The night of travel through the Frozen North by hoof was arduous. It was dark and cold. The ubiquitous cloud cover keeping even the moon from lighting the way. But being June, and the height of the summer solstice, they needed only to get down off of the plateau to get into more temperate climate.

In the small hours of the morning, they entered a small, mountainside hamlet. Most of the citizens were asleep. But there was a modest inn that still had the front lamp lit. Stark's vision was blurry with exhaustion. He followed the two mares inside. After a brief exchange with the front desk that escaped his hearing, they were in a room. He slept where he fell.

-----

Stark awoke to the dawn as it streaked in through the window. The other two were already awake. He stumbled up off the floor. They stood at the window, overlooking the valley ahead, watching the sunrise. He could only make out their silhouettes against the sun behind them. They turned toward him at the sound of the bells on his Starswirl ensemble.

"Good morning." She said. "I hope you slept alright." Stark twisted his head about, trying to get the knots out of it. He still felt like he could sleep for another age. But his curiosity outweighed his fatigue.

"I've had worse." He lied.

"Come on then. We haven't a moment to lose." She said, leading him outside. "We need to find a way to stop Sombra. If any place will have the answer as to how, it will be here." She said, waving about her at the village. "Young unicorn, let me be the first to welcome you to Canterlot."

"HA!"

"Hahahaha"

"HAHAHA HA HAA! YOU DOLT!" Stark clutched his sides at the absurdity of her statement. "This isn't Canterlot! Why, this is barely a hovel! I- wow!" He practically keeled over. "I just- I'm sorry- hehehehe! It actually takes a lot to make me laugh that hard." He said between gasps. He was practically tearing up. "Oh ho ho, oh-" He sighed "Okay, but seriously, where are we?" He asked once he had composed himself. His companions were mortified. They hadn't expected him to make such a scene. Luckily most ponies were still asleep at this hour.

"I AM being serious. This IS Canterlot." She said.

"Wha- what?" Stark asked incredulously "No, no it can't be. Canterlot has a castle on the side of..." He trailed off as his view traveled up the side of the mountain. "...no." He put his hoof up in front of his view, blocking out the muddy huts and squalor. "No." His eyes narrowed. This was the correct mountain. He recognized that ridge line anywhere. This was the right side of it. "It's impossible!" This was the place. "Nononono!" He ran to the ledge overlooking the valley below. Where Ponyville once lay was naught but grass and a smattering of trees. "What the hell happened!? Where is it!?" His legs gave out as the world spun around him. The hard cobblestone against his skull worked like no ordinary tranquilizer could.

"... and then he just went crazy and passed out."

Stark looked up from the bed he was on. Some sort of cleric was muttering something beside him. Candles were everywhere.

"Oh good, it worked doctor. He's awake." She said.

"You purged the demons!" Her sister said.

"What? No. I just got to worked up and my blood pressure spiked." Stark said, sitting up.

"You did what with the blood now?"

"Ha! I knew it was bad blood. Good thing we had the leaches." She said. Stark looked at the mollusks on his legs.

"AHH!" He peeled them off, painfully. "No! This is not how medicine works! What is wrong with you ponies? You. Get out!" He barked, dismissing the 'doctor'. "Now... can somepony please tell me what is going on?"

"You started talking crazy and then you fell asleep out in the streets." She said.

"I don't mean about me, I mean the world! It's not right!" He said. They both looked at him strangely.

"We don't understand. Are you sure you are alright?"

"Yes... No... I don't know. I just- who are you anyway?" He asked. After everything that had happened, he'd been too scared or tired to even bother knowing the identities of his companions. But then he never was the most social of ponies. But now was the time that he needed answers. Starting with them. She pulled back her hood, finally revealing her entire face.

"My name is-"

"Celestia!?" He asked in sudden recognition. Her mane was pink, and she and her horn was shorter. But even without her royal jewelry, those eyes, it was her.

"N- no. How- how do you know her real name?" Her sister barely had time to finish her question before he pulled her hood back as well.

"Luna?" He knew he recognized her voice as well. Her mane was a pale blue, but it was definitely her too.

"I'm sorry, have we met? How can you know our true identities?" Celestia asked.

"He must be a spy!" Luna said.

"It's me! Starswirl!" He said. He was met with blank stares from both of them.

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you Starswirl." Celestia said, extending a hoof. Luna gave her a glare. "What? I can tell when a pony is lying. And he's clearly not a spy. After all, he helped me break you out of the dungeon."

"But how do you know us?" Luna asked. "Our identities were kept secret by the unicorn tribe. Who talked?"

"Luna, be calm." Celestia intervened. "He's a fellow unicorn like us." She turned her attention back to him "If you know who we are, then you must know what we do." She probed.

"Yeah. You're responsible for raising the sun and moon." He answered.

"And how did you come by this knowledge." She asked.

"Everypony knows. It's common knowledge." He said.

"No. Wrong. Only the upper most echelon of the unicorn tribe knows this!" Luna barked.

"Wait..." Starswirl's mind raced.

He's a unicorn like us.

upper most echelon of the unicorn tribe

UNICORN TRIBE

"Oh no." He breathed. "I need something to write on. NOW!" Celestia hurriedly grabbed a blank notebook from her bag, along with a quill and ink. Starswirl pulled the bits of paper from his bag. The spell from the first page of the book and the heading from the second. He checked it against his cipher. "Dearest Mare," But it was wrong. The second R in the greeting was a different symbol. "Oh no."

"Princess Cadence?" The guard asked of her attention. She looked up from what must have been an incredibly interesting floor, given how much time she'd spent staring at it in the last twenty four hours.

"Yes?"

"Princess Twilight Sparkle has arrived." He said.

"Yes. Send her in." She said. Cadence didn't know what was about to happen. But Celestia had been crying all night. Amidst her bouts, the only information anypony could get from her was that Twilight Sparkle was to be summoned immediately, if not sooner. And that upon her arrival...

"Cadence! I came as fast as I could. What's wrong?" Twilight said, galloping toward the crystal throne.

"That's just it Twilight, I have no idea!" Cadence said. "Princess Celestia is in the royal suite. She's been inconsolable since she arrived, crying all night. I'm fairly certain it has something to do with your son's disappearance, and-"

"Disappearance!? Starswirl is missing!?" Twilight yelled.

"Yes. But Celestia seems to know where to. But she refuses to speak to anypony but you." Cadence barely finished her sentence before Twilight turned on her hoof and was headed back out of the throne room. Cadence looked to the guards. "Remember," She said to them "Celestia gave very specific instructions that they are NOT to be interrupted under any circumstances." She said. The guard stood fast. The doors to Celestia's room flew open. Celestia was a mess. She hadn't slept a wink all night. Her eyes were puffy and red.

"Celestia! What happened? What's wrong?" Twilight asked quickly, closing the door behind her. Celestia's teeth were on edge. She'd rehearsed this speech so many times before. And here she was. And she was lost. For the first time in a millennium, she was genuinely afraid.

"He's gone." She wept. Twilight had only ever seen Celestia cry twice before in her entire lifetime. Even then, it was barely a single tear from the normally stoic princess. And here she was, openly crying forth buckets.

"Starswirl? Yes I heard. We need to find him. Do you know where he went?" Twilight asked desperately.

"Not where." Celestia said, pushing the pile of papers across the table to her. Twilight looked down at the encrypted book. It was clearly ancient. On the paper was a decoding cipher.

"This is the last book of Starswirl the Bearded." Celestia said. "The first page is a spell, but the rest..."

"But... I've researched everything about Starswirl the Bearded. I've never heard about this book." Twilight said.

"Nopony has. Because you were not meant to until today." Celestia explained.

"But what does this have to do with-"

"The answer is in those pages." Celestia said. Twilight quickly decoded the first sentence.

"Okay, it's a letter to somepony. A mare-" Twilight jumped back from the paper as though it had transformed into a snake. "NO!" She looked up at Celestia. This book was many hundreds of years old. The normally regal princess could barely bring herself to meet her gaze. "He didn't! He isn't!?" Twilight choked up. Celestia just gave the barest of nods. "And- and you knew? You KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN? MY SON!?"

Celestia braced herself. Twilight was upon her in a flash. She was too distraught to use magic. But her hooves moved in a blur, pummeling the white alicorn while screaming every expletive she could think of. Celestia offered no defense. Her hooves hung limply beside her as she took the blows to her chest and face. Celestia's head jerked from side to side from the repeated impacts. Somewhere in Celestia's brain, the information could be called pain. But it was drowned out by the pain in her heart. Her jaw crunched. She tasted blood. Twilight kept swinging blindly, screaming through the tears as she beat her former mentor. She swung and hit her over and over until her muscles burned and her hooves bled. Celestia continued to take the beating.

He was gone forever now and there was nothing she could do to bring him back.

The purple pony on top of her soon exhausted herself, crying just as hard as the alabaster princess under her. Celestia only reached out and hugged her, even as she flailed her hooves weakly at her between sobs. Celestia held her to close to her bruised chest, even as she continued to curse her name until her lungs were sore.

"I'm so sorry."

"R and D were one symbol." Starswirl said looking down at his scrap of paper in ancient Canterlot. "It wasn't 'Dearest Mare,'. It's 'Dearest Madre'. It was my book. My journal that I wrote to her!"

"Your son is Starswirl the Bearded." Celestia said. Twilight continued to cry weakly on top of her. "This book is yours." She said. "He wrote it to you in code. The cipher is for you to read it when nopony else could." Twilight barely heard her. She was still in shock. "... when you're ready."

"Come on. Let's get you cleaned up." Celestia said, helping Starswirl to the water basin in the room. She splashed a bit on his face. The polished metal disk in front of him barely served as a reflective surface. He ran his hoof across the thick scruff on his jaw.

"I don't suppose either of you have a trimmer?" He asked. They continued to look at him like he had ten heads. "Screw it. I'll just grow it out." He resigned. He sat back at the table. He'd copied the spell he'd used to get here into the book for study later, using the original coding, before he could forget. Then, in a moment of clarity, he closed the notebook and looked at the cover. This was that book. This was the book. This book would travel through the ages to his Madre's hooves over a thousand years from now. He knew what he needed to do. After having been working with it for so long, he knew the coding by heart. It was like a second language to him now.

Dearest Madre...

Twilight's tears stained the ancient parchment as she read the page.

Dearest Madre,

If you're reading this, then it means that I am gone. I have only just arrived in the distant past, shortly after Sombra staged his coup in the Crystal Empire. I have met a young Celestia and Luna. Which, I know, means that Celestia knew that this had to come to pass. I hope you are not too hard on her for it. I realize now that she had no choice but to let it happen.

Twilight looked up at the bruised princess and cringed.

I finally understand my destiny, and who I am supposed to be. I suppose it is fate that it could not happen any other way. If mom would have had her way, he I would have been Trixster the Bearded. Because they do not have beard trimmers here in the past. I will have to invent them. I will have to invent a lot of things, now that I think about it.

It is still a bit strange, thinking about all the things that Starswirl the Bearded did in the past tense as future things I am destined to do. Ponies here don't even know how to call light to their horn. I had to teach them. One down, one hundred ninety nine to go.

Madre, there is something I wanted to tell you. Something I felt my whole life but could never tell you before. Now this is my last chance. I always felt like you were constantly comparing me to him. Starswirl the Bearded. And I always felt like I could never live up to whatever it was he did to gain your admiration. I never understood your obsession before. But I guess it is well placed now. So watch me.

Watch me go.

- Starswirl the Not-Yet-Bearded

P.S. Give my love to Mom.

Twilight clutched the book tightly as though it actually were her son, threatening the old bindings. She nervously turned the page.

Dearest Madre,

You will not believe what happened today...