Chapter by: Winston

“Remember, if you start getting uncomfortable—”

“Yeah, yeah, free to stop whenever I want.” Starlight Glimmer waved a hoof. “You’ve only told me three times, Twilight.”

“Sorry.” Twilight grinned sheepishly.

“Look, I’ll be fine,” Starlight said. “I mean, you wouldn’t put me in there with something if I wouldn’t be, right?”

“No… I wouldn’t…” Twilight rubbed her foreleg. “It’s just, a few other ponies have had, you know. Unpleasant experiences.”

“Well, has it killed anypony yet?” Starlight asked flatly.

Twilight paused and blinked. “No.”

“Then how bad can it be?” Starlight shrugged and kept walking.

“Right… how bad can it…?” Twilight shook her head and hurried to catch up to Starlight.

“Interesting,” Starlight murmured, staring through the glass at… whatever was inside the case, some sort of jewelry. She wasn’t really sure what to make of it, and Twilight’s instructions hadn’t exactly been specific: they amounted to, ‘Take a look and tell me what you think.’

The display case had a hoof-sized hole in the glass, presumably meant to facilitate reaching in and handling the object inside. She guessed from this opening that ‘take a look’ was meant to be interpreted senso lato, but sticking in a hoof and pawing at something that she was warned could be dangerous seemed like a questionable opening move.

Horn first, she decided. She reached out with her magic, threading it carefully through the hole. Nullifying fields warded the glass, radiating outward for most of the hole’s radius. It made trying to get a magical sense of the object inside feel like looking through a narrow peephole with a fisheye lens.

Starlight frowned. “How am I supposed to work like this?” she mumbled.

After some hesitation, she pushed inward with her magic, testing the wards by projecting her own cone of nullification. They resisted, but not very strongly. The fields seemed to be more for containing stray emissions than for repelling a determined effort to enter, and she was able to reach in easily. Once she did, her magic skittered across the surface of the object while she examined its physical composition. Precious metal alloy, solder, enamel, a gemstone—something in the sapphire family—yes, a ruby. Nothing off the wall about any of that.

The magic that permeated through it, though…

She recognized it immediately, something she’d never forget in a million years.

Chronothaumic flux.

Starlight’s breath caught in her throat and she took a step back. Time magic? Was this why Twilight wanted her to look at it? Because of her past experience with these kinds of spells? But… if that was the case, then why hadn’t she warned her? Why drop her in blind?

Starlight scowled. A sinking feeling crawled in her gut. Putting her here, with something like this, giving her totally free rein? Twilight must really, really trust her.

Either that, or…

…Or…

She looked around nervously, suddenly self-conscious.

Why is this room so heavily defended?

Starlight tried to suppress the uncomfortable thought. There were two possibilities, and the one where Twilight trusted her was flattering. The other was not. She had no trouble picking which one she preferred to believe. In any case, it was unhelpful to agonize over right now, and there was still a job to do, so she steeled herself and reached back in again.

The enchantment was powerful, stronger for its size than any chrono-magical device she’d felt before—not that many existed, granted.

But there was also something different, too, like nothing she’d seen before.

Starlight noticed that the temporal anchors were reversed from their usual positions. Thinking about what this meant, she came to a dawning realization of what it implied: information exchange from discrete points in the forward light-cone of the observer, allowing future-sight that was deterministic instead of merely probabilistic.

The jumble of jargon working its way through her mind boiled down to a conclusion of just two words.

True retrodivination?!

Starlight’s eyes opened wide in shock and her jaw dropped. The thought was overwhelming, numbing. How… how was this possible? Magic like this was only theoretical. Most of the greatest mages believed infallible future-sight would never be accomplished. Some actively worked against it, in fact, deliberately concealing and suppressing research that might lead to it. Even if it was possible, it was fraught with hazards, both known and, ironically, unforeseeable. This was a kind of terrible power that ponies might kill and die for, the kind that could remake the world in one’s own image… or destroy it.

And here it was, in her hooves.

Well, metaphorical hooves, anyway. She still hadn’t reached in to touch it.

It wouldn’t be hard, though. Just push back the wards again and use her telekinesis to pull it out of the display case, and it would be hers. Easy as pie. It could teach her so much, opening new chrono-magical doors to explore.

All she had to do was go ahead and claim it.

The thought beckoned even as those very same possibilities made her blood run cold. She paused and pondered.

What if she did? What would happen? What would she see?

…Would she even want to?

She tilted her head and considered. Scrying into the past was one thing, and not actually a very hard thing. The principles were well known and she’d dabbled in it from time to time, usually successfully.

But the past had already happened, over and done and set in stone, at least relatively. Merely seeing it didn’t break anything. To screw up the past took active effort and some real work, as she knew only too well. As far as just idle peeking around was concerned, that was safe enough.

But the future?

She thought about the way her favorite book on temporal mechanics explained it: right now is the future’s past. Right now could lead to many potential futures, but they were unfixed and one was as good as another.

Except when it wasn’t.

Starlight paced anxiously around the display case, her brow furrowed and a scowl on her face. Scrying into the past was only possible because it traced backward along the lines of causality that led to the present moment. Retrodivining, the process of looking into the future, was in theory essentially the same, just scrying to send information into the past from a future frame of reference. It was all just relative, after all.

The problem was, tracing backwards from the future meant that the line of causality it followed had to become fixed in the process. There was no escaping at that point. Once a particular future was retrodivined, it was unavoidably predestined to happen, no matter what.

Every theoretician she’d read agreed on at least that much.

It was a terrifying thought, with a million grim possibilities. What if she saw something awful? What if she saw a friend die in a horrible way? What if she saw the destruction of Equestria and the end of pony civilization? What if she saw a giant asteroid hitting Equus and wiping out all the life on the planet?

No. No! She turned away, breaking her gaze off the display case and staring at the floor. She couldn’t risk seeing those things, knowing she’d locked them into happening. The torment would be unbearable, driving her mad to know that she could never prevent it. She would inevitably try anyway, and fail, and it would destroy her. She knew herself well enough to be sure of that.

Unless…

Another thought whispered in her mind, desperately clawing its way up through these bleak prospects.

Unless, of course, I didn’t have to see anything bad…

She lifted her head. That was a possibility. In a not-quite-yet-determinate future, couldn’t almost anything be actively projected in, rather than passively observed? Those theories existed as well, and they stood to reason, didn’t they?

Yes. Make my own future. This was the real potential, of course, and it was why ponies wanted retrodivination in the first place. It would take a disciplined and steady mind of intense focus, but there was no reason that somepony couldn’t inject their own visions of desirable outcomes to fix as future inevitabilities.

One such example popped into her mind easily.

“I could ensure that I’ll become an alicorn someday,” Starlight whispered to herself. “Couldn’t I?”

Well, why not?

But not just things like that, either. She shook her head. It wouldn’t be right to use it just for selfish reasons, when it could do so much more. Something like this should help everypony. And it should especially help her friends.

Like Sunburst. Couldn’t he be the great wizard he deserves to be? All his reading, all his studying… that shouldn’t just all be for nothing. Should it?

Starlight’s eyes gravitated back to the artifact inside its display case.

No, it shouldn’t, and she could fix it. She could make all those injustices and all those disappointments of circumstance right by simply envisioning the correct future. The answer was right here.

But… the dangers…

With an effort, she broke her gaze from the artifact and turned away.

Yes. As before, there were still countless dangers. What if her will faltered? What if her imagination ran away with her? Having it happen just for the wrong fraction of a second could be enough. What if she projected the wrong mental vision and created a future she didn’t mean to? There was no telling what it might be. For all she knew, her nightmare about giant carnivorous carrots eating everypony and conquering Equus could come true.

Well, sure, there are dangers, but isn’t there always some danger in everything? Did you ever let that stop you before?

Starlight considered this. It was true, of course. Nothing good ever came without being willing to accept some sort of a risk.

But was it worth it? All those dark possibilities of future catastrophe… what about them?

Well… they might all happen just as easily anyway, whether foretold or not, she reasoned with herself. The only difference was, with this kind of power, if any of them were about to strike, she could create a future in which they were averted. What if an observatory suddenly spotted a giant asteroid on a collision course with Equus? She could force it to miss instead, couldn’t she? What about an invasion? She could make it inevitable that Equestria would win the war. Maybe there wouldn’t even need to be fighting. She could cause a natural disaster to wipe out the enemy army. She could make the enemy commander keel over dead out of the blue from a brain aneurysm or a heart attack. Problem solved.

So many possibilities! And the beauty was how completely generalized it was. It was the ultimate multi-purpose tool, a solution for any problem. The holy grail of magic! The more she let herself sink into these thoughts, the more they became jubilant, intoxicating, almost dizzying, making her smile to herself and feel lightheaded like the enjoyable buzz from just the right amount of a fine liqueur.

With this knowledge, there’s no limit to the good I could do!

But…

Her smile faded as a sobering realization deflated the airy sense of optimism.

That was also the problem, wasn’t it?

There was no limit.

There needed to be limits. Tempting as it was to do as she pleased and always have her own way, her experience with Twilight in Ponyville had taught her one lesson that she knew was the most important of all: sometimes the better part of real friendship was just knowing the boundaries.

A true friend wouldn’t take it upon herself to write the future for her friends. A true friend wouldn’t take away their ability to choose, would she?

So don’t take it away. Nothing says you have to, necessarily.

Tempting, but she knew this was easier said than done when there was so much gray area. What would happen when it came down to feeling like the only choice was between overriding the will of a friend or watching something terrible happen? What happens when it becomes easy to say, “Just this once,” and then “Just this once” turns into “Just this one more time,” and then another, and another after that? Where would that slippery slope ever end?

It ended in a living hell of cutie marks in jars, all the individuality and spirit of a village being suffocated under her hooves.

Come on. It’s not like that anymore. Don’t Twilight this up. You know how that goes.

Starlight blinked. Okay. Maybe she was just being neurotic, hoofwringing over nothing. Maybe Twilight’s tendency to overthink was rubbing off on her, and maybe it wasn’t always the most helpful habit.

Right. Just think of all the good that could be done.

She wanted to, she really did—but at the same time, she couldn’t stop thinking of all the free will that could be trampled.

Free will? Let’s not kid ourselves, you don’t even think ‘free will’ is a thing. You’re a determinist.

Starlight paced around the display case, head down, staring at the floor. “Maybe.” She shook her head. “But that’s not really the point—”

She stopped and caught herself, looking up and snapping her mouth shut. “Who am I even arguing with?!” she asked herself in quiet exasperation. “This is ridiculous.”

And it occurred to her: it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? It was so unlike her.

Something was wrong.

And why did she keep catching herself staring at the thing… the piece of jewelry… the amulet… in the display case without being quite aware she was doing it?

Sudden realization clicked in her head, screaming an alarm through her thoughts and shooting adrenaline through her veins. In a reflexive fraction of a second, her horn flashed and she cast a shielding spell around her body, isolating herself from all external magic.

Her eyes narrowed. “Oooh-ho-ho. You think you’re clever?” She whispered to the thing in the display case. “Give me just enough rope and I’ll hang myself, is that it?”

“I might have even done that, once.” She paced back and forth in a tight pattern. “But there’s a good reason I won’t now,” she declared. “Because my friends are more important than what I want.”

“All the changes I could make, all the things I could do for them…” she continued. “Making Sunburst into a great wizard? I could. I really could. But how do I know that’s what he wants? I’ve never really asked him, I just assumed. But when I think about it… when I really think about my friend instead of about myself… I realize that maybe there’s a reason he never became one. Maybe that’s not what he wants at all. This is a truth it’s taken me so long to really understand, but I get it now: I have no idea what other ponies might really want for themselves or what's really best for them. All I can ever know for sure is what I want for everypony else. And I know it’s wrong, forcing things on them without giving them any choice in the matter. Yet, here you have me, within a hair's breadth of doing it.”

Her ears flattened and she turned and glared hatefully at the thing in the display case. “Again.”

Starlight was suddenly aware that her face felt hot, her back and legs tense and rigid, her nose stuffy.

“You almost got me, didn’t you?” She sniffed and blinked. Burning tears rolled down her cheeks.

Those tears spurred something primal and vicious, making her want to lash out. Agonizing glass slivers of the past welled up from deep inside and stabbed at her heart. Rage and hurt filled her to overflowing, giving her the urge to destroy this monster that tried to convince her to do something that would make her relive the pain and the shame all over again. She wanted to rip the pedestal out of the floor with her telekinesis and thrash it to pieces. She wanted to tear away the protective wards on the display case like tissue paper, smash the glass, blast the thing inside with dispelling magic until all traces of its foul enchantments were stripped away. She wanted to shatter the ruby, crush and twist the metal, blast it with pyrokinetic heat until it charred and then blazed into a white-hot blob of unrecognizable molten metal.

Everything inside her screamed for this monster’s utter obliteration, to wipe it out of existence so thoroughly not even a memory of it would be left.

But she held herself steady. The tantrum raged out in her mind while she stood still and did nothing. With an effort, she finally pushed it all down until there was enough of a calm cold emptiness inside to let her function without spilling into unbridled passion.

She held herself back because she knew that even more than it made her angry, it wasn’t worth letting it take her dignity. She was a pony. She was an individual. She had a choice. This thing? It was just some piece of junk jewelry in a glass box.

“I know I can’t have what you can teach me, because I’ve been here before,” she said softly. “I know how this starts and I know where it ends. And,” she gritted her teeth, “and I’m not going back. Never! Now get out of my head and get out of my life!”

She turned and walked away, head held low and tail hanging limp. A single choked sob escaped her while she opened the door and exited the room.

Starlight ate in silence, eyes fixed on her plate of grilled vegetables. She knew in some dull, distant sense that the dinner she’d been served was delicious—she could taste the perfect seasoning and how it popped from the sprinkling of flat-grained sea salt—but it was hard for her to really appreciate right now.

Twilight sat across from her, likewise picking halfheartedly at her own meal. Periodically, her eyes would flick up to glance over at Starlight, then back to her plate. Between bites she kept breathing in, as if gathering the air to speak, then letting it out again.

Starlight’s annoyance finally built enough that she dared to look up from her plate and lock eyes with Twilight.

“I know you want to say something,” she stated bluntly. “Whatever it is, can we just talk about it and get this over with?”

They stared at each other for a few seconds of weighty silence.

“Starlight, I’m sorry.” Twilight looked away. “I… I think I screwed up. I should have given you more warning. I should have told you…”

Starlight waited for Twilight to continue.

“I should have told you… that thing… it was the Alicorn Amulet,” Twilight said with an effort.

“Wait wait wait.” Starlight dropped the piece of grilled carrot she had halfway levitated to her mouth. “The same one Trixie told me about?” she asked incredulously. “You… you put me in a room with it and just let me have at it? And you knew?!” She reared up and pounded a forehoof on the table. “Why would you DO that?!”

Twilight cringed and stared with wide eyes. Starlight fumed for a moment, looming over the table, until she caught herself and slowly shrank back down into her seat.

“…Sorry,” Starlight said awkwardly, staring at the tablecloth. “I, just, uh…” She cleared her throat.

“No. It’s alright,” Twilight mumbled. “What I let it put you through was pretty rough. I hurt you. I was wrong.”

“Just tell me why.” Starlight sighed, suddenly feeling more tired than angry. “That thing should have been destroyed. You know that.”

“You’re absolutely right, and that’s exactly what I was trying to do,” Twilight said.

“Come again?” Starlight half-closed one eye.

“Well, we couldn’t just disenchant it,” Twilight said. “There was no simple and straightforward solution. I wish there had been. But we—the other princesses and I—did find a design flaw that could be exploited. We realized it needs energy from a host to charge itself back up over time. And it spends energy trying to attract new hosts. It spends a lot, in fact. It’s very well protected against directly dismantling the enchantments, but we found that if it kept failing to find a host who would give it a recharge, it would drain itself looking for one until it eventually ran dry and became inert.”

“So you let it tempt somepony hoping it would exhaust itself.”

“Numerous someponies, actually.” Twilight nodded. “Most of them were told going in what they’d be up against. For you, though, I decided to try things a little differently.”

“Gee, I’m flattered, but why?” Starlight asked. “What’s so special about me?”

“I thought the Amulet was almost out of power, when your turn came up,” Twilight said. “I was getting worried about how long it was taking, and I just wanted it to be over. I knew that if anypony had the punch to finish it off, it would be you. It just had to sink enough energy into trying to convince you. In order for that to happen, though…”

“…You couldn’t tell me.” Starlight nodded. “Yeah. If I knew, I wouldn’t have given it an attack surface. I would have shut it out and it wouldn’t have lost nearly as much working on me.”

“Right.” Twilight nodded. “I hoped you’d be the one to just kill it, finally.”

“Did I?”

“Not quite.” Twilight shook her head. “But I think you got it most of the way there. We all owe you a lot for what it put you through to accomplish that.”

“Ya think?” Starlight glowered.

“I’m really sorry,” Twilight ruffled her wings anxiously. “I know you’re probably pretty mad at me right now.”

“A little, yeah.” Starlight fidgeted with her silverware. “…But I understand.”

“You do?” Twilight sounded the slightest bit hopeful.

“You did what you had to do.” Starlight shrugged. “I get it. I’ve been there.”

“I swear, it was only because I knew you could handle it,” Twilight said. “I did it this way because I trust you, Starlight.”

“Yeah.” Starlight finally cracked a tiny, crooked smile. “Yeah, I know you do. I appreciate that.”

Twilight paused, looking around uncertainly. “So… are we alright?” she asked cautiously across the empty space of the table between them, pointing a hoof back and forth between herself and Starlight.

“I guess.” Starlight started nodding, then stopped. “Err… I don’t know… I just…” She groaned and rested her head in her hooves. “We will be, Twilight. We will be. But right now, it’s been a rough day, and I’m still kinda hurting. I think I just want to be alone for a while.”

Twilight nodded. “Okay.”

Starlight pushed her chair back from the table and walked off on quiet hoofsteps to her room, where she lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about retrodivination and ruling over ponies’ lives and the future and the past and how great and how terrible it all was and could have all been again.