Twilight refuses to accept her ancient alicorn heritage
Finding herself with wings and unusually powerful magic, Twilight Sparkle proceeds to have breakdown after breakdown, until with the help of her friends, she confronts Celestia and Luna about it... And learns that she's a far more important little pony than she ever imagined - for all the wrong reasons.
Twilight wasn't a morning pony - never had been, as a matter of fact. But on this particular day, she probably wouldn't be an afternoon pony either.
Maybe an evening pony? What a night.
Tossing and turning for hours, she just couldn't get comfortable no matter how she contorted herself. Some point after she'd finally dropped off, she must have got all twisted. Her body was full of cramps. Maybe she'd finally have to take Rarity up on her regular offers to visit the spa.
Sure could do with a massage right about now. My back...
She was far, far to sore to fall back to sleep. She was sure her joints actually creaked as she flopped out of her bed, hooves hitting the wooden floor of her bedroom with soft thuds. She arched her back in an effort to work the worst of the kinks out.
OW! OW OW OW OW OW!
Okay, enough stretching. Stretching could wait until after breakfast.
Breakfast. Oh my. Breakfast.
She was so hungry. She couldn't ever remember feeling this hungry before. She wobbled over to the nightstand, feeling around with her magic for her hairbrush.
I'll just get this hair out of my eyes, then breakfast. Breakfast!
The hairbrush cracked, the sound like a whip. Her head jerked up, hair flying out of her eyes. She was holding the pulverised remains of the carved wooden handle. She'd crushed it. The head dangled sadly in her telekinetic grip.
Whuh... What? How did THAT happen? So HUNGRY! Augh. Forget my hair. I need breakfast.
She glanced at the mirror to see her tremendous bed-head.
Spike's gonna be laughing about this all week, the littl-
The remains of the hairbrush fell to the floor. Her hunger fled. An icy ball of horror replaced the gnawing pains in the pit of her stomach. Her eyes had opened so wide, her eyelids stung. The pony staring back at her from the glass looked aghast, the mouth agape, the colour draining rapidly from its lavender face. Above the terrified eyes, sticking out of the rumpled mess of indigo mane, a horn protruded. It was half as long again as Twilight's horn, its tip needle-sharp. The spiral fluting glistened like mother-of-pearl, and small motes of light were winking in and out all around it.
The pony in the mirror moved its eyes, just as Twilight did. Left, then right, the pinprick pupils shifted, as Twilight gazed at the ruffled feathers sticking every which way out of this strange and terrifying pony's wings.
Twilight's heart stopped for a few beats. She didn't notice. She wasn't breathing. She didn't notice this either. For nearly a full minute she gaped at the shocking reflection, the trembling in her chest spreading throughout her entire body until her hooves rattled quietly against the floor. Then, suddenly, she tore her eyes away from the mirror, whirled around, and stared at her messy bed. Full of lavender feathers.
She started to pass out. Her knees hit the floor, blackness crept into the edges of her vision, huge rolling waves of nausea pulsed through her. Her heart beat so fast and hard that it ached, the blood pumping through her ears sounded as loud as a train. She started breathing again, great, wracking gasps of air that burned through her throat and chest.
"Spike..." she choked out.
Come on, Twilight, get a grip. Just breathe. Breathe. That's it. Nice, deep, even breaths. Don't think. Just breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
"Spike," she whispered.
Breathe, damnit! Slow, steady, calming breaths. Good. That's it. One more, deep, hold it in, aaaaaaand...
"SPIIIIIIIIIIIKE!" she yelled. "SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE SPIIIIIIIIIIIKE!"
The rushing sound that was filling her ears muffled the patter of quick feet running up the passage. She staggered to her hooves in a daze, lurched sideways, and fell out of her bed-loft with a shriek, collapsing in a heap on her main bedroom floor.
The door opened. "Twilight? What's wrong? Twilight? Twilight! Did you fall? Are you hurt? Why are you covered in... feathers..."
Twilight opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry, but she could make out Spike holding up a wing, near the tip. His eyes were dilating, then they rolled back into his head. Spike toppled gently over onto his back with a soft thump.
This was far, far too much to deal with for one morning. Twilight felt her grip on reality finally snap, and as her head hit the wooden bedroom floor, she joined the little dragon in blissful unconsciousness.
"Should we send for the Princess? I really think we should. This is, well, quite unusual."
"Unusual? It's crazy! Unicorns aren't supposed to have wings! Not proper pegasus wings anyway! Those butterfly wings were bad enough!"
"Rainbow Dash, I have apologised over and over for my deplorable display at the competition, and thanked you countless times for saving my life! Why must you keep bringing those awful events up?!"
"Quit yer hollerin', you two, she's comin' round. The last thing she's gonna need is an argument right now."
Three anxious faces swam out of the blackness, fuzzy and indistinct at first, then colours and detail came flooding in. Twilight jerked upright with a start, panting a little. Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Three of her best friends.
"Oh, GIRLS!" Twilight gasped. The three ponies jumped a little, then uttered surprised exclamations as Twilight launched herself up off her couch and caught all three of them into a bone-shattering hug.
"Hey now, sugar-cube, you don't wanna be throwin' yerself around like that. Yer' unwell, is what you are, an' we're here to make sure you're okay." Applejack's familiar drawl made Twilight start sobbing.
"Y-you're here! I... I w-wanted my friends! I was d-dreaming about all of you! N-nightmares! I couldn't f-find you and I needed you and... How did... Did Spike get you?" The other three gently started extricating themselves, and each other, from Twilight's shaking grip.
"Calm down, Twilight, we're here for you," said the purple-maned unicorn that was gently pushing Twilight back down onto the couch. "Spike ran straight to the Boutique to tell me, I ran here while he went to get the others... Ah, darling, I must confess I was quite taken aback. I lifted you down here, straightened out and folded your... new additions, and got you settled in on your couch."
"Then he ran inter me as I wuz gettin' ma stand set up fer the day," Applejack said. "He ran off ter get Dash, and I ran here."
"He yelled 'til I woke up," Rainbow Dash put in, "and I raced to Fluttershy's. Then we got Pinkie on the way back, and we, um..."
"Spike's upstairs in bed, he's had a terrible shock, poor thing. And Fluttershy had to go back and check on her animals, she should be right back, and we have no idea where Pinkie Pie disappeared to. She was here a minute ago," Rarity said. "She's probably planning you a party to celebrate your... um..."
"We've all bin' waitin' fer you to open yer eyes. We wuz about to send Dash here to go fetch the doctor, but you woke up an'..." Applejack gaped as Twilight leaped back off the couch. "Hey now! You need rest! Now just you come back here, Twilight!"
The three of them raced after Twilight, straight into the library's small kitchen. Twilight, wings trailing behind her, had made a beeline straight for the fridge. Her head was jammed inside it, munching on something. Applejack stuck her own head in, next to Twilight's. "Hungry, huh, sugarcube?" Twilight didn't answer. Her eyes were closed, and she was gulping down a bunch of droopy carrots. "Hey, uh, I got fresher carrots'n those out at mah stand. I can go get yeh somethin' if yeh like?"
The sound of the front door closing floated through from the main room of the library. Twilight had finished the carrots - stalks and all - and was starting on a couple of turnips, when Fluttershy trotted into the kitchen. "Oh! Twilight, are you okay? You're up. Should you be up? Should you be" - Twilight let out a belch to make Spike proud, and started to attack a lettuce - "um, eating quite so much food?"
Well, she did just have, ya know, a growth spurt," Rainbow Dash pointed out as Applejack backed up. "Happens every moult for a pegasus. You have to regrow all your feathers in a single night, and you're just so far beyond hungry the next morning that you can go a little crazy if there isn't enough food in the house."
"Really? I don't get so hungry after a moult, Dashie."
"Well, no offense, Fluttershy, pal, but you don't really burn through the energy I do. Could be metabolism?"
"Oh! Yes, I'm sure that's what it must be," Fluttershy nodded.
"Whatta you think, Fluttershy?" Applejack asked, continuing the conversation that herself, Rarity and Rainbow Dash had been having before Twilight came around. "They ain't no pegasus wings. They can't be. Twilight's a unicorn!" She shook her head in protest. "Ponies don't just go an' grow themselves a set a' wings overnight. It's gotta be a spell."
"They ARE pegasus wings, Applejack! I would know! I'M a pegasus!" Dash pointed out, quite unnecessarily, from near the ceiling.
"Well, they can't be alicorn wings," Fluttershy offered. "I mean, the only alicorns are the Princesses."
"Ah, Twilight, darling, you're... you're not a princess, are you?" Rarity asked, a little timidly.
"They're not pegasus wings," Twilight said as she withdrew her head from her now-empty refrigerator and nudged the door closed with a back hoof. She licked her lips. "I'm not a pegasus. I can't possibly have pegasus wings. And if it was a spell, I didn't cast it. As far as I know, there's no spell that can grow feathered wings on a pony. And they absolutely positively just can not be alicorn wings, because there's no way that I could be an alicorn." A worried frown crossed her eyes, and she glanced up quickly at her horn.
Don't think about that. Don't think about that.
"Twilight, they are definitely pegasus wings. Look!" Rainbow Dash plopped to the floor and stretched her own wings up and out. "Can you do that? We'll see what they look like when you hold them up!"
Twilight looked back over her shoulder at her wings. They were hanging limply down at her sides. She tried to move them. Nothing happened. "Nope," she said. She tried again. They twitched, and Twilight gasped. "I felt something! It's like..." she concentrated, grunting slightly. Slowly, very slowly, they started to rise. "Aha! I've got to use muscles I didn't have until this morning! I think... " The feathers seemed to be straightening out of their own accord. There was a brief, slow flutter, and then the wings folded neatly against her sides. "Okay. Okay. Step one. Stay with me, girls. Keep my mind off how I got them for the moment, alright? I'll start going crazy if I... Just keep me talking, okay?" There were nods of agreement.
"Sure, we can do that. Can you raise 'em up so they look like this?" Dash asked, giving her own upraised pair a small shake.
"Let's find out," Twilight replied. Her wings flapped open. "Oh! They sure can move once you know how! Okay. Upright. Let's see..." Twilight's wings arched up until they mirrored Rainbow's pose. "Like this?"
Rainbow Dash's own wings wilted. Her jaw dropped open to mirror the looks on Fluttershy's, Rarity's and Applejack's faces.
"What?" said Twilight. "What's the matter?"
"They're not pegasus wings," Dash whispered.
"Of course they're not pegasus wings! I'm not a pegasus!"
"Oh my..." Fluttershy squeaked.
"They look like..." Rarity was even whiter than usual. "They look like..."
"Princess Celestia's wings," Applejack breathed.
The wings in question hit the kitchen floor with an audible "flooooomph."
The five best friends stared at each other in utter silence. After a very long moment, Rarity broke it.
"Your horn," she whispered. "Twilight, your horn. It's bigger. And far too sharp to be a unicorn horn..."
Twilight had started shaking again. Rarity took a step forwards to comfort her, when an explosion of confetti, streamers, and balloons seemed to erupt out of nowhere, accompanied by a cacophony of sound that hammered off the walls of the tiny kitchen like particularly cheerful thunder.
"SUR-PRIIIIISE! IT'S YOUR CONGRATULATIONS-ON-GETTING-YOUR-NEW-WINGS PARTY!" shrilled Pinkie Pie, shoving a party hat over Twilight's horn and grinning, quite literally, from ear to ear.
The party hat burst into flames, and Twilight hit the floor, screwing up her eyes, curling her legs and wings tightly into a ball, and starting to shudder violently.
They had her back out on the couch, still curled up, but not shaking any more. The five mortal ponies in the room cast worried glances at each other, and at their potentially newly-immortal friend. Everypony felt uneasy about something they couldn't quite put their hooves on. Predictably, it was Pinkie Pie who brought up the elephant in the room, in the way that only Pinkie Pie could.
"Okay, we'll just have to hold off on the party until later, that's all. So tell me! Is Twilight really an alicorn?! Huh? Huh? Is she? Is she gonna help Celestia and Luna rule Equestria from the castle in Cante-"
Everypony gasped. Twilight gave a shudder, but then lay still again.
"Oh no," Pinkie said in a very small, very sad voice.
"We'll never see her again!" Rarity wailed. "Of all the things that could happen!"
"Now hold on a minute!" Dash said, with heat in her voice. "Twilight lives HERE. In PONYVILLE. Sure, she grew up in Canterlot, but this is her HOME."
"We ain't lettin' her go without a fight," Applejack almost growled.
"The Princesses can't just come and take her away! I won't let them!" Fluttershy shouted, then immediately squeaked and tried to hide behind Spike.
"Why would Celestia want to take Twilight away from Ponyville?" Spike asked. "Like Rainbow Dash said, this is her home now. Where her friends are."
"Spike!" Rarity said. "You woke up? How do you feel?"
"Fine, now," Spike grumped. He didn't sound fine. "I just had a shock, you know? And I did run pretty hard to get you ponies here. I am just a baby dragon."
"Spike, do you know anything about what's happened to Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Not a clue. They're definitely alicorn wings. They got a certain feel to the feathers. Right after I touched them this morning, I think I had a bit of a meltdown. I mean, come on! Twilight's gotta be an alicorn! Explains why her magic's so powerful, huh?" Spike offered. "Anyway, when I came round again, Twilight was out cold herself, so I sprinted for help."
"D-d-d-d..." Twilight murmered. Her eyes fluttered open.
"Twi'?" Applejack asked, deep concern in every feature of her expression.
"Spike... D-definitely alicorn wings?"
Spike looked anxious. "Feel like alicorn feathers to me, Twilight." He rubbed his wrist with his other hand.
"Don't let it get you down, Twilight! We're all here for you and we'll help you and we won't let the Princesses touch one hair of your mane!" Pinkie Pie said with uncharacteristic seriousness as Twilight started to shake again. "Speaking of which, you really should brush it out. I almost can't see your pointy new horn!" Pinkie giggled, then poked a hoof at the tip.
BANG.
Wailing in pain and shock, Pinkie flew violently through the air and smashed into a bookcase. Everypony else shouted in surprise. Twilight leaped from the couch and moved with surprising speed towards the smoldering pink heap that had slid down the wall to the floor.
"PINKIE!!!"
They all crowded around Twilight. She was shoving books off Pinkie and turning her over, rubbing her face. "Pinkie! Pinkie!"
Fluttershy bent an ear to Pinkie Pie's slightly-smoking chest. "She's breathing. Her heart's beating. Oh my goodness!"
"Owie-owie-ow!" Pinkie said, shaking her head. "Oooh!"
"Pinkie! You're alright!" Twilight gasped. "Are you hurt? Anything broken? Should we get you to the hospital?"
Pinkie sat up, now shaking her head violently. "I think I'm okay. Wowie, Twilight, what was that? That hurt! My Pinkie Sense sure didn't see that one coming!" She looked at her hoof. There was a small black burn-mark right where she'd touched Twilight's horn. "Oochie! Lucky that's on my hoofsie! That coulda really hurt otherwise!"
"The party hat!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed. "Twilight, you didn't make it catch fire on purpose, did you?"
"What? On fire?" Twilight asked with a confused expression.
"I put a party hat right over your horn and it went up in flames! I thought you were just adding a really nice touch to the decorations, but then you went and curled up," Pinkie explained.
"Wait, wait. This morning... I went to brush my hair..." Twilight said quietly.
She ignited her horn and telekinetically poked the bronze pony-head bust sitting on the centre table. It rocked back and forth. "Feels the same as ever," she said. She picked it up.
Her aura was still deep red. She glanced up and saw the same colour surrounding her horn... But it was definitely brighter than it had ever been. Sharper. And those little motes of light...
The bust groaned.
They all looked at it.
With a deep, metallic crunching sound, the hollow bust collapsed in on itself. Shrieks all around.
I've never been that... strong before!
Twilight swayed on the spot as the realisation threatened to overwhelm her.
I've never been anywhere near that powerful...
"Twilight, dear, is it correct to assume that you... did not mean to do that?" Rarity asked.
"Rarity! I've seen you levitate dozens of things at the same time! You're really good at telekinesis! Could you have... squashed this bust?" Twilight asked, waving the still-groaning piece of metal in front of her.
"Twilight! Please! I can lift dozens of things like ribbons and fabric and needles and thread and scissors at once, and I could cheerfully lift that bust, but I couldn't have CRUSHED it! It took all the effort I had to levitate you downstairs this morning!"
I'm TOO strong.
"I couldn't have crushed it yesterday either," Twilight said. "I'd have to use a spell designed to crush it... Not just ordinary levitation. I did the same thing to my hairbrush this morning as well. Telekinesis... Telekinesis. Hmmm." She reached up and tapped the tip of her horn.
"Twilight! No!" shouted the entire room.
Nothing happened. Twilight poked it a few more times. It felt a bit... warm. "It's attached to my forehead, girls. I'm sure it's only if something else comes into contact with it. Looks like I can't control my magic at the moment."
Because you've never had any reason to learn how to control this much magic before.
"Spike! I need 'So How Exactly Do You Control A Floodgate?' It's around here somewhere!" She grabbed a book off the top shelf with her horn, and it exploded into dust. "Oh! Right. Spike, looks like you'd better, uh, try to find it."
"It's over here! Don't grab it!" Spike called, zipping down a ladder and trotting over with a book that was almost as big as he was.
"Floodgates? What in the hay?" Applejack asked.
"It's a metaphor. It means how to control the amount of magic you're using. Most unicorns don't need to know how to do that," Twilight said pensively as she turned pages with a hoof, "but I did. And I can't remember how to, uh, throttle it right down. Aha!"
Twilight read voraciously. "I need to keep my mind off certain things at the moment, girls. If I keep thinking about them, well... I think I'll have another breakdown. And we want to avoid that for the moment. I need to figure out how to really screw my magic down to a trickle, and then I think we're all going to go and pay Celestia a visit."
"What?!" from two or three ponies.
"No way!" from Rainbow Dash.
"She'll make you live in the castle and never see us again and you're our friend and I'll miss you so much and..." Pinkie trailed off. Twilight looked up from the page and over to her. Pinkie's face was sadder than Twilight had ever seen it.
"I'm not going anywhere, girls! I need answers! I need them fast. And the only pony that can give them to me is Celestia!"
Twilight Sparkle stood on the ground in front of the barn at Sweet Apple Acres. It worked. She'd done it.
Then she heard the thuds.
Five disheveled ponies were picking themselves up off the ground, while Spike, standing, fought to contain his laughter. Applejack actually looked like she might be sick. "Woah, Nellie," she said, standing on unsteady hooves. "Mah stomach must still be back at the library!"
"I didn't like that," Fluttershy said in a very small voice. "Oh, I really didn't like that."
"Really? I LOVED IT!" Dash exclaimed, doing a backflip. "Twilight, that felt like I was going about a million miles an hour!"
"Right, so I can levitate things safely. At last." She stifled a small sigh, thinking about her ruined furniture. "And I can teleport. And I can teleport really far. And I can teleport lots of other ponies with me," Twilight finished. "I don't think I'm too much of a danger to be out and about any more. Just one more test!"
Fluttershy opened her mouth to say something - and then promptly fell over on the wooden floor of the library. "Wait, Twilight, I think I'll just... walk back. Oh."
Everypony else had arrived standing, this time. Applejack still looked a bit sick. Dash was in the air when they had left the farm, and hadn't actually re-landed yet. Pinkie Pie was crosseyed.
"Oooh, Twilight! That really is the funniest feeling!" Her eyes slid back into focus. "What next?" Pinkie, in particular, had been having the most fun out of all of them. A true party pony at heart, having hundreds of magical spells and tricks being tested around her was like letting a foal loose in a candy store. Or even, like letting Pinkie herself loose in a candy store.
"Like I said, just one more test. I need to see just... how far my magic can go." She trotted up the winding staircase to the highest balcony, and magicked open the doors.
Nice to be able to do that again without turning the doors into splinters.
Her friends emerged onto the balcony behind her, some, like Pinkie and Rainbow Dash, looking eager and excited. Applejack looked wary. Fluttershy looked downright terrified. Pinkie bounced over to her and gave her an enormous hug. The terror in Fluttershy's eyes seemed to get worse.
"Now don't you worry, Fluttershy! We're doing this to help Twilight! Our best friend! She's so scared about what's happened to her that if she even thinks about it, for just ONE MEASLY SECOND, she goes all scaredy-shakey and squeezes herself into a ball! So let's just keep helping to distract her!"
Thanks a bunch, Pinkie. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts...
"Right. So. You know that, before Celestia and Luna, Unicorn ponies raised the sun and moon every day. And it would take hundreds and hundreds of them working together to do it?"
"We were all in that holiday pageant, Twilight," Rarity offered. "You think you..." What she was saying hit her. "You're going to try to move the SUN?! What if something goes wrong?!"
"I'm not going to try to move the sun. I'm going to try to touch it."
"Oh, no no no!" Pinkie exclaimed. "Twilight, you'll burn yourself!"
"Touch it TELEKINETICALLY, Pinkie." Pinkie's blank expressions were never the same twice. "Like, with my MAGIC."
"Ohhhhhhhhh. Okie-dokie!" she grinned, then bounced up to the railing to watch the show.
"Are you shure, Twi? I mean, ya really wanna go pokin' the sun with yer mind, like?"
"Why not, Applejack? Celestia does it every day. And ordinary unicorns used to do it once. But a single unicorn can't possibly reach the sun on their own."
"Biggest test possible, huh? Well it IS you, sugarcube." All the same, Applejack still stepped back a pace or two.
"Right." Twilight looked directly into the sun. The automatic reaction to squint... wasn't there?
I'm staring directly into the afternoon sun with my eyes wide open and I can see it perfectly and quickly before I lose my nerve...
Igniting her horn, Twilight reached out.
And out.
It's SO far away!
...Oh.
Well, that feels... creepy.
She knew that the thing she was touching with her magic was impossibly remote, impossibly hot, and impossibly... enormous. She could feel how to grab it, how to fling it around the sky, how easy it would be to...
Better not. Want to get Celestia's attention, not the attention of all of Equestria. This is the creepiest thing I've ever done.
"Now that is CREEPY," said Rainbow Dash.
"How do you know what it feels like?" Twilight asked in alarm, looking around. "Dash... Why are you so small?"
"Uh, no, I mean you, Twilight..."
She was looking down at all of her friends. She glanced down at the balcony. Still standing on it. So she hadn't started floating, or anything like that.
"Twilight, you're... so big! A-and your mane!" squeaked Fluttershy, clearly terrified.
A wisp of indigo smoke drifted over one of Twilight's eyes.
"Oh my, darling! You look... You look amazing!" Rarity cried. "You look like Princess Celestia!"
Twilight craned her neck around and looked at her tail. Behind two enormous upraised wings, a tight, toned waist and shimmering flanks, a sparkling sheen of violet hues that seemed to waft there instead of hair. And she was looking at her tail down a...
...a long lavender muzzle...
Twilight released her hold on the sun in shock. The world seemed to get bigger - all of her friends shot up in height. The wood under her hooves got closer. Unruly purple hair flumped down over her right eye.
Well, this is sure starting to add up to that thing that I don't want to think about because if I think about it then I start shaking and... Stop it. Stop it. Calm. Cool. Collected.
"Okay," Twilight said, turning to face her friends. The looks on their faces were almost as creepy as the feeling of holding the sun with her mind. "I know what I'm going to do. Somehow, something to do with... with whatever happened to me last night, something's letting me seem to cope with crisis. And I'm getting better and better at it every time I start to get all... Well. You know I've never been very good at that before," she admitted, somewhat sheepishly.
"Sugarcube, when everythin's goin' peachy, yer jus' peachy yerself. But we ALL know that when our good friend Twilight starts gettin' all flustered-like, we all gotta step up to the plate," Applejack said firmly. "Same as you'd do fer any'o us."
"Yes, I know, I know, and I think having you here with me today is what's making me cope! I... I'm terrified." Twilight looked at her front hooves. "I really do think that I'm an alicorn. There's no doubt, really. Not any more. Not after... after that..." She looked up at her friends, couldn't hold their gaze. "I think that I'm going to have to go and help rule Equestria," she told the floor.
Pinkie Pie let out a sob. Twilight looked up. The bubbly pink earth pony had sat down, legs akimbo, and was openly weeping. "N-n-nuh-not going to let that happen."
Oh, Pinkie...
Twilight walked to her happiest, saddest friend and pulled her into a hug. Then more tears came, from Twilight, from Applejack and Rarity holding each other and bawling, soft sobs from Fluttershy, choked whimpers from Rainbow Dash who'd grabbed hold of Twilight and Pinkie, then they were all holding each other, sobbing, shaking. Muffled words and bits of phrases came through the sobs to Twilight's ears.
"Yer not g-goin'."
"We, we love y-y-you, T-t-t-t..."
"I CAN'T LOSE A FRIEND! I CAN'T! I CAAAAAN'T!"
Everypony was so surprised, they stopped crying. As the others backed up, Twilight lifted a choking, gasping Pinkie Pie off the floor where she had just thrown herself, and into another hug.
What is this?
Twilight knew that Pinkie was pretty insecure about herself, and the outer veneer of joy and happiness was paper-thin. She valued her friends more than anything, because... Because...
Because she didn't have friends as a filly either. Just like me. And now she does, and she's... She's scared to death that she'll lose them...
Well. Maybe now I can do something about that.
Twilight looked into Pinkie's swimming eyes. Pinkie must have seen something on Twilight's face, because she stopped sobbing and sat back, gazing at her. As the tears dripped off the end of Pinkie's muzzle, Twilight spoke, first to Pinkie, then looking around at the rest of her very best friends.
"But if I really am a princess, then I can do pretty much what I like, right? And if that means that what I want to do is to stay RIGHT HERE" - she stomped a hoof on each syllable - "then that's what I'm going to do. Even if it means telling Celestia that... that she can take her lessons and rules and everything else and just shove them! Because I am NOT leaving my friends!"
The joy on Pinkie Pie's face told her that she'd made the right decision, whatever were to come from it.
"Now, are ya sure? Ah mean, REALLY sure about this?" a very flustered Applejack was saying.
"Really, really sure. I've been practicing, haven't I? Nothing bad happened when we went to your farm, did it?"
"'Ceptin' we all fell over. Now that's all fine an' dandy, sugarcube, but Canterlot is one heck of a lot further away than Sweet Apple Acres!"
"It's not the distance. I could only teleport a hundred feet or so before. Now I could... I could probably teleport to the moon." Twilight shook off the feelings that last thought gave her.
"Ah'm not sayin' Ah won't do it. I'd do anythin' fer you, Twilight, you know Ah will. But is burstin' in on the princess really such a good idea?"
"Probably not. But this is pretty serious."
"It's an awesome idea, Twilight! I mean, she won't really be angry at us, right?" Dash asked. Twilight could tell that she was much more worried about this trip than her demeanour showed.
"No idea. Only way to do it, though. So, are we ready?"
"Oh my goodness, no!" Rarity trilled, trotting forward with a hairbrush. "We're going to see the princess! And your mane looks like an absolute disaster area!"
"Hey, nothing touching my horn, remember!"
"But Twilight!" Pinkie sang out, bouncing right up to her. "You can turn it off now, right?"
"Yeah, I guess so. But nopony touch it. I'll try to turn it all-the-way off, then somepony tap it with something," Twilight said, gesturing around at the various torn cushion covers and smashed wood from her earlier experiments with lifting the furniture. She concentrated.
Wow, this is hard.
"Anything?" she asked, eyes screwed shut. She felt something tap the tip of her horn.
"Well, I'm not smacking into any more bookcases!" Pinkie giggled.
Twilight opened her eyes and saw a grinning Pinkie Pie with a hooftip to her horn. "Pinkie!" Twilight gasped, stepping back from her quickly. The million little pinpricks of light reignited and danced around her horn.
"Well, those little sparkly things all went out, so I figured, why not!" Pinkie picked the hairbrush up in her mouth.
"Oh, really, dear, you should let me..." Rarity trailed off as Pinkie started to brush the crazy tangles out of Twilight's mane.
"PINKIE!" Twilight yelled, quickly closing her eyes and concentrating. The little motes of light winked out. "Tell me when you're finished. This is really hard!"
"Mmmkie-dmmkie-lmmkie!" Pinkie mumbled cheerfully around the hairbrush.
Okay. I think I can hold it.
"Spike?"
"Twilight?"
"Take a letter."
"With pleasure!" Spike whipped out a quill and scroll.
Dear Princess Celestia,
I must speak with both yourself and Princess Luna urgently.
My friends and I will be in your chambers in thirty seconds.
Your very, very worried student,
Twilight Sparkle.
Pinkie stepped back to admire her handiwork, just as a burst of green fire and smoke slipped out of one of the many smashed windows. "There! Now you don't look so frizzy-wizzy-headed!"
"Well, that should get her attention." Rarity sounded skeptical.
"But Twilight's mane looks just the same as always! Why would that attract attention?" Pinkie was the very picture of bewilderment.
"The letter, dear."
"Oh! Silly me!"
"Rarity, I don't have a choice!" Twilight's mane looked like it was about to snap back into scrunchy tangles of its own volition. "I'm going slowly crazy here, in fact I don't really know why I haven't completely snapped a hundred times today, I have to concentrate like mad to stop magic leaking out of me, I have wings - WINGS! - and I need answers before I completely lose it. Ready?"
Everypony looked worried.
"Ready?"
"We're ready, Twilight. We'll do whatever we have to do," Fluttershy said. "Even that... teleport thing again." She closed her eyes and shook with terror.
"Yeah! We'll back you up!" Rainbow Dash vowed.
"Anything for a friend, dear," Rarity managed to say without a waver in her voice.
"Let's do this, Twi," Applejack said, a look of determination spreading across her face.
Pinkie Pie just nodded. There was more determination on her round pink face than Twilight could ever have believed her capable of.
"Alright," Twilight breathed, "just a little bit... That's about right... Now focus, Celestia's big chamber, tallest tower..."
Glowing red energy, shot through with winking motes of light, appeared around the six ponies and one dragon.
The scroll arrived in a burst of green fire. Celestia looked up in surprise, snagging it out of the air with her magic.
She walked to the door of her private chambers, pushed it open with her magic, and poked her head through, her multicoloured pastel mane floating through after her. "Guards," she called to the two pegasi in ornamental armour outside the door, "Is Twilight Sparkle in the castle?"
"Not that I know of, your Highness," one answered.
"I know not, your Highness," chorused the other.
Celestia frowned. "Very well. If she or her friends arrive, see them in at once. Please send for my sister, I wish to speak with her in my chambers."
"Yes, your Highness," this time in unison. One pegasus lifted off and streaked down the corridor, to deliver the summons to Luna.
Closing the door, Celestia was just about to reach for a scroll to send a letter back through Spike, when, with a blinding flash of deep red light, six ponies and one baby dragon exploded into being in the centre of the large round room.
"Twilight Sparkle!" said Celestia, shocked. "You teleported here from Ponyville? With your friends? Nopony is that powerful!"
The others were all down on bended knee, looking at their own front hooves. Twilight and Spike remained standing. "Princess," Twilight began.
"Not to mention, teleporting into a chamber protected by ancient magic against just such an intrusion!" A look of beaming admiration was spreading across her face. "My most wonderful, talented student! Once again, you prove my faith in you in the most unexpected -"
Twilight unfolded her wings and raised them above her head.
Celestia sat down on her haunches so fast, it happened in a blur. "Oh, my," the princess whispered.
It must be the day for it. Very slowly, Celestia's beautiful magenta eyes rolled straight back into her head, and she toppled to the side.
Pandemonium. Twilight reached her first, Fluttershy close on her hooves.
"Princess! Princess Celestia! I think she fainted!" Twilight gasped. "We should get some guards, or..."
The chamber doors opened, and a midnight-blue alicorn trotted into the room, an irritated look on her face as if she wanted to complain about something.
The look evaporated as she caught sight of her sister, lying awkwardly on the stone floor, surrounded by unfamiliar ponies.
The seconds stretched by. Rainbow Dash coughed. Princess Luna blinked at Twilight's wings.
As Twilight felt her body smash through the thick stone wall of the tower, the entire chamber exploded in a deafening concussion of deepest midnight.
Chapter 5: Lunacy (Alternate Title: My Little Expositionary Chapter)
Falling.
Twisting.
Screaming.
Huge chunks of stone all around her, battering her, smashing her. The most violent wind she had ever felt, tearing at every inch of her body.
I'm dead... I must be dead... I can't even feel the pain.
Hooves. Cool, strong hooves. Around her waist.
I really am dead.
The stones had fallen away to thunder down the mountainside. The wind wasn't screaming in her ears any more, but something had replaced it. Something with a voice.
"TWILIGHT SPARKLE! NO! NO! PLEASE! NO! NOOOOOO!"
Hot tears were splashing onto her face.
I'm not dead?
She opened her eyes.
Princess Luna was holding Twilight in a tight embrace, sparkling silver tears leaking freely from between the lids of her own tightly-closed eyes. They were floating close to the tallest castle tower, jerking higher and higher with every beat of Luna's enormous midnight-blue wings.
"I'm sorry, don't move, I'm s-sorry, please don't be dead, I hurt you, please don't try to move..."
"P-princess?"
A gasp. Twilight felt the grip around her slacken.
"You're conscious? You should be dead!"
Wait until you see my next trick...
A flash of blazing red. Luna released Twilight in shock - and Twilight dropped lightly back onto the floor of Celestia's private chamber.
Luna fell out of the air and hit the floor herself. She had been teleported. By somepony else. She was gaping at Twilight as her sister's first and only student galloped across to where Celestia was getting back to her hooves, surrounded by those other ponies... It took Luna a moment to realise that they weren't strangers at all.
In an instant, Luna was by her older sister's side. "Big Sister! You're alright! I was... I thought... Twilight Sparkle! I thought I'd killed her! But she's..."
Celestia was shaking her head slowly. She opened her eyes and looked at Luna.
"Why is there a hole in the wall, Little Sister?"
"I... I don't know why, Big Sister. My magic... It leaped out of control."
Celestia closed her eyes and drew a very slow, deep breath. Twilight, standing with her friends, could never remember the princess ever looking so much as slightly flustered. But for this single instant, she really did look thousands of years old.
"Did you use magic on Twilight Sparkle, Little Sister?"
Luna nodded. "I came into the chamber and saw you on the floor. I simply couldn't believe it. I went to push the other ponies away from you with my horn so I could get to you, but..." Luna looked worried. "Something happened with my spell. It latched onto Twilight Sparkle and... and a surge of power unlike anything I've ever felt before... unbidden. My spell darkened the whole chamber, and then she just... She flew at the wall with enough force to smash right through it! As if I'd thrown her with all of the strength I could muster! And... she doesn't even have a scratch." Luna hung her head. "I thought I'd harmed a pony. I thought... Dear Starshine, I actually thought I had killed a pony."
One lone silver tear dripped from Luna's cheek to the floor as Celestia nuzzled her little sister.
Celestia looked around at the others in the room. Everypony seemed perfectly fine, though the looks of worry and shock on their faces were unsettling. Twilight herself didn't have a feather out of place, but was wearing a look that demanded answers. And Celestia was going to give her those answers... Whatever the price.
"Little Sister, my faithful subjects, my dear Twilight," Celestia began. "I have just undergone the greatest shock that I have received in all of my long life. I know what has happened to Twilight, though I never thought it would happen at all, to anypony. And certainly not to one that I know so well, and care so much for. If you would like to please sit down, we have quite a lot to discuss."
"Us too? Ah, heh, I mean, us too, your Highness?" asked Rarity.
"Of course. You are all her very best friends, and she will need all of your friendship if she is to survive."
"Survive?!" Pinkie Pie shrieked.
Twilight looked around at all of her friends. Their expressions were ashen.
"Please, please. Let us all sit. Guards," Celestia added, opening the door with her magic. The two pegasus guardsmen were cowering in fear against the opposite wall. "Oh! Please, you have nothing to worry about. A small spell mishap. Everypony is fine." They stood up shakily and bowed low. "As you see," Celestia said, gesturing with a gold-shod hoof, "Part of my wall is now at the bottom of the mountain. Please, send a team of strong pegasus movers to clean up and recover the stones. And you may leave your post. We do not need any... guarding for the moment."
"Y-y-y-y-yes, y-y-your H-h-h-h-h..." The guards stammered as they fairly rocketed down the corridor and out of earshot.
Celestia closed the door again and walked to the circle of cushions by her fireplace. The others followed, Luna taking a cushion next to her sister, Twilight sitting in the cushion Celestia indicated, directly facing her. Spike sat down next to Twilight.
"So," Celestia began. "Firstly, I must congratulate you. The first new alicorn that the world has seen for six thousand years."
Luna's head snapped around so fast that the wind of its passage was audible. "WHAT?" she thundered.
"Little Sister, think about what you see before you. You know there is no possible magic to give a pony feathered wings. Of the three kindred, feathered flight belongs only to the pegasi."
"I... I suppose I really should have studied more lore, Big Sister." Luna turned her head forwards again. "Twilight Sparkle. Do you mind?"
"Uh, Princess Luna, I... huh?"
Luna stood up and stepped towards Twilight. "Hold out your wings."
Twilight gingerly opened her wings. Luna took a quick, sharp breath, and then sat back down, hard. "Alicorn feathers." A few non-alicorn feathers had been ejected from her cushion.
"I don't see any difference!"
Everypony looked at Rainbow Dash. "What?! I don't! They look just like pegasus feathers, which look just like bird feathers, which look just like any other kind of feather! Yeah, sure, when she puts 'em up like this" - she arched her own wings high above her back - "they look just like the Princesses' wings. But they're just feathers!"
"They don't look like pegasus feathers to me," Rarity said quietly.
"Very succinct," Celestia said to the suddenly awkward-looking unicorn. "Tell me, what do you see?"
"Well, I, uh, where to begin? They do look like just any other feather when she has them folded up," Rarity explained. "But when she puts those lovely wings into the air, they just... Oh my. They just... shimmer! They glow! And they're... they're moving, like in a breeze that isn't there!"
"No they're not! They're completely ordinary feathers!" Dash protested.
Celestia chuckled. "I wonder who else can see one of the glories of Twilight's beautiful plumage?" Nopony offered, and Twilight re-folded her wings. "Alright then. What makes Miss Rarity different from the rest of you?"
"She's got a really good eye for fashion?" Fluttershy offered, as Rarity blushed furiously at being called "Miss" by the princess. Suddenly, Fluttershy squeaked with the realisation that she'd spoken aloud, and immediately tried to do her very best impression of being completely invisible.
"She's afraid a' gettin' her hooves dirty?" That earned Applejack a truly magnificent scowl.
"Oh! I know! She's the most beauti-" Spike sat back down and started pointedly looking away from everypony. His little scaly face was nearly as red as Rarity's had been.
"Not even close, my little ponies. And my little dragon." Celestia smiled at Spike. "Think about it," she prodded.
Silence. Then, finally, rolling her eyes, Pinkie Pie let out an exasperated sigh. "Oh, come ON, girls! It's OBVIOUS! She can do MAGIC! DUH!"
"Absolutely correct, Miss Pinkie. Magic is as magic does, as they say. You must have known magic in order to see magic's traces. Tell me, Twilight. What do you see?"
Twilight looked back at her new feathered appendages. "They're just feathers."
"Open them."
Twilight stretched her left wing out and forward, holding it out in front of her face. "Oh. Ohhh... They almost look like they're made out of crystal, or... or, I don't know. Frozen smoke? I've never seen anything like them before. They don't look like your feathers, Princess. They look, like, ordinary I guess, until they're stretched out. Then they don't look like normal feathers." She folded her wing back against her side, a frown creasing her forehead.
Rainbow Dash grumbled quietly over that particular use of "ordinary" and "normal".
"Do they look like these?" Luna offered. Her magnificent plumage swept a high, graceful arc, as Celestia's followed suit.
Twilight reeled her jaw back in. "...Oh. Yeah. Um, yeah. Wow. Your wings... never looked like that before," she said.
"You've never been able to see them properly before," Celestia said. "It wasn't your wings that made my heart stop, Twilight Sparkle. It was your feathers. Alicorn feathers. They look unique, to an eye that can see them. The thought that you were an alicorn was the most profound shock I have ever received. Not in many thousands of years have I ever... Well. Passed out."
"There's been a lot of that today," Twilight said. "It nearly gave me a heart attack, seeing you fall. I mean, princess, you're... you're, well, you're you!"
Celestia smiled. "Luna and myself may have ruled Equestria for thousands of years," she began with a glance at her frowning sister, "but that does not make us infallable. Far, far from it. I have made mistakes, as has Luna. I regret my mistakes bitterly. You must learn to cope with such bitterness, Twilight. You will have to hold it within yourself forever, and not let it destroy you from within."
Luna nodded. "Twilight Sparkle, this is the gravest thing that I will ever say. Alicorns must, MUST contain their emotions. You must learn to deal with them. I could not do so, and a thousand years ago, I paid the price for my... my weakness. Do not, ever, allow yourself to be consumed by hate, greed, anger, vengeance, or fear. Or jealousy," she added, looking down at the floor.
"I... I'll try. I'll really try. I mean, we don't want another..." Twilight hesitated. "Another Night Mare Moon."
Luna blinked sadly. "No. Not ever."
Celestia sighed. "And yet, this is what I fear will happen."
A few gasps, and then silence. Twilight found herself on her hooves. "Hey! We're not just going to sit by and watch me be consumed by some evil negative emotion! We're going to do every single thing that could possibly be done to prevent anything like Night Mare Moon from ever happening again! Right?!"
Celestia looked ancient beyond count of years for a heartbeat. She looked at Twilight for a long moment, then said "Well, we'll certainly do everything we can to prevent that. Please. We're getting ahead of ourselves." She shifted on her cushion. "Twilight, apart from your new feathered limbs, what else have you noticed that has changed about yourself?"
Twilight considered. "Lots of things. My magic. My... I don't know, my personality? I seem to be able to keep my head better. I, uh, wasn't very good at that at all, was I?" A sheepish grin.
"Although it was thoroughly embarassing for them at the time, the citizens of Ponyville will be laughing about that incident with the doll for years to come," Celestia said, with more than her usual measure of amusement playing about her lips. "Keeping calm in a crisis. A very central part of being an alicorn. Good. What of your magic?"
"My magic is a lot stronger. I don't know how strong, exactly. I had trouble controlling it, at first. Pinkie almost got badly burned when she touched my horn. But I read the section in 'So How Exactly Do You Control A Floodgate?' about how to throttle everything right down to zero, and I worked up from there. I practiced levitating my furniture... I, ah, um. Oh yeah. Heh heh, I might need an advance on next month's stipend for the repairs..." Celestia giggled. "Anyway. I teleported my friends here with practically no effort at all. And I... I reached out and touched the sun today. I didn't move it, but I think I could."
Celestia tilted her head towards the small pile of rubble surmounted by a gaping hole. "Why don't you try now?"
"Really?" Twilight was flabbergasted.
"Of course. See what you can do."
Twilight stood up. "It'll be surprising. I, uh... I don't look the same when I do it."
Celestia and Luna looked at each other for a moment. Finally, Celestia said, "I think we would very much like to see that."
Twilight trotted towards the hole in the wall, the other ponies following, staring at the slowly lowering sun.
It is SO WEIRD to look straight at the sun and not have to squint. Alright. You asked for it, Princesses.
A finger of magic exploded out of her horn and streaked off to the unimaginably far-away ball of white-hot energy. She grabbed it. Tested its weight.
Man, that is SO creepy. How can something so heavy be so LIGHT?
Rolling her eyes at the unintentional pun, she pushed it below the horizon, extinguishing the day. No more effort than raising an eyebrow.
How strange to see a night sky so completely devoid of stars.
She pulled it back to where it should be at this time of day.
Well, I hope that didn't creep too many ponies out.
And then, the tall, slender, graceful lavender alicorn turned around to face her audience.
Her friends were beaming at her. Spike, who hadn't witnessed her earlier transformation, had his mouth open in a perfect "O", his rapt eyes shining with tears.
"Twilight," he breathed. "That's amazing."
Twilight barely noticed. Her attention was focused almost entirely on the two other immortal beings in the room.
Celestia and Luna were blazing orbs of sunlight and moonlight. Twilight released her grasp on the heavenly body, and their normal forms reappeared. They looked... impressed.
"I've got a question," Twilight said.
I'm being so bold. That sounded like I just snapped at them. Am I more assertive now too?
"Go ahead." Celestia bowed her beautiful head.
"What did I look like to you?"
"You looked as we look," Luna replied. "Once you grow, you will be a truly beautiful alicorn, Twilight Sparkle."
"Oh," Twilight replied. "It's just, you looked like the full moon. And Princess Celestia looked like the noonday sun."
Realisation seemed to dawn on the two princesses. Without a word, both alicorn sisters began to glow faintly. Twilight guessed that they were both using their most powerful magic, reaching for the sun and the moon.
It must change your awareness. Magic is as magic does, I guess...
In unison, Celestia and Luna gasped. They stopped glowing and stared at Twilight.
"Well," Celestia began, "that clears that up."
Luna just looked shocked. "That clears WHAT up, Big Sister?"
"What did you see?" Twilight asked.
"Please, everypony, sit down. Now I know that my fears are not misguided. I will explain as best I can."
"Wait, what did you see, princess?" Twilight sat down next to Spike again, confusion on her face.
"We'll come to that in a moment," Celestia said, with uncharacteristic brusqueness. "I fear for you, Twilight Sparkle. I fear for the future of my land, I fear for my beloved subjects. I fear for my sister. And I fear... I fear for myself."
Luna's stare at her sister could have shattered solid rock. "You know something here that I do not." It was not a question.
Celestia looked out the large hole in her wall at the early evening sun, hanging just above the horizon, right where Twilight had left it. After a moment, she stood up. "Please excuse me. I will be right back." Trotting over to the doors, she opened one, went through, and closed it behind her.
Twilight shifted uncomfortably. Luna was giving her a very odd look. It was half-sympathetic, half-fearful.
Luna is... afraid of me?
"So, Twi'," Applejack began, then coughed. She tried again. "Twi', you alright? Really alright? 'Scuse me, Princess, but I ain't had a chance ta talk to ma friend since she went fer that little tumble."
"I'm fine, Applejack. Perfectly fine. Princess Luna, what did you see?"
"Please, Twilight Sparkle. I cannot answer that. Not yet. As soon as Celestia returns, we may be able to... ah, address that issue."
Nopony spoke. Twilight glared at Luna.
"I want to know."
Luna didn't answer.
"I said -"
"I heard what you said, Twilight Sparkle." Luna's voice was trembling. Twilight's friends had all gasped at her affrontery. "I cannot give you the answer to your question. Please! We must wait for my sister! I do not truly know what the vision means!"
"Oh... Oh, I'm so sorry," Twilight said. She felt terrible. She got up, walked over to Luna's sitting form, and bowed. "I'm sorry for speaking to you like that, your Highness. I, uh..." Twilight stood up again. "I really don't know what has gotten into me!"
Did I just talk to a princess like that?!
Luna smiled. "You do not need to refer to me by title, Twilight Sparkle. And please, do not bow. Such things are beneath you. You, too, are royalty now."
Twilight shook her head. "No thanks, Princess. I'm not royalty. To tell you the truth, that's really why I'm here. My friends and I came to tell Celestia that I want to stay in Ponyville, and just keep on leading my perfectly normal life. I'm a perfectly normal pony and that's how I want it to stay. Perfectly normal."
Amidst nods of agreement and encouragement from her friends, Twilight sat back down on her cushion and nodded proudly at herself.
"I admire your spirit, Twilight Sparkle. If this is what you wish, then I shall see that it is done. My sister will agree, I am sure."
"Really?!" Twilight had bounded back onto all four hooves. "Oh, Princess! That's all I want! Thank you!" She bounded forward and gave an astonished Luna a hug.
"That's what we all want!" put in Pinkie Pie. "We're not gonna lose our friend just because she's all -"
The door opened, and Princess Celestia strode in, a grimy, crusty box floating in her wake. There was dirt on her golden shoes. Twilight released a now-blushing Luna and sat back down quickly.
"Little Sister, this was left to me by Mother." Luna gaped. "I know Father may have left certain items to you also. I will never ask you about them."
Luna had rapidly composed herself. "Of course. The Safeguards are there for a good reason."
Everypony else in the room just looked bewildered, and a little frightened.
Celestia settled herself back onto her regal cushion and lowered the box to the ground. The top opened, and a very small, impossibly-ancient book floated out and rested at Celestia's hooves.
Twilight wondered if there had ever been such a profound silence in the entire history of the world.
"A little family history. Twilight Sparkle, six thousand years ago, with my mortal birth, I became the first alicorn. Three years later, Luna was born, and she, too, had this power."
What?
"You will find this in no history book. Six thousand years is too long to remember, for books at least. Facts become legends, and legends become myths. And myths are scoffed at."
Twilight and her friends were barely breathing.
"Our parents were unicorns. We never knew how, but they could perform the most profound magic. They could see beyond the mortal world, to all the mysteries of the universe. They wrote volumes. They lectured us."
Luna chimed in. "They had guessed that we would be immortal. Indestructable. Ever-lasting. They told us to wait for the founding of Equestria, and to offer our services in raising the sun and moon. We did. We were worshipped as gods." She scoffed. "Perhaps we are gods. I do not know. We shunned such worship and put ourselves into the service of all living things. In time, we became royalty. The descendents of the original founders became royalty alongside us."
"Our mother, Starshine, left me this book," Celestia continued. "This foretells of all the things that the universe had told her would come to be." Celestia magicked the grimy box out of the way and bent low. She touched the tip of her horn to the book.
The book expanded. It was huge, five feet long, two feet wide, and nearly a foot thick.
"The last words my mother spoke to me were" - everypony's mane stood on end as Celestia rumbled something incomprehensible. Spike curled into a ball. "A very ancient tongue. What it means is -"
"In here you will find the horrors to come. Take heed and avert them, or let them pass untended. The choice will be yours."
Every face, except Spike's, was turned toward Twilight. Celestia and Luna looked like they had both just been slapped.
"I understood what you said. And... No, I didn't understand the words. I understood the meaning." Twilight felt her face colouring.
"That is exactly what the words meant. I never opened it. I let things happen that I could have prevented, but felt that if this was the way the future must be, I should not interfere. Until... One day I... shall we just say that I have studied this book cover-to-cover for a little short of a thousand years." Celestia glanced at her sister. Luna was staring at the book with astonishment.
"You could have... you could have known about... you could have prevented... The Night Mare?" Luna's voice was fainter than the most insubstantial whisper.
"The past has passed. The future is before us. I am sorry, Little Sister." A single golden tear tracing down her cheek, Celestia opened the tome with her horn, flicking to a page about halfway through. "Twilight, can you read this?" The book spun around to face the newest alicorn, and Celestia indicated a short passage in impossibly-small incomprehensible script with a hoof.
"Jealousy will allow The Lunacy to claim the younger Eternal Sister. Night will conquer Day, but balance will be restored. A thousand years of sorrow await the bringer of the night, until the friends of the Master of Magic help to redeem her frozen heart to the shepherd of the day." Twilight looked up. "Well, that's kinda explicit. That's about... about my friends and I... bringing Luna back. Back to Celestia." Luna hung her head.
If I'm going to live forever, I'd better learn to deal with my sorrow, too.
"My friends and I are in this book?" Twilight asked, slightly overwhelmed.
"They are always referred to as 'the friends of the Master of Magic'. And yes, Twilight, you are the Master of Magic herself. You are all scattered throughout this enormous collection of future history," Celestia finished.
Twilight sat back and allowed her imagination to run riot.
Get your head back in the game.
"What's 'The Lunacy'," asked a by-now-thoroughly-confused Rarity.
Luna stood up. Her eyes were closed. She gave a small shiver, opened her eyes, and looked at Rarity.
"The modern term is named after me, Miss Rarity. Lunacy. Moonstruck. The stories of the full moon driving wild creatures mad, and later being applied to ponies that lose their grip on sanity. The original, however, simply means something like 'insanity'. The closest modern word is, indeed, 'lunacy'. There is no reference to me in the ancient word 'sharaheng'."
Twilight heard Luna say 'sharaheng', but understood her to be saying 'lunacy'. She stopped breathing as Luna looked straight into her eyes.
"The Lunacy, Sharaheng Zus, is a spirit of chaos. Not like Discord," she said, as everypony gave a start. "Not external chaos. Internal chaos. We don't know what it is, we don't know where it resides when it's not... doing what it does best. But it took me in my jealous rage and it transformed me into The Night Mare. It feeds on the vast stores of emotions that must live within an alicorn forever. Hate, rage, anger... jealousy. It overcomes the will, it..."
Luna sat down. "I cannot speak more of this." She looked at Celestia. "I begin to understand, Big Sister. It's in there, isn't it?" She pointed a silver-shod hoof at the enormous book.
Celestia closed her eyes and nodded slowly. Her horn ignited and the pages began to flip in reverse order, one after another, like a torrent. They stopped at the very first page of the ancient volume. There was only one single line, right in the very centre of the enormous page.
"Twilight Sparkle," Celestia said, very quietly, "would you please read the very first line that my mother wrote into this book?" Her eyes were still closed.
She's trembling.
Fear. A hot, violent, burning fear, rising up in Twilight's throat. She tried to force it down. She couldn't.
Just read it. There's nothing that the princesses can't do. Especially now that I'm here as well. Whatever it is, it's not the end of the world. Calm. Calm.
Her fear subsided just as fast as it had arisen.
Really nice thing, being an alicorn. I can calm down just so easily.
She leaned forward and looked at the very first line of the oldest book in the world, a line written in a tiny, completely illegible script that she could still understand perfectly. She cleared her throat and read aloud:
"The third Eternal Sister will embrace The Lunacy and destroy the world."
That was it. There was nothing else. There was no "and this will be prevented via steps A, B and C." Just one simple statement.
Twilight sat back on her haunches and looked around the wide, circular room. Fluttershy looked as if she was about to faint. Pinkie Pie was crying. Rainbow Dash had her eyes closed and her hooves over her ears. Rarity seemed to have passed out. Applejack looked like someone had just kicked her square in the muzzle. Spike was curled into a ball so tight, it was perfectly spherical.
Twilight looked towards the princesses. They were both shaking.
Open fear. The princesses - THE PRINCESSES - are both completely terrified. And they're showing it.
"What did you see? What did you see when you looked at me?"
Neither sister answered.
Twilight got to her hooves and drew in a very deep breath. "WHAT DID YOU SEE?!"
Both royal alicorns hung their heads in unison. Again, for a fleeting instant, Celestia looked every day of her six thousand years. And for the first time, Twilight noticed, so did Luna.
What is this what is this what is this what is this
They both looked up. They looked at each other. They looked at Twilight. Celestia started to speak. No sound came out. Luna spoke for her.
"Come ON, Twilight! It's the easiest thing in the world!" the blue pegasus shouted down from fifty feet in the air.
Twilight shifted her hooves nervously. This wasn't like her balloon. And it wasn't at all like a pegasus chariot. SHE would be doing the flying, and if she stopped flapping her wings, she'd fall out of the sky.
So then I could just teleport down to the ground. Or I could probably just hit the ground at a hundred miles an hour and not feel a thing.
Maybe not a good idea. I might hit something important.
She shook her head slowly and exhaled, her nostrils flaring wide. Something vaguely rainbow-coloured was moving about in her field of vision.
I am doing the right thing.
...Right?
Friends. She needed to spend time with her friends.
Because soon they'll just be memories along with everypony else...
Stop that. That won't happen.
"I SAID, ARE YOU READY TO TAKE OFF YET?"
Twilight blinked. Rainbow Dash had been flapping up and down barely three inches from the end of her muzzle, and she hadn't noticed. "Huh?"
"Jeez, Twilight." Dash dropped to the ground. "You're, like, a million miles away."
"A million... huh?"
"You got a lot on your mind. I know. But come ON, Twilight! You're starting to cut into my nap time!"
The corners of Twilight's mouth twitched. Then, the first grin she'd worn in days hitched itself onto her face. "Cutting into your nap time? It's ALWAYS your nap time, Rainbow Dash!"
Laughing, Dash flapped her wings and hovered about a foot off the ground. "Heh heh, yeah. That's about right... You gonna at least try flapping your wings or something though? See what it feels like? Because," she finished with a wink, "I could be napping."
Twilight smiled. She could concentrate on anything she wanted to now, she supposed. She could stop concentrating about that... that other thing.
Stop. Flying lesson.
Twilight stretched her wings out to her sides and gave them a few slow experimental flaps. "So, most of this is going to be balance, right?"
"You read 'Elementary Flight Control', didn't you?" The singular circumstance of Twilight borrowing a book from Rainbow Dash was probably going to be a talking point for years.
There might not be years...
STOP. IT. Flying lesson!
"Cover to cover. I've got it memorised."
"Great! I'll catch you if you fall, just keep your head up, and keep beating your wings. You'll find your rhythm. Jump when you take off, it makes it easier. You need to find your balance more than anything. Ready?"
Twilight nodded. She tensed her legs to spring, then lifted her wings high for that first powerful downstroke.
Woah. Woah. Hey, now, this, I like...
She was two hundred feet in the air -
"Hey! You're supposed to just be doing circles around the meadow, not trying to set some new altitude record on your first flight!" Rainbow Dash complained. She was about ten feet off to Twilight's right, her wings moving faster than Twilight's slow, easy beats - but then, while extended, Twilight's wings were nearly twice as large as the pegasus pony's own.
"Rainbow Dash! I love this! I LOVE THIS!" Twilight closed her eyes and just kept flapping, the glorious, refreshing wind blowing her mane and tail, seeming to take more and more of her terrible worries for the future away with every gust. She opened her eyes and beamed at Dash.
This is flying? No wonder Dash is hardly ever on the ground. This is great!
Yeah, now you can just fly happily along and watch the world burn beneath you...
Her wingbeats faltered for the tiniest instant.
No. NO. Stop that. FLYING.
"Twilight, you're just flying straight up. You need to be going forwards!"
Twilight leaned forward at the right part of her stroke, just like the book showed. Her head went down, her tail went up, and she flipped onto her back.
A flash of red. She stood on the ground, shaking slightly. Looking up for Rainbow Dash, she saw the cyan pony streaking back towards the ground. She was yelling something.
Well, best to just get back up in the saddle, I guess.
Beating her wings again, she leaped lightly from the grass of the meadow into the air. Slower this time. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty feet. She met Rainbow Dash at forty.
"That."
Twilight looked at Dash. "That what?"
"That. That was..."
"What?!"
"AWESOME! Twilight, that was TOTALLY awesome! You're never gonna get a dopey nickname if you can just teleport yourself out of a crash! Oh man. I wish I could do that!" Dash looked so impressed that Twilight couldn't resist.
"So, are you saying that you're NOT the most awesome pony in all of Equestria?"
"'Course I'm still the most awesome pony in all Equestria. Nothing changed there!"
"So..."
"Twilight. You are HARDLY just a pony any more. You're royalty. That doesn't count." Twilight coloured, and Dash added "But don't you think I'm gonna start bowing and scraping and saying 'Ooooh your highness can I please please kiss your hooves' or anything like that. You're Twilight. You're my pal. And Celestia said you don't need to take the titles anyway."
Twilight felt a bit better. Her friends, at least, would never consider her royalty. Oh, they joked about it, but never anything serious. They all wanted Twilight to stay in Ponyville too.
"Let's just keep flying, uh, straight up for a while, Rainbow. I like this."
"Yeah, we're not really that high. When you start to feel chilly, we'll head back down and work on manoeuvres."
Not to say that actually managing to stay in Ponyville was proving particularly easy at the moment... The only alicorns that anypony even knew about - well, at least until a week ago - were Celestia and Luna, and it seemed that everypony's immediate reaction to an alicorn was to assume they were royalty.
Well... You didn't even know there have only ever been two winged unicorns either, until last week. If a strange alicorn turned up in town, you'd have thought she was a princess. A relative of Celestia's. You would have bowed.
Now, I guess, you'd just try to suck them dry of magic, just like you did to Luna...
Stop that. That's not even true and you know it.
How strange that an alicorn's kneejerk reaction to a spell being used on them was to pull all of the spellcaster's magic out through their horn. You had to suppress the urge to do so, if you didn't want to knock the unfortunate unicorn out, or worse. Admittedly, a fairly useful ability to have, especially in Equestria's earlier days of assassination attempts and the like. Luna, of course, was far too magically powerful to be harmed in this manner, and the result of Twilight's subconscious yank on Luna's spell had just massively increased the force, in Twilight's direction, of the gentle shove Luna was giving to everypony. No, you couldn't do this to an alicorn. But as far as unicorns were concerned...
Thank goodness I was out cold when Rarity levitated me downstairs that first morning. If I'd been awake, I could have subconsciously killed her.
I wonder what it'll be like to consciously kill her?
Squeezing her eyes tight for a moment, Twilight smiled over at Rainbow Dash, who really did look impressed. This was only her second flight, after all, even though they were just flapping lazily upwards. Twilight directed her thoughts back to some of the stranger reactions she'd experienced in Ponyville over the last week.
Mrs. Cake just couldn't stop herself from addressing Twilight with "Your Highness." Pinkie, bless her crazy heart, had told Mrs. Cake that Twilight wasn't a princess, but then, giggling a pink streak, had gone on to say that Twilight would throw anypony who called her a princess into the royal dungeon. So it was Her Highness at Sugarcube Corner for the present.
Sigh.
What will you force the screaming masses to call you as you burn them alive?
Stop. It. Think about flying.
"Hang on. This balance thing."
"Yeah?"
"The best thing is practice, right? And the higher you are, the longer you can fall, and that means you have more time in a single fall to practice balance and poise and centre-of-gravity?"
"Yup. Just remember, it's not the fall that kills you."
"The sudden stop at the bottom can't really kill me either, Rainbow Dash."
"Yeah. That's gotta be the weirdest thing, right?"
"This is going to be weirder. Wait here, I'll be right back."
Twilight teleported herself ten thousand feet straight up.
This is HIGH.
Her eyes slammed shut as panic roared in her ears.
You can teleport yourself safely to the ground any time you want. You can probably survive a fall from this height without even a single bent feather. You just flew, on your own, for the first time in your life. And you loved it. So. Open your eyes. You have to do this. You KNOW how to do this - you have that whole book memorised. It just takes...
"PRACTICE!" Twilight's eyes flicked open. She wasn't level. She stopped flapping, holding her wings straight out. She dropped like a rock, the wind howling through her ears.
She shifted her body's centre of gravity by moving her legs. Then she started rolling her body underneath her wings.
Heyyyyyyy...
She was pointing nose-first at the ground, plummeting downwards. She banked to the left, accidentally rolling completely around once before getting that back under control. The wind in her face was exhilarating, the pure rushing speed was almost a drug.
I've never felt anything like this in my entire life...
She pitched back a little. She could see the meadow far below, just to the southeast of Ponyville. There was a tiny blue speck...
Twilight grinned. She aimed.
The tiny blue speck grew into an anxious-looking blue pegasus with an unruly shock of multicoloured mane. She was circling at about fifty feet, looking up and down, obviously trying to see where Twilight had got to. She didn't see the rapidly-approaching lavender blur until it passed under her at a distance of three feet, and a speed of about two hundred miles per hour.
Rainbow's shriek filled Twilight's ears as she flared her wingtips up very sharply and rocketed back into the sky. At the top of her brief climb, she flipped over backwards and began to flap again, rolling level, slowing herself down, and approaching the stunned pony standing in the middle of the meadow.
As Twilight came in to land, wings beating up dust and leaves, she took one look at Rainbow Dash's face and knew that every single prank that this particular pegasus had played on her had been worth it. Disappearing ink, itching powder, whoopee cushions, hoof-buzzers, super-spicy cupcakes, everything. They had all been worth it for that look.
Twilight's hooves touched down. She ruffled her wings and folded them neatly against her sides. She grinned at Rainbow Dash.
Dash's expression was priceless. Her mane was blown every which-way, her feathers were rumpled, and her tail was stuck straight out in awe. Finally, she managed to make her jaw move. She mumbled a bit.
"Well?" Twilight asked proudly. "How'd I do? On the Rainbow-Dash-And-Pinkie-Pie Prankometer, where do I score?"
Dash shook her head. "We need another scale. That was so far off the chart, that was, like, like..." She couldn't seem to find the words. "I'll never prank you again. I could never top that!"
"You should see your mane," Twilight smirked.
"You should see yours! If you're gonna do those kindsa speeds, you'd better get a style like mine! Neatly-brushed fringes do not go well with that much speed!"
They were still laughing an hour later when they flew to the town square for smoothies. Last week, Twilight would have just walked. Yesterday, she would have teleported. Today, she was going to fly. Not only was this the best feeling in the world, she'd also managed to pull one of the biggest pranks ever on one of the biggest pranksters around. And the elation she got when soaring that fast pushed almost all of the very dark thoughts straight out of her mind.
Almost all.
She didn't tell Rainbow Dash that she couldn't decide whether to loop underneath the hovering pegasus, or smash straight into her back, impaling her most loyal friend upon her rapier-sharp horn, until she had only been about ten feet away.
A downcast Twilight Sparkle appeared in Celestia's cozy tower-top room with a small pop and a flash of light. "It happened again."
Celestia looked up from the enormous book, now on a specially-made stand, and gave Twilight a knowing smile. "Who was it today?"
"Rainbow Dash. I nearly killed her. I mean, I nearly killed her on purpose." Twilight shook her head glumly as she trotted to stand beside her once-ruler, now-equal. "Anything in there about that? I was going to fly into her and stab her with my horn."
"You didn't do her any harm. No, I don't recall any horn-impalings. But then, you're not really in this book any more, Twilight. Well, apart from page one."
A sheaf of notes appeared on the stand next to the book, magicked from the library bedroom's writing desk. Twilight started to riffle through them. "What does this mean? I found it this morning and I didn't know what to make of it. And I wasn't going to interrupt your court session," Twilight added, forestalling Celestia's protest. "It could wait until now. I had to leave anyway. Flying lesson."
"Oh, yes! How did it go?"
"Well, I've got one more little bit of motivation to get everypony safely through this now. Flying is amazing," Twilight smiled up at Celestia, "and it pushes just about everything else out of my head. It almost feels like... as if it's just the old me alone in here."
Celestia nodded gravely. "I can't get The Lunacy out of you, Twilight. That is something only you can accomplish. It's not controlling you, like it did Luna. It's waiting for you to control it. To embrace it. It will whisper to you. Remember, your thoughts are not all your own. But your will belongs only to you."
Twilight nodded. "I was hoping for a little more time, I guess. I mean, I'm still me." Twilight sighed softly. "But I've thought about killing two of my friends now. Applejack was pretty mad at me, saying I'd taken all the fun out of applebucking by clearing a whole orchard at once, but... Grabbing her with my telekinesis... I did get her laughing. Saying that I was playing around and now we get to spend more time together without work in the way. And we did have a lot of fun that afternoon. I don't really think I would have thrown her through the barn."
Twilight's eyes shifted focus. "But I wanted to," she finished softly. Her head drooped.
After a moment, she was able to speak again. "It's more than just those two. I've thought about killing all of my friends. I just had the opportunity with AJ and Dash." A pause, then Twilight continued, almost whistfully. "The spa's going to be a lot of fun tomorrow. Maybe I'll drown Fluttershy and Rarity. Or strangle them with their towels. Or I could get them to strangle each other. That'd be entertaini-"
Twilight started in shock and disgust.
How can I even THINK stuff like that?!
She sat down on her haunches and looked at the ancient stone floor.
A gentle hoof on her shoulder. An enveloping wing. "We will find a way through this, Twilight. We are trying everything we can. Luna and myself will never give up, if it means saving our beloved Equestria."
"She can't even stay in the same room as me anymore," Twilight said sadly, looking at the carved patterns on the stones.
"Can you blame her for that? It is not your fault that The Lunacy is inside you, waiting to be called forth willingly. My Little Sister has no problem with you at all. But to ask her to face the thing we now see hiding behind your eyes..." Celestia's wing was quite steady against Twilight's side, but the tiniest quaver was creeping into her voice. "I believe such a thing will forever remain beyond her ability. The monster that held her under its unbreakable control for a thousand years is now sitting politely and obediently in your mind, tame as a kitten, waiting to be let out on a leash. She looks at you and she sees The Night Mare waiting to be reborn."
The two alicorns sat in silence for a few minutes. Celestia stirred. "You had something you wanted to ask me?"
Twilight jerked her head upright. "Oh! Yes. I found this," she said, magicking a piece of paper into Celestia's telekinetic grip, making sure not to pull or tug on her fellow alicorn's magic.
They've only just got the wall repainted.
Celestia held the paper up and read the notes Twilight had been making. "'The Master of Magic will abandon her friends when chaos drives a spike between them.' You are worried about this passage?"
"I'm not sure. I thought it might be talking about Discord."
Celestia's regal face assumed a thoughtful look. "It could well be. Discord isn't mentioned in here, you know."
"Huh?" Twilight was astonished. "I thought this records everything Starshine saw of the future?"
There really was everything in this book. Everything from the end of the world right down to innumerable anonymous colts and fillies that had banged their knees. It was maddening as hell, because nothing was in any sort of order, chronological or otherwise. There were no given names, just ones that would appear to seem symbolic after the fact.
The occasional nugget of actual interesting and helpful information was buried in amongst thousands upon thousands of lines like "The one whose father's father built the first of six houses on this spot will break his leg when tripping down the stairs." MADDENING. You couldn't figure out who most of these ponies ever were or ever would be.
And, what was worse, of the occasional line that seemed promising, such as "The longest night of the shortest winter shall set the stars in motion to reveal the path of true peace", there were no dates, almost no way of knowing what events were being referred to, and absolutely no way to know how important the cryptic passage might be, compared to those around it.
How are you supposed to know what's important, and what's not?
Well, I suppose the single most important thing in here DOES have the whole first page all to itself...
"Mother saw everything, that is true. But there is no explicit mention of Discord in this book. Neither is there a mention of the Elements of Harmony."
Twilight shook her head. "Do they have some sort of, I don't know. Some sort of, uh, other name? Um, allegorical?"
Celestia smiled a very sad smile. "I don't know why neither the Elements of Harmony, nor the Spirit of Disharmony, are in here. I know everything this book has to offer. I've even guessed correctly about some particularly bad scrapes and bruises. Those cuts and bruises didn't happen. And I don't think the end of the world will, either."
Twilight strongly disagreed. A week ago, she would have accepted Celestia's words without question. Now, however, she could question all she wanted.
But she didn't. There was too much to do.
Celestia and Twilight resumed their examination of every word in the enormous volume. Somewhere in here, there might be a clue, something that Celestia may have taken out of context. They were up to page nine hundred and forty one. There were more than seventy thousand pages. Each page was almost as big as a door, and the ancient characters were the size of ants. Twilight was extremely glad that sleep was optional for alicorns.
Twilight pulled her eyes away from page one thousand, six hundred and twenty three, and saw Celestia at the chamber's large east-facing window out of the corner of her eye. She tore her concentration from the book, and watched in wonder.
Celestia's horn was glowing faintly. Then, the glow spread and enclosed her entire regal body. She held a perfect pose, front hoof raised, head high, eyes closed. As Twilight watched, she saw the stars begin to fade from the sky, and a faint rim of blue begin to spread across the entire eastern horizon.
It must be morning. Luna just put the stars to bed. And now Celestia is raising the sun... How... how beautiful.
Celestia remained as still as a statue for nearly two minutes. Then she stepped back a pace, rested on her haunches, breathed deeply, and opened her eyes, gazing at the brightening blue line of the horizon.
She turned back to the book-stand, and opened her eyes wider when she saw Twilight looking at her in fascination.
"Raising the sun?"
"More than that, Twilight. It takes a short while to cast the spell that moves it across the sky for an entire day."
"It was beautiful."
Celestia actually blushed. "Thank you, Twilight. As long as just a single pony appreciates my effort every day, I am happy. You must try it."
"Really?!" Twilight couldn't believe this. Sure, she'd moved the sun once... But to cast the spell that shepherded it across the sky for a whole day... "I'd be honoured!"
Celestia smiled. "Then you can do it tomorrow."
Twilight's jaw would have hurt last week. Now she just felt the joints stretching. Then, her brain clunked back into gear.
It's morning. We've been working all night. And I'm not even remotely tired. I'll try and catch a nap later on, though. Not sleeping is too... weird.
"Hey, I'd better be getting back to the library. I hope Spike's alright. For a baby dragon, he seems pretty good at taking care of himself." An extremely sheepish grin. "He takes pretty good care of me, too." Celestia giggled.
"I'll be back. I'm going to the spa today. I really want to see Rarity and Fluttershy. I haven't seen them in days."
"I'll be waiting. We'll figure this out, Twilight."
"See you soon, Celestia."
Both alicorns were smiling at each other as the smaller of the two disappeared in a flash of deep red light.
Twilight broke her hug with Fluttershy and smiled. The buttercup-yellow pegasus smiled back, despite a flicker of fear in her eyes.
No, no, no! My friends are not going to be afraid of me!
Even though I think about killing them...
NO!
"Hey, Fluttershy, are you okay? You look nervous. It's not me, is it?"
Fluttershy's entire face was now hidden behind her light-pink hair. "Oh, no," she began, in barely more than a whisper. "It's not you at all. I'm just... Rarity..."
Twilight got it. Absolutely nothing in her expression changed.
Fluttershy wants Rarity here as a safety margin. She's afraid to be alone with me.
"...Rarity had a big order come in, and she had to cancel. I'm sorry, Twilight," Fluttershy whispered. "I really wanted to spend this morning with you both." She was practically shaking.
"Hey! That's a real shame! Don't worry about it! I'm sure we'll have a great time! C'mon, let's go get pampered!" Twilight was all smiles as she magically wrenched open the door to the Ponyville Spa. "After you! Gotta work out that stress!"
Fluttershy walked inside, her hooves practically buzzing against the doorsill in her fear.
Twilight spotted one of the attendants. "Hi! I'm Twilight Sparkle. I'm an alicorn." She extended her wings. "My friend and I have an appointment. Gotta make a really important point, okay? No horn filing. Alicorn horn, see? The little sparkly things give it away. Don't touch it. It'll blow your bucking face off."
Twilight sank slowly into the boiling-hot spabath. She felt her fury at Fluttershy melting away with every extra inch of luxuriously-scented water that enveloped her. Her pegasus friend was still at the sinks, washing off the remnants of her facemask.
I'll tell her that she's got nothing to fear. That it's just me, her friend Twilight Sparkle. What, she doesn't think I'm going to bite her face off, does she?
Yeah. Yeah, I could do that. Eat her face. That won't kill her. I can kill her later. Make her suffer first.
Twilight didn't reprimand herself for this thought.
"Um, Tw-wi... Twilight?" Fluttershy squeaked.
Twilight opened her eyes, stared at the shrinking violet with palpable, smoldering hatred, and smiled her friendliest smile.
"Hey, are you getting in? This water isn't gonna stay this hot forever, ya know! It's great!"
"Um, T... Twi... Twilight, I, um, I have to, um, I, uh..."
Twilight harumphed. "I'm not going to hurt you, Fluttershy. If you don't want to be around me, that's fine." She sank lower into the glorious bath. The water was lapping her neck.
"Oh! Oh. I'm..." The shy little pegasus coughed the tiniest cough. When she looked back at Twilight, her eyes were sparkling with tears. "I'm so sorry, Twilight. I really am. I... I don't know what's gotten into me. I know you're just, um, you, you know, but I... I feel..." She let out a squeak.
"You're scared of me."
Fluttershy didn't answer.
"Oh, fine. Look, just get outta here. I know all my friends think I'm a freak who's just gonna murder them the first chance I get. Who knows, maybe I will. Go on, go see your animals or something." Twilight dunked her head under the water. She was too angry to remember to choke off her magic.
The bathwater lapped at the base of her horn.
All of the water in the oversized tub exploded into superheated steam. The windows blew out. The doors were ripped to splinters. The wall into the main spa disintegrated. Ceiling beams fell. The lights went out.
Twilight leaped from the now-empty tub and squinted through the mist. She hadn't been so much as nudged by the explosion. The fractured tile of the tub crumbled behind her as she bolted to one of the smaller holes in the walls.
Fluttershy was lying in a changing room, up against a badly-dented locker. Her perfect yellow hide was covered with angry red blotches. One of her wings was twisted at an unnatural angle. Her other wing was nowhere to be seen.
Twilight stared, thunderstruck. Coughing, swearing ponies were moving through the thick mist towards her friend.
I did that.
I'll never do it again.
Twilight Sparkle closed her eyes. Her horn ignited, the deep red aura extending and expanding.
I'll never hurt another pony again.
She pictured her destination.
Not ever.
She gritted her teeth.
There was an enormous, violent explosion of light.
She opened her eyes. Her last breath whooshed out of her lungs.
She sat back onto the snow-like ground and looked up at the world. Everypony she loved was there.
And I can't hurt them from here.
Oh, Fluttershy, I hope you're alright. They can regrow your wing. They can fix your burns.
But I can never look you in the eye again.
Her tears had frozen solid in the vacuum before they fell softly, like snow, to the fine, powdery surface.
When Luna raised her crescent moon that evening, the dark image of a crying winged unicorn was plain for all to see.
Another scroll appeared in a silent pop of light, falling slowly onto the sizable pile to her left. She ignored it. They were getting more insistent, arriving several times an hour now. She wondered if she could cast some spell to stop them getting here at all.
She sighed, frozen tears cascading down her cheeks.
Sighing is so damned unsatisfying with no air. Nothing to blow out through your nostrils.
She went back to gazing sadly up at the world, wondering how long she could stay here before giving in. She'd lasted two weeks. She didn't think she could stay another second.
They've got to die. All five of them. It's too risky. They stopped me once, they can stop me again.
She agreed with herself.
And then I can kill everything else. But them first. Too much of a risk to start, if they're alive.
She couldn't even remember why she was crying about Fluttershy.
"Why don't ya' just go an' GET HER?" Applejack asked, exasperated. Then, she remembered who she was talking to. "Uh, sorry, Princess. Ah just miss ma friend, is all."
"I miss her too, Applejack. But I can't go and get her. I can't go to the moon." Celestia shook her head sadly.
The meeting was taking place in the Ponyville library, as per Celestia's suggestion. It was far more convenient for the two alicorns to travel to the village than it was for the five mortal ponies, and one relatively-mortal dragon, to travel to Canterlot.
"Buh-but you sent Princess Luna there!" Rarity objected, with a nervous glance at the younger alicorn, who was busying herself with pacing around and looking annoyed. "A thousand years ago! And you can raise the sun! And Princess Luna can move the moon and stars! That's more magic than you could possibly need to just go and get her!"
"I used the Elements of Harmony to imprison my sister within the moon." Celestia bowed her head slightly. "And my sister had vast, unimaginable powers available to her when the prison broke, so coming back from the moon was trivial. But remember the special circumstances surrounding each of these events. Twilight Sparkle has powers that dwarf our own, even combined. She has simply taken herself out of our direct reach. Neither Luna nor myself can teleport to the moon. It's too far. We would die in the attempt."
These words were like thunder in the ears of the five ponies and one dragon. The Princesses could do anything, couldn't they?
Apparently not.
"We can send scrolls. We are constantly sending her scrolls. But we cannot go ourselves. Such a thing is beyond us!" Luna stopped her pacing and glared. She looked angry. "Nor can we send a messenger. You are all too large, even the dragon, and even if we could send you, you would perish almost immediately! Twilight Sparkle can survive such a place," Luna snorted, "and so could I. But no mortal creature can."
"Well," Fluttershy put in, "you could always ask me how to get her back."
Two earth ponies, one pegasus pony, one unicorn pony, two immortal alicorns, and one baby dragon looked at the shyest pony any of them had ever met. The determination on the yellow pegasus's face was incredible.
"Do you want her back? Because I want her back."
Celestia bowed her head. "What do you suggest?"
"Princess Luna? I have a question. It's about bringing the night," Fluttershy asked. Luna cocked her head. "What else can you do with the night sky?"
The sun had set. The night had risen. They were ready to try.
"Please remember, my little ponies, that she may not come back, even after this," Celestia said.
Fluttershy simply looked determined. "We have to try. What are we if we don't try to get our friend back?"
Celestia looked at Luna. The younger alicorn nodded back slowly. A hundred members of the Royal Guard were in Ponyville, just in case. They were door-knocking right now, just in case. They had orders that Celestia had never imagined she would have to issue. Just in case.
"Little Sister, if you would please do the honours?"
Luna trotted up the short staircase to the library's large picture-window. The glass panels glowed pale blue, opened, swung outwards. She had a fine view of her magnificent night sky. The other ponies gathered around as she raised her head, closed her eyes, and sent the magic of the night out to all of the infinite heavens.
They looked at the dark silhouette on the face of the gibbous moon.
They waited.
They hoped.
The stars...
Twilight blinked. The stars. The stars were moving.
The constellations swirled and changed, individual points of light and great clusters, all moving, slowly, steadily.
They were bunching together, forming lines, curves, twists... words. They were forming words.
Twilight looked on, stunned, as the entire universe rearranged itself, just for her. They were sending her a message. She wouldn't read the scrolls, so they were moving the very heavens themselves to give her a message.
Please come home.
I miss you.
I'm waiting for you in the library.
- Fluttershy
Fluttershy...
Fluttershy misses me...
After I...
She remembered what she'd done. Her eyes snapped wide, shattering the twin trails of ice on her cheeks.
Fluttershy!
The enormous image of a weeping alicorn vanished from the face of the moon.
Her hooves touched the wooden floor of the library's large, welcoming ground floor.
A pink-and-yellow blur slammed into her. A pair of front legs wrapped tightly around her neck. She was being ferociously hugged by a crying pegasus.
"Twilight! Twilight! Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were never coming back! Oh, I've missed you so much! Oh! You're so cold!"
"Fluttershy!" Twilight gasped, hugging back.
I'm so sorry I almost killed you.
I'm so sorry I didn't kill you.
"I'm so sorry I almost killed you! Are you alright? Are you okay? Was anypony else hurt? I'm so sorry! I -"
Soft thumps as all of her other friends joined the hug. Sniffs and sobs. Twilight was crying with sheer joy.
I have you all right here, you can't get away, and now you're all going to die. I'm so happy!
"My friends! My best... My best friends! I... I don't know what I was thinking! You're all here! I'm so happy!"
The hug broke up. Twilight stepped back and looked with trepidation at the beaming pony right in front of her. Fluttershy looked fine. There were a few patches where her coat hadn't quite grown back in. "You're alright! You're okay! I thought you were dead! I... I... I just..."
Fluttershy wiggled her wings, her smile getting wider. The feathers on one were a little fluffier than the other. "I'm just fine! The Princess herself arrived at the spa right after the explosion! There were quite a few burns and a couple of sprains. I was the worst but she regrew my wing just like that! Oh, you were right. I was so hungry! Remember, right after you got your wings?"
Twilight was momentarily distracted by the sight of Luna, standing at the large, round picture window. The midnight-blue Princess stood silently, back to Twilight, eyes closed, horn glowing as she restored the heavens. Below her stood her older sister. She was behind the circle of her chattering friends, smiling down at Twilight. The small alicorn jumped forward and nuzzled her neck. "Celestia! Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"
Celestia sat back and looked quizzical. "Why are you sorry, Twilight Sparkle? There was no harm done."
"I'm sorry for running away!" She turned around, to look at all of her best friends. She smiled.
Maybe a fire spell. I could burn them to death.
No, just telekinesis. Easy. Crush them.
No, I don't want to hurt them. They're my friends.
And they can stop me.
I want them to stop me!
No, I don't want them to stop me! I have to kill them!
"Uh, Twi'?" Her farmer friend was looking at her with the deepest concern. "Y'all right there, sugarcube?"
Twilight seized Applejack and hurled her, at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, straight at the wall.
WHAT AM I DOING?!
She teleported Applejack right back to where she had been standing. The orange earth pony fell over with a muffled "Ooof!"
The newest alicorn was on the ground as well, hooves over her eyes. "Girls! G-girls! Get away from me!"
There was absolute silence, followed by the sounds of a very dizzy pony being helped to her hooves. Twilight felt a hoof touch her shoulder. Celestia. She could feel the ornamental shoe.
Did I just do that faster than Celestia or Luna could react?
...Excellent.
"Apple- Applejack. A-are you okay, AJ? Did I- did I hurt you?" Twilight's voice was fragile as crystal.
"Ah, uh, woah, my stars. Ah'm okay, Twi'. Dizzier'n a spinnin' top, but Ah'm okay. What jus' happened?"
Twilight ground her hooves into her eyes. She spoke in a rush, as if she was afraid that her voice would fail her.
"I just picked you up and threw you at the wall. Then I realised what I was doing and teleported you back. If I hadn't caught you in time... If you had hit the wall... I... I..." Twilight screwed up her face. "I just tried to kill you, Applejack."
There was complete and total silence. Twilight stood up slowly, eyes closed. She felt Celestia right beside her, warm and reassuring. She took a deep breath.
At least I can sigh properly again.
She sighed.
Twilight opened her eyes and looked at her friends.
They're my friends. I can't hurt them.
I don't have to hurt them, I just have to kill them.
I don't want to kill them.
I want to kill them.
"I'm going to kill all of you."
Every single face in the room was beyond shock. Twilight started trembling. She closed her eyes and shuddered for a moment.
The entire library jolted, as if there had been a momentary earthquake. Ponies gasped.
Dust fell from the decoratively-painted ceiling.
The lights dimmed.
Her hooves left the floor as she began to levitate. She opened her eyes again and looked at the five targets before her.
Her eyes were blank, white-hot, blazing with infinite power.
"LUNA!" Celestia screamed.
Luna spun from her position near the elevated window as Celestia crouched, horn ignited, wings spread, between Twilight and her friends. Leaping into the air, she flew through an arc towards the front door, eyes wide in terror as she passed over the floating form of Twilight Sparkle. Five ponies, and a very surprised baby dragon, were wrenched into the air by Luna's magic. Exclaiming in shock and surprise, they were pulled through the room as Luna blasted the front door into splinters and flew through the opening, tucking her wings in tight. The six friends, now all looking terrified except Spike, who was rolling himself into a tight little ball, followed along in her wake.
Luna flew higher and faster, calling back over her shoulder to the terrified Bearers. "We must get you away from her! You are all the hope that we have!" She looked down at the sleepy town below as her trailing entourage shouted questions and made exclamations that she ignored. Soldiers in glinting armour could be seen. They were everywhere. She hoped the Guard had managed to warn every residence in time.
She bellowed one single word in a voice that shook the entire town.
"EVACUATE!"
Celestia approached Twilight Sparkle. She had stopped levitating and fallen to the floor. She lay still, panting shallowly, her eyes closed.
"Twilight? Twilight, listen to me. You can fight this."
"No," Twilight groaned. Her flanks were rippling. Things were flowing beneath her skin like snakes. They showed through with a deep yellow-white glow. "No, I can't. I'll kill them. I have to kill them. They have to die before... Before I... I can't risk the... The Elements... Can't risk... They'll stop me... And I have to... Have to..."
Sounds of many hurried hoofsteps were filtering in from the night outside. The guards were doing their duty. Celestia looked with sorrow at her former student, now a fellow alicorn, and seemingly beyond her help.
"I don't know what will happen, Twilight. I will try to save you. But you must keep trying to save yourself, too. Remember, your will is your own. Your thoughts are not all yours, but what you do with them is." Celestia bowed her head. "And remember, too, that what my mother wrote in the book can be prevented. There are events recorded as inevitable fact that I have averted. The book was written as if no intervention were possible. But we can intervene. We can defeat this!" She placed her hoof on Twilight's shoulder.
Twilight's own hoof slammed on top of hers. She whimpered. She shivered.
For many long minutes, they remained silent, Celestia looking with sadness at Twilight, while the latter twitched and occasionally moaned on the floor. Were the hoofsteps outside getting fainter and further away?
"I... don't..." Twilight whispered.
Celestia bent her young, ancient face close to her former student's. "Twilight?"
"I... don't... want..." Her teeth were grinding with every word.
"What don't you want, my beloved Twilight?" Celestia asked softly.
Twilight stopped panting. Slowly, very slowly, she rose from the floor, three feet, four feet, spinning around gently in the air to face Celestia, who had started backing towards the doorway.
"My will is my own." The voice was not Twilight's. It was almost a snarl. Low. Venomous. Full of danger. "My will is my own."
Her wings were thrown wide. Her eyes flicked open. Two blazing orbs of pure white light bored into Celestia.
Celestia threw a holding spell around Twilight. She felt the immense tug of power as Twilight unconsciously tried to empty her of magic. It would strengthen the spell considerably. Even so, it would only hold for moments, but she had to buy time, and she needed every second. She whirled and bolted through the door, taking to the air immediately. Suddenly, the night sky above her flared, then extinguished into deepest black. She did not pause to wonder why. Hovering high in the air above the library tree, she surveyed the streets of Ponyville. There were still far too many ponies making their way out of the town. Summoning her seldom-used Voice, she filled her lungs. She didn't like using it on her subjects, but right now, she had no choice.
"EVERYPONY! THIS IS YOUR PRINCESS! RUN! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! FLEE! GET AWAY FROM PONYVILLE, NOW! RUN! RUN! DO NOT LOOK BACK! DO NOT LOOK BACK! RUN! RUN! RUN NOW! AS FAST AS -"
The Ponyville Public Library exploded into a gigantic, roiling, violent fireball. Celestia was knocked, tumbling, upwards and slightly to the side. She caught herself and dived for the ground.
Vast chunks of flaming tree were falling around her. The nearby shops and houses had been blasted flat. Some of them, too, were starting to burn.
As the enormous fireball began to cool and darken high above, she beat her wings and cautiously approached the fiercely-burning pit where the magnificent old tree had once stood.
Something was rising from the blazing inferno.
Something hotter and brighter than the fire itself.
Its coat was sun-white, its eyes blood-red, its mane and tail were roaring sheets of yellow-orange flame. Two great wings spread wide from its shoulders. The horn on its forehead was very long, and very sharp. It looked at Celestia with death in its eyes as it rose slowly into the air.
The Thing opened its jaws. Rows and rows of jagged, uneven teeth. A gaping maw of horror. It was smiling at Celestia. A terrible, world-ending smile.
The Thing moved. Faster than lightning, those hundreds of teeth had closed around Celestia's neck.
Luna swept down to a graceful landing far inside the specially-prepared hideaway. She lowered her wind-swept charges gently to the floor of the cave.
Rainbow Dash was shaking her wings out. "Can somepony PLEASE tell me what the BUCK just happened?!" She was glaring at Luna with a little more hostility than was strictly allowed, but Luna didn't care. There were far more important things than royal protocol right now.
"Twilight Sparkle has embraced The Lunacy. It has been poisoning her thoughts for weeks, and she has succumbed. Wait!" she said, seeing the looks of despair. "Celestia and I have a plan. We have not told Twilight Sparkle of this. The Night Mare... Well. Whatever Twilight Sparkle is now, she retains her old memories. We could not risk her knowing of this plan, though she seems to have guessed an essential part. She wants to kill you to stop you from using the Elements of Harmony against her."
From amidst a sea of shocked and worried expressions, Fluttershy walked up to the Princess of the Night. "Can we save Twilight?" she asked, not a flicker of fear or shyness in her voice or on her face.
Luna frowned down at the yellow pegasus. "I am not sure, Miss Fluttershy. We will do anything that can be done to save Equestria." She looked up. "I must return. A battle may shortly take place, and I must help." The briefest flicker of terror crossed her face, but was quickly dispelled. "There is food and water, plus comfortable bedding. Please, do not leave this cave. It is a sheer drop outside, and the entrance is difficult to see. Celestia or myself will return as soon as we possibly can. Do NOT leave the cave!" she shot at Rainbow Dash, who looked defiant. "We cannot risk Twilight Sparkle finding this place. Not only are you here," she said, pointing with a silver-shod hoof at a small, plain-looking wooden chest set up against one of the rough walls, "but also the Elements that each of you bear."
"The Elements of Harmony are here?" Rarity exclaimed, walking over to the chest and magicking the lid open. Five beautiful necklaces gleamed back at her from inside.
"Do not put them on. They, and you, must be kept safe for the moment. Twilight Sparkle may be able to sense your whereabouts if they are activated." Rarity slammed the lid of the box and muffled a gasp. "If Twilight Sparkle finds either you or the Elements, Equestria will be lost. Celestia has the Element of Magic. We are going to try to force it onto Twilight Sparkle when we have you all with us, and hope that the magic of the Elements does the rest."
"So, you and Princess Celestia are going to try to capture her?" Fluttershy asked. "And then you'll come and get us?"
"We will certainly try." A look of hopeless terror momentarily clouded the alicorn's eyes. "Her powers may be beyond us, and if so, the world will end. We will surely try. Now," she added sternly, "stay here, stay hidden, all of you. One or both of us will return. I must go. I have no more time!"
Ignoring the clamouring protests, she wheeled and flew back up towards the cave entrance.
Luna couldn't possibly think of how she would help in the battle that surely awaited her. Twilight Sparkle would simply have to look at her, and she would flee. She could not face The Lunacy. The fear... The fear was far too great.
Were she to still have the powers of The Night Mare, she might be able to do something. But those powers were gone. Too dark to begin with. And completely gone.
She could get them back...
If she succumbed...
She had no jealousy left in her. Her little ponies loved and enjoyed the night she made. They honoured her with one of their most beloved nights of celebration. Were she to fall to jealousy again... Even if she triumphed, would she not just try, once again, to bring forth eternal night? No. Too dangerous. Far too dangerous. And utterly impossible. She felt not a scrap of jealousy, not over anything.
Fear. She had fear. Fear for The Lunacy. She could fall to her fear, but how would that help? She would be afraid, far too afraid to do anything. She would run. She would probably use her dark powers to run to the moon and hide. But Twilight Sparkle could teleport to the moon unaided. And now... The Lunacy would follow her there, and find her in her terror. She could not fall to her fear.
Was there any hope?
Yes...
She hated The Lunacy. Far more powerful than her fear was her hatred for the thing that had taken her will, had made her overthrow and imprison her sister, had made her bring about her first fruitless attempt at endless night. She hated it. She could face it in hatred. She wouldn't be a risk to Equestria. She hated only The Lunacy.
Did she?
Luna examined her soul as she flew towards Ponyville. Besides The Lunacy, what did she hate?
Nothing. Hate was not in her nature. She was not born to hate. She was born to love, care, guide, rule.
But not to hate. The only hate she felt was for The Lunacy.
She could do this... To save Equestria... She would do this.
Luna released her instinctive alicorn restraint and began examining her darkest emotion. She let it seethe and boil.
Hate.
She hated The Lunacy.
Hated what it was doing to Twilight Sparkle.
Hated what it wanted to do to Equestria.
Hated what it had done to her, most of all.
Luna concentrated very hard on just how much she hated this monster.
Deeper and blacker and colder than the lowest pit of Hell, a hatred to crack the very world rose through her, consumed her.
Transformed her.
The night sky flashed brilliant white to match her unquenchable fury, then the moon and the stars winked out, leaving only a blackness above as profound as the hatred in her heart. Straight ahead, a distant fireball blossomed into the sky. She streaked towards it with the strong, powerful beating of wings as dark as the night around her.
Four best friends sat facing each other in the gloom, the one solitary lamp brightening their moods as much as the cave. Fluttershy was off in a corner seeing to Spike. The little dragon seemed to have come out of his shock for the most part, and he and the buttercup-yellow pegasus were talking quietly together.
"This is hopeless," Rarity said. "Hopeless. Princess Luna thinks it's hopeless. Did you see the look on her face?"
"Yep, Ah did. Don't rightly know what ter do about it, though. Ah hope Big Mac got Granny and Applebloom away okay." Applejack shook her head sadly. "Ah wish Ah wuz with them. Ah wish we were all together. All mah family, and all mah friends."
Pinkie Pie seemed to have gone into shock, her poofy mane looking ready to collapse at any moment. Her family was far from Ponyville, but this, right here, was the only fear that the otherwise impossibly-cheerful pink earth pony could never face. The loss of a friend. The last two weeks had been bad enough on her, but with what was going on now... She choked out a sob as her chin slumped all the way to the floor.
Rainbow Dash didn't have anything to say. She was a pony of action, not used to just sitting around on her butt and letting everypony else have all the fun. Then she realised that there might not be anything less fun than whatever was going on back in Ponyville, her adopted home. She'd moved there, just like Twilight, and she'd found friends there, also just like Twilight. And now one of the best friends she would ever have was... What? Fighting the Princesses? She shook her head.
Over in the far corner, Fluttershy stood up, nodding with thanks at the baby dragon.
"Good luck. You're gonna need it," he said worriedly.
The yellow pegasus turned around and walked away from Spike, who looked like he was curling up for a nap. She headed straight towards her childhood friend, the most reckless pony she'd ever met. Fluttershy was feeling reckless too.
"Rainbow Dash? Let's go. We've got a job to do."
Celestia slammed through the side of the quaint town cottage. Before the rubble had even started to fall, she burst up through the still-collapsing roof and seized the Thing around its neck with all of her considerable magical might. The monster sucked and pulled at her spell, strengthening it beyond measure. The scattered and broken wreckage of the town began to smoke and flame from the sheer magical force she was exerting. Gasping with the effort required to maintain such an immensely-powerful spell, she managed to choke out "Twilight! Please! Fight it, fight it!"
The whole world twisted as her telekinetic grip was broken as easily as spider-silk. White-hot tendrils of fire snaked around her, crushed her, held her immovable. The Thing had her, had her in an obscene parody of a lover's embrace. She felt hot teeth grate her cheek. The Thing hissed into her ear. Its voice, harsh and cold as the roots of a mountain, almost stopped her heart.
"Twilight Sparkle is dead. As is Equestria. As are YOU! WHERE ARE THE BEARERS?!"
Sudden vicious lashes of deepest midnight ripped and clawed at the Thing. Celestia wrenched herself free from the weakening grip, spun, kicked the monster with the force of thunder. Then, a gentle hoof on her shoulder. A smooth, silky, confident voice. A voice she hadn't heard for more than ten centuries.
"Please, Big Sister. Allow me."
Night Mare Moon launched herself at the Thing with all the power of a thousand years of hatred.
Without stopping to even ask herself how Luna had done it, Celestia turned and flew to the main bridge out of town to shepherd the evacuation personally.
Vice-like blazing fire wrapped around Night Mare Moon, and she felt herself spun upwards, around, over the top of the Thing which held her. It slammed her down. She smashed into a two-level house with enough force to shatter it into dust. She roared up out of the shallow crater she had made, forcing the white-hot fingers off her hide with her own tendrils of blue. Darting forwards out of the slackened hold, she grabbed the monster's face with a cloud of blackish-blue magic, and twisted, hard, down and to the side, then let go. The Thing spun down, colliding with a windmill. It vanished, thrashing, inside the structure.
Night Mare Moon grabbed the large pavilion in the centre of the town square. She pulled, strained, tore the building from the ground. Flourishing it high, she smashed it down onto the collapsing, burning windmill with the force of a furious demon.
The wreckage exploded into fire, a white-hot blur shooting from deep inside the ruin, heading straight towards her at impossible speed. She used her magic to move aside rapidly, pivoted in the air, and whipped a hold around the slathering muzzle that was passing her by at thousands of miles per hour. She called upon all of her strength, and pulled.
The Thing, caught in its charge, flipped up behind the straining Night Mare Moon. She spun it up and back over her head, flinging it to the ground as hard as she could. It landed with an explosion of dirt, rock, fire and snarls. She didn't wait for it to get back up. She began seizing the largest, heaviest-looking, most solidly-built cottages and houses and shops and anything else she could see, spinning them around and around herself to build up their speed, then slamming them, one after another, onto the creature that she hated with all of her being.
The entire enormous pile of rubble and wreckage flew up into the air. She danced to the side. It spontaneously ignited into white-yellow flames, staying together in one rough, huge ball, then flew at her too fast for her to avoid. Suddenly glowing sunshine-gold, it was snatched from the air in front of her, swung through a wide arc, and smashed into the once-again airborne Thing with a collision that shattered the few remaining windows in the ruined, burning town.
Celestia had returned. Everypony must be safely away from Ponyville.
"Take the left! Get it! Hold it!" Night Mare Moon shouted, as she flew to the right through the still-falling wreckage.
"An' jus' where in the hay do ya think yer GOIN'?!" Applejack said heatedly. "We gotta stay in this here cave 'til the Princesses come an' get us!"
"There's something we have to do," Fluttershy said impatiently. "We have to save Twilight."
"We ARE savin' Twilight. Ya CAN'T leave," Applejack protested.
"We have to."
"Alright then, we're all comin' with ya!"
"You can't come," Fluttershy said. "You, Rarity and Pinkie have to stay here. You can't fly. We've got a long way to go and we'll be flying fast."
"Where are we going?" asked Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy ignored her.
"If you leave," Rarity said, "Twilight might find you. She... I can't believe she ever would, but she might hurt you. She... she did hurt you, Fluttershy dear, remember?"
"I'm not ever likely to forget it!" Fluttershy was starting to raise her voice. This was so unlike her, everypony took a small step back - a small flap back, in Dash's case. "It was MY fault that Twilight lost her temper! It was MY fault that she said the things she did! It was MY fault that she blew up the spa and ripped my bucking wing off! And it was MY FAULT that she RAN AWAY TO THE MOON! MY FAULT! NOT HER FAULT! I LET MY FRIEND DOWN!"
The other ponies were backing away in earnest now. Fluttershy was starting to get very, very angry.
"She wanted to spend time with me, but I was scared of her. SCARED! Of a FRIEND! Some friend I turned out to be! Well, I'm going to make up for that! Come ON, Rainbow Dash! We're leaving!" She turned to go.
"Fluttershy, wait! Where are we going?" Dash was as surprised and confused as she'd ever been.
"Luna said it herself!" Fluttershy was starting to stamp her rear hooves in agitation. "She doesn't think she and Celestia are strong enough to catch or stop Twilight! So they need help!"
"Help?" Dash was almost afraid to ask.
Fluttershy scrunched her eyes and pinched the bridge of her muzzle in frustration. "What's the only magical creature in all of Equestria that's as strong as an alicorn?!"
"Oh, no way. No way, Fluttershy. You can't be serious. NO! WAY!"
"Spike told me where to start looking." The faintest hint of her Stare glinted in her burning turquoise eyes. "Come on, Rainbow Dash, and try to keep up. We're gonna go catch some dragons."
The two sides were too evenly matched. The two sisters together could equal the ferocity of the Thing. The Thing could equal them. They slowly circled each other in the hot, turbulent night air. Celestia and Night Mare Moon kept their distance from the monster that regarded them now with a mixture of superiority and contempt. The bright, flickering orange glow from the ruins beneath sent vast shadows into the starless sky above the three alicorns.
Stalemate.
"Very well," said the Thing. "I am forced to make some greater threat. You," it spat. A lance of white-hot flame stabbed out, faster than a lightning bolt. Night Mare Moon danced sideways to avoid it. "You desired Eternal Night. You shall have it." The towering flames surrounding it roared from bright yellow-orange to violent blue. "Bring me the Bearers, alive or dead, here, one hour, or I shall destroy the sun."
It twisted a roaring, spinning fireball around itself, then vanished with a concussion of light.
With a small burst of light, Twilight Sparkle appeared near the top of one of the many craggy mountains to the south of her adopted home. She sat down on the rough stony ground and stared at what she had done. Ponyville. Her home. Far more of a home than Canterlot had ever been. She and Celestia and Night Mare Moon - where had she come from? - had destroyed it, every building, every structure. The fires were mostly burned out now.
She was amazed that the fight had lasted as long as it had. She'd been constantly trying to run, to stop, to shout a warning, anything. Holding back her magic while trying to use it. Attacking her former mentor while desperately trying not to do so. And then, that threat! How could she possibly destroy the sun?! And why?! And what reason in all Equestria had she to threaten anypony with anything?! It was all so frustrating!
Ruffling and refolding her wings at her sides, she watched the two other alicorns, mere specks at this distance, flying rapidly away to the east. She sighed. She didn't want to know where they were going. Yes she did. No she didn't. Yes, she did.
"I hope everypony got away from the town okay," she said aloud.
"Why am I worried about that?" she replied to herself. "I'm going to kill them all anyway."
"I don't want to kill ANYPONY!"
"But of course I do," she reminded herself. "It's all I've ever wanted to do."
"No, no, I want to be Celestia's student! I want to study hard and make her proud of me and when I've learned everything I can I want to just live a nice quiet life with my friends and work in the library and maybe one day meet a handsome stallion and maybe get married and maybe even have little colts and fillies and then I can teach them everything I know and they'll be so smart and my friends will have their own beautiful little foals and we'll all live together just so happily for as long as we can and we'll get to watch them grow up into pretty and handsome young ponies and then -"
"I've never wanted any of that. All I want to do is just get on with this task of destroying the world. It's all I've ever wanted to do."
"I've NEVER wanted to do that!"
"I've wanted it for thousands of years."
This was a very strange thought for Twilight to think. She knew it was absolutely true. It was a completely undeniable fact that for thousands and thousands of years she'd wanted nothing more than to tear the world apart.
"But I just had my nineteenth birthday. Just a couple of months ago. In Canterlot. With my friends."
She had no answer to this.
"So," she asked herself, very slowly and deliberately, "if I've been wanting something for thousands of years, and I'm not even twenty years old yet..."
"DO IT!" she shouted to herself, leaping to her hooves, her mane and tail igniting into roaring sheets of flame. "NOW! I MUST DO IT NOW! FORGET THE ELEMENTS, FORGET...!" The fire was just as quickly extinguished as she sat back down.
"I'm not me, am I?"
A pause. Then, slowly, "of course I'm me. Who else would I be?"
"I don't think I am."
"But that's silly. How could I not be me?"
"Because I've got The Lunacy in my head, and I can't tell my thoughts from its thoughts."
She didn't reply to this.
"You've been inside my mind for weeks, suggesting, twisting... Making me try to kill my friends..."
"The Lunacy's in my head, but it can't control me. It's waiting for me to control it. It can't control my thoughts. It can only whisper ideas and suggestions to me. And I can ignore those ideas and suggestions, because they're not mine. So this thing I'm doing, killing my friends so the Elements can't be used, that's all my idea. And I want to do it."
"I don't want to do it. And I DO think it can affect my thoughts."
"No, I don't think so. All my thoughts really are my thoughts. I mean, this thought right now. That's my thought."
No it isn't.
"NO!" Twilight's eyes screwed up, her mouth twisting into a snarl. "I'VE WAITED TOO LONG FOR THIS!" With teeth and fear and hate and bloodlust, Night Mare Flare roared into the sky with flames erupting all around her. She flew straight up, thousands and thousands of feet high, leaving a blazing trail in the pitch-black night sky. She slowed. Paused.
Turned.
Headed straight down again towards the top of the mountain she'd just left.
She covered the two miles in just a fraction of a second. If she had been a pegasus, a thousand Rainbooms would have followed in her hypersonic wake.
She hit with enough force to blast the top two hundred feet of mountain into blazing molten fragments.
A large, graceful, lavender winged unicorn burst from the flaming, steaming ruins, horn blazing bright magenta and gold. She couldn't teleport, for her magic was busy elsewhere. She pivoted in the air, flying fast on large alicorn wings, heading straight towards the remains of Ponyville, smashing right through the thousands of rocks and boulders and glowing smears of molten rock that filled the air, all of her willpower focused on just one thing. She mustn't stop thinking about it. Just that one thing. Somewhere in the deserted, smashed, smoldering town before her, she would surely be able to find just one piece of relatively-unburned parchment or paper or even cardboard or...
Her mane flared into flames for a moment, then back into flowing sheets of indigo smoke.
Don't... stop... thinking... about... it...
Celestia swept down the long, winding cave within the cliffs under Canterlot. She saw a faint glow from around a bend up ahead. Slowing down and gently flapping to the floor, she walked in on a heated argument.
"We gotta go after 'em! This is silly an' crazy an' jus' downright dangerous! Can't think of what's gotten inter Fluttershy!"
"But if we can't get out, I mean, if you need wings to get down from the cave, then -"
"Oooh! Rarity! Can you teleport?"
"Me? Teleport?! You ARE crazy, Pinkie Pie! Of course I can't teleport! Precious few unicorns ever manage to teleport!"
"Well, Ah'm still gonna go have me a looksee. Maybe there's a way down without - Oh. Howdy, Princess."
"What has happened?" Celestia asked, concern crossing her forehead. She could only see three ponies.
Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie Pie were looking at the alicorn that had just landed behind Celestia with horror. They started to back away.
"No!" Night Mare Moon called. "You have nothing to fear!"
The three little ponies disagreed. They turned and fled further down into the cave at a full gallop.
"I'll get them, Little Sister," Celestia said, galloping off herself with her horn blazing the way.
Night Mare Moon sat down with a huff. Reminding herself very pointedly that her hate was only for The Lunacy, she stifled a growl and breathed deeply and slow. She couldn't blame them, really. Even that Thing had seemed surprised to see her.
With the soft clopping of nervous hooves approaching from her right, she remained seated, kept her wings tightly furled, and bunched her magic mane in as closely as she could. Looking away, she said softly, "I am not the Night Mare Moon who tried to bring eternal night, my little ponies."
"We, uh, we know, um, yer Highness. We're sorry," Applejack said in a voice composed of equal parts wonder and terror. "Ah mean, you're still Princess Luna. A-and we know you'd never... you'd never hurt anypony."
"I just spent most of the last hour trying very hard to do just that to your friend Twilight Sparkle." She stood up, the three ponies flinching slightly. "Celestia and myself have not spoken since the end of the battle. We wished to include you in our discussion. But I believe we may have a problem. We are missing two ponies."
"Where are Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy?" Celestia asked. She sat down and looked very closely at the three remaining Bearers.
"They... they left," Rarity whispered.
"And we don't know where they went!" Pinkie Pie said, sadness and loneliness all over her face. "They said we couldn't come, because we can't fly! And they left, and then we started arguing! We were gonna go after them, to see where they'd gone off to in such a rush, but -"
"Of course you were going to," Celestia said with a smile. "Do you know why they left?"
"Fluttershy said Spike told 'er where to find dragons," Applejack said, gesturing with a hoof. "He won't wake up. Ah've tried. And it don't make no sense. Fluttershy was powerful angry jus' before she and Rainbow Dash left, and that ain't like her at all. And she's so scared a' dragons, she normally jus' curls up and squeaks!"
"Dragons?" Celestia stood and walked over to Spike. She nudged him with a hoof, then crouched down, her face very close to his. "Spike," she said softly. "Spike, it's Princess Celestia. Wake up please, Spike."
The baby dragon snuffled and grunted, but continued to snore softly.
"Cover your ears, please," Celestia said over her shoulder. She turned back to the baby dragon. Things were far too important to be polite.
"SPIKE!" Celestia roared with the power of her Voice.
A green-and-purple blur bounced off the ceiling. Celestia caught him with her magic, stopping him from hitting the floor, and held him up.
"Pruh-Pruh-Pruh-Princess?!"
"I'm sorry about that, Spike, I really am. But we needed to wake you up. Just to clear this up first, Princess Luna doesn't look quite like herself at the moment." She spun the little dragon in the air to face her sister.
"N-NN-NNNNNNNN-"
"No, Spike. Not Night Mare Moon. Luna. Technically. Now, if I might ask you something?"
"Uh, okay, uh, sure, I guess?" Spike kept shooting glances at the tall, spooky-looking Royal Princess.
"Where are Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash?"
"Oh." Spike looked nervous. "Fluttershy, uh, well, she wanted to find some dragons."
"Yes. And I hear that you told her where to look for them?"
Spike nodded.
"And just where would that be, exactly?" Celestia was smiling despite the urgency of the situation.
Spike choked. He retched. His eyes bulged. He belched a cloud of smoke and green flame which swirled for a moment and then, with a pop, flashed into a torn, charred piece of paper.
Nopony, and nodragon, seemed to be breathing as Celestia levitated it and read its contents aloud, which seemed to have been hurriedly scratched with a burnt splinter of wood.
i can control it i know
where it hides itself in my
mind maybe i can stop it try
the elements get my friends
it will come back when I have
to use magic to send this
"It could be a trick," Night Mare Moon said.
"But it probably isn't. We've got that deadline," Celestia reminded her big little sister. "We did wonder about this. How it found her so fast. How she started to believe its thoughts were her own."
"Uh, beg pardon, Princess?" Celestia turned to look at Applejack. "Deadline? Did you say 'deadline'?"
"Just one moment, please, Applejack. Spike," she said, turning to the nervous dragon, "Did you send her to the Great Northern Caverns, to Shale Gully, or to the Termagant Range?"
"Termagant Range. They're closest. Fluttershy told me to tell you that even though you'd be mad at her, she thought she was doing the right thing. You know, extra muscle?"
"Why, in the name of everything that we stand for, did we not think of the dragons?!" Night Mare Moon exclaimed.
Celestia shook her head. "You know they would never agree to help us."
"But when faced with the destruction of the world?!" The silver-armoured midnight-black alicorn was stamping a front hoof. "Surely, they would help!"
"Perhaps they would. Perhaps they wouldn't. They may not believe such a thing is possible. We'll see, when Fluttershy returns."
"IF she returns. Ah. That is," Night Mare Moon faltered, seeing the looks of dismay on the three young ponies. "That is, I am sure there is an excellent chance. Now. We must tell you about the battle. I am afraid your town has been destroyed."
"Everypony got away safely," Celestia said over the gasps. "We talked about this before Luna moved the stars for Twilight, if you remember? We can rebuild Ponyville. No lives were lost. I hope that can last."
"So... Twilight attacked you?" Rarity asked, with a sharp intake of breath when Celestia nodded. "I never would have believed it! Our friend, Twilight!"
"...Is not herself!" Night Mare Moon snapped. Rarity shrunk. "I am sorry," Night Mare Moon said. "It is... It is difficult, having these dark powers again, for... for not entirely selfish reasons this time. Yes, she attacked Celestia. I was able to release my hatred for The Lunacy, and transformed once again into the monster you see before you. A monster on a very short leash, this time. I hope. My hatred is for The Lunacy alone. We thought that Twilight Sparkle had willingly allowed herself to embrace this madness."
"But this note," Celestia continued, holding it up, "is our greatest hope yet. There is something we do not entirely understand about the situation. The Lunacy found Twilight within days of her... her ascendancy. She has no dark emotions, not of the depths needed to allow such a creature to twist her mind inwards and dwell on her dark secrets. So she must be doing this herself. She must have facilitated her transformation herself. But with this note, I am not so sure any more."
Night Mare Moon looked at her through narrowed eyes. "The prediction from Mother. I assumed, when I heard it -"
"You assumed the same thing that I did. That one day, another alicorn would appear. It would abandon reason for insanity and allow The Lunacy to consume it. That doesn't seem to be the case. If Twilight is still in control, well. I told her many times that her will was her own, and to be wary of her thoughts. Perhaps when this thing got inside her, it -"
Spike belched another tongue of fire. "I wish there was a bit more warning with that spell," he grumbled, as Celestia snatched a small scrap of parchment out of the air and read it.
i need to talk
come to ponyville
hurts to do this can
only hold it for a
few minutes
"We gotta go see her!" Applejack shouted. "We gotta go! Maybe we can talk to her or -"
"No!" Luna said, with an air of total finality. "I will go. I can best escape that Thing. This may be a trap, or it may be exceedingly important. Big Sister, tell them the rest. I will return."
Before Celestia could speak a single word, Night Mare Moon had dissolved into a silver-blue mist, which swirled for a moment and then faded from sight.
"Well," began Celestia, looking after her.
"Um, Princess?" said Pinkie Pie, tugging gently on her mane to get her attention again. "What was that about a deadline?"
Night Mare Moon reformed out of the mists of the night just beyond the western edge of the former Ponyville. She saw nothing but rubble, a few scattered fires, and wisps of smoke everywhere. But she heard her.
That was Twilight Sparkle's voice. It was coming from... That light. She was by that light.
Night Mare Moon swept towards the flickering, sputtering glow. Coming around the shattered remains of a barn, she saw Twilight lying on the rubble-strewn street, rolling and thrashing around in obvious agony. She was the size of a fully-grown alicorn, her tail and mane resembling flowing smoke, her great lavender wings joining her hooves in beating the ground in torment. But Night Mare Moon was caught short by her horn. It was illuminated, and a ten-foot-long spike of magical energy was rippling and twisting outwards from it, making the rubble smoulder where Twilight's anguished movements brought it into contact. Night Mare Moon had never seen so much magic being channeled at once. She doubted she herself could even come close, even now.
"Twilight Sparkle. Can you hear me?" She was not going to land. She was tensed to flee.
"GNNN-Luna! Lu-AH! Luna? Is that- UHHHGHH -"
"In a manner of speaking. You wanted to talk. Please, talk." Her hatred of The Lunacy was compelling her to attack while it was weak, but she held herself. If she attacked now, she would accomplish nothing. If she waited, she might discover how to kill it. "We are trying to help you. Trying to find out how to get that thing out of your head."
"It's - ah. Unghhhhh... I c-can... HHUUUHHHH! Hold it... Get the AAAAAUGH! AHHHHH! Get the Elements... Get th-AHHH!"
"They will not work without you! You are the keystone! You are the sixth Element!"
"I - ah. AHHHHHH. OH! I can - Get my - Get my fr-AAAHHHHHHHH! FRIENDS!" she gasped out. "GET MY FRIENDS!" Her tail flamed momentarily, then reverted to magical hair.
"I do not think that is a -"
"PLEASE!" The word tore from a tortured throat. "I m-m-UHGH. AH! I MUST SEE MY FR-AAAHHHHHGGGGGHHHHH!"
Fire blossomed from her head and tail. Twilight Sparkle had obviously lost control for the moment. Night Mare Moon vanished in a flash of starry smoke as a large, dangerous, many-toothed face swivelled in her direction.
For a couple of minutes now, it had been getting more and more annoyed while it waited for the intruder to just go away. Finally fed up, it cracked open an eye to see what was tapping gently on the end of its snout. Maybe a mid-nap snack?
Both enormous eyes snapped open, staring in shock and terror at the creature before it.
It couldn't look away. It couldn't move. It couldn't even blink.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mister Dragon," an incredibly tiny pink-and-yellow pony was saying in a quiet little voice. "I didn't want to wake you. But we have a tiny wee problem."
Her eyes bored in on the dragon's wide, staring gaze. Like thunder. Like a force of nature.
"I know how much you need your sleep, but, um, you see, my friend Twilight's just about to end the world. And, you know, it's really hard to sleep when you're dead. So, um, I'm just wondering if you'd mind helping us attack and capture a rampaging alicorn? And then, you can get right back to your nap."
Night Mare Moon opened her mouth to speak to her sister and the remaining Bearers, but before she could enunciate a single sound, she was rudely interrupted by a rainbow-maned sky-blue pony colliding at high speed with her armoured head.
"RAINBOW DASH!" a chorous of voices shouted.
"NIGHT MARE MOON!" a lone terrified pegasus shouted.
Night Mare Moon closed her eyes and gently screamed through tightly-clamped jaws, while the pink earth pony grabbed the terrified rainbow-blue blur and whispered urgently into her ear. She stood up."If we have all finished?!" she said, her voice in a slightly scarier pitch than she had intended.
"Wow, Rainbow Dash! What happened?! Did you find the dragons?! Did ya?! Huh huh huh?" Pinkie Pie was leaking enthusiasm all over the cave.
"Sure did, Pinkie Pie! Princess Celestia! I got a really important message from Fluttershy." The speed demon stood tall on her hooves and made herself look as important as possible. "We've got dragons! They'll fight for Equestria!"
There was a fairly shocked silence following this statement. Finally, Applejack ventured forth.
"Dragons? Y'all found DRAGONS?"
"Lots'a dragons!" Rainbow dash chortled, doing a rather un-recommended aerobatic manoeuvre within the tight confines of the cave. "We've got two of them on our side, and Fluttershy thinks she can get at least one more! Oh man, that pegasus is CRAZY! I mean, seriously... Oh, you had to be there! Oh! Oh! Pinkie Pie! Fluttershy said I had to bring you back with me! She needs another, uh, I can't remember what she said. Another, uh, cowgirl, I think!"
Pinkie's expression blazed with happiness. "Oooh! I could do that! I've always wanted to fly! Ever since I got my cutie mark, Mom always said that I kept bouncing around everywhere so fast all over the place, I shoulda been born with wings!"
"Alright, my little ponies," Night Mare Moon said. "I believe that a plan has come to light. It seems that Twilight Sparkle can briefly contain the beast. Very briefly, mind you," she said to the suddenly surprised faces in the cave. "We shall give Twilight Sparkle what she wants. We shall present her with some of her friends, and then we will see how she reacts."
Celestia's expression told everypony exactly what she thought of this plan. Night Mare Moon seemed to have anticipated her. "We will not risk anypony. We... I... That is, I did not set out to explicitly harm a single soul in my madness of a thousand years ago. I could not do so now, as I could not do so then."
"I never doubted that you could, Little Sister," Celestia said after a brief silence. "Please, if you have a plan, share it with us. If you will pardon the rather uncouth phrase, I've got buck-all to work with here."
"Rainbow Dash." The Mare of the Night stared the technicolour pegasus square in the eye. "Along with your very ebullient pink friend, please, take this message to Fluttershy." She spoke on for a few moments. "We will wait for your signal, and then Celestia will get the other ponies. Are we agreed?"
There were nods all around the cave. Rainbow Dash sat upright and saluted. "Sure thing, Princess!" Flapping back into the air, she picked up Pinkie Pie with her front hooves. "By the way, your Highness? You look awesome, you know!"
Grinning, Night Mare Moon spread her enormous wings and swirled her magical mane. Every pony in the room felt a thrill of terror, which was quickly dispelled as they remembered she was fighting with them. They hoped.
"Fly jus' as fast as ya can, Rainbow Dash!" Applejack called as the pegasus whipped up the cave, the delighted squeals of the pink earth pony growing rapidly faint.
"Alright then, Little Sister," Celestia said. "Let's put this plan into action. The deadline has passed, and I feel nothing trying to attack the sun. I'm not really sure she could do it, but we can't risk that." As Night Mare Moon nodded, she turned to Applejack and Rarity. "Are you ready to try to save your friend?"
An earthy-orange pony picked her way carefully through the smashed and scattered rubble of Ponyville. The indigo-maned unicorn that followed her was somehow ignoring the dirt and dust that accumulated on her pure-white hooves.
They rounded a ruined windmill, and saw her.
Lying on the ground before them, blood-red tears streaming from her eyes, a regal-looking alicorn writhed and thrashed in the shattered street. Her enormous horn was ablaze, her vast wings smashing into the ground so hard that they were cracking the flagstones of the road on which she lay.
"Twilight?" the earth pony asked.
"Twilight, are you alright?" the unicorn chipped in.
The change was immediate. The thrashing alicorn leapt bolt-upright, visibly shrinking in size as she resumed her natural form. The vast discharge of magical energy from her horn shrank to little more than a tiny glow.
"Applejack? Rarity?"
A lavender blur caught the two ponies around their necks, pulling them into a deep embrace. "Oh, I've missed you! I've missed you! Where's everypony else?! Are they okay?!"
"They're fine," the earth pony said. "Twilight, what are you going to do with us?"
"What am I gonna DO with you? Oh, Applejack! I'm not going to do ANYTHING with you! It's so good to have you here! I can concentrate, I can block this thing off for as long as I want! It's in my mind but I know where it lives! I can beat it! I really can!"
"Twilight Sparkle, I am very sorry to have done this. I really am. I never intended to deceive you," the apple-marked pony said.
Twilight looked her farmer friend in the face. "What... Applejack, you don't sound like... Applejack..."
Applejack and Rarity approached Twilight and Night Mare Moon's two mirages. "Twi', we're over here. Princess Luna wouldn't let us near you without makin' sure you weren't gonna just, well, you know. Just try an' attack us, like." As she spoke, "Applejack" and "Rarity" dissolved into blue smoke and dust. "But we're here now, sugarcube. And we ain't leavin'. We're here for ya, come Hell or high water."
"I, um." Twilight looked stunned. "I thought that you weren't, uh, you. But I know you're you now!" The small purple winged unicorn swept the real Rarity and Applejack into a powerful hug.
"So, ah, Twilight, dear, what do we do? Well, I mean," Rarity said, "I suppose it really is you in there?" She looked thoroughly petrified.
"Oh, Rarity. Of course it's me! I told Luna to get my friends! My friends make me stronger! I know where It is, and I can put a barrier spell around It! But, uh," Twilight seemed to sag slightly. "It really does take it out of me. I mean, you shouldn't be here in, uh, about twenty seconds from now. If it finds you..." The lavender alicorn's eyes widened.
"Hey! We got ourselves a plan!" Applejack said. "If we tells y'all what we're gonna do, can that thing in yer head find out about it?"
Twilight shook her head. "It only knows whats going on in the present. Like, It only sees what I see. Through my eyes. I've got It in my magic cupboard right now," Twilight chuckled. "Tell me anything you want, and as long as I don't think about it too hard, It's in the dark. What I need is a distraction. If you and the rest of the girls were there, and I got REALLY distracted -"
"Well, alright then!" Applejack said. "Okay, we're gonna try and catch you. Like, hold ya' until we can use the Elements. And we got ourselves a real doozy of a distraction! That alright with you?"
"It'll be so dangerous with you all there," Twilight said, a look of desperation coming into her face. "I might, uh, I might kill you."
"Oh darling! Don't you worry yourself about that! Just promise me this one thing," Rarity said.
"What? Promise you what?" Twilight's eyes were starting to dilate. "Hey, uh, girls, I don't think I've got too much longer here."
"Don't worry, Twilight. Just promise me something, alright?"
"Of course!"
"When it comes, you promise me that you'll fight tooth and hoof to get yourself back. Promise me?!"
"Okay, okay! Okay, Rarity!" Twilight was starting to twitch and shudder. "I promise! I'll... uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."
"You jus' save yer strength, okay? We'll be there to save ya!" Applejack and Rarity were backing up rapidly.
"I promise, girls! I promise! Get away! It's coming baAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The earth pony and the unicorn turned tail and fled as fast as they could. Flames erupted behind them as Night Mare Flare took flight.
"WHERE ARE YOU? YOU WERE JUST HERE! WHERE ARE YOU?!"
Twin white-and-gold and black-and-silver blurs smashed into the towering flaming alicorn. Celestia and Night Mare Moon together grabbed It and threw the Thing as hard as they could, straight upwards. They followed on its hooves, pressing the attack. They had to get Night Mare Flare as high as they could.
"Wheeeeeeee! This is fun!" Pinkie Pie shouted over the roar of the wind and the tremendous beating of massive wings.
"It's not supposed to be fun, Pinkie!" Dash called back. "We're supposed to be saving Twilight! But yeah, this is fun!"
"Eyes on the prize, girls!" Fluttershy shouted. "There they are! Rainbow Dash! The signal!"
The multicolour-maned pegasus leaped upwards from the neck of her steed and rocketed into the sky. Tipping over high, high above into a dive, her wings beating so fast they were a blur, she did what she absolutely, positively did better than any other pony, because no other pony had ever done it. Her special talent, a talent as rare as Twilight's total mastery of magic, something that no other pony, ever, had been best at. This was far from a trivial task - she'd only done this twice before, after all - but the lives of every living thing in the world were at stake, and also, more importantly to her, her friend's life was at stake. In such a situation, the most loyal of friends found that the required power and speed came easily. Her light-blue wing feathers nearly caught fire as she accelerated, straight down, through the speed of sound and far beyond, passing Mach two, Mach three, Mach four...
As the blinding explosion of panchromatic light shattered the night sky above them, Fluttershy drew in a very, very deep breath. She pointed at the raging battle dead ahead and, as the rapidly-decelerating Rainbow Dash flew back to resettle herself onto her mount, let forth the loudest sound she would ever make in her life.
"CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!"
Following the Sonic Rainboom's spectrum-shattering visual shockwave all the way in, three of the most enormous dragons that Equestria had ever seen, complete with screaming, whooping ponies clinging to their backs, flew faster than the fastest winds towards the battle for the fate of the world.
Twilight knew what was going on. It was like watching a film. She saw herself grabbing and thrashing Celestia and Night Mare Moon, throwing them away from her, trying to hurl them to the ground far below, ripping and tearing uselessly at their indestructible flesh...
She was fighting with all her might to not allow her magic to be seized and pulled from her by the other two alicorns, so as not to accidentally strengthen one of the spells she was raining on them. And she was pulling as hard at their magical attacks as she could, making them far stronger, far more devastating upon her.
It wasn't going to work. She'd win. She'd destroy the sun so everything slowly froze to death, and then she'd start to take the world apart piece by piece to find the Bearers.
A vast rippling sheet of pure rainbow blasted across the sky above her. Paying it no heed, she saw Celestia dive for the ground, moving faster than she'd ever seen the Princess move. She ignored that, too. Concentrated only on Night Mare Moon.
Enormous teeth closed around her.
Dragon teeth.
Magical teeth.
She was caught, in huge, indestructible, magical teeth. They were crushing her. They might even be able to penetrate her magical hide.
Magic is as magic does...
Vast claws were raking along her back and wings. The echoes of pain shouted through her mind as she twisted, fighting back, lashing the dragon with blistering fire, allowing herself to forget that dragons were fireproof.
She was thoroughly distracted.
Now was the moment.
NOW!
She found The Lunacy within her mind. It was there. It was right there. It could not have made its location more plain. And it was thoroughly surprised and distracted by this development.
Oh, yes. Some star must be shining down on me. I'll ask Luna about it later.
She fumbled within her mind.
She found purchase.
She grabbed it.
Squeezed it.
Twisted it.
Broke it loose...
"GET THE BUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!" she screamed, in a tone far louder and far more regal, despite the profanity, than the Royal Canterlot Voice.
Twilight Sparkle threw the tiny ball of absolute blackness as far away from her as she could...
The world seemed to explode in a concussion of terror and hate.
She fell.
Fell through the air.
I'm falling...
I'm going to hit the ground and die...
She remembered that she couldn't.
Wings tearing wide, she took in the view.
The Lunacy, visible at last as a physical entity. Night Mare Moon and the dragons were ripping into it. One dragon was hurled straight down, but they were too high for it to hit the ground before it recovered, and it flew back into the battle with jaws blazing fire.
Celestia was floating low down near the town, a thick magical bubble around herself and five other ponies. She was carrying Applejack, Rainbow Dash was carrying Rarity, and Fluttershy was holding Pinkie Pie.
They were all wearing necklaces...
"THE CROWN! THE CROWN!" Twilight screamed. "WHERE IS IT?! WHERE IS IT?! WHERE'S THE CROWN?!"
Celestia reached her magic down to the small, well-hidden wooden chest she had placed in the rubble beneath her. She seized the magenta-jeweled tiara and threw it faster than a bullet towards the rapidly-approaching small lavender alicorn.
Twilight saw it coming.
She grabbed it. Moved it into her flight path.
It slammed onto her head with a physical concussion of bright white light.
The Master of Magic flexed her thaumaturgical muscles.
Oh. Oh, my.
She opened her eyes. They blazed white-hot as she found her target. High above, three enormous winged beasts surrounded Night Mare Flare, snapping at it, smashing it with their great indestructible claws, blasting it with white-hot dragonfire. Night Mare Moon circled the rampaging battle, firing blasts of coloured light at the ferocious Thing at the centre of the fray. Distracting it. Blinding it to the real threat.
"GIRLS! TO ME!"
The crown's jewel exploded with light. Celestia dropped her magical barrier as five ponies, their jewelled necklaces glowing, were telekinetically pulled up to Twilight's height.
The Element of Magic, wielded by the most magically-powerful being the world had ever seen.
Flying higher and higher, her friends following along close on her wingtips, up towards the Thing that had tricked her, manipulated her, tried to control her.
The dragons saw her coming. Disengaging, they flapped back out of the monster's immediate reach, leaving it to Night Mare Moon alone.
Night Mare Flare saw her coming too. A fear, a terror older than Equestria itself, blossomed wildly in the mind of The Lunacy. It saw its destruction. Powered by the vestiges of Twilight Sparkle's magic, its magical ability was immense, but it could not triumph over this. It could not stand in the face of the Elements of Harmony.
It turned and tried to flee.
Twilight snatched it, squeezed it, crushed it with her mind. It began to howl, twisting, spinning within her grip, trying to teleport away from the death it saw bearing down upon it.
The jewels on the elements flared suddenly, intense purple and howling yellow and searing blue and blazing orange and red. The other five Bearers gasped in awe as their eyes, too, suddenly flamed perfect blistering white.
Twilight Sparkle, Master of Magic, Keystone of the Elements of Harmony, threw all of her magical ability into the destruction of the indestructible. Her friends started to scream as blazing rainbow-hued light began to explode from their eyes.
Twilight Sparkle's own eyes blazed hotter than the core of the sun as she cast her spell.
The concussion shattered windows as far away as Phillydelphia and Manehattan. A giant elemental fist of pure white light, entwined with spidery threads of all the colours of the rainbow, smashed into Night Mare Flare with the force of the Moon colliding with the world. Uncountable flying white-hot sparks exploded from the Thing as the three massive dragons turned tail and fled the oncoming cataclysm.
Night Mare Flare lived up to its chosen name. With a flash of light many times brighter than the noon-day sun, illuminating all of Equestria for hundreds of miles around, the enormous fang-jawed flaming alicorn-shape shrank into an almost imperceptibly-miniscule pinprick of light, shimmered and wavered for the tiniest moment, and then, with a sudden caterwauling shriek that every single living thing in the world heard clearly, exploded into a vast blooming sheet of brightest day and deepest night, spreading rapidly to the horizons, covering all the world with speckled swirling blotches composed of equal parts light and dark, flame and smoke, day and night, before fading, softly, to nothing.
With a scream of absolute glorious elation, Night Mare Moon exploded in a shower of deep blue smoke and silver sparks. A small alicorn with a pale-blue mane shot down out of the expanding cloud of black and silver dust, shrieking with joy as billions of stars blossomed and exploded back into view in the pitch-black night sky above.
"It's dead! It's gone! It's gone, gone, gone! It's gone forever!" Luna shrilled, her face almost split in two by an enormous smile. Then she noticed what was occupying Celestia's attention. As her sister raced up from far below, she folded her wings and shot into a dive after the falling unconscious ponies.
To claps and cheers from hundreds of ponies, Twilight Sparkle levitated the flag to the base of the pavilion's rooftop flagpole. Tying it to the halyard with her magic, she flew gently down from the roof to land beside the Princesses and her friends, folded her wings, and called "Ready?!"
Whistles and whoops and more clapping. "Okay! Here we go!" Her horn ignited, the flag moving gently to the top of the pole. Applause and cheering as the Mayor moved to the podium under the pavilion's bright bunting.
"Wonderful, wonderful!" the Mayor said. "That's it! Ponyville is officially rebuilt!" The cheers redoubled. "Thank you, everypony!" More cheering. "And especially to Princesses Celestia and Luna, who helped so much with the clearing and reconstruction!" The ponies went even crazier. "But most of all, to our own Princess Twilight, head of the organisation committee and personal architect of the new Ponyville!"
The applause was deafening. Ponies everywhere, all around the town square, were clapping their front hooves, stamping their back hooves, and cheering and yelling their heads off. Twilight blushed furiously, wanting to put a stop to this, and point out that she was most definitely not a Princess.
"Just go with it for now, Twilight Sparkle," Luna's amused voice murmured gently into her ear. "Be a Princess for just one day. You might even grow to enjoy it!"
After the downtown celebrations were concluded, Twilight and company walked through the early evening sunset back to the new library - and, over Twilight's objections, the official royal residence of Ponyville. Twilight had used an enormously-powerful growth spell to age a sapling about eight hundred years in the blink of an eye, and the woodworkers had hollowed out and strengthened the structure in record time, aided by Celestia, Luna and Twilight herself. There was one little addition to the large new balcony on top of the tree, however - a pedestal for the palace's enormous Sun Disc. Twilight had objected strongly, but Celestia put her hoof down. As Ponyville had missed out last year, Twilight was raising the sun right here at the upcoming Summer Sun Celebration, and Celestia was going to make sure she did it in style.
"Wow, Twilight, I'm beat! I've been on my feet for days! I'm gonna go have a nap." Spike trotted wearily up the stairs to his new room.
"We're going out to have a few drinks later, Spike," Twilight called after her number-one assistant. "We might not be here when you wake up."
"Okay," Spike yawned back from the landing. "Want me to save you any dinner?"
"No, we're good. Thanks for offering!" Rainbow Dash called.
"No problem. Have fun, you guys!" The sound of a door closing. Spike adored the fact that he had his own room.
Twilight looked around the new ground floor reading room, stocked with books from the Canterlot Royal Library, and even a few from Celestia's private bookcases.
Home.
She sat down on the couch and looked grumpy.
"What's the matter, sugarcube?" Applejack asked. "Ya' tired?"
"No, I'm not tired. I've been working all week without a break and I'm not tired at all. Alicorn thing?" she asked Celestia. The Princess nodded from her seat at the row of plush cushions along the wall.
"Well then, what's got you all grumpy?" Pinkie Pie asked around a mouthful of sprouts, coming out of the kitchen.
"I... I don't know. Let's go. I need a couple drinks, girls. Princesses?"
"We would be honoured, Twilight Sparkle," Luna said. Celestia nodded in agreement. The two royal alicorns stood and followed the six smaller ponies back out the door and into the darkening evening.
The old atmosphere of the Ponyville Bar was there, even though the eight ponies sitting alone were all incredibly famous - and two, possibly three of them were royalty. Though the citizens of Ponyville had seen a fair bit of Celestia since Twilight had moved here, and the Princesses themselves had gotten their hooves quite dirty during the week-long rebuild of the town, a Princess was still a Princess, and nervous glances kept shooting from the other patrons all evening. The six best friends, and two royal Princesses, all sat around the table in the bar's largest corner booth, chatting, laughing, having possibly a little too much cider, and talking about how Equestria was now safe forever with the destruction of The Lunacy.
"I really didn't know which of my thoughts were mine and which weren't," Twilight told her friends and the Princesses. "That Thing was really good at what it did. My thoughts really weren't my own at all, just like you said, Celestia." Twilight tipped her glass at her former teacher. "I couldn't tell which were which. I started to think that I really did want to destroy the world!"
"So how in the hay did ya' manage to beat it, Twi'?" Applejack asked.
"I out-thought it! I had these weird conflicting thoughts, but they made complete sense, like, um, oh! I believed that all I'd wanted to do for thousands of years was destroy everything. And I realized that I'm not thousands of years old. I think that unhinged it."
"After our first battle, when you remodeled the top of Windmore Mountain?" Luna asked.
Twilight nodded. "I realized that it was doing my thinking for me. It got mad, really mad. It tried to take me over, to force me to do its bidding." Twilight smiled. "It made a bit of a mistake. I kept my head. Kept calm. I flew straight down at that mountaintop as fast as I could go. That made it furious, but I'd found out where it was hiding in my head! I could be me again. But it was so angry. Every time I let my control slip, it burst back out. I was just a passenger. A passenger in my own mind. It nearly won."
"I don't want to even think about that!" Rarity said, with a note of worry in her voice.
"I think it was watching me, ever since we pushed it out of Luna last year. It saw my transformation and moved into my head, trying to make another Night Mare Moon."
"It sorta did, Twilight," Fluttershy said quietly. "How did you really stop it though? I mean," the pink-and-yellow pegasus said shyly, "what about the prediction? It almost did come true." Fluttershy looked momentarily terrified at the thought, then resumed her relatively benign expression.
"Easy. The Lunacy just made a mistake. I'm not the third Eternal Sister. I'm just Twilight Sparkle."
"But you ARE an alicorn, Twilight! So doesn't that make you an Eternal Sister?" Rainbow Dash pointed out.
"We think you are, Twilight," Celestia said. Luna nodded. "Remember what we saw when we looked at you with our full magical sight. And The Lunacy itself could not have known of that prediction."
"Well, alright, maybe. Maybe I was destined to end the world, and I just decided not to. At least, if it isn't me, and the third Eternal Sister does show up some crazy day," Twilight said with a smile, "she won't be able to embrace The Lunacy." The smile faded. "I don't think it was expecting me to destroy it, maybe just drive it away with the Elements again. Or trap it in stone." Twilight closed her eyes for a moment. "It was still a living thing, though. Evil and twisted, with no purpose other than to cause chaos and destruction. But still a living thing. And I killed it. On purpose." She lowered her muzzle to the table sadly.
"Twilight! Yer' crazy! That thing was gonna use ya' to destroy the world!"
"This is yet another reason why we think you are the third Eternal Sister, Twilight Sparkle. Your love for all living things. ALL living things," Luna emphasized. "I hated The Lunacy. I hate its memory. But I, too, am sorry that it is dead." The midnight-blue alicorn looked at her sister. Celestia nodded.
"As am I. Though I do not think you made a mistake."
Twilight looked with surprise at Celestia as the large, regal-looking alicorn continued with sadness in her voice.
"The Elements of Harmony, used in anger. Used, for the very first time, to kill. If what you did would have been, well, wrong, the Elements would never have activated. If bringing true, eternal harmony to the world meant killing the thing that would have otherwise destroyed it, then so be it. Luna and myself will mourn the passing of such an ancient immortal spirit," Celestia said, "but not for very long. You will, too, I think, also for a brief time only. I am afraid that this will be something else you will need to learn." Her younger sister nodded sadly at this.
The talk turned to other things. Twilight didn't join in. She looked slightly confused about something. This was the same feeling she'd had back in the library, just before they all went out. She listened to her friends talking happily all around her, listened to the background din of the bar. Everypony was having the time of their lives. Glancing up, she saw Celestia looking at her glum demeanour out of the corner of her eye.
Eternal harmony...
Eternal...
Finally, Twilight brought up the subject that she'd been trying to avoid for weeks and weeks now.
"So, uh, Celestia?"
The co-ruler of all of Equestria lowered her glass to the table and looked at her very steadily. Something told Twilight that Celestia knew what she was about to ask.
"What's on your mind, Twilight?"
"Uh, eternity. Immortality."
The talking and laughter of her friends died down as everypony turned to look at her. The rest of the bar was still noisy enough, but those around the table heard Twilight very clearly as she whispered the thought that she'd finally been able to confront.
"I'm going to have to watch all of my friends grow old. Grow old and... and pass away."
The background sounds of reveling ponies seemed to die away as well. Twilight looked at the table sadly, picked up her glass of cider, put it back down again. She was interrupted by a tremendous hug from Pinkie Pie.
"Don't you worry about that, Twilight! We've all got years and years and years of parties to throw before anything like that happens! The Princesses must have lost friends! Right, Princesses?"
In extremely-typical Pinkie Pie fashion, the hyperactive earth pony had just unwittingly opened a very deep wound.
Celestia and Luna both nodded. Briefly, very briefly, their faces showed deep traces of sadness and sorrow.
They must have known hundreds of ponies personally over the centuries. Thousands.
Thousands of friends... gone.
"How do you do it?" Twilight breathed.
"It's not easy. But we cope. Part of being an alicorn is keeping a level head in a crisis, Twilight, as you know. That will extend to coping with loss." Celestia looked around the table at the sad faces, all except Pinkie Pie shocked at this obvious revelation. "You all have long, full, worthwhile lives ahead of you. Twilight will share in those lives. You will all, one day, pass away, just like every other living thing. Twilight will remember you in her heart for ever, my little ponies. And so will Luna and myself, as we remember every friend we have ever made."
The six best friends digested this slowly as a pegasus guardspony trotted unobtrusively up to Celestia and murmured something quietly into her ear. "Yes, yes, I suppose you're right." She looked at Luna, who nodded, then she turned to address the table at large.
"The other affairs of state are starting to pile up. I'm afraid we must both get back to them. It is quite a lot of work, managing the business of an entire realm, along with moving the sky around as well," Celestia smiled, getting to her hooves. "I trust we will see you all soon, though? We're having a small, private dinner this weekend. Just the eight of us, plus Spike."
"Oooh! Formal dress?!" Rarity exclaimed, her shining eyes going wide with joy and anticipation.
"However you choose to come will be fine," Luna said, smiling happily. "Twilight Sparkle, we will be awaiting the arrival of your friends and yourself." The two sisters bowed, which made Twilight wince. "Celestia and myself are quite looking forward to it. Imagine us, hosting a private function for a Princess!"
Celestia and Luna chuckled. To bows and smiles from the other patrons, the Princesses, accompanied by half-a-dozen golden-armoured guards, walked gracefully out of the Ponyville Bar.
Twilight slumped her chin down on to the table. Then, she craned her head around and looked at her wings. She wiggled them. She sighed.
"Twilight!" Pinkie gasped without warning. "You GOTTA come to Sugarcube Corner tomorrow at four o'clock! I just remembered!" she said in a sudden rush.
Twilight sat up and looked at her immensely happy and expectant pink friend. "Let me guess..."
"Shhh! Don't tell yourself this, but it's your Hey-Wow-Twilight's-Gonna-Live-Forever surprise party!" Pinkie giggled. "Everypony's invited!"
Twilight rolled her eyes, then smiled.
The first of many, many parties to come.
"Wouldn't miss it, Pinkie. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
Let's get this out of the way first: I can't write. I'm not a professional writer. I don't even think I qualify as an amateur writer. But I do has prettie drarn gud spellung and. grammar, which'll be fairly helpful to me if I decide to bash out fanfic after fanfic.
I started writing this story around the premiere of Season 2 last year, but whether it was before or after The Return Of Harmony aired, I couldn't tell you. Basically, I was looking for fanfics of Twilight suddenly getting wings. I don't know why that is so relevant to my interests, but if I had to hazard a guess, it would be because Twi's my favourite character and I really wanted to see her with no physical or magical limits. I couldn't find any, not one! I'm sure there are loads of them out there, but the only other two I've seen to this date are The New Princess and Responsibility, and before I found either of those, I decided that if I wanted to read about Twilight as an alicorn, I'd just have to write it myself.
This story is essentially one enormous wish-fulfillment fantasy. It's far too contrived. There's really no drama aside from the constant cliffhanging, the big world-ending plot-point (which was conveniently resolved with no real effort), and Twilight having something in her head that keeps trying to get her to kill her friends. I think I only started writing this story because I really wanted to see Fluttershy flying into battle on the back of a dragon. And as for THAT scene... There was no reason for Pinkie Pie to have flown back with Rainbow Dash at all, she just got to sit on the third dragon for the hell of it. Kinda stupid too, as Pinkie hasn't got wings herself, and the back of an airborne dragon, even a temporarily tame one, is no place for a pony that can't fly.
And the dialogue. The dialogue! Of all the worst things that could have been written! This! Is! The! Wait, wait, my fainting couch is in the shop getting a service. Moving on. A very wonderful anon called Anon pointed out to me the obvious word for multi-party dialogue: polilogue. A wonderful word, and I just can't write it. (Well, I can write the word itself, but not polilogues in the abstract. Good grief). In conversations between groups of characters, most of them tend to get forgotten or given out-of-character lines just so they have something to say. I am TERRIBLE at this. I'm surprised I never put in a few lines like:
"Hey, we're here too!" Dash exclaimed. "Don't forget about us just because you're shit at polilogue!"
"Yeah, ya schmuck! What are we, invisible or something?!" an out-of-character Rarity agreed, gently and bloodily inserting her horn through the fourth wall and up the author's left nostril.
So I'll have to work on multi-party dialogue. I'll have to work on it a lot. I should watch some of the better "everypony says something" scenes in the show itself...
But I guess the real, real reason I started writing this is because I've always wanted to write... something. Somehow, I found the motivation, I dreamed up a crazy story that could never work, I threw in every single cool thing I could grab from the show so I wouldn't have to come up with my own cool things, and then decided to never, ever post this story anywhere.
And then, reading Responsibility by GaruuSpike just before Christmas, I saw a story that I considered to be far, far better than my own. "Someone else wrote my story!" I whined to myself. "They wrote it far better than I ever could!" Then I calmed down and stopped being a selfish little twat, and decided that I would offer my own take on the "Twi's got wings, woo!" story. Perhaps because I had no idea where Responsibility was heading, but I was sure that it wouldn't be "end-of-the-world."
Anyway, this is my little story done and dusted. There are two alternate endings still to come. One's a gag ending, so we'll all see if I'm better at comedy than polilogue (answer: almost definitely yes. That doesn't mean I'll be funny, though). The other one is the grimdark end-of-the-world ending I originally had planned out, but then couldn't write because it was too depressing, but then wrote anyway, because the idea of what would have happened in the library if Applejack had actually hit the wall at nearly a thousand miles an hour was far too tempting not to explore.
And on a personal note:
I have to admit that I was completely blown away by the response that this crappy little fic received here at FiMFiction. In fact, I'm rephrasing that. To say that I have been blown away is an understatement, a vast, gaping monstrosity of an understatement. I like this place, it's comfy and cozy and you can put your hooves up and enjoy a cup of cocoa any time you want. I really think I'll be staying.
You are, all of you, the most incredible and amazing people I've ever come across online.
Appendix II: Super-Mega-Ultra-Happy Alternate Ending (with still just a hint of bittersweet)
Note: This ending didn't exist until about two hours ago. I'd been editing the super-grimdark alternate ending together, and also another canon ending set far in the future, and they both thoroughly depressed me, so I put this alternate ending together to cheer myself up, and decided to share it with you as well.
This is NOT canon to the end of Not My Destiny, but it does make me happier.
We pick up the story halfway through the bar scene in the epilogue.
The talk turned to other things. Twilight didn't join in. She looked slightly confused about something. This was the same feeling she'd had back in the library, just before they all went out. She listened to her friends talking happily all around her, listened to the background din of the bar. Everypony was having the time of their lives. Glancing up, she saw Celestia looking at her glum demeanour out of the corner of her eye.
Eternal harmony...
Eternal...
Finally, Twilight brought up the subject that she'd been trying to avoid for weeks and weeks now.
"So, uh, Celestia?"
The co-ruler of all of Equestria lowered her glass to the table and looked at her very steadily. Something told Twilight that Celestia knew what she was about to ask.
"What's on your mind, Twilight?"
"Uh, eternity. Immortality."
The talking and laughter of her friends died down as everypony turned to look at her. The rest of the bar was still noisy enough, but those around the table heard Twilight very clearly as she whispered the thought that she'd finally been able to confront.
"I'm going to have to watch all of my friends grow old. Grow old and... and pass away."
The background sounds of reveling ponies seemed to die away as well. Twilight looked at the table sadly, picked up her glass of cider, put it back down again. She looked up at the Princesses, both of whom were gazing at her with incredulity.
"Your friends? These friends? Luna asked, sweeping a silver-shod hoof around the table. "How in all of Equestria are your friends going to grow old and pass away, Twilight Sparkle?" the midnight-blue alicorn said, disbelief written all over her graceful features. "How is that possible?"
Celestia blinked at Twilight's thoroughly confused face, realising what the small lavender alicorn meant. She started laughing quietly, beaming at her former student, who was now starting to turn slightly red. "Oh, Twilight! You don't know?" The Sun Goddess swept her gaze around the table, beaming at all of the Bearers. "None of you know? None of you noticed?"
"Ever since you defeated Night Mare Moon and destroyed my dark powers," Luna said, "have you ever so much as stubbed a hoof? Suffered any sort of injury at all that you didn't recover from far faster than would be possible for a mortal creature?"
Dawning comprehension began to appear in the minds of the six ponies.
Applejack remembered more than a week with no sleep and immense physical exertion, something that should have put her in hospital... She'd been fine after a half-hour nap...
Pinkie Pie shuddered at the memory of ingesting dozens and dozens of toxic muffins, which only made her mildly ill. She was bouncing around again, perfectly well, within minutes, while the other unfortunate customers that had had as little as a single bite were all in the emergency clinic overnight. Some of them were in there for days...
Fluttershy winced, recalling how she'd run at full speed into a closed door last Night Mare Night, something that should have broken her nose, and possibly even knocked out a few teeth. She'd been only momentarily dazed. And not to mention that she'd regrown her severed wing in almost no time at all, and her serious burns had faded in less than a week. You couldn't even see where they'd been now... How much of that was Princess Celestia's doing, and how much was her own?
Rainbow Dash, suffering similar serious injuries to her wings, remembered even having one trapped under a rockslide once. Where there should have been crushed and shattered bones, there were only bruises that had faded in hours...
Rarity, a unicorn, and not very physically strong, had carried a three-tonne rock around for hours with hardly any effort. She didn't like thinking of... that particular day, but it was true. She'd done it.
And Twilight herself, before the day she woke up as an indestructible alicorn, had been through so many scrapes and bangs that she should have ended up permanently crippled. Smashing into the cliff while running away from the hydra... And earlier that day, hadn't half a moving truck fallen right on her head? And what was the result? A headache that was gone within ten minutes.
"The Friends of The Master of Magic are scattered all throughout The Book, Twilight. You are all mentioned many, many thousands of times. I'd say you'd all have fairly furiously busy lives if those predicted events weren't spread out over a very, very long time," Celestia finished, winking at her lavender friend. "The Elements of Harmony have immense power, and Luna and myself were never able to unlock more than a fraction of their true potential. At last, however, the Elements have found their masters. They have chosen you six as their Eternal Bearers. They changed their forms to match the ponies they selected to wield them for all of eternity."
Nopony spoke for a moment - they were all too shocked and stunned by this revelation. Predictably, Pinkie Pie broke the relative silence at their table.
"We're all gonna live FOREVER?" she shrieked. "I can throw parties for my friends FOREVER?" She was almost vibrating her way off the seatcushions in her obvious excitement. Celestia was about to bring her back down to earth, but Luna spoke first.
"Remember, please, my little ponies. Immortality is hard. You will have to watch your loved ones grow old and pass away. This will be very hard on all of you," Luna said sadly. "You will all be together forever, but your other friends, lovers, children... They will all die around you. Your hearts will break, over and over, for thousands and thousands of years. You must all learn to cope with such immense loss." One single silver tear trailed down Luna's beautiful cheek, mirrored by a golden one from Celestia, as they briefly allowed themselves to remember their own vast grief.
The Bearers had obviously not considered this, and just as Twilight had thought she'd outlive her friends, now they were realising they would outlive... everyone else they cared for. Twilight was just coming to the understanding that she'd actually be able to see Spike reach adulthood, about two thousand years from now, when Celestia spoke again.
"It's not easy. But we cope. Part of being an alicorn is keeping a level head in a crisis, Twilight, as you know. That will extend to coping with loss." Celestia looked around the table at the overwhelmed faces.
Luna spoke again. "Twilight is an alicorn, but, I'm afraid, you are not. The loss and grief may seem overwhelming. But you will find your own ways to deal with it, I know you will. Twilight Sparkle, my sister, and myself will all be there to help you through it. We all promise you that."
Celestia nodded. "You all have immensely long, full, worthwhile lives ahead of you. Twilight, Luna and myself will share in those lives. You will suffer loss such as you cannot imagine. But for every friend and loved one that passes away, you will remember them in your hearts for ever, my little ponies. Just as Luna and myself remember every friend we have ever made."
The six best friends digested this slowly as a pegasus guardspony trotted unobtrusively up to Celestia and murmured something quietly into her ear. "Yes, yes, I suppose you're right." She looked at Luna, who nodded, then she turned to address the table at large.
"The other affairs of state are starting to pile up. I'm afraid we must both get back to them. Even with all the time in the world," Celestia chuckled, "there's just never enough time." She smiled, getting to her hooves. "I trust we will see you all soon, though? We're having a small, private dinner this weekend. Just the eight of us, plus Spike."
"Oooh! Formal dress?!" Rarity exclaimed, her shining eyes going wide with joy and anticipation.
"However you choose to come will be fine," Luna said, smiling happily. "Twilight Sparkle, we will be awaiting the arrival of your friends and yourself." The two sisters bowed, which made Twilight wince. "Celestia and myself are quite looking forward to it. Imagine us, hosting a private function for a Princess!"
Celestia and Luna chuckled. To bows and smiles from the other patrons, the Princesses, accompanied by half-a-dozen golden-armoured guards, walked gracefully out of the Ponyville Bar.
Twilight slumped her chin down on to the table. Then, she craned her head around and looked at her wings. She wiggled them. She sighed.
"Oh! Girls!" Pinkie gasped without warning. "You all GOTTA come to Sugarcube Corner tomorrow at four o'clock! I just remembered!" she said in a sudden rush.
Twilight sat up and looked at her immensely happy and expectant pink friend. "Let me guess..."
This is the canon ending of Not My Destiny. The story is complete at this point.
The ceremony was utterly spectacular. It had been held, by tradition, in Ponytopia, as it had been every ten years for the last two thousand. As it was such an important date, and in such an important place, all three Royal Princesses had taken part. Luna had first provided a night-long display of comets and meteor showers, Twilight had brought the glorious dawn, and Celestia had sent the sun thundering high into the sky for this, the longest day of the year.
The three thousandth Summer Sun Celebration was the biggest ever. Three days of festivities and holidays had preceded the day itself, and there were three more days of celebrations to follow. From the balcony of the enormous castle, the Royal Pony Sisters looked down on the vast crowds gathered below in the plazas and walkways and streets of the bustling capital city, and all three of them smiled.
"Well, Little Sister, that went magnificently."
"You're not kidding, Big Sister," Twilight replied to Luna. "There must be ponies here from all over Equestria! I don't think I've ever seen so many smiling faces in one place before. How about you, Biggest Sister?"
Celestia closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, a single golden tear, a tear of joy and love and wonder and celebration, shimmered in the corner of her large magenta eye. "Never, Littlest Sister. Never, in more than eight thousand years. Our stable has grown beyond my wildest imaginings."
"I do miss the old place," Twilight said softly. "But time marches on. Progress..."
I miss a hell of a lot more than just this place, back when it was called Ponyville.
...think about that later.
Time was the greatest paradox of all. The last two thousand years had passed in a rapid blur of memories and events and grief and joy, yet every single individual second of time had seemed to stretch and grate on as if it were years and centuries, every minute lasting thousands and thousands of unbearable years. She put it from her mind, hitched her regal expression back onto her face, and smiled down at the crowd, wondering if she could stand to stay alive for another second.
She'd lasted another ten months. Somehow. But enough was enough.
She'd made up her mind.
She was saying goodbye for the last time.
Set near the back of the palace, the lovingly-cared-for Royal Memorial Garden had been closed to the public for the afternoon. The ushers apologised to the tour groups from Old Canterlot and Manehattan, but there were VIPs attending a private ceremony.
The VIPs in question could be clearly seen through the tall, graceful fences and gates that served to partition the graveyard off from the rest of the enormous, flowing palace grounds. The tourists could see why they weren't allowed in. There were no Ponies more Very Important than these three.
As Celestia and Luna sat watching, heads leaning on each other for support, wings around each other in a rare public display of emotion, Twilight stepped reverently up to the first of the seven special headstones that stood together on a slightly elevated patch of ground near the centre of the graveyard. Bowing low for a moment, she raised her eyes and looked at the familiar, grief-filled monument. A simple cylinder of marble with carved wings emerging from the side, a small, well-polished brass plaque adorning the front.
Never Resting While Awake, Here She Rests In Sleep RAINBOW DASH Bearer of the Element of LOYALTY
Died Aged 43
Loyal Forever
It always seemed so unfair that pegasus ponies lived such short, rapid lives. This was probably why it was tradition for a pegasus to marry an earth pony or unicorn - though nopony liked to dwell on the reasons behind this, of course. Rainbow Dash shunned tradition anyway. Her Wonderbolt husband and herself had had three beautiful fillies, all of whom inherited their mother's unique hair colour, and all of whom became orphans in their early teens. Pony society was set up for such events, and a little royal attention certainly didn't hurt their chances of individual fame either. They had all followed their famous mother into the Wonderbolts, and they had all managed to perform Sonic Rainbooms. She would have transformed into the Element of Pride if she'd seen them.
A murmur of worry crossed Twilight's grief-stricken face for a moment as she said her last goodbyes to her most loyal friend. She had gone to the Vault of Harmony to retrieve the Element of Loyalty, to hang it proudly about Dash's neck as the pegasus lay in state in the old Canterlot Castle, only to find that it was missing from the chest they were kept safely in. Gone. Shocked, she thought to take the Element of Magic instead, only to find that one of the small jewels below the crown's star-shaped gemstone had transformed into a tiny thunderbolt-shaped ruby...
The shocked conversation that followed with Celestia and Luna was still vivid inside her head. Twilight had locked the Elements away again, afraid of what she would find if another friend passed away. She attended the funeral of her short-lived friend and somehow managed to manage her grief and loss for almost three decades.
And speaking of the short-lived pegasi, just as her next friend had shunned the sky to live on the ground, she also seemed to have shunned the relatively short lives of the noble flyers. No pegasus had ever reached fifty. Fluttershy shattered the record for all time. Twilight looked towards the softly-rounded pillar entwined in stone butterflies.
Here Lies A Gentle Soul FLUTTERSHY Bearer Of The Element Of KINDNESS
Died Aged 71
Friend To All
White-maned and white-coated at her death, the friend of every single living thing had spent her final morning feeding all of the animals she cared for around her cottage and grounds, as she'd done almost every morning for over half a century. She'd died on her rounds, and no bird sang anywhere in all of Equestria for more than a month.
That had done a great deal to wrench her heart from her chest, but somehow she managed. She held on. She endured. And just over thirty years later, she met the hardest test she'd had at that time.
Her Final Party Over At Last PINKAMENA DIANE "PINKIE" PIE Bearer Of The Element Of LAUGHTER
Died Aged 100
Happiness Eternal
The saddest day in Equestrian history. The birds silencing their morning chorus for Fluttershy was bad enough, but this...
She fought to both remember and forget Pinkie Pie, who'd passed away, still pink-and-poofy, the day after her hundredth birthday. The party itself was still legendary. Her dozens of great-grand-children had been planning it for over a year, and, typically, Pinkie herself had completely forgotten the date, even though she'd sadly remembered her beloved Gummy's birthday the day before, as she had every year since the tenacious little alligator had passed away. She was very, very surprised, and happier than she'd ever been.
Maybe that's why she died? She knew she'd never be happier?
At this point, Twilight hadn't dared to examine the Elements, though she thought she knew full-well what was happening to them. She had vowed she would never open the chest they were stored in again, not ever.
She kissed the top of the spiral pillar with the engraved balloons entwined around it, and moved on to the one on its right.
The simple three-foot-tall marble slab had a stylized apple carved into the top-right corner. Twilight gave a sniffly chuckle through her tears, thinking of what the orange earth pony with the simplest of tastes would have made of being laid to rest in such a place as this.
Salt Of The Earth APPLEJACK Bearer Of The Element Of HONESTY
Died Aged 102
As Dependable As Sun And Moon
Barely eighteen months after all the happiness seemed to have vanished from Twilight's life, Applejack, the most dependable pony in the world, had died while applebucking, passing away while involved in her self-imposed duty, just like Fluttershy. The only thing that could stop her was her own death. She herself had greatly increased the numbers of the Apple family, not to mention Macintosh's and Applebloom's efforts, but even with all the help in the world, she was always out there, working the farm with the rest of them. Stubborn to a fault, and Twilight loved her dearly for it.
Pausing to wipe fresh streamers of tears from her face, Twilight bowed low before the tall, slim, diamond-shaped stone memorial. The tears were really starting to flow strongly now, despite the fact that she'd had more time to spend with her unicorn friend than she could have possibly hoped for.
The Rarest Of Gifts RARITY Bearer Of The Element Of GENEROSITY
Died Aged 321
Giving Until The End
Twilight was immensely proud of her most generous friend. When she'd passed away, two centuries older than any other unicorn in history, her family had been absolutely enormous, though she'd had no foals of her own. Over three hundred of Sweetie Belle's own descendants had been in attendance at the funeral, but the vast majority of the three or four thousand mourners were orphans, each one known personally to the most generous spirit to exist in living memory.
Spike and Rarity. What a pair. What had started as childhood infatuation from the dragon, and gentle humour and indulgence from the unicorn, had developed into one of the greatest, truest loves the world would ever see. Nopony thought it the least bit odd - love is where you find it, after all. And Spike and Rarity were very, very much in love.
Something about the magic of Spike's own slow aging had carried through to his wife, allowing her to reach her phenomenal mortal age. A good thing, too, because the inseparable pair had set themselves several lifetimes' worth of work to do. Unable to have their own children for the obvious reasons, they'd used their mutual fame, and Rarity's vast wealth from her to-this-day-popular fashion lines, to open the most spectacular orphanages possible in every city in the world. They ended up 'having' tens of thousands of children, and the trust-fund that still managed the places wouldn't be depleted for another three thousand years.
Of course, Spike was a dragon, and though he'd somehow slowed his wife's aging as she stood by his side - Twilight liked to think that love had a lot to do with it - he did, after all, have a lifespan measured in the thousands of years. Just after the funeral, the seven-foot-tall dragon had said goodbye to Twilight and the Princesses and flown away, to see if a hundred years of slumber would ease his broken heart.
It didn't, but he came back anyway. He really couldn't bear to stay away from Twilight. He was her number-one assistant, after all.
Strong Heart Of Fire And Gold SPIKE Honoured Above All Heroes
Killed In Battle Aged 987 He Gave His Life To Protect His Princess, His Big Sister, His Friend
The dragons were petitioning for much longer nights and much shorter days, so Twilight and Spike had gone to see if they could reach some compromise. It was like just any other ordinary day-to-day diplomatic mission, boring as boring can be, until the dragons had attacked her, wanting to capture a Princess to use as a bargaining chip. She'd held seven or eight of them off, but there were more than twenty at the conference, and Spike, her magnificent lifelong number-one assistant, had taken on the rest of them. Alone. A half-grown dragon taking on fifteen or so fully-grown ones.
He'd killed them all, even the ones that Twilight was managing on her own, before being overcome by his wounds. Bursting into green fire during Twilight's mad dash back to Canterlot with him, he'd burned away to nothing, not even ash remaining to bury here in the garden. What was interred under the marble winged-flame pillar was a magnificent radiant-cut topaz, Spike's most treasured possession, given to him by his one true love long, long ago, and, as he often said, the only reason he'd never really started a proper hoard. What was the point if you already had the most important gemstone in all existence?
The dragons had been shocked by these events. Knowing what an alicorn could truly do, and fearing the wrath of all three Princesses, their peace treaty was binding and eternal. And it had been signed within hours. And somehow, Twilight didn't forget her oath to never open the Vault of Harmony, take what she found there, and wipe every last dragon from the face of the world. Spike would never have forgiven her. And she would never have forgiven herself.
With a burning pain in her chest, at least as hot as Spike's own leaking dragonfire in which he perished, she turned to the seventh, and final, pillar of stone. Shaped like a tall, six-sided crystal with a broken top, it was no larger than the others, yet it seemed to radiate importance of a kind the others didn't have, massively important as they all were.
This was the real reason she was here. She missed her friends enormously, but this... This was different. She visited these graves every day, but she would usually only nod at the others with respect and grief. But she would always sit down in front of the final marker, with its two criminally-small plaques, for a few minutes. The thoughtful groundspony at the time had fitted an intricately-carved flagstone just for her.
The greatest joy and the greatest sadness of her life. For more than eight hundred years after the death of Spike, she'd shunned friends, had become aloof, confided only in her two Sisters. The very model of the detached monarchy. But at Celestia's urging, she'd begun teaching in the new school for talented unicorns that had just been completed in the newly-built city of Ponytopia.
She'd taken students under her wing, taught the very best to be better. And then, she met him. Starburst, her most faithful student. He even shared her Cutie Mark exactly, showing enormous latent magical ability. A magnificently-talented young unicorn colt, he grew into a fine stallion under her watch. They became more than teacher and pupil, they became friends. The first friend she'd had in centuries.
And her heart began to thaw.
And he asked her on a date.
Her! Royalty! Going on a DATE!
Well, she wasn't really royalty, after all. She never wore any regalia. And she still didn't think of herself as a Princess.
She'd accepted.
His Royal Highness PRINCE STARBURST Beloved Husband Of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Died Of A Broken Heart Aged 44
It was all she could put on the plaque. If she'd tried to put anything more on it, this plaque would be a hundred feet wide and a hundred feet tall. And there still wouldn't be enough room to say what she needed to.
But...
Her eyes flicked from the small plaque to the equally-small one just above it. Her resolve cracked. Her silent tears became wracking, shuddering sobs as she collapsed to the ground.
Her Royal Highness PRINCESS TWILIGHT GLIMMER Beloved Daughter Of Princess Twilight Sparkle
Tragically Died Aged 13
They had told her. Celestia and Luna had told her. Over and over, they told her of the grief to come, and how she would manage it, how she would come to terms with it, how she could live her eternal life with relative ease. How all of her massive stores of emotion could be safely bottled away.
It wasn't working out that way.
Her beautiful daughter, a wonderful deep-purple winged unicorn. Not an alicorn, which is what everypony thought at first. She was mortal. She was so very talented in magic, and was already a fantastic flyer when...
No...
No, she would not remember. She would die right here if she remembered. Starburst HAD died right here, on this very spot, refusing to leave, becoming sick, dying. Dying of a broken heart, and breaking her heart even more.
No, she wouldn't die. She would fall to her grief, as Luna once fell to her jealousy. She would exile herself, probably back to the moon, probably forever.
But she might not. She might become a new Night Mare, and impose her grief and suffering on every creature in the world.
She could not take that risk.
Standing up, at long last, she noticed the sun had set and the moon was halfway up the sky. She'd been here for hours, sobbing on the ground at the foot of her daughter's memorial. She brushed off her legs and turned her back on the seven graves, walking back to her Sisters. They rose to meet her.
"I'm leaving."
"We know," Luna choked.
"You must do this, Twilight," Celestia said, wiping at her own tears. "You must do this or it will eat you away."
The three Sisters, two of them biological, one through honour, embraced for what seemed years, but was only a few minutes. Then, they slowly began to walk up to the special room in the tallest tower.
There was only one item of magical jewellery remaining in the chest that had stayed firmly locked for almost two thousand years.
The sparkling golden tiara, gleaming as though somepony had just finished polishing and shining it for hours, was lifted reverently out of the chest by Celestia and Luna, their hooves shaking slightly as they held it up to Twilight. Underneath the large magenta stone of Magic were five smaller gemstones.
The ruby of Loyalty, shaped like a lightning bolt.
The delicate-looking butterfly-shaped pink diamond of Kindness.
A happy-looking balloon, the glowing tourmaline of Laughter.
The warm, welcoming apple-shaped citrine of Honesty.
And the magnificent diamond-shaped purple sapphire of Generosity.
There were small filigree threads of glowing gold linking each of these gemstones to five of the six points on the star of Magic. The final point held a tiny golden six-pointed star, exactly like her Cutie Mark and the gem of Magic itself.
The Eternal Sisters placed the Element of Harmony on Twilight's lowered head, behind her horn. As Twilight's head came up, Celestia and Luna bowed.
"It suits you," Luna said.
Twilight smiled. "I'll see you again?"
"Undoubtedly." Celestia looked as if she was about to crack in two from trying not to cry.
After more than two thousand years, the three alicorns found that there was nothing more that needed to be said. There was only time for one more embrace, and then, Twilight stepped to the balcony, opened the doors, spread her wings wide, and lifted off into the night sky.
The stars above her winked out into blackness. The moon faded from view.
Luna's giving me the whole sky to myself.
Thank you, Big Sister.
Once, long ago, she had used her phenomenal magical ability, channeled and amplified immeasurably through the Elements of Harmony, to destroy something that could not be destroyed, to kill something that could not be killed.
On this night, two thousand years later to the hour, she would do so again.
The six jewels set into the Element of Harmony blazed bright magenta and purple and pink and red and blue and orange. Memories of her very best friends strengthened the coming spell beyond estimation.
Magical spells all over Equestria sputtered and flickered. Unicorns dropped the things they were levitating as their powers seemed to briefly falter. Magically-kindled candles and fires went out. Magically-locked doors sprung open. Magically-powered clocks ran backwards as Twilight Sparkle, now high over the capital and still rapidly climbing, gathered all of the magic in the world for her spell. And far below her, gazing skywards from a balcony in Ponytopia, the magnificent forms of two regal alicorns shimmered and wavered, briefly showing two small winged unicorns in their places, a white one with a curly pink and green mane, and a slightly-younger one whose sky-blue hair set off her coat of midnight. Tears were streaming down each small, childlike face.
Causing ethereal ripples all over the world, the most powerful spell ever cast flowed from the mind of Twilight Sparkle and into her rightful crown.
Her horn cracked in a spiral, right along the mother-of-pearl fluting. She didn't object, she didn't complain, she didn't fight as the magic burned away her indestructible flesh and bones. She wanted to go. The sun seemed to be momentarily aloft in the night-time sky as the Element of Harmony detonated.
I'm coming, girls...
With a vast rippling crack of multihued light, like a massive spherical rainbow exploding high in the otherwise empty night sky, Twilight Sparkle died.
The sun didn't come up that morning. It sat just below the horizon, brightening the edge of the sky, but not itself peeking above the edge of the world. The moon had just set, leaving a faint silver glow on the horizon, but the stars burned above, far brighter than usual. For seven days, the enormous ball of warmth and light slowly moved around the horizon, always staying just out of sight, while the stars remained perfectly still overhead. A gloriously melancholy display of midnight black with blazing points of light above, and red, gold, purple and blue streamers of the coming or leaving day around half of the horizon, counterpointed by a shimmering silver hint of the moon directly opposite. An entire week of unchanging star-strewn dawn and dusk in memory of her.
Seven days of sparkling twilight.
And then, the stars went in, and the sun came up.
The start of another brand-new day.
The sunlight revealed an eighth stone erected to the right-most side of the line in the Royal Memorial Garden. A large marble cylinder, slanted at the top, with an inset six-pointed star carved in the face, surrounded by five smaller stars. The small brass plaque in the middle of the pillar was newly-made.
The Most Magical Of Ponies HER ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCESS TWILIGHT SPARKLE Master Of The Element Of MAGIC Bearer Of The Element Of HARMONY
Died Aged 2019
Friendship Could Not Make It All Complete But Magic Found A Way
She gently touched the ground. Warm, green, luscious grass, thick and soft underhoof. She didn't look up for the moment. There had never been such perfect grass, not anywhere. Not ever.
The light filtering down was so comfortable on her hide. It was just perfect. She breathed in deeply through her nostrils, held her breath for a moment, and then exhaled. The air. The air was perfect.
Suddenly, a confident, laid-back, incredibly-familiar voice sounded just in front of her. The voice, too, was just perfect.
"Well there y'are, sugarcube. Took ya' long enough! We was gettin' tired a' waitin' fer ya!"
She looked up, just as another voice cried "Momma! You're here!"
They were all beaming at her. All of them.
With tears of joy in her eyes, she smiled back.
She wasn't at all surprised to see that Pinkie Pie had thrown her a party.
