His screams were as silent as his laughter had been; as silent as the grave. Twilight jumped back, trembling with horror. The entire library trembled with her, shaken by the force of the soundless screaming.

Dear Celestia, what have I done?

She watched the unabated agony in his eyes as hundreds of years came rushing back to him in the same instant. Time had stuck like a broken record, playing over the same few seconds of the world shaking again and again. Minutes passed, each one trailing as if an hour. Suddenly, the stallion ran short of breath; he collapsed, exhausted, to the floor. Twilight sprang up from her seat and hurried around the table to his side. She found him huddled under his cloak, his forelegs covering his head and his eyes shut tight. The world had returned to normal, and now he was the one who was shaking.

"Are you... okay?" she asked, trying desperately to think of what to do. She knew inside, though, that there was nothing to be done; she knew nothing of his struggles, of his suffering. For now this was his battle alone, and there was nothing she could do to help him.

The stallion's shaking slowly subsided; soon, he was as still as stone. Either he had taken control of his demons, or they had consumed him. Twilight shuddered to think of what would happen if it was the latter. He spoke, still frozen on the floor.

"I...re...mem...ber..." he said in a chilling drone, each syllable drawn out and punctuated with a different tone as though he was breaking into song. Ever so slowly he rose from the floor, his eyes still closed. "I...re...mem...ber..." he droned again, this time in yet lower tones. He stood up straight, towering over the tiny unicorn. She shrank back away from him - he was a ticking time bomb now, and she had no way of knowing what would happen when he went off. "I...re...mem...ber..." His eyes cracked open. For the first time since she had first seen him, there was fire in his gaze.

"Everything."

His face split open as a grin spread across it - a wicked grin that showed all of his teeth. It was the first time Twilight had seen his teeth; they were filed to razor-sharp points. Running his tongue over his ancient lips, the scarred horror stepped towards her. She willed herself to step backward, but her legs would not obey her. She could only sit there, frozen in terror.

He began to laugh silently; a trait that she had thought merely peculiar now chilled her to the bone. He circled close around her, licking his lips and laughing. She heard the sharp intakes of breath caused by his silent laughter.

"Now that you have restored my memory, I have one more thing to say to you... Twilight Sparkle."

Twilight trembled as her name floated out from between his teeth. The stallion drew close, his mouth inches away from her ear; she quietly wondered if he was going to take a bite out of her, to find out how she tasted. She felt the heat of his breath as he hovered over her, waiting. The atmosphere was charged with electricity. The tension was palpable. He whispered into her ear...

"...Gotcha."

Twilight couldn't decide whether to be angry, relieved, or to simply pass out; she settled on an expression of supreme bewilderment. The stallion's evil grin melted as he fell to the floor, rolling around and laughing as silently as ever. He jabbed a hoof up at her, pointing to the source of his amusement. "You should see the look on your face! Priceless!"

She finally found the will to be indignant. Putting on her best scolding face - practiced for hours at a time on Spike - Twilight stomped over to the laughing stallion, who had now rolled halfway across the room. "You think that was funny? I've never been so terrified in my life! And I've certainly never seen somepony so old act so immature!"

He laughed all the harder. "Really? Never? Are you quite sure you're a personal student of Princess Celestia? If I didn't know better, I'd say I know her better than you do!" He continued rolling about on the floor as if it was the most fun he'd ever had.

"So that's it?" she said, "All of this was nothing but an act? The screaming, the agony in your eyes, the flash of darkness - all just setup for a joke at my expense?"

The stallion abruptly stopped; the way he froze in mid-motion, half on his back and half on his side, was almost comical. He rolled over onto his stomach, but stayed down on the floor.

"No." he said, the life draining from his expression. "That was genuine enough." His ears drooped, and he closed his lifeless eyes. "You were right - hundreds of years of memories at once is, well... overwhelming. Once I got myself under control, I was in dire need of a... good laugh. The only thought in my head was doing something to take my mind off the past, if only for a moment. I saw an opportunity, and I took it without putting any thought to the consequences. I am... sorry."

Twilight was silent for a moment, mulling over his words. "Oh, alright. I'll tell you what, Mr. tall, dark, and scary. When you're ready, you can make it up to me by telling me your story."

The stallion's eyes opened, and he looked up at her with an expression of mixed sorrow and confusion - as if disbelieving that she would forgive him so easily. She smiled down at him, extending an invisible hoof of support - both to help him up from the floor, and to pull him from the hands of whatever ghosts lay in wait in the corners of his mind. He couldn't help but smile back.

"Very well," he said, finally standing up once again. "I certainly owe you that much. Along with an introduction, it seems. With my memories restored, I can at last grant you both."

"My name," he said with a flourishing bow, "is Ebony. I am one thousand, six hundred and forty-two years old. As for how that came to be so, well, a proper story is supposed to start at the beginning - don't you agree?"

She nodded, so he gestured to the table. They took their seats opposite each other once again. Though Twilight didn't show it outwardly just yet, she was ecstatic. Meeting somepony who had lived this long was quite a rare opportunity indeed. She had princess Celestia, of course, but the lifestyle of royalty was surprisingly restrictive. The princess had little time for personal adventures with the weight of an entire country on her shoulders. A pony somewhat lower in the social hierarchy would no doubt have a more personal view of history - and would likely prove to be a more practiced storyteller. A pile of parchment, several quill pens, and numerous bottles of ink floated over to the table, covering most of the surface.

"Going to document my entire life story, are we?" Ebony asked with a chuckle.

"Of course!" Twilight responded, in an entirely serious tone. "With as long as you've lived and as many scars as you carry, it's about time somepony did it. You must have such fascinating stories to tell!"

She was doing a poor job of keeping herself composed, nearly bursting at the seams with scholarly giddiness at the chance to learn everything Ebony had to tell.

"Very well." Ebony said simply. "Shall we begin?"

She nodded vigorously.

"As you wish." He sighed, closing his eyes and letting himself fall back - far back, into the depths of distant memory. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its life. "My end... starts at the beginning."

"It was the time before Equestria. The time of discontent, when the pony tribes lived separated by hatred. My birth was an accident, and my parents did not want me. For all my life, I have never known why. But now, thanks to your magic, even that which I had been too young to understand is made clear."

"There was only just enough food to go around, and the pegasi leaders had strict birth laws to make sure it stayed that way. I was just another mouth to feed and, having been born outside the established limits, I was unworthy of life. So they dropped me from the edge of the cloud city."

Twilight's quill pen, which had begun scratching furiously to keep up, trailed straight off the edge of the paper before falling free of her magic's grip. She looked up at Ebony, her jaw hanging nearly down to the table. A moment of silence passed. He spoke again, still staring away at nothing.

"Why so surprised? Even as children, pegasi bounce like rubber."

"But..." Twilight said, "they left you for dead? Just like that?"

Ebony's mouth twisted into a smirk. "Not exactly. Militant though they may have been, the pegasi of old were not killers by nature. They were merely doing what they did best - turning their problems into someone else's. You see, the home of the pegasi was poised over the outskirts of an earth pony village below. It was not by any means the first time a child was cast out of the city to be raised by earth ponies, nor was it the last."

Twilight considered for a moment the implications of such a practice. Potentially hundreds of young pegasi cast out of their natural homes, to be raised by a tribe of ponies that despised them on principle. Questions rolled around in her head, but she remained silent. Her quill pen resumed its feverish scratching.

"I was found by a passing earth pony couple. They whispered among themselves, as if somehow worried that I - a just-born colt - would be offended at what they had to say. As their disagreement escalated, so did the volume of their voices. It seemed that the stallion was of the same mind as my original parents - that I was just another mouth to feed, and a problem best left in the hooves of somepony else. The mare, on the other hand, was the only creature in the world that held compassion for me."

"Times were hard on everypony back then, but the earth ponies had it the worst. At the mercy of the other two tribes and forced to give up most of the food they produced, there was hardly enough to go around - let alone extra for a baby pegasus not even worthy of the care of its real parents."

"Ultimately, the mare was given a choice. She could stay with the stallion, and leave 'this thing' for somepony else to take care of. Or... she could give him up. Give up their future together, spit in the face of everything they had worked together to achieve. She thought he was bluffing. She refused to believe that he would just let go of her."

"She was wrong."

There was a moment of silence. Twilight's pen caught up to the current point in the story, and stood poised over the parchment. Just as she was about to give Ebony a verbal prodding, he continued.

"The mare was blinded by what I had thought was motherly compassion, and she chose me. The stallion simply nodded his head, turned around, and walked away. For years, the mare kept telling herself that one day he would come back. He never did. She... never quite forgave me for that. It had been her own decision to make, but she blamed me all the same."

Ebony sighed. He closed his eyes and leaned forward until his muzzle hit the table. To Twilight, it looked as though he had suddenly fallen asleep.

"Um... Ebony? Are you alright?"

"I never knew her name, you know." He spoke with his head still resting on the table.

"What?"

"The mare I called mother." he said, sitting up straight once again. "She never told me her name. Said to call her 'mom' or 'mommy'. As the first of many small acts of defiance, I chose to address her as 'Mother' whenever it was necessary to do so. A shallow and meaningless decision from the perspective of others, perhaps. But it had meaning to me. I did not recognize her as my mother... and she, in turn, did not recognize me as her son."

"She fed me, of course. Kept a roof over my head. But she did not participate in anything I would call... parenting. For days at a time she would leave me to my own devices, heading out to who-knows-where without so much as a wave goodbye. She would come back disheveled by her little adventures and... always alone, just the same as when she had left."

"In a way, I... appreciated the solitude. Being left alone meant plenty of time to think, to read and to reflect. I'll grant her this much: Mother always kept plenty of books on hand, and I never wanted for a way to pass the time. All the same, I grew to... resent her. Why take me for her own if she did not wish to be a mother? Why throw away her love for a child she did not want? She gave me no answers, only the same cold disregard she had always given - and books, to teach me what she would not."

"Many times, I ran away. Flew off into the countryside in search of something... better. Looked to other ponies for a place I might meet a warmer welcome. I never found either. The unicorns looked down upon me. The earth ponies avoided me like the plague. Even my fellow pegasi rejected me, calling me 'earthborn' and other... colorful names. Each time I came home to no welcome to speak of. Not once did mother react to my return. Not once did she direct so much as a single word at me unless something needed to be done."

"Over the years, as the cold seasons became steadily harsher, 'something needing to be done' became more and more common. Mother had owned her own land where she grew all the food we ate herself, but after a time she was too old, too weak, too... broken to work the fields herself. So... she had me do the work instead. I never complained, of course - I was the only one she could call on, and I didn't exactly have anything more important to be doing."

"I worked hard, night and day, with little rest. Though mother never said it, we both knew I would have to be stronger if we were to survive the worsening weather. I pulled that worn out old plow until the straps snapped, then I put on new straps and pulled it some more. Within a few years, my body had become as strong as my mind. Each year, all the same, we had less and less food to show for it."

"More time passed."

There was a piercing silence. The only sound in the library was the frantic scratching of Twilight's pen. It came to a halt, hovering over the parchment. Ink dripped off of the point, creating a sizable blot in place of the most recent period.

"At the dawn of my twelfth year of life, Mother came to speak to me. It was both the first and the last time she spoke to me at length for any reason beyond plowing the fields. 'That time already, eh?' she said. 'Twelve years old and big as a house! You're as old as I was when I found you, you know that?' I remember... asking her what she was getting at. She took on a somber tone. It was the first time she ever displayed any real emotion in front of me. Her face held an expression of deepest regret."

"'Listen. I'm sorry.' she said. 'I wish I could have been a better mother to you. I know you probably hate my guts by now, but I taught you the only way I knew how. The world is a cold, harsh place. I did what I could to make you just as cold, and just as harsh. The books taught you how the world works without any of the sugar coating you'd get from real parents. Pulling the plow made you strong so that you might live to make use of that knowledge.'"

"'When I found you in the field all those years ago, I knew it wasn't... right. You weren't meant for... this life, this world so cold and bleak. Something told me you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I... just couldn't let it go. I gave up... a lot more than I bargained for to stand by that decision. But I promised myself I would save you if I could - and after all, if you can't keep a promise to yourself, what good is your word to anypony else?'"

"'Look... something big is going to happen soon. I know you've felt it. The world is changing, and there is nothing anypony can do to stop it. We can hope the change is for the better, but... we won't know until it's over. And... I'm afraid I won't be there to see it. I feel that my time is up, young one. But you... you have so much life left before you.'"

"I didn't know what to say. I had never really spoken to anypony before. I just stood there, waiting. And mother, she... she put her neck around mine. That day... my mother gave me a hug for the first and the very last time."

A second of utter silence passed. Time stopped for Ebony, for want of a single tear.

"'Now go.' she said to me. 'Go out there and fight. Make a name for yourself, and earn your right to a place in this world. Find out who you are, and make sure everypony knows your name. Go forth, my son. Go forth and live.'"

Ebony sniffed. He wanted to cry, but he had forgotten how.

"I never even knew her name, but I have never forgotten the look on my mother's face... as I saw her for the very last time. A single tear rolled down her cheek..."

Twilight's pen had long since stopped its movement. She stared into Ebony's eyes, trying to imagine the pain he felt.

"Ebony..." she said, reaching out toward him, "...you don't have to go on..."

He held a hoof up, silencing her. "It is alright, Twilight. My mother has been gone for more than sixteen hundred years. You'd think... I would be... over it by now."

With each word he spoke, however, his countenance grew darker. In his eyes, Twilight saw a kind of pain she had never experienced - the profound sorrow of a loved one lost, a wound that would never heal.

"In her own way, I suppose, she was the best mother I could have possibly asked for. She made me cold and hard, intelligent and strong. She was willing to let me hate her in order to teach what needed to be taught. She died alone and unloved, all for my sake. For the sake of an outcast baby pegasus."

Ebony put on a bittersweet smile - the smile of a pony who had just seen a storm cloud's silver lining.

"It's almost funny, you know. Just as she never gave me a name to know her by, mother never gave me a name to call myself. She had said that that wasn't a choice for her to make, that when the time came I would take a name for myself. I... never got to thank her for that."

He sighed the sigh of somepony who had just had a great weight lifted from his shoulders. His smile grew a little, became a little more sincere.

"That day, when the Windigoes came and ice rained from the skies, I saw my reflection in a frozen lake. For the first time, I saw myself the way others would see me. I named myself Ebony, for my coat as black as the night. And I made myself a promise. One day I would discover who I was, who I was meant to be. If not for myself, then for my mother. My mother who I had never loved until it was too late."

The smile disappeared. In his eyes, Twilight saw the weight of centuries. They bore down on him, heavy and relentless. He looked tired. Not the simple wear of a hard day's work, but the profound exhaustion of somepony who hadn't slept a single night in his long, long life.

"It has been more than sixteen hundred years since that day. I have yet to make good on that promise."

For a time, they both sat motionless. The sounds of the town outside seeped in, reminding them both that time had not, in fact, stopped. Twilight's horn began to glow faintly, and writing materials floated away from the table. Ebony caught one of the pens between his front hooves as it floated past him - the same pen Twilight had been writing with.

"What are you packing up for? We're not finished." he said in a bouncy tone, his mood having completely changed from moments before.

"But..." Twilight said, "...you just looked so..." her voice trailed off.

"So... what? Come on, Twilight. Where's your sense of dramatic pacing? Every story has to have ups and downs. You've gone and ruined the mood just as we were getting to the good part!" He put on a comically deep frown of feigned discontent, and crossed his forelegs in front of him for emphasis.

Twilight couldn't help but laugh at the ancient stallion's childish display. "So I take it that means you want to go on?"

"I should certainly think so! Come now, sit down, listen for a while. And get back to writing. You wanted to document my story, so it had better be complete!" he waggled a hoof to punctuate the last remark.

The ink, paper and pens floated back to the table, and Twilight carried on where she had left off. Within minutes the story was up to date, and Ebony snickered.

"What's so funny?" Twilight asked.

"You're just so adorable. So young, so full of life, and so enthusiastic. Even if your enthusiasm is directed at... well, books. I dare say I'm jealous."

A smile stretched across her face, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. "Hey! There's nothing wrong with books!"

Ebony laughed his peculiar silent laugh. "I didn't mean to imply that there was. But sometimes you've got to pull your snout out of a book and actually make use of what it teaches you. I'm being silly, though - you already know that. Now... let us continue."

He fidgeted about in his seat, getting comfortable once again. As he settled into his pillow, he visibly cooled into the slow, cold, calculating creature Twilight had become used to. She briefly wondered if he might have a split personality. He began to speak in the timeless, monotone voice she already knew so well.

"The Windigoes froze... everything. For miles and miles around, there was nothing but ice. Where once there were homes and ponies, now were merely frozen statues. I wondered why I hadn't yet been frozen myself. I know now, of course, that it was my mother's love that kept me warm, held me safe out of reach of their vile power. Even in death, she had saved my life."

The quill pen snapped. Silence dragged on as Twilight chose a replacement.

"I had to go far beyond the borders of pony-settled lands to find anything worthy of the title of 'life' - let alone something I could actually eat. Ravenous, exhausted, and hundreds of miles from home, I thought it was a dream come true when I saw a lone apple tree rising in the distance. Little did I know that it was the onset... of a waking nightmare."

"Too tired to fly, I plodded toward the horizon at a pace that would have bored a snail to tears. I fell in and out of consciousness as I went, no longer really knowing where I was headed. It was not until I bumped head-first into the trunk of the tree that I remembered. The moment I looked up, a falling apple landed square in the middle of my forehead."

"There was no pain, only joy. 'Food!' I screamed with all the volume I could muster, 'At last!' I tore into it, devouring it seeds and stem and all. Mad with hunger, I looked up at the top of the tree and growled like a rabid beast. Summoning all the strength I had left, I kicked the tree with the force of a cannon blast."

"It reverberated as though it were a giant wooden bell, and shook as if it had drawn the ire of the earth itself. Finally there was a crack not unlike thunder, and the tree came crashing down. I ran up its side as it fell, wanting nothing more than to be upon that sweet fruit the very moment gravity had finished taking its toll."

"As I bit into apple after apple, a noise rang in my ears. I paid it no heed as I worked to sate my endless hunger. At last, when not a single apple remained, I was forced to come back to reality. What I found there was not, on the whole, what I would call... normal."

"The tree I had just knocked over had been growing out of perfectly flat stone - stone that stretched as far as I could see... in every direction. Stranger still was what I found under the spot where the base of that tree had been, minutes before. It was a door, carved of a metal I had never seen in any of the books I had read. At the touch of a hoof it slid open, giving way to... nothing. It was the middle of the day, and yet beyond that threshold all I saw was blackest darkness. That very moment, the noise I had ignored came again - but this time... I heard it loud and clear."

Silence rang in Twilight's ears as Ebony stopped once again. This time, though, it was not the same. Icy winds whipped through the air, and shadows danced in the corners of her eyes.

Today was the hottest and brightest day of the year.

"And what was that noise?" asked Twilight.

He remained silent, lost in the distant past. Finally he spoke, but his voice was not his own.

"It was a voice." he said. His eyes were clouded over with murky shapes, the ghosts of ages past dancing before him.

"Over the passing of sixteen hundred years I have forgotten many things. I forgot how to stand, I forgot how to fly. I forgot how to laugh, I forgot how to cry. I forgot how to live... I forgot how to die. In time, I forgot even the sound of my own mother's voice. In all that time, over all those years, two things never left me. The first was my mother's face on the day she died. And the other..." his voice trailed off.

"And the other...?" Twilight asked, already knowing the answer.

Ebony nodded. His eyes closed, his timeless gaze directed inward toward himself.

"I have never forgotten that voice."

Next Chapter: Chapter Three - Timeless Malediction Estimated time remaining: 46 Minutes