Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated on her wellspring of magic, trying to bring any sort of spell forth, to no avail.

Her magic was still almost nonexistent, much to her growing distress. Whenever she'd try to reach out to it, her magic almost seemed to shrink away, causing no small amount of frustration.

The magic was there, it just wasn't... cooperating. With a sigh, Twilight opened her eyes and looked around her, taking in the many tall snow covered trees surrounding her and her friends.

Her eyes stopped on Rarity, who had been trotting along beside her, and she frowned slightly. The white mare had seemed no worse for wear magically, despite having used almost her entire reservoir of magic during the fight with the golem.

What made them different?

Why was Twilight the only one made to suffer this odd lack of magic?

She didn't know, but she resolved to find out the moment she got a chance. Keeping her own thoughts to herself for the moment, Twilight refocused on the darkened mountain path ahead. It wasn't long after that, that her thoughts about what they'd all do now were interrupted by Applejack.

"Hey... Twi?"

Twilight turned to the cowpony as she trotted up beside her, opposite Rarity. The lavender mare took notice of Applejack's troubled expression and her brow furrowed.

"What is it, Applejack?"

Applejack didn't respond for a moment, looking almost nervous to say what she wanted to say. Eventually however, she finally spoke up, turning to Twilight with a meaningful look.

"Ah've been thinkin'..." she paused another moment, then, "say we get back to Equestria. What in the hay do we do then?" she hung her head slightly, "ah have no earthly idea how long we been gone, but ah get the feelin' it's been a lot longer than we think'."

"It's been about sixteen years."

The group stopped dead and each of the girls turned to Pinkie with shocked expressions, save for Twilight who grimaced as she continued to stare at the path ahead. The pink earth pony looked back at each of them in turn before speaking again, melancholy thick in her usually bubbly voice.

"When we were in the facility, I found this really big science-y looking room with all these weird machines," she brushed a hoof through her flat mane and pulled out several sheets of paper, "I didn't know what they did, but I also found these."

The rest of the girls looked at the papers in bemusement.

"Pinkie, dear," Rarity asked with a raised eyebrow, "why do you have paper in your mane?"

"I had a feeling these were important, so I nabbed them before I ran into all of you," Pinkie replied with a shrug, "I don't really understand all the stuff written here, but there was something about 'violent reactions' and 'unexpected results' and 'an estimate of sixteen years'. I just put some pieces together is all."

"What?!" Twilight cried before frowning at Pinkie, "Pinkie, if you had something like that with you all this time, why didn't you say anything? I've been trying to find answers to what's been going on all this time, and you just had documents relating to the changes we went through?"

"Sorry, Twilight," Pinkie replied somewhat sheepishly, "with everything that happened, I kinda forgot I had these," she frowned and reached into her mane once more, "I wonder if I left anything else in here..."

Twilight went to grab the sheets of paper in her magic aura, and growled in frustration when nothing happened. She trotted over to where Pinkie stood and snatched the documents from the distracted pink pony before scanning them furiously.

After a minute her brows furrowed and she frowned deeply.

Microbiology wasn't something Twilight was particularly well versed in, and these documents were full of heavy scientific jargon that even she couldn't quite comprehend, some of the terms not being familiar whatsoever.

A lot of what she did understand only confirmed her suspicions.

It turned out Rainbow Dash had been right about their initial deaths. From what Twilight could gather, almost the moment they had been injected, the virus had essentially torn them all apart and completely remade them from scratch.

And Rainbow Dash had seen just how gruesome the process had been for herself.

Twilight briefly flicked her gaze to the cyan pegasus, who looked bored and irritated that they had stopped. Looking at Rainbow now compared to how she was when she had first rescued her, Twilight could see her feelings on what had happened to them all had clearly changed at some point.

Frowning, she turned back to the documents before her.

Twilight had already known from scouring Asger's memory that it had been over sixteen years since they had been dormant in that facility. While that was extremely upsetting, that didn't surprise her. What did surprise her, was the fact that there had been some kind of magic involved in the process -- magic she didn't recognize.

Even more surprising was the mention of Harmony.

One scientist had theorized that the violent and deadly reaction from the injection of the virus was a result of the virus' strange magic coming into contact with the magic of Harmony within each of the girls.

That caused Twilight to think back on what Pinkie had said before about no longer being able to feel that 'warmth' whenever they were all around each other. If this scientist's theory was accurate, and this 'warmth' really was the magic of Harmony...

"So what gives, egghead?"

Twilight blinked and looked over to Rainbow Dash who had moved to hover over Twilight with an impatient scowl on her face. She pointed to the documents as she continued.

"Any of that gonna tell us where to go next?" Rainbow asked, "because I'm pretty sure that's what we should be focusing on right now, Twi."

"Now just a moment, darling," Rarity said, trotting over to the two, "I for one would like to know what those horrid scientists have done to us."

"Ah don't know, Rares," Applejack added, looking around the general area, "ah think Rainbow's got the right idea. We don't know where in the hay we are, an' just standin' around is makin' me a mite antsy."

"Um... if it's all the same, I'd like to keep moving as well," Fluttershy said, pawing at the ground nervously, "I mean, I'm not trying to say this isn't important or anything, it's just that I really want to get back home."

"I know exactly how you feel, Fluttershy," Pinkie agreed, squeezing the pegasus in an impromptu hug, "I wanna make sure everypony in Ponyville is okay," she pulled away and looked back to Twilight with a small frown, "but I also wanna know why we all got funny in the head."

"It... I don't think any of these documents mention anything about the behavioral changes, Pinkie," Twilight replied, shifting between documents and scanning each one, "I can't make sense of a lot of this, but just from what I was able to find out," she looked up at Pinkie with an apologetic frown, "things might be worse than we thought."

"Ya'll don't have to tell me that," Applejack replied with a grimace, "Pinkie said it's been... sixteen years was it?" she looked to Pinkie who nodded solemnly, before looking back to Twilight, "an' there was somethin' about a war--"

"A war that Equestria lost," Twilight finished with a grim look, "a war that Sombra won with the help of Luna."

The rest of the girls fell silent as they let the information sink in, fear and worry of what had happened to their home and loved ones showing clear on their face. Eventually Fluttershy was the one to break the silence.

"How did this even happen?" she asked quietly, speaking to nopony in particular, "what went wrong?"

"We... I failed Equestria, that's what went wrong, Fluttershy," Twilight replied, hanging her head, "I... I don't remember all the details, but... there was some kind of test I was supposed to take, and I'm starting to think stopping Sombra from becoming king had a lot to do with it."

"Oh, that's right," Rainbow Dash replied, rubbing the back of her neck, "we were supposed to do some big important thing in the frozen north."

The other girl's eyes lit up as they remembered what Twilight had told them before all of this had happened.

"Yeah," Applejack began slowly, "now ah remember, we were supposed to do somethin'... what was it?" she rubbed her chin and frowned in thought, "ah think... ah think we were supposed to protect somethin', but ah can't remember what..."

"No, I think we were trying to look for something, dear," Rarity objected, her own brows furrowing in thought, "I feel like I should know what it is, but I can't even remember what this... empire looks like, or even what it was called."

Fluttershy merely stared out at the dark and snowy scenery, looking at nothing in particular as she thought about her animals and the ponies of Ponyville. As the other girls talked amongst themselves, Twilight looked back to the documents, conflicted as to whether or not she should mention what she had read to the others.

As she ruminated on the decision, the documents were suddenly yanked out of her hoof. She looked up in surprise to see Pinkie slipping the papers back in her mane. She went to ask Pinkie what she was doing when the pink mare spoke first in a hushed tone.

"I may not have understood everything written in those papers, and they might say some bad things," Pinkie said before giving Twilight a small smile, "but what I do know, is that we all still have each other, and that's enough for right now, don't you think?"

Twilight blinked.

"But... but didn't you want to know about..."

Twilight trailed off as Pinkie slowly shook her head and looked over to where the others were. Rainbow, Applejack, and Rarity had started bickering over what they remembered at some point while Fluttershy looked on with an unsure expression.

"I want to know what's going on with us as much as you do, Twilight," Pinkie continued, not taking her eyes off the others, "but I think that can wait until we at least find out where to go from here," she finally looked back to Twilight, "sixteen years is a long time to be away from home, and I wanna go back as soon as possible so we can let everypony know we're... well... that we're still around."

Twilight opened her mouth to protest, but found she couldn't. She wanted to go home as well -- to see that her family was okay, and to find Princess Celestia. It looked as thought the others had already forgotten about the documents during their discussion, and aside from the note about Harmony, the documents hadn't really told her anything she didn't already know or suspect anyway.

After a moment of contemplation, she sighed and nodded at Pinkie before trotting over to the others. The mystery of what had been done to them could wait for now. Right now, if this war and its result really was her fault, Twilight had to get back as soon as possible so that she could fix it.

But before anything else, they had to find their way out of this mountain range.

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