EV 7

The first time she’d been here it had been different, despite how everything looked the same. The dark, ominous cloud hung over the mountains and

Luna was sobbing at her older sister to do something. Twilight didn’t know what it was that the dark alicorn wanted, but it seemed—

But it was still the same and Twilight felt a strange echoing that bothered her. It was similar to the kind of illness Pinkie had suffered after letting Applebloom help her bake. Had it not been a dream, she would’ve vomited.

It was all so very wrong.

[You are doubled. The aether is not linear, Twilight Sparkle. You are here, and you are here again, both at the same time. The feeling will pass.] Luna’s voice came from the roaring wind, calm and focused. She tried to speak but the wind overcame her words. She thought, wandering if this was the way to talk to the goddess.

—I don’t have the entire picture, Princess. I know that the only way to fix this breach is to go to the source, but I’m not sure what else to do from here.

There was no answer except for a strange compulsion to guess. She couldn’t be sure if it was Luna (the real Luna) or her own mind’s dissatisfaction. As the dream preceded slowly as it had the first time, and the terrible feeling of doubleness persisted, she tried to piece things together, starting chronologically.

The Princess had dreamed, not realizing that the magic keeping her from doing so had faded. Shortly after, she had come here, to this dream constructed from her memories. Somehow, Discord had been able to take advantage of this, and all Hell had broken loose.

[Twilight Sparkle, we are almost to the time you left this dream. Please pay attention. I will be there with thee shortly and my sister comes also.]

She looked, really looked, at the two alicorns now. As the sick feeling in her stomach and the pain in her body vanished, they looked straight back at her. Celestia spoke first.

“He’s waiting, somewhere,” she whispered.

“Sister, please, I know this is difficult, but you have to do this. He’ll only come if you do!” she suddenly grimaced, and looked down at herself. “I had forgotten… our wounds. The day returns to us, sister.”

“Thou- you and I, after a whole month. Yes, I feel it all returning to me. I feel as if I shall have no choice but to act as I did. I will make the mistake that ends the war and plants the seed for the next one.”

The two alicorns seemed different and Twilight couldn’t quite put her hoof on what had changed. Their voices, yes, were different: Luna spoke with perhaps more energy, and Celestia’s voice was higher in pitch now. In the back of her head, some tiny logical pony decided that they had taken on their old mannerisms with their old forms.

“Princesses, what are we doing exactly?” she managed to yell.

The wind stopped absolutely. Everything around them froze, and the dream simply stopped. The sisters flew to be before her so that all three ponies floated over the landscape together. There, they hung as a trinity of tiny forms over an awfully still valley. Nothing breathed in all creation but them.

“We’ve… gone back. The three of us,” Celestia began, her voice betraying her. “To this day. The dreams of a Goddess are so very powerful, Twilight. You have no idea how powerful they are…. The terrible winged, tentacled things that have been born because Luna had nightmares. That last one that we… Twilight, you must try to understand that this is both a dream and not a dream.”

Twilight felt a growing horror. In the still air, she could afford to whisper. “Princess, when is this? The day you defeated Discord, right? Why would this be a nightmare if you won?”

“Twilight, my faithful student, you must know what comes before this day. When we emerged from the temple, my sister and I had been changed. She was no longer the same energetic filly and I had lost some of my bookish, introverted character. The emotional pain of that place is so great that it dogged our every step back home.

“The war with Discord that we waged lasted three months. Every few days, we would catch up to him and a great conflict would break out in the skies. Fire and lightning would fill the vision for miles around. It simply lingered on and on, Twilight, and we were winning— but at a pace that was far too slow for me. I was exhausted both physically and mentally and every moment I spent alive was spent in a firestorm of rage that couldn’t be quenched.”

“And so,” Luna said, her voice as quiet as Twilight’s, “we caught up to Discord over the skies of Ponyville, that town that I loved so dearly. The town I made my first friends, though I was always a little bit of a stranger to them. We fought him, and we came closer to his defeat than we ever had before—“

“AND HE WAS ABOUT TO GET AWAY AGAIN!” Suddenly, Celestia was screaming, throwing herself back and flailing in the air, overcome as she was caught up in the past. “I have to stop him! So long, so long, so long, so long…” she began to grind her teeth, drifting back and forth as if pacing the air.

Luna grimaced and then the passions which had overcome her older sister began to war in her. She shook Twilight, her eyes wide and her younger voice urgent. “Twilight, this is how it happens. The dreams of a Goddess are different from the dreams of a normal pony! The nightmares of Goddess alter the fabric of reality… I can feel my wounds again,” she was breathing hard. “I… it’s as if I’d not had the time to prepare…” she backed away, and Twilight could feel the world around them almost pushing her away, pushing her back towards her sister so that the drama could continue.

Celestia looked back towards the cloud. “DISCORD!”

Everything began again, the wind howling and the storm ahead swirling above the purple mountaintops. But this time, Twilight spotted something fleeing towards those clouds and she knew the shape well.

The tiny, far-off shape paused, turned, and Twilight sensed that the avatar of chaos knew what was coming. The violence in her princess’s voice frightened her, and she could only imagine what it would be like to have such murderous fury pointed in her direction. She shuddered.

“Celestia, please! Please, for the love of Order and your blasted Sun, don’t do this!”

“It has to end! It has to end and thou knowest it!” the older alicorn responded angrily.

Below, Twilight realized that the dam was gone— no, not gone. Rather, it had been destroyed, ruins of it still present here and there. Water flowed freely heading towards the town below. She could see ponies fleeing in all directions, scrambling around the town and outlying farms. With horror, she recalled the debacle with Mare-Do-Well and how when fixing the dam herself she’d realized just how much water it held back.

There was enough water to destroy the town below, so close to the mountain.

“Please, it’s Ponyville! We love Ponyville! I love Ponyville. DON’T YOU DARE DO THIS!”

“This can’t go on! He’s faster than before! What if we don’t catch him this time, my sister? What shall we do then?” Celestia glowed with fearsome energy and around her three lights began to glow and circle. “You know that you have no choice. Join your power with mine, Luna. I command thee, as thine older sister!”

“WE KNOW THEM! WE CAN’T JUST LET THEM DIE!”

“If we don’t stop him now, and we lose him like we did a month ago, another town will die. We can stop him right now, today. You can’t hold back the flood on your own!”

Twilight stood in mute horror. She remembered the darkly colored filly and her ignorance of magic and knew it was true.

“No! No!” Luna, younger but still so very similar, brought her three lights to bear. Now, the six lights took on colors and Twilight recognized them, her heart sinking even further. The Elements of Harmony charged and their power built as a frantic Discord tried to find safety in the clouds he had created that were swiftly abandoning him, chaos magic backfiring as it often would.

Below, the waters rushed down towards this old Ponyville that Twilight had only seen in memories. She could hear the screams of terrified, innocent ponies from where she floated.

Suddenly, Discord was right in front of the two alicorn sisters, and Twilight knew that Discord himself had come, pulled in like a moth to the light. He had taken his place in the play, taking over for himself. “Oh, dears, it looks like you’ve had to relive it all over again… such a shame. I mean, really, Celestia, did you honestly think you wouldn’t find me eventually? You know you would’ve… why didn’t you try to blow my cloud cover and follow behind, hm?”

The Elements were almost prepared. There would be no escape for Discord. Twilight could feel their magical auras and felt the familiar taste of her own Element. Luna’s plan was suddenly before her, as if the Princess had told her straight out what to do.

But she felt so alone, in that moment. The ponies who had brought her here, to this terrible dream, no longer seemed aware of her. Below, the water rushed on and Luna was always looking down at it, in agony. Twilight felt the compulsion to do likewise, despite the nearing discharge of magical energy. She felt that it wouldn’t come while she looked. Dream logic would work that way, that it would only work after I’d seen what haunted the Princess.

Of all the possible courses of action Twilight could take, looking down towards old Ponyville was the least desirable of them all. Though she didn’t speak it aloud or think of it in so many words, she knew what would greet her eyes if she glanced down. Logic fed her a constant stream of argument: she couldn’t afford to be distracted, if she looked down and became involved she may slip into the dream herself and become someone else, the timing had to be perfectly in line with the Princesses…

She just didn’t want to look down.

Ahead of her, the Princesses circled the avatar of chaos to prevent his escape. Discord did little to break free, only laughing triumphantly, experiencing this moment in the future and knowing that his enemies were forced to relive it. Twilight looked into his eyes and he looked back and she knew he could see her. His eyes danced with demented mirth and seemed to speak to her across the divide.

Celestia’s grand mistake, the one that founded her land of peace and plenty and love on such a foundation, was made because she didn’t look down either.

Twilight took a deep breath and glanced at the town below. Instantly, she was trapped, the dream compulsion taking over. In the warped world of pure thought, she could see all of what happened as if she hovered just above it.

The water came on, a great wave swallowing up green life into a deep blue nothing that faded to black as she felt every simulacrum of life in the false world that was swallowed up close its eyes. In town, terrified earth ponies tried to flee to higher ground, towards the hills. Some had foals on their backs, others with possessions or saddle bags. Here and there, she saw a unicorn mixed in, trying to flee. She could feel the pounding of their hooves and the air was full of their voices and in a moment of mute horror she knew that Celestia had felt all of this too, flush with the power of the Elements drawing on the energy from nature itself.

She didn’t let it seem real. She didn’t look.

An earth pony mare climbed onto the roof the town hall with much effort, and Twilght was surprised to note that she was heavy with foal. Gasping, she looked up at the far off figures in the sky and she screamed a wordless, knowing scream. Somehow, she knew exactly what was going on. Twilight had no idea how she had deciphered it all so quickly, but she felt like that mare with her frazzled red mane and light red coat, knew everything. That pregnant mare cursed the two alicorns, and as the water poured into the town and snuffed it out, she was still screaming the truth.

The air crackled with magical energy.

Twilight focused on the image of the crown which bore her element, and it appeared before her. She ran on autopilot, adrenaline blocking out thought.

Discord, before her, suddenly seemed more concerned than he had seemed before.

She called on the Element as it came to rest on her head, moving of its own accord and propelled by its own innate seas of magic. From outside of the dream, she could feel the others reacting, their elements pooling into hers and strengthening it, awaking its potential.

She just wanted to go home.

The magic filled her body with the pleasant burn that it had brought on the last two times, and the Elements, as they had before, chose their own punishment. Twilight could feel them working, hear something shouted in alarm, hear drums beating in her ears and voices which sounded like her friends.

She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open when she could think clearly again. Everything was dark and she felt numb and tired in the aftermath of using the Elements of Harmony.

“Twilight?” It was Celestia’s voice, calling from the black.

“Yes, Princess? I’m here,” she said, and coughed.

“I’m sorry they didn’t come. Do you see now why I didn’t want them to?” Twilight knew the Princess meant her friends, and she nodded. Remembering it was dark, she answered again for her mentor’s convenience.

“Yes, I understand.”

Twilight was surprised at how calm she was. The horror of the destruction of Ponyville was simply gone. Any anger or betrayal or heartsickness she may have felt over Celestia’s past was absent. She had nothing.

“There was another reason, Twilight, though it’s going to be very hard for you to accept.”

Twilight lifted her head from off her hooves— she noticed now that she was lying down, and could feel that her hooves were crossed for some reason. It was a strange sensation, to be numb and feel still an outline of oneself.

“Twilight,” the princess began, hesitant, “the dreams of a Goddess are… different. I believe you’ve been told that a few times now, haven’t you? Well, they are. They have long reaching effects. My first dream tore up magic that was ancient and strong. My second… my second undid it all. All of it. You see, my faithful student, the Aether doesn’t work like Equestria. Time is not a line there like it is here, it is all together in a great undifferentiated mass. When you and I and Luna went back to my dream, we were going back to the first time I dreamed. Do you recall the doubling you felt? I felt it as well, because we went back to the same dream. I fell into the old pattern because I hadn’t been aware the first time I was dreaming, and had acted as I did on that day so many years ago.”

“What do you mean that you ‘undid it all’? All of what?” Twilight was finally becoming interested.

“The void, the missing ponies and land, it’s all back the way it was because it never changed. Effectively, you went back to the past and in that moment, you sealed Discord and ended my dream prematurely. That’s something for my sister to explain, because the Aether always gave me headaches when we were younger.” Celestia’s voice chuckled in the dark.

“Why do I feel strange?” Twilight said. She felt as if she were waking up, warmth spreading along her body. She tried to move her hooves, and they responded, if a little weakly.

“Changing time sent everyone back but the three of us. Luna is here too, Twilight. She simply doesn’t wish to talk. You’re both in mind, with me, and we are all sleeping the empty sleep my sister and I bear. It’s unpleasant, isn’t it? But I don’t think you were referring to the physical sensation of being asleep.”

“I feel so calm. I saw that mare on the roof screaming at us and the water and all of it and I simply feel… calm.”

“Because it never happened. It is so very hard to explain, Twilight, and I’m not sure how. Luna and I feel the pain you are missing, but we feel it as we always have, as an old, old wound. We have no aftereffects of the dream, though I know what happened. None of it happened. In fact,” she paused here, and the calm broke as she finished, “I would say it perhaps never did. Tonight is the night I dreamed first, Twilight. There was only one dream, really. One river leading onto another, with the second and the intervening periods all as tributaries.”

“That’s impossible,” Twilight didn’t know what else to say.

“Few things are really impossible, Twilight.”

“Sister,” Luna’s voice rose up from somewhere else beside Twilight. “We are not sure that you have fully explained. Twilight Sparkle, do you remember what happened before you woke up to find the world in chaos?”

There was no response.

“We- I know many things about dreams. It was I who first laid those magical seals that took my beautiful domain from my sister. I imagine them a prison, and I was the architect who designed that prison. An hour ago, I felt my sister come back at long last into the bosom of the blessed Aether and I knew that she would go to that place, because I knew it still tortured her.

“So I was in her chambers in a moment and fell beside her bed, at her side in the air over the old Ponyville in a moment. Unfortunately, Discord was there as well and doubled, as in the future he was going to be there for you to spring our trap. I knew instantly that I would be unable to stop him for two reasons: because he was doubled, able to return to that moment, and because the Elements were created to stop one Discord, not two.”

“So you called for me?”

“No, I… how do we explain this? In a panic, I stole you. I reached out into the Aether and found you and I simply ripped as much of you away as I could. I thought I had all of you… but it didn’t work. I only got part of you: your intellect, your skill, your calm. You stayed strong throughout all of the dream my sister created by herself to escape into, stronger than perhaps you would’ve been in reality. I feared for your sanity because of my mistake, but my sister’s love for you maintained the shadow of you I had created foolishly.”

“You were so brave, my little Twilight. I… wanted someone to be trusting me,” Celestia said softly from her left. Luna, she could tell now, was at her right.

“Am I the real Twilight at all?” she asked quietly, finally feeling something outright: fear.

“Yes, but not all of her. We… have to put you back. You’re different from what Twilight was. You are her, but you’ve changed and become something a little different from her in the separation,” Luna admitted.

“It has to be done, Twilight. I’m so sorry.”

“You only exist in the Aether, and she is an empty shell without you. So we must return you. I’m sorry, but this will all have been a dream.”

Celestia sighed, long and low. “Oh, Twilight… you’ve grown, here in my dream. Maybe this all could’ve been avoided, but when I retreated nothing could be undone. Both of us, Luna and myself, have failed you tonight. My will, my… I’m not sure what to call it, but it kept you alive. You aren’t a puppet, but you were being held up by my mind. But you’ve gorwn, your mind reacting to losing parts of itself by copying my mind and Luna’s. You won’t realize it yet, but you would if we let you stay this way. You’d have our memories soon, our mannerisms. You would begin speaking archaically, perhaps, or start taking your tea like I take mine, or… I don’t know.”

Luna spoke. “The hole I bored in your mind in my stupid, blind haste is like a circle, Twilight, and you are a square. A crude analogy, but I think an effective one. When we return you to your body, the parts of you that are of us will be removed. I will not lie to you, Twilight. The cut will not be clean. Though you will no longer have the two of us polluting your mind with our own, you will feel that you have indeed lost something. I don’t know how it will affect you completely.”

Twilight felt a different kind of numbness now. It was a lot to take in, and to be perfectly honest, she didn’t understand the implications of a lot of it. That everything had been a dream… she shook her head, though it seemed foolish to move at all here for some reason. Her mentor (or had it been Luna?) had mentioned something about the feeling of being asleep. Was this it, then? Was she moving while asleep?

Distraction didn’t provide escape from the matter at hand for long. “I… I just think this is a lot to take in. Princess Celestia, Princess Luna— will I just wake up, then? When you do this? Wake up and feel a sense of loss or something along those lines?”

Luna answered, being the sister more experienced with dreams. “Yes. A great, great sense of having lost something. It will be profound, I would think, because your mind took much from my sister that you aren’t aware of yet. You will remember this all, because all of what you learned was true. We would’ve waited to tell you, but I feared as Celestia retreated inward briefly, you would recall much on your own and not be able to understand it. We have much to discuss when you awake.”

“My faithful student,” Celestia began, her voice now firm in the manner one takes on at the beginning of an arduous task, “it is time. When you wake up, you will be in your own bed in Ponyville. I think you need the day or longer to rest, but when you are ready, write me. Go see your friends, talk to everyone and enjoy the sun. Tell none of them what you know, at least not yet. When you are up to it, there is much to learn, much to explain. Goodbye, my faithful, wonderful student.”

Twilight opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. She could feel her cheeks dampen with tears that came from seemingly nowhere. Outside, the first light of day greeted the waking world. Twilight cried and pondered the nature of things in her heart.

A/N: Yes, there was a reference to Luke in a Pony story. Sue me. Haha. :3

Hurray, it is accomplished! I’m so relieved to have finished this… I like the story, but it could have been a lot better. This story was really a writing exercise for me, mostly, and because of it I think my fiction muscles have been stretched adequately to get down to business! For those who are dissatisfied, I think I will return to this storyline more than once, and absolutely at least once. The things that Celestia and Twilight have to talk about are gonna be fairly interesting.

The pregnant mare survived, the only survivor. Her child was a colt named Livery... remember what Twilight was reading in chapter one? He alone knew the truth when his mother died shortly afterward. But he forgave Celestia. For those unsatisfied, consider that and the passing years. I REALLY wanted to tell his story, but there wasn't a good way to do it. He was the first Royal historian. :3

Keep a look out for a FoE oneshot and a Conversion Bureau story on the horizon, both of which I think will be way more awesome then any of this. Also, if you are on DA, please stop by my profile at http://juliusscipio.deviantart.com/ and chat me up ‘bout ponies/read a bit/ comment! That is of course if you wish!

ALLONSY