The palace halls were silent, save for Celestia’s own hoofsteps echoing in their vast expanse. The only living souls she encountered were the night guard. Most of them nodded to acknowledge her, while the rookies hastily bowed as she passed and the veterans who knew her well simply continued on with their rounds.

The silence continued until she entered her semi-private dining room; semi because since Luna returned, it was also hers. It was a relatively small room compared to the rest of the palace’s cavernous testaments to the fact Celestia personally owned the country’s treasury. Crimson red carpet from ancient Saddle Arabia ran from wall to wall, though Saddle Arabia wasn’t so ancient when she first got it. The walls were adorned with paintings from various past protégés of hers whose talents extended beyond magic and into the realm of putting paint to canvas, save for one wall that was made entirely out of glass and looked out to the horizon. She could see the moon low on the horizon clearly through the windows, casting its soft glow across the hills west of Canterlot.

Her sister was seated at the mahogany dining table, having what would be breakfast for anypony else given the hour, but dinner for her. Celestia smirked, recalling the story behind that table. The salespony who sold it to her said something about how it was made from fire breathing trees from some place called Malachor or something and could bend the fabric of reality. She was fairly sure he was quite insane. All she cared about was the nice table.

“Ah, sister, you’re back!” Luna greeted, her ears perking up. “I take it negotiations ended well?”

“I managed to talk her into moving her nest and her eggs to the Crystal Mountains with a bribe of gems. I don’t think she’ll be bothering anypony there.” Celestia took her seat on the cushion opposite her sister. She discarded her fake polite smile she wore for the masses and relaxed, a much more genuine grin crossing her face. “How’s the political zoo been since I left?”

“Rowdy as ever,” Luna sighed as she speared a mini tomato with great prejudice, sending its juices across her plate, and biting into it as if it’d insulted her mother. “Hoity Toity remains amiable, but he’s about the only one. Money Bags the Seventeenth is still trying to buy out Filthy Rich’s enterprises down south and just about everything else with a price tag. The words ‘monopolies are illegal’ don’t seem to get through to the old codger.” She skewered a few leaves of lettuce and bit into them, angrily chewing as she continued the list. “The heads of the Kicker family are still lobbying their plots off to raise our military budget, as if it isn’t obvious they’re just trying to raise their own salaries and make themselves as important as they’ve always thought they are.” Her plate empty, she threw manners out the window and chugged the last of her mead. “The price of Zebrabwean ore continues to rise and the queen refuses to budge because she still thinks we’re hiding political fugitives from her.” She huffed as she coated her fork in butter. “I miss the days when our country was small enough to not have to deal with all this fuss.”

“Such is the curse of being the leader of a world superpower,” Celestia sighed. “You just have to learn to find enjoyment where you can.”

Luna smiled at her sister as she snapped up her fork and swallowed it. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Celestia eyed her fellow diarch before asking, “Sis, why did you just eat your fork?”

“The doctor said that I need more iron in my diet,” she responded as if she’d been asked why water was wet before sending her spoon to join her fork.

“Lulu, I highly, highly doubt he intended for you to get it from your silverware,” Celestia sighed.

“What better source of iron than actual iron?” Luna asked with a confused look on her face.

Celestia stared at her sister for a good long while before saying, “I hate it when I can’t argue with your logic.”

The side doors to the kitchen opened, and out trotted a young unicorn mare with a grey coat and electric blue mane tied into a braided ponytail. Her horn was glowing and she held a platter with the sun princess’s favorite breakfast assortment. “Welcome back, your highness,” she greeted in her Canterlot accent with a smile. Celestia had seen the mare around the castle many times and knew her by name – of course she did, the mare was their personal waitress – but what drew her attention is what she was wearing.

“A Prench maid outfit? Really, Lulu? That’s what you have our personal staff wearing while I’m gone?”

“Don’t you like?” Luna asked with a smug smile.

“If you want, I can take it off,” the servant said meekly as she set Celestia’s breakfast down.

“No, Silver Platter, it’s fine,” the princess mumbled, struggling to get her blush under control.

The mare smiled and bowed, cantering back into the kitchen with Luna’s empty plate. The solar regent struggled to keep her eyes off the frilly undergarments that Luna had provided the unicorn. Celestia waited until the door closed to say, “I will get you back for that.”

“Why, whatever do you mean? I thought you loved Prench fashion,” Luna said coyly.

“This was to get me back for all the times I’ve interrupted your bed-rocking sessions, isn’t it?” Celestia asked, raising an eyebrow as she dug into her food.

“Oh, I haven’t even gotten started getting you back for that, Tia,” Luna said with a devious smile.

“Yes, about that, what have I told you about having sex with the staff?” she responded, trying to derail the conversation before it pulled into Celestia Has a Prench Maid Outfit Fetish Station.

Luna hummed in thought before saying with a completely straight face, “Share?”

“No, to not do it,” she huffed as heat rushed to her cheeks anew. “If the press ever finds out, you’ll never hear the end of it.” She raised her cup of tea to her lips.

“Sorry dear sister, but I really don’t want to wait years on end to court lovers in secret like you do,” Luna sighed. “You really do just need to come out and ask Twilight on a date.”

Celestia’s eyes shot open and she sprayed her tea all over the table. “E-excuse me?” she choked out.

“Twilight Sparkle,” she repeated as if she were talking to an amnesiac. “Your protégé. I see the way she looks at you, and you haven’t had a paramour in, what, three decades?”

Celestia narrowed her eyes as her horn glowed, extracting the tea from the table’s surface and returning it to her cup. “Even if I were interested in such an arrangement, she is far too young for me.”

“Tia, we’re older than the Everfree Forest itself. Everypony is too young for us,” Luna reminded.

“Lulu…” She sighed. “Things aren’t the way they used to be. We can’t just point to a pony and take them back to our bedchamber anymore for a quick roll in the sheets. The legal marrying age also isn’t thirteen anymore. Ponies have standards now, and I’ve adopted those standards. One of those standards is to not court ponies that are only recently legal adults.”

“I miss the simpler days more and more,” Luna groaned.

“And that’s your prerogative. But as for me and my love life, Twilight is too young, and I’d appreciate it if you dropped the subject,” Celestia said firmly.

“Only if you stop butting into my love life too,” her sister shot back.

The older alicorn let out a groan. “You’re impossible sometimes.” She looked at her plate. She’d barely touched her food. She pushed it away and got to her hooves. “I’m not all that hungry. I have to prepare to go to Ponyville to investigate this Insano character.”

Just as she turned to leave, the locks on the door glowed with Luna’s magic aura and slid shut. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” the night princess said. “The Doctor dropped by two nights ago and warned me about Insano, and something far worse in our future.”

Celestia turned to her sister. The younger alicorn’s face was suddenly very grave, all hint of sisterly playfulness thrown in a ditch.

“Tell me everything.”

At the same time that Celestia was wandering the halls of her palace, the early morn was still and quiet to the south, in Ponyville. Everypony laid in their beds save for a few night owls, including Twilight Sparkle’s actual pet owl who was tasked with making sure Insano didn’t creep out of bed to get up to any mischief. His owner was fast asleep in her bed.

That tranquility naturally went right out the window before the sun arrived. Whirling wind and flying pages could be heard outside her room, though the unicorn was too exhausted from keeping up with Insano the previous day to hear it. Owlowiscious hooted frantically and flew from his perch and onto his owner’s head, flapping his wings to try to wake her up.

“Wh-what?” she groaned as she swatted at whoever dared to wake her. Her eyes groggily opened and her ears flicked as the owl flitted away, still hooting his head off. “Owlowiscious, what’s gotten into you?” Her ears perked up when she heard the wind outside her door pick up and the sound of magic sparks hitting matter. “No… no, it can’t be.”

She bolted out of her bed and galloped out of her room. The moment she opened the door she was blinded by a blast of pure white light. She screwed her eyes shut with a yelp and covered her face with her forelegs.

When the light dimmed, she cautiously opened her eyes once more. The burst of light left her vision blurred and swimming with colored spots. She shook her head and blinked. All she could see was a tall, bipedal silhouette standing in the center of the library’s main room.

“Wh-who are–?”

Her question was cut off when the figure pulled something from its hip. Twilight was engulfed in a magical aura and pulled out of the doorway to her bedroom, unceremoniously landing on the floor in a heap. She groaned and looked up as it pulled out something else with its other foreleg. It pointed the twin long objects in opposite directions. A bolt of blue light went into Twilight’s room, cutting off her pet owl’s hooting, and a bolt of silver light hit the door to the outside, the lock snapping shut.

“Who are you?” she asked in a panic as she scrambled away, the thing’s forelegs returning to its sides. “How did you figure out time travel? What did you do to Owlowiscious?!”

“Calm down; I just hit him with a sleeping charm. I can’t afford letting anypony know I’m here,” said a very familiar female voice. It held up its foreleg again and flicked it, turning on the lights. It didn’t have forelegs at all; it had arms ending in hands, fingers and all. Clutched in both with a soft but steady grip were twin wooden wands, each surging with magic power.

Twilight gasped as she looked the intruder over. “You’re…you’re…!”

The other pony nodded and smiled. “You. From another time and place.”

Twilight looked her new future self over. She looked relatively the same, save for the new hands and the fact she walked on her hind hooves. Same purple fur, same dark sapphire blue mane and tail with pink streaks. She wore black leather armor with plates of steel reinforcing it, the armored plates bearing arcane inscriptions that Twilight was only vaguely familiar with. Strips of black cloth cascaded down her shoulders with writing in gold whose meanings Twilight could only guess at. What little fur she could see was covered in dark blue tattoos of arcane runes.

“What happened to you?” Twilight breathed. “What happened to us?”

“Many things, none of them pleasant. Hopefully we can change that,” the future Twilight said as she took off her hat and looked it over, a black witch’s hat with many burn marks and holes. “Damn, bastards really did a number on my hat.”

“Well, tell me then, before the spell wears out!” Twilight begged, shifting on her hooves in worry.

“Calm down,” her future self said as she put her hat on her head. “Starswirl’s theorem on time travel was incomplete; I finished it. The spell should last a few more minutes, though I don’t know how long exactly. Besides, I did the smart thing and wrote down what I think you need to know.” She reached into one of her suit’s many pockets and pulled out a folded up piece of parchment. Twilight took it in her magic field and started to unfold it when her future self added, “Please… don’t read it until I’m gone. Changing the course of history while I’m still in the past may have catastrophic consequences. Granted, we’re already making a time paradox, but I don’t want to take any more chances than necessary. This whole thing is a last resort.”

“Last resort?” Twilight repeated as she put the folded up message on her desk. “How bad are things in the future?”

Her future self locked gazes with her. The eyes that stared back at the younger Twilight were the eyes of somepony who had seen far too much in their life. They were worn out. Tired. Tired and ready to go to sleep.

“I’ll tell you if you can start up a cup of tea for me. I haven’t had tea in… I think two years,” future Twilight said as she walked into the kitchen.

Twilight trotted close behind her and did as she was bidden, her horn glowing as she threw open various drawers and cupboards. “Of course.”

Her future self pulled up a chair and sat in it with a sigh of relief. As Twilight filled the pot with water and started to heat it up, she looked at her future self with more scrutiny over her shoulder. Her neck and face were covered in scars, and Twilight could see the edges of more in the gaps of her armor. Some were long gashes left by a blade, but most of them were circles. They couldn’t be the product of arrows; perhaps spears or javelins.

“It’s nice to be home again,” future Twilight mumbled as she relaxed, just gazing at the ceiling.

“Why couldn’t you go back home in your own time?” Twilight asked, realizing she’d get an answer she wouldn’t like after the question left her mouth.

“I’m not sure I should tell you. You’ll just try to avoid it in ways that I didn’t outline for you in that letter and go nuts with stress,” her future self said with a flick of her tail.

“I learned my lesson with my… well, our first time travel fiasco. I’ll take the future as it comes, and I promise to only focus on what you told me to,” the unicorn vowed, turning to her guest as the pot heated.

Her future self was silent for a few seconds. “Ponyville was abandoned a few years back,” she finally admitted. “We all left it to the Everfree Forest. I think it burned down a few weeks ago. I definitely remember seeing fire in that direction from Canterlot.”

Visions of Ponyville overgrown with weeds and infested with the monsters of the forest before burning to the ground took over Twilight’s mind’s eye. “You live in Canterlot now?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.

“Used to,” her future self said wearily.

Twilight bit her lip and screwed her eyes shut. “Did… something happen to Canterlot?”

There was another bout of silence, only interrupted by the pot as it began to boil. Her future self looked her straight in the eye. “How about we cut to the chase? Do you want to know what the future is like as I know it? All of it?”

Twilight opened her eyes and looked about as if her answer would be somewhere on the floor. “Yes. I think I’d never stop wondering what happened if I didn’t know for sure.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” her future self sighed. She turned her gaze downward into her hands in her lap as she wrung her fingers together. “I cast this spell from the throne room in Canterlot palace. When I left, it was under siege. The enemy had already broken through the main gate, and I could hear fighting just outside.”

“Oh no…” Twilight breathed, her ears flattening. “Wh-what about our friends?”

She winced as her future self’s hands tightened into fists. “Our friends… our friends are all dead. Fluttershy committed suicide a year ago. Rainbow Dash died in the Third Battle of Ghastly Gorge a year before that. A few months before that, Pinkie Pie died in the Second Battle. I saw Rarity die right in front of me two nights ago, when the siege on Canterlot started. All that’s left is Applejack, Spike and I, and… and they won’t last much longer.” Her knuckles turned white and her hands started to bleed as her nails dug into them. “And if there is a future for me to return to… I won’t see another sunrise, myself.”

Twilight sat down. She didn’t even feel the wooden floor beneath her. She didn’t feel anything but the tears forming in her eyes. Everything else was so much wasted space and noise. “They…they can’t be dead.” She shook her head and wiped the tears away with her forelegs. “What did that to them…? What happened?” She gasped when she felt her future self’s hand on her head. She looked up to see her smiling sadly.

“I don’t think I can tell you. You’ll find out. And if you follow my instructions, things will go better,” she assured, kneeling down and pulling the pony into a tight hug.

“Wh…what about y-you?” Twilight stammered, hugging her future self close. “If I change the future, what’ll happen to you?”

“I have… two theories. No certainties, since this has never been done before that I know of,” she whispered as she stroked her younger self’s mane. “One, the flow of time splinters and I go back to my timeline, awaiting my death. Two, there’s no future for me to go back to, so I cease to exist when the spell wears off.” One of her hands clenched in Twilight’s mane. “I hope it’s the latter.”

Twilight gasped and pulled away, looking her double dead in the eye. “But why? Why would you want that?”

“Because I accepted my death a long time ago. What does it matter if I’m extra dead?” she asked with a joking smile. “Besides, it’ll mean that I never existed in the first place. It’ll mean I succeeded.”

Twilight looked down, her lips pursed into a thin line as her eyes continued to water. “Aren’t you scared…?”

“No, I’m not. I don’t remember this meeting; I already know that this won’t create a stable time loop,” her future self admitted. “I know things will turn out differently. I just hope it turns out better.”

Twilight pulled her future self back into an embrace, hugging her tighter than she’d ever hugged anyone before, her eyes screwed shut as the tears flowed. “I’ll make sure of it. I promise I won’t let any of our friends die! I’ll make a future you’d want to be a part of!” She started shaking as she sobbed into her future self’s chest. “I’m just… I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that…”

There were a few more moments of silence before she felt a hand run through her mane. “Thank y–”

Twilight saw a flash of light behind her eyelids, and suddenly all she was hugging was air. She blinked her eyes open, but she already knew what she would see. Her future self was gone. The room was empty.

A loud whistling sound pierced through her melancholy. She looked up to see that the water was ready. Her ears flattened against her head as she took it off the stove and finished preparing the tea. She went through the motions robotically, all sense of time gone. Next thing she knew it she was stirring sugar into the cup. She looked down at it and saw her own muddled reflection staring back up at her. She lifted the cup up and brought it to her lips.

Her own tears had already tainted it with salt. Next Chapter: They're Coming to Take Me Away, Haha Part 1 Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes