I stood paralyzed by the emotions battling inside of me: dread, shock, confusion… Somewhere in the back of my mind I was even glad to see my friends again. But as the seconds passed, common sense began to regain control over my mind amidst the overwhelming desperation.

I was observing things that should not be, and yet it wasn’t just me – Tin Flower was obviously witnessing that as well. So it wasn’t a recurrence of the virus which plagued my mind under Canterlot. However the question as to why I was seeing what I was seeing remained and, more importantly, what I was looking at. Was it even real or was it an illusion?

“Twilight, is it how you looked when you were… you know?” Flower tentatively asked, looking at me in bewilderment.

My eyes returned to ‘me’ and my friends. Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t looking at something random – it was a very exact moment from our lives! We were visiting this city looking for Applejack who went missing after she went on a rodeo… But how was I seeing that? Did I travel back in time somehow?

Deep in my reverie I almost forgot about Tin Flower’s question. She had to tap my shoulder with her metal hoof to bring me back to reality. If it could even be called so – I wasn’t sure anymore.

“Yes, it’s me…” I trailed off, becoming lost in my thoughts once again, though for a different reason right now, “And my friends…”

My gaze slid over the ponies who were some of the most important in my life, as dear to me as family members. We were so innocent, so happy… If I were to tell them what would become of us in the not so distant future, they wouldn’t believe me – I myself still had trouble distinguishing my life from a nightmare at times.

“You were pretty,” Flower again yanked me out of my musing. Before I could react to her words (though, I had no idea how) she continued, spluttering, “I mean, it’s not that you don’t look pretty now as well…”

“It’s all right, Flower. And thank you.” It was the most warmth I could muster right now, because I had finally managed to snap my attention from sorrowful nostalgia to the real issues.

Where were the others? And what should we do now?

I twirled in place, taking in my surroundings. The sunlit street in front of me lived its own quaint busy life. However, I could only see it – no sound or smell crossed the invisible wall between it. There was a clear border between realities – the sunlight was abruptly ending, becoming night in a very unnatural way, grating on my mind. It was impossible to say how far the ‘past street’ went – the remains of the ‘present’ were obscuring the view. Trying to deduce anything by looking at the sky was impossible because of how everything was blurring in the distance, making my head hurt if I tried to concentrate; which was strange by itself since I shouldn’t feel pain due to my metal body. All in all it was an utterly bizarre, anomalous sight, going against the logic and rules of both science and magic.

At the same time behind me were the ruins, decrepit and ancient, but suspiciously well preserved. I was sure it was no accident, the force that was behind the appearance of the ‘past’ street must have been making the city debris appear younger than they should be. And they were just as silent, only the occasional gust of wind was playing with sand, making it whisper its rough murmuring song.

While my friends were on the ‘other’ side, they weren’t the friends I was looking for right now. Rainbow, Delight, Wire and Trixie should be in the place where the anomaly was, but none of them could be seen either inside or around it. Considering how violently it manifested, I was starting to become very concerned about their fates.

Glancing at Flower I saw her looking back at me expectantly with a face full of worry. It didn’t evade her that we were alone and most likely in serious trouble. But we were together and that was a priceless advantage.

I was torn between the options presented to me. We had to look for our friends – I wasn’t ever going to abandon them no matter what. However, I still had no idea what we were dealing with. I didn’t even know if I could just walk into that anomaly without any consequences for me, and especially Tin Flower. And right now wasn’t the time for experimenting. Thinking of it made me return to the previous question: what was it? If it was just an illusion, it wasn’t that troubling. But if I was dealing with time travel… My mind was racing, trying to calculate all the possible complications. The self-consistency principle I experienced myself… but what if we got stuck there? And why didn’t I remember that?

I abruptly stopped my train of thought. No matter the details, one thing was certain: going in would be dangerous and questionable in its productivity, leaving me with only one choice.

“Let’s try to find the others,” I said, motioning for Tin Flower to follow me.

I turned away from the sunny and who-knows-if-even-real Dodge City and began to trot into the ruins. Flower gave the bright street one last longing glance – for her it was a place of enchanting beauty, rather than a deeply troubling echo of the past. I spared it a worried look as well – my friends and ‘I’ were already gone from sight, following a mare called Cherry Jubilee. However, I feared that we very well might have to return there if we failed to find the rest of our company in the debris.

Slowly and cautiously we were crossing the dilapidated town.

There wasn’t much left of the buildings around us but skeletons made of once-sturdy wooden girders, and even they were giving up to time. Almost every house had their roofs caved in, often taking the walls with them as well, though in a few cases they still remained, alone and half-ruined.

It still wasn’t something I had expected to see. There was only one place in Equestria which stood, and would stand, the trial of time – the Castle of the Two Sisters – but it was a completely different case. What I was looking at wasn’t even supposed to be a city. Those buildings were temporary, built only to be replaced later. Exposed to the elements they could have lasted for two, two and a half at best, centuries before being swallowed by sand.

Another thing I noted was that I couldn’t recognize the patterns of stars in the sky at all. It wasn’t just because Princess Luna didn’t care about her night tapestry anymore; those stars just looked wrong in general – alien and unnatural. Inexplicably, everything was bathed in moonlight, but the moon itself was absent from the sky. It was as if it was always behind my back no matter how fast I turned. Even with Flower’s help, I couldn’t catch sight of it. Needless to say it was not just weird, but distressing, bordering on creepy.

On top of that I was feeling an increasing discomfort – not with the situation itself, though my worries were growing with each minute passing and proving the futility of our search. There was something wrong with the magic. Its flow was irregular and wrong in a way I couldn’t explain, only sense vaguely. Even Tin Flower complained about the strange faint buzzing sound she was hearing – she called it ‘white noise’, though I had no idea what it meant.

I stopped in my tracks and frowned. It took me a few moments to realize what was happening. My eyes grew wide and my proverbial heart skipped a beat – it was exactly the same thing I had felt before reality split apart the last time. I turned around and with horror realized it was happening again. The ruins began to warp and flicker, losing their colors or becoming oversaturated, plunging into pitch black darkness or becoming lit by the blinding daylight from the unseen sun.

My knees buckled under me. I was being reacquainted with a sensation I had almost forgotten thanks to my artificial body – pain. I tried to warn Flower, tell her to run, but only a strained scream escaped my mouth. To my horror, she echoed it.

The pain became blinding, filling my world with a grainy shimmering whiteness. The only sounds I could hear were screams, but I couldn’t tell to whom they belonged: me, Flower or the world itself as it was torn apart. Much like before, as suddenly as it came, the agonizing wrongness was gone at the moment of its apotheosis. Blinking away tears…

Wait.

I dabbed my eyes with my hooves – it was oil! Whatever that was, it damaged my body. I began to whip my head around – if it was enough to overpower the steel of my metal vessel there was no telling how harmful it could be for a filly!

Flower was right behind me, a few steps away, in the same place the anomaly caught us. She was unsteadily rising on her shaking hooves, blood dripping from her nostrils, eyes and even ears. I rushed to her quivering form, carefully embracing her in my hooves.

“Are you alright!?” I yelled as I began to inspect her for wounds – but couldn’t find any.

Flower spat red on the ground and weakly nodded, gulping. I squeezed her to my breast and then let go. She swayed, but then she regained her bearings.

“Yeah,” she nodded again wiping blood from her muzzle. Raising her bloodshot eyes at me she asked, “What the fuck was that?” Then her eyes shifted behind my back, and a confused expression overtook her features. “And where the fuck are we?”

Too relieved to see her alive and relatively unharmed to chastise her for the foul language, I looked around.

I had to blink a few times, because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Unlike the last anomalous occurrence, reality didn’t split anywhere near us – it seemed like we had ended up inside it, which explained why it affected us much more strongly.

All around us were the ruins, but they were hardly the same. As if listening to my complaints, the universe decided to throw us into what was supposed to be: Dodge City almost erased by the river of time flowing through it.

Only rare stone foundations were marking the ground like tombstones. The timber turned into either rot or fossils, bleached and bone-dry, half eaten away by wind. Sand and dust were midway in greedily and inevitably swallowing the town. The moonlight was gone and only the unfamiliar stars were shining down, barely helping to distinguish anything in the darkness. With the walls gone, I could see the distant horizon, and it made me frown. I expected to see more of Hayseed Swamp; it was almost as if it had withered along with the city over the centuries, though that made little sense.

“I don’t know,” I whispered to Tin Flower in a small voice. There was something ominous about Dodge City now, as if somepony or something was watching us.

Suddenly I felt a touch on my flank – it was Tin Flower who pressed herself to my body, looking around with fear. I pursed my lips. I wasn’t going to leave my friends behind, my plan was the same, but there might be an addition to it. There was no telling how many anomalies we were going to experience, but I didn’t want Flower to go through any more of them. Bringing her out of the city and returning back to continue my search would be the most reasonable thing to do now.

I lit up my horn and headed to the direction of Hayseed Swamps, feeling Tin Flower brush my side as we silently crept amongst the headstones of the long-abandoned houses.

The silence was unbearable, not even wind whispered to the sand, no crickets’ song rang through the air, no rustle and bustle of nocturnal life could be heard. With the darkness pressing in from all sides, I felt like my mind was being crushed inside my skull by the onslaught of the void around us. Trying to distract myself from that unpleasant sensation, I began to think about those anomalies. After all, one more observation had just been added to the data I possessed on the matter. But somehow the quiet was disrupting all my ideas, making them abruptly dissolve into the same nothingness which surrounded us.

“The sunny street we saw was from the past,” I softly said, deciding to voice my thoughts so I wouldn’t go crazy. And also, Flower was a smart filly. Although she wasn’t a unicorn, she could still notice something I was missing.

“I figured as much,” she commented, getting the cue. I was sure our surroundings had to be just as unnerving for her, if not more so. “Are we traveling through time then?” There wasn’t a single hint of excitement in her voice, only concern.

“I’m not sure…” I replied. I couldn’t deny I was witnessing Dodge City in different states… stages of its existence, but... “This is supposed to be the present, but it’s decayed enough to be five hundred years old.”

Flower fell silent for a few moments. I didn’t need to turn to her to see her scrunching her nose as she thought hard.

“Doesn’t that mean we started from the… ‘past’ past?” Yes, she was a smart filly indeed. “But how?”

“I’m asking myself the same question.” A deep sigh escaped my mouth. It wasn’t the only inconsistency in all that mess. “If it is time travelling, why can’t we see the moon? And why does Hayseed Swamp seem to be smaller now? Something doesn’t add up.”

I abruptly stopped – I just saw movement on the edge of the circle cast by my light. I put a hoof in front of Flower, preventing her from trotting ahead – the little mechanic was too lost in her thoughts. She glanced at me questioningly, and I silently nodded towards the place where I saw something barely noticeable shifting on the outskirts of my horn’s pale glow.

Like two statues we stood in the middle of a luminescent purple lake, peering into the night. I thought I could feel Flower’s heartbeat with my hoof, but I dismissed it as my imagination. And as seconds passed away I began to realize that those glints in the darkness could be nothing but tricks of the light as well – this place wasn’t good for my mental health.

I had almost decided to dismiss it as nothing and continue on our way out of the city when I saw it.

An equine silhouette, glowing ever so faintly, moved slowly and preternaturally as if gliding through the air. I felt, this time for real, Flower tense and grab my hoof, either seeking protection or reassurance. Possibly both.

I stood, both horrified and enchanted, watching as the lambent mare hovered into the circle of my light. She had neither wings nor a horn, and yet her hooves weren’t touching the ground. Her features were grayed out, emanating ghostly and weak radiances of colors that looked very familiar, but I couldn’t say where I had seen them before. Her eyes were blank and aimed downwards, together with her slightly tilted head giving her a mournful appearance.

A stroke of insight came to me. I had seen a pony like this before… in the Deep Tunnels. Captivated by the mare’s eerie appearance, I failed to notice the buzzing inside my head, growing stronger and more unpleasant as she neared us.

I took a step back, but my hoof failed to find a steady purchase on the small pebbles and I teetered, barely regaining my balance. My frantic motions were accompanied by the loud crunching of sand and gravel under my metal limbs.

The mare snapped her head in my direction… No, that wasn’t the correct way to describe what I saw. Her silhouette jerked in a single massive convulsion, her whole body changing pose without movement – her limbs just appeared in other places, as if she were skipping frames of motion. After one more spasm, she regained the same floating position but with her head pointed at us, though her eyes were unfocused, fixed on something behind, or even beyond, our scared faces.

The grating sensation inside my head was starting to become painful and I heard Flower grunt and felt her wince – she was feeling it too.

Without any warning, the mare began to scream – a deafening, terrifying, inequine wail cutting straight into my mind, filling my vision with static and making me drop to one knee from the agony.

I knew I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear myself. Flower’s mouth was open in just as silent a cry, her nostrils and eyes dewing the ground with fresh crimson tears.

Not able to aim from the overwhelming pain and the static, I began to hurl stunning blasts one after another in the direction of the shrieking specter, and after a few of those, she stopped with a gurgle. Gathering all the strength and resolve I had, not bothering to look at it, I grabbed Flower from the ground and all but flung her barely moving form on my back. Then I darted away as fast as I could without tripping over my hooves.

The stone remnants rushed by as I ran past them, trying to escape the skull-splitting screeches of that undead mare. But it wasn’t helping… Static was filling my vision along with the noise dominating my hearing. Too late I realized that it was another anomaly about to claim us again, not the nightmarish ghost.

My hoof caught on a stone, I was launched forward and in that very moment reality warped around me, becoming white agony dominating my every sense. I flew through the air for what felt like an eternity of pain until I crashed into something relatively soft – somepony, I realized.

My vision was yet to return to me, but I could already hear a muffled yell from the pony under me, signifying that Flower and I might have chanced to stumble upon one of our friends, or at least not another horrifying specter.

“Rainbow! What gives?” the pony snapped in a bone-chilling voice.

The static was fading from my eyes, replaced by lavender flank into which I had slammed with my muzzle.

“Wait…” Twilight Sparkle said with rising worry in her tone. “Who are you?”

It was as if I were looking into a mirror, if there were mirrors which could show a younger version of a pony. There were five centuries spanning between ...us; but in practice no more than five years had passed and yet it was undeniable how youthful she… I… was.

I found myself lost in those two pools of vibrant amethyst. Around them there was no sickly darkness of sleepless yet nightmarish nights spent trying to come up with an invention that would turn the tides of war. Nor did deep wrinkles, dug by constant panic-bordering stress, mar her young skin. And from those eyes not a void of endless pain and loss answered the world, but a reflection of the stars – of the sun she carried in her heart.

She was Twilight Sparkle and I was Twilight Sparkle. How could we be so different and still be the same pony?

I didn’t know how much time passed, but it was her who was the first to come out of the stupor. My appearance couldn’t go unnoticed by the younger version of me. Despite all the efforts of the city, I still retained enough paint on my metal body to look uncannily similar to what I once was. Whatever theories and questions she had in her mind remained unvocalized as she noticed something at my side and her eyes went even wider than before, becoming filled with nothing but worry.

I began to turn my head in the direction she was looking (and already moving), but I understood what got her attention as soon as I heard a loud groan of Tin Flower, more annoyed than pained, before I saw the filly at my side.

“I didn’t know somepony can fucking screech louder than Wire,” Flower grumbled, making ‘Twilight’ freeze in her tracks, appalled by both the intonation and choice of words. Noticing her presence, Flower added, “Twilight, did you hit my head by accident or something? You look… erm… different…” she mumbled as she was wiping blood from her eyes and nostrils.

“I… I didn’t hit you!” ‘young’ me instantly recoiled at the accusation, her eyes jumping between Flower and me, the obvious desire to help the wounded filly fighting with confusion. “I’ve just met you!”

“Neither did I; you didn't get hit at all,” I said worriedly, tapping Flower’s shoulder to get her attention. She might not have been affected directly, but it was obvious our transgressions between realities were having a negative effect on her body. It could be just blood vessels in her nose and eyes rupturing, or it could be much worse – any of her internal organs could be suffering from those anomalies resulting in internal bleeding.

Flower turned to me and then back to ‘young’ Twilight, her expression becoming both confused and curious.

“Who are you!?” ‘young me’ yelled again, this time with clear panic in her voice. “This filly needs help – she is bleeding!” I couldn’t deny her point, and it might be a very good idea to get some while I was in this reality. A sudden thought crept into my mind: what if I left Flower in this, much better, world with the ‘young me’? It wouldn’t go against the rules of time travel, would it?

“Nah, I’m alright.” Flower stood up and smeared blood from her hooves all over her coat, making both of us Twilights wince. “Could be better,” she muttered, “but it’s not the worst I’ve ever gotten.” With those words she flailed her metal hoof in the air, reminding me how she got it and driving ‘young me’ into a state of further shock.

That gave me a bit of time to think of how I should proceed. The problem was, well, in ‘me’. Back then I was not only innocent, which could be a problem on its own, but also quite impressible, more so than now. However, I still needed to start from somewhere. And I decided to cut straight to the chase.

“I’m you from the future,” I levelly stated, looking ‘myself’ in the eyes again.

I was met with disbelief, of course.

“But there can’t be two ‘me’s’!” she retorted, looking crossly at me, “It’s not scientifically possible!” Oh, Twilight, what would you know about it...

She stuck her hoof at my chest. “You are not scientifically possible!”

Wait a moment… why did it feel so familiar?

“Oh...” A deep sigh escaped my metal lips.

Of course… I had already visited myself from the past. But it happened a few weeks after I returned from Dodge City, so that’s why this Twilight had no idea. And that also made me realize something else: if I remembered how a Twilight from the next week came to warn me I also should have remembered a blood-covered filly with a metal leg and a metal version of myself.

That meant whatever was taking place right now wasn’t time travel.

“What happened to you?” Twilight continued to gush, oblivious to my revelations, “Why do you have to wear that armor? Is there some epic pony war in the distant future or something?” I shuddered at those words – she was too innocent. “How did you time travel?”

“Stop!” I barked at her, and clutched my head in my hooves; her curiosity wasn’t helping the situation, but rather acting like a salt on wound. “It’s not time travel…”

But what was it? What was happening? It wasn’t a question of ‘when’ anymore, I realized, but ‘why’.

“What do you mean?” young Twilight tilted her head, slightly taken aback by my yell. “You’ve just said you are from the future.”

I let out another deep sigh. Dealing with myself was a bit harder than I expected. Back then I had no idea how time travel worked – not that I had a full understanding now.

“I am, but I don’t remember this encounter, though I have to – it’s how time travel works.” This version of me had no idea that time travel abided by the self-consistency principle – she had yet to experience it… or never would.

“Maybe you are going to wipe my memory after?” young Twilight suggested, squinting at me suspiciously.

“No, I don’t know such a spell.” I shook my head sadly; not because of my answer, but because the understanding began to dawn on me: If I didn’t remember this past, it never existed – it simply wasn’t real.

“Are you…” her eyes went wide and her face paled. “Are you going t-to k-kill and r-replace me?” She stammered.

Even if I had the same or almost the same body it would have changed nothing, sadly. Not that it was an option I would ever consider.

“Of course not,” I dismissed her worry with a roll of my eyes.

I knew it was coming and it was no surprise to me when Twilight’s face fell, even more so when she thought I was going to kill her. Since we both were Twilights her mind should be following the same path and when presented the exact same information, come to the same conclusions.

“Then…” she swayed, trying to regain her bearings, starting to hyperventilate. “It means I am…” the last words she squeezed through tears, “...not real?”

The younger and not-so-real Twilight fell on her knees, hit by the crushing realization, sobs wracking her delicate frame.

I felt sympathy towards her, but to my own surprise I also felt some… detached coldness. After I was resurrected in a different body, after all I went through, my perception of such matters became more… casual. I was no longer perturbed by the existence of multiple instances of the same or almost the same pony. In a morbid clarity, I understood her nature and its implications. She was nothing more than an aberrant echo.

“I’m afraid so,” I said, mimicking sorrow. She didn’t need to know how I was seeing her, I knew how she would react – I had been there before. “I’m sorry.”

I let her grieve for her situation for a few minutes, impassively watching how she grimaced with existential pain. Dodge City stood here for hundreds of years and I couldn’t even fathom how many times this Twilight Sparkle re-lived her visit to it and if she even was aware of her perpetually echoing existence. It could be the very first time for all I knew, caused by my return to this place. What if I dragged her out of this anomaly? Would she exist in my reality? Then there would be three Twilights who were in this world… Which one of them would be the true one: all or none?

Looking at her made me realize how drastically and yet inconspicuously my view had changed on such things as who was a pony: Nothing but the memories they did and did not have...

“But… h-how can it be?” She finally calmed down enough for her curiosity to reign once again.

“I don’t know.” It was my turn to grimace. Whatever revelations I had about all of this, the forces behind our problems remained unknown. “We keep running into some kind of magic anomaly here at Dodge City. I thought it flung us between what I thought were different moments in time… but it doesn’t seem to be so.”

“Maybe it is some kind of a disrupted timeline?” Twilight suggested and then audibly gasped, “Do you think we created it because we have met?”

I considered that possibility for a single moment, but quickly dismissed it.

“No, something was wrong with this place before I even stepped into it.” Talking with myself had no use – she knew even less than I did and our minds worked in the same way. “Listen, I… I need to find my friends and escape this place. Can you help me?”

Although I pitied her, I couldn’t help this Twilight. She was only an aftersound of me. I could still help the others, however.

For a few moments she was silent, brows furrowed as she considered her options.

“Yes,” she finally nodded with a somber and resolute expression.“What do you want me to do?”

“I’d like to find a doctor to have a look at Flower…”

“I’m fine, I’m telling you,” the filly in question protested.

“...and look for my friends.”

“So…” Twilight awkwardly began as we exited the wooden building we were in onto the sunny streets of Dodge City, “Can you tell me something about your future?” Her ears drooped and tone became full of sadness. “I won’t be able to see it, but I’m still curious.”

I hesitated with the answer, but only because I was scanning my surroundings for any signs of Rainbow, Wire, Trixie or Delight. Unfortunately nothing betrayed their presence. I idly wondered if Rainbow met herself as well and how it had gone.

“You don’t want to…” I began my reply with a sidelong glance, but trailed off as I felt a disturbance in the air.

“Can you feel that?” I screwed my head around to look at Twilight. Another anomaly was coming.

“Yes…” she whispered with wide eyes. A moment later she exclaimed, “It’s not the timeline that is disrupted but the ley lines!”

I was too distracted by the growing pain to truly appreciate that statement. Oddly she didn’t seem to be affected by the cracking reality, while I was beginning to feel an unbearable ache in my horn once again.

“Oh, not this fucking shit again!” Flower angrily yelled, clutching her head in her hooves, blood already starting to drip from her nose.

Everything became white agony for that maddeningly infinite amount of time.

And then I was blinking dark oil from my metal eyes, rising from my knees. As soon as I could see, I instantly checked on Flower. She was leaning on my body, heaving, a sheen of sweat on her coat and scarlet streaks on her cheeks glistening under the moonlight. Moonlight! I was whipping my head trying to understand in which reality we had ended up in this time.

“Twilight, I don’t wanna complain,” Flower rasped, spitting on the ground, “but I’m kinda tired of all… that.”

She wasn’t alone. But I had some good news.

“It seems like we ended up in the original reality this time,” I said checking on my surroundings once again.

Fallen apart wooden houses, moonlight without a moon but with unfamiliar constellations; I could even catch a glimpse of Hayseed Swamps – they looked the same as when we were entering Dodge City. Yes, it was the ‘present past reality’, which might have its own issues, but it was where we began at least.

Now was the time to consider the implications that ‘young me’ told me before she ceased to be along with the past. Because in fact it was an invaluable piece of information.

‘Disrupted ley lines’ wasn’t unveiling the dark secret of this place, but it did partially explain how the anomalies worked. The Everfree Forest was an example of such a phenomenon, though not to a degree this severe. When Princess Luna turned into Nightmare Moon, the resulting aftershock of that spell damaged the tapestry of magic, making it uncontrollable and wild. But here… whatever took place, it must have completely torn apart reality.

Surely it was an incredibly interesting question deserving thorough research, but right now I had a filly who was ravaged by this place and potentially internally hemorrhaging. There was one very relevant fact implied by that knowledge which could be life saving. If the problem was with the ley lines, avoiding the points where they were piercing the ground and coming out of the depths of the earth could potentially help us to not run into any anomalies anymore. It wasn’t a certainty, but it was a chance we shouldn't dismiss.

Closing my eyes, I tried to concentrate on the magic around me. I reached out and…

It was like a white-hot nail was lodged in my horn. My eyes instantly opened and I saw a shower of sparks, both magical and not come out the top my head, lighting Flower’s scared face, while I was spasming with agony.

“What was that!?” she exclaimed with worry, instantly returning to my side and trying to get a better look at my forehead.

Grimacing, I touched my horn, making it sizzle as the oily tears evaporated from my hoof. It was discouraging, but not enough for me to not attempt it at least one more time.

Sparing Flower any verbal answer, I give her a reassuring nod. Letting out a deep sigh and then just as deep a breath to calm myself, I closed my eyes.

Ever so slowly and carefully I expanded my mind sensing the flow of arcane energies all around me. Somewhere to my left there was a great disturbance, a raging inferno of violently swirling and thrashing magic. I instantly recoiled from it as my horn ached from the memory of searing agony.

After a few long minutes of tentatively and meticulously probing the reality around me as far I could expand my sense of magic, I came up with a somewhat concrete idea of which areas and directions we should be avoiding.

If I was correct, we should be able to pass a series of ruined buildings on our right without stumbling into any more anomalies and luckily emerge into the outskirts of the city. Motioning with my hoof for Flower to follow I headed into the passage between two decrepit houses.

We crawled through the debris and darkness, guided by nothing but my memory of the torn apart magic tapestry. From time to time I had to pause and check for anomalies again. So far my guess of them being directly connected to the ley lines was correct... or we were just fortunate.

The path ahead of us was more or less clear with one single exception, more confusing than worrying. There was a disruption, not of ley lines but something else, cold and dark. And there was also one more thing concerning me: I thought I could hear muffled shrieks ahead of us – unintelligible yet clearly equine, definitely belonging to somepony sapient this time.

Turning back I saw clouds of dust in the air. It glistened in the moonlight with an unmistakable sheen – it was arcanium. In retrospect I realized that the shrieking spectre glowed with iridescent light. I had a vague suspicion that, somehow, the presence of that magic metal was linked with the overall weirdness of this place.

I tugged at Tin Flower’s ‘clothing’, making her pause. She stopped turning to me with a questioning and even somewhat hopeful expression – she could hear the cries too. I shared her hope – it very well could be our friends out there. However, it could also be one of those screamers, and the last thing we needed right now was to run into them.

Looking at Flower, I realized that she was missing her saddlebags. I couldn’t remember the moment she lost them – it must have been when we were fleeing the screaming ghost. Mine were still hanging on my flanks, but one of them was torn at the corner and seemed to have lost some of its contents. However, now wasn’t the time to take count of our remaining supplies. The yelling in the distance became more pronounced.

Motioning with my hoof for Flower to keep quiet, I took the lead and began to creep along the decaying wooden walls towards the noise. After we passed a few buildings, a clearing – a crossing of two streets – opened before us. Right in the middle of it, a living shadow was fighting back a group of… things.

Mere lengths away from me stood semi-corporeal beings loosely resembling equines, though not completely. They must have been ponies once, but now, because of horrifying tumors that were covering those parts of their bodies which weren’t semi-transparent, I couldn’t tell if they were pegasi, unicorns or earth ponies. I couldn’t even discern if they were mares or stallions. Their bodies were either spectral or deformed beyond recognition, and it didn’t take me long to understand what had twisted them. Shards of arcanium were lodged into the discolored flesh, eerily glistening under unnatural moonlight.

It took me a few moments to realize that the shadow amongst those abominations was, in fact, Trixie. Strangely, she looked ragged – this place must have been affecting her just as well. But more confusing was that she was apparently having trouble winning the fight, despite how deadly her power was before. Surrounded by the ribbons of inky darkness, she was using them to merely rip out hoof-fuls of sand and dust from the ground and fling them at the five abominations surrounding her. However, it made sense in retrospect – they were full of arcanium, even their hairless skin glistened with the trademark colors. Trixie could do nothing to them.

With those monstrosities circling her, I seemed to arrive right on time – Trixie had no way to escape without risking being caught by one of them. Though Trixie was nearly invulnerable, I was sure that being touched by those creatures would do her no good. It also seemed that she couldn’t even fly away in her weakened state; not without coming in contact with one of the abominations.

Frantically whipping my head around, I tried to come up with a way to help Trixie out of her situation – I didn’t want to directly use my magic on any of those things, fearing how it could interact with arcanium. However, there was no reason I couldn’t use my magic on the objects surrounding me. Planting my hooves in the earth I concentrated on a large slab of bricks still held together by mortar and levitated it from a mound of debris, sending crumbling stones and rotting wood scattering everywhere. While it wasn’t that hard to levitate such a large object (I had to levitate an Ursa Minor once, after all), the problem was in giving it enough velocity to become an improvised projectile and in operating it without smashing it into anything.

Before the torn away part of building became a weapon in my hold, I froze in indecision. A mass of stone this large would easily pulverize flesh and break bones, potentially resulting in fatal injuries. Those abominable monstrosities didn’t seem to have any consciousness left in them, only the most basic of instincts guiding them through their wretched preternatural existence. But they were still ponies, and I was about to likely murder them, with my improvised weapon being so devastating. Was I really going to do that?

But then I remembered how I had attacked the rapists in the Tunnels, leaving at least one of them heavily wounded, his fate unknown to me. Back then I didn’t contemplate my actions, I just defended those who could not defend themselves. It was no different now, right?

Like a gigantic pendulum I swung the piece of wall through the air, crashing it into the abominations’ sides, sending them flying through the air and into the surrounding ruins.

As I predicted, their bodies scrunched and squelched on the impact, leaving arcs of black ichor raining down on the ash and dust. I winced every time the mass of rubble collided with their disfigured frames. Even though they had no understanding of what was happening, somehow that made it worse.

All that time, the face of the young and innocent Twilight Sparkle was in my mind. She wouldn’t have done that. We weren’t the same pony. Yet I was sure I was Twilight Sparkle.

Finally, the last of those creatures was standing before me, as it had diverted its attention from Trixie and was closing on me. It was too far away from the ruins to throw it there with the rocks floating in my magic. I hesitated once again, but with the monstrosity being mere steps away from me I had no choice left but to act. The piece of wall soared up in the sky; turning away from the eyeless muzzle, I let go of the stone.

For a second there was no sound as gravity was at work. Then there was a wet thud accompanied by the snap of bones and thick drops of something sprayed on my metal cheek. I couldn’t bear to look at what had I done, but in the corner of my eye I saw a puddle of dark blood nearing my hooves. Shuddering with horror, I took a hasty step back.

After the darkness and debris swallowed those disfigured beings I waited for about a minute, concerned that they might return. And it was also to calm myself down. As nothing emerged from the shadows, I carefully approached Trixie, making a wide circle to avoid the motionless body.

The last time we talked, things didn’t go so well. Judging by how she sat with her back turned to me, the pain I had caused with my words still resonated in her heart.

As I came closer to her slumped form I noticed what was making her look so bizarre, and it made me frown deeply. There was no mistake now – she had two outlines, as if it wasn’t one, but two living shadows and they were different. Was this how her magic worked or was it something more morbid?

Bewildered and uncertain both of how to proceed and if I should even come closer to Trixie, I stopped a few steps away. She half-turned her head and looked at me for a few moments before she spoke.

“I’m surprised you decided to save me,” she grumbled. That was supposed to sound like her snapping at me, but all the venom she was trying to put into her voice was replaced with genuine pain.

“What do you mean?” I was taken aback by both what she said and how deeply hurt she sounded. “You’re my friend!”

“Are you sure I’m not just another monster to you like those?” Trixie accompanied her bitter words with a wide swipe of her hoof, supposed to motion at the arcanium abominations now absent or… dead.

I pursed my lips. Just because she took my silence as a confirmation to her question didn’t mean she was right and I saw her only as monster. But… I remembered my feelings towards her when I saw her true form up close for the first time. That urge to either attack her or run away.

It still didn’t mean she was only a monster to me.

“Trixie, I’m sor–”

“Don’t lie to me!” She angrily snapped, swiftly turning to look right into my eyes, but I cast my gaze away. “What’s different, Twilight? You accepted me five hundred years ago, but you can’t even look at me now.” There was so much desperation in her voice, so much pain mixed with confusion.

“I…” I uncertainly began trying to untangle my own feelings.

“Have you been treating me like a friend just because I told you we were friends once?” Trixie almost screamed at me. I involuntarily took a step back, but not because of the volume of her voice. It was the accusation which struck me.

The memory of how I met her in that weird temple resurfaced in my mind. I barely recognized her, I barely remembered her even as a boasting showmare. If she had never told me how we spent years working together then she would remain the same nopony for me. So actually...

“...Yes.” It was Trixie’s turn to stumble back as if I hit her. “I never was the Twilight who knew you.”

Trixie was looking at me in shock, her mouth slightly agape and a sudden thought occurred at me. Why exactly did ‘I’ accept her as a friend in the past if I couldn’t do it now? Was it ‘my’ depression-induced indifference towards everypony and everything which made me close my eyes to the fact that Trixie was a witch from the Coven? Had ‘I’ even known that?

“And you are not the same pony that Twilight knew,” I loudly stated, taking a step towards Trixie. “You are hiding things – terrible things!”

“I regret it!” Trixie instantly cried out, her voice quivering with tears she wanted to, but couldn’t, shed. “I regret it every day, every moment of my cursed life! I regret that I joined the Coven!”

For a moment my rising anger was threatened to be snuffed out by pity. Not only did she sound genuine, but from what I had seen I knew she was using her magic for good. But what about the time when she hadn’t? I read the reports from the frontline and there was a very good reason why everything went into creating an armored suit to withstand the Coven’s spells.

“You were a part of the most vile magic organisation that ever existed, which killed thousands of ponies in the most atrocious ways!” I shouted back at her. The only thing she didn’t do was destroying one of the major cities, since she was there when King Sombra was finally killed, but I wasn’t sure, even of that. No amount of time acting as vigilante could erase genocide from anypony’s record.

“I never killed a pony! Not as a part of the Coven!” Trixie retorted in desperation and at that very moment the second outline of her body almost tore itself away from her body in a sudden jerk. Making me and Flower, who was silent all that exchange, audibly gasp.

It was a young-looking unicorn mare I couldn’t recognize, with a mane-do similar to mine, but with more streaks in it. Her muzzle was contorted in apparent agony and… protest? The apparition quickly returned to Trixie’s body, becoming but a tumultuous outline once again.

I remembered how Trixie took shadows from the objects back at the crash site. Had she done the same with a pony? What would happen to a pony when their shadow was stolen?

“Whose shadow is that?” I asked with a deep frown. I took a step back and used my hoof to bring Tin Flower closer to me, though it was barely needed: the little filly clutched my side, shaking. “What have you done?”

“Her…” Trixie visage was a barely comprehensible mix of guilt, turmoil and fear. “..it was an accident…” she mumbled weakly, as my expression hardened further. “...she tried to destroy Canterlot… I had no choice...”

I had already seen her kill without hesitation, turning ponies and griffins into ashes. It could be called self-defense in both cases, but was it always that way? Who was she to pass verdicts of death and life?

I couldn’t rely on five hundred year old memories. I lived in the present, and right now I was looking at nothing less than a war criminal who was allowed to both roam without justice and dispense judgement on her own. In truth she was a typical part of Canterlot, as much as everything else in that fallen city.

Trixie must have seen that in my eyes as she darted forward to me, keeping low and looking even smaller than before.

“Twilight, I have changed,” she pleaded, almost on her knees. “I was doing everything to make up for the things I’ve done.” Our eyes met. “Please, Twilight, don’t I have the right to a second chance?”

Failing to choose any expression but a cold mask of passionlessness, I regarded her for a few long moments.

It wasn’t my place to judge her. Rainbow seemed to be more than fine with Trixie’s deeds, but she was a representative of the Swarm, no matter what she thought. Ironically, it would be Princess Luna who should be the proper station to decide Trixie’s fate. I wondered if she was aware of that.

There was only one thing I could and should say. Was Trixie my friend?

No.

There was no reason for it. I barely knew her, and the things I did know were nothing but repulsive in the end. However, I couldn’t just leave her here, nor dismiss her help. If I were talking of justice and making her answer for her crimes, bringing her to Princess Luna would be a start.

I glanced at Tin Flower, and she answered me with a confused look. It wasn’t hard to imagine how strange that conversation must have been for her. But at least it gave her time to regain her strength.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, both to Flower and Trixie.

After taking only one step forward I realized that I actually had no idea where I was going. Hayseed Swamp was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t check the magic around for ley lines. Frowning, I turned to Trixie who stood behind me, dejectedly looking at the ground. Regardless what her deeds were, right now she was a prisoner of this place just like me and Flower. And more importantly she might have an idea what was wrong with it.

“Trixie, what is happening here?” I asked and closed my eyes, concentrating on the arcane workings of my surroundings.

She hesitated with the answer and I couldn’t blame her – it was no simple inquiry.

“You know there are only seven Thunderspires in Canterlot, right?” She finally answered with a question of her own, her voice still a bit shaky with the aftershock of our confrontation.

“Yes, one was blown up by the Pink Butterflies.” It was one of the many things I learned from the fillies shortly after I woke up, but still remembered clearly. That knowledge became even more grim when I saw a Thunderspire up close – to destroy something like that, a lot of explosives were needed… and hate. But what did that have to do with our predicament?

“When it happened, the arcanium tip fell on the ground and shattered, creating a massive zone full of magic distortion, now called the Rupture,” Trixie explained in a gravelly voice.

Shocked, I opened my eyes and was met with the sight of Tin Flower who perked up at the last word, “Oh, I’ve heard about that! Ponies say it is like…“ Her voice trailed off as she paled, which was quite a feat considering both her dirtiness and the poor lighting. “...a death trap,” she mumbled worryingly.

Arcanium was a potent metal, but as much as it was useful in its uniqueness, it was also extremely dangerous. Unrefined arcanium was a volatile substance, wildly reacting to any magic, and after being processed it was still something to be careful around. Even ‘deaf’ arcanium was unsafe due to the horrible untreatable wounds it could inflict. The tips of the Thunderspires… they were made of tons of arcanium. I dared not imagine what was inside that ‘Rupture’. Canterlot was lucky not to be wiped out entirely.

“I have barely been there, but this city looks like the same thing happened here,” Trixie grimly commented, sounding a tiny bit annoyed at being interrupted by Flower.

Unfortunately, I was inclined to agree with Trixie even though I had yet to see the Rupture myself (not that I was eager to). The everpresent sheen of arcanium and violently ruptured ley lines couldn’t be explained by anything else. However, the questions of how such a substantial amount of arcanium ended up in this place and what we could expect still lingered, along with the most important one:

“How can we get out of this place?”

“We just walk, there is nothing else we can do.” Trixie heavily sighed, then added in concerned tone, “But what about the others?”

“I want to take Flower out of this city first and then return for them,” I recited to Trixie, concentrating on the ley lines once again.

This time I tried to expand my magic as far as possible, probing around in attempts to find a familiar pattern, but to no avail. We were as lost as we could be. At this point I was just stretching my senses, looking for the least dangerous path. It was then that I felt it – not an anomaly flaring across the ravaged arcane landscape, but a spark of magic, distant and weak. It was somepony casting a spell! It could be one of those abominations, but it could also be Red Wire.

It was a somewhat hard decision to make. I didn’t want to spend more time than needed in this place and even less did I want Flower to stay with me – any moment we could run into those arcanium monstrosities, not to mention the anomalies. But we had no direction to follow. Having a chance to find Red Wire or the others was better than wandering around aimlessly, and Wire shouldn’t be in Dodge City either.

Turning to where that flicker was, I motioned to Trixie and Flower with my hoof to follow as I stepped into the ruins. Knowing that the path ahead was more or less clear, I moved swiftly – if it indeed was Wire who cast that spell, there was hardly any time to lose.

As we weaved our path through the debris I began to note that our surroundings were changing in quite a disturbing way. Shards of glass and stone hovered, frozen in the air, stubbornly refusing to abide by gravity and find their rest on the glittering arcanium dust. Specks and flakes of that malignant metal were strewn all over the ground amid ash and… bones. At some point even larger objects began to appear hung high by invisible strings in glimmering mist – fragments of walls and roofs, even a badly damaged freight train car. It was as if, for them, time had stopped when they were torn from their original places by a powerful explosion.

As we passed under that twisted car, I heard muffled yells ahead of us, followed by flashes of golden magic faintly lighting up the surreal ruins in the sky.

We almost galloped out of the decrepit street. In front of us sprawled the reason for both the name and existence of the city: the enormous junction of railroads.

As far as I could see railways endlessly stretched away, though that was to be expected. The weird aspect of that sight was in the railroads not converging together into only a few lines, but going on and on, appearing like an infinite rail station, with dozens of intertwining rails covering all the ground. In the distance, the webwork of steel and wooden paths spread even further, ignoring any logic. Reality itself appeared to be cracked, splitting like a broken mirror. In those twisted misaligned images the railways continued, lost in the horizon which I couldn’t tell from the sky sometimes – they literally melded into one surreal landscape.

The metal rails weren't consistent in their appearance either. In some instances the rails were pristine, shining under the unnatural starlight as if they were in active use, polished by train wheels over and over. But there were also rails that were deteriorating, with clouds of rust suspended in the air around them.

Where the railroads were, the trains followed, but on this station they seemed to rebel from the rule of the steel tracks. That didn’t mean that most of them went off the rails (though many did), no, they also hovered in the air, frozen in a way similar to many other objects around.

The carriages were mostly belonging to freight trains; only a few passenger cars could be seen, gazing back at me with dark, empty windows. It was miraculous that in some of them the glass remained unshattered, making those train cars stand out in their almost untouched condition. What was incredibly strange and worrying was that the next carriage could be sagging as if melted or collapsing into itself from the rust which ate its way through the warped hull.

With each step we were going deeper into the railyard, which I didn’t like in the slightest, but it was from where the sounds were coming. Past the remains of a rotting cargo carriage I saw silhouettes moving. A sudden sparkle of sunlight illuminated a filly unicorn and a pegasus trapped by shambling deformed equines in an alleyway formed by two deteriorating train cars. Sharp shards of arcanium were lodged into their distended corpses and dimly reflected that weak beacon of desperation in the void of the cursed night.

As I raced towards the battle destined to be lost, my mind raced as well – I was the only one who could turn the tide of it, but I was yet to figure out how. I could no longer use the same tactic I applied to the abominations that threatened Trixie, as the space between the carriages where Wire and Delight were having their last stand was too cramped for swinging any object of considerable size. Not to mention that there were no such objects, unless I lifted a whole carriage (which would be absolutely ridiculous) or started to tear one apart.

I skidded to a stop at one end of the narrow space, right behind the pack of monstrosities trapping the girls. They were too busy fending off the onslaught of withered terrors to notice me or Flower and Trixie who were quick to catch up. A quick glance at them showed that while they were eager to help our trapped friends, they had no idea how to.

Desperation began to well inside of me. Frantic, I tried to tug on rails or crossties, but the former refused to obey my will and the latter crumbled to dust. Still fearing to risk using magic on those abominations, I reached out around me, hoping to find purchase in sand and ashes, but nothing except bones were buried inside, and I couldn’t wield those effectively against the hardened ulcerated pelts of those once ponies.

Red Wire finally took notice of us and cried for help, her words becoming a yelp of panic as one of the beasts lunged at her, forcing the filly to shoot a harmless whirl of sparks into its eyes, giving her a moment to dodge back. She bumped into Delight, who was busy fending off the monstrosities with a broken shovel.

The circle of abominations was closing on them. A couple of those wretched beings changed their course, turning to us. The plan to distract those monstrosities died in my mind almost as soon as it was born: there was no time to draw their attention, and I would have to deal with them later, which could become an even bigger issue.

The situation was nothing but hopeless. I realized that my magic was still reaching out probing the surroundings; however, there was only death and arcanium. Arcanium… An insane thought crawled into my mind. There was so much of it around me that it would take me mere seconds to gather enough for a decent-sized weapon and then ‘deafen’ it, making it negate and disrupt any magic. It was a crazy idea, but the only one I had.

Every flake, every mote and even chunk of arcanium in my vicinity began to float towards me as I willed it. I moved them as hastily as I could, but still carefully, not daring to funnel too much magic into that capricious metal. The cloud of arcanium in front of my eyes took the form of a plank, and then I concentrated my magic on it, remembering the spells and months of practice at the RCRC, where I learned the art of arcane forging. The arcanium became soft and liquified, taking the form of a flimsy blade – I had never made a weapon before. I heard Tin Flower gasp behind me, obviously impressed by my skill, but I had to return all my attention to the sword I was making as it began to shake in my hold, sensitive to the slightest change in my concentration.

It was going to be sloppy work, but I had no time to do anything beyond forge a blade, and a basic one at that. It felt like I had already spent an eternity gathering and molding arcanium, but in fact less than a minute passed. It would be a wonder if that sword–no, dagger–didn’t fall apart as soon as I tried to use it.

Agonizingly long seconds passed as the metal was solidifying and above its warping surface I was seeing a mob of creatures made from ponies with the use of the same material amassing around my friends.

Finally, the blade felt more or less hard, but that was only half of the work done – it had to be ‘deafened’ now. With the right approach, a piece of arcanium can be severed from the arcane field, becoming an antithesis of magic.

I sensed the magical field around the dagger and used my magic to cut it off. With each miniature ley line plucked away, the feeling of a cold void inside the freshly forged weapon grew, until only the handle held traces of magic, enough to wield that hollow blade.

After what felt like an eternity, I at last had the means to help Wire and Delight, and just in time it seemed – their cries rang through the air: panicked obscenities coming from the filly and yelps of awkward battle from the pegasus.

The dagger floating in my hold, I rushed in their direction, already calculating my strikes. It was no weapon of immense power suitable for a frontal confrontation, nor was I a seasoned fighter, but it was razor-sharp – enough to cut tendons in the legs, incapacitating those beasts as they moved slowly enough to be manageable targets for me.

I clumsily danced around those abominations, thrusting the dagger at their legs, missing or landing glancing blows more often than finding my mark. But when I did, I practically mowed those creatures down. The withered skin and sinew seemed to be melting under the touch of the blade’s edge, rivulets of dark ichor sprouting from the deep cuts.

My onslaught on the back of the mob finally got their attention, at least partly, diverting it from Wire and Del. Soon enough, as a considerable amount of bodies were wriggling on the ground futilely trying to stand on their damaged limbs, there was an opening wide enough for the filly and pegasus to escape. As they rushed past me, I almost stumbled, shocked by their appearance.

Delight’s left blind side was covered in bite marks, many of them were bad enough to be noticeably bleeding, including one at the base of her wing, which was preventing her from flying. Her jaws were tight around the greyed wooden handle of a broken, yet still sharp, shovel which she was using as an improvised weapon. Judging by the dried out blood on her muzzle and cheeks she had suffered the anomalies as well. She looked horrible, covered in grime and bruises in addition to her wounds, almost making it impossible to discern her original color if not for her wings.

Red Wire was even worse for wear. She didn’t have as many wounds as Delight, but the one she had was making me shudder in sympathy. Her artificial eye was completely destroyed. Its metal casing was gone, revealing an almost empty eye socket, save for a few cables still poking out of it. Blood, soot and oil marred her face, perpetually grimacing in pain.

I returned my attention to the arcanium abominations in front of me and after a few unsuccessful attempts I managed to bring them down. However, many more, dozens of them were already shambling in my direction. With all their attention now focused on me it wouldn’t take them very long to overwhelm me and my flimsy weapon, not to mention it seemed that there were more and more coming from the space between the carriages and from the shadows of the surrounding wrecked train cars. So I turned away from them.

A fair distance away from the battle the girls gathered together with Trixie awkwardly standing a bit afar. Flower was fussing over Wire’s broken artificial eye, while Delight was trying to bandage her wounds with shreds of the rags she was wearing. With worry I noted that none of them had their saddlebags on.

Catching up with them, I instantly turned back to look at the mob of former Dodge City dwellers. They didn’t lose their interest in me, and it wouldn’t take them long to reach us, but more importantly they cut us off from where came from. We had to move.

I returned my eyes to the girls and they looked back at me with expectation – it was up to me to get them out of here. The problem was, I still had no idea in what direction we should be moving. It was logical to assume that travelling by one of those railroads could lead us out of the city if not for the fact that said railroads had long abandoned any logic themselves. With the abominations closing on us I was left no choice but to press forward.

We were making our way through the junction of railroads, and I started to regret plunging ourselves into it, since the webwork of tracks seemed to be endless.

It was impossible to predict the way ahead of us because of the carriages. Sometimes we had to walk around entire trains, as we couldn’t climb over or under them. The more concerning thing, however, was the increasing amount of arcanium – it wasn’t just motes or flakes anymore, but large shards menacingly hovering in the air. If I wanted I could even grab one of them and it would be a direct upgrade to my modest weapon, but they could react on my magic unpredictably. Furthermore, I avoided coming near them and often it caused us to make additional detours around the areas with too many slivers. On top of that, we kept running into arcanium abominations. Either I or Delight, who had recovered enough, would take care of them, but it was still taking our time.

And while all of that was quite worrying, what troubled me the most was the magic. I was pausing every so often to check on the ley lines in the beginning, but as we were getting deeper they were becoming less and less pronounced, becoming one huge distortion. My horn was constantly aching with a pulsing pain and the dagger was wobbling threateningly in my magic. Red Wire had the same complaints, on top of being unable to use any spells at all. In a few areas the distortion of magic was too powerful, affecting the girls, giving them nosebleeds, and Trixie, almost making her fight her second shadow. I was getting a splitting headache and multiple warnings about the condition of my crystals. Needless to say, we had to backtrack and find another way.

We were at the place where reality and anomalies had no boundary: the sky above us was constantly changing, appearing like an afternoon, sunset or midnight or something in between with the still invisible sun and moon; our surroundings were switching states between how the junction was around the time I visited it and ashes mixed with the rusted ruins of its future. At some point I was rather shocked with what I saw: what I took for a misplaced shadow on the ground was in fact a tear right into the night itself. From a hole in the earth, stars and nebulas gazed indifferently at us as the coldness of the void breathed through a gate to the cosmos.

It felt like we spent hours in that place – I couldn’t tell the truth because my clock turned off, showing me a tiny error message. So it was quite unexpected when the lost trains and railroads leading to nowhere finally came to an abrupt end. However, it was no pleasant surprise.

I struggled to comprehend the sight in front of me, for it hurt to even look at what I was seeing. The only thing I was sure of was that I was witnessing the rotten heart of Dodge City, ripping it apart which each malignant beat. It was like looking into an ever shifting broken kaleidoscope and trying to make sense of it. Day and night, twilight and dawn, past and present flowing from and into each other and sprinkled on top with gaping holes into nothingness and space. Huge slivers of arcanium, larger than a pony, were forever stuck in the air, all of them pointing at the center of that phantasmagory. I couldn’t even take a direct look at what was there, for my eyes were becoming filled with static. The only thing I could see and sense were protuberances of magic coming out from it, but those arcane energies were somehow wrong in a way I struggled to understand. It was as if the magic was... feral.

The girls could barely stand on their hooves, and I was so distracted by that warping refracting chaos that we failed to notice part of it moving in our direction until it was almost too late.

The huge hulk of... something terrifying lunged at us from the swirling mayhem of reality. I could barely make out the details of it and what I saw barely made any sense. The only thing I was able to do was use my magic and yank my company out of harm’s way, resulting in searing pain shooting through my horn.

We fell on the ground as the place where we were mere moments ago became an explosion of sand and arcanium. Dazed, I turned to look back. From the cloud of dust the most terrifying being I had ever seen was slowly rising. With a detached macabre clarity I realized that I was looking at something like a draconequus, but turned inside out.

It was a constantly shifting mass of distorted flesh, rotting and yet still living, clinging to the deformed bones and long sharp shards of arcanium, both seamlessly lodged deep into that congestion of decaying tissue. With rising horror I realized that once it had been many creatures – a single featherless pegasus wing stuck out of that mass, twitching miserably; an array of unicorn horns branching with tumorous growths; the carcass of some very large creature, a former resident of Hayseed Swamps, served as a foundation for that entire unnatural being, its long jagged ribs protruding from the distended skin towards the sky; from amidst all that putridness the bare skull of a buffalo gazed at me with empty sockets. Under the flaps of the torn discolored pelt hanging and swinging freely something dark roiled, making the entire abominable amalgam shudder and move. Inside the shaking bloated clusters of boils hanging from the withered sinews, dark forms moved, and I somehow knew it was seeing us.

It was a sight so horrid, I was paralyzed, unable to tear my gaze from the towering form even as it began to shamble towards us, wobbling madly, but gaining speed at a frightening pace.

Something heavy and metal struck my head hard enough to make it ring. I instantly turned in the direction the blow came from – Tin Flower was looking at me with eyes wide from utter terror. Only now I realized that somepony was screaming my name. I whipped my head around – Delight was holding me by the withers with her hooves and desperately tugging.

We had to run!

Scrambling on my hooves, skidding on the deep ashes and sand, I made off after the girls. We dashed along the curving line of trains and their wreckages with no direction in mind other than away from that thing. I could feel its heavy thuds, I could hear the squelching of flesh and bloodcurdling moans and screeches coming from many mouths. As I ran I unstrapped the saddlebags – I almost hesitated doing that since I was the last one with supplies, but the thing was only coming closer and, deep inside, I knew that if it were to get me I wouldn’t die I would become part of it.

With each step, desperation was claiming me. I could see that the girls were slowing down – they were galloping on fumes and adrenaline, they had no energy to begin with. We would have to face that monstrosity at some point, but I couldn’t imagine a single way we could survive it. I dropped my dagger the moment it attacked us, but it would have made no difference anyway. Trixie could do nothing to that abomination either since it was infused with arcanium. We were doomed.

As the girls sharply yelled in front of me, breaking me out of my reverie, I looked forward only to see that our fate was about to meet us. Ahead of us, trains were heaped into a small mountain with its top diffusing itself into the sky with floating carriages. It was protruding into the unstable centre of the city, blinking in and out of an anomaly. And there was no obvious way in the other direction. It was a dead end. It was our end.

I came to a screeching halt, turning around to face the manifestation of the city’s malignancy. Behind me I heard screams and hoped that the girls would be smart enough to use the precious moments I was gifting them to find some escape.

For its monstrous size the abomination moved extremely fast and it would take it mere seconds reach me. Bracing myself, I began to funnel all my magic into my horn despite the searing pain. There was no way to predict how that much arcanium would react to a direct blast, but I wasn’t going to survive any other way. When the thing was only a few body lengths away from me I released the spell.

The mass of putrid flesh exploded in a fountain of fire and blood, stumbling back, stopped in its inevitable onslaught. A mortifying wail sounding like it came from thousands of throats cut the air. But it was too early for exultation, because I knew – I missed.

Swirling my head around I saw two things: Rainbow Dash rocketing across the ever-changing sky, the turbine of her suit roaring fiercely and guns smoking; and from behind Tin Flower was closing on me at high velocity. Before I could momentarily rejoice at Rainbow’s timely appearance, the filly heavily crashed into my shoulder and sent me spinning along with her, making us both turn to the abomination only to see it surging at us.

With deafening thunder cracks echoing in the perpetually crumbling realities around us, Rainbow’s guns fired, tearing into the rotting hulk with enough force to knock the monstrosity from its deadly course.

A twisted skinless decaying limb with a warped claw of bone and arcanium fused together whooshed right above us – a strike that would have ended our lives if not for Rainbow Dash.

I grabbed Flower, who was right in front of me now, and attempted to drag her back, when I saw a ghostly spectre of the limb that just passed above us follow its corporeal counterpart. To my utter horror I realized that with the creature falling back it was now striking lower. With all the strength I had, I desperately tried to move Flower from its path, but my hooves were sinking into the treacherous sand as I failed to move her. She yelped quietly when the shadowy claw passed right through her and became limp in my hooves.

I cried out in rage and desperation, but the sound of my voice was drowned out by the agonizing howl of the abomination as Rainbow fired at it again. However, this time it didn’t stumble back, instead it rushed towards me in fury, using its claw to propel itself forward. I had mere seconds to draw upon all the magic I had, enveloping everypony in it.

From all the spells I knew there was only one that could help us in that situation, but it would still be a wild shot if not outright suicide. I had never teleported so many ponies at once. Because the desert before was a featureless waste, I couldn’t come up with a location that would be within reach of my ability, and I couldn’t warp somewhere inside the city because of the anomalies constantly changing it. Finally, I had no idea how it would interact with my new body, and I would only have one chance to find out.

Simply wishing to get out of there, I finished the spell.

Author's Notes:

Another chapter to go.
Special thanks to IAmApe who helped to make it better in more ways than just fixing grammar.

There is a chance that the next chapter will be posted later than three weeks and the same may apply to all the chapters left. Speaking of which:
Chapter 15 ready and awaits editing.
Chapter 16 is 90% ready, needs only one dialogue re-written a bit. Then editing.
Chapter 17 is in the works with about 20-25% of it done.
Since there is not that much of the story left to tell, it is much easier to say now how many chapters will be posted. The story will end on chapter 21 followed by a short epilogue. Of course, knowing me, there is a chance that there may be 22-23 chapeters in total.
I'm sure I will finish writing the story by the end of this year, but it may take a bit longer to post the remaining chapters due to the editing process taking a fair emount of time.

Aftersound Project Discord server - it's a little community dedicated to discussion of the story and whatnot. Everyone is welcome to join.
Pony Tales, a quite welcoming place dedicated to disscussing and working on many great stories (now including Aftersound). I think you may also find it interesting.

If you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know.
I hope you enjoyed reading this story so far.
Stay awesome.