Void I: A Moment of Peace

Void I - A Moment of Peace

by Chaodiurn

Spike knocked on the front-door of Rarity's Carousel Boutique. It was Tuesday, and usually he would be supposed to clean up the library right now. But this week, he stood next to Twilight in the middle of Ponyville. Rarity ordered a book, and as the things were lying he wasn't the dragon to let this chance pass.

“Thanks for taking me along, Twi,” Spike said.

She was standing on his right side and had only three hooves touching the ground, since her left front-hoof was stopped before it could reach it's destiny by Spike's knocking. She frowned at the sentence of her assistant.

“It's not like you gave me a real choice,” Twilight said.

“Of course I did!” Spike said, “I asked you to take me along. That includes the fair choice between yes or no.”

“Oh, that's as sure as fire,” Twilight said, “Your grousing about how the library didn't need any cleaning, our task about the study of friendship and not to forget child labour surely were just reasonable arguing.”

“Exactly! We had only few visitors last week, so what should I clean a tidy library up for?” Spike confirmed.

Twilight knocked on the door again, with a bit more force than Spike did.

“Don't start that again. You know I like the library being clean, no matter how many visitors we welcome each week. Besides, no one knows what the next day brings,” Twilight said.

“It's hardly thinkable that we'll have a storm of Ponies in the library this week, when last week barely bought ten,” Spike said while he began to grow noticeable impatient as he began to shift his weight from foot to foot.

“Education is the engine of society, Spike. You can never know when a pony hits realization and needs access to the collected knowledge of ponykind. As long as there are cities, Ponies will come visit us.”

“Maybe in your world,” Spike muttered, “Tell you what, Twi. If you like it that tidy, why don't you clean up the library yourse-” the opening door cut him off.

“You were saying?” Twilight asked with a serious expression, her ears shifted back a little.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Spike said. “I promise to clean it up tomorrow,”

In the door stood a white-coated mare with a yellow tape-line around her neck and red glasses on her nose.

“Well, hello my dear!” Rarity said facing Twilight, “I'm so glad you could make it. And what is this?” She turned to Spike,” You didn't say you'll bring company along. And why, such a lovely one.”

She put a hoof on the dragon's head and gave him a head rub. It was a physical wonder that he didn't lose his balance, given to the odd position his body went into.

“Hello Rarity,” Twilight said despite the still unfinished debate, “ I've got the book you asked for. And as for him, well, I hope you don't mind.”

Rarity shook her head lightly, “Oh, of course I don't! It's always nice to have a good friend around. Please, come in.”

She turned and went inside. So did Spike, who got propelled inside by his tail.

Twilight followed and rolled her eyes. Somehow, wasn't exactly sure whether Spike or Rarity's greeting made her to. Closing the door behind her, noises filled her ears.

“Do you have custom?” Ra asked.

“Well,” Rarity began as she turned back to Twilight, “There is always someone who wants to get something done. But I told them that I'm taking a break, so we should have some minutes for each other, just as you requested.”

“Great!” Twilight and Spike said simultaneously.

After a short silence Twilight took the requested book out of her settle-backs. Rarity's eyes sparkled at the view of knowledge.

“Oh, thank you! I think it's about time to get a new fashion for this boutique itself,” Rarity said and laid the handed book on a shelf.

“Everything for a friend,” Twilight said, “But I have to admit that I wasn't suspecting such an special order. It would have taken me hours to find it without Spike's inventory lists.”

“He is a jewel, isn't he?” Rarity said, giving him another head rub. He probably would have said something, but his condition made every effort of speaking or controlled movement generally useless.

Twilight frowned a little, but couldn't really deny the fact.

“Anyways, there's something I wanted to discuss with you. Only, if you customers can wait, of course.” Twilight said.

“But of course!” Rarity said without hesitation, “No customer is more important than one of my friends, especially you, Twilight. Now tell me, what do you want to speak about? I already wondered, you usually don't fail to mention such an information in your letters.”

Twilight smiled at the generosity of her friend. Rarity always set her friends over everything else.

“As you know, I have a guest lecture about cutie-marks at our schoolhouse in two days,” she said.

“Yes, you mentioned it. Isn't it gorgeous? It's about time, if you ask me. You are the smartest pony I know and there is barely a single pony, not even in Canterlot, who would be nearly as good as you in teaching others about the knowledge of this world. But cutie-marks you say? Isn't that something that is different from Pony to Pony and a barely comparable thing?” Rarity said.

“Well,” Twilight said, somehow thrown back by Rarity's excitement, “Everything in this world can be analysed in a scientific way. It's a very basic idea of science, whether it's a falling apple or a cutie-mark.”

“Even a cutie-mark?” Rarity asked, “Well, then, what do you want to know from me? I don't think I could tell you something that you haven't heard already.”

Twilight shook her head, “Don't say that. Everypony can say something about them, and the more answers I get the more useful they become. It's a bit complicated.”

“I see,” Rarity said nodding.

“So, what do you think about cutie-marks in general?” Twilight asked.

“In general?” Rarity said, “It's the thing that makes ponies unique, even by style. At least, until they wear cloths, of course.”

This time it was Twilight who nodded, “Yes, but what do you think gives them purpose? I mean, Ponies are the only race who ever had them and there's nothing compared to it in the whole world! Why do only Ponies have them?”

Rarity smiled at the fire of questions that came out of her friend's mouth. She would probably never change.

“Twilight, dear, don't you know that it's bad manners to ask more than one question at once? And you know that I'm not a pony to answer those questions.”

“And I don't expect you to,” Twilight simply said.

“Pardon?” Rarity said.

“Of course the exact answers require lots of science, but you are a pony of society, Rarity. I don't know a pony that knows more about others, how they are related to each other and so on. That's also huge part in the function of cutie-marks, so I need you as a connection between my researches and the common ideas.”

Twilight wasn't sure whether it was just her imagination or real, but as she spoke a spark seemed to enlighten Rarity's eyes. It also seemed to take Rarity an oddly long moment to find words of response,

“Are you asking me to gossip with you, Twilight? Is that what you want me to do?”

“Well, yes, I am,” Twilight confirmed with a smirk.

“Oh my, this calls for a cup of tea. Why, I'll better do a whole can!” Rarity said and went into the direction of the kitchen before actually involving Twilight, “Please, let me invite you to a cup of tea. And I don't accept a no. Your visits are so rare, and you don't even send me Spike to inform me about your latest doings from time to time. It's not fair to keep my Spikey-Wikey working in your library every day.”

At the comment Spike jumped up from the table he was sitting on, “You hear that? Spikey-Wikey totally needs more time to drink tea with his friends!” he said and rushed over to Rarity.

Twilight shook her head a little. Maybe this wasn't one of the best ideas she had in the last weeks, but a book that she read lately, The Guide to Advanced Research-Tactics and Methods, said that it's necessary to try new methods from time to time to keep the results coming in the highest possible quality, as the sources can be adjusted that way. But for now, there was no return to her library too soon.

“Guess I'm in then,” she said.

“Magnificent!” Rarity cheered, “I'll go and make the tea, won't take too long.” She didn't wait for her friend to answer as she rushed off, Spike closely following behind her.

“Alright,” Twilight said to herself, left behind all alone. A pony that knew many ponies had of course much to tell.

Hopefully not too much, she thought.

Before she went off to follow her two friends, she waved her gaze around to get an updated impression of Rarity's shop.

Every time she came here, the odd architecture amazed her. As she did herself, Rarity lived in the same building in which she worked. And it wasn't really less odd than a tree. A circus tent provided her the dry and save space the noble unicorn needed.

On the first look it didn't differ much from what she knew of a common tent. The most of the actions were taking place on solid ground. Selling, designing and the kitchen she was just about to visit shared the same floor.

However, Rarity also managed to get another floor integrated into the tent, one where she could sleep in peace without getting disturbed by anything that could happen in the shop. She had also some tools of design in her private floor, but so did Twilight sleep with books time to time, what didn't left her in the position to judge her for this.

She then started walking. It wasn't really hard to find the kitchen. From the shop, the first room one saw when entering through the front-door, there only let one door deeper into the mansion, despite the stairs directly leading to her bed. It was a clever design, Twilight admitted. It surely supported Rarity after a long day of work, not forcing her to move through her whole home before reaching the satisfying warmth of her bed. It took her kinda off-guard to hear of Rarity's plans to re-arrange the place, as she got quite used to the vision that welcomed her whenever she stretched her neck through the door.

Every time she visited, she felt thrown into a world of fashion and fanciness, finished works radiating their beauty at her from the right side of the room, and the secret energy of planning and creating from the other, as she used to hang half-finished dresses and some gems there to give a warm feeling to the whole place. In her opinion, it worked out rather fine, but Rarity seemed to be displeased with it lately.

In her latter she wrote that the design of her shop didn't fulfil the standards of her clients anymore, what was basically her main-reason for ordering a copy of “Rooms for Success – How to Make Your Walls Sell”. A squishy title in her opinion, but the cover never shall determine the quality of the content.

She moved to the door that Rarity has past several minutes before. Behind it, a small corridor let straight to a wooden door that led to the small garden placed behind her shop. However, Rarity used it more frequently to dry her clothes than actually growing flowers.

In the right wall were two doors of equal colour decorating the wall. The first let to what Discord would proudly call his capital of chaos, the so-called inspiration-room, while the second had a much ordered meaning, containing nothing but some soap and water to wash dirty clothes.

Her destination, however, was located on the left side. No door but a big arch that Rarity lately has decorated with a probably self-made portière, invited to enter the kitchen, where she already could hear light-hearted chatter.

“And then she wanted me to clear the whole shelf! Again! Can you believe it?” She heard a certain little dragon say.

“Perfection comes at a price, Spike, it's might not be pleasant all the time but it's necessary to keep everything just perfect.”

“Exactly,” Twilight said, revealing her attendance, “That's exactly what I'm telling him since weeks.”

“Darling, you're here!” Rarity greeted her almost as they haven't met just minutes before.

“What has taken you so long?” Spike asked.

“Excuse me?” Twilight said, “I just tried to figure out why Rarity would want to change the design of her house after it proofed to be fine after all these years.” She was the last pony who would deny anyone to have an own opinion, but Spike's lately tendencies to question every step of hers were starting to get on her nerves.

Rarity laid her ears back in uncertainty. Was there something wrong between her two friends? She couldn't remember them fighting in the past, not even arguing.

“Well,” Rarity said to keep them from giving her a chance to figure out. Albeit she hesitated, given to the tense tone of Twilight's voice, a cup of tea surely would calm her down if there was an issue to be angry about, “as you know, my audience is turning more and more to the upper classes of Canterlot, what is, if I am allowed to say so, magnificent, but with them new standards for presenting myself arrived.”

“But didn't they come because of the style you were following before?” Twilight asked, her usual curiosity filling her voice again.

“I-” Rarity said to begin to explain the rules of modern trades, but to her relieve the water jug decided to cut her answer off with a high-pitched whistle.

“That's my signal, I guess,” she said instead and took the water pot off the hot plate. For proper tea, the water had to cool down by around fifteen degree centigrade before entering a tasteful union with the muds. Else ways it would hurt the sensitive partner.

On the side she already had placed a ceramic pot that was adorned by little blue ornaments. It was big enough to give the tea the space it needed to swim freely in the hot water. Of all, it was her favourite pot for making tea.

However, the most important thing was missing.

“Spike, be a gentleman and get the tea-buds, please? I think the whites are a good idea today. They are in the shelf just behind you.”

“Sure thing!” Spike said and jumped up to get the requested material.

“White tea?” Twilight asked.

“Why, yes. I learned about it about a month ago, when a merchant wanted to get his robe fixed. It's growing far in the east, and he praised it as incredible unique in this land. As he offered me to make a pot I couldn't resist. And let me tell you, it's truly worth it's price.”

“What's so special about it? Except the colour, of course,” Twilight said. She knew that her friend swore on Oolong tea, the connoisseur's tea, as Rarity described it. Too often she fancied of its complex taste and the depth, never to be reached by both, black and green tea.

“It's such a nice variety,” Rarity said, “it's a rather smooth drink, you know that I'm impatient with the bitter black teas. And the green leaves overcook too fast. No, those buds are carefree, yet tasteful. And with very own characteristics, too. I am told that they are rich of antioxidants. Lotus Blossom and Aloe are using its extracts in creams since few months, and I'm highly bound to try some of them. Time is marking me lately, don't you think?”

Twilight shook her head, half in denial, half in wonder, “Don't say that. Ageing is the most natural thing. You're looking fabulous.”

“Thank you, Twilight. I'm trying my best, what isn't easy all the time I have to admit.”

Twilight nodded, “It's a legacy of Discord, don't you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“The whole ageing-process. We chance in every breath. Oxygen is taken into every cell of our bodies so they can survive. And what's the end of it? Every cell morphs it's own predator as a by-product. Free radicals, I bet he made the name up himself, which react just with the molecules of the cells. Until something steps between to interrupt this corrupting oxidation and slows the process down, of course. That's why antioxidants are called as they are. But you'd need to stop breathing to cut off the respiratory chain and the production of free radicals with it. Continuous changing till the end.”

Rarity smiled at the scientific elaborations of her friend. Even if she was here, she never really left her library. She didn't know many ponies who stood as focused on a task nowadays. A dying talent.

“We wouldn't have a reason for drinking delicious tea without it. I guess it's the same as with the cutie-marks. It's let by time and we can do nothing about it. Some weeks ago, Sweetie Belle molested a customer of mine because she wanted him to get her a cutie-mark by time-travelling. A silly filly, but she's not entirely wrong, is she? If there's something to blame, it's time.”

“Time is a dimension, Rarity. You can't blame a dimension for what is happening inside it. Without it, everything would be everywhere, eternal chaos so to speak.” Twilight stopped her speak to allow herself to enjoy the amusement of Sweetie Belle's stubbornness, but eventually spoke up again. “That poor pony must have grown an headache. Sweetie Belle wouldn't stop before a Trappist told her where she could find her talent.”

“Your word in Celestia's ear, my dear. I enjoy when she visits, but her impudence can be embarrassing, especially when she's afflicting my customs. I really hope she'll get her cutie-mark soon.“

“And I'm pretty sure it won't be time-travelling. That's magic of highest difficulty. Why was she interested in that, anyway?” Twilight said.

“Oh, the pony had an hour-glass on his flank. A good custom of mine, brown coat, dark mane. Time Turner by name. Do you know him? He was the time-keeper when those awful crooks showed up at Applejack's.”

“Time Turner?” Twilight asked, “No name that I can recall.”

Rarity's eyes shifted to the clock, before she returned her gaze to Twilight again, “That's a pity. He's a rather handsome stallion, if you ask me. And intelligent too! I really can't think why he hasn't found a special somepony yet. His elaborations about time always have a magic soak on me, and so to Sweetie Belle it seems.”

“What elaborations, exactly?”

“Oh, you would like it. He's an empirical character, a pony of science. When I'm speaking with him, it feels like I'm joining another world! Everything he tells has this undertone, the same that you have, telling that there is more behind just everything. Still, I think that he's losing himself in his theories sometimes, but that's what doctors tend to do I think.”

“He's a doctor?” Twilight asked with erected ears, “Doctor of what exactly?”

“Hmm...” Rarity lowered her head, seemingly trying to remember, “I can't remember. Now that you ask, I guess he never mentioned that. I never asked, either. Judging by his cutie-mark I would guess that it's something time-related. Maybe physics?”

“Possible,” Twilight said, “but the the ponies I know who have interests in time are studying it in a magical study.”

“That's only because you haven't met him yet. Why, you two would be such a sweet match.”

Twilight blushed slightly, taken off-guard by the sudden intimacy of Rarity and waved off the idea, “You know that I haven't time for such a thing.”

“The poor doctor!” Rarity exclaimed, “There exists such a beautiful companion for him and than it's his element itself that denies him his luck.”

Twilight shook her head, “Time can't be his element, that would be on the same level as Celestia. How do you think he got his cutie-mark?” Twilight asked, eager to fulfil her task.

Rarity on the other hoof smirked, as her friend just has turned down another stallion without even meeting him.“How should I know. Maybe he was good in turning hour-glasses during elementary school.”

“Nice talent to have,” Spike commented with his head still buried deep in the shelf.

Neither Twilight nor Rarity could deny a giggle to raise from their chests.

“That wasn't nice, Spike,” Twilight tried to blame Spike as she regained a more serious voice again, “But do you think that something like that would make a pony actually becoming a time-related doctor? That's complex science, what needs tons of work and compassion to be mastered.”

“It was just a joke, Twi,” Rarity said, checking a little clock once more to assess the temperature of the water.

“Hurry up Spike,” she said, “the water isn't supposed to boil, but cold water isn't useful either.”

“I'm sorry!” Came out of the shelf, “But I can't find anything white here.”

“They aren't white, Spikey, they're silvery.”

The sound of bone meeting heavy wood confirmed that the message reached its target,“You're telling me that now?!”

Another wave of giggles filled the room.

“Thank you, Spike,” Rarity finally said as the dragon hold a claw full of silvery shimmering buds into her direction.

She put them into the pot within her blue aura, “Would you mind the tea to be a bit stronger, dear?”

“I hand that decision into your hooves. I just hope that we won't fall into medisance, because a foreign tea is attacking our nerves,” Twilight said.

“Spoken as a real lady,” Rarity said and elevated the pot onto the middle of the table, where a small coaster already were positioned. It didn't look rather special, more like a simple circle made of marble. But then again, this was what made it special. Subtlety is the catalyst of style. When it appears as you want to achieve style, it loses value, she once said to Twilight. Even when her dresses not always transferred that message, her kitchen followed it at least.

“You really should go and ask him out one day, you can't remain in solitude forever,” Rarity said as she sat down face-to-face with her bookish friend.

“I told you, I have no time for a stallion... a doctor you say?”

Rarity allowed herself to chuckle; she found the mixture of curiosity and slight disinterest in Twilight's voice quite amusing. Twilight has been a determined pony ever-since, one of the sort who, in addition of a bit talent, worked hard for what they got. It wasn't a usual occasion to see the foal of the upper middle-class become a royal protégée. The student of Princess Celestia herself, that was something that wouldn't be repeated too soon.

“She doesn't need a stallion, she has me!” Spike said, not giving her time to finish her thoughts.

“But of course, Spikey,” Rarity gave him another head-rub, “you make up for many things.”

“Many? There's nothing a stallion could do better than me!” Spike said, punctuating his statement with a proud posture.

Neither Rarity nor Twilight gave attention to it, as they shared precarious stares.

“Where does he come from?” Twilight asked after a short silence.

“Oh, he's just from here, Ponyville. And, other than you Twilight, he's seen nearly daily in the streets. But when I got him right, he also has a residence in Canterlot. I think he said it was just one room, small and inconspicuous. But It would be bigger on the inside. I don't know how he meant the last part.”

“Nor do I,” Twilight said nodding. “Do you think he has family in Canterlot?”

“That's just it! I've done some research about his family and general origin, but I simply couldn't find anything. Even if you shoot him there's no reputation to lose,” Rarity said.

“Rarity! Even if I would engage him, the relationship would be quitted with best intentions on both sides.”

“Of course it would, my dear. But look at a pony like Fancypants. Nearly every pony of Canterlot is somehow connected to him, and it is almost impossible to stay in that city for much longer than a week without making contact with him, especially in such a special position as you are occupying. Just imagine your relationship would break with him!”

“I would be more interested in his cutie-mark than in his social position, though,” Twilight said, half in embarrassment and half in annoyance.

“I can't believe that you are reducing such a stallion to his cutie-mark,” Rarity said, smelling at the ceramic pot to check the current state of aroma.

“Rarity!” Instantly shot back from the other end of the table.

“Sorry. Tell me, do you have other plans today? A short drawn tea has its very own energizing impact.”

Twilight sighed at the summoned thought of the upcoming work of cross-studying.

“Well, I will search through my library for any scientific reasoning for the impressions of this conversation. A little energizer couldn't hurt.”

“Very well, then. Spikey, I need the little sieve that I used the last time you were here. Do you remember where it is?”

“Of course I do!” The little dragon almost shouted, woken from his sleep-near state of being. As beautiful Rarity was, he wasn't one who could build up interest for such a topic. It didn't take the little dragon long to make out the right shelf that contained the object of question.

“There you are, m'lady,” he said proudly as he handed over a small sieve of nearly the same size as the cups had.

“Reliable as always,” Rarity praised her benefactor. Soon it was hovering over Twilight's cup, that stood waiting to get used on the table ever-since, while the tea pot, which of course matched the design of the cups just perfectly with it's similar white-blue design, floated into position.

“To answer your question, he's got three golden crowns, each with a purple jewel decorating it. A truly unique one, if you ask me.”

“Unique in the system,” Twilight said as she watched the mysterious tea filling her cup.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, as you just said, it's three crowns. Just look around and you'll see that nearly everypony either has three symbols or one. For example, Fluttershy has three butterflies, and Pinkie Pie has three balloons.”

Rarity felt silent for a moment and lifted the pot into an idle position between the two friends. In all the years she watched ponies come and go, rise families and build up social contacts, she never realized that matter.

“That doesn't make it less unique, does it? It's probably just an fixed order in nature.”

“I agree. But what sort of order? What makes three so special?”

“I don't know,” Rarity said and filled her own cup.

“Me neither. Not yet, at least. Tell me more about him. Do you know how he achieved his mark?”

“To be honest, I don't. It's a quite personal thing to talk about and even when I meet him here and there, that's no topic we are talking about.”

“Yet,” Twilight teased, and this time it was Rarity who blushed.

“What I know is that he has connections to all three kingdoms. I first didn't believe it, either. But after he show me some letters, it was kind of obvious. He was born in the upper class of Canterlot, as the son of an ambassador, while his mother had a good running shop in the centre of the town. He has built connections to the highest instances very early, showing a talent of diplomatic talking and business. At least that's what he has told me.

As the Crystal Empire was re-arranged by your brother and his lovely wife, he had the best premises to get a high value there, too. And with two big kingdoms behind him, it didn't took long until the changelings grew interest for him. Today he's organizing the mayor trades between every of those kingdoms.”

“Eeew,” Twilight responded as she examined her drink while listening, “I think you need another sieve, Rarity. Something of the buds got through.”

Rarity, who was just running warm in speaking, had to think several seconds before realizing what Twilight meant.

“Oh, that. No, that's normal with white tea. These are tiny hairs who protect the buds from bugs. The merchant knew his goods, give him his due. You don't really notice them, and once you get used to their existence you won't recognize them any more at all.”

That wasn't a lie. Indeed Rarity had forgotten about them up until now. The result of this rediscovery were two silence mares, who throw distrustful gazes upon their drinks.

“It's good, believe me,” Rarity said, blinking away the view of unclean tea.

With uncertainty in her expression, Twilight levitated the cup in her fruity-looking raspberry magic up to her snout, taking cautious sniffs before leading the warm cup to her lips.

As she bended the cup and opened her lips, an instant shiver of joy went through her spine. The warmth of cup was most comforting, letting her whole face fall into complete relaxation, while a strange mixture of aromas filled her mouth, and she thought to have identified mint, vanilla and somehow even a note of wood in it. She found it strange, as she never had tasted a drink that tasted like dried wood, but it gave somehow a certain strength to it. Somehow, it reminded her of her library.

Taking another nib, she slowly placed the cup back on the table.

“And?” Rarity asked eagerly.

“It's... interesting,” Twilight said. “I never tasted anything like it.”

Rarity smiled, “It's special, isn't it? It's nothing you get at every corner. Do you like it?”

Twilight nodded, “I could get used to it.”

“Uh, uh, let me try too!” Spike interfered the assessment.

With a smile Twilight shoved her cup over to Spike, who grasped it with his claws as to not let it escape, like adult dragons did with they preys. He took a gulp, a little less squeamish than Twilight, and gave little time to the tea for expanding its aromas, as he sent it straight down his throat. Hence, his expression lost some of its excitement and he returned the cup to Twilight.

“I don't know,” he said, “tastes like tea.”

“Doesn't it taste different from the one we drink at home?” Twilight tried to motivate the dragon for a finer conclusion.

“Well,” he said, causing Twilight's face to lit up with expectation for the shortest second, “no.”

Twilight sighed.

“Someday,” Rarity said.

“Someday,” Twilight repeated, allowing herself another sip. “To return to the topic, I think the triangle of Fancypants' influences hasn't something to do with his cutie-mark. It's not causal enough. Celestia is only managing one sun, sure, but Fluttershy has to deal with far more than three animals. And I don't even wanna try to cut down something down to three that's related to Pinkie Pie.”

“I don't think you should take Pinkie Pie as a reference.”

“Yes, but you know what I mean.”

“Don't you think you're taking that a bit too serious, darling? Cutie-marks resemble the generally attitude of ponies, and I don't think that whether it's three or one does matter at all.”

“Nothing can be taken too serious in science, Rarity,” Twilight paused for a moment, Rarity's words ringing in her ear, as if they tried to summon an idea. So they did and she spoke up again, “That's it! What if cutie-marks with multiple symbols are referring in a less sticky way to what the pony is predestined? A sun doesn't give much room for interpretation, there is only one burning planet in our skies. Three butterflies on the other hoof can mean anything.”

Rarity looked at her friend with worried eyes, “Are you implying that there are higher and lower cutie-marks?”

“Not higher and lower, but different ones. They have different styles and I am sure that this has a meaning. I just have to find out which one.”

“But maybe there is simply none,” Spike threw in, “And if it was, why hasn't some other pony detected it yet?”

“Good point, Spike,“ Rarity said, “I also know ponies who have marks that are similar interpretable as butterflies, but out-sized in one big motive. Octavia for instance, a famous musician of Canterlot and a good friend of Fancypants, who introduced me to her once, wears a single treble clef. Isn't that also something more open? Unless her talent would be to draw them, what I, to be honest with you, don't think.”

Twilight sighed, taken mentally down by the verbal crossfire.

“Probably no one found out yet because it's not that easy.” With a gulp, she emptied her cup.

“Can I have have another one, please?” she asked.

“But of course,” Rarity said and re-filled her friend's cup, “Just remember who you are researching for. Not every foal lives with a librarian in a library, and they will have a hard time to understand anything that Spike doesn't get. He's such a smart dragon.”

Spike blushed. Getting complimented by Rarity always was the achievement of the day.

“Sure. But before I can boil knowledge down to something teachable I need a solid base. Else ways, the lesson would suffer from my uncertainty.”

“That will be two very long days,” Spike said, sunken in his chair.

“Actually, Spike,” Twilight said, “That's nothing you can help me with. I already have a list of the books I'll use, and until I finished the reading I don't see sense in remaining order in the shelves.”

Rarity's look jumped over to Spike, whose face immediately lit up, only to return to Twilight, “Are you saying that you want to do this without Spike's help? Are you sure about that?”

“Of course she's sure! She has done that before,” Spike said, “Despite of the mess she always leaves behind she handles it very well on her own.”

“Indeed,” Twilight confirmed with a raised eyebrow. “I'll need the silence and his attendance would be more disturbing than actually helpful.”

Rarity nodded, “If you need a place for Spike to stay, then I could take him for the days. As you know I have some mayor changes to be done here, and his help would be a great relief.”

“I'd love to!” Spike added just as Rarity's words faded into nothingness.

Both mares gave the dragon a look, who answered it with a way too wide smile. Some seconds of silence passed before Twilight eventually faced Rarity again and spoke up.

“Well, if both of you are fine with it. Thank you, it's highly appreciated.”

“So it is!” Spike cheered.

“That's the least I can do, Twilight,” Rarity said, sipping her tea.

“Are you going to reinitialize your boudoir aussi?” Twilight said, facing the little dragon, “I'm not sure if he would be a proper help for that.”

Rarity shook her head, “Don't worry about that. The first floor stays unchanged; I'm only reinitializing the main-floor.”

“Just, please, don't do it as prosaic as the shops in Canterlot,” Twilight said nearly begging. “I always enjoyed the warmth that radiated from the simple decoration in here.”

“Celestia forbid! A large part of my audience is coming here for the rural feeling. I just want to cut the chaos short that overtook my working in the last month.”

Twilight smiled and sipped her tea, “That's good. Chaos shouldn't inflect the way you're perceived. It has its really own creative energies, sure, but it's order that should lead through the world. It's another step to become a grand courtier, and you know that I still believe that you'll wear that title one day.”

“Why, thank you Twilight. I–“

Rarity's answer was cut short by a dull thud that filled the room. A look to her right revealed that it was Spike's head who met the wooden table.

“Is something wrong? Do you need a glass of water?” Rarity asked, instantly worried about her little friend and helper.

Also Twilight wasn't less worried as she asked, “Shall we open a window?”

Unseen, Spike rolled his eyes before lifting his head back into a normal position.

“I'm fine,” he said, “But as good as the tea may or may not is, the time is ticking and if you don't stick to the topic for longer than five sentences we will be sitting here until tomorrow.”

“Always the conscientious assistant,” Rarity said and chuckled to herself. He could be such a dramatic dragon.

“I guess you're right,” Twilight said. “You mentioned a pony with a single treble clef as an cutie-mark?”

“Octavia, yes. She's a cellist of the Royal Solar Orchestra. She's a very... orthodox mare. As far as I know, she comes from a very sophisticated family, her father a doctor on the Royal University itself and her mother a musician of no less value.”

“I'm sure her mother was lucky that she followed in the footsteps of hers. I wouldn't call that orthodox. Many mares do that nowadays.”

“Sure, but she didn't follow her in certain other ways,” Rarity said and lowered her head. Despite her cup was just half-emptied for the third time, she downed it with one gulp.

“What do you mean?” Twilight said.

“I heard that she is in a... close relationship with Vinyl Scratch. A mare, one of the leading DJ's in Canterlot.”

Spike smirked. “What's the deal with having a close relationship with a mere? Me and Twilight are close friends, too.”

“Not like that, Spike. She's... dating her,” Rarity said.

Twilight, who was busy swallowing the tea, got overtaken by the sudden urge to spit every drop of liquid that rested inside her mouth over the table. She managed to keep her snout closed, but hadn't as much control on her throat.

“Just my reaction when I was told about it. She's such a sophisticated mare with all doors open, but instead of making use of it she turns away from stallions to date a mid-class mare, one without financial problems or not. But still, that's no match for her class.”

A short silence filled the room, before Twilight eventually spoke up, “Just because she's with a mare doesn't mean that she turned away from stallions completely.”

Rarity, not used to such statements from the bookish mare, throw a surprised look at Twilight.

“My, Twilight,” she said, “do you think they-”

“No,” Twilight interrupted her with a denying head, “I'm just saying that marriage is something finite. It's a rare occasion that it really fits and maybe she's just trying out something new.”

“I highly doubt that it's a good idea then. To trade a life of her class, with all the joys and privilege for a life of cheap parties and drugs? Even if she opens her eyes to it, that's political suicide!”

“You don't know whether Mrs. Scratch takes drugs or not,” Twilight said, and sipped from her tea. Sometimes her friend was a bit fast in judgement, and she wasn't one to let prejudices prevail, at least not where she was able to keep it down.

“You know what they're saying,” Rarity simply replied.

Disappointed, Twilight placed the cup back on the table. “Not everything the people say is true. You said that she's one of the leading DJ's of Canterlot. I'm sure that a clean head is needed to get into such a position, especially with the rising popularity of this music in the last years.”

“You need far more than a clear head for that, my dear,” Rarity said, “She's earning her money with modest art, if you even can call it that. It's not the skill that counts in these circles, but the ponies you can win for yourself. Her audience are the lower classes, who are satisfied with the simplest sort of music. With all my respect, I can't imagine that they know a difference between their artists. It's all about which DJ is popular, and how do you think a mare could become so well known in Canterlot?”

“Maybe she worked extra hard for it,” Spike interfered.

“Then the question is who exactly had the hard part,” Rarity said, a tone of derision in her voice.

“Rarity!” Twilight interfered.

“Sorry, Twilight. The topic always heats my blood.”

'Why is that? You don't even know that mare, yet you're in such a discomfort about her actions,” Twilight said.

“Well,” Rarity began, “I certainly never met her, but I know many ponies in her circles. She has a good character, and also was born into the best circumstances a good artist could dream of. Yet she is wasting that life to live with a random mare she met. It just can't be what destiny planned for her.”

“But maybe it's what her destiny needs one day,” Twilight said in a low voice, her mind slowly making a connection to the unknown mare.

“What do you mean?” Rarity asked.

“Destiny is something enormous. Right now, she is only following her emotions, building up a friendship with a pony she likes. And we, as the bearers of the Elements, should know best how powerful a tight friendship can be. Who knows were this will lead her. As you said, her friend, nomen nescio, knows a lot of important ponies. Who know what she'll gain from these contacts.”

Rarity lowered her face, “That would be a cruel fate.”

“Why?” Twilight asked, “She would surely have a nice life from then.”

“Octavia, yes. But what would that leave behind? Vinyl Scratch, left by her love for the greater good.”

Silenced filled the room. Both mares watched their tea rest in their cups, while Spike's eyes helplessly ran from Twilight to Rarity.

“I didn't think of that,” Twilight eventually said. “What's Mrs. Scratch's cutie-mark?”

“Three notes. I'm not into that topic, but I believe they're quavers.

“Do you think that's what their cutie-mark give them? A destiny like a composition, a continual up and down until it ends? The one the out-standing clef, the other one only the notes in the system?”

Twilight slowly shook her head, “ I don't think so. Destiny is a way more precise thing, Everyone goes through ups and downs in their lives, that's nothing cutie-mark related.”

“That's for you to think about,” Rarity said and looked on the solid floor clock, that stood in a corner of the room, “As for me, I have customs to serve. As much as I appreciate to spend time with you, Twilight, the business waits.”

Twilight nodded and emptied her cup, “Yes. I think I have enough informations to continue my studies anyway.”

With that, Rarity stood up, “Very well then. Twilight, my dear, I enjoyed to have talked with you once more. Maybe you'll soon find time for it again. It's good for your character to talk with other ponies once in a while.”

Twilight also stood up, “Sure I will,” she said as she usually did when she was asked to visit more often.

Rarity levitated the empty pot and cups back to the sink, where they probably would get cleaned by her newest assistant. She had to keep an appointment, after all.

“I'll bring Spike over in two days,” she said.

“Thank you. I should be back by midday then.”

“Stop treating me like a ware!” Spike insisted, what caused Twilight to blush a little.

“Anyways, thank you for the tea. See you around!” Twilight said and waved at her friends.

Rarity waved her good-bye, “Every time again! Bye, darling.”

“See you in two days,” Spike said, still sitting on his chair.

With that, Twilight Sparkle left the kitchen of Rarity's home and walked back through the arch and into the selling-room, which still were empty.

“Let's do this,” she said to herself as she pushed the entrance-door open. The light of the sun flashed her eyes, which were used to the dim room-light by now.

–

Back in her library, Twilight firstly closed the door behind her and sighed. As promising it sounded to change methods time to time, as exhausting it was. To decent to her informations, which are not even aware of their own capability, incomplete and unsorted, was a track so much harder than what her books required. Biographies, for example, were much more detailed than what Rarity told her, allowing a better analysis of the strings that are connected to a ponies cutie-mark.

The book tricked her.

She hung her saddlebags into a wardrobe that guarded the door since she moved into the living tree. Released from her last burden, she turned away from the door and went to her shelves, which were already robbed of certain fosterlings. Multiple gaps cleaved around her, seemingly moaning for the delay she caused on the reunion of dictionaries and professional literature.

“Better get working,” she reassured them.

At the upper end of her staircase she entered her private room, which also provided several books, albeit they were of higher personal interest. Today, however, she wasn't going to enjoy Countless Shades Of Gray. She took seat at her oaken desk, that flanked the stairs. It was a combination of a desk and a shelve, with two plains to hold the most important books.

It was a special request she once made, and the carpenter used to let his work be rewarded properly. Twilight didn't mind it. There weren't much things she would spend her bits for, and combining two useful things to something unique she'd use on a daily base was definitely worth the money. Furthermore, the merged shelve allowed her to place a plant onto it, so that it would fill her snout every morning with its blessing smell.

She sat down at the desk and learned back to let the silent potential in front of her woo her senses before she got to work. Her space was to act was reduced today by a stack of books she had collected earlier for this work with Spike's help. The first thing for her to reach out was, however, not one of them. Instead, her eyes locked a paper that laid in the middle of the desk. It was a letter written by Nova Mind, a fellow of the Celestial Arcademy of Canterlot and a pony who couldn't refuse to help the protégée of Celestia herself. She had made a request herself weeks ago, and sent him a letter asking him about a brief biological analysis of cutie-marks. He was a famous scientist on pony biology who wrote several books about any sort of biologic analysis, ranging from neurotic maps to the finest differences between the three big races. With a sign of Celestia, she hoped that she wasn't ignored, as eh was known to be a busy pony. During the last days, she nearly exploded every time the post mare passed her house without delivering anything. It was just yesterday, when she ripped a brown paper out of the mare's hooves. Looking back, she could have controlled herself just a little bit more.

She took the letter and read. Again.

Dear Twilight Sparkle,

I am glad to be able to help a pony who stands under the sign of our Princess Celestia herself.
As you asked for a brief summary of the cutie-mark's biological role in the equine body, I will start this with a sentence that I utterly hate to hear myself. As you have contact to royal circles, I ask you to regard this letter with high discretion.

Latest researches of our university have shown that nerves connect the brain with the symbolus destinatus, or as you named it, cutie-marks. The interesting fact for your problem is that the physical appearance of the nerves is not dependent of the symbolus destinatus itself. They develop in the early years of foalhood, while it can't be seen that a s. destinatus shown up before this connection completely built up. I have to give a side-note, that we are watching that relation for barely a decade, what cuts down the time for research to an almost uncertain thought. But regarding this fact, it appears just to be logic if we conclude that the s. destinatus is dependent on the neural connection to the brain, or, what's more likely, to what's on the other end of it, the hippocampi. As there are two s. destinati, there also are to hippocampi in both hemispheres of the brain. You may know that they take a most important role in our memory system.
If we follow that idea, the moment of appearance of an individual's s. destinatus is mainly dependent on the speed the connection to the brain builds up, what is a highly individual process. We have few data, but there are many cases known in which a s. destinatus has shown up after few years, while in other cases, of which we have plenty in our list of volunteered subjects, there's still no s. destinatus to higher ages. It is still for us to research, which role take gene defects play here, especially for those who may have foals themselves but are still without a s. destinatus.
With this knowledge, the role of a s. destinatus for the whole organism both is increased and decreased.
The physical connection to the brain confirms it's psychological role upon the individuals, and probably also explains the relation between it's sharp and the lives of the individuals. On the other hoof, it's role as a symbol of destiny, as the ponies regard it long-since and with which even Starswirl the Bearded was fatally tricked, as seen in his work “About the Relation Of Lifetime and Cutie-Marks” and even later in “The Equine as Superdimensional Being”, where he feasts upon metaphysics that are nothing more than gibberish talk of ancient methods, is cut short. We have to believe that the past plays a much bigger role than the future for a s. destinatus, which would place the question of destination not to the biology, but to the social sciences, more precise to the question of birth right, and the question what an individual born into a family can do in those circles, and what it can't.
I, for instance, can't spend more time for your questions as my work is waiting.

Sincerely,
Nova Mind

P.S. If you find this helpful on your important task, you may want to share it with the Princess.

She laid down the letter and gave a little time to the informations to sink into her head. There was a change going to take place in the understanding of cutie-marks. Great. But she was prepared for this. She had searched for the two mentioned books earlier that day. One of them laid atop of her little collection of knowledge. If she wanted to understand this, one of the classics was inevitable. She pushed the letter aside and took the tomb from its resting place. It had a brown binding, having written About The Relation Of Lifetime And Cutie-Marks upon in bright calligraphic uncials. Hundreds of years it received protection spells against time and pollution, saving the colour from fading away. The fact itself wasn't anything special; Twilight owned several of such books. This one, however, was a book of science and philosophy. Even when they got together in the past centuries, the old days were known for the strict divide between clean science and vague thoughts. She opened it.

As it has been ever-since, the first pages were used to inform about the author, participants and the publisher, if there was one. An elaboration of Starswirl, in association with the Royal Academy stood handwritten on the last blanc page that preceded the index.

Starswirl. It was a name she knew from earlier studies, back in the Royal Palace. Starswirl the Bearded, as he was called post mortem, is the father of the amniomorphic spell and with that he's often regarded as the most important conjurer. Other than herself, Starswirl became the protege of Princess Luna when he conferred a doctorate at the Royal Academy. She never found out why he was chosen, but it wasn't Luna's worst decision as he created more than two hundred spells in this position.

Twilight turned the page and went through the index.

“Time and Age... Biological Destiny... Equine Sociologicus... Uniqueness in Evolution... The Time Turner-Problem...”

Time Turner-Problem?, she repeated the words in her head. Wasn't Rarity talking about a pony with that name?

She shook her head. Coincidences happened. Even if she had to admit that this was a strange one.

In topic-based reading it was a normal thing to skip the foreword. She always felt a little guilty for it, as it was next to the afterword the only chance for the author to find some personal words for his work. But the clock was ticking and the written word hadn't the habit to disappear. And thus, she opened the first chapter, Time and Age.

IF we want to understand the dimension in which the cutie-marks influence the lifespan of each individual, we firstly have to understand the three essential substantives of this question: dimension, lifespan, and cutie-marks. every of these three substantives is a complex problem itself, and each of them has to be understood clearly if we want to get their connection right. many ponies are stuck in the ancient view that a dimension is a subdivision of movement, that cutie-marks tell us what we can do best and that the lifespan is all the time between our birth and death, each one separated strictly by science. those interpretations, however, are outdated and in need of being outdated, if not fixed. to begin with, dimension what we can call a linguistic disaster. its roots lie, as it is with many scientific words today, in the language of the Ancients, where 'dimensio' meant 'extent'. as it was with so many borrowed words, its meaning survived the centuries. while a word is something abstract, something without matter or substance and therefore something that does not necessarily change with time, its host, the minds of the Equine race, do just that. wars were fought, cultures fell and raised and new perceptions of the world made new ideas possible. soon, philosophers and scientists found themselves in the need of a word that expressed more than an extent of something. when maths grew in importance, with its primary function to order the live of ponies, the decision was made to part the world into three dimensions, in which everything could happen. the up-down-dimension, the forward-backward-dimension and the left-right-dimension. in combination these three built up the world in which we are moving. later, some ponies thought there was a fourth dimension necessary to describe the happenings proper, the time.
With those four dimensions, the understanding of the word itself soon changed into a word that described the meaning of something in its true size. if we read literature of old authors, sayings like 'it goes through every dimension' were meant to underline the enormous importance of something. equipped with four autonomic dimensions, the science experienced its greatest boost in history. everything could be described with the help of four variables. that is, until they hit the edges of that system. there was no way to set the four dimensions into a satisfying relation.
Especially the first three showed no noticeable differences in the way they worked, nor showed energetic abnormalities when moving through multiple ones, while the fourth seemed to have only one way it acted: foreword. time was the only dimension that couldn't be negated. 't also was impossible to move freely in it. in the period we know as 'The Great Depression' some ponies resigned and abandoned the system that helped – amongst others – Equestria to become a world power.
They fused the first three dimensions into the dimension of space, while time should stay the second dimension. To keep the proven equations up, the dimension space has been divided into three planes, each the equivalent of a former dimension. it was at the latest then, when ponies began to think about a more precise definition of dimension. with only two dimensions left, it didn't take long to let a debate rise whether both are real dimensions, or one shall be seduced in its rank. the fact that time couldn't be divided into lower planes was downplayed with the division into seconds, minutes and hours. others argued that this were no planes but simple measures, as they had they equivalents in the planes of space. this was a problem that bothered ponies for a long time.
Because, even when time weren't regarded as a dimension, nopony could really denied the existence of it, and what existed had to be part of a bigger system or it had to be the bigger system itself. but as often there were solutions presented, as often they didn't satisfy the ponies. with continuous passing time, if it can be described as doing so, it became the duty of my generation to find a solution for the problem of time.
That said, whenever you see the word time in this work, it is, unless being explicitly marked otherwise, the very basic sense of it, describing the time the clocks show, respectively the time-span means the time between physical birth and death, as I can only regard the foal as a Equine being at this moment. being not born, evolution may turn the embryo into what ever it's pleased to. It is unclear in which way the process of requembryo still affects beings after the mad god was petrified by the Holy Two. the term dimension, however, will switch its meaning between its ancient meaning and the latest definition of it. I will also take the abstract being of pegasi, unicorns and earth ponies alike as an entirely autonomic dimension, in which I will try to explain the influences of cutie-marks for the being's destiny and psyche.

The last term, cutie-mark, isn't less confusing. all we have to physically describe them is their colur and shape. they don't have an own substance, no special physical characteristics nor can they be deleted by physical harm. when cut off or burned away, the fur will grow back in exact the same shape and colur as it was before. since a cutie-mark also can never be found in the same shape and colur at two different ponies, Time-Turner-Problem¹ excluded, nor ever changes its appearance, they are seen as a save method to identify a creature of the Equuen race. See my previous work “A Scientific Approach on Cutie-Marks” for a detailed analysis. This analysis will define the meaning of cutie-marks for this work.

Her eyes trapped on the note, Twilight had to stop reading. She hated such marks for breaking the flow of eye-movement. But luckily, she reached the bottom of the first page anyway. She already felt this sensation in the back of her head, this burning sensation that sometimes took over her when she read these old books which were too old to contain modern grammar. That Starswirl lived in a time of a big reformation regarding this sector wasn't an excuse. Books died because of it. Twilight took a deep breath and moved her eyes onto the sole footnote of the double-page, added in handwriting, as it was often added after the book got printed, before the Equestrian Printing Association decided in a large wave of reformation to forbid post-printed changes. Hence, an ingenious scrawl read,

A grey Equus with a cutie-mark that's equal to the shape and colur of an hour-glass. Barely known and earth pony, unicorn and pegasus alike, but not on the same time.

Twilight shook her head and shut the book close. The EPA should have pushed out their reforms way earlier. Pushing it aside, she searched through her tower of books for a more modern approach on the topic.

“I mean,” she said while building up several smaller towers to get a rough order into her work, “you don't make any sense. You try to be modern, logical and then you make a footnote that you just ignore exceptions.” She stopped speaking as one of Starswirl's earliest works got into her hooves, 'A Scientific Approach on Cutie-Marks'.

“And not only that, but you're listing an exception that doesn't make sense either. For Celestia's sake, you were Luna's protege. You can't let me down on this topic, it's kinda important, you know?!”

She opened the book and opened a random page, just to close it instantly again. “How can you even give an entirely independent chapter to only one individual problem that you call 'barely known' yourself?”

She tossed the book back to his original position on the desk and faced her copy of 'About the Relation of Lifetime and Cutie-Marks', “Fine. I'll read it, but you better have something for me.”

She took the book back in front of her and opened the last chapter.

DESPITE of all those facts and their proves to contain an universal truth, there are still individual cases that speak against the words of sanity itself. they are little, almost invisible for the mortal eye, but they do exist. the most of them are barely more than legends, special cases the philosophers of foreign cultures have made in their attempt to understand the Equestrian culture. but there is one phenomenon that I think has to be analysed in the most detailed way. it found its way onto my desk by complete coincidence. I was searching through multiple historical sources to add them as visual support to one of my works, when I began to recognize a repetitive condition. in several visual portrayals of the most important points in history, one individual seems to appear again and again. we already know several alicorns to be more resistant against ageing than the most non-alicorn creatures are, but this particular subject shows even less indications of growing old than our dearest princesses do. when I told friends about this, I allow myself to get a bit trivial at this point, they said I would be mad, and that such a thing would be impossible. I can't say that I haven't see it coming, though. the subject switches face, mane and even its race. but seeing myself as a good scientist, I trust my own theories. in the earliest chapters I said that cutie-marks are highly unique, with one exception. when I refer to a subject that changes face, colur and race, another fact is needed as a save proof for his his continual identity. and leaving these three reasons behind, the cutie-mark is the only reason left to identify. on every of the analysed potrayals is one individual carrying a cutie-mark that equals an hour-glass in shape and colour. and it is most likely that the number of references would be even bigger without the eras of clothes.

Twilight had enough of this. Her horn glowed in lavender light, as she switched into the Royal Reading Technique, a way of reading that was developed by the gods of the world long before Equestria was formed. Celestia taught it her after years of begging. With the help of magic you left the realms of language. It let you extract the pure essence of the author's ideas from a writing, leaving the need to read proper words or even sentences behind. That way you hadn't to bother with the common problems of communication, as the pure ideas got soaked into your mind. However, this process needed much energy and was therefore only to be used when it was absolutely necessary.

Few seconds later Twilight jumped up from her seat with a slight headache and dashed down the stairs. Of all possible things, this was something that she really couldn't need on her time-table now.

As the shelves came in view, Twilight's stopped on the stairs. Her eyes were jumping between the history- and the author's section. She didn't know which one to prioritize, but she hadn't the time to think about it either. If Starswirl's theory would be proven to be right, all her made plans for the upcoming lesson would be worthless.

Not allowing herself to waste too much time with thinking, she walked up to the historical books first. Starswirl said something about the last peaceful day between the mayor changeling-hives and Equestria. It was just such an occasion what made proper lists of her inventory necessary, but it was her very own mind what took their jobs in the same time. It didn't took her long to get in front of the right shelve, its signs announcing the decade between the first diplomatic contact and the fatal war.

Her head moved fast along the backs of the books, following their time-line to its end. She nearly rammed her head into the ground when she took a book from the lowest level. Its old taste filled her mouth, a taste she greatly enjoyed in other times. But right now, she just spat it onto the ground to cast another of her research spells. Her aura encased the book and filled her eyes with a soft glowing as well. The pages browsed fast and her eyes checked whether the searched information came into view or not, once more supported by a magical connection. Barely two second later, the book came to a rest and the spell vanished on its own will.

Twilight, not used to such a rapid use of research-spells, blink-blinked her eyes to cast away a pain that flooded through them into the depths of her mind. In front of her hooves laid a picture of the ancient ambassadors of Equestria, who faced the leading generals of the mayor changeling-hives. But she wasn't interested in their political functions; their cutie-marks were clearly identifiable. She let out a sigh of relief, as they were everything but an hour-glass; scrolls and fancy ribbons decorated their flanks.

The background was a big room, circumscribed by large windows and filled with a crowd of ponies. Everypony was watching the fatal diplomatic disaster, most of them not even drawn with cutie-marks, while there was one mare who faced another visitor. Twilight frowned. While the best political ponies were sent to keep peace up, she faced an earth pony that looked middle-aged. Her expression was almost pleading, as if she wanted the stallion to get everything fine. Maybe it was just a little joke of the artist, but the motionless expression of him didn't speak of any try to do anything about this situation. How should he, an earth pony without rank or function. Or at least she believed him to be that. And yet, maybe he drew her attention just by this uniqueness in the scene. As she examined him, she recognized that he was one of the few in the background who was portrayed with his cutie-mark. As her eyes made a connection between his abstract cutie-mark and her reality, she felt how her heart skipped a beat, probably two.

The stallion, coloured light grey, had something little on his flank, poorly coloured, but definitely recognizable as an hour-glass for a cutie-mark.

She left the book where it was and turned to the following section, which documented the happenings of the war to it's very last declarations. Again, she had to go to the lowest level of the shelve. The peace negotiations took place over years, but there was only one that stood out. Princess Celestia, along with Luna and several diplomats, visited the leaders of the changelings in their own habitat personally, to declare the invalidity of everything the two nations had negotiated yet. She wanted the changelings to dissolve their remained hives, moving their people into the Wastelands, not being allowed to grow an army seized over one hundred thousand soldiers ever again, given the scenario that they would grow to those numbers again. Otherwise, she would erase their entire race from the surface. Something that she was certainly capable of, judging by the strength of the former army.

To this point of history it was never revealed what really happened, but following the further historical records those changes never happened.

She cast the spell once more and the book flew off the shelve and in front of her vision. After she unsuccessfully tried to blink away the pain in her eyes one more time, she didn't bother with the fancy armours or weapons of her princesses. Instead, she checked the background immediately. Again, there was only one mare not facing the possible fall of a race but a sole stallion with an emotionless expression. This time, however, the mare wore wings, while the stallion shown near to no difference to the earlier one. Seconds passed before she looked down at the flank of the stallion, just to see an hour-glass decorating him.

“Impossible,” was all she could say. The big changeling-war lasted for two-hundred years, almost completely exterminating both sides multiple times. Even if you didn't age, what simply can't be possible, it was nearly impossible to survive all of this if you hadn't Celestia's genes.

But as impossible that was, it wasn't the proof she searched for. Starswirl spoke of ponies sharing a cutie-mark, or a immortal pony who switched his race and face, but never his cutie-mark. So Twilight had to find another reference, further ahead on the time-line or earlier on.

She wouldn't trust the first banishment of Discord to portray him. Even if there was a pony with such a cutie-marks, it impossible to tell whether it was Discord's work. There was this Time Turner, just on the same spot on the time-line as she was, but she hadn't the time to run through Ponyville to find a pony she barely knew. She sighed.

She eventually decided to check for any portrayals of Luna's banishment. She felt uneasy to do so, as Luna became a good friend in the past months and looking up the beginning of her thousand-years-imprisonment for proofing an impossible and outdated statement certainly wasn't bringing good emotions to her. But if she wanted a big event in the history of Equestria that would attract a motionless stallion with an hour-glass on his flank, then this would be the best thing to go with. The introduction of Equestrian Bits after the old silver standard failed in the war with the changelings didn't sound too attracting.

So Twilight turned around and went for the deeper into her library. There was a significant time to pass between this war and Luna's banishment. Sometimes she couldn't decide whether to think that time runs incredibly fast in the eyes of an immortal or painfully slow. Maybe it just depended on the situation, just like it did in a mortal's eyes. In this case, Celestia would probably remember the last thousand years very well for a long time to come.

Twilight shook her head and pressed her eyes close. Maybe she should slow down a bit. She felt way to exhausted then she should be by now. But she let only a short time pass until she watched to her left. It was the shelve containing the history of the second last millennium. Usually she would be proud to know the exact position of a book, but in this case the topic was darkening her mood.

She stepped closer and levitated the book that included the last days of Luna's flawless existence with a loose grasp of magic. For this one she didn't need a spell to find a drawing. She had worked with those pages more than one time to work up the painful memories of the lunar Princess. Silently Twilight let the pages skip in her aura, until the picture of the banishment itself showed up. It had still some dark spots spread over the page. At some spots the ink blurred, despite the protecting spells.

Twilight gulped and watched the scenario. Princess Lu – Nightmare Moon – was hovering in the upper middle of the picture, enclosed by a yellow orb. Her face spoke of agony and hate. In front of her, some metres below, hovered Celestia, surrounded by the six Elements of Harmony. Her eyes seemed to glow, and as did her horn. But this time she hasn't opened it for the two immortals. Around the defeating scenario stood a crowd of ponies, some on solid ground, few hovering in the air, but all feared to they bones. That is, except one. A pegasus on the left was looking up to Luna. His legs didn't flew helpless around as the others did, and neither carries his expression any terror. He looked, even stronger than in the other pictures, out of place, as if he was copied inside. But manipulation would have to pass the protective spells. A spell that allows no changes doesn't care for the matter of them.

The angle of the pegasus didn't allow a free look at his flank, but she still was able to make out clear parts of what most likely was an hour-glass.

A strong headache suddenly overcame her, and she dropped the book. Her eyes closed shut, she rubbed her fore-head with a hoof. What fate was her Princess living? Thousand years of pain and an eternity lived in bitter sadness and muted darkness couldn't be meant for any soul to be lived through. Nothing could be cruel enough to force that way. What has she done to her Princess?

She opened her eyes and faced the book on the ground, or at least that's what she thought to do. Her vision was blurred, and she couldn't see much more than wall of colour lying beneath her. She pressed her eyes close again and felt a sole tear form in the corner of her right eye. Was she crying? She has seen this picture multiple times before, and most of the times she even had Luna with her to get control of that memory. Twilight henceforth felt a spark of hatred be born in her chest, only vanish in the same second back into non-existence.

She forced her eyes to open, collapsed, but still found the strength to close the book with her hooves. She felt lost. It wasn't the fact that her class in two days got into a unreachable distance. She didn't fear to fail. But no matter how hard she tried to deny the facts, everything that Starswirl wrote was proven by history. And how insane several authors became and as pointless writing could become with it, historical documents never lied.

It wasn't this pony. She didn't know who he was or what he did. She didn't care. But his existence alone was attacking the most basic laws of science itself. Everything she'd learned in her life to be absolute and a unshakeable fact got successfully attacked by one single individual. Sure, Discord did that before. But he's a propelling power of the nature. He changes the rules she lives in. But that stallion, he's denying their existence. She spent all her life trying to understand the absolute momentum. Only to be broken by the brother of coincidence?

For the first time in her life, Twilight didn't know where she stood.

After a time, she got up and levitated the books back into their protecting shelves. She wasn't in the mood to cast her spell another time; another proof would be senseless and a waste of time.

She turned to the author's section, a section that she was the mother of. Her section. In her childhood she often wanted to have a split section where all the letters and smaller writings of the big minds could be found, so she wouldn't have to find the right edition of the right work first. And with the years of being a librarian in Ponyville, she made that wish come true – with a lot of Spike's help. It took months to replace the single letters from their books to an own tome, but as a librarian she hadn't much else to do, anyway.

She went through the alphabet and allowed every latter to summon a little memory of the work that was invested into it. She smiled when she reached the thick tombs of Starswirl the Bearded. For being one of the biggest minds that time has revealed yet, this unicorn was a chatterbox without peer. Seemingly endless pages begot of love-stories, family problems, friends who got married and she even had read one letter where he wasted a whole sheet of paper to complain about the distracting dry cough of two guards.

She took the first tome and skipped through the pages. Seeing his letters now, she remembered him to have referred to a letter from his mother, where she described a pony with just that cutie-mark. She was the mayor of Canterlot, and so he suspected her of all ponies to know such a event-loving stallion. Apparently he was right.

Eventually Twilight found the letter, too drained to complain anymore. She read.

My dear Starswirl,

how nice it is to hear of you! you write seldom if ever. I think the last time you wrote when you got the place at the university that you wanted. I can remember how happy you were! why don't you write more often to your mother? I know that you are a busy pony, but can't you just bear some time for your own family? please, there happens so much nowadays, and I can't even be sure anymore whether you are still in town. you didn't even explain why you need to know about this pony you asked me to watch out for. the one with the hour-glass as a cutie-mark. he's a unicorn, to clean your uncertainty. if I remember right, he visited me about a month ago. a very nice person! really polite and very patient, too. you could learn a thing or two from him. but that's not the reason why I can remember him. it is his the strange request he had. he wanted access to the recordings of the princesses last meetings. as you know that's a really secret topic that can't be dealt with by my secretaries. but he told me that he was sent by some sort of high administration and showed me some sort of paper. I have never heard of such an organization, but it looked pretty official, though. it even had Celestia's signature.
You really shouldn't waste your time searching random stallions. how long weren't you out with a mare now? time is ticking. you can't wait forever to find someone to marry. you need to have foa-

Twilight shut the book close and returned it into the shelf. At least the law for the acting of parents seemed to be unharmed.

What she needed now was a glass of water and a train. This was a problem she couldn't solve in her tiny library. Ponies had to deal with questions about space and time, the vaults of reality itself, and it seemed she had just received her invitation to that hunt. And Canterlot should provide her just what she needed for that. Bigger problem, bigger library. She still had a chance to solve this mess.

–

An hour later Twilight stood on the bottom end of the three stairs that led to the first and only platform of Ponyville's train-station. There wasn't a train to be seen yet; she managed to get ten minutes early as usual. That way she had more than enough time to go over to the kind stallion who earned his money by selling the tickets, and keeping the general order of the station. He always wore a warming smile on his face, which seemed to be immune to external influences, as he even smiled when the pegasi got over the top again, flooding everything that's not flying itself. She walked up to him, not smiling.

“Hello miss!” He greeted her cheerfully.

“Hello,” Twilight answered, “I need a ticket. A Thirty-eight, please.”

The stallion nodded, immediately beginning to search through the collection of tickets that was lying on his side of the counter.

“Canterlot, huh?” He asked while doing so, “Visiting relatives? The most ponies I see going there are either doing that or are working there.”

“Work's calling,” Twilight said, already getting some bits out of her settle-backs.

“Sounds pretty stressful,” he said, “ten bits, please.”

She tossed them onto the counter, “You have no idea. I know why I never wanted to become a teacher.”

He took the bits and hoofed over the ticket. “Ah, don't say that, Miss. Bringing young ponies through their foalhool surely is a great thing to do. Every job has stressful days, but this is surely something special.”

Twilight nodded slowly, “Something special it is indeed.” She then faced the stallion again, “Say, when does the train arrive? I'm in straitened circumstances.”

He gave her a comforting smile. “Don't worry, Miss. The train should arrive in less than give minutes by now.”

Twilight nodded and the stallion ordered something underneath Twilight's vision, before he spoke up again. “Excuse me, but would you mind me to ask for your name?”

“I'm Twilight Sparkle. Tell me, how long do you think five minutes are?”

That question was enough to get back the stallion's full attention.“Excuse me, Miss Sparkle?”

“You see, sir. There's a funny thing about time...”

–

Twilight sat in the train to Canterlot. It's barely an hour ago that the twisting an screaming of the stopping train interrupted her elaborations to the more than confused stallion. The scenery hasn't changed much in the meanwhile. She was still passing fields and trees on high speed. There wasn't much interesting stuff going on inside the train, either. Only few ponies went for the train, and so she was able to find a nearly empty wagon. With the constant pressure of the wheels pressing over the rails, her eyelids began to grow heavy again. Soon she found herself sunken into a hypnotising darkness and hugged by the swings of the night goddess herself.

–

“Miss.”

Darkness.

“Miss, you really have to wake up.”

Darkness.

“We reached our final destination. I have to ask you to leave the train, Miss.”

Brilliant light.

–

“Is she gone?” Journey Leader asked his peer who returned to the driver's cab with an odd expression.

“I... think she is,” Conductor Steward said.

Journey Leader turned to the conductor,“What do you mean 'you think'? Is she gone or not?”

Conductor Steward, however, just shrugged and sat down, “It's hard to tell. I tried to wake her again, but she didn't bother to move a single inch. And then, suddenly, her horn glowed and surrounded her whole body in a bright flash and she disappeared.”

Journey Leader looked at him in disbelieve, “Disappeared? Sleeping ponies don't just disappear! And if that's so, I'm definitely dating the wrong mares.”

Conductor laughed, but returned to a serious expression soon, “I think we should make a report of that. Who knows what happened to her. She looked pretty sick, too.”

“Rubbish!” Journey Leader said, who was already packing his bags. “Whatever happened, she's gone now and not our problem anymore. Now move your flank out of here, I'm not going to be late tonight because you're concerned about a sleeping mare.”

–

Twilight found herself standing in front of the royal palace. The sun was about to set, and already painted the sky in a burning sensation that contained every possible shading between light yellow and the darkest red. The solar-guards were still in positioning, and didn't give out any sign whether they were just starting their shift or standing there since hours. Of course the latter was the case.
How she came here she couldn't completely remember; her memory was blurred for the events that happened after entering the train. But that wasn't important. In front of her laid the answers she urged to find.

As she stepped closer, some guards saluted her, mostly those of higher ranks. It's been a while since she came here the last time. Her brother once said to her that a solar-guard has the power of a timberwolf, the heart of a pony and the memory of an elephant. She always liked his enthusiasm for the guards and sometimes even wished to also have something that she could love that much. Her books didn't allow that. They demanded a critical view, sometimes even more.

She passed the guards and entered through the half-opened massive gates. It didn't matter how long she'd been in Ponyville. As soon as she entered the big entrance-hall she felt the warmth of her true home. She would have liked to visit Celestia, even if only for a short hello, but something in her assured her that it was the best not to do so. Time was ticking, after all, and the topic complex.

–

Twilight remembered the way to the wings of the royal library all too well. When she was a little foal, her nannies were even told to watch out for her in the night, because it could happen that she sleepwalked to her favourite place in the whole castle. That was a talent to have, regarding the fact that she usually slept in a tower outside the actual building.

Of course it was impossible to establish a hall in the castle that could hold all the tombs the Equestrian history has brought up. So the library was parted into several wings, each specialized to a certain sort of the written word. For visitors this system was too often a confusion to understand, but once you got used to it orientation wasn't a mayor problem any more. Some ponies compared it to the Canterlot Hospital, which followed a similar system to order its stations. Sometimes ponies would come here only to get used to it, without having a bleeding family member on the other side of their route.

Soon Twilight reached the gate that guarded the Starswirl the Bearded wing. Not everypony was allowed to enter, because some of Starswirl's later works are regarded as “not save for the public consciousness”, as Celestia explained it. To achieve a maximum safety for those books, Celestia seemed to have thrown all her creativity together. An enchanted iron-door, as they were used in the most prisons of Equestria, drew all the attention to it between the wooden doors that surrounded it. It may was not the best idea to hide the section, but the heavy lock combined with a break-save-spell nearly made it impossible to get into without the right key. And even if you did so, the iron bars allowed the patrol to have a wide vision into the wing without having to enter.

But of course a royal protegee was trusted to deal with those sorts of knowledge in the most responsible way. Now was a key for a sole room something incredibly impractical in an immortal's castle. Thus one of Twilight's practical lessons contained the creation of a save opening spell, that differed enough from the common ones to not be derived from them. She succeeded in that intention, much to the discomfort of the high-ranked guards who carried the duty to also know the entrance-spells for the areas with an higher security level.

She stepped closer and threw a first look into the hall. She could see the first shelves, filled with all kinds of scrolls, letters, and books. Then there was the big hour-glass that decorated the mid of this honouring wing. It was the biggest hour-glass she knew, showing the time left to the next year. How it was managed to calculate the exact number of sand-corns for that was beyond her, but the past (and her curiosity) had proven it to be exact to the very last corn.

Twilight touched the lock with her horn that glowed in the gentle colours of her aura, and an audible click announced that her way was cleared. She pushed the door open and entered where she last had been at her excess about time travelling with Pinkie Pie. At least she never had to face boredom issues.

She walked through the shelves, her eyes checking the signs that told her what exactly was stored in each level. She levitated few scrolls when she reached the last decade of his live, to see what he made of all of this. Maybe he found a solution and was just played down as insane, as it happened to many other great minds before and after him.

Slowly walking ahead, she opened of them. The Moon Controls the Seas stood at top of it, in Starswirl's usual scrawl.

I can't feel any different than angered whenever a pony speaks to my princess as the second in order. In the past years it became more frequently that I heard her being seen as the queen of rest. Most ponies seem to think that, while Princess Celestia is the creating power of this lands, Luna's the one giving them a break from her endless beauty. Myopic drivel! As always, our people is fast in judgement, not spending a second look to the spheres that appear to be silent and empty at a first glance. What the public naivety fails to see, much to the suffering of my beloved Princess, is that being a queen of heaven has a further reach than those fools imagine. At this point I could fall back into the meaning of the moon to the nocturnal creatures of these lands, or what stars truly are, but this has been done multiple times before, and every pony with enough brains to feel a curiosity for this topic has more than enough books he can rely to. Instead I feel this urge to open the ponies's eyes to what they can't see, to another world within their world. It is a widespread myth, I want to say misbelief, that the end of land marks the end of our rulers's power. Many think the sea is nothing more than a buffer to the end of the world, a genius mechanism that saves them from being devoured by the endless void. Nonsense! The sea, better would be seas at this point, are more than an endless reservoir of salty water. Now it known that there's life possible in those depths. See plants are a popular dish in sophisticated houses. If you ask scientists about the possibility of plants that are growing in the water, where every tree would drown, they'd tell you that those plants adapted to the low oxygen that the water contains, and that the sun light that reaches down to them is enough for them to grow. But go ask them about the death creatures that are occasionally found at the coasts! Fishes bigger than houses brought ashore by unknown powers. How could such organisms exist? There would be a nearly endless space needed to grow as much of those animals that it would make sense for evolution to actually form them. And with that, even more food would need to be stored. But that's not what I want to write about. I once watched a group of ponies to push such a subject of the sea that was still alive back into its habitat. Twenty strong stallions bushed and pulled at the being with robes and brawn, but all of it didn't move him a single inch. I want to ask how this creature came to where it ended. It's unthinkable that it came there by itself. Given to its size and the positions of his fins he wouldn't be able to swim forward miles before he reached the coast, assumed the rough maps of the coasts and their water-depths are right. There is another power needed to bring the fish its doom. If you ever visited a coast, you know the rushing of the water that permanently moves against the land, the sand, the rocks. The water is in permanent movement, slowly creeping deeper into the lands, devouring the coast, just to turn around, giving back each inch it took and more. I spent months investigating this phenomenon. But no matter how many data I collected, how big I drew the circles of my researches, I couldn't find a reason for the movement, nor could I determine a solid system that the water followed. I admit that this took me down. I couldn't accept that something as simple as water-movement couldn't be explained. So I searched for help where I always found help when things got overwhelming. I went and asked my Princess, Luna, if she knew anything about it. I remember too well how she stopped whatever she may was doing when I asked her. She smiled at me in this way she always smiled when she thought I was taking a minor topic too serious. In the simplest words she told me that it was a thing with the moon. As she lowered and raised the moon, the seas would follow its path. The moon and the seas would be two large moveable masses, and that the bigger one was leading their dance. She also told me about the life in those depths, that she had a pet there, called Leviathan. She said that with the sea following her moon, she would directly control the movement of the most important element for billions of livings. She said that she was sorry for those who died to this movement, but it was impossible to her to keep control over every subject in every corner. When I asked her why she hadn't told anypony yet, she simply said that it wasn't affecting this people. She said that it could be regarded as a different world that didn't matter on solid ground. And even if it would become necessary to this people one day, she still could tell them about it.

It is the long run that lets my anger against the blinded people turn into a sadness. Every time I saw Luna she smiled, her face filled with love and warmth. And yet, it seems that all her love is barely taken in this world. It is not fair. I am not feeling bad for getting sentimental at this point. I could see the beauty that laid in her nights before, but now knowing that she bears so much more with it, and that nopony even knows about it; that everypony is only seeing the dark silence that her nights bring to their homes, makes me want to raise a campaign to bring her true size into the minds of every pony I can reach. But alas, Luna forbid to speak about it. Why she didn't mention. But her pleading words alone are enough for me to follow her commands.

How much bears this generous immortal in her eternal life that no mortal pony is aware of?

Twilight gulped and furled the scroll again. She knew too well where this reticence would lead the lunar princess. Somehow, it didn't surprise her that she never was told about the Leviathan, either.

She looked back to the shelves. She reached the last works of Starswirl. It was another point in which he was an inspiring stallion: his last scroll he wrote the very same day he passed from this world. However, the lack of love that was recognizable in the organization of this section made her raise an eyebrow. The loose scrolls laid on a thick tomb, which looked like it hadn't moved for while now. She carefully levitated it, making sure that no scroll would leave the shelve without being asked to.

She blew off some of the dust that has collected on the binding. A grey cloud formed in front of her face, forcing her to close her eyes shut. Apparently scrolls weren't good dust-savers. Still coughing, she read the title. The Equine as a Superdimensional Being. Instantly a lightning stroke through her memory.

”The Equine as Superdimensional Being”, where he feasts upon metaphysics that are nothing more than gibberish talk of ancient methods.

Without hesitation she let her magic open the book, slowly passing the pages. Her eyes got trapped at a picture that appeared near the half of the monograph. It filled out a whole site and displayed a faceless stallion and without any further signs of a certain identity. He seemed to be transparent, almost invincible, as the same short lines that formed the background formed his body.

Nearly instinctively her eyes began reading on the next page.

It would require the brain of a foul to still deny the existence of this relation. You could blame me for leaving the track of the empiric sciences, but that is not true.
Yes, firstly I thought it was a dream. I woke up as usual, and everything seemed to follow its normal procedure. Until I discovered that hole in my head. It wasn't big, although rather deep. I touched it slightly with a disinfectant stick. I suspected to touch something bleeding, but instead I could insert it and afterwards an pencil and even a longer staff much further than expected. It appeared that the hole in my head had dimensions that extended far over the size of my skull. So I started an extended research. I took a reel of cotton and bound a little weight to its end. Then I stepped in front of a mirror and threaded it carefully through the hole in my head. After a while the cotton was unrolled and I held the other end of the cotton in my magical grasp. At least twenty-five metres of cotton and the thread hung taut in the hole in my head and I felt how the weight gently swung deep down on and off. So don't tell me what reality is.
I know now that it was no dream.
They took me away, asked questions, made experiments. The whole program. Everything would swing, they said. This universe and many others. Every galaxy, each atom in them. Everything would be made of the same basic energy. Tiny vibrating strings or multidimensional membranes, at least by our knowledge not entirely describable. Every oscillation would define the attributes and determination of every particle. Particles and their binding energies, of with eventually any matter was made of. And of which we were made.
We are not mire than energy. We are not more than our thoughts.
There exists far more than the temporal and spatial restrictions that we can perceive. There is much more of everything. I've seen it. They spoke of a small asymmetry, an impurity at the beginning of the universe, which would have helped every being to existence, out of the state of an absolute equilibrium. Even time and every law of nature, as we know them or better, as we believe to know them.
And they would have come to correct that impurity.
They showed me this world. Round and sharp at the same time, swinging through the true dimensions and other things like a pendulum. Beyond it spread another world. Darker. They said it was were they came from, a world shaped by the movement of ours. It would be their task to bring the perfection back, to stop this impure movement. Only this way they could become flawless themselves again. Between those two worlds, the ghost energy that their movement left behind, beyond the reaches of time, would form a million other unrecognisable worlds.
I can understand Luna's statements now, whenever she told me that I was taking my studies too serious. How could I possibly waste my time with the micro mechanics of this world, while there are so many worlds out there, not even partly understood and completely unseen?

A flash in the corner of her eyes distracted Twilight from reading. She looked up. It was the sole mirror of the wing that reflected the last sun rays of the day. When her eyes caught her reflection, she nearly dropped the book, seeing in what condition she was. The skin in her face was pale and shown through her fur. In the dim light of the room her eyes shown in an empty glow that spoke of everything but energy or life at all. It almost felt like the gaze of her own reflection was penetrating her own eyes. Neither she realized before that her mouth stood open a little, giving her saliva a chance to collect in the corners. When did she become like that? She stepped a little closer. Her mind slowly filled with terror as her reflection refused to move its legs for only a single inch. It also probably should have become bigger, but it didn't.

“How is that possible?” she silently asked, her voice shaking.

She didn't know if it was delightful, but the reflection remained as it was; it didn't answer.

She spoke up again, “This is impossible! There is no spell in Equestria that would make that happen,” trying to regain control of her reality.

However, she didn't succeed in that, as she saw how her own reflection started to move its lips, completely independent of her own moving.

“I am not from Equestria. Not anymore,” she heard it say, if the happening could be described that way. The message came perfectly synchronised to the lip-movement of her reflection, but the sound itself didn't come through the air. Instead, she heard the words rise from the depths of her subconsciousness, silent but clearly audible. She felt like she was in a dream, but her wide-opened eyes where not able to blink her awake. Twilight's mind was petrified by fear, yet something in her still allowed her to command her lips. She had to control the situation as much as possible.

“What do you mean? Who are you?” She soon realized that there was barely a movement possible that didn't concentrate on her lips or tongue.

“I am you, Twilight Sparkle. Can't you see?”

“You are not me!” she screamed, “What do you want?”

The reflection remained silent for a brief time before the voice in her head eventually raised again, “I want to save Princess Luna before it is to late.”

She tried to shake her head in disbelief by instinct, but she wasn't able to, “Princess Luna is all safe. You are not making any sense.”

“Princess Luna is not save. Nightmare Moon is not defeated yet.” This time, the words had a sharper ringing in her head, which almost hurt a little. It felt like they cut their way to her consciousness with a sword.

“She is defeated,” Twilight said, trying to stay as calm as possible. “We changed Princess Luna back with the Elements of Harmony months ago.”

“You changed her back, but you didn't defeat Nightmare Moon. You used the Elements of Harmony on her... do you even know who Nightmare Moon is?”

Confusion was slowly building up in Twilight's head. “Luna's dark side. The part of her who wants the eternal night.”

The reflection remained silent once more. “She is so much more than that. Go to Luna's old chamber. It is the one with the black door in the forbidden corridor, I guess you know where that is. You will find my letters to Luna there. But you will be on your own. There can't be magic in this room.”

Angrily Twilight stepped closer to the reflection, “Why should I do that? Why should I break one of Luna's most important rules?”

But this time, all she received as an answer was the reflection of her own lip-movement. Whatever this was, it was gone now. Twilight felt a fatigue grasp her, and she allowed herself to make full contact with the floor, and she felt like a big weight was taken out of her head. What was that thing? She looked into the mirror. She felt a slight relieve at the sign of her true reflection, which didn't look as exhausted as it did before.

Entering the forbidden corridor was the least thing she was up to do. It had this name for a reason. Ever since Luna forbid every soul in this castle to even set one step into it. She never said why, but judging by the punishments she set up for doing so, she really meant it. When she once asked her about it, Luna forced her to promise that she'd never come up with that topic again, and never to even think about looking the corridor up.

And somehow, she felt like she broke a part of the promise just now. Great. Even if it was kinda forced, to Luna she didn't want to even half-break a promise. Not as her subject and not as her friend.

But whatever this thing was, it was, even if every scientific theory spoke against it. But then again, this was also the case with this hour-glass flanked stallion. Maybe she knew now where he got his cutie-mark from. Whoever he was, he was incredibly good at stealing hours from innocent mares.

Twilight sighed.

That thing said Nightmare Moon still wasn't defeated. She didn't believe it, and it made it fire-proof that this thing wasn't her. Because if it was, it would have known about the endless hours she spent with Luna to re-socialize her, and the enormous progress they made. By now, Luna even seemed to give lessons in behaviour to her time to time. Something Twilight hadn't aimed for.

She couldn't go to the forbidden corridor. Not even when there maybe laid the answers to whatever just has happened, to what that was. And not even when there were letters from Luna regarding Nightmare Moon she didn't know about. She couldn't. Luna would tell her everything that was necessary to keep her as stabilized as possible. Even when there wasn't something she needed to be stabilized from. And that Celestia did carry on the tight rules for this section in the thousand years of Luna's absence didn't mean anything, either. Right?

–

“I'm so going to regret this,” Twilight muttered, shaking her head slightly.

She has spent the last fifteen minutes walking through the countless corridors of Canterlot Castle, only to retreat at certain points, heading for the big entrance-gate,but always ending up in another turn, and finally at the same corridor where she turned earlier. It was a small miracle that she hadn't drawn the attention of any guards in her doing.

And now she was just one right-turn away from the corridor that never should be stepped into. But she felt she already has passed the point of no return. With every step a little voice inside her head was crying 'no', which she identified as her good conscience. And then there was this other part of her brain, the one which lusted for a revelation of the room that she was forbidden to see since she was a little foal. She silently hoped that it was a big bad voodoo-spell, but something told her that it was just her personality.

Twilight gulped hard when she reached the final corner.

“Definitely voodoo. I'm totally innocent and not aware of what I am doing at all.”

Maybe she would just run into a magic wall, sealing the corridor off. Maybe she'd set a alarm free, or even trigger a death trap. A shiver ran down Twilight's back. She didn't like death traps. But knowing that there was no time to waste, as Luna would wake up soon, she took a step back and, with a deep breath, she charged around the corner with closed eyes.

She didn't ran into anything. There also was no audible alert ringing nor was she standing in some sort of acid. So she was emergency-ported into space then. It had to be this way. She was in space, along with the whole corridor, and never going to see her friends again.

Eventually Twilight opened her eyes. The corridor she was standing in didn't differ much from other corridors, despite it had a sole black door on the left side. She looked behind her. The corner she just charged around was still there. Maybe she was lucky and not in space. But she preferred to save her optimism for Luna's actual room.

At least eerie mirror-Twilight's directions were precise. There was indeed only one black door in the forbidden corridor. She was standing in the forbidden corridor.

“Alright, so the ancient Luna liked black doors,” Twilight said as she walked to it, “that surely quiets the mind after a stressful day of being an immortal ruler.”

When she reached the door, the librarian hesitated to turn the rusty door knob. But with a crunch the heavy door, it was probably made of old oak judging by the pattern of the wood, opened.

As she threw first gazes into the chamber, all of Twilight's nervousness vanished. In the blink of an eye Twilight stood in Luna's nightmare. Everything in the room was black as coal; every attempt to find colour in this room would be a wild-goose chase. With slow steps she entered the room, her vision lost in the blurred shadows that formed the fittings. The walls, the ground, the bed and even the table. Everything carried the exact same blackness. Only few spots on the ground, mainly around the windows, were brightened. It wasn't brightening the place, thought. Twilight could think of what caused the pinpoint concretions.

The biggest eye-catcher was probably a big mirror between the windows, or better a mirror frame. The glass was shattered and missing, some tiny parts still laid sparkling on the black ground. She had to pay attention to where she stepped. The frame itself was carrying the same black as the room did, but its carvings still stood out beautifully. It was made of massive oak, and the carvings reminded on sticks and branches that once held the glass naturally in position.

But that was not what she was here for. She closed the door behind her and made her way to the secretary, her eyes focused on the ground to avoid the slivers. Fortunately Luna didn't seem to have grown her habit for a disordered workplace over the years on the moon. Multiple letters laid dust-covered on top of the secretary.

She took one of the upper letters and freed it from its dusk cover. When she was able to see the ink, she felt the blood rush from her head. It was a scrawl that had all rights to be found in Luna's ancient chamber. Her mind was racing. The reflection had claimed to be the sender of those letters. But that was impossible. Starswirl left this world thousand years ago, shortly before Luna...

Dear Luna!

I know that I haven't sent you a letter in the past weeks. I am sorry for it, but I had the most important reason for it. Our last conversation had set my mind on unease. You told me that your twin sister, Nightmare Moon, was born dead, because she didn't grow a heart. You said that this was possible, as a special exception that nature brought. As you know I have researches running about the gods of this and other worlds. I know that you don't want me to do that because it is dangerous, but I couldn’t simply let this case rest in my memory. That an immortal dies is a strictly impossible thing in every world that I have knowledge of. I know that you don't want to trust even me in this matter, but this time you must listen to me. Again, I am sorry for the commanding tone of this letter. But as everything lies right now, it seems that not the biological body is the immortal thing, while it truly suffers less damage by time and burdens imposed by sovereign right, but the personality of the immortal itself. When the body of an immortal dies it seems to be possible that her personality can transfer to another one, if special connections are given. In your case, the body died in the womb, where the closest connection between two foals exists that I can think of. But in this case, the alternative body, yours, already contained a personality. I spoke with several psychologists who are leading ponies regarding different sectors of mental illnesses, and according to them it could be indeed possible that something or someone could exist in the head of a pony, while the pony itself is still alive and sane. Naturally, the personality that occupies the body would set barriers to the uninvited guest, if we can call it that way. The problem that we are facing, and that turned my mind on worst unease, is that this protective mechanism can, as others, fail. I got multiple answers saying that this guest could try to get active, to obtrude on the body. One even said he thinks that it could be possible that this guest would try to take control of its host. But this process would be one of the slowest in the nature to be found. It would be impossible to say how many years can pass before the host even grows knowledge about this guest. Others say, and I prefer this variant, that both personalities fuse. However, this is not a perfect synthesis but a flawed, explosive mixture. The multiple aspects of this corrupted personality would always be fighting a war for the total leadership, always shifting the borders in the very same spirit until the subject reaches a state of complete mental decay. All I am asking you for is to give me a chance to save you from a possible illness. I remember when we were taking care of stranded whales last summer. I didn't mention it, but there was a sparkling in your eyes when you saw those pitiful creatures, big and peaceful, dying a death that came from something that they didn't understand. A sparkling that I've never seen before. I only want the best for you. As both, a princess and the only friend I shared the most of my life with.

Most faithfully,

Starswirl, your friend and protege.

Twin sister? Lost in thoughts Twilight walked over to one of the big windows. On her way she stepped into one of the remaining slivers. Her right front hoof began to bleed slightly, but she barely noticed it. Luna never spoke of Nightmare Moon as a twin sister. Of course not. It was impossible. Gods weren't simply born, were they? And without a heart. From what she knew an alicorn's deoxyribonucleic acid was way too complex to fail at such an essential part.

No. Whatever Starswirl was making up in the insanity of his last years, they were old wounds that shouldn't be ripped open again. She was right. She never should have come here.

She shook her head and turned to make her way to the door. Her fear that it magically imprisoned her proofed to be wrong. As simple as she was able to enter, exiting was. She made sure that the black oak was lying tight in the lock and walked back to the corridors she came from.

“What are you doing?”

Eventually the same voice that occupied the reflection earlier rose in the depths of her mind. It made her stop her tracks, but a second time she was not going to give control of her over to a voice that she didn't believe to know the owner of.

“Leaving,” she said sharply, forcing her legs to continue walking.

“Have you read the letters?”

“I've read enough, yes.”

“Then you know why you need to help me.”

“You don't need help. Luna is save now.”

“She's not. Nopony is. It is impossible to kill an immortal. It is only a question of time until her struggle for supremacy will start again.”

“So what am I supposed to do? I healed her with the Elements and helped her re-adjust in the past months. That worked fine, without breaking her most important rules.”

“But you can do more. Together we can delete Nightmare Moon.”

Twilight suddenly threw her head against the wall next to her, “Together? You mean me with a voice in my head? I don't even know what you are! How did you come into my head? I haven't planned all of this!”

A short silence passed, and Twilight didn't move an inch. Eventually the voice spoke up again.

“I am a spell. You activated me.”

Twilight shook her head, rubbing her forehead at the wall, “There are no such spells. And I didn't cast anything unusual in the past.”

“I am not your spell. Starswirl enchanted his works with me, so that one day a pony with enough potential could continue his work if he would fail. You activated me when you decided to skip the reading of one of his books.”

“That's ridiculous! Not even Starswirl could give an enchantment the signature to last thousand years. And besides, your not sounding like a spell. A spell can't sound like anything! Not even Starswirl could give spells a personality.”

“I have no personality. I am directly placed into the mind of the subject that activated me. I use the function and the structure of its brain to transfer informations. In the past hours this symbiosis took place. The fact that so much time has passed since I was cast is explainable by the fact that time is no essential factor while I am inactive. For a mage who developed time travelling time works a little different.”

Twilight tapped nervously on the ground with her right hoof, and saw a deep-red spot on the carpet when she looked down. She was bleeding. She lifted her leg and examined the wound, “And what exactly are you supposed to do? Spells have clear functions. And you haven't done anything clear by now.”

“My function is to lead the pony whoever activated me to the Gate of Tartarus. You can compare me to an information-compressing spell with extended functions.”

She was about to cast an disinfection-spell, but the words cut her off, “Gate of Tartarus? That's a prison for demons.”

“That's what it is used for. The Gate of Tartarus are a rift between the two big worlds. It was once built to keep the rift stable, so the princesses could investigate the other side. After they realized what that was, they sealed it and it became an one-way portal, used as a prison for the worst creatures.”

Twilight didn't know what to think about all of this. But it made more sense than staying near a corridor that she shouldn't visit. She started walking again.

“What is on the other side?”

“Unknown. The informations Starswirl saved in me are limited.”

Twilight sighed, “Great. And why in the name of Celestia should I go visit Ceberus? What does that have to do with Luna?”

“Unknown. The subject has to find the second part of the spell before the gate can be found.”

“What do you mean 'unknown'? And what second part? You can't part a spell!”

“Excuse me?” asked a third voice behind Twilight, who shrieked scared.

It took her a brief moment to turn around. Behind her a solar guard crossed her path on her way to exit the caste. Of course. With the setting of the sun their duty ended.

“I-” she began. It was a young stallion, just a recruit, “Nothing. Stressful day, that's all.”

The guard examined her. Strangers were unusual to be seen in the castle at this hour.

“The castle is not opened for strangers during the night. Do you want me to escort you to the gate?”

“I'm not--,” she said before she realized that he may not had to know who she was.

“You're not what?” he asked.

Twilight shook her head, “Nothing. I know the way out, thank you.”

The guard nodded, “fine. Make sure that you are out in ten minutes.” He passed Twilight.

“I'll do,” she said, not following his movement with her eyes. Eventually the guard disappeared behind a corner and Twilight sighed in relief.

“The second part is an enchanted artefact that Starswirl owned. He owned is for his whole life, and the emotional bond made it possible to enchant it with more complex parts that are needed to form a spell that has the right size to fit his determination to save Luna.”

Twilight continued walking. She could be drinking tea in her bed now.

“And where is this artefact?”

“Unknown.”

She couldn't suppress a scream of despair.

“However, Starswirl prepared a teleportation spell to its location. He added the first half on the last page of The Equine as a Superdimensional Being, while I contain the second half.”

“So that's what it is. I wonder if Starswirl knows how many ponies tried to find that out.” That was finally something she recognized and something she could work with. She had read multiple treatises on that topic.

“What happens if I not go back and take it?” she asked.

“Nothing. Without the second part this spell will run out after six hours and Luna won't be saved.”

“Will your disappearance have affects on my brain? Like damage on my long-term memory or something?”

“No. I will be gone, that's all.”

Twilight bit on her lower lip. By all means, this was not fair at all.

“You say that you are the minor part of the spell?”

“Yes. I am only the general execution that contains only the most important informations to guarantee a save process.”

“And you are sure that you're not causing a headache to the subject?”

“It is guaranteed that there is no pain to the subject while I'm active or afterwards.”

She rubbed her forehead. With that she saw that her wound stopped bleeding. At least one good news today.

“Must be something different then. Let's find out what this artefact is.”

“Thank you.”

–

Twilight levitated the book. It still laid where she dropped it earlier on. She then let the pages skip until the last page of the book showed up. Her eyes ran over it.

“I still don't understand how this can be a simple teleportation spell. It's a completely different pattern.”

“It is not an usual teleportation. The particles of your body will temporarily shifted in time and space, while contact with the artefact will return them to a normal form. This way you can't fail in getting back.”

Twilight's ears shot forward, even if there was nothing to listen to, “It's a time-travel spell?”

“Combined with a transportation-spell, yes. This way you will need less energy for the time-related difference as you would need for re-building your current form.”

“How would I be re-built? I mean, you can't simply form existent particles of an other position on the time-line into a pony.”

“Unknown.”

She rolled her eyes, “That alone justifies to get you completed.” She read through the spell.

“Cast the existent spell when ready. I will add the missing part automatically.”

Barely after the voice fell silent, a bright light engulfed Twilight's horn and the space around it. She felt a magical energy pulling and tearing at her body. The light grew more intense and immersed her surroundings in a flawless purple light, before the powers outgrew the grasp of reality. Everything fell dark and silent, and for one little second she felt as if all happenings of her live were passing through her mind in the exact same moment. It was as if she had the consciousness of hundreds of years. That was, until a little golden glow was born before her.

“That's it. Go and get it,” a voice suddenly said from somewhere.

“I can't,” she wanted to say. Whether she really said it she didn't know. Now that she tried to move, she noticed that she didn't feel her body anymore. She seemed to be swimming, floating. Light and clueless.

“Don't rely on what you're experiencing. Try to imagine the movement. The execution will follow by itself.”

“What if it doesn't?” she tried to say, but again her voice didn't reach her ears. Shortly after she tried to imagine her four hooves on a ground. She imagined that she pushed her right front hoof forward, along with her left hindleg. As nothing happened, she tried to imagine the same thing for her other two hooves. And indeed, the light seemed to has come a little closer. She repeated to imagine the two moves, and again the light became brighter. It worked.

When it seemed in reach, she imagined to grasp it. It didn't moved.

“Hold on tight,” the voice said.

In the same moment the light that radiated from where she thought was between her hooves. She imagined to press them together. Even if she couldn't feel anything, the light seemed to push her away, to cast an eerie force against her. The golden light devoured the darkness that surrounded her, radiated through her mind and cut off anything that was left in her consciousness.

–

Bright light. Even if it was only the pallid moonlight, Twilight's eyes had problems to get used to it. She blink-blinked her eyes under light pain. She was back in the castle, and laid right where she had cast the spell. She could hear her pulse beat sending the blood through her eyes. Next to this, nothing reached her ears.

“Has it... worked?” she dizzily asked.

“Yes,” the voice in her head said.

She forced her to stand up. Next to Twilight, between her and the mirror, laid a golden pocket watch.

“What's this?” she said.

“That's the artefact.”

“The artefact?” She took it. It was golden, decorated with multiple circles of different sizes that reached into each other.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” She spun it around a little. There wasn't anything special about it. She pressed her hoof on a small button at its top and with a click, the watch opened.

“Just cast the same spell you used to activate me. But don't open it.”

To her surprise, the inside didn't contain a dial. Instead, golden light radiated inside and began to spread into her direction.

“Regarding that last fact...” Twilight whispered in amazement.

“Close it.”

“Why?” she said. The light slowly reached her nose.

“Unknown. Close it.”

But it was too late. The light touched Twilight's head and her mind was immediately soaked away. She was rushing through a golden channel in that she could see all points of history, some being displayed big and clearly, others small and pressed between the bigger ones. In the next moment she was racing through faces at high speed. They were incredible big. She didn't knew them. Each time she passed one, scenes rushed through her memory. She saw stars exploding, ripping everything else that existed apart, except for the place she was standing in. Another one showed ponies that wore metal suits, marching in a perfect synchronisation, before it all came to a stop. Without any notable proof to what just happened, Twilight saw the clock in her hooves, closed by her left hoof.

“What was this?” was all she could manage to get out.

“Nothing that's relevant for our mission.”

“It was... beautiful.” She gulped, “Terrifying.”

“It was not meant for you. Cast the spell.”

“Right.” Her horn lit up again and she touched the clock with it. Again she was soaked out of reality.

Twilight found herself standing in the royal dining room. Before her sat Celestia, facing Luna worried, who sat few seats away. Next to Luna a stallion chewed lazily on a flower.

“That's Starswirl,” the voice in her head said.

“When are we?” Twilight instinctively asked.

“This is one of the last dinners Starswirl took with the princesses. It's a memory, so don't worry about getting noticed.”

“Starswirl,” Celestia said.

The bearded stallion swallowed, and looked to Celestia with tired eyes, “Yes, milady?”

Celestia looked at him with sad eyes. Twilight knew that look. She saw it few times, when she dismissed her old soldiers of their duties. “There is something we have to talk about, regarding your studies.”

Starswirl's face, on the other hoof, almost spoke of boredom, as he already turned away from Celestia to re-fill his plate, “M'lady, I already assured Luna to stop my researches about the lower worlds.”

Celestia shook her head, “It's not that. You are Luna's protege for more than fifty years now. Your clock is ticking.”

“Clocks are always ticking,” he said flatly, “nothing that can't be controlled.”

This time it was Luna to speak up, “Not in this case. You spent all your life hard working, sometimes too hard, and that leaves marks.”

“Your point?” he said.

“You have to stop,” Celestia said. “It's been enough. You've done much for us and our people, but we can't set your health on risk only to keep you active.”

With that, the boredom vanished out of Starswirl's face, “You can't retire me! I still have tons of researches to do!”

“I know,” Luna said, “but please be rational. You're already part of the oldest subjects we have in Canterlot, and all the stress you are applying to yourself when your sunken into a topic. I don't want to lose you to that.”

Starswirl's hoof sent the clinking of glasses and plates rang through the hall as he smashed it onto the table.

“And thus you want to lose me to time?” he screamed, “Haven't I controlled time in higher levels than any pony before me? Am I not the only pony to be trusted with the question when it is time to stop something? After all those years you want me to stop because you don't trust me to know my metes and bounds?”

A shiver ran through Twilight's spine. Of all scenarios she could have seen, this was one of the least she was up to face.

“It's not only that,” Luna tried to ease his mind, “but as long as you are serving me as my official protege you are bound to the duties that come with it. I know that they rarely occurred in this decade, but I could not find sleep ever again if a sudden need of them would cause your body to decay to death.”

But Starswirl's expression did not speak of any easing, “I think awfully well that fifty years are proof enough for the ten years to come. You know as well as I that for everything that is possible to come in this decade a way to lay my duties into the hooves of Celestia. Even if you dismiss me, that would be a much smarter decision than lying your faith into the hooves of a fledgling. In which case you could keep me in duty just as well.”

“Starswirl, please,” Celestia interfered, “trust your princes in this matter. Times may not always be as peaceful as they seem to be.”

“I did not say that I distrust my princess, Celestia,” he snapped, “If there is one pony in this world left that I can rely my absolute trust to, it is my Princess Luna, and you know that. My turmoil originates rather from my knowledge about the burdens she is carrying. When she took me into her service I swore to use my knowledge and my abilities to her welfare and the welfare of the nation, to my last breath if necessary. It is just that pact that I am sticking to, m'lady.”

“And this I know indeed, my friend,” Luna said, “But as it is I cannot let you carry the burden of this position any more. My sister is right, times are not always as peaceful as they are. And so are you right that the past era of peace speaks for another peaceful decade. But it become harder with every year what the next brings. But you have to understand that we need this decade to find a worthy follower. Your knowledge and experience will proof priceless in his training for sure. You--”

“Princess, I” Starswirl cut her off.

“Please,” only to be cut off as well from his princess again, “We are not cutting off any of your rights here. I could never do that. Even more, we would finally find the time to spend the nights together without worrying about productivity. All we want you to do is to give your burdens to a younger follower.”

Twilight could see Starswirl's look bouncing helplessly between the two princesses. Both were looking at him with similar expressions. The determination of the immortals was the biggest burden to carry sometimes. Twilight knew that already.

“I,” Starswirl began, “Excuse me. I think I am not hungry anymore.”

With that, Starswirl stood up from his chair and left the dining room, without awaiting allowance to do so by the two immortal rulers of the land, and without looking back at them.

“Went better than I expected...” Celestia muttered, taking another apple from the menu.

“Better than expected?” Luna said, “The poor stallion is near a nerve collapse!”

“He is. But I was afraid we would have to tell him about the particular situation. Especially for him, a pony who is already seeking contact to other worlds, that could have had fatale consequences.”

Luna sighed, “True. But I still can't see why you refuse to close Tartarus with the Elements. Even Starswirl could master that spell now. Why does all this have to be? Why do we risk the peace of our subjects year to year to a breaking seal, while there is a finite solution lying under our hooves?”

Celestia took a bite of the apple before she said, “Because, Luna, it does not work that way. The worlds have to influence each other.”

“That's not influencing! They are threatening our world every second with decay and death and suffering, and all we do is to watch and send the old proteges against their wills into retirement. We have to act!”

With the last syllable of Luna's voice darkness began to feast upon the scenery, until nothing more was left than the flawless darkness, to which Twilight somehow got used to in the last hour.

“It approaches the god's duty on fast hooves,” the voice in her head said.

Slowly blazing fire began to throw its light into the blackness, growing, and in the dancing shades a landscape formed out, filling more and more of her vision until she was standing on solid ground again. What she saw made her wish the darkness back. She stood in the Wastelands, which stood ablaze in flames as high as a house. The ground, she knew it bright brown baked by the sun, was deep red. Thousands of soldiers lied on the ground as far as her vision allowed her to watch. They were broken, bleeding. It was their blood that painted the ground into the cruellest red. And yet only few seemed to be dead. The most bodies were convulsing in pain, the muted screams reaching her ear. At the horizon a giant gate elongated upwards.

“What is this place?” she said, carrying the terror in her voice.

“This is the Gate of Tartarus a the day the seal crumbles. The demon armies invaded our world and slaughtered our armies. It is the end of ponykind as you know it.”

“But... that's impossible. You said this was a memory. But this didn't happen even thousand years ago. And I can't see Starswirl anywhere.”

“As it was said before, time works a little different for a pony who invited time-travelling. He never was here on his own, but he visited. This is what happens if it is failed to seal off the Gate of Tartarus with the Elements.”

Suddenly, Twilight noticed a movement in the corner of her eye. She turned her head into its direction, and what she saw made her blood became two degree colder. A bipedal creature stepped across those fields of death, crushing whichever skull was unlucky enough to get caught between the ground and his feet. It was much taller than a pony, even than Celestia, and long arms were hanging down its sides. Instead of a skin or fur, it had large skulls, bigger than the dragon's ones. The whole creature was black as the night, except the while vessel that it hold in one of his claws.

“And this is the reason why you have to get the Elements and go here,” the voice in her head declared. “This vessel is capable of trapping souls temporarily, to transport their pure form for transport, until they are processed further.”

“Processed further? What things could be made of a soul?” Twilight nearly didn't want to ask.

“Engine, soul-lamps, all sorts of things. But that is not important. With such a vessel we can extract Nightmare Moon out of Luna's consciousness and trap it in the depths of Tartarus, before we close it for all time.”

As if the demon was asked for a demonstration, he decided to ram the open end of the vessel in just that moment deep into the head of one of the still living stallions. Despite of how deadly this attack looked, the stallion stroke wildly around before falling to the ground. A bright energy filled the vessel, and the demon pulled it out to continue its walk to the gate.

“Without crushing her skull,” the voice added.

Twilight was stunned by the amount of brutality she just became witness of, so it took her a moment to answer. “But I can't take the Elements alone. I need my friends to use them.”

“You don't. The separation of the Elements's powers are made to guarantee noone would use them to cast dangerous connections between the worlds, as they are needed to petrify a subject without killing it. For average usage you are authorized as you are a royal protegee. As the Element of Magic you are able to use them as catalysts for your spells, to protect yourself from the demons.”

“I have to inform Celestia,” Twilight said.

“You can't. You know that she is blinded by the years of peace. She would turn you down as she turned Luna down. You saw it.”

“But I can't tell Luna!”

“You have to take them. It is your duty to perfom in a way that brings the highest value to Equestria, and that is safety.”

“What if I fail?” Twilight asked.

“You can't. The life of billions is resting in your hooves.”

Twilight felt the ground beneath her shake. At the horizon she saw something leaving the Gate of Tartarus. It was flying and looked like a dragon. However, this creature was much bigger, with to heads leading its way.

Darkness took hold of her again, and the last thing she could perceive was the voice in her head whispering the word 'Elements' over again, before she lost her consciousness in the switch of reality.

–

Twilight was walking on the red carpet that decorated the big hall that provided security to the Elements of Harmony. Its walls were decorated with mosaics of the most important successes in the Equestrian history. Of all ponies on this infinite time-line, why had it to be her? All she wanted to do is to read in peace and to study the rules of this world without being disturbed.

Eventually she reached the ornamented door with its hole in the middle. Behind it rested the Elements of Harmony, silently and not aware of all the impossibilities that Twilight suffered.

“You know how to open it.” Somehow, it didn't sound like a question, even when her brains told her that it was meant to be one.

“Well, yes. There is an emergency mechanism, for the case that Celestia is not available.”

“Get them, we have no time to waste. You know that Luna is keeping a strong eye on them.”

Twilight nodded, “A habit I never was able to judge, though. Who would even dare to try to steal the Elements? Next to me, that is...”

She stepped closer. Now standing directly in front of the hole, the big doors appeared overwhelming. But she went too far to retreat now. She lowered her head a little and pushed her horn into the hole. She closed her eyes to focus on the complex unlock spell, and her horn began to glow. Slowly the slits that spread over the whole construct filled with energy and the door began to open. It was significant slower than Celestia's method, but what did she expect.

When she felt that the door came to a stop, she opened her eyes and stepped back. She felt a little dizzy. This spell was far complicated for such a day. Taking a step to the left, she saw the richly decorated box that contained the stones of interest.

She stepped closer and opened the box. All six elements were there.

“Now cast a teleportation spell to the place you saw in the memory.”

“I shall do what now? That is miles and miles away, somewhere in the Wastelands! How am I supposed to teleport that far?”

“The Element of Magic has its name for a reason. Touch it while casting and it will activate. With that, the link to them is also re-activated and your magic will be highly increased while carrying them.”

A loud scream that erupted the castle stole Twilight's freedom to make this decision, and in barely two seconds she had the picture of the mind in her eyes, and a bright light surrounded her and the elements, before she felt her self ripped out of space, only to be re-created in the very same moment.

Entr'acte I: Pavor Diurnus

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The mirrors were offending. Every side, every angle was scoffing at her. Into all eternity they would blame her, not caring for what really happened. But why should they, when even intelligent ponies, alive and equipped with working brains, didn't want to see the truth? No, it was futile to hope for release. As endless their were, the pain wouldn't give the naïvety of those diurnal fools a run. Always throwing the gaze back. No more they could do. How could they blame a goddess? They didn't bother with the art of reasoning any more then Discord did. She didn't want roses on her grave; only the full truth. She didn't need to be were the roses of live grew. They were too uninteresting for her garden anyway.

Alas, it was too late. A black wound replaced her home now. They would see the truth that lays behind celebrating the blood-red burning sky every day again. She could already taste the prays and chants that the moon will stay veiled. Bitter-sweet prays. Wasn't the moon, like the mirrors below her, the sole creation that reflected the cruel light into her Stygian night? Perhaps cruelty lost its façade in the dark as any shadow did. They could not see in the dark, those fools.

She closed her eyes and moved her head close against the mirrors she walked on. A perfect darkness surrounded her, melting, with only one perfect pony standing before her. She lost any feeling for her body, didn't felt the cold glass beneath her. But losing her balance was no danger – she was already falling. The pony smiled at her and she felt falling, falling until she saw the grey ground form below him and her, a wide landscape ready to consume her before she reached her destination. Soon countless burning stars surrounded her. They burned against a superior enemy, glary and holy. It reached out for her without harm and help, igniting her in her fall until her body hit the ground and soil burst.

She opened her eyes again.

She was lying on a stone field, not far away from the furthest outposts of a city. The air was cold and the sky above her shown in the loudest blue it could wear. The ground beneath her was burnt to ashes by the rescuing fire that had engulfed her own body only seconds ago. She rose up from the ground and scream of delight escaped her. There she stood, the cold air in her lung and the burned ground beneath her. The skies promised a perfect new start. Nothing would be the same, at the end. Silently smiling, and an ancient tone humming over her lips, she descented over the flat fields into the direction of the ponies who had fallen just as she did.

The town was the most stunning one. Buildings, streets and even lampposts blocked her vision self-confidently, built of the stones that she had blown out of her own prison an eternity ago. Ponies passed her, not paying her attention. An urge befell her. She raised her hoof, watched it hovering in the air. Solid. Flawless. Another pony passed her and she threw her hoof against him. A scream reached her ears when a skull broke. Warm fluid ran down her hoof and flesh hit earth. They were paying attention now. A mare came running to aid the stallion. She lowered her head to his, muzzled him, asked if he could hear her.

She shifted her weight to her back-hooves and in a moment that cut off gravitation her hoof met yet another skull, trapping it between Luna and earth. She saw hint legs twitching, not for long. Ponies screamed at her. Soon snow would come and cover this wounded earth for the night. She felt a pony shaking her. She didn't understand what he screamed. A blue aura was glowing below his head and soon his screams faded into the silence she came from. His eyes were twitching and didn't seem to stop until a sharp pain cut through the blue. She felt the sun reach her heart. She turned her head. A guard was standing behind her, terror in his expression. His spear was sunken deep into her flesh. Red blood spilled out of the wound, deep into the ground. The guard took his hooves off the spear and she felt that her hooves wouldn't carry her weight no more. With a smile she hit the ground. This earth was strong, well fed. The forced her gaze into the sky, where a black cleave had formed. She saw black creatures stream through it, begging for her attention, and the ground shook and blasted before everything faded into darkness.

“This is not the time for rest, my Queen,” a voice said that could only be owned by a perfect one.

She turned her head into then direction it came from and saw him standing there in perfect darkness.

“I am no queen,” she said. She didn't hear her voice.

“I know,” he said, pointing at her, “the price has been paid.”

She looked down herself. A big hole was where she expected fur and flesh. She smiled.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Don't you remember? Since centuries ponies dance at this day to please the volcano, so that he wouldn't burn their homes into ashes,” he said.

“True.”

The pony blurred. The colours of his mane and fur mixed, and with time he lost more and more of his shape.

“Dance,” she heard him say, “Dance.”

Her rest was lost in uncontrolled movement. She shifted her weight between her legs, only slowing growing in intensity. Her head shifted, driven by the movement of her body, and with the physical unrest the colours of the pony began to resharpen.

“Let us break this cage. Let me become your song and scream,” it reached her ears.

She moved faster, swung hear head and while the pony before her grew more and more into shape, she saw other colours appear around them. Yellow, lavender, white, blue, pink. Tiny balls and strings of every colour light could produce were born into the darkness. It was decay she was summoning.

“Between death and eternal life has to be something third.”

The colours grew brighter, louder, until the sea of colours hurt her eyes. She drowned. The colours fought back the air she breathed, and soon there was barely anything left for her. But she couldn't stop moving. Tears of agony ran down her cheeks and a third voice attacked her perfect agony, sharp and cutting.

“Dance with us. Dance with us into the mirror-world. Dance with us until the mirror breaks.”

–

A loud scream filled the halls of Canterlot Castle when Luna's body shot up from a deep slumber. Her fur and mane were wet from sweat. The air laid cutting cold on her face, and her breath was heavy. Would a pony have seen her, it would have seen the expression of the goddess laying in the strongest denial, terror and panic one could imagine.

But she was all alone.

Entr'acte II: Pavor Nocturnus

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With another step, Celestia pushed the loose stones on the ground aside. Ancient remains of majestic rocks who stood against the foam swirling waves of the sea countless aeons ago.

They hurt her hooves. She was walking along the rugged cliffs since hours and even if it was hard to remember, she knew the pain in her legs didn't raise as she went further. In every step the pain stopped with the raise of her hoof and returned with the muted push on the ground, but there was no exhaustion. Her legs burned, but that's what they always did when she walked down this way.

She never was here before, but she was sure that it has been always this way. Too well known was the feeling of her sore throat that was parched by the salty winds of the sea. And too well known was her only companion, the moon who stood majestic in the dark sky. But he was cruel. Not relief was what he offered, only cold and bright light that gave it's metallic color to everything he touched.

She wasn't able to look at him. The moon would just rip the eyes out of her face. No, it was no use to spend time with him. Too much other things had to be done here. The sea told her. She just had to keep walking, and she did. The voice of the sea was always right, had always downed her doubts. So did it now.

It changed. The time she didn't visit this place was long. The song of the singer faded away long-since. There were no cries and white paintings on cold stone were telling about free flights over the sea. Only the waves were still the same, even if its temper was boiling these nights.

Wordless Celestia walked further along the cliffs. She tried to spot anything that could be worth to be her target, but the bright moonlight only revealed an endless path of rocks and stones. She wanted to stop in her faltering steps; she wanted to unfold her wings.

She would step close to the cliff, unfold them and jump down to a free flight over the endless ocean. But she didn't. She couldn't. She didn't even know how far it was away exactly, and the only thing that would wait for her was the key on its ground.
She had to find something different. She felt that it wasn't far away, but she couldn't see it. Too many things blocked her vision. If only the moon stopped to enlighten the unknown.

Pain filled her mind. It was a beautiful feeling. It drained slowly at her consciousness and gave her being a meaning. It told her how beautiful the gray rocks were, taught her about all the possibilities of this place.

And there was only her shining companion to correspondent with it.

The light brought her decay. Always when the pain was speaking in beautiful riddles, the moon interrupted with this sharp beams, cutting through the sensitive connection. Demanding.
She never understood it. There was nothing she had to offer, but still it never let her rest.

Or had she?
The moonlight shone bright.
But it couldn’t sleep in this bright light.
So it raised from its deep sleep, lusting for nothing more than darkness. It raised, and crept slowly forward, through her chest and her soul.

She could feel it raise, but the pain stopped her from crying. It told her that it would do nothing. It would do nothing but raise and feast from the beams that passed her eyes. It was hilarious. Now she had another companion. And he wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t anything at all. It would just creep forward, slowly raging through her chest.

She knew better. It was that old animal called longing. She longed for darkness. Loneliness would be better than the company of this cruel companion. She wanted to be alone; to be in the dark. She would find it. She would be able to find it. But she wasn’t. What was it, that denied a goddess from the search of something, that couldn’t be found?

The animal rose from the ground of her subconsciousness and began to feast just as the pain has told her. It raged, it crept and it ripped her soft flesh apart. She couldn’t keep walking with it inside her. She had to set a trap; she had to locate it and to get rid of it. Another companion meant another step farther away from her big target.

She didn’t know why. His company seemed nice. But he was just blocking her way as much as the cruel moon was. She had to be all alone, and she had to be it now. Time was passing too fast for interrupts like that.

Celestia knew she had to do it. She had to fight back the longing, and she had to kill it.
So she enticed it, burned her eyes in the moon. Her pain was screaming. She was barely able to keep the fine connection alive, but the price for this fight would be worth it. The gray moon ripped at her eyes, and cut through her mind. She kept walking as the screams fell silent.

Her steps felt heavier than before, and her mind began to grow empty. Nothing seemed to push her forward anymore, but the animal was coming closer. The longing raised and right before she failed in her steps, she gripped it tightly. Now she had it, now she was able to look away from her oldest companion, back to the beautiful gray stones again. As she looked at their beauty, and at the beautiful white paintings of long-since passed times, her pain grew slowly back in its strength.

She had to rest a bit, walking in empty steps and letting the pain refill her mind, before she was able to return to her new possession.
Now she got it, now it was hers. She wanted to stave in its head, but its screams of fear were too touching. She couldn’t kill her own longing. She gave a little bite of light to it, just to give back the ability to speak. She felt it wouldn’t hurt her anymore, and maybe it knew something.

It bagged, nothing shall she do to him, not the slightest harm was offered here from any party.
It wasn’t his fault. He was just a wild animal.
He said he never wanted to hurt her. Regrettably he’s stuck in her, but if she would let him go, let him survive this journey, then she never should feel empty again. Then he always will be in her.

Celestia stopped her tracks only for few seconds. Maybe it was right. Company surely wasn’t handy at this waters, but it was far too dangerous to let the moon fill her mind again. And who knows, maybe she would never will find an animal again.

She reentered her walk and agreed, it shall happen. It shall be that way.

The creature sank down and rolled itself to a little ball. It degraded itself, and fell into a sleep, it one would call it like that.
And with that, the movements of the creature became fewer and finally left the range of her sense. It slept, and she walked under her companion, her mind filled with her pain and guarded by the silent grasp of the longing.

She walked and it was a joyful time. She enjoyed all the ancient relics down her hooves, the feeling of moving such mighty things and the long thoughts of helpless searching.
With more steps, more noises of waves reaching her ear and with more beams enlighten her paths, she quickly forgot about the new companion in her.

She turned her look over the wide waters of the seas. Furious and gray clouds were carried by cold winds all over the place, blocking every possible source of light. Except of the moon. They never would have had a chance to stand this powerful source, and only would turn into this mystic grayish coat that everything grew that dared to touch it.

Waves were sent against strong cliffs, filling the ash-tasting air with noises, beautiful enough to be created by the sirens.
Maybe she should hurry, it seemed that a storm was coming up - or just passed, right before her arrival.

Soon, one of the great clouds moved closer to the gray, shiny stone in the sky. Celestia wasn’t sure if it truly was going to block the vision between them, but her doubts faded with every second in which her stare moved closer to the moon, just following the movement of the cloud.

It came closer, and first rays met the particles of ash and dust. It was this time, when she became witness of a battle between giants. Rays were sent down from their master, ready to cut everything in they way into little pieces. But everything they met was a dark cloud, feasting away everything that could try to enlighten the paths below it.

It was a sight for gods, immortal eyes.

Celestia began to fade away, but just before she lost herself in the fight of giants, a throb in her chest dragged her mind back into action. A heavy breath escaped her lung. There was only one thing that was able to cause such an action.
Celestia closed her eyes and focused her mind on the big grab that guarded her pain. But for what she searched wasn’t to be found anymore. Panic slowly crept into her mind.

She extended her search, it had to be somewhere. She could feel the moon rays on her coat become weaker, and slowly not void but darkness began to fill her mind.
She searched. She began to leave the clusters of her consciousness. Not in her subconsciousness she expected it to be, but maybe somewhere between those big sections.

Even her pain became weaker, and the feeling of hard rocks under her hooves faded slowly away. The darkness became stronger, a big cloud of nothing more than unknown being that surrounded her thoughts. It was a wonderful feeling. She stepped further through her mind, and as the blackness became nearly perfect, a little white ball came into her view. She stepped closer to it, curiously. Feared.

She stepped closer and as she reached it, she laid her head down on it, listening to what was inside. She heard nothing. There was no throb in the white cotton ball. But it had to. This was were the animal laid down. Celestia turned her head away from the ball. She would find it.

Celestia entered deeper spheres of her mind, and the darkness, so seemingly perfect just a moment ago, filled now everything in her senses. She saw it, she smelled it and she tasted it. It was a taste of decay, rotting.

The darkness seemed endless, at least until a little glow came into view miles away. She knew that glow too well. It was that glow that rested in the deepest circles of the mind of every being. It was her soul. She had to reach it.

It was odd. As she stepped closer, the light should have become brighter, bigger, fighting the alimentary darkness back. But it didn’t. It nearly seemed, as if the darkness itself was casting Celestia into the light, like a mother that gave birth to a child. But she was already alive. The pain had told her.

The light wasn’t hurting her eyes. It called for her and the darkness pushed her forward. Only the steps hurt her thoughts. Every time when she came closer, a throb resonated through the endless darkness and herself, raising in its intensity constantly. Soon it filled her like a thunderbolt. She was barely able to stand it. If only her heart could fall quiet again.

Suddenly, everything fell quiet. The throbs stopped and the darkness faded. The light however extended and soon filled the whole space around her.

Celestia found herself standing in a white void, alone and empty. The noises felt quite. The pain, the longing, the hurting. All of them were gone.
Slowly she turned her head around and tried to find any spot in this place that seemed to be different in any possible way. She had to find something to reach.

And this time it wasn’t hard to find.
Celestia turned around. Behind her, a guise was standing deadly silent. It was cadaverous and had big black wings. She cried for pain, she cried for terror to fill up her mind. But she was all alone. Alone with this evil creature, a butterfly at her soul.

She looked at it. It were focusing her with anger and thirst. She knew that it wanted her blood. Then it began to move. It came closer to her, and Celestia knew that she had to die now.

As it reached her, a gentle smile crept across its face and it bowed down to her, to whisper words into her ear.

“It’s not my fault. I can’t stand it. I’m only a wild animal.”

--

Celestia awoke sweating in her bed. The moon was still standing high in the sky, and filled her chambers with bright light. Her eyes shot open, and screams were escaping her royal chest. She screamed as loud as she could, everything should vanish from her, she wanted to scream everything away.
As her lung ran out of air, she sank back into her comforting pillows. Sweat ran down her face and she wasn’t able to stop her eyes from twitching around until she was finally falling back into a seemingly endless sleep.

Circumstances

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Of Law and Friendship
Circumstances

Celestia walked up and down in her private chambers. It couldn't be. It can't be. But what was she saying. She knew that the day would come, but it came so swiftly. The elements – they're just too powerful. Back in old days, when her mother gave the Elements of Harmony to her and Luna, she warned them. She warned them how dangerous this artifacts are: that their power corrupts, that their power can drive even the bravest ponies into madness. Of course they did. Old relics from an old, ancient age, a discordant age, relics, distributing the power to change whole creations. For the better – or for the worse. Oh, and they did. It was almost pathetic. A god fell to his own weapons.

It was no other pony than her mother who stole the elements and ended Discord's kingdom. But no, not the age of the elements. She never was able to destroy them and so she did the only thing she could do: she guarded them. She guarded them with her life, and as that came to an end after thousands of lifetimes, she gave this burden to her two children. How could she have done this?

Guard the possibly most powerful artifacts alone is one thing. Splitting up that burden up between two Alicorns, who were literally as different as day and night, was something complete different.

Over millennia the two sisters ruled together over the legacy of their mother. But with each day that passed, the two rulers separated further and further. Celestia, ruler of day, goddess of the sun itself, the birth-giving orb that illuminated the day for ponies since day zero, was always intended to keep them away from her kingdom. She didn't want to take any risks.

But Luna, ruler of the night and goddess of the moon and shadows of the night, had other plans. She wanted to use them – make the world even better. The night had still many daunts in it – daunts that the day hadn't to fear. But Celestia didn't understand. Oh, why didn't she? Why didn't she give at least a bit of that energy to her sister? But no, she didn't want to trust even her own blood when it came to the elements.

And so it came that Luna began to turn away from the kingdom. How could she give all her love and energy to a kingdom which didn't trust her? Or at least, the main-ruler of it didn't. But what's the difference? There was no trust for her. Well, then she had to make them trust her. That's how Nightmare Moon was born. She never would forget that day.

She sat in the throne-room as she did so many days before, carrying for her beloved kingdom as Luna charged in. She wasn't at sleep as she was usually at this time, and she wasn't Luna either. Her set of teeth was transformed to a lethal one, ready to bite even through the most muscular necks. Her necklace was replaced by a dark, shining armor and even her eyes changed from that pure, lovely eternal blue into sharp slits, green as the deadliest poison. But the most terrifying change was her voice – without any doubt. It was a loud one, claiming and cold.

“Give me the elements or die.” The words still rang in her ears.

Nightmare Moon threw all the solar-guards out of the throne-room, faster than Celestia thought it would even be possible. And then, Nightmare Moon engaged her own blood with a glowing horn, not even letting the tiniest room for any speaking.

Celestia had no choice. The only way to save her kingdom was to use the power that summoned this danger. Ah, that's only possible with a creation formed by Discord. Making ponies able to live a peaceful life, full of joy and free of any harm. But in the same moment, creating the biggest dangers for them, making life so valuable. What a shame.

It was that night, when a new shape was spotted at the moon. The folk named it the 'mare in the moon'. Oh, they had no idea how right they were with that.

It followed another period of piece, free from influences of the elements. But as anything, this wasn't supposed to last forever. The day came, when Celestia got another protege, a follow-up for Starswirl the Bearded. After his death she wasn't able to train another one for a long time, but with Twilight Sparkle's show at the test for a talented-class, that fact changed as so many did. She trained her as good as she could. Maybe a bit too good. Coincidence or not, it was just in the years of Twilight Sparkle's being where the thousand-years-prison for Nightmare Moon, or her sister Luna if you want it that way, ended. Celestia tried everything. But there simply wasn't any way to keep the shadow away. Nightmare Moon returned, as raging as she was when she was sent up to a cold, lonely prison.
Twilight, being the perfect royal protege she was, knew of the elements and their powers to recover ponies from total madness. She tried to find them, to get rid of Nightmare Moon and to save the world. Of course she didn't knew that Nightmare Moon was a mad-running goddess of the night, forgotten by the recordings to the blessing of Celestia herself. It was too painful. But she tried as hard as she could to save her world. Who could blame her for that? Well, Discord maybe, but he was standing still in his stone prison as he stood so many years now.

It was the first time in her life, when Celestia didn't know what to do. Her sister was free again – searching for the power of the Elements of Harmony and willing to kill everything in her way. Celestia could use the elements again, sending Luna back to the moon for another millennium. But that wasn't possible without involving outstanding, mortal ponies. And she didn't want that. The elements should stay covered, unknown to ponykind as long as possible. She didn't want to risk that. Not yet.

Another big mistake in her live.

On the fateful day of return, the goddess of the sun didn't came to a rather important celebration in a rather unimportant ville, simply called Ponyville. She was too busy. She had to guard the elements once again. With her life or even with the blood of her own family, when it had to be. But it wouldn't be necessary. Celestia wasn't a fool. After Luna was banished to the moon, she switched the location of her artifacts. She brought them to an old castle in the Everfree Forest. Discord's old residence.

And Nightmare Moon didn't know that. So while Celestia was busy in an empty chamber, which was once guarding the treasure of might, Nightmare Moon was sharp-minded. She knew that her sister wouldn't be that pathetic in her acting, letting them laying where they were as she was forced to go. So she did what a princess of the night possibly does best: she vanished into the shadows and let Twilight Sparkle do all the research work. What a lucky circumstance that this pony showed up just at her revelation. All she had to do was to give that pathetic, little, mortal pony a chance to find them and then deny her chance to banish her for another millennium. A good plan. What could a mortal do against a goddess all on her own?

But then, something happened that neither the Princess of the day nor the Princess of the night saw coming: Twilight Sparkle found a way to the elements, but with the help of five other mortal ponies – oh, both Princesses would have called them rather unimportant before that – she used them. Six ponies, each one mortal and rather pathetic in the comparison to Nightmare Moon, gained contact to the Elements of Harmony themselves. What was this? Embodiment of pure power? Celestia's mother failed to tell them about such a possibility. Maybe even she didn't know. Even if she was an old and wise Alicorn, the Elements always were something that she feared, never up to an investigation around them.

So however this was possible, it was. They used them, gained the powers of them and changed the mind of a goddess. Change the mind of a goddess. Imprison one is believable, but change one? Discord surely outperformed himself with this creation.

Even if Celestia was the goddess of the sun, she wasn't able to keep her mind clean at this moment. She was a goddess and immortal, sure, but compared to her mother she was still a rather young goddess. What was this all about? Why were mortals able to erase Nightmare Moon out of Luna's mind and she once wasn't? Why did Luna lay there, as young as she was and why were everything still that fine? She didn't care, her own blood, her little sister Luna, was save and not going to be away for another millennium again. Oh, she missed her lovely company. And she was there again.

She didn't want to ask any questions at this point. Maybe she should have. For sure she should. Countless were the hours where she thought about that day and Discord's last words, as her mother told them to her.

“Those who laugh now, feeling the joy of live, will see it. They will be gone, just as snow at spring.”

She didn't understand that sentence for a long time. She did search for answers, but never found anything that satisfied her mind.

In the end, however, satisfaction was nothing that she should have cared about at all. Maybe that was the big answer. With the youngest happenings, she understood everything. Why the elements were what they was. Why Luna once wanted them. Why something that peaceful and joyful had to be so vulnerable. It was as it always was. A new kingdom, built on the ruins of Discord's world. Always being influenced by his spirit to the very deep core. Life for joy, die for enjoyment.

It filled her mind with hatred. Why had this to be? The mortals hadn't anything to do with those old happenings. But Discord wouldn't spent a single through about that. Oh, how much she wished him to be at the place of Twilight now. Her mother was wrong. His punishment didn't hit the spot. It was too simple. He should burn, down, in the deepest circles of Tartarus. She was wrong. Life simply didn't need chaos and disorder to exist. She was wrong.

Celestia let out angry cry. It was no use. She could rage as long as she wanted, nothing would change. She had to meet her protege face to face. In fact, she didn't see Twilight for some days now. Not since the judgment had fallen and Twilight was given into Luna's hooves as it was tradition in those cases.

The days that followed passed rather quickly. There was too much to be done and nopony in the higher positions of power had actually much time to think about the events. But than the day came when Luna called for Celestia. It was three days in the past, when one of the loyal palace-stallions came to her chambers with the message that said the prisoner was ready now to enter the last state of punishment. And that Celestia's presence was needed. Both leaders had to be present for this. It was what the law said.

She sent the stallion back, with a message for Luna this time. She wanted the prisoner to be able to talk - technically, at least.

But she couldn't. The pain was too big. For three days she didn't left this room by now. But it was time. She had to. To guard the creation sometimes meant to harm the same.

Burn Discord, burn..

With that last thought, she went to the exit of her private chambers. A rather big door, golden, and usual guarded by two of the bravest guards in whole of Equestria. But not today. There was no need to guard the Princess. Not today. And besides, she wanted to be alone. No pony had to hear her angry monologues.

She left her chambers, turning to the right where a slightly darker corridor was leading to a circular staircase and which she didn't use for a while now. Why should she? It let to a deeper dungeon, used for those who deserved a harder punishment than others. It laid deep down in the earth, guarded once by heavy doors and several guards. But those times passed. Peace made them useless, no one needed to be imprisoned in these ways nowadays. Well, not to the last happenings at least.

Celestia hesitated a second, but cleared her mind as fast as the hesitation arrived. She had to do this.

She made the first step, away from her chambers and the shiny stairs, leading down to a little preparation-room of the throne-hall itself. She stepped forward, coming closer to her dark descend.

The old circular staircase was rather little, not giving much space for many ponies to walk down. Of course not. This corridor was only to be used by her and Luna.

She made her first steps down the stairs and were greeted by the shine of the soul-lamps. It made her stop in her tracks instantly. She didn't came here for such a long time that she nearly forgot about these. Prisoners who were unlucky enough in the old days to end up in these corridors didn't went to eternity with the end of they punishment. Or they did, to be technically exact. However, before they could enter it, another part of punishment was waiting for them. Their souls, their pure energy of being, weren't given free with death. It was captured and attached to a enchanted rod, giving light to the environment for a really long time. Gaining light by the restless burning of rotten souls. You listened closely to hear silent screams from the lamps. Perfect to fight bad moods.

Celestia shook her head. This wasn't the time for getting distracted by old circumstances. She simply had to ignore them. And she was good when it came to this sort of action.

Celestia continued her walk, crossing several soul-lamps. No time for distractions. Not today.

As she went deeper, getting more and more stairs behind her, another sort of silent screams reached her ears, too loud for soul-lamps.

She knew too good who sent them. There were only two ponies around here, and only one of them had a reason to scream.

She walked further. The screams grew louder with every hoofstep and the count of soul-lamps did fall slightly, causing the whole place becoming darker. She welcomed the shadows. There was no need to see things in a clear vision right now.

Before she finished her thoughts, a big and heavy door came into vision. It looked neglected. The door was made of heavy oak and a little, rusty doorknob made of copper was attached to it.

So this was it, she was there.

Over it, a metal-sign was attached to the cold stone-wall. "Isn't mortality the best evidence of life?"
She remembered that sign. After Luna was banished to the moon, things were getting harder for her. With only one princess, there were only one to administrate the punishments. She attached this here to have something that lighted up her mood. She really liked the sounding of the words.

However, this didn't worked today.

Celestia shook her head and placed a hoof at the door. It never was locked. What for?

For a last time, she faced one of the soul-lamps which were located on the right side of the door. It screamed silently at her, suffering in a restless burning of pain and longing.

“Oh, shut up thou fool. This is what thou deserve and we do not think about releasing thee.”

Silently, she hoped for a little sign of reaction. A little moan, anything! But no, only more screaming.
With another sigh, Celestia pushed open the door slowly and entered the halls which were empty and unused for the longest time now.

She looked around. The screams were louder now, not filtered by the heavy oak-wood anymore, but she still wasn't able to see, or hear, where they came from. Not that this was a big problem. She knew these gray, stony halls as good as every other part of her castle, regardless of how long she didn't visit them.

Her ears perked around. If she only found out which of the three corridors she had to follow, everything would become incredibly easier. Or at least she would be able to find the subject of interest.

It didn't took long. Three corridors and an endless wave of screams isn't a combination that makes it too hard to locate ponies. She headed for the middle one, the longest corridor of the three. Oh, this was really supposed to create screams. Good, old times...

Celestia lost herself in a wave of memories as she walked through the gray corridor, made of harsh stones and supplying empty cells on both sides. After a while, the last cell came into view. It was the biggest, closing the corridor in its length. The heavy door stood open, and the screams flowed freely out, right into Celestia's ears.

Whatever was in her mind at this point, it has vanished by now. No other thought should lay in her mind, nothing besides this should pull her concentration away.

"Stop the whimpering, foal! Don't thou see it's useless? Don't thou see, that not even your mentor is carrying for you anymore? She didn't come here for so long now, and without her I am not allowed to stop this. What a shame!"

Celestia finally reached the cell, containing the pony of interest and her keeper.

Twilight Sparkle laid on a stone table, what was in fact more like an altar than a table, chained and covered in her own blood. Her horn was missing. Celestia didn't know what exactly happened in the past days, but the wounds and the very fresh scars on Twilight's body told her the story. The screams weren't faked, that much was clear.

On her left side stood Luna, facing the tortured mare with a glare of pure hatred and a surgical lancet in her right hoof. Her necklace was missing. The royal jewelery was replaced by a horn, penetrated and bound at a long leather strap which connected it to Luna's neck.

It was quiet obvious that none of the both had spotted her yet, as Luna set the lancet down at the shaking mare's skin, making her cry without any further actions. Luna bowed her head a bit more down and cut slightly and cautious into the soft skin. Blood flew across the steel, and another scream filled the halls. Luna was very careful indeed, only cutting off a little piece of skin, letting the flesh unharmed – for now. She hasn't done that for a long time now, but still remembered all the tricks.

“Luna,” Celestia said in a rather determined voice.

The Princess of the night finished her cut, getting a tiny piece of skin off Twilight's flesh and cleaned her knife with a little, bloody paper. “Ah, sister. You're finally here. We began to think that you couldn't make it.”

“I did. And I see that you have started the ritual already. Didn't I say that you shall wait until I spoke to her?”

Luna turned away from Twilight to face Celestia. “Sure you did, but as far as we can remember, this is supposed to mean one, maybe two hours. Not three days.”

“It's supposed to mean that we both have to be present, no matter how long it takes.”

“Please allow us to ask,” Luna said, “what was it exactly that hold you back so long? Did the other bearers of the elements made problems?”

Celestia waved her head no, “you know that the punishment is completely in your hooves this time. It's just, I.. had to order my mind again.”

Luna laid her lancet back onto a little table and walked away from her prey, to the side of Celestia, ready to leave.
“Well, then. Do you little talk and call us when you have finished. We can't wait to get this over with.”
Celestia didn't look at her little sister, instead she made her first step into the direction of blood and pain.
“Don't worry, it won't take long.”
Luna smiled in approval, “Good. We wait outside then.”
“So it shall be.”
Luna left. Her big sister would need some time to talk to her protege. Even when she has done what she did, Celestia still is her teacher, her boss and what's more important: her second mother. With all the hatred burning inside her, she was still able to understand her sister at some point. Must be a side-effect of these darn elements.

Celestia moved over the shaking, pain-screaming mare. Seeing Twilight that close showed her how terrible she really was treated in the last three days. Her horn was missing, as much she knew already. It looked like it was cut off very rugged. Luna really had to be rushing at this point, since it was a nearly holy tradition for her in old days to delete the race-specific special parts in an act of highly carefulness. Her body didn't seemed to be threatened any better. Parts of her skin were missing here and there, her entire body was blood-covered and deep cuts seemed to be made for a bit of extra-pain. But at least she still had all four hooves, her head, and - what's more important - her tongue.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia said in a not less determined, but much softer voice.

However, she was only responded by a fearful, pain-filled moan. “Please! Stop it!”

“It's okay, Twilight. It's me, Celestia. I won't hurt you.” Celestia wanted to give a little touch to the poor mare, to signal that she really wouldn't hurt her, but she didn't found a single location at the little body that wasn't as much injured that it wouldn't hurt her even more. So she vanished that thought.

“P-princess?” Obviously, it wasn't needed. Twilight has always been a strong mare. Celestia was glad that she still recognized her.

“Yes, it's me. No harm to be taken now.” She said in the most conforming voice she was able to.

The mare looked at her mentor with the most regretful eyes she seen for a very, very long time.“P-please, can you please untie me?”

The smile Celestia tried to make up suddenly dropped to nothing. “I'm sorry Twi,” she began, “I cannot do this.”

Twilight's expression filled itself with nothing but pure terror. “But. But why, Princess?”

“Do you remember what you did?” Celestia simply asked, not sure how to handle this.

“W-well,” the terror in Twilight's eyes faded, only replaced by an empty stare, “Yes. But I didn't want to. Why, I-”

“Stop right there, my student. I know you didn't want to do such a thing. The elements are powerful, too powerful.”

“T-then free me. Please!” The mare wasn't talking in normal sentences anymore. It was more like a random mixture of shrieking and screaming. The wounds, they were too deep.

“No, Twilight. I really can't. The punishment is Luna's to be spoken as it was always done in cases of betray.”

“But I didn't betray you! I just wanted to help!”

“I know that. But that is it. You tried to use the elements on your own, facing the gate to Tartarus itself. The elements are powerful, yes. But they are called 'Elements of Harmony' for a reason. As much as I dislike it, they can't simply banish the evil out of the world. It always has to have a place somewhere. And what you did, well, did just created more trouble than even I expected you could cause in your lifetime.”

Celestia felt bad. So terrible bad. How could she simply talk in that way to her protege, to her close-to-be-daughter? It was ridiculous. But it had to be done.

“But,” Twilight collected her last bit of energy, “the seal of the gate is crumbling. You said it yourself! I just did..” Celestia almost could feel the pain in her very own chest. The pain, which must be living in Twilight's right now, “I... I wanted to renew it. Hold back the armies.”

“Yes, that may was your intention. But stealing the elements and bringing them into the range of the gate is an act of betrayal itself. Why didn't you simply asked?” Celestia wasn't sure anymore if she wanted to send all these rules to Tartarus herself as Discord once did or whether she really wanted to stay as strong as she tried to be.

“I'm sorry, Princess. It was just- I, the elements. I through it wouldn't be too-”

Celestia hushed her. “That doesn't matter anymore. You brought the elements without any permissions to the gates of Tartarus, causing the seals to get even weaker. Do you have-”

She couldn't do it. This wasn't anything that the poor mare deserved... sure, she broke one of the highest rules and sent the seals of Tartarus to the ground, but she only wanted to help.

“Do I have what?” For the first time since weeks, she heard Twilight's voice in a tone, free from all fear.

She never should have told the poor mare about the seal. Twilight feared the evil always too much. Since she became her personal student, Twilight was strong-minded to keep anything that was evil away from her world. Chaos in her works? Never to be found. Sleeping in entire darkness? Impossible! And now she had a weapon against the source of all evil. Where did that mare got her energy from?

“Do you,” Celestia hesitated, this wasn't something that she deserved, not at all, “Do you have the slightest idea what that means to Luna?”

Twilight's expression filled itself with confusion, as it did so many times before. Pain and confusion, one of the worst combinations Celestia knew.

“Luna,” she started, “was fighting the demons of this world through her entire life. As the to-be-princess of the night she had to deal with demons who lurked in the shadows since we were little foals. She always tried to fight them, but she never was able to make any significant progress. As time past, our mother gave us the elements of harmony. She warned us that they are really powerful, mighty enough to cast away every evil from the world – and every good, if they are used in a wrong way. She told us that it was our duty from this moment to guard them and keep the world save.

Luna saw a great chance in this to get rid of all the demons who harmed the night.”

Celestia's voice faded in the last sentence, and her eyes drifted away to a point that didn't exist.

“So she did use them to close Tartarus?” The mare asked.

“No. I didn't allowed her to do so. I thought it would be too much risk, since no one who was alive was able to tell what powers are sleeping in the elements. I know now that this was a bad idea, but I didn't saw the signs in these days.

Luna drifted away from me, further and further. She wanted to seal them away completely, to make the night as peaceful as the day was since the rebellion of our mother. I was too thickheaded. Until she turned into Nightmare Moon finally, becoming one of her so hated shadows herself. I didn't see the signs, and so I had no choice but to banish her to the moon. Else ways, she would possibly have crushed the old seal, also a work of our mother, spreading daemons all over Equestria. Twilight, please, believe me, I'm so so sorry.” Celestia wasn't able to keep eye contact to her anymore.

Twilight's view faded. She didn't know. She didn't want to.

“What will be with my friends?” She finally managed to say.

The white-coated goddess tried to force her brain back into action, “Well, they will be,” she hesitated to find a better saying, but it was no use, “informed. We will withdraw them any rights of being a bearer of the elements and they won't be physically harmed, you have my promise for that.”
For the last time, the pale mare smiled. “Thank you.”

“I'm so sorry, Twilight Sparkle. Goodbye.” Sometimes, immortality could be a real curse.

“Goodbye, Princess.” Twilight didn't saw the eyes of her mentor to say her farewells anymore.

Celestia reached the rusty iron-gate of the cell only seconds after Twilight spoke her last words. She didn't want to spend any further minute than needed in this merciless place.

“Luna,” she said in a voice, so little and regretful that no one would think that Celestia herself owned her.

The princess of the night raised from the cold stone-floor, happy to see her sister again.“Ah, so you finished finally. Can we do our final part now?”

“Isn't there a way to avoid this? She doesn’t deserve it.” It wasn't likely, but a last try couldn't hurt.

“We're sorry, sister. But we are bound by the law. She betrayed our kingdom and has to take the cost of it now.”

“But-”

“No but, sister. Not again. This time, I am right, and you have to follow. Or would you prefer to send a mortal to the moon?”

Celestia sighed heavily. It burned her feelings, but Luna was right. She couldn't allow herself to get downed by her emotions. The law has spoken and good intentions can't erase such a happening.

"Will you kill her?"

"I will follow the traditions of this dungeon."

“Fine then. I'm in my chambers if you need me.” Celestia said, leaving into the long, cold corridor already.

No more words were spoken. Making her way back to her chambers, she heard Twilight's screams begin again. But this time, they wouldn't last long. Why is this harmony so cold? It feels so wrong.
As the goddess of the sun reached the heavy oak door, she made up her mind. She made a decision,
to keep up with the being of goddess of the sun, the warm, life spending orb.
I will find a way to erase your pain, Twilight. I promise.
With that, the loudest scream filled the halls and a new sparkle was born.
I promise.

______________

Authors note:

Thanks for reading! If you think it's worth your time, then I would be really glad to get some feedback.