter rises from the haggard alicorn behind the shovel. "Realized it, did you? The fool's got it into his mind to toy with the very forces that bind everything together. He's made up his mind, and nothing we can do will stop him, aside from killing him. And that would defeat the purpose, now wouldn't it?"

A perfectly white hoof rests itself upon Death's shovel, stopping him from working for a moment. Life's determined gaze looks deep into his milky white eyes. "Only we have that power—only you or I could destroy something like Chaos. What is it you aren’t telling me?"

Death's wheezing laughter croaks from his dry throat again. "Many things, but for now, know that I'm doing my best to make sure that buffoon succeeds; if he doesn’t, everything will unravel." Waiting for Life to remove her hoof, Death continues. "What do you know about us?" He waves a bony hoof around them. "All of us."

Life sighs and releases her hold on the shovel. "Digging up some old memories there, Death. Why ask me? You already know the answer."

The sound of the shovel hitting wood echoes around them. "Humor me."

Rolling her eyes, Life obliges. "The first to form himself out of Magic was Chaos, ever shifting and uncontrollable. The second, forming so quickly after Chaos as to be nearly instant was Time. Her forming marked the beginning of everything we know. After that—" 

A soft wheezing laugh interrupts her. "No no, not that part." Death's hooves work on opening the coffin, looking at the skeletal pony resting inside. "Sorry old friend, but our deal is off." Death slowly reaches out and touches the remains with a hoof, angry whispers filling the air as he forcefully purges the liches soul from the world. "I wasn't asking for a history lesson, I was asking what you knew about us.”

"I don't know where you’re going with this, so how was I supposed to know what you meant?" Life huffs and doesn't speak for awhile. While he waits for her to get control of herself again, Death begins looking for a book inside the coffin. Surely it's here somewhere—he can feel the dark magic.

Right as he finds it tucked into a hidden compartment, Life speaks again. "We are formed from the different aspects of magic that came into existance during the instant of creation. Each of us assumes an important role, which is inseparable from our selves; for all intents, we are what we embody. When asked about it, Time once said that we are 'powerful magic that became sentient and took a physical form out of convenience.'"Life sighs. "She doesn't really talk much, but what she does say should be honored and remembered."

Death scoffs. "I wouldn't be so sure. We were under the impression that she knows all: all that was, all that will be. Apparently she's just been cheating. She does embody time, but she never took actions to dissuade our assumption of what that meant."

Working open the hidden compartment, Death's withered hooves roam over the faded leather cover. "She's not omniscient." Life's sound of indignation could either have been from Death's proclamation, or the tome he now holds. 

Life looks away in disgust. "You know my thoughts on that magic. I was opposed to its creation from the very beginning."

Death's bony hoof rubs the cover of the book, made in old pony leather, the words Necronomicon emblazoned across the front. "Time may have done experiments to learn necromancy, but she can't hold a candle to something written by me. Some things just aren't possible for somepony to do without my blessing."

Life glares at the tome. "Or mine. That book"—Life practically sneers the word—"is my single biggest regret." Life looks Death square in the eyes. "This is the last time I shall uphold my end of the deal." Life's horn lights up and her voice echoes around the area, shaking the very foundation of the world with each syllable. "The next owner of this tome shall have my blessing to use it, but this shall be its last owner. No longer shall this tome recognize any other as its master."

When she's done, Death gives his blessing as well, but his words are silent, and fill the air with a chill that doesn't seem to fade.

When they are both finished, Life sighs. "Who are you giving it to this time? A street urchin? A pony who's parents were murdered again? Maybe spice it up and give it to Hatred." 

Death shakes his head, his soft wheezing laughter filling the air. "Neither. This is going to Lun in a couple hundred years; she's going to have a need for an army. An army we will provide for her."
> Chapter 10
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A hooded figure makes her way deeper and deeper into the badlands, her eyes on the sky as she tracks a barely noticeable dot. Black carapace in front of the dark night. Hardly anypony could be expected to track such a thing.

Lun wasn't just anypony. Her draconic eyes follow the changeling as it finally enters a hive, a smile on her face. She waits outside, starting a small campfire with the sparse vegetation around her. Curling up, she looks at the stars, moving one or two to make them flow better, painting a beautiful tapestry.

She was so engrossed in her work that she almost didn't her the confident stride of an approaching changeling. Looking down, she sees a young queen, Barely an adolescent, staring at her with an unreadable expression.

Lun inclines her head. "I'm sorry to hear about your mother, Chrysalis. I hope the power struggle wasn't too tiresome."

The changeling scoffs and takes a seat next to the fire. "Of course not. I always knew I would take over when that old hag died. Though I didn't expect you to find my new hive quite so quickly; I'm not currently accepting guests." The young changeling points in the general direction of Equestria. "Leave."

Sighing, Lun looks up at the sky, fixing a star that seemed to be flickering. "I'm afraid not. I'm going to need your help."

Chrysalis's eyes widen at this admission, quickly narrowing as she tries to turn this to her advantage. After several long moments, she gives up and sighs. “What do you need help with? I'm barely managing to get by with my small force of love collectors—I don't have the power to assist anyone, and with the Plague sweeping Equestria it's becoming increasingly harder to plant harvesters."

Lun doesn't say anything for a while, simply staring at the moon hanging in the sky. "I think I've waited long enough, Chrysalis. My sister sits on the throne and basks in the love of the ponies, meanwhile, I'll be lucky if I get three visitors a month at Night court. I've done my best to make the night sky beautiful for the ponies to enjoy, but instead they lock themselves inside, fearful of my night."

Lun slams a hoof into the ground, a flash of lightning cracking above. "I'm done waiting. I deserve just as much as my sister; I am not the weaker one!" Chrysalis has moved back a bit. Lun takes a few deep breaths to steady herself, looking down at the small crater surrounding her hoof. "I apologize. The plague Chaos released has worn on me—every day there are fewer survivors, and even they are changed forever.

I've waited four centuries for them to embrace me; I'm done playing nice." Lun's draconic eyes glow inside her hood, staring at the newly crowned changeling Queen.

Chrysalis gulps audibly, taking a moment to compose herself. "You still haven't told me what you need. Not that it matters, I'm not about to give you anything when I have my work cut out for me building a hive. It would take years before I have a notable hive."

"How many?" The irritation in Lun's voice makes Chrysalis step back even further, the Dark Alicorn taking deep breaths. "If you were to acquire a steady supply of love, how many years would you need?"

The changeling's eyes narrow. "At least ten, but closer to fifty for a large hive. If you are looking for soldiers to go against your sister, then I would like longer. I doubt I could do anything against her if she got serious without lots of work building up heat resistance."

"Leave that to me; I've been studying a few tomes that have come into my possession." Lun's face splits into a wide smirk. "My sister only has Fire, but I have more than Ice on my side now. She's only really good with overwhelming force—subtle, cunning uses of power aren't her forte." Lun's smirk vanishes, replaced by a sneer. "Too much time basking in the sun, every word she speaks worshiped like miracles." The venom in Lun's voice is growing stronger but she calms herself down with more deep breaths.

"Fifty… Fifty years is the most I can wait. My magic is screaming at me to take action; it's becoming harder and harder to stay calm." Looking up at the stars above she continues, almost as a whisper. "The darkness inside me grows in response to negative emotions, and I'll soon come to a point where I can't… hold back." Lun stares into Chrysalis’s eyes. "You best be on my side when that happens, or you'll become another obstacle in my way that I have to remove."

Chrysalis gulps but nods. "Is that all? I have much work to do." Lun nods and Chrysalis makes her leave. Lun carves a spell matrix onto the ground, the symbols glowing silver before vanishing into the earth, oozing like tar into the blackened and broken ground beneath.

With her mark done, Lun steps to where it once was and vanishes, reappearing in her dark quarters in Everfree castle. A quick magical scan to locate any scrying magic later and she heads to her desk, pulling out a thick tome made of old leather, staring at the agonized face on its cover as if it holds all the answers.

Perhaps it does.

There will come a time that this no longer repulses you; I urge you to dig into its secrets when this happens. Life has made it abundantly clear that its next master will be it's last. That master is you, Darkness.

Hesitating a bit, Lun opens the tome, a wave of psychic energy hitting her, telling her to turn back, silent screams of those used to make this abomination.

With a fierce effort of will she resists its wordless commands to leave it be, and opens it to the first page.


Chapter one



The Power of Souls











Fifty years later


How long has she done this? Is this truly her purpose in life?

"This isn't you! What's wrong honey?!" Two ponies are causing a stir in the middle of town, a husband and wife.

Looking down at the list that has become her closest companion these last few centuries, she desperately searches for a name. After several tense moments of reading and she comes up empty, letting out a sigh.

If they are not on the list don't purge them, kill them. I'm far too weak to purge everyone from what Chaos did. Only those on the list are important for history to be on the right course.

Clover channels her magic into the Black amulet around her neck, the red gem in the center beginning to glow along with her eyes. Time slows, then eventually stops.

I made this amulet long ago; only its owner can remove it.

Clover walks up to the Pony, looking him in the eyes. Searching for some sign that he will snap out of it.

They are full of rage, fear, and confusion. His hoof is raised up to strike his wife, her head ducked and waiting for the blow.

It's important that you kill them the exact same way every time. Nopony must know it is you.

For the thousandth time, Clover curses Chaos from the depths of her soul. Weaving a spell, she summons a small shard of ice, positioned perfectly inside his skull. Turning and walking away, she releases the magic from her amulet, the flow of time eventually picking back up to normal around her. The pony standing perfectly still before collapsing onto the ground. His wife noticing and trying to wake him up.

Crossing another town off the list Clover continues on her journey, an odd throbbing in her head causing her to stumble a bit.

As she travels the pain in her head gets worse and worse, her heart starting to ache as well. "W-What's happening?" Stopping where she is, she notices the amulet around her neck is glowing. Time's warning echoes in her mind.

You must not let darkness claim your soul—this amulet corrupts its wielder in return for power not normally at their disposal. Were you still a Light pony, this would cause untold damage to those around you. As darkness is already a part of you, keeping it in check should be second nature.

Under no circumstances should you give into hatred.

The flashes of those she's killed flash through her mind, her anger rising at Chaos for forcing this upon her. With horror, she realizes he Amulet is amplifying the negative thoughts inside her. Grasping at the amulet with her red magic she tries to remove the dark artifact from her neck.

It refuses to budge, the latch giving not an inch. Is she no longer the owner of the amulet? does it own her now? She tries over and over to remove it, her head filling with anger, the amulet fueling her rage.

Slowly the air around her begins to fill with mist, a chill entering her body as she feels something appear.

She freezes in place when a dry raspy laugh fills the air. A lance of dark magic strikes the amulet square in the center, causing the thoughts filling her head to slowly quiet down. The amulet pulses once in anger but goes inert after a few moments.

"You resisted the call far longer than I would have thought, Clover the Clever."

Clover's mind is filling with panicked thoughts but she eventually calms herself down, her heart hammering in her chest. Just casting two simple protection spells fills her head with pain, but the alternative is worse.

Far worse.

After a few moments the spells take effect, and she takes a deep breath she didn't know she was lacking, collapsing onto the ground as the tension leaves her body. Slowly she looks for the source of the voice, and her heart nearly stops beating right then and there.

Standing nearby is an alicorn, male from the looks of it, his body so thin that she can clearly see his bones beneath the thin layer of skin that holds him together. His wings are nearly featherless and poorly maintained—what feathers he has are broken and sticking at odd angles. His head is devoid of a mane, and his lips are pressed against his teeth in an almost permanent sneer.

Clover is looking Death in the eye, and her body recoils in terror.

Death's wheezing laugh echoes around the clearing once again. "I'm surprised. I figured I would have to tone down my aura, but it seems you've been taught well." The alicorn takes a step closer, looking down at her. "A soul going through a shift, and still manages to cast the proper protections." Death's grin gets wider, his dry lips splitting apart with the motion.

Clover opens her mouth but is still too terrified to form a response. At least she didn't attack him in a panic like the last dark alicorn she met.

Taking a seat, Death's broken horn lights up, and the body numbing terror leaves Clover’s body, causing her to gasp a deep breath she hadn't realized she needed. "Do not fear, I'm not here on business." Death's milky eyes slowly roam over Clover and he snatches a list poking out of her saddlebags, scanning its contents. "Ah, I recognize Time's writing anywhere." He reads through the scroll, frowning at the list of names. "How odd." With a snap another list appears next to the first, this one made of rotting and decaying paper. "It seems nearly the exact opposite of mine. How strange that whoever isn't listed here, dies." Death looks to the recovering unicorn, his eyes deadly serious. "Such a naughty unicorn you are. I've been quite busy these last decades because of you. How's it feel to be the world’s first mass murderer?"

Clover's eyes flash in anger, glowing red for a brief moment. "I only do what I have to! It's all Chaos's fault." The amulet begins to glow again, the fire leaving her eyes and replaced by fear.

Death shakes his head slowly. "Truly, I expected you to shift much sooner. I suppose this is due to your training under the Great Deceiver." Clover raises an eyebrow at this, not having heard her mentor referred to in such a way. She struggles to stand and glare at Death, but her strength fades almost as fast as she can gather it, the amulet around her neck glowing faintly.

Death taps his chin with a bony hoof. "Strange that it would happen now of all times." Death's milky eyes study the amulet around Clover's neck, not saying anything for several long moments. "It doesn't recognize you as its owner; the corruption of your soul is too prominent." Death takes the scroll and looks at it. "You need time to recover. I'm afraid you're going to miss the party. I'll take over where you left off." A black portal slowly appears beneath Clover and she begins to sink into it. Her gaze looks terrified but Death simply smiles, his face resembling a grinning skull. "If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't be seeing me like this. You have all the time in the world—I'll release you when you can let go of your hate."

Just before Clover sinks into the portal, she glares at him, eyes full of malice as they vanish into the void. Death sighs. "I may be waiting a while." Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he heads toward the next town on Time's list.
> Chapter 11
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A cloaked figure made her way through the night, the soft crunching of the gravel beneath her misshapen hooves the only companion Chrysalis has.

Well, that and her thoughts.

In the past 50 years, Chrysalis had matured into a fully grown Changeling Queen, her hive beginning to prosper. Due in no small part to the donations she was getting from Luna.

The changeling's thoughts turn sour again as she remembers the bad news she bears, her latest experimental batch was a failure, the structure of her praetorian guard is far too bulky, requiring too much love to maintain, of the few hundred she birthed, only four survived to maturity.

She cursed under her breath as she makes her way to the meeting point Luna gave her, her dread only growing as she thinks about how the Dark Alicorn will take her news, if anything these past few years Luna seemed a bit...unstable.

Pushing her way through some bushes she finds her quarry sitting on a cliff overlooking a small village, her wings are spread wide behind her, framing the moon before her perfectly.

The stunning sight is enough to make Chrysalis' breath catch, stopping abruptly to view Luna's form.

Blinking and shaking off her distraction Chrysalis moves up, and takes a seat next to Luna, following Luna's gaze, her emerald eyes fall upon a singular house on the outskirts. Chrysalis' mouth opens to deliver her excuses only to find it abruptly shut before any words emerge, a glowing blue aura wrapped around her head.

Chrysalis' gulps, with a single flick of magic the alicorn could snap her neck like this. The Queen holds perfectly still, her mind racing. Does she know? has she been spying on me the whole time? around and around in a spiral Chrysalis questions the many faulty steps that lead to this moment.

"Calm yourself, changeling, your breathing is growing frantic, I simply wish to listen." The Alicorn's magic releases the queen's head. "A new experiment is about to be complete- Ah, our other guest has arrived." Turning her head slightly to the right The alicorn's eyes bore into a shadow behind a tree. Good to meet you Crimson C-" When the figure she's looking at steps away from the shadow she realizes that the figure is female. Rising to her full height.

"Crimson Knife. Why is it that you show up when I asked for your husband? Where is Crimson Court."

Chrysalis looks at the newcomer, Glowing red eyes stare at both of them, flicking toward Chrysalis' as if sizing her up. A pair of fangs similar to Luna's poke over her bottom lip. Her coat is ashen and bland unlike other ponies she has seen, a horn upon her head marking her as a unicorn.

"I'm afraid my husband will not be joining us tonight. We had a rather...large disagreement about his latest project, So he's going to spend a little while...staked to our bed."

Staked? what on earth does that mean? Before Chrysalis can even ask Luna's voice roared. "You best explain yourself Knife or I shall bind you and drag you into my sisters light myself." Standing above the odd unicorn staring her down, the weird ponies confidence fading fast.

"Wait! I caught him planning something alone." The unicorn is holding her hooves up, pleading with the Alicorn. "He tried to convince me to abandon your chosen path, but I'm always going to be faithful to you my queen!"

They stare at each other for a long moment before a loud scream pierces the night, followed closely by a howl.

"Our business is not over Crimson Knife. For now, observe the newest addition to our army."

Luna's gaze shifted down to the village below, a house on the outskirts of the town swarming with commotion. A Thickly furred shape running from the house. A heavy weight settled into chrysalis' abdomen, a thick feeling of dread filling the air. 

Shortly after the shape fled into the forest, Luna gracefully flies down from above, framed perfectly in the moonlight as she lands next to the dark shape. Chrysalis followed her closely, getting a good look at the creature before her.

Clawed paws dig into the ground, white canines flashing in the moonlight. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be a wolf....though this one is far bigger. Lighting up her horn to fill the area with soft light chrysalis frowns.

Since when did wolves have pink fur? The changeling was beginning to feel like she was missing a crucial piece of a puzzle, a haze of frustration filling her as she tried to make sense of what was happening.

"Come little one, there is nowhere for you to go now. Those ponies won't understand what's happened to you." The wolf growls at Luna but the alicorn simply smiles at the creature. An almost motherly glow coming from the alicorn.

"Now now, don't be that way. I know the urge is strong, but surely you can tell I'm much stronger than you." A Soft whine comes from the wolf as it slumps to the ground, glancing back toward the city one last time before bowing its head to Luna.

"Perfect. Crimson, Chrysalis, meet the newest part of our army. And... A declaration of war toward my sister." Everyone just looked at Luna questioningly, waiting for her to explain.

Luna's laughter fills the forest as she begins walking deeper into the forest. "All in good time, my children of the night."

~~~~~


Celestia stands in front of a glass window, looking on at The pony strapped to the bed. Flanking on her left and right are two ponies holding clipboards.

"We've yet to determine what causes the disease, your highness." The alicorn's gaze is locked upon the pony inside the other room, watching as he screams and hurls any loose items at a doctor trying to get some readings.

"We know you've been following this disease's progress for decades, but...we've yet to find a readily available cure."

Biting her lip Celestia held back yet another curse upon Chaos for doing this to her ponies. "Updates? Has the fatality rate dropped at all."

The pony to her right's ears folded closer to her head. "I'm afraid not. It's still holding steady at 95%. The ponies who survive have no connection to cutie mark, blood relation, or even political views. As far as we can tell..."

Celestia sighs. "Survival is completely random." A golden glow begins filling the room, The white Alicorn's horn beginning to glow as a powerful blast of Light shatters the glass and slams into the pony on the other side. the pony cries out in pain, his body being pinned to the wall opposite Celestia.

Celestia's Eyes are locked upon the pony's form, watching as his grey coat slowly regains color. right before the process finishes the pony slumps, growing limp as the color fades from him once again.

Biting her lip Celestia lets the pony's limp body hit the ground, the spell slowly fading, the three doctors looking at her in shock. In a low voice, Celestia said one word. "Leave me." The deadly seriousness in her tone made all other activities stop.

The shock of what Celestia just did slowly fading the ponies rush toward the two separate doorways, only to collapse to the ground a moment later.

Celestia feels a cold wave wash over her body, her form wavering for a moment as she feels a familiar sensation.

She had to move quickly, lighting her horn she envelops the doctors around her in a golden barrier, her own pulse beginning to slow in the meantime. Darkness began to fill her vision, she ignored it as she finished the spell on her ponies. 

Only once the others are safe does she turn her attention to herself, stabilizing her body right as she begins to hear a faint clop of hooves slowly approaching a nearby doorway.

Each step fills her with cold, even her protections are not enough to fully stop the chill she's feeling. When a familiar skeletal form finally enters the doorway.

The hunched alicorn leans down and inspects the glowing ponies at his feet, reaching a hoof closer to them, only to have a small spark of yellow light repel him.

"Hmmm, not your best work. Seems after using that book she gave you, your magic is far more...." The pony stops speaking for a moment, searching for the right word, his milky eyes roaming the room. "Ah. blunt. it's a bit more forceful than it was before. no longer an elegant suggestion to go away, this one's a simple command." Death rises and steps over the ponies littering the floor, their chests barely moving as his very presence seems to drain the life from them. 

Celestia takes a few deep breaths to steady herself, he couldn't have come at a worse time. Her emotions were still in turmoil from dealing with the plague Chaos brought into the world. "Can I...ask that we do this later? I'm barely keeping my anger in check as it stands, and putting my ponies at risk with your presence is not what I need to clear my head."

Death shakes his head sadly, looking to the still smoking remains of Celestia's ire. "I'm afraid not, I'm simply completing a task for someone who is no longer capable of accomplishing it, but it seems I’m a tad late in arriving, your guard’s enchanted armor was rather troubling to bypass.

It was too much, too many thoughts were racing through Celestia’s head, with a wordless cry she channels all of her frustration into her solar body, causing a massive flare in the skies above, accidentally vaporizing the clouds that were being gathered for today’s 3 o’clock rainstorm, to many pegasus’ dismay.

Feeling better Celestia takes a deep breath, steadying herself as she sighs. Slowly her thoughts begin to organize themselves, her mind stopping its frantic workings. Looking at Death something he said strikes her as odd. "What do you mean 'completing a task'. It's quite unlike you to walk Equestria yourself."

"And here I thought I'd have to be patient for you to ask the right question." Death's thin face turns into a smirk, his head more resembling a grinning skull than a living pony as his thin laughter fills the small room. "I'm simply taking the place of Time's errand pony. I'm afraid her task was a bit too much for her soul to take. She's currently wrestling with her literal inner demons as she fights to reclaim herself."

Errand pony...

A hollow pit slowly formed in Celestia's stomach, looking down she grabbed a clipboard from one of her unconscious assistants and begins flipping through the pages.

At first, it was simply assumed dying was an effect of the 'discorded' ponies. Looking at the first reported cases of death and going in order from oldest to newest follows a set pattern. Starting at the farthest settlements from Everfree and slowly moving closer.

Moving closer at much the same speed as somepony walking from location to location.

The pit in her stomach slowly hardened into a solid crystal of unease.

Celestia's not seen Time for quite a while, She simply wrote it off thinking Time was doing something to protect Equestria.

How wrong she'd been, instead of protecting it, she'd sent her “student“ to remove the cause of her pain.

Death's chuckle filled the room once again. "Seems you're piecing it together Light."

Celestia's ear flicks at that name. "Please don't call me that, especially in front of my little ponies. It's enough that they worship me for bringing the dawn."

Death slowly paced around the room. "Speaking of 'worship', when's the last time you spoke to your sister?"

Celestia goes to open her mouth but freezes when she realizes she's not really made time for her sister.

We used to argue almost constantly, but that all stopped around...twenty?  forty? close to forty years ago.

"She has her own duties to attend to, her night cou-"

Death cut her off with a sneer. "has been empty for the past two decades, she doesn't even bother to show up anymore. Did you truly not notice?"

His grin never fades. "I figured she'd do something far sooner, After all, I did give her my book."

Death's book? Celestia's mind whirls for a moment, trying to explain the fear she suddenly felt, after a few moments something clicks in her memory.

"Surely you don't mean you gave the..." Her voice falters, not willing to say the name out loud. "The book to my sister. And even if you did, I doubt she'd use it, She knows there's no place in the world for such..."

"Such darkness?" Death's raspy laugh comes from his decayed throat once more. "You truly haven't noticed it at all. I dare say you should pay your sister a visit. My work is done here."

Death turns to leave, stepping around the collapsed forms of the ponies still sleeping before stopping at one in the doorway. "Ah, I had almost forgotten." He reaches down and moves close to one near the doorway, reaching a decayed hoof toward the glowing barrier, a spark of light hits him but he continues until he touches the pony in the shoulder, the soft breathing of the pony catching for a moment. After a final exhale the pony lies still, the golden barrier leaving the cooling body.

"Such a shame, she had been hiding it so well from the rest of you. If only she had told somepony she wasn't feeling well." Death's milky eyes move and lock onto Celestia's "Giving ponies purpose is well and good, but when they believe their work to be more important than themselves they can easily..."

He paused, a white orb slowly floats from the ponies mouth, hovering next to him and pulsing sadly. "Work themselves to death. Don't worry little one, My other half has a good place for you." With that Death leaves, the sound of his hooves slowly fading in the distance, a soul following him for a distance before fading away.

Seeing one of her ponies die right before her sparks a flare of anger inside Celestia, made even worse by the fact that she’s partly at fault.

This plague’s been messing with her priorities, but first, she has something to do.

She has to see her sister, surely she wouldn’t think about using such vile magic.

Definitely not.


~~~~~~~


A table flew across the room, shattering into wooden splinters and sending books tumbling to the ground, sheets of paper and scrolls slowly drifting to the ground.

In the middle an angry purple alicorn stood, breathing heavily.

For the first time in her life books are beginning to fail her. She's experienced nothing like these current symptoms before. Even after killing Celestia a few times the backlash from harmony didn't affect her nearly as much.

Looking down at the mess she slowly calms down. waving a hoof and the table slowly beginning to reassemble itself, right before the spell finishes a lance of pain shoots through her head, causing the spell to backfire and time to reassert itself again.

"You won't find anything about it. This is the first time it's happened."

Time's ear flicks as a familiar voice comes to it. As she turned around she came face to face with herself.

"A duplicate, why aren't you in your own timeline? The rules are one outside of time, and I take precedence being the Primary."

Upon closer inspection, there's a barrier floating around the duplicate. Time makes a decision to never spawn the duplicate and turns back to the matter at hoof, debating what to do next.

"I'm afraid that won't work either. I'm here for a very specific Grimoire. And in your current state, you can't stop me." The soft sound of hooves on carpet move around Time and the duplicate begins slowly floating up toward the top.

Right toward the dark section.

Time reached out to slam the duplicate to the ground, only to have her magical grip slip off the duplicate, feeling like she was covered in grease. "What? you are me. I decide when to use those tomes, and they are not necessary. this is supposed to be a-"

The duplicate cuts her off. "Vacation, I know. It was bound to happen eventually. With infinity at our hooves, you were bound to run out of experiments at some point."

The Duplicate looked at her sadly. "I'm afraid that you can't affect me. surely you recognize the barrier?"

Now that her attention was drawn to it the telltale signs of Chaos practically ooze from that barrier.

Time's voice came out in a vicious snarl. "Of course he would even be able to turn me against myself."

The copy's expression softens at that. "That's truly what you think? You’ve drifted farther than I ever expected." Her expression turned sadder as she reached the top, hovering near the dark section. “To think that this would have been me…”  The copy raised a hoof, a tome lifting from the shelf and flying toward her Hatred and the magic of Vengeance and Abhorrence slowly floats through the barrier, one more dangerous artifact released into the world against her will.

With a cry of rage Time released a blast of pure magical force from her hoof, magic powerful enough to level a moderately sized city simply washes over the copy's form, her sad expression seeming to grow deeper, the tomes behind her completely unaffected by the magic and Time's head flares in pain, driving her to her knees as her vision swims a bit.

"And now you've begun attacking yourself." The duplicate shakes her head, a few words coming out as no more than a whisper. "Chaos was right."

And with that, she's gone.

With the second most destructive Grimoire Time has ever created.


~~~~~


The pink pony thing is huddling in the corner, staring out with fearful blue eyes.

Chrysalis‘' attention, however, was focused on the situation between Luna and Crimson Knife.

Luna is pacing back and forth, her silver covered hooves ringing softly on the marble floor of her chambers.

"You are sure he planned to betray me."

Crimson knife's form is pressed against the ground, black chains wrapped around her body and keeping her pinned to the floor, It looked highly uncomfortable but the strange pony's gaze is even and unafraid. "Yes, I don't think he would run to your sister, such a thing would be a death sentence, but he discovered how to share our curse with others, and was turning ponies into servants."

A soft crack filled the room, one of Luna's hooves came down a bit too hard, splitting the marble she was standing on. She makes no other outward signs of anger, her eyes still looking similar to a dragon’s as it stared at Crimson in silence.

"Under no Circumstances are you to 'turn' other ponies into what you have become. I've already released my curse upon the world." She gestures to the shaggy pony in the corner, which flinches back, brilliant blue eyes watching Luna intently.

"I do not need more to deal with, my plans are nearly complete." The blue alicorns gaze moves to Chrysalis. "I’ve already got one disappointment, I was looking forward to praetorian’s being front line soldiers, by all accounts the changes shouldhave worked."

Chrysalis flinches slightly at that. "I saw the issue and did my best to plant agents into the guard. It's been long enough that I doubt anyone remembers our kind aside from the...longer lived species such as yourself." As Chrysalis opened her mouth to continue a soft knock comes upon the door. "Sister?"

Luna curses. "Why does she have to come now of all times. it's been decades since she's even been in this part of the castle." The blue alicorn turned to Crimson, With a flash of magic the chains are gone. "Take her and leave." Luna gestured toward the pink pony, her gaze flicked to Chrysalis and was blinded by a green flash of light before the changeling queen is gone, a simple servant standing in her place. Seeing that that is handled she looks back to see Crimson and the pink pony sinking into the shadows of the room, vanishing from sight right before the door opens and Celestia walks in.

Luna lets loose a snort of annoyance. Of course she would just let herself in without asking permission. Luna almost didn’t have time to change her eyes back to normal before her sister sees her and greets her with a tense smile.

"Ah, I was hoping you were here."

Luna made her way to her bed and laid upon it, looking at Celestia closely. She seemed a bit nervous. Chaos’s plague must really be weighing on her if she came for my advice. Luna turned to the ‘servant’. “Leave us.” The mare nodded and casually walked out, closing the chamber doors on the way out, the green glow of her magic going unnoticed by Celestia.

She always was good at being unnoticed when she wanted. Shifting her gaze Luna looked at her sister. Celestia’s mane was beginning to fray, errant strands of pink making her look a bit frazzled.

Truly Chaos’ plague was beginning to wear on her, Luna fought back the urge to sneer at seeing her sister so disheveled.

She silently made a note to thank chaos for this small victory on the eve of her plan.

Celestia looked distracted, her gaze roaming the room. It was far darker than it was before, a hint of something in the air making her uneasy. Celestia’s horn lit up with a simple spell, a golden aura beginning to fill the space.

Recognizing the magic her sister was casting Luna speaks. “Why are you here sister?” Try as she might she couldn’t keep the anger from her voice, Celestia for her part let the spell fade as she looked to her sister in shock.

“We haven’t spoken in decades and you take that tone with me? I’m simply checking something I was told recently.”

Luna’s face darkened. “And instead of asking my permission you simply waltz into my chambers, and start casting a scanning spell?”

Put on the back foot Celestia responds in kind. “Of course, if what I’m told is correct, my ponies could be in danger.”

Luna’s face twisted into a snarl at ‘my ponies’. “Of course, it’s always ‘my ponies’ this, ‘my ponies’ that. Must be nice being worshipped with such zeal.” Luna inspected one of her hooves, admiring how the light shone off one of her silver slippers

The simple anger that those words conveyed shocked Celestia to her core, dread filled her and caused her to resume casting her spell.

She had to be sure, Luna wouldn’t-

Celestia gasped, and looks to the floor, the tell tale signs of necromancy lingering in the air, when she widened her search, she gets another positive result.

Looking to Luna’s wardrobe

Luna’s face fell as she see’s where Celestia is looking. She slowly rose from her bed, moving between her sister and the door, she watched as her sister opened a drawer, visibly recoiling as her magic slightly brushed against the Necronomicon.

“Sister?” Celestia looked to the bed, and instead found her sister standing between her and the door, a dark look in her eyes.

“Surely you didn’t…” The large mass of necromantic energy coming from the center of the room answers her question before she even finished it.

The anger she was feeling before was gone, replaced by a pit of dread.

Luna’s face darkened, her anger no longer disguised. “Seems the cat’s out of the bag a bit earlier than scheduled, you weren’t supposed to know for a few weeks when I refused to lower the moon.

Celestia’s face twisted into utter confusion. “But why? We’re worshiped…”

Luna’s voice cut her off, her voice spoken with such force it echoed a few times around the room. “No you are worshipped, I’m shunned and feared.” A memory flashed in luna’s mind. “Even Time’s student attacked me the first time she saw me.”

“That was just a mistake, she didn’t know it was-” Luna’s sardonic laughter cut her off. “Please sister, we both know that Time doesn’t make mistakes, I finally understand what she was showing me now.” Memories of her conversation with Time shortly before their arrival on Equestria flash in Celestia’s mind.

Luna’s hoof made a sweeping gesture toward the window. “They bask in your light, weighing on your every word as if it’s divine providence, where as my court hasn’t seen a single soul for decades.” Luna’s eyes duginto Celestia’s.


Stomping the ground with enough force to crack the solid marble again Luna huffed “I’ve waited long enough.” With that her horn lit up, causing Celestia to flinch and absently take a defensive stance. 

It wasn’t the power of the magic, it was the utter hatred that courses through Luna’s magic that gives her pause. Celestia had to hold back tears as she feels how twisted with emotion her sister’s magic is now, her very soul utterly consumed by it.

It was hatred as deep and vast as the open sea.

Shadowy magic begins to cover up Luna’s form, her shape twisting and growing larger. Batlike wings sprouted from her back, her eyes twisting and transforming into draconic slits. With a laugh her teeth begin to deform, growing sharper and longer, a pair of fangs protruding from her lip.

Seeing her sister in her natural form Celestia resigns herself for a fight. She forsook this form in order to show the ponies a kinder face. The small act of throwing that form away means she’s given up winning over ponies with peaceful resolutions.

When the transformation is over her horn remains lit, what she was doing with her magic was lost on Celestia until she realized the room was getting darker. Looking out the window she saw her sisters moon rising in the sky, rising up until it eventually blocked the sun, bathing the world in darkness.

When she looks back, her sister’s expression is twisted into a grim smile. “This is my declaration of war. By this time tomorrow, I will hold this city in my grasp sister.” And with that and a flash of darkness, she was gone.

Along with the Necronomicon.




~~~~~~




Crimson Knife looked at the nearby coffin, her beloved lying inside, his peaceful expression only marred by the wooden stake through his heart.

A blast of cold hit her and crimson looked behind her, only to see the angry expression of a Nightmare staring back at her.

She recoiled in fear for a moment before regaining her composure. “Luna-”

With a wave of her hoof the dark alicorn interrupted her. “Do not utter that name ever again. The ponies had their chance, they see me as a monster, well I shall become one. A Nightmare brought to life.”

Walking over to inspect Crimson Court she sighs. “Tell me, what was that method he discovered of sharing your curse.” her face is set in a grim line. “We’re going to need an army.”
> Nightmare War.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Celestia was looking over Everfree Castle, the capital of Equestria. The city was designed shortly after Discords sealing, so it had a chasm surrounding it to be more defensible from the abominations that his Chaos brought to the world. A large stone bridge gave easy access to the city, built less than a few decades ago to allow steady trade.

The city itself was remarkable, the stonework being done by true masters of their craft, only the designs of the Canterlot Project could surpass them in grandeur. The forest is kind and ancient, seeming to tolerate their presence, and somewhat welcome it as well.

Now though, the city was evacuated, while Celestia hoped she can reason with her sister, it’s not worth risking the civilian’s lives in the process.

Her gaze moved from the city to the treeline far in the distance, her eyes roaming over the hoard her sister had brought. Zombies, some new kind of pony that slinked through the shadows as if born there, and glowing red eyes farther back glared at her, and she knew they could see her clearly, even at this distance. In the distance trees moved, falling and being changed by magic

The ponies around her hadn't noticed them yet, she opened her mouth to sound the alarm when a crashing wave of emotion slammed into her. The force of the emotion nearly caused her to lose her balance.

Icy tendrils began to form in her heart, hatred as deep and vast as the darkness between the stars washed over her.

It took her several moments to regain her composure, long enough that the watchponies had already noticed the army leaving the treeline. They sounded the alert, a clear note ringing through the night.

The sound of a mustering army slowly spread, the castle walls echoing with the clatter of weapons being grabbed and armor being strapped, the telltale rattle of spears as they were handed to new and old recruits alike.

The soft clop of hooves on stone alerted her to someponies’ presence. Without looking she spoke.

“Alert the Canterlot garrison, we’ll need them if this becomes a siege. And even if it doesn’t, they outnumber us eighty to one by my estimate.”

A few barked orders behind her and the clop of hooves moved closer. She looked upon her Capitan and sighed, after a moment her gaze returned to the hoard.

Her captain knew where he was needed, even if it was a silent shoulder to grant her strength.

Soon enough Celestia spotted a dark figure flying above the forest in the distance, her sister had arrived. They locked eyes from hundreds of feet away. Celestia searched with all her heart to find that spark of light that always existed, even in her sister's deepest darkness.

The light she saw brought to life in the night sky so long ago.

A sneer was her reply, a warning shot from the moon above slamming into the hastily erected shield Celestia put up.

The force of the impact against her red barrier shook the castle to its foundation, the trees in the distance swaying from the pressure wave.

For her sister to call upon such power in a populated city showed the depths of her disdain.

“Capitan Blueblood, this will be unlike anything you have fought before. Keep casualties to a minimum, any fallen soldiers will rise up and fight against us. Cut off the head of any casualties you can, the true terror of necromancy is that the necromancers army always grows, while ours will not.”

A stiff nod and the pony left, the sound of his hooves on stone getting quieter and quieter.

Honestly, he shouldn’t even be here, he retired with honor a few weeks ago. But he wasn’t the kind of pony to stand about while others died.

At least his wife managed to evacuate.

A chill settled over Celestia’s form, off in the distance Luna flew, illuminated by her wings against the moon at her back.

Her sister was coming. And if the ‘greeting’ she just got was any indication, this visit will be far from pleasant.

Celestia flew out to meet her sister. The closer she got the deeper and darker the feeling of Luna’s magic became. When they were within speaking distance Celestia stopped.

“Please, don’t do this. If there’s a problem, we can work on it together. We stopped discord once, we can stop his plague together as well.”

Luna’s face twisted into a snarl. “It’s always something else, you get so preoccupied with something that you don’t notice those beneath you. Tell me, did you even realize I’ve not been in Night Court in twenty years? You’ve not even been in my room in over a century. Meanwhile basking in all the love and praise of these lower beings.” She cast a glance at the castle, her dispassionate gaze showed her utter contempt. “Such flawed creatures, so easily frightened.” She grit her teeth, a pair of fangs poked over her lip. “I changed my appearance, I contributed to the arts, I founded many museums, yet they still seek the warmth of your Light!”

Celestia opened her mouth at her true name but was cut off when she continued. “I’m done waiting, it’s been nearly a hundred generations since Discord was sealed, any terrors he unleashed in his night are long gone, yet ponies still don’t approach me.”

Luna was glaring at the battlements, her draconic eyes following the ponies preparing much like one would watch an anthill.

Darkness begins to swirl around her horn, the moon above seeming to pulse with power.

“Sister! We are not to use our power in populated areas! you know what happens. The world we built will be scarred forever!”

At that, she seemed to pause.

“Getting cold feet?”

Celestia blinked, Discord was leaning against Luna, his appearance was so sudden the spell she was channeling released early. Pure white light slammed into the earth next to the Castle, the force of the blast causing cracks to develop on the towers, sending ponies scrambling away.

“Oh dear, Seems I startled you a bit. Anything I can do to make up for it? I got a coupon for couples therapy somewhere…no..that’s a 2 for 1 at the soup kitchen...” he started patting himself down as if searching many invisible pockets,  sending random bits of everything scattered about. Celestia’s eye caught sight of a book, very similar to her own grimoire, though it looked unnerving to say the least, her brief glimpse seeing ‘Disharmony’ on the cover and a T at the bottom, just like every grimoire she’d seen so far.

Celestia recovered from her shock first and glared at the draconequus. “We sealed you, you should be nothing more than a statue.”

Discord waved a claw in dismissal. “I got a friend in low places...or maybe sideways places….Time’s weird like that.”

“Time? Is she helping you? To what end? She loves order far too much to put up with your antics.” Luna sneered

“Well, yes and no. It’s a long and harrowing tale, of a much younger Embodiment of Chaos. Ah, to be a few billion Cycles younger.” He sighed. 

“I was making chaos, She was studying a colony of ants, writing it all down on one of her many scrolls. He looked wistfully off in the distance for a moment.“I’ve got a bad hip now, It’s really driving me batty.” A muffled. “Speak for yourself, old man.” Came from Discords’ left hip. He rolled his eyes. “Ignore him, Sisterly disputes always get him down.”

A muffled “Why can’t they just get along? It’s so sad…” came from the forlorn hip. With a look of disdain, he popped off the offending appendage, leg included, and shoved it into a small can, the appendage compressing much smaller than it should be as it was stuffed inside. “Oh can it, I’ve had enough of your complaining.” He turns to a wardrobe behind him and starts going through various legs to replace the missing one. He gets to one that ended in a rather risque high heel and blushed a bit. “Oh my, where did that one come from?” a catcall coming from nowhere, in particular, filled the silence

Luna simply glared at him, her patience quickly running out. “I’m doing what Time desires, surely you won’t interfere. Hell, I’m sure I could cause enough chaos for you to be on my side for once. What do you say, want to cause some destruction again?”

Had she really fallen so far? To ask Him of all beings for assistance. “Sister, that’s against the rule-” 

“Buck your rules! These ponies, these creatures know nothing, when I’m done with you and your paltry forces, I’m going to give them one chance, one. If they don’t accept me, then I’ll raze everything to the ground and start over, next time they won’t have you to turn to for guidance, only me.”

Before Celestia can reply she’s blasted away from her sister, with so much hatred flowing from her she hadn’t even realized that her sister was charging a blast till she was hit with it. She flew clear across the battlefield and slammed into one of the towers. With a crack and rumble, it began to fall, threatening to flatten her soldiers flat.

Even in pain, she could see that the paltry shields her unicorns were putting up wouldn’t be enough, as she fell she channeled magic to her own horn, covering the ponies below in a proper shield.

Being crushed by a couple of tons of rubble was inconvenient, but the blast from her sister hurt. She wasn’t holding back. Of course, her sister knew most mundane attacks against her avatar would merely inconvenience her. 

Even an avatar can feel pain, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to exist fully in the world, not knowing when something was out of place.

Not that it wasn’t exceedingly difficult to actually hurt an avatar.

Ponies were pressing against her shield, trying to get to her, and getting slightly scorched for their troubles.

Does she really seem weak enough to let something this small hurt her? Lifting the rubble from herself she deposits it in an empty corner of the courtyard. At the shocked expressions on her soldiers’ faces, she looked down, only to discover a hole where her chest should be.

That would explain the pain, she was nearly cut in two by her sister. For a surprise attack, it was quite effective.

She waited for it to regenerate. After a few moments though, she realized nothing was happening. looking up she sighs as she realized that her sister’s Moon was actively blocking her light from reaching her.

She gave the order for her soldiers to charge as she teleported herself closer to her star, basking in the rays, her body quickly began healing itself, though her sister’s moon was still blocking her light from reaching the battlefield, making it impossible to perceive what is happening, even with her other senses.

Her sister knew she can see all that her light touches if she chose to. It also stopped her from drawing upon her power inside the glowing orb when she was on Equestria’s surface.  Not that she would call upon her full power regardless, The ramifications being quite damaging if she drew too much.

It was a masterful move regardless, She never really noticed Luna was quite a tactician.

Celestia stayed a bit longer in order to charge up some extra magic, having a sinking feeling she will need it, cutting it as close as she could before she started affecting things near her avatar.

Some things were just too flammable. For example, ponies. or buildings.

When she teleported back she came across a gruesome scene. The battle lines were in total disarray.

Standard battle tactics were to use shields to defend from artillery as they charged, then to separate out opponents with shields to make numbers more manageable. This strategy required one unicorn to be defended at all costs as they could do nothing but channel the shield spell.

It spoke volumes of how much her soldiers trusted one another, to casually leave their lives in each other's hooves so completely.

The shields, however, were being popped by Luna with obvious glee, if not outright incinerating the ponies inside with raw unfocused magic. They were exposed and overrun by the teeming hoard clawing and biting at the shields.

There was no sign of Discord, which was more concerning than not.

In the middle, the distinctive purple shield of her captain's wife was being targeted by Luna next.

She’s supposed to have evacuated with her newborn foal!

With a single flap of her wings, Celestia broke the sound barrier, showing up right in time to block her sister’s attack with a hastily erected shield. Any relief was short-lived when she heard a cry from below.

“CHANGELINGS!” The battle lines utterly collapse as ponies turn on each other, some disguised changelings, some panicked Soldiers.

The trust of her soldiers was being used against them, for when trust is broken it’s hard to repair.

They were beginning to rout, the low morale of fighting such hideous creatures already putting them on edge.

She lit her horn and sent a spell upward, lighting up the sky with a winged symbol. When her soldiers saw the retreat sign, they all began moving toward the bridge, fighting their way back when necessary.

When they were all safely inside the city’s walls the charges blew, sending the bridge and a host of unfortunate souls plummeting into the chasm below, dying broken on the rocks beneath.

Soldiers detonated extra charges to block the main gate leading to the city, the beautiful stonework simply being turned into rubble to slow down the approaching hoard. For her part Celestia raised a Shield over the entire city, flying above the tallest spire, her brow furrowed in concentration.

From here she could clearly see the army her sister has gathered was truly massive, a battle of this scale hadn’t happened in Equestria since the Griffon Wars.

A spike in hatred alerted Celestia moments before the impact, her gaze moving upward and locked onto her sister. The moon pulsed once with magic and the rest was darkness, illuminated only with shards of her broken shield as it faded away.



~~~~~


“Is there truly no other way?” Life was looking upon a large globe, scenes of the civil war playing out before her, Celestia’s avatar looked fine, but the city was nearly in ruins from the blast.

Death was watching a different orb, this one completely black except for a white unicorn with a green two-toned mane floating inside. Her eyes were red and hateful and she was screaming obscenities at her confinement, most directed toward chaos, some to death, some to all of life itself.

They were in a room, far more ancient than even Equestria. Fashioned from the first matter to exist in the universe the meeting place of the Gods was magnificent to behold, much due to Darkness’ artistic nature. The octagon was split into eight wedges, each with fanciful designs of the Deity who was represented in it. Life’s was green and vibrant, etched with the purest jade and marble, Death’s was made from slate, carved to look like the bones of ponies struggling to escape. And each section in turn showed the gods and their domains, all except the last section, which was chaotic and unrefined, jagged in one spot, even in others. Not even seeming to make sense to those who looked upon it. Chaos’s wedge was twice as wide as any other section, the rest being split in two with the gods and their other halves.

Light, Darkness.

Love, Hate.

Life, Death

Chaos

And finally, a perfectly symmetrical circle rested in the middle, where Time resides, bridging all the gods together.

Right outside of Time’s circle was a series of Scrying Globes, one for each deity to use during discussions, or to just monitor the state of their world.

Death sighed. “In order to stop what’s coming, we all have to chip in, I’ve even begun talking to Hate.”

“Truly? I doubt he was receptive to visitors, even if he’s not being called for quite yet.” Life looked upon the death and destruction being done by Darkness and her army, especially looking at the undead rising and killing others to make yet more undead, her disdain was evident, and she was absently letting some of her essence spill into the room.

“You mind?”

With a start Life realized what she was doing, toning down her aura she looked at death to see him quite peeved, half his body already crumbling to dust before her. “Sorry, You know my feelings on undead, and to see them killing so many...I’m having a hard time finding places to reincarnate, The birth rates are still quite low, even this far after Chaos’s reign.

“My my, that sounded like a jab. You truly wound me.” 

Chaos was lying on the floor, a spear through his chest, clutching it in mock agony. “These barbs hurt…”

Rolling her eyes Life shuts off her globe. “Are you aware of what you’re doing? You risk everything, not only what we hope to achieve, but what will ever be achieved. Any one of us could die, but not you.” She walked up to chaos, with a twitch of her hoof she ripped the spear out of the draconequus and glared at him, her aura absently began filling the area again, plants seeming to come from nowhere, vines covering multiple sections of the octagon.


With a sigh Death jumped back, landing in Hatred’s section of the octagon. 
“There’s no talking to her when she’s like this.” His body was beginning to reform already, but it was still inconvenient.

For his part, Chaos looked unusually serious. He waved a claw at the room in general. “Each of you has your opposite, the one you spend eternity with, Mine hasn’t awoken yet, and trust me, this puts Hatred’s long wait to shame.

Before anything get’s worse a feeling of compassion washed over everyone, their squabbles slowly ebbing away, Life toned down her aura, and took a couple of deep breaths. “Thank’s Love.”
When she was calmer she turned back to Chaos.

He floated over to the center, An aspect of Time appearing before him, surrounded by a shield of chaos magic she looked from one to the other and sighed. “I’m guessing the undead are putting her on edge?” 

At the sound of Time’s voice Life stiffened, she slowly turned toward her and uttered an embarrassed cough, the vegetation slowly wilting and dying until no sign of it remained.

“Your majesty, surely you agree Chaos’ plan is foolhardy, there’s still no change in the far future, he is going to die. And when he does, everything goes with him, even time.”

Time Beta tilted her head to the side. “Seriously? Am I really that far gone?” She looked down, pulling a tome out of dimensional storage. “I was hoping to avoid using this, but…” She looks at the cover of the book. Hatred and the magic of Vengence and Abhorrence.

Chaos puts a claw on her shoulder,  his expression somber and genuine.

“I’ve waited long enough, don’t you think? I can’t go another Cycle without my other half. You’ve seen the face of Harmony.” Time simply looks sadly at the cover of the book, her hoof following the bottom, where a simple T denotes the author.

“Another life, another Time, a flip of a coin, a twist of fate. Opposites collide and create infinity.”

She looked at Chaos as she finished the thought. “And nothingness.” 

He understood.

Everything is riding on this. Even Time itself.

Either infinity or nothingness.

A flip of a coin.


~~~~~



Laughter greeted her ears once again. “You try so hard Sister. You’re cut off from your magic, guarding the Elements and these foalish ponies.” With a sneer, she fired a bolt at the select few remaining guards huddling behind Celestia.

Without even thinking Celestia’s wing flicked outward to absorb the blow, the resulting wound being added to the countless cuts and bruises that covered her form. With her sister cutting off her Light, her regeneration wasn’t working, and this avatar was beginning to fail

“Please, Sister, we can work through this, haven’t you shed enough blood?” Celestia’s eyes shifted toward the ominous red-eyed ponies behind Luna, fangs flashing in the moonlight.

The tower was rocked by an explosion, sending both alicorns seeking to regain their balance and composure. 

“What is it now.” Luna hissed to the beings behind her. From the back someone moved up, bowing to her, and whispered something.

Alicorns have very acute hearing, Celestia was able to hear him mutter: “Reinforcements have arrived, a magic surge destroyed much of the army outside.”

“Hear that sister? Someone in your guard flared and took out a lot of my forces, but they won’t get here in time.”

Darkness began swirling around Luna’s horn, the moon pulsing with power as she drew upon her magic again.

“Time to end this. I’ve changed my mind about giving your ponies a chance. Look at them, so determined, so afraid. They’ll never accept me.”

Her horn was glowing more and more, the very shadows themselves being absorbed to fuel the spell.

“What was that you said? Scarring this world forever? Worlds can be rebuilt. It will be hard without you, but not impossible.”

Celestia didn’t have enough magic to block a spell of this magnitude, her body was going to be scattered from this but she would reform eventually.

Then a spike of cold hit Celestia in her heart. She gasped and looked at her sister, a knowing smile on her face.

She was still charging her spell, but the moon above had attacked her, shifting her focus she noticed a spear of pure magic cutting through her sun, right through the core.

Luna wasn’t simply destroying her avatar, she was attacking her main body too.

She truly meant to kill her.

In pain she looked behind her, the ponies that were once so stalwart were cowering in true fear.

This was why their true abilities must never be known, these little ponies weren’t ready. With a wince the pain in her chest grows harsher, icy tendrils moving through her body. Though they couldn’t see it, Celestia’s sun was dying. Her gaze shifted back to her sister and the utter glee on her face.

No, that wasn’t right.

This wasn’t her sister.

Her sister wanted to be accepted. She was shy, and a loner sometimes, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t enjoy long discussions that go into the early mornings.

Her sister found joy in the most mundane things, a good book or simply admiring a painting for hours.

Her sister loved art, loved creating, she even created the night sky, a painting to rival any artist past or future.

She did it out of love.

The sadistic grin on Luna’s face grew, and the pain spread wider making breathing more and more difficult, above the flickering light from behind the moon was noticed by the ponies, concern on their faces.

This isn’t her sister, not anymore. One more glance behind her showed her ponies looking to her to save them, centermost was her Captain, his wife clutched next to him.

His wife that was supposed to evacuate with the newborn foal. Behind her, the elements of harmony shone.

Shedding a tear Celestia channeled her little remaining magic into the elements, with a glow they began to circle around her.

“Relying on trinkets now? Those only work on threats to harmony, if you use them forcefully they will reject you.”

Celestia’s expression hardened, and a silent prayer to Harmony ran through her mind.

“I know.”

The light grows brighter, her body began to absently float. For the first time, her opponent looked concerned. 

“Those can’t kill, at most they can seal me away, I will return.”

“I know.” This wasn’t her sister, but it could be again. She had become what she said she would be.

A Nightmare. 

It was time for the world to wake up. Celestia took all her love, her pain, her desperation, and even her sadness. All with a silent plea as she channeled her remaining magic into the artifacts.

Give my sister back to me. 

And with that, they fired. Nighmare's voice cried out “No!” her own spell meeting Celestia's in the middle. Nightmare's magic was far more powerful than should be allowed on this world.

She could feel the clashing magic as it warped the world around them, the surrounding forest crying out in silent pain.

Still, she pressed on.

I just want my sister back.

But it was not meant to be. Her spell overtook Nightmare’s, sending her flying toward the sky.

The moon above shook from the impact, the magic piercing her sun faltering and fading away.

She took her first real breath of several moments, her body slowly repairing itself, her pink mane growing and changing to a rainbow color. Above them, her sister’s moon changed, a series of craters forming the angry glare of an alicorn staring down balefully on the surface.

She sank to the ground, tears slowly staining her face as she realized that the elements had rejected her wish.

They had sealed the Nightmare away instead of purging her of dark thoughts. Reaching for the artifacts to channel them again her grip faltered, the elements slipping from her grasp and slamming into the ground. She looked down and saw that the elements had been rendered to stone, inert.

“No! This is not what I wanted! Please!” Again and again, she tried to activate them.

It was with a shock she realized that the element of magic wasn’t even here anymore.

Please, just give her back. I’m sorry Lulu, I’m so sorry.

She didn’t even notice the reinforcements arriving to drive back Nightmares' army.

For a full year she didn't move from that spot, her thoughts circling around her last confrontation with Nightmare Moon in an infinite loop, her constant pleas for harmony fell upon deaf ears.

Harmony had rejected her.


~~~~~~


Nightmare raged at the world, trying over and over again to kill her sister’s main body.

She was so close!

“That was quite entertaining. For a temper tantrum, I’d give it about an eight”

Chaos’ voice reached her from above, he was walking around her surface. Using her rage as fuel to augment her concentration she manages to summon a small avatar on the surface.

Even as she turns to look at him chains of Harmony wrap themselves around her hooves, keeping her from simply flying to Equestria.

“Ah, there you are my dear. I believe we had a deal…”

“You said you’d help! I got no assistance from you at all, you simply watched as I got banished!” She tried to break her arcane bonds only to get a lance of pain as punishment.

“My dear, I said I’d help you, not when I would help you.”

With a shock, Nightmare hissed at him. “You knew this would happen!”

“Of course I did, as it’s happened countless times before, but this time I have a weapon.” He pulled a hat from nowhere Chaos waves a magic wand, pulling a book from the depths. With a grin, he drops it onto the moon. “Tada!”

Recognizing a Grimoire Nightmare moved closer, something about this one seemed off, as if it wasn’t really here.

Disharmony and the magic of Strife and Conflict.

“Disharmony? Doesn’t that…”

“Go against the very fabric of the universe? It does indeed. Our little ‘neutral’ friend has been quite naughty. Tell me, did any of your spat with your sister seem preordained? Like you were meant to lose? Well, the jig is up, you are destined to lose, but not if I have anything to say about it.”

Chaos flips the first page open, the glyphs on the surface moving in a chaotic mishmash of thought, and emotion, you’d have to be quite insane to understand it fully.

Luckily chaos was, and it was a thing of beauty, utterly perfect in its portrayal of disharmony.

“It’s said that it can take a lifetime to learn all that is in a grimoire. This one will take many. I’d say...roughly a thousand years or so. There’s an art to staying sane enough to know what you want to do, but insane enough to do it.”

Nightmare was simply looking at the tome.

Destined to lose? Nightmare thinks back on her fight, the elements were a little quick to grant her sister her wish. The fact that the fight ended up in the chamber of harmony also seemed rather coincidental.

She flicks her eyes to him. He said he had help from time...

She tested the strength of her bonds and found them unbreakable with her current strength, she’d have to draw upon the power of her stars. Her gaze turned upward, she called upon her innate magic and began moving parts of her night sky. With a frown, she found that she could only move them a little bit. At the current rate, they would be in position...

She does a little calculation.

A thousand years.

A slow grin spread across her face, it seems this millennium will go by quite quickly.

Who needs sanity anyway?

Seeing that he’s no longer being paid any mind Chaos flips the book to a random page.

“Disharmony, don’t expect the page order to make sense.” With that and a wink, he was gone.

Far below a very similar, but much different conversation was taking place.

Stupid stupid stupid, if we’d had the praetorians the reinforcements wouldn’t have been an issue, now my meal ticket is sealed away and I’m missing the love that was supposed to make up for all this breeding.

No nightmare ruler, no more ‘donations’ of fresh ponies. Her forces were decimated, her infiltrator population was incredibly low, and this close after a civil war pure love will be very, very difficult to obtain.

Wars always created more hate than love, quick flaming passion when they return from the battlefield followed by sadness at what was witnessed.

Pacing back and forth in her hive it was quite a while before she even realized she had a guest, a purple alicorn with an odd barrier circling around her.

She nearly jumped out of her chitin. “Gah!” Dropping to a fighting stance by instinct she glared at her guest.

In the brief moment it took her guest to raise a single eyebrow she realized she’d be utterly destroyed if this alicorn wanted.

Changelings are emotivores, and as such have an empathic sense that surrounds them at all times, sensing the emotions of those nearby.

And the feeling she was getting from this alicorn was...wrong.

It was as if she was there, but not at the same time. Something was there, but…It’s as if there was an invisible barrier. It may look like she’s there, but she’s not.

A perfect void in the shape of an alicorn.

It also made it impossible to tell what the alicorn was feeling.

Growing more curious she sent a drone to latch onto the being from behind, the command happening over the hivemind and thus impossible to predict.

The result was as sudden as it was gruesome. the changeling was ripped apart at the smallest level.

The only saving grace was that the shredding was so perfect, that there was literally nothing left.

“What…”

With a sigh, the alicorn speaks up. “I don’t actually exist in this plane, your...drone just met an event horizon that separates me from this world, I have to be careful not to touch anything directly or I not only break it down but scatter it across time and space. I have to sync my local time in order to interact without destroying. She raises a hoof. “And right now only my hooves are synced, from past experience I know this is the best way to avoid a fight, you always were an ‘attack first’ kind of changeling Chrysalis.”

She looked kinda wistful for a moment. “It was a shock, to say the least, the first time Cha-” she coughed. “Discord touched me, completely ruined the experiment I was working on at the time.”

“Please tell me there is a point to this visit.” The queen rolled her eyes. More gods, great.

Her initial fear had receded, and with it the aggravation of her situation resurfaced.

“You alicorns are starting to annoy me, The moon’s not even been lowered in days.”

The alicorn brushed that away, not even seeming to give it much thought. “She’ll recover eventually, though I don’t recommend going near her, the pain of her loss may affect you.”

Chrysalis starts at that, the memory of the drone that got too close to that castle causing a shiver down her carapace. Even chrysalis was affected by that much sadness and shock.

She simply nodded. “Noted.”

“To answer your question though, I came to give you this.” She pulls a book from...somewhere and holds it out. Hatred and the magic of Vengence and Abhorrence.

If the alicorn felt wrong, this book felt downright disturbing.

“It’s...a book. We don’t keep records in such...archaic methods.”

“This is one of my artifacts.” the alicorn said with a smile, tapping a part at the bottom with a hoof.

A simple T where the author should be.

An artifact... It doesn’t look like much. But artifacts are supposed to have a portion of the power of their creators.

Her gaze moved between the book and the alicorn and back again. “What is your name?”

Alicorns are named after what they represent, perhaps she can get a clue as to what sort of magic this might contain.

“I’m Time. or at least a version of her. Think of me as a...drone that is going against the hive.”

A traitor! Before chrysalis’ hackles rose a serious stare from the alicorn promptly stifled any action, the memory of what happened to her drone flashed through her mind.

And that was her doing nothing.

“Before you get too afraid, I’m going against the flow of time, you see...your planned invasion will fail.”

Plan? What plan? She hadn’t even gotten far enough to begin planning something like that.

“This Grimoire contains a form of magic you might find quite useful, though it will take you quite a while to master.”

The alicorn opens the book and just the first page’s Glyph matrix made chrysalis’ head spin.

I never was really good at magic, arcane script especially.

“Trust me when I say this: Love isn’t the only source of power for you, and in time you will learn this. Hatred may be poison to you for now, but as with all things, you can change that.”

And with that, she simply floats the book out to Chrysalis.

She hesitated but figuring she’s in no position to argue she accepts it, the book floating in her green magic.

Then the alicorn vanished, she simply...stopped existing. Teleports usually have some kind of signature or at least a little flash of light.

She was there one moment and gone the next, the transition was so fast that Chrysalis’ mind couldn’t even process what had happened before it was done.

Reeling from such a casual display of her domain. Time, if she wanted me dead, I wouldn’t even have enough time to realize I might be in danger.

She thought Nightmare was strong, but in a fight, she’d be putting her bets on Time.

Thoughts of displeasing this goddess shook her to her core, but...maybe she was on her side, at least for now.

With a grin, she looked down at the book. The goddess of time just gave her a trump card. maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

Now if only she knew what Time meant by ‘invasion’.
> Research
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cycle 21563759

Experiment: Destruction of Light to see effects on Equestria’s reign.

Nightmare Moon takes over unopposed, issuing in an authoritarian regime and claiming the title of Empress.

Demands for secrets involving time increase roughly 87.5% and refusal leads to the destruction of property and sometimes cities as she attempts to take that which cannot be taken by force.

Throughout our encounters, she’s realized some magic can affect me normally, and that ambushes would prove effective if I didn’t keep warning myself they were happening.

She has also realized that I am stronger than she is. I lost my temper after one request and nearly killed her, my Overseer intervened and spared her.

Since that encounter, she’s realized that I am CHOOSING to let her live and that she’s only able to succeed at my whim.

This has had a noticeably negative effect on her mood, for the repeat of this experiment do not allow her to realize I am stronger.

Nightmare will have her way, regardless of the consequences. Luna puts more forethought into her actions, Nightmare has her intelligence, but without empathy, her cruelty often leads to undesired outcomes.

Effect on Harmony:

Harmony backlash resulted in the creation of heroes to try to subdue Nightmare Moon on the exact date that she would have come back from banishment with Light alive. Disposing of these interlopers helped secure her Reign, as the power of Harmony they possessed was quite strong, and would have unmade her.

Interesting that those Six would still be born even with such substantial changes to Equestria present.

Harmony must have put this into play meticulously

Effects on Discord: 

He seemed to enjoy himself for a moment, but Nightmare Moon was his superior in combat, he only survives because of his difficulty to eliminate, refer to Chaos Document 314592654 on theoretical methods to remove Chaos.

That and he seems to be deliberately not using much of his power, he’s tight-lipped on why, and often mentions things he shouldn’t be aware of.

Par for the course with Chaos.


So far, all her research has led to dead ends. She sighed in vexation and pulled an experiment log from the growing pile at random...


Cycle 21564759

Experiment: Removal of Both Light And Darkness to study the effect on the world government.

Left unopposed Chaos takes over the timeline, as per Cycle 21564758 Sealing of Discord at the proper time Light and Darkness would have confronted him results in beneficial societal progression.

Without a being to protect them from Chaos’s creatures that run rampant and the ‘Discordified’ ponies, the growing society collapses within two centuries due to attrition.

Effects on harmony: Headaches, a strong desire to protect ponies that is obviously foreign in nature.

I’ve not had such feelings since my first thousand Cycles, when I was more similar to my original narrow views.

Thinking back on it, seeing the elements of harmony grow old and die affected me deeply at the time

Refrain from documenting irrelevant thoughts. - Overseer 21564759

This! This is it! The migraine, the weakening of her control over herself, there’s only one possible solution:

Harmony Backlash.

But how? She hadn’t done anything, what’s different this time?

She sat upon one of her chairs and slowed her thoughts, clearing her mind with the ancient technique of royal breathing.

Not that breathing was necessary for her anymore.

It still helped.

As her thoughts and anger subside the result is clear.

Chaos.

Random elements click into place, a lot of the weird things Chaos said in the past suddenly begin to make sense.

Chaos is like her, he doesn’t exist within the timestream. That would explain how he could interact with her so easily, and how he knew of her tree experiments.

He’d been watching, waiting for her to...take a vacation? Or maybe...maybe he tampered with the last experiment, knowing it would be difficult to deal with without all her power.

That moment, that single instant that her protective wards on her Grimoire’s was down.

That is what he was waiting for.

Time’s estimation of Chaos grew, but so too did her resolve.

He wants to play with the timeline? Two can play at that game, It’s obvious what she had to do.

She rose from her seat and the tower, floating over to the chaotic mishmash that was the current timestream.

With practiced ease, she pinpointed the Prime Timeline.

The river that all forks of potential futures and multiverses split from.

There was no need to stop him all at once, nor did she care about the Alternate Universes.

Seeing his obvious meddling she knew what she needed to do.

If harmony is blocking her power, she just needed to appease it somehow.

Tit for tat.

An eye for an eye.

Chaos doesn’t know who he’s messing with.

Splitting herself in two she enters the timeline.

Overseer 1 watched as she entered the timeline and everything suddenly went dark. The usual white void vanished instantaneously, all the futures got cut off shortly after where Prime entered.

Like a tree with it’s canopy removed.

With a quick estimation Overseer deduced that it happened roughly 3 years after she entered.

This is bad, she’d never seen something like this, Time itself is about to end. In the distance her tower crumbled to nothingness, the void moving closer, and closer to the Prime Timeline. Soon all that would exist is the timestream.

Acting quickly she moved to a few moments where time ended and appeared before herself.

Prime’s mane was ablaze with fire, her wings flared in anger, her coat shone bright and pure fury burned in her gaze, the radiant heat of her wrath was scorching the planet around her.

If she weren’t careful, the planet itself would break apart.

“Stop! If you continue down this path you’ll destroy everything! This moment is the crux, either the multiverse ends now, or it begins anew!” She’s surrounded by many beings, Light, Darkness, and even...Chrysalis? As well as 5 of the elements of harmony.

One is missing though, even her student is here, shielding the other ponies with an icy barrier.

She also felt Death’s presence nearby, not close enough to kill anyone though, and what little effect he was having was being counteracted by Life, likely next to him.

They could all feel how everything relied on this singular moment.

Alpha for her part simply snarled. “This? I’m just removing a thorn from my side. It’s time for a new experiment, make sure to write down that the theoretical method to kill Chaos seems true.” She held up a diminutive Chaos between her hooves.

”This is my lab, and I’m done allowing a rat to run around and topple over my experiments” She pulled him close, her fury rising, she was one flex away from crushing him to nothingness.

Chaos simply looked resigned, his body was pale, his mismatched form only being kept together by Time’s magic forcing all of the Chaos in the universe into a singular point.

The theoretical technique to destroy Chaos was simple, incinerate it.

Then pull together enough for him to form a new body, and incinerate that too, repeat ad nauseam till all chaos is gone.

Something clicked in Observer 1’s mind.

The goading, the pain. The discorded Plague.

It was all for this, all to piss her off.

Chaos simply winked at observer 1 when she realized, a burning sensation in her chest causing her to gasp.

A spark of realization.

He knows that if he dies, so too does the universe.

He knows, yet he’s willing to risk it all for...something.

Something worth more than everything.

Observer 1 looked back to Alpha. She seemed to be waiting for something, looking at Observer 1 intently.

This was bad, it was obvious that Chaos was vital to the existence of the Multiverse, And Alpha didn’t notice.

A quick check confirmed it, from what she could tell, the rest of the universe's Chaos was about to be incinerated.

From previous flares of emotion, the standard tactic was to retreat and let the anger die off, or overpower with a sneak attack.

She’d lost that opportunity when she entered in haste without creating a duplicate.

And waiting wasn’t an option either…

With no outward sign of gathering energy, she does a last-ditch effort...

An attempt to discorporate herself, in the time Alpha reforms it should let her emotions cool off.

Her attack is blocked with ease, and Alpha’s anger turned from Chaos to Observer 1. She was promptly incinerated as well.

Ever burning flames. Only timeless things could affect Time, as Alpha well knew.

As she burned away she decided to send a single letter.

A final letter to her old teacher.

Overseer 1’s last thought was ‘I hope it’s enough.’

Observer 2’s last thought was “please, Celestia.

I was wrong.”


~~~~~


> Nightmare
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

How long had she been here? logically she should have died long ago.

Seemed Time really did stop her aging.

"Please, this isn't you. snap out of it!"

Oh, it seems we're back to the last one she killed.

Clover's eyes flashed red for a moment as she was forced to watch herself commit murder after murder.

She's tried giving into madness, that didn't help, but was a fun distraction for a while.

Then she went sane, and that didn't help either. Death still held her in this prison.

Sometimes she notices him, looking down upon her with a disappointed face.

The sound of a body hitting the floor filled the void, her last killing complete, she was heading toward her next town.

Wait.

A glimmer of thought broke through the haze. A warmth spread through her body, almost like it was guiding her to look closer.

Following the unseen guidance she forces herself to watch her last murder, but this time she notices something, a faint memory somewhere in the back of her mind.

This moment. She was cursing Chaos for bringing this upon her.

With a shock she realized she had given into hatred, and that resulted in a feedback loop from the Alicorn Amulet.

It was hard to feel things anymore, but maybe this apathy is what she needs.

She tried to remember her Shift when Time took her as an apprentice.

It was so long ago now.

Vague memories slowly pierce the fog.

With a shock she realized she never really was sane in her time here. The whispers of the Amulet served as an echo chamber for her hatred.

Speaking of Hatred, she swore she saw some pony with red eyes watching her a while ago.

couldn't be Death, His eyes are milky white. looking blindly at the world.

Whatever, back to the problem at hoof.

For the first time since she was put in this prison, she actually listened to the amulet around her neck.

The whispers that are always at the edge of her hearing become clearer, like a droning noise you got used to after awhile being focused on for the first time.

"It's All Chaos's fault."

That was wrong, she chose to do this because she believed Time knew best, who was she to argue with a god?

"Please, don't be corrupted."

It was wearing on her soul.

A ponies’ soul is made up of their thoughts and convictions.

With a huge effort of will, she not only listened to the amulet around her neck, but replied.

Each whisper was met with logic.

Each horrible memory was accepted.

Each act of brutality shown to her wouldn’t phase her.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she pulled herself together.

When all was said and done, she was alone in a globe of darkness. A soft thunk sounding through the void as the Amulet was removed, the red glow from it dissolving away to nothing.

“About time. I was beginning to think you’d never regain control.”

Far above the shadows Clover could see milky white eyes peering into her soul.

“Good. there’s much for you to do, I have a guest who’s..well, I can’t say she’s been waiting, as it was just a step to the left for her.”


The world around Clover shatters, The brightness of real light hitting her eyes for the first time in centuries caused her to blanch. 

The room being one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen didn’t help matters either.

When she finally came too, she took it all in.

It made her soul hurt. This massive room was so utterly perfect that it brought tears to her eyes.

This must be the meeting place of the gods.

Each god was represented by a wedge of the octagon, the whole thing brought into harmony in
the middle where a large golden Hourglass representing time resided.

Clover felt a pull toward the center, almost like it was beckoning her. Before she could take a step however a hoof touched her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks.

Looking toward the owner of the purple hoof she saw her mentor, covered completely by some kind of shimmering barrier of chaotic magic.

Seeing her mentor for the first time in ages, she reflexively bowed.

“Time.”

For her part, the alicorn simply stared at the Hourglass that so captivated Clover.

“Interesting…”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Sorry, I was lost in thought for a moment. I can feel harmony’s strings at work here, Clover the Clever. However, I am not your Teacher. To avoid confusion you can call me Beta. I’m a ‘younger’ version of the Time you met, when i was removed from the cycle by a certain dragonequus I was hardly one thousand Cycles old.”

“Sorry, what’s a Cycle?”

“Oh, one cycle is the Universe from its inception to it’s heat death. Time and others like myself count our age in how many times I have existed until the end of all things.”

She tapped her chin with a hoof. “I suppose you could think of it as ten to the hundredth power years each time. Back to the matter at hoof, my Originator is the Prime, the central version of myself who ascended to her power so very long ago. Every time the universe ends; she goes back to the beginning to start over.”

Clover’s mind was spinning, she had just assumed Time’s age was infinite, and now she was getting new information to  disprove that assumption.

An assumption she’s beginning to notice, her mentor didn’t attempt to dissuade at any point in her training.

Although another question was buzzing in Clover’s mind. “What do you mean ‘Ascension’?”

Beta simply smiled at that. “She hadn’t told you? She was once a mortal, just like you. I believe she’s going to be born in roughly 182 years.”

Talk about splitting hairs. The chicken or the egg argument came to the forefront of Clover’s mind.

“Take your time, I’m sure it’s a lot to process.”

A cough draws Clover’s attention to a pair of beings behind her, recognizing Death she instinctively tried to cast the protection spells but the moment she saw the Alicorn standing next to him her mind went blank.

Before her is perfection, a pure white alicorn that almost seems so soft she’d blow away in a strong wind, her outline was hazy and undefined, almost like mist. Her features seemed to always be in flux, shifting from one moment to another, each form being more beautiful than the last. Eventually, green makes itself known to her, she notices vines intertwining around the Alicorn’s hooves and wings, seeming to keep this perfect being contained so that she doesn’t dissipate. Hair made up of Budding flowers and vines flowed behind her in an unseen wind

Clover’s very soul was aching at her beauty.


It feels as if her heart has stopped. Wait…

Touching a hoof to her chest she realized her heart had stopped, yet she wasn’t dying.

“I tend to have this effect on mortals, it’s as if they can feel from where they came, the soul seems to remember.”

Death’s raspy laughter filled the small room when he noticed Clover’s expression.
“Don’t look at me, with Life this close by it would be quite difficult to kill you here, even if you took a mortal wound. Though I suppose in one sense you have, she actually does stop your heart, her beauty is too much for mortals to process, but her very nature prevents such a thing from being fatal. It’s also why you don’t need those pesky protections against me, our auras are canceling each other out.”

Clover had to look away, taking a deep breath as she steadied herself, feeling her heart beating once again she couldn’t help sneaking a peak at Life one more time, causing said Alicorn to laugh a bit, the sound of mirth filling the large chamber.

Realizing she got distracted, Clover devoted a huge effort to forcing herself to stop thinking of Life’s perfect form and once again process the problem at hoof.

After a few minutes of her thoughts running around in a circle she found she was getting nowhere quickly, with a sigh she turned to Beta. “Alright, I give. What are you doing here? I don’t have enough information to make a guess at this point.”

“Knowing when you don’t know something, I see my taste in students remains strict. Though for the life of me I can’t fathom why she accepted. She doesn’t take students unless it’s part of an experiment, and those experiments are long finished.”

“Weren't you paying attention? She was kinda forced into the decision when she caused Clover’s shift without preparing countermeasures necessary to go back in time and rectify any mistakes.”


The sudden deep voice gave Clover a start, causing her to look for the source, only to come up empty. When she had given up, laughter from above caused her to look up.

Right into the eyes of Dragonequuis. 

Clover’s first instinct is to blast him with magic, which she did only for the beam to burst into harmless confetti.

“My my, you really are her student aren’t you. She reacted the same way to me the first few cycles.”

Beta, for her part blushed and looked away. “Have I mentioned he ruined the experiment I was running at the time?”

Clover’s thoughts this time didn’t run in a circle. They ran into a brick wall and crashed, burning in a pile of rubble.

Time. Working with Chaos?

What in Harmony is going on.



~~~~




The bonds were weakening. Struggling more and more, Nightmare pulled against the magical restraints, a paltry planet above her serving as her attempted destination.


Somewhere nearby a Book lay on the ground, open to the last page, which of course was the first.

What did Chaos say? Oh right, a trick to being sane enough to know what you want to do, and insane enough to do it.

She’d already lost a few minutes because one of her stars drifted out of sync with the others.

With a pulse of power she realized the time was right, her eyes roamed around her, finding the four stars she managed to pull into the moon, with their magic combined with her’s she shattered the manacles that she’d grown used to holding her avatar imprisoned.

The face on the moon vanished.

“Aaaah, that’s so much better!” Nightmare cracked her neck and shook out the nerves.

An itch hit the back of her mind, it felt like ants crawling over her brain.

No, wait. It was the feeling of hooves on her body.

Someone was here. With but a thought she appeared before a rather interesting being.

Why was it so tall? With a small thud Nightmare realized she forgot to teleport her hooves with her, with nothing to hold her upright she fell onto her side, her eyes glaring hatefully at the super tall white pony before her.

“One moment, I need to go shopping for a bit.”

In front of her several different variations of hooves appeared, scrolling past as if she was viewing a catalog. If a causal pony watched this, they'd think she was using Chaos magic.

“To have fallen so far as to use his magic.”

Ah, speak of the devil. Meet the causal pony. “Sorry sister, but this isn’t the same….wait, you are my sister right?”

Tall, check. White, check, arrogant disposition, check.

Pink mane…kinda? “Why’s your hair so flowy flowy. There’s no wind on my moon.”

“An aftereffect of Using the Elements of Harmony alone.”

“Oh, right. Those things. I knew I was forgetting something important.”

With a flash Nightmare stood up…then fell down because her hooves were too small.

“Oops, one moment.” Another flash and she was her proper height, roughly equal to Celestia.

“Come to beg sister? I’m still blowing up that pesky planet of yours.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, I’ve got a student that I’ve grown rather fond of down there.”

Ugh, of course she does. It made Nightmare want to smack that smug look off her sister's face.

So she did, or at least she tried to. The blow that should have sent the offending head flying around the moon quite separate from it’s former body was stopped cold…or should she say stopped hot? This aura burns.

“Still only using Fire? Such a shame.” Nightmare was looking down at her quite literally burning hoof. “What’d I do to make you so angry? If anything I’M  the one who should be mad. Which I am. Not insane though, just mad. Both definitions.”

The look on Celestia's face was priceless. Nightmare wanted to frame it and put it on a wall.

No, that’s not right. She wanted to frame it, get it all nice and pretty, then burn it.

Bonus points for the irony of burning an image of the ‘sun’ as ponies called it.

A sudden thought hit Nightmare and she started laughing maniacally.

“Something funny?”

“Yes, I just realized that the ‘Sun’ has quite a large ‘moon’ now.”

Oh, she’s headless now.

Awkward, it’s really rude to lose one's head when you have company.

Honestly.

A blue swirl of magic slowly climbed from the stump of what was formerly Nightmare moon’s head, forming a new head as the old one dissipated into the base magic it was made of.

Wait…

Looking closer..

“Sister…why does your body seem more…fleshy than before? How long has that avatar existed?”

At that Celestia's expression went from sour to stony.

Seems she hit a nerve.

No matter, Nightmare moon had more important matters to attend to, with a wave burning shackles wrapped around Celestia's hooves.

Her expression went from stony, to surprised, to incredulous when she realized she couldn’t break them.

“The opposite of the spell you used against me, you’re going to be stuck inside your sun until I’m finished destroying your carefully laid plans. I’ll be sure to unblock your view before I destroy the planet.”

Celestia's response was to channel a bunch of magic to her horn, too much it seems as her horn snapped and fell to the ground before her, moments before she was yanked away, forced inside her solar body just like the spell Nightmare moon escaped from a few minutes ago.

Though, since her magic wasn’t split between the stars she’d likely break out in a few hours.

Plenty of time.

Turning her sadistic smile toward the planet above, Nightmare Moon dissolved into blue mist and flowed toward Equestria, right toward the castle she remembered so vividly.
> Familiar, but Different.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“My dearest, most faithful student, Twilight. You know that I value your diligence and that I trust you completely.”

“But you simply must stop reading those dusty old books!”

Twilight gasped. It had taken her ages to find all the reference material for that prophecy!

“I know that you helped solve a long-standing question about the Chaos plague, but you are digging into things that are restricted for a reason.”

Each word was hitting her like a hammer to her chest.

Doesn’t she see that something bad’s going to happen?

Wait.

Twilight paused as she made her way to the Canterlot docks to hear the rest of the letter Spike was refusing to read until she was on her way to….somewhere.``It made sense, Celestia often didn’t say what she truly wanted, and thinking about it logically she’d be more familiar with a millennia-old prophecy than Twilight would.

After all, she lived through it.

When her view of Canterlot quickly receded behind her Spike opened the scroll and began reading again.

“My dear Twilight. There’s more to somepony’s life than studying.”

“So I’m sending you to supervise the preparations for the summer sun celebration in this year's location, Ponyville.”

This was harder to decode than usual, what answer couldn’t be found in books?

Twilight Hadn’t made any progress when Spike read her the following line.

“And, I have an even more essential task…”

This was it, right here was the crux of the issue.

“Make some friends!”

Or not.

“Look alive Twilight, the princess arranged for you to stay in a library. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

Wait, that was it. It’s not that the answers wouldn’t be found in books. She meant that the archives in Canterlot weren’t sufficient!

“Yes, yes it does. Because I know that I’m right. I’ll check on the preparations as fast as I can, then get to the library to find some proof of Nightmare Moon's return.”

“Then when will you make friends like the princess said?”

“The princess said to check on the preparations. I am her student and I’ll do my royal duty.”

Twilight landed on solid ground for the first time in several minutes. “The fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends.”

After another quick back and forth she decided to speak to a pink pony, only for her to gasp and run away faster than eyes could follow.

“That was…”

Twilight was about to say ‘interesting’ when something caught her eye. The effect of a ‘notice me not’ charm fizzled out against her horn with a small clash of magic and her eyes met…

Herself?

A lavender Alicorn with purple eyes and a two-toned mane. Before she could even wonder about what she was seeing the crowded street blocked her view and when the view cleared the alicorn was gone, not even leaving behind the telltale aftereffects of teleportation.

Which was impossible.

Not as impossible as seeing herself as an Alicorn, but still…

Imagine the hubris of thinking of yourself as a Deity.

“Equestria to Twilight? You there?”

Twilight blinked, filing the odd encounter away for further study. “Yeah, yeah. What’s first on the list?”


~~~~~



That was dumb.

Time peeked out at the much younger version of herself when she knew her focus wasn’t on her anymore. 

She’d forgotten to add herself to the Notice Me Not charm. It’d been so long since she’d interacted with alternate versions of herself that she’s mostly forgotten the procedure. This also wasn’t a…normal cycle, to begin with, Chaos’s tampering was evident everywhere.

Ponyville was half as populous as it should have been for one. Hopefully, her student did her job and the key players to history are about.

Speaking of the key players of history, her mind went back to what she said...

The fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends, huh.

She’d not seen them for quite some time. Her experiments involving them were long since finished. It was one of the first things she did, alas none of them had the spark needed to ascend as she had.

Even after extensive testing on the matter. Body modifications, possession, and even soul magic didn’t seem to do the trick, some underlying force was preventing her from doing what Celestia did for her aeons ago.

There was of course Nightmare Rarity, but she wasn’t satisfied by such half measures.

Time spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly. At first, she’d roamed the central square to have the biggest line of sight in the whole town.

After that she took to the sky, hovering on a soft cushion of magic. No matter what she tried to catalog she found herself drawn to her old hoofsteps. Giving it up as hopeless she spent the remainder of the day keeping track of herself.

She couldn’t just jump to the confrontation with Nightmare Moon because she might miss some of Chaos’s tampering, she was in uncharted waters now.

So she had to wait and watch herself.

While noting the differences down on a scroll, of course, no reason not to add to the archives.

The Apple family was missing a few members, they were still friendly but you could tell it was wearing on them.

Rarity had lost both her parents to the Chaos Plague, leaving her to raise Sweetie Belle alone.

Rainbow Dash was also an orphan and raised by a militant orphanage. Good to see her drive to join the wonderbolts intact, even if her personality was a bit rougher than before.

Fluttershy seemed the least affected, perhaps Chaos still had a soft spot for the pegasus? Maybe that could become useful in the future if a hostage became necessary.


“Don’t even think about it.”

Time swore she just heard Chaos’s voice over her shoulder, the threat hanging in the air gone like the wind.

What was she doing again? Ah, right. Fluttershy seemed almost normal.

A countermeasure suddenly activated, a small sound playing next to her head. She looked and saw a blue orb.

Someone just used mind magic on her! She spent the next hour searching for who could have done such a thing, Her efforts becoming more overt the longer whatever it was that did that eluded her.

She would not be controlled!

~~~~~



Twilight’s day was going terribly. Gone were her aspirations of getting this done in a reasonable timeframe.

“And that’s the story of my whole life. Up until today, wanna hear about that too?”

“Oh yes please.”

For someone named fluttershy she got over her shyness really quickly.

To top it all off, her horn was aching from an abundance of Celestial magic. She was trying to narrow down which Alicorn it could be and was getting nowhere.

She was aware of Love, Hate, Life, Death, Light, Darkness, and Time. But the last two Celestia was unusually circumspect on. She was also hesitant to mention Darkness, that name being little more than a whisper.

Even that little bit of Information was hard-won from Celestia, on the pretense she wouldn’t repeat it to anypony. That left one unaccounted for.

To make matters worse, the magic seemed achingly familiar, it was definitely not Celestia’s, her magic felt warm and soothing, like the sun on a cool afternoon, soft and gentle..even motherly.

Shaking her head she continued down that train of thought. she’d read recounts about how her magic once felt like a poorly restrained inferno during a war almost 1000 years ago.

Though picturing Celestia as a warrior didn’t seem to fit with what she knew of her.

Anyway, she’s getting sidetracked. One could only distract themselves so much, and her irritation was beginning to show.

“We really have to go, it’s time for this little guy to go to bed.”

Slamming the door shut into the darkened library she sighed in relief.

“Surprise!”

Twilight’s groan was swallowed up by the cheering ponies all around her.

It took some doing, but eventually, she made her way to the sleeping area above the library proper. The place was quaint, but poorly insulated, she could clearly hear the party going on in full swing, not seeming to have noticed its namesake leaving.

“Libraries are supposed to be quiet” was what she muttered to herself as she dealt with the headache induced by an abundance of Celestial magic suffusing the area.

Absently rubbing her horn she wondered briefly if she should attempt to pierce the notice me not charm.

Speaking of hubris, if it really was an alicorn, the only way she’d break through is if the deity let her, and considering the fact that she’d already ‘fixed’ it when it failed before that clearly wasn’t on the table.

Twilight found herself staring up at the moon, seeing several stars slowly drifting toward it.

“The stars will set me free.”

This was bad, she’d gotten nothing done, and even worse, she couldn’t even look up a solution seeing as a bunch of crazy ponies were still dancing the night away like crazy.

When She asked Spike about it he just gave the typical child answer of “It’s the summer sun celebration, everypony has to stay up late or they’ll miss the sunrise.”

Several hours passed like this. 

As she got ready to follow the townsponies to the location of the festival, she saw that they were heading to the town hall Rarity decorated earlier. Usually, these ceremonies were done outside, but today they picked an indoor venue.

Twilight couldn’t help looking up at the moon as the four stars joined with it, the face plastered upon its surface vanishing from sight. What’s worse is that Alicorn she was feeling seemed to have vanished quite suddenly as well.

An intense feeling of dread hit her, only getting worse as Celestia didn’t make her planned appearance.

“She’s gone!”

Panicked voices filled the air as swirling blue/black mist slowly coalesced into the form of an Alicorn.

A dark and hate-fueled voice filled the air. “A party just for me? You shouldn’t have! Throwing a farewell ceremony for the sun. such a novel idea, I shoulda done it myself.”

Some guards charged her, only to be flung back by a burst of mana followed by a lightning strike, likely used to disguise the magic usage.

“Really? Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with? Has my Sister really erased me from history?”

“You’re Nightmare moon.”

Twilight herself is shocked at her own voice, her senses were screaming at her that this was a dangerous situation, the magic flowing from this Dark Alicorn was overflowing with spite, hatred, and resentment. Twilight would be surprised if she even cared about leveling the entire city.

“Oh my, I had heard my sister found an apprentice, and such an odd choice as well. Don’t think I don’t feel you nearby, Time.”

Time?

As in the Goddess of Time?

Seemed one mystery was solved, and three more took its place.

From Celestia’s scant few times she spoke about the deity, she said she mostly lived like a hermit, in a tower surrounded by magic tomes.

Honestly, it sounded fantastic, but a more pressing issue reared its ugly head.

Why did Time look like her?


~~~~~


It was fruitless. Whatever just used mind magic on her was nowhere to be seen, and she’d already given away her presence with her unrestrained use of magic.

She was floundering too much in the dark here, so she decided to summon the protocol scroll to figure out what she was doing wrong.

It took several minutes before she realized something was wrong.

Her scroll hadn’t shown up.

“What is my observer doing?” With a sigh, she stepped to the left to attempt to return out of the timeline, only for the world to go…weird.

It looked like she entered a funhouse, to her left and right countless versions of herself showed up, looking up she saw the same happening on the vertical plane, looking like an infinite grid of herself looking up. She raised a hoof, and countless other purple hooves raised as well.

Attempting to move forward made them do the same, blocking her as if she was trying to walk into a mirror.

Resynchronizing herself to the timeline she noticed something for the first time.

Her event horizon was gone. The barrier that wrapped around her when she entered the timeline was missing. Any being from the timeline touching the barrier found itself ripped apart and scattered across all of time, she often had to make preparations to stop such a thing from happening.

Time Jumped when a bird landed on her shoulder, the last being to touch her had been Chaos.

For the first time since her ascension, she was fully aligned with the timeline.

This was bad. Being Immune to everything inside the timeline was her main trump card. Her training with Clover showed that she wasn’t any slouch in combat, but she just lost her biggest shield.

She didn’t age anymore, so that wasn’t a concern, but if she couldn’t leave the timeline, even if she did attempt to go back in time to change an outcome, it would fail. Previously she’d have to do some prep work to avoid a paradox. But now even that wasn’t an option anymore.

The next experiment was to go forward in time a little bit, which worked.

Kinda. Even though she wasn’t outside the timeline anymore, she should still be able to move forward at least.

The problem was it looked like a solid barrier of rainbow energy was stopping her. As she probed the barrier she noticed it wasn’t a complete one, there were various ‘holes’ in the barrier, sections of the future that weren’t locked out completely. 

She decided to test the ‘solid’ parts of the barrier to see if she could brute force her way through.

Her horn started to ache, the same feeling she’s been dealing with for some time now.

The magic seemed familiar. Analyzing it for a moment she felt the magic for the first time. It was Soothing, reminding her of hours spent simply reading books on a soft bed.

It was Harmony.

One more time she tried to leave the timeline, the infinite versions of herself showed up right on cue. Bracing herself she walked forward, into the mirror image of herself right in front.

She passed right through and wound up back where she started, facing the opposite direction.

She was locked into this timeline.

What new form of Harmony backlash was this? Harmony hadn’t ever done something like this before.

Something occurred to her, and she cast several spells in quick succession.

She had forgotten to reset the mind magic alert, and now she was expending some magic to shield her mind. This wasn’t overly taxing, but it did take a bit of focus. Which was the main reason she left one of various magical countermeasures in place instead, they just needed to be fed magic every once in a while to keep them active.

Which was why she didn’t usually do this constantly, few beings could affect the mind of an Alicorn, to begin with, but that number was never zero. 

Especially now that she was synced with time, she’d not felt this vulnerable in Millenia

The next experiment was to see where those ‘holes’ in the barrier led.

Harmony wanted her to do something here. Stepping through the hole she found herself right at an encounter with Nightmare Moon.

Well, only one of the encounters. This one seemed to be almost finished, Nightmare Moon was raving about honesty. There was the familiar collapsed cliff, but at the bottom was a…poker table?

It was only then that Time noticed the playing cards slowly drifting down, Applejack was giving Twilight the ‘trust fall’ scenario, but behind them Nightmare was furious, she was already casting a spell to kill them.

Normally Time would have let it happen, but a familiar pain reared its ugly head once again.

The Harmony backlash headache started again, but this time it seemed to guide her. Her magic flowed into a spell pattern she’d never seen before. Which was being added to the growing list of ‘impossible’ things happening this Cycle.

She didn’t have enough time to memorize the spell pattern, one moment she was watching Nightmare charge up a blast, and the next she was dispersed into blue mist and fleeing the scene.


While she absently floated above the chasm trying to make sense of it all she noticed eyes on her.

Two sets of eyes, one from her younger self, and another from Rainbow Dash.

Needing time to think she vanished, pulled along the timestream like a fish caught on a lure.



~~~~~


“What the buck was that?!”  Rainbow Dash was in her face once again. “You really are a spy aren’t ya?”

Twilight pushed her away. “No, of course, I’m not. I don’t know what’s happening either. But I swear I saw a glimpse of her once before, in town.”

“You did? Was it before or after I left to plan your party?”

“Before…no, wait. Right afterward.”

“Oooooooh! I knew my Pinkie Sense was telling me something! But the message was weird. ‘An old friend will stop by to visit’ doesn’t happen very often. And I’ve counted everypony in town no less than four separate times. So that means my friend must be invisible!”

It took Twilight several seconds to try to decipher what Pinkie just said, a few moments later she failed and could only ask one question dumbly.

“Pinkie Sense?”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s just one o’ the things ya just accept about Pinkie. Tell me, yer tail’s not twitchin’ is it?”

“Noperoonie!”

“Good, being this close to ah unstable cliff is bad news. Let’s get this show on tha road, we’ve got ah castle ta find.”

~~~~~

The next thing she knew Time was floating above the six ponies as they made their way deeper into the forest.

From what she knew, Applejack’s test wasn’t until much later, however it wasn’t the only thing to change because of Chaos’s tampering. Now it seemed like Pinkie’s test was next.

Below she could see the fear enchantment twisting the trees into horrific shapes.

Time was rather impressed. When she encountered this, it wasn’t nearly as strong, affecting the Everfree with magic was always a tough prospect, but this time Nightmare Moon really wanted to kill them.

This new enchantment wouldn’t be broken by simple laughter, even from the bearer of the Laughter herself.

Time decided now was a good time to analyze Nightmare Moon’s soul, whenever a being casts a spell, an imprint of the soul is left behind if you knew how to look.

She had a bit of time before the group arrived, so she decided to see what changes had occurred due to Chaos’s tampering.


With a small pulse of magic, her spell was complete, She fused the readout into a scroll and began reading through the various aspects.

Ice: 15%
Darkness: 20%
Disharmony: 64%
Miscellaneous (Luna) 1%

The buck?

Usually, Luna’s soul was much stronger.

And 64% disharmony? That’d drive anypony insane. Chaos must have given her the Grimoire.

Absently Time sent a request to her observer to pull Luna’s soul makeup from the archives.

It took two minutes to realize the request wasn’t being fulfilled. This was the second time her Observer hadn’t answered a command, which was unheard of.

That left two possibilities. Either her Observer was ignoring her orders, which was impossible.

Or her Observer was incapacitated in some way.

Which was less impossible.

She attempted once again to exit the timeline, only for the mirror world to return to her perception.

She was stuck, and now she was without assistance.

Could this day get any worse?
> Rage
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes. yes, it could.

Rainbow Dash nearly just died. Time appeared above the still dangling bridge leading to Everfree Castle and there was no Rainbow Dash. There weren’t even any Shadowbolt’s left over from the ‘test.’

Knowing anything could have happened Twilight let out a pulse of magic, checking for feedback.

She got a ping, but it was below.

Far below.

Slipping through time. (one thing she was relieved she could still do) she appeared at the bottom of the ravine.

It wasn’t pretty. Rainbow was in a mangled mess. It looked like someone had bound her and thrown her down the pit, the remains of Nightmare’s magic were still there on Rainbow Dash’s wings.

Or, should she say ‘wing’?

One was fine, the other one was so injured it didn’t even resemble a limb anymore.

It was easy to piece together what had happened. Rainbow had passed her ‘test’ and instead of leaving her to return triumphantly, Nightmare Moon had tried to kill her in a supremely ironic way.

Dash had freed herself of the bindings to avoid a fatal fall, but she landed on her side as she tried to arrest her momentum, resulting in the broken blue pony she saw before her.

Seeing Dash’s body lying there, barely breathing amidst the rubble of the formerly majestic bridge that once graced the ravine above something sparked in Time.

It was hot, a hot feeling in her chest, so sudden it took her breath away.

This wasn’t right.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

She hurt her.

She nearly killed her.

Time screamed in anger.

The rest was lost as she only saw red.




~~~~~

“Ah don’ like this. She’s been gon too long.” Applejack was absently pawing the ground.

Twilight was busy trying to figure out what that pulse of magic was for. It slammed into her horn with such force she nearly lost consciousness. 

Rarity had actually fainted for a few seconds.

“I know. I don’t like that scream I heard.” Twilight looked at Fluttershy who was shaking like a leaf. It was clear she wanted to fly to see what was going on, but she hadn’t been able to open her wings since the scary forest.

No help coming from there.

Suddenly an explosion of magic came from the bottom of the ravine. A wave of such intense anger buffeted Twilight she could feel her mane starting to spark and burn with residual emotion.

Celestia affectionately called it ‘flaring up’ but it was anything but a joke. She took a few deep breaths like Cadance once showed her.

She knew she was dangerous when she did that.

She also recognized that magic signature.

It was Time.

“Everyone get back!” It didn’t even seem like Twilight had to tell them, they could all feel it.

Anger so strong that even earth ponies and pegasi could feel it.

The light from the magic explosion revealed a cloud of darkness floating above the ravine, which seemed to zip quickly toward the castle in the distance as if afraid.

Before Twilight could even open her mouth to say anything she saw Rainbow Dash flying above the pit, seemingly looking around for something.

Twilight was relieved to see that Rainbow was alright, that was until she turned to look at them, and she saw what had happened.

One of Rainbow’s wings was gone and replaced with a truly wonderful sight.

Gone was the blue wing, in its place was a series of Cogs and gears in the shape of a wing.

The geometry shouldn’t make sense, but it did, she could swear that when she looked into the wing she could see a hint of something, a brief glimpse of something that gave her a headache and caused her to abruptly look away.

By the time she looked back, the glimpse was gone, as was the view into the internals of the new wing, instead, there was a covering of what looked like copper or maybe even bronze covering it.

It was only when she realized that she was staring that she noticed Rainbow Dash had said something.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “I said ‘Did you notice a violet pony in a robe? It looked a lot like you if I’m being honest.” Dash’s eyes narrowed for a bit before she looked down at her new wing, moving it and extending it to test it.

“It’s weird it feels…better than the one I had.” Getting a grin on her face she swung her wing at a nearby wooden post.

Which looked normal for all of three seconds, until it slid down and fell, a diagonal cut so fine it seemed even the the wood hadn’t noticed it was sliced for a moment.

Dash’s wing was glowing a copper color, blades coming out from the ‘feathers’ only to slowly retract into the contraption, leaving no hint that they were there.

Everyone said “Woah” in unison.

Then there was an explosion of white light coming from the castle’s main entrance, several birds taking to the air in fear.




~~One minute Earlier~~



Time’s breathing was ragged, her eyes narrowed, she hadn’t felt like this in a while, pure white-hot rage.

She might have gone overboard giving Dash a new wing, but it was hard to think straight.

Deep breaths, use the royal breathing technique.

“There you are.”

The last pony she wanted to meet had found her.

Nightmare Moon’s sneer was unhinged and gleeful as if she was having the time of her life.

“Just, don’t.”

“Aww~ is the little goddess having a tantrum? Seems I’ve found something that can get a rise out of you. Which part was it.”

Time’s vision was getting redder and redder, her mane resembling a billowing flame that was burning hotter with each word.

“Was it that poor blue pegasus lost the ability to fly?”

Time’s robes catch fire.

“Was it the panic she must have felt falling to her death?”

Wisps of coppery magic begin to fill the area. Time’s gaze was locked on Nightmare Moon, failing to notice that she was standing in the element chamber.

“Not. One. More. Word.”

Nightmare’s eyes lit with glee, she opened her mouth to speak, only to realize that a hoof had lodged itself into her face.

The last of Time’s faculties was spent forming a cage to cut Nightmare Moon off from her celestial body.

She wanted this to Hurt.




~~~~~


Twilight and the others rushed into the Everfree Ruins, following the bursts of magic and light till they found themselves staring at what Twilight couldn’t even call the aftermath of a battle.

This was a slaughter.

She was looking at the back of a white alicorn, her mane a roaring inferno that was burning the tapestries on the wall, much to Rarity’s dismay.

The floor was a mess of cracked stone, a large crater taking up the majority of the room. There might have been a throne at the far wall, but it had joined the ever-increasing pile of rubble that was the castle.

The alicorn’s hoof slammed down again, making the crater she was standing in deeper, causing a light dusting of rubble to fall from the ceiling.

Boom.

Twilight took a step back in fear, the magic billowing from this alicron was nothing but pure white-hot rage.

Her hoof stepped on a piece of glass that might have belonged to a stained glass window.

The alicorn’s gaze locked onto hers faster than she could curse such a cliche.

A long moment hung in the air as the two stared at each other until recognition was shown on the alicorn's face.

Suddenly the white alicorn’s form winked out of existence, the rapidly fading heat being the only evidence that she even existed.

That was until Twilight looked at the epicenter of the crater.

Her breath caught in her throat as her eyes got used to what they were seeing. At first, it was an unrecognizable lump of black and red, but the more she looked the more features came into view.

A pile of feathers that might have been a wing, a broken horn lodged into the ground as if someone had ripped it off and rammed it into the ground. What might be the remains of an eye?

Twilight’s mouth opened. “Is…is that…Nightmare Moon?”

Rarity and Fluttershy both fainted.
> Aftermath
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

While Rarity and Fluttershy recovered Rainbow Dash had covered Nightmare Moon’s body with a still burnt tapestry.

Twilight, for her part, was staring at some shards of crystal on the ground, her horn still ached from the abundance of Celestial Mana in the air, but something about these shards kept her attention.

There was another magic here.

Twilight’s eyes went from the shards, to what looked like a fancy stone receptacle. The fact that it survived the angry alicorn's rampage spoke to its durability.

She looked at Dash’s new wing, remembered the poker game with Applejack and the cliff, even Fluttershy helping out a warped manticore.

A spark flashed in her chest.

“We need to heal her.”

Everypony looked at her as they spoke in unison. “What?!”

Rainbow bristled: “Have you seen the damage she’s caused? She nearly killed us! Three times!”

Fluttershy spoke softly. “The animals she hurt in the Everfree…”

Rarity was looking at the tapestry covering Nightmare’s body.

“She’s right.”

It looked like others wanted to say more but Twilight stood her ground, the spark growing stronger.

“Rainbow, you risked your life for ponies you barely knew.” 

The blue pegasus kicked a random rock. “Any guard would’ve done the same.”

“Applejack, you refused to lie, even a great threat to us.” Applejack pulled her hat from her head to hide her face, a bit of red in her cheeks.

“Fluttershy, you helped so many animals today, showing kindness to the most savage of beasts.”

The yellow pegasus eeped and hid behind Rainbow Dash.

“And Rarity, you gave so much of yourself, leaving Sweetie Belle behind to stop somepony doing something bad.”

Twilight lifted the tapestry from Nightmare Moons' body.

“Look at her. She’s not recovering like an alicorn should. Something is wrong.”

Twilight looked up at the moon, its light far paler than when the night began.

“She’s dying.”

One by one, everypony felt the pull, shifting and standing behind Twilight. They didn’t know what led them to do so, but they all began to feel the magic, stronger and stronger.

Their belief in Twilight, in their shared journey, flashed into their mind.

The crystal shards started to glow and circle around them, coalescing into amulets wrapped around their necks.

Twilight felt something settle on her head but paid it no mind, She started channeling her magic into her horn, overcharging a healing spell. One she discovered to cure the Chaos Plague.

Suddenly she was floating, her magic shifting into a new form, a rainbow of light blasting from something behind her horn and into the mangled heap of Nightmare Moon.

Slowly her body started to recover, her limbs straightening, a horn growing back. A new set of wings sprouted from her back, light blue instead of black.

Broken teeth reformed into neat straight rows, no hint of the fangs she had before.

Her eyes reformed, showing regular pony eyes.

With a blinding flash of light, she was made whole once again.

Standing before Twilight was a small blue alicorn filly.

When Luna opened her eyes she saw Twilight’s face, images of Time flashed in her mind and she reflexively fired a shard of ice at her.

Only for Celestia to appear in a burst of light and redirect the small frozen blade with a wing.

Before anyone could act Celestia had already tackled the blue filly to the ground. “LUNA!”

The filly struggled a bit but resigned herself to the hug, her eyes tearing up a bit as her memories slowly returned to her.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know, I missed you more than you can ever imagine.”

While the alicorns had their tearful reunion Twilight had removed the heavy thing from her head.

It was a tiara, emblazoned with her cutie mark. Looking around she noticed the others looking at their own necklaces.

“The elements of harmony…we actually found them.”

Celestia had recovered, and her usual serene smile was on her face. No, that wasn’t quite right, some ponies couldn’t tell the difference, but this was the most genuine smile she’d seen on Celestia’s face in a long, long time.

Twilight bounded toward her and nuzzled Celestia’s neck, the warmth of her coat helping to melt away all the fear she’d been through.

They took some detours, but Twilight felt things were finally getting back on track.




~~~~~



“I’ve never seen her like this. She was always so…unflappable. So sure in herself.”

Clover the clever was looking down at a small basin of water, An image of a flaming Alicorn mercilessly hunting What looked like giant eels in a canyon.

The destruction she wrought in her anger was leaving a scar on Equestria.

Discord sighed next to her, placing a hand on her back. “All alicorns have a problem, the worlds they inhabit are too… fragile. Nightmare Moon wasn’t joking about destroying Equestria, the planet, not the country. Here we see Little Time having a tantrum.”

His eyes narrow.

“She must feel she’s in a world made of cardboard. Personally, I see it as a house of cards, you never quite know when someone will bump the table.”

Discord waved his hand and the image in the water changed, showing a green hive full of ponies made of black chitin.

Over the Millenia Chrysalis seemed to have mastered the use of Hatred. She never went far from the Grimoire, always keeping it with her.

None of the Changelings seemed to notice the black mass above them, a cloud of darkness that seemed to be growing stronger by feeding on their hate.

“It seems Hatred is almost here. And the Changelings timetable has increased quite a lot.” Discord moved a small chess piece on a nearby chessboard. Clover had never quite understood what game he was playing, as the chessboard seemed to work in more than three dimensions.

She was still suspicious but she had to admit he was the best solution.

“Check, your move Time.”

The image of Time’s rampage reappeared in the pool of water. She was panting heavily in a crater as her coat slowly returned to its normal lavender hue.

Discord’s expression was one of infinite loneliness for a brief moment, gone so fast Clover wasn’t sure it was there to begin with.

“Almost my other half, you’re almost there.”

He smiled as his claw crushed a queen chess piece.

“I’ve waited this long, what’s a few more years.”

Even Clover knew he didn’t believe that for a moment.


~~~~~

Time’s breathing had calmed down, the fire that was her mane slowly regained its usual two-toned hue.

Taking one deep breath she heaved a long sigh. “I can’t do that again, I nearly killed her.”

A pulse of Harmony magic hit her a moment later, giving her some relief that she didn’t screw things up too badly.

At least it was cathartic. A lot of her frustration was gone.

No, that’s wrong, it was worse than before, simmering just beneath the surface.


It still felt good.

Her face twisted into a grimace. “Chaos.” She spat out the word as if it were the most vile insult she could think of.

Not for the first time she truly wondered if Chaos was necessary, all he did was get in her way, running her tests time and time again.

She never did find out what happened to that version of her. What could have caused her to betray herself?

After her last meeting with ‘herself,’ she went through the archives, every fragment of herself was accounted for.

All except for one. A small experiment, to catalog an ant hill as it progressed, the hope being that it would give her some insight into how changelings worked.

Her last note was ‘Experiment Ruined. Chaos made an appearance. Starting new experiment. He says he has something ‘I’d find more interesting.’”

Woah, she just felt another flare, a nearby bush was on fire. She took her time quashing the flame, imagining it was chaos’ face she was smothering.

Time lit up her horn, pulling an old scroll from her personal storage.

Without access to her tower, she’s left with what she brought with her.

Her eyes settled on the title.

Potential ways to remove Chaos.

No, not yet. She’s not lost yet.

A determined expression settled on her face.

“Bring it.”

She could’ve sworn she heard Chaos’s laughter in the wind.

~~~~~


More Deities had gathered around the scrying pool. Clover was doing a remarkable job avoiding looking at Life.

As they watched Time vanish each one was thinking about the scroll they just saw.

Clover had problems with the word ‘remove’.

 It was too dispassionate, hiding what it really meant.

To Kill Chaos.

Life and Death both looked worried, their gaze was on Chaos.

Love had already left, she couldn’t bear to see Time this way. She said she was going to ‘snuggle Twily till the sun went down.’

For chaos, he just sighed.

“We’re in the endgame now. It’s almost time to move an immovable object.”