Chapter Eighteen

The three of us were sprawled around a small campfire, about three hundred miles north of Los Pegasus. We were beyond the desert, near the Unicorn Mountain Range. Soon, we'd cross over into the badlands.

I myself was on my back, over the spread edges of my cloak. The night sky burned clear above me. There, to the west, the Ursa Minor. To the north, was Firefly's Fall. Different constellations, as clear a map as anything put to paper. It was funny, back as a human, I'd barely tolerated the 'great outdoors' as anything but a necessary evil for the world to store its supply of trees. Now I could forage with the best of them, and survive months in the wild.

"Mother?"

"Yes, Luna?" I stretched my head back to look my youngest in the eyes.

"Did not Discord say it would be a couple weeks before... whatever happens comes to pass?" she asked.

I grinned. "He was lying. It takes having known him since he was a human, but his eyelids scrunch up a bit." I left it at that- knowing that my 'immortal enemy' had been one of my three closest friends had left me... conflicted, to say the least. I'd been avoiding the thought for quite some time, after all, and denial was a powerful motivator.

"Most of my little ponies couldn't imagine me showing fear," said Celestia, who was similarly staring at the sky. "Though I'll admit that I am very afraid, right now."

I knew what she wasn't asking out loud, and said, "I'm not. I haven't been afraid since you two were young. Since Discord banished me to the past, really. It's odd how very unafraid I've been, since becoming a pony."

"And yet you left yon Miss Sparkle behind," teased Luna. "One would think that the sights you've had of her backside were enough to hearten anypony."

While Celestia sputtered, I glared at my youngest. "Girl, don't even try that nonsense. I haven't 'taken in the sights' since your father passed."

"Maybe you should," said Luna. She frowned, turning serious. "We're big girls, now, mother. We pieced together a great deal of what you did after Discord banished you to early Equestria. The fact that the griffons consider you one of their 'war spirits' is a telling one. You've done your part, and you are much loved. Now is when you should be happy."

"I am happy," I told her, believing it from the bottom of my heart. "I saw you again, didn't I? I've kept all of my promises. Now I just have to do it again." I smiled. "Maybe I'll settle down after that. Or maybe I'll get to see how the world has turned out, again. Only this time, I'll have a home to come back to."

I looked back up to the sky. "Maybe I'll figure out why the stars are so different after a mere few millenia. Or why the sun and moon are so different." Or answer a host of other questions.

"Or finally get around to teaching us witchcraft," said Celestia.

I stared at her. "You're the most magically powerful creatures on Earth... er, Sola, and you want to learn witchcraft?"

Luna nodded frantically. "I can make fireballs now."

"And I can throw storm clouds," said Tia smugly. "I believe those were our conditions. Besides, isn't it the family business?"

"Fair enough," I said. "Hasn't anybody else managed it, though?"

"The art died out," said Luna. "Yours was the last generation of witches, and none left apprentices."

"A thousand plus years and nobody picked up the knack?" I asked, feeling a bit bewildered. I certainly hadn't been the first, after all.

"What is 'the knack'?" asked Celestia.

"The first lesson to witchcraft," I said. I chuckled. "Might as well start your first lesson now, then. Fine. Witchcraft is all about the fact that everybody has magic. Got that?"

"Well, yes," said Celestia, looking confused. Given how I knew she'd taught hundreds of mages herself over the years, I wasn't surprised. "Every tribe and species has its own magic."

"Wrong," I said, restraining my laughter. "Everybody has magic, full stop. Their bodies just add the... uh, 'flavor', if you will. Bypass hooves, wings, what will you, and use your magic directly. That's witchcraft."

"But you cast with your wings!" said Luna. "You told us- showed us, even!"

"I only write runes with my wings," I said. "Because it's quick and easy. Here."

With my hoof, I traced out four runes and a dirty sketch of a half circle with three notches. It was the shortest spell I'd ever developed.

I grinned up at them. "Here. I'll power it with my nose." Unrefined magic only needed physical contact, after all. I pressed my muzzle to the sandy earth and squinted. Tiny witchlights danced up from the soil- they would continue to do so for about five minutes, until the power ran out.

"It's literally the most efficient magic possible," I said. "The only problem is that you can't use it on instinct- all spells have to be written out each time. I only have... twenty spells, I think, that I could cast as fast as a unicorn sorceress could." Not that I'd ever let an enemy know about my 'preparation time'. Invisible spells could be written ahead of time, and without the glow that gave away unicorn magic. In short, my magic seemed instantaneous.

"That's it?" asked Luna dumbly.

"That's it." I motioned them both close. They scooted over eagerly. "Here. Tonight, we'll build a light spell. Tomorrow, we'll do simple levitation. That one will be tough- you're effectively matching gravity's acceleration with a lift to negate weight. Movement is a free-range pointer, that can rotate in three hundred and sixty degrees by three hundred and sixty degrees. Plus you have to have a braking capability... that one is about three hundred symbols over a diagram forty times wider than this one..."

"My goodness, what's this?!" asked Celestia, flying backwards in front of her sister. Witchlights danced out in front of her. "Magic, but without using a horn? Madness! Have you seen the like, little sister?"

Luna grumbled, then sent a fireball at the other alicorn's face. Celestia blinked around coal-rimmed eyes.

I grumbled. "Luna, you were born a unicorn! You've had to unlearn a few things, so don't feel bad. Tia, stop being a twit or I'll magic you neon green. I haven't taught you to dispel witchcraft, either. It will last weeks."

My eldest pouted, and cleared the ash from her face. Thank goodness alicorns were hardy. And that they had grown up as normal ponies. Half-indestructible youngsters would have been hell to teach. I'd gladly take having to kiss scraped fetlocks and put cool cloth over blackened eyes.

Luna magicked out a sheet of much-folded parchment and conferred with it briefly, before drifting on the wing until she was next to me.

"Three thousand bodylengths ahead, mother! We should be seeing the beacons from the old archaeological team, now!" she called over the wind.

I nodded, and gave the wing-twitches first put into use by the old pegasus military to lead the both of them down with me. It was as fine a semaphore system as had ever been developed.

We coasted down to where the Bad Lands became a distorted, broken landscape. Faded orange markers, long since having lost their magic but not the distinctive colors, guided my path to an outcropping.

"Oh my," said Celestia.

"Yup," I agreed. "It really needs a good coat of paint," I said, looking at the massive, dark mouth of a cave.

"Er, no. I meant this letter from Twilight."

I looked back. Luna was reading over her sister's head, hopping on the toes of her hooves to get a good view.

"It seems she's aware of your little trick, or else has deduced it," said Celestia with a small, proud smile. "She and the girls are quite put out with us."

"Good thing we have a lead on them," I said. "Ready?"

"But of course," said Luna.

We passed into the dusty entrance, each of us casting a strong magic light. Halfway into shadow, I stopped.

"Is something wrong?" asked Celestia.

I shrugged. "I think that we're in Idaho," I said, which meant nothing to the girls. "A province famous for potatoes."

"How times have changed," noted Luna.

I rolled my neck, and we proceeded.

The cave floor angled down sharply. There were enchantments -ones so old and alien that I could hardly feel them- that had kept the place open over the ages. Occasionally we had to press by barriers that stopped low-mass objects such as air and particulates.

Half an hour of descending, and artificial structures started to show wherever the walls had worn away from the cave. It was definitely human construction, if slightly different than what I knew. At one point, Luna held us up to puzzle over a set of golden arches that just barely poked through the ground.

"What strange art was this?" asked my youngest.

"The human equivalent to 'Hayburger'," I told her. Celestia broke out with laughter.

Shortly afterward, I froze. The girls did likewise.

"Danger?" asked Luna.

"Worse," I groaned. "Come out, Discord."

A sigh echoed through the cavern. "It's no fun if I can't sneak up on you, you know. And... and you could call me by my old name."

Something like anger flashed through my blood. Then an altogether more solemn feeling. Finally:

"Alright, Dan. Pax?"

"Pax," said the chimera, who tunneled up through the dirt. He was wearing a hat, which he tilted jauntily around his antler. "Do you like it? I always wanted to be a Mouseketeer."

I hummed the old Disney theme song, and he chuckled. Then the levity disappeared, and I said, "I thought you weren't going to bother saying goodbye. Or at least, I figured you'd change your mind."

He shrugged. "It seemed... proper. Or at least, it does now. My memory comes and goes, you know. It's in my nature. It took Fluttershy telling me all about her 'new alien friends' to remind me of... of what we were, before." He gnawed on his lip with his single, great fang. "I can't tell you everything, of course. I don't remember you telling me everything myself, back then, you see?"

"Of course," I said.

"I forgot ever having friends," he admitted, walking with us as I lead the group further on. "I forgot so much."

"It was the same with Linda," I said. "She thought that we had all been together just days before." I coughed. "If you lose it again, I'm still going to have to kill you."

"Got ya," said the draconequus pleasantly. "Friends?"

"Friends," I said.

"To think, if you had been able to stay around longer, we might have put Discord in his place so much sooner," mused Celestia, bright eyes darting between he and I.

"Not a chance," I said, then chuckled. "I'm probably the weakest alicorn in the world. Twilight had more power on me back when she was a unicorn."

"Pull t'other one, it has bells on it," said Luna.

"Really," I said. "I did the math. I'm actually pretty low on the power scale."

"Managed to make me bleed," grumbled Discord.

"That's only because I'm sneakier than you," I told him, patting him on one misshapen shoulder consolingly.

"Are not!"

"Children, please," said my eldest.

Crazy Dan and I stuck out our tongues. His lashed out about a foot further.

I stared, and said, "Fluttershy must be a lucky mare."

At that, he started choking on said tongue.

"So," I said, pressing my advantage. "Am I getting any nieces or nephews, soon?"

"Argh!"

I suddenly felt so much better.

The space was vast. Discord -and really, it was just easier to call him that- kept popping everywhere, rummaging through the rubble and coming up with knickknacks that he stored... somewhere. He wasn't wearing pockets, so I really didn't want to know.

This place was entirely held up by magic. It seemed to be an odd mixture of military base and cliff dwellings, like those once built by the Pueblo people. There were rusted spots that had once held street signs. Gaps where hinges had held up doors. Only stone and metal remained, and more of the former than the latter. Occasionally we passed hoof tracks, remnants of the old exploration team that had gone unchanged in the decades since.

Our final destination was obvious- at the far side of the chamber was a great, rising pyramid. Its sides were carved with channels that literally glowed with magic. At times it steamed up out of the ground, taking physical form in a way I hadn't thought possible.

"I wish I had payed more attention to those old reports," said Celestia, scanning the ground with a spell. "These ley lines are more potent than those running through the crystal caves under the palace. More organized, even, if that's even possible for ley lines."

Discord remained suspiciously silent. Heaven only knew what was going through his head- I had a feeling that whatever had changed him so thoroughly had made it so that even his mind wasn't like that of a human's, anymore. Not that I could claim different for myself, either. I knew full well that being a pony had changed me in a number of subtle ways.

"Come on," I said, starting up the pyramid.

"What makes you so certain that this is our destination?" asked Luna.

"Narrative causality," I said snarkily, drawing a chuckle from Discord. "Seriously, if there's nothing up here, we can use the vantage point to search the cavern."

Luna looked up the incline and quirked her brow. "You do realize that all of us here can fly, correct?"

I stumbled, just slightly. "Nobody likes a smarty-pants, Luna."

"Yes they do!" she replied, skipping ahead cheerfully.

I sighed. She was, of course, absolutely correct.

The ground itself was so highly charged that it felt like roiling silk under my hooves. As if it could throw me at any second. We couldn't have been more than a mile or two under the surface, but it felt so much deeper than that.

"Any spoilers?" I asked, eyeing Discord.

The draconequus shrugged. "Honestly, it really is all fuzzy, for me. And I haven't seen the... other instance of you in well over ten thousand years."

I nodded. That put more weight on the likelihoods that I had either died or skipped forward in time, again. It wasn't much, and I didn't want to be too pessimistic, but I wouldn't fool myself either.

Once we reached the top of the incline, there was a circular doorway. It was covered in a veil as opaque as cloth. Discord gave it a good, hard look, then walked through.

I did likewise. It was like pushing through a bubble with a hundred times more surface tension. Something... some kind of mental impression, perhaps, flashed through me. As if the strange magic was searching for something in particular. I saw a familiar bipedal figure flicker in my mind's eye.

After crossing through, I stumbled, before turning around. It took nearly half a minute for Luna and Celestia to push through. They were much more tangentially related to my old species, through me, but evidently something must have sparked the ward's recognition. It was probably a bit odd of me, but I felt a subtle pride. My girls were a credit to two species. Not that I'd ever doubted that, but it made me feel smug to see some outside vindication of it.

Or maybe I was just reaching- not that I cared. They were my daughters.

The four of us finally inside, we turned as one to take in our environment. It was a roughly square chamber, with a vaulted ceiling. A much smaller pyramid sat in the room's center, and light rippled off of the walls like we were in an indoor pool.

I stepped toward the incline.

Light flared, and filled every inch of space, blinding me. I heard three distinct voices cursing. Were it not for what I heard next, I would have joined in.

"Hello, me."

I blinked frantically, until I could see again. Until the figure was visible.

If nothing else, I'd always had a realistic body image. Never had I ever been so beautiful as this, as a human. She stood tall, proud, and graceful. Beatific, even, as if she had stepped out of some cathedral fresco.

She was also transparent.

I swallowed, and rasped back, "Hello." There wasn't much else to say. Was this the version of myself who had already skipped back after returning to the past? And why the fuck was she transparent?

"Why the fuck are you transparent?"

And it seemed that I had just lost my mind-to-mouth filter, to boot.

She smiled down at me. Even with the minor boost in height granted by my ascension, my normal stance hardly put my eye level to her rib cage. I could hardly believe, confronted now with the image of a human being, how alien it felt. The redhead was garbed in a plain, white dress.

"Because I'm not really myself. Or yourself, I suppose," said the human, tilting her head. "Not anymore. I left this image behind. The loop hadn't yet been closed, you see- I had the feeling you might yet come by."

Discord, of course, immediately tested this out by marching a head and sticking his arm through her -my- head.

"I wish you wouldn't do that, Dan," she said.

The chaos spirit chuckled nervously. "It's not often somebody can claim to have gotten in your head- you can't blame me."

"You're more than an image," I said, picking up on the important bit. "An artificial intelligence? Built from magic."

She lifted one shoulder and let it drop. "In a way. More than that, though. I'm sort of a fully sapient ghost. A clone of you with a short half-life."

I bit my lip. "How literal is that ghost thing. Did... did you die?"

Her eyes narrowed at me in confusion. "Obviously not. Or else you wouldn't be here."

"Mother? I'm not sure I'm following all of this," said Celestia, stepping up to my side with her sister in tow.

"Mother?" asked my ghost self, looking at me. "My, you have been busy."

"Shove it," I said automatically. "Wait, why don't you remember that? How limited is the intelligence of this image? If this was what I came up with at the end of a stable loop, I ought to have added enough background awareness to hold a real conversation." I frowned. "Though that's probably too much effort to put into talking to myself, I suppose."

"What stable loop?" asked the image of my human self. It was strange, to still so easily read her human expressions. Confusion, uncertainty, frustration...

"The time loop," I said, getting a little frustrated myself. "I haven't gone back yet, obviously! Whatever history I haven't played out with my human friends, whatever happened to the human race, it hasn't happened to me yet. Can we cut the cryptic comments and get down to business? I've got to take the long way around, this time, and I'd like to get it over with!"

Realization flooded her face, then... pity?

"I think I understand the cause of your confusion," she said. "You think you have to go back. Only, you've already gone back. Approximately seven months ago."

"No," I said. "Really. Cut the cryptic stuff."

"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," said the image.

It disappeared. Moments later, the world stopped.

I was twenty-five years old. Three days ago, I had... slipped, I suppose. Mentally. Really, I figured, in that strange sense of detached calm that so often cradled the thoughts of the suicidal, it had been a long time in coming. Not good enough for my family, not good enough for me... I had been walking the knife's edge for long enough.

A bitter, sarcastic thought in the back of my mind mused on whether the medication had stopped doing its job. Or maybe it had carried me as far along as it could, further than I might have otherwise have gone. Either way, this was it.

The deciding factor had been leaving home at the beginning of the weekend. I had asked for some time alone, told my friends not to wait up, and disappeared into the forests of Washington state. The scenery was beautiful and quiet. Perfect for introspection. Perhaps less perfect, really, for somebody who oughtn't to be left alone with their own thoughts.

Days later, tired and with almost nothing left of my supplies, I finally came across 'the perfect spot'. White water rapids fed, here, into a massive basin. The water swirled, deep and cold. Anything that fell in would be drawn down, down, to be forgotten. I hoped I would be forgotten. I hoped it would be quiet, down there. Or maybe the noise of the rapids would drown everything out, leaving it quiet in my own head, if nowhere else.

I smiled.

I stepped out into thin air.

I fell.

It hurt a bit more than I had suspected, trying to breathe water. The gash to the back of my head from being tossed into the side of the basin wasn't doing me any favors, either.

That had been stupid. I should have just weighed my clothes down with rocks and found a calm lake, or something.

'Ah, well,' I thought. 'You live and learn.'

Other thoughts echoed, demanding my attention. Self-loathing, the old fan favorite, took pride of place. Disappointment at never having finished reading 'The Sandman' was there, too.

And for some godawful reason, I worried that I'd left my coffee maker on.

Time slowed. Likely because my brain was shutting down. I'd worn my contacts that day, so even tumbling end-over-end, I was able to make out the way the bubbles outlined the current in the water. Seeping from my open mouth, fluttering over my eyelashes, outlining...

...outlining...

A single moment, then, stretched on forever. I saw a pattern underneath everything, above everything, supporting everything. The solid world existed upon a tumbling layer that was at once a fluid and a solid. Light spilled like molten silver. Images of impossible things made possible assembled themselves like sand did upon dunes in the desert.

Everything I'd known was so very incomplete. I saw the world, and the pattern. I saw how easy it would be to reach forward and, by changing the pattern, change the world.

And then time continued, and I was drowning again.

I woke up alone, and in a dark place, and everything was horribly cold. Though I did not know it, the end of my world started there, with me, and with that cold that crept and filled every cell in my body.

I curled up in on myself, not knowing where I was and not remembering where I had been. There had been... something fantastic. I had been happy. Why had it gone wrong? Why was there blood on my fingers?

It took me a while to come back to myself. To remember what I had seen. Somehow, I'd clawed myself up, out of the water, somewhere downstream. I vomited, nauseous and with a pounding in my head. Blood trickled from the tips of my fingers where they'd scraped raw against the rocky shore, and it took me a moment to realize that some of it had come away from where I'd reached back and touched the tender spot at the back of my head.

I didn't remember much after that. Some campers brought me to a nearby town, I later heard. I was so focused on that spark of inspiration I'd seen at the moment of my near death, I hardly heard the jokes passed around by the hospital staff about the 'stupid tranny hiker'.

At no point did I say what I had been doing out there. At no point, perhaps negligently, did they ask. At some point, a doctor came by and warned about lasting damage, and permanent changes to my personality. But my insurance wasn't the best, and I was able to show I could still count to ten and understand English, so I eventually got out.

Back in Seattle, my friends were waiting for me. They seemed relieved that I was there, but concerned that I hadn't remembered being there a full two months after I'd obviously already left. I put that mystery away for another time. Linda, always so understanding and hesitant, made them let things lie.

With time -how hadn't I lost my job in those two months?- and space -everybody acted as if I hadn't been gone at all- I built the node. It was absurdly simple. I won't claim to have known the science behind the arrangement of crystal, brass, and lenses, but I saw the shape of the thing which would let me alter the pattern.

There was no switch. As soon as it was fully formed under my fingers, it was active.

For the first time, in all time, there was magic. And it was mine.

There was more. There was so much more. Even as the images flooded my mind, some defensive instinct wove a new spell, a purely mental one. I walled it off, all of it. Impressions were left-

-I moved the world I was a goddess-

-but that was all I needed. All I wanted, really. I had my answers. Anything else was just-

-I wrote everything, the laws were put in place, my word became reality-

-superfluous.

I woke up.

I blinked, and breathed. My ghost was still standing there, eyes distant and inscrutable. I pushed past -through- her, up to the tiny pyramid at the room's center. Peering over the edge, I saw a deep, brightly-lit well that led to nowhere. At least, to nowhere that existed anymore.

Blindly, I reached back with a Ghostly Hand until I found the saddlebags I'd discarded. Out of them came a novelty. I had seen it in a shop on our way out of Canterlot. It was a stupid, touristy thing. Canterlot was the unicorn city, after all- mystical-seeming trinkets were exactly what they passed onto tourists.

This was a journal. A thick one, with fine pages and a stylized series of runes around a star.

"Ghost," I said. Though she didn't make any noise moving, I sensed her at my side moments later. "How much power do you have left?"

"Enough for one more impossible thing, I believe," she said. "Impossible as the locals measure it, at least."

"Enchant this," I said, waving the book. "Make it a consumable, spell-casting aide. Make it render nearby spells as runes." I didn't bother to say what runes.

No small wonder I'd had such a smooth time learning magic. I'd relearned it. I'd written the runes I'd learned from the book.

"Also... add a weak fascination field. Key it to ourselves." I'd carried Tom (short for tome) around with me constantly for a reason, after all.

The book glowed.

"Done," said my ghost. "I expected something that consumed more power, or was maybe a bit more challenging..."

"Don't be a show-off," I mumbled. "That's very unattractive in ghosts." I turned to her. "Send it back a few seconds after I went back, plus... four feet in elevation." After considering the bruise I got, I corrected myself, "make that five feet."

"This is purely to maintain the time loop, and not out of some sort of deep-rooted masochism, eh?" muttered the ghost as the book glowed a brief, furious white.

"You'd know," I snapped. "And I wouldn't! Past me was an asshole!"

"True," said the ghost glibly. "Toss it in."

I looked into the well. "Paper and water, the perfect combination." Nevertheless, I chucked the book into the luminescent water. It sank, slowly, until it disappeared just a bare distance before it should have gone out of sight.

The ghost flickered, then glanced down at its hands in surprise. "Looks like that's it for me. Quick, give me some appropriate last words."

"So long, suckers?" I tried.

She... it... grinned. The ghost turned to face the room's three other occupants, then called, "So long, suckers!"

And then I was alone on the dais.

Silence stretched until I realized that a pressure in my mind had disappeared. It must have been there... forever, I supposed. It didn't matter, now. The time loop was closed. Mankind was gone. Sort of? Its children, and more specifically my children, had inherited the Earth. Sort of.

I shook it off, turned back toward Dan and my girls, and said, "Let's go home."

"So, what was it?" asked the chaos spirit.

"I don't know," I answered, passing them and heading to the entrance. "I just had to wall off twelve thousand years of memories to stop my head from popping..."

"How literal is this 'popping' business?" asked Celestia, staring back at where the memory had been standing.

"I don't want to find out," I said. "Now, I'm going to forget this all in about two minutes, so I'm going to give you the gist of it, so you can tell me after."

"After what?" asked Luna.

We reached the bottom of the pyramid. I turned, stuck one hoof into the stream of living mana, and started writing the spell.

It was a work of art. The thing was so madly intricate, it was a wonder I was able to do it automatically and still be able to talk.

So I told the girls what happened and executed the spell, opening a rift far enough back in time and space that-

A woman, sensitive to magic but born too early to learn it, woke up with a story in mind about friendship and harmony from a far-off world.

Another, years later, glanced up into the sun shimmering through white water rapids saw the shape of the universe.

-that it did what it had to.

"Poor little emo pony," crooned Discord.

I glared at him. "Said the guy who turned into a chaos spirit for, and I quote, 'the stability factor'."

He mimed being shot. Confetti came out of the exit wound.

"I'm twelve thousand years old," I said. "Closer to thirteen, maybe. I just sent my past self the inspiration for using magic. I didn't make it- I just saw it." I decided not to share the circumstances behind my vision, since that would be opening a can of worms. "That younger, inspired me shared the idea. First with my friends, then others. Soon enough, there were thousands of us up and down the western coast." I smiled. "A real magical society." The smile faded. "But magic damages those who don't have the knack. We could never have given it to everybody, in time for everybody to survive it."

I swallowed, staring at the ground as all but the most important details were already slipping away. I'd purposely forgotten them all once already, after all.

"But we didn't have limits," I said, a little more softly. "We hadn't grown into it. We could, and did, do everything. Big things. Catastrophic things. So I made a judgement call, gathered everybody up, by force when necessary, and shunted us all to the nearest world with a safer environment. An old, old world. Earth, under different circumstances."

There was so much more to it. I knew what was wrong with the stars, and the celestial bodies.

"I slept through most of those millenia," I admitted.

"A few months ago, though," I continued. "I woke up where I was sleeping in that creepy well thing -Rarity was right, I have no taste- and sensed a time spell. One cast by me. I remembered my friends had told me that I had been, from their perspectives, in two places at once. And because paradoxes are bad, I went back in time to just after I... left home without telling anybody. The spell was big enough to make the rift that Twilight first explored."

"Meaning, after I woke up from being hit in the head with that book," I said, waving back to where I'd tossed it in the well, "I was over twelve thousand years old. Only... I guess I wanted a blank slate? Or something? Which is why I didn't remember." I felt my eyes cross. "So... I'm technically about twelve and a half millenia old, though I only remember two centuries."

"So what you're saying is, you don't have to go?" asked Luna. Clever mare, picking out the important bits.

"I don't have to go," I replied, smiling. "Been there, done that, got the tee shirt, and-"

I was bowled over by two laughing, rolling bodies. Discord, the bastard, just pulled out a camera and made patronizing cooing noises.

We stumbled out of the ruin. I didn't care about it anymore. They could explore it, melt it down, or whatever.

What I did care about was facing half a dozen angry mares.

"Ah... false alarm?" I tried. The girls didn't look impressed at my answer. "Donuts are on me?" Still nothing. "Um... your sun's an artificial, magical artifact?"

"What?" asked Twilight. That, it seemed, had cut through the mood.

"Oh, yeah," I said, nodding gamely. "This planet went out of its orbit millions of years ago- some clever species here set up a new source of daylight and gave it a dozen different orbits that they could adjust as needed. If they weren't guided, the sun and moon would hop onto any old track. Humans did it for a while, but... yeah."

"What happened to them?" asked Pinkie, uncharacteristically quiet and staring at the ruins behind us.

"The worst thing possible," said Discord, warming up to his idea of what made a good lecture, I guessed. "Immortality."

"Really?" asked Luna, looking miffed.

The chaos spirit rolled his eyes. "It was the method. You turn thousands of beings into demi-gods by handing them cosmic powers, and a few of them are going to get 'good idea' that they just 'have to try'." His claws made quotes that hung blackly in the air. "A bunch of them cast a planet-wide spell affecting anything remotely human. Every now and then, all these poor little hominids would be set back to factory standard, after a certain amount of damage."

"Age counted as damaged, by the spell's reckoning," I chimed in. "And it reset their bodies to perfect health indiscriminately. Including brains, and even that wasn't perfect."

"So, apparently, did pregnancy count as too big a shift from normal 'health'," said Discord, eyes half-lidded. "No new humans. Anybody that were damaged too fast for the spell to heal died without any possible replacements."

"Sometimes, you'd get those who forgot everything after gaining magic, including memories of anywhere other than Earth," I said. "Stories of us popping up from another world throughout history were true... from the human's perspective. They'd just been home yesterday, as far as they knew."

Celestia stared at Discord. "And so some of you left your human shapes behind completely, to avoid the spell's effects."

"Right on the nose," said Discord, offering the mare his nostrils in congratulations. She declined.

"It's a long story," I said. "I'll write it down later -the important bits- before I lose it all, but..." I stopped and stared at the landscape. "Can we go home? I just really want to be home, right now."

"Dang it, we just got here!" said Applejack, stamping a hoof.

"I got this," said Discord. "We'll call this one of the twelve thousand Christmas presents we owe each other."

He snapped his claws, and we were gone.

Twelve of us, friends and family all, stumbled down to breakfast that morning. Rarity was the one who decided we weren't waking up fast enough, apparently, and showed this by shrieking loud enough to spike the adrenaline levels of all those at the table.

"Your horn!" Her pupils were like pinpricks.

I stared up at the weight that had finally disappeared after far too many decades, and nodded. "Oh, no. I'm not one of the special ponies, anymore."

Celestia and Luna merely snickered. I'd told them myself what I expected to happen.

"Welcome back to the team," said Rainbow, nodding. "And... condolences, I guess?"

"You're not panicking," said Twilight, eyes narrowing. "Another prank?"

"Alicorns are hyperthaumic beings," I said, turning my attention back to my waffles and the tureen of warm syrup in front of me. "My body's been fueling a time rift of insane proportions for centuries. All of me, across time, was feeding the magic into that one event. Rift's gone, but the paradox closed with certain side-effects."

"Not to worry!" said Discord grinning. "So long as she doesn't give into the urge to kill me, we're tied together. And since I'm immortal... You know, I saw this in a cartoon, once, I think..."

"You can't just unalicorn! Dealicorn?" Twilight's eyes crossed. "It's... it's anti-apotheosis!"

"Of course I can," I said. "And given I still have more limbs than I was born with, I'm not terribly worried."

"What about Jill?" asked Fluttershy, worrying at her lower lip, nervously.

Discord and I met gazes. "Dead. She fueled the spell to drag up several thousand humans, plus a chunk of the desert, and translocate it onto the next universe over. No wonder she ended up as sort of a saint."

"Nothing about that woman was saintly," mumbled Discord, wiping at a tear.

"So... is that it?" asked Applejack, glancing around. "End of story?"

"Of course not," I assured her. "The story doesn't end 'til you're dead, and that won't happen until I inevitably lose patience with Crazy Dan, here, and smite him."

"I give it six months," said Discord, nodding thoughtfully.

Next: Epilogue, eighty years later...

Author's Notes:

Oh sweet merciful Christmas, this has taken forever to push out of my brain.

To the kind comments, thank you. The constructive ones especially, and the ones with poetry, well, that was just a nice little discovery! For the confusing and transphobic comments... no thank you, I guess? Seriously, you guys criticized everything but the actual story...