Countdown to Crisis

by RainbowDoubleDash

Rating: everyone
Tags: Alternate Universe, Twilight Sparkle, Sad, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Shining Armor
Length: 8148

Twilight Sparkle, on the run for months, is cornered in a small town. She escapes by teleporting - teleporting far further than she had ever intended

Big things have small beginnings.

A Lunaverse story, the prequel to the upcoming "Crisis on Two Equestrias."

Published 2013-01-15 16:30:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-01-16 05:48:13 UTC

1. Exit Twilight

The town was called Poniszawa, and it straddled the border between Equestria, the Griffin Kingdoms, and Konja. In ages past, when Latigo had been a sovereign nation, it had been a town built around a mighty fortress that defended Latigo against the incursions of griffins and Konjavic ponies both. When Latigo’s king had died without an heir nor legitimate claimants to his throne nearly seven hundred years ago, looking like it would fall into civil war and fragment, Equestrian armies had marched in, Luna citing an ancient, nearly forgotten claim to the kingdom. There hadn’t been much that Latigo could do to resist Equestria, but then again the Equestrians had proven themselves to be excellent new lords, ruling with a light touch and quickly turning Latiganskis into full citizens of Equestria, rather than mere vassal subjects. In time, the distinction between Latiganski and Equestrian had blurred to practically nothing, and within two hundred years Latgio had become a willing province of Equestria, helped along, no doubt, by the fact that the provincial lord of Latigo was a full viceroy within the halls of the Night Court, second only to Luna herself in power

Poniszawa’s great fortress was, indeed, the only true casualty of the Equestrian invasion. The Equestrians had constructed a newer one several miles away, larger and easier to defend, and the old fortress had been abandoned for years before somepony had the bright idea of turning it into a tourist attraction, a proud symbol of pre-Equestrian Latiganski culture and military history. However, at this time of year – late spring, early summer – Poniszawa wasn’t yet being visited by tourists. Late spring and early summer were times for beaches and picnics, not the exploration of old, inland ruins. Its tourist season was the fall instead. As such, the town was, at the moment, quiet, and out-of-the-way, and perfect for a pony looking to hide someplace familiar.

Twilight Sparkle telekinetically tightened her cloak about her throat and made sure her cutie mark was covered, as she walked into the bad part of Poniszawa, the lower-class neighborhoods, the slums. Of course, if one had taken this neighborhood and moved it to, for example, Manehattan, then it would have instead been the kind of place to start a family and raise foals in. The ponies here didn’t even lock their doors at night. Some even kept them open to make a breeze.

Still, it was a place where she was unlikely to be spotted by anypony who might recognize her. As she trotted past one of the gangs of disaffected youths that Poniszawa had – one of whom wished her a pleasant night – she pulled her hood up over her head, offering only a curt nod to the pony who’d spoken to her as she made her way towards the motel she remembered.

When she was younger, her family had often vacationed here, spending time away from business, the Night Court, and everything else, just spending time together as a family. They hadn’t stayed at this motel, of course – but it still made the town dig up an awful lot of memories for Twilight, memories she wasn’t sure she wanted dug up, but at the same time memories she suspected had to be dug up.

Checking into the motel wasn’t hard; about a year ago, she’d learned how to create a sort of magical “pocket,” just outside of reality, where she could store things, and of course the most sensible thing to store there had been money. The House Starlight – her family’s House – was one of the wealthiest in all of Equestria, and even though she was on the run, with no way to replenish her money, she still had an awful lot of bits held at the ready. As long as she kept her head down and her cutie mark covered, she could still enter the small towns and hamlets of Equestria and buy food or spend a night in a warm, reasonably clean bed.

She could have done that someplace far away from Latigo, of course, but after recent events…after months and months of hiding her face and moving furtively in the dark – she’d needed to think, and depending on where those thoughts took her, she’d want to be in Latigo, as close to the provincial capital of Latysława as possible. As she looked around the motel room – a bed, a bathroom, and very little else – she really couldn’t help but think of her home, her family, her books, everything she had waiting for her in Latysława if only she could gather the courage to go home…

…but then, as always, she saw her face. Trixie Lulamoon, staring at her with a smug and arch look, convinced of her own superiority. And why shouldn’t she be? She had fooled everypony, everywhere. She had the respect tutelage of the Princess herself. She was the bearer of the Element of Magic. She had a position of moderate respect and authority as the Representative of Ponyville. All of it built on lies – lies! – about her magical talent, about her work ethic, about everything. She was a fraud, a fake, and it was her fault that Twilight was on the run!

…or so Twilight had thought for a long time, told herself for the past several months. As she clambered onto the bed and under its covers, she couldn’t really summon up the anger she’d felt for so long anymore…and she found herself being forced to point out to herself that she was the one who’d overestimated her own abilities, she was the one who had brought a mind-slaved Ursa Minor into a populated town in the middle of their Eventime festival just to prove a point.

Twilight sighed, closing her eyes. She needed sleep, first and foremost. And then – in the morning – she would make her decision.

Twilight was woken by the sound of her motel room’s door unlocking. She’d always been a light sleeper – provided she hadn’t gone on a study-binge of several days, anyway – and her ears easily picked up the sound. Her eyes were instantly open, and only the barest of moments later, she was standing on her bed, horn glowing a bright, angry purple in challenge.

Whoever was on the other side of the door realized that their surprise had been ruined, and so instead simply bucked it open – and Twilight found herself staring at a tall, lithe earth pony mare in the uniform of Poniszawa’s police.

“Twilight Sparkle!” The pony proclaimed, pointing a hoof forward. “You are under arrest for – ”

The police pony probably had more to say, but Twilight’s eyes snapped shut as her horn’s glow increased in intensity, and she popped out of the room, appearing in a flash and burst of magic outside the motel, eyes wide and taking in everything she could. She saw, near the motel’s office, a number of additional police officers, along with the gang of “disaffected youths” from earlier – one member of which had apparently recognized her face and was even now in his mouth clutching her wanted poster, with its thousand-bit reward for any information that lead to her.

The sky, meanwhile, teemed with pegasi, carrying glow-gem torches that shined light down onto the streets below. The pegasi noticed the flash of her arrival, and instantly called out to their companions even as they centered their lights on her. Twilight gasped in surprise as she turned to run –

– and was tackled to the ground by a unicorn, a unicorn wearing a form-fitting black outfit with silver lightning strikes along its flanks, over a thick jerkin that felt strong enough to repulse arrows. The unicorn’s horn glowed bright yellow.

“Twilight Sparkle, I am officer Haymaker of the Shadowbolts,” the unicorn informed her. “You are wanted by the Crown. Do not resist your arrest.”

Twilight resisted her arrest by doing the first thing that came to mind – lashing out with a front hoof, catching the officer in the jaw. He stumbled, apparently not expecting her to resist, but by now Twilight was surrounded by a swarm of police ponies armed with batons and ready to subdue her. First, however, they would have to catch her – and that was not a likely prospect as she closed her eyes, thought of a spot on the road to Poniszawa several miles away, and teleported –

Only to smack into something. Twilight saw nothing but stars for several moments as she lay on the ground, shaking her head. By the time she’d recovered enough to stand, she found herself standing outside the old Poniszawa fortress, on the edge of town – and just inside a bright pink bubble, a bubble that seemed to stretch around the entire town, as far as she could see – a bubble that was now shrinking.

Twilight’s eyes widened. There were only two ponies in all of Equestria strong enough to make a shield spell this large – and if Princess Luna had been making it, it would have been blue. That could only mean that Shining Armor, captain of the royal guard – her big brother – was here.

Twilight shifted from hoof to hoof, trying to teleport again. All that accomplished was smacking into the bubble. She teleported around town, trying to find another way out, but it didn’t help as the bubble continued to shrink, its center always focused on her as she moved and shifted around town. Even worse, the shrinking bubble was informing the police and the Shadowbolt – or were there more than one? – exactly where she was.

Twilight’s mad teleporting, then trying to break through the bubble with magic, carried on for several minutes. Eventually, however, the bubble was only fifty feet wide – then twenty-five feet – then ten feet – then even smaller, four feet, barely large enough for her to stand in. She had come to a stop in Poniszawa’s town center, near a fountain, her presence illuminated by street lamps that were swiftly joined by the pegasus ponies and their glow-gem lanterns, then the remaining police officers, the Shadowbolt, Haymaker – and galloping alongside him, a white unicorn with an electric blue mane and tail, out of uniform and with a look of near panic on his face even as his horn glowed brightly. Twilight’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of her brother, before she desperately began trying to teleport again, slamming her hooves against the shield even as the police ponies formed a ring around her, while dozens of Poniszawa’s citizens, awoken by the commotion, looked on from their homes or came out into the streets.

Not like this. Not like this. She didn’t want to see her brother again like this! She was vaguely aware of Shining Armor and Haymaker arguing over something, before Haymaker eventually stood aside and let Shining Armor through. The white unicorn all but galloped to the shield, the police ponies parting to let him through.

“Twily!” Shining Armor called. The name cut through her like a knife as she froze, her back to Shining Armor.

“Sh…Shiny?” Twilight asked softly.

Shining Armor came around, trying to look Twilight in the face, but she turned from him, again and again until he gave up. She didn’t want him to see her – she didn’t want to see her brother again like this, trapped in a field of his own creation, trapping his fugitive sister!

Shining Armor placed a hoof on his own shield. “Twily, please,” he said. “Look at me. Please, I need to know you’re alright.”

Twilight felt wetness in her eyes. She closed them, hunkering down. “What are you doing here?” she asked softly.

Her brother tried again to look at her; she again turned. “Time off,” he said. “I wanted to see the old castle, before tourist season started…thought that maybe you’d be here. I don’t know how or why, but I knew it, I knew, Twily. Because I’m your big brother.”

Twilight stifled a gasp. Her tears were flowing freely, now, and from the sound of his voice, Shining Armor wasn’t having any easier a time keeping his own emotions in check. “S…so you brought the Shadowbolts?” she demanded.

Shining Armor hit his shield. “No – yes – Twilight, you’re a wanted mare and the most powerful magician I’ve ever known. The Shadowbolts were probably keeping an eye on me in case you tried to get in contact with me. But I didn’t think about that…I just wanted to see you. Twily, please, look at me…please…”

Twilight shook her head. “Not like this. I didn’t want to see you like this…”

“Twilight, please, stop trying to run – ”

“I didn’t want to see you like this, Shiny! I didn’t…I was going to make a plan! In the morning, I was going to make a plan, I was going to decide to go home or keep at it, keep trying to show that Lulamoon is a fraud! But now that’s all ruined and you’re here and…and…it’s not supposed to happen this way!”

“Twily, I’ve talked to the Princess. She said herself that she’s willing to be lenient. That you’ll get the smallest possible sentence for what happened in Ponyville. She just wants you home safe, I want you home safe, mom and dad – ”

Twilight choked at that, hugging herself tighter. “H-how is…how is dad?” she asked.

Shining Armor was silent for a moment. “Not…not well,” he said. “He’s not taking it as well as everypony thinks he is – as he thinks he is. Twilight, please look at me, please…”

Twilight shook her head. “N-no. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this…I need to – need to – ”

She tried teleporting again, but to no avail. She tried again, and again, and again, each time running into the shield that was Shining Armor’s signature spell, his special talent of protection made manifest. Eventually, Twilight found herself heaving for breath, and no closer to teleporting out of the shield than before.

“You can’t break out, Twily,” Shining Armor said. “Nothing gets through my shields.”

Twilight rifled through the spells she knew, trying to find a way out – and, almost to her own chagrin, she did. It was an old spell, nearly a thousand years old, one that she’d learned from one of the forbidden tomes she’d gained access to while wandering Equestria. “There might be one,” she said through a shaking voice. “It was…it was a teleporting spell. The most powerful teleporting spell I’ve ever found, I think the Princess herself made it…so powerful that I’ve based all my teleportation spells on it. They’re all just smaller versions of this spell…”

Twilight stifled a slight laugh as she turned around, looking at Shining Armor and smiling a little. “I’ve never cast it before,” she told him as he looked at his sister, burning her face into his mind. “It…it takes a lot out of a pony. Maybe too much…always worried that I might overchannel if I tried…and you know what it would take to make me overchannel?”

“Twily,” Shining Armor said, putting a hoof on his shield bubble. “Twily, don’t – ”

Twilight put her hoof up as well, through the bubble, touching Shining Armor’s hoof through it even as her horn glowed bright, even as she recalled the spell, pushed it to the forefront of her mind and just began dumping her magical energy, her power, herself, into the spell. It was enough that there was an audible thrum within the shield – enough that magic was bleeding out of it, swirling dust and pebbles beyond the shield’s boundary, creating a wind that whipped at the manes and tails of everypony even as Twilight glowed with a bright lavender light.

“Twily!” Shining Armor said, not shielding his eyes against the painful glare that his sister glowed with. “Twily, stop!”

“Not yet,” Twilight insisted. “Not yet – it was too soon, Shiny, but don’t worry, I’ll – ”

Twilight didn’t get to finish the sentence. All at once, everything seemed to push away from her – Shining Armor, his shield, the police ponies, the town, just pushed away in all directions, bleeding out until there was only black, black everywhere – blackness that reached out and claimed Twilight Sparkle.

The place didn’t really exist. But if it had – it wouldn’t have mattered, because it had no air. But if it had air – then it still wouldn’t have mattered, because nothing could survive in this place, even assuming that it existed in the first place, which it did not.

But if it did exist, and if there had been air, and if somepony could have been there, then they would have heard nothing, because what happened was far too complicated for mere sound.

But if it had not been – if there had been a pony in this impossible nonexistent place, breathing air that wasn’t there and hearing a sound that couldn’t be made…

Crack.

Author's Note

There will be 2 chapters to this.

2. Enter Twilight

Falling…falling…falling through time and space, then past time and space, between time and space…she was falling, falling, and she didn’t know how fast or far or for how long…forever…forever…forever…past the innumerable possibilities of existence, through the threads of probability, through the cracks of the between-space…falling, falling, forever, forever…

Thud.

Once in her life, Twilight Sparkle had been drunk, and so it followed that once in her life, shortly thereafter, she had been hung over.

This felt a lot like that.

Twilight opened her eyes, decided it was the a mistake to do so, and closed them again, rolling over and burying her face in the pillow. She was in a bed. She didn’t remember crawling into a bed, but then the same held true for when she had woken up hung-over some years ago. Perhaps there was a benevolent, kind-hearted spirit in the world that saw to it that all suffering from hangovers were deposited into beds. More likely she had been carried there by…

Twilight’s head shot up as everything that had happened came crashing back to her, her eyes snapping open. She was in a bed, a white bed, a white wall behind her and surrounded by white, translucent curtains. It looked suspiciously like a hospital bed, and the fact that she was wearing a hospital gown strongly supported that theory, though she could not for the life of her identify most of the medical instruments she was surrounded by…

The curtains parted behind her, Twilight turned to look, and she let out a shout of surprise as a griffin strode in. She instinctively recoiled to the edge of the bed and set her horn glowing as a dangerous warning.

The griffin stopped his pace, holding up his two front claws and wings flaring in a natural reaction of his own. “Bitte, bitte! Ich bin Arzt!” he insisted. “Beruhigen Sie sich!”

Twilight paused a moment, before realizing that how she was reacting was incredibly rude, especially seeing as, on second glance, the griffin was wearing a white coat and had a stethoscope around his neck – he was a doctor. Twilight settled down on the bed slowly, horn’s glow dying down as she forced herself to ignore her headache and instead try to dredge the very, very small amount of Griffin she knew. “Ich…um…ich nein spreche Greife,” she said, slowly and haltingly, her pronunciation and syntax probably terrible.

The griffon nodded. “I thought not,” he said, his Equestrian thickly accented but leagues better than her own meager attempts at Griffin. He kept his distance from the panicked pony, even as he made sure the curtain was closed behind him. “I apologize, Fräulein. It should have occurred to me that you vould be startled on waking up. Any pony vould be on seeing einen Greif.”

Twilight nodded, though she blushed slightly. “Where am I?” she asked. “Who are you? How…how did I get here?”

The griffin offered a reassuring smile. “I am Doctor Siegfried. As for vhere you are, you are in the Siegfried Memorial Hospital in Federschau.” His smile grew slightly. “The hospital is not named for me, of course.”

Twilight offered a slight smile of her own at that, as Siegfried continued. “You were found passed out in an ally in Federschau,” he said, “and brought here. Fortuitously I know something of unicorn pony anatomy – it is a hobby of mine – und I was able to determine that you had overchanneled. After that it vas a relatively simple matter of requesting ether potions from Equestria und feeding them to you vonce they arrived.” The griffin stood up a little straighter. “It is lucky you vere found vhen you vere, Fräulein, else you might have been unconscious for veeks. As it stands, it has been three days since you came here.”

Twilight’s eyes widened at that. “Three days…?” she asked. All at once, it felt like much less time had passed, and at the same time much, much more.

“Ja,” Siegfried answered. “Now, if you do not mind, Fräulein, I should like to examine you und see that you are recovering.”

Twilight shifted slightly, but nodded. The doctor approached gently, taking a thermometer from a bedside tray and placing it in her mouth, testing her reflexes, and even using some device that Twilight had never seen before to measure how much magic was even now running through her body, her ‘cruising speed’ of magical might. Unsurprisingly, the device, calibrated for typical unicorns, had its needle nearly spun off of its holder when examining her.

“Vhat were you doing in Federschau?” Siegfried asked as he plucked the thermometer from her mouth, and seemed satisfied with its results.

Twilight glanced at the griffin, licking her lips. “I, um…it was an accident.”

“An accident?”

“Teleporting accident.”

“Ah…” Siegfried said, nodding. He seemed to take the knowledge in stride, but then, he had mentioned that the study of unicorn ponies was his hobby. “Ich verstehe.”

“If…if you don’t mind, and I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of Federschau…and given that I was teleporting…”

The griffin smiled. “You’re wondering how far you are from Equestria? Not to worry, Fräulein. Federschau is right on the border, no more than a half-hour’s trot.”

Twilight blinked at that. Equestria and the Griffin Kingdoms were currently at a high point in their relationship, but they had been enemies in the past – and the principal duty of the Viceroy of Latigo, Twilight’s father, was to watch and maintain the border, just in case the griffins ever attempted to invade. As a result, Twilight, herself, had a fairly complete knowledge of all the towns and cities of the Kingdoms that bordered Equestria, and Federschau was not among them. “Does…does Federschau have a different name in Equestrian, do you know?”

The griffin doctor put one claw to his beak as he thought. “I think…” he said, “Poniszawa?”

Twilight stared. “Poniszawa?” she echoed.

“Ja…well, maybe. I believe that it vas vonce a pony city, but then there vas the treaty, Lederland vas divided in half…”

Lederland was a griffin name that Twilight recognized – it was their name for Latigo. “Divided in half? Treaty?” Twilight demanded, hopping out of the bed. She stumbled, hooves unsure after not being used for three days, but they must have been the most eventful three days in the history of Equestria if what the griffin said was true.

The doctor was swiftly at Twilight’s side, claws wrapping around her barrel to steady her. “Bitte, Fräulein,” he insisted, “you must remain in bed!”

Twilight stared at the griffin. “When was the treaty signed?” She demanded.

“Was?”

“That…that treaty you mentioned! When was it signed?”

Siegfried looked confused. “Maybe…siebenhundert Jahre?”

“I don’t speak Griffin! What treaty? When was it signed?

“Seven hundred years ago. Bitte, Fräulein, I must insist that you get back into bed immediately!”

Twilight stared in shock, before resolving that she knew exactly what she had to do: buck around a few times like a bronco, causing Siegfried to stumble away, though she avoided hitting him. Then she was off, diving out from behind the curtain and running through the hospital’s halls. It looked much like a hospital in Equestria might, save a presence of griffins and a lack of ponies, but as Twilight ran she was once again struck with just how many medical tools and equipment she did not recognize. Stranger, too, were the overhead lights, set into the ceiling but obviously not glow-gems, instead being a series of long, glowing tubes…

Two orderlies appeared from nowhere – large, burly griffins in medical scrubs, wings flared and ready to stop her. Before Twilight could even think of what she was doing, of how bad an idea it was to even try magic right now, her horn glowed, and…

Pop.

Thud.

Twilight lay still for a few moments on the ground beneath her, which was dirt. Her headache had returned, and she needed a few moments to recover. Eventually, however, she opened her eyes. The lavender unicorn found herself on a road, pine forests on either side. The air was cool, though not too cold, while there were traces of melted snow here and there –

…wait, what? Twilight knew that the Griffin Kingdoms were colder than Equestria on average, being further north, but even they did not get snow in June. Twilight forced herself to her hooves, looking around. The landscape was intimately familiar – this was Latigo, certainly, and in fact, she was fairly certain that…Twilight galloped several paces along the road, up over a ridge, and found herself looking down at Latysława, the provincial capital…

Twilight stared.

That was not Latysława.

The road signs, and the ponies that Twilight asked as she trotted, cautiously, into the city after conjuring a hooded cape to cover herself with, disagreed with her initial assumption. Indeed, at a glance, Latysława looked the same as it always had – but looking deeper…

It was little things. The gas streetlights were gone, replaced by filament light-bulbs, a passing pony she had asked told her. They ran on electricity, itself not an alien concept to Twilight, but seeing it utilized on such a large, casual scale was. The Latysława that Twilight was familiar with, further, was built of wood and plaster with cobblestone streets, but not this one – this one was built of concrete, and brick, most of the buildings appearing to be no more than two decades old, three at most. The last time Twilight had been in her hometown, her father had been fighting with the city council against replacing the old, iconic buildings…apparently it was a fight that he had lost.

But lost in three days? This looked more like the work of fifty years!

The thing that had changed most, however – the thing that made Twilight freeze in place – was something that had changed, at a glance, the least. In Latysława’s central park, in its very center, there was supposed to be a statue of Princess Luna, hewn from obsidian, standing tall and proud, gaze lifted slightly as she looked towards the future…

…here, that was replaced by a new statue, one of white marble and of a different alicorn, taller, with a longer horn, wings spread wide and rearing into the air with one hoof held high, almost as though she was trying to direct the heavens, even as she smiled beatifically down at the ponies that passed on by. Twilight crept closer, staring with wide eyes as she took in this changed, alien monument. The statue’s mane and tail flowed like Luna’s, but were striped as though to suggest a rainbow – and her flank was adorned not with a crescent moon, but an eight-armed sun.

Twilight recoiled in horror when she noticed the sun. “Corona!” She whispered harshly as she stumbled backwards. A few ponies gave her sidelong, curious glances; she collected herself quickly.

This was a statue of Corona. The mane and tail were wrong, and this statue showed Corona with actual, full eyes, not the blank, glowing orbs that she was supposed to have – but no other pony had a cutie mark of a full sun.

Twilight put a hoof to her chest as she stared. Corona…these ponies in their alien city, so unlike the Latysława that Twilight knew, followed Corona, glorified the Tyrant Sun, the mad alicorn who would be Queen of Equestria. How could they? How could they trot along on this wintery day – for indeed the day was wintery, against all logic – happy and feeling content?

Something was wrong, Twilight knew, something was so very wrong…she began trotting, then broke out into a full gallop through the not- Latysława, looking for something familiar, anything familiar…and, Luna be praised, she found it: set between two brick buildings Twilight didn’t recognize, was Latysława’s library, unchanged from the one that Twilight knew so well, which she had spent so much of her foalhood in.

Twilight charged headlong into the library, nearly bowling over several ponies as she raced up its steps, through its familiar mahogany doors, and into the one thing that could possibly still comfort her. Only at the last moment did she realize that the interior might be different, wrong – that there might be a statue of Corona in here, too, or perhaps these ponies, with their electricity, didn’t even use books anymore? Twilight didn’t know what she’d do if that was the case.

But, fortunately, it was not. Inside, it was the same building it had always been, save for the electric lights, and some kind of punch-card machine at the front desk. But the layout seemed the same, the walls, the floor, and the books – thousands and thousands of them, spread out across three floors and a basement. Twilight breathed a huge sigh of relief – relief that was swiftly tempered by a look at a calendar, a calendar that read November despite the fact that it was supposed to be June.

Still, it was otherwise a bastion of familiarity – a safe haven in a sea of utter, low-level wrongness that existed outside. Twilight nevertheless spent a few moments looking around the library, wondering where to even begin.

“Well,” she said at length, in a low voice as she began to trot. “Just like everything else…begin at the beginning.”

“Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together, and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies.

“But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night. One fateful day, the younger unicorn refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn. The elder sister tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young one's heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness: Nightmare Moon!

“She vowed that she would shroud the land in eternal night. Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony. Using the magic of the Elements of Harmony, she defeated her younger sister, and banished her permanently in the moon. The elder sister took on responsibility for both sun and moon, and harmony has been maintained in Equestria for generations since.”

Twilight stared, wide-eyed, at the story she’d just read in the book of fables. She was sitting in the foal’s section of the library, having decided to start at the beginning and work her way forward, and she meant the beginning: the simplest of history books, and the earliest. As far as she could tell, everything was the same at first: the first ponies, the revelation of the Alicorns, the troubled times before the first Hearth’s Warming Eve, the event itself when the pony tribes came together to found Equestria. It was simplified, of course, this being the foal’s section, but for every book she’d finished, she’d cross-referenced with more advanced books pulled from the adult’s history sections. She was beginning to be surrounded by a small fortress wall of books, and the various foals – not to mention the library staff – were staring at her oddly, but she paid them no mind.

This book, a tale of fables and legends of the past thousand years, was the first difference she had encountered…and it was an amazingly huge difference.

“This is wrong,” she said, setting the children’s book down and levitating over an adult tome. “This is…Luna wouldn’t…Luna couldn’t do that! She’s the Princess!” Twilight shook her head even as she turned to “early-modern history.” Finding the chapter, she found it subtitled.

Early-Modern History, 1,000 Years to Present Day: the creation of the Mare in the Moon and the shaping of Modern Equestria under Princess Celestia.

Celestia. That was the name the books kept using for Corona – not her more modern name, but her archaic one, the one referring to the Princess before her fall. There was no mention of a Tyrant Sun anywhere…and information on this ‘Nightmare Moon’ was scarce at best.

“What about Latigo?” Twilight demanded, putting the book aside and flipping through a second, then a third, looking. She didn’t find much information, but she did find maps. One year, Latigo was a sovereign nation…and in the next map, it had disappeared, the Griffin Empire (Empire, Twilight noted – not Kingdoms, plural, but Empire, singular) and Equestria itself having absorbed it. She’d probably need to find a specialized book to better understand what had happened.

For that matter, this Equestria, this sun-worshipping, Celestia-ruled, electric-powered Equestria, only barely resembled the Equestira she knew. It was swollen, having absorbed Paardveld, Heststed, Pferdreich, Cavallia, Caballeria, Hippopotamia, even the island nation of Etalonia. For that matter, the Griffin Empire was larger than the one she recognized as well…and several minor nations were completely missing, absorbed into Equestria, the Empire, or some other state. Most notable by their lack were two nations – the Hippogriff State, and the Crystal Empire. Even more unnerving was the sheer amount of unclaimed territory – the Griffin Empire and Equestria may have grown larger by absorbing more states, but the empty land of the Skyshaper Peaks, as well as the Wilderlands to the west, were larger.

Twilight tapped a hoof to her mouth in worry. This Equestria was larger – and seemed to have become so by gobbling up its neighbors. Was it a warlike empire? Her visit into the Griffin Empire seemed to suggest otherwise, given how easily Doctor Siegfried had appeared to acquire ether potions for her…and the ponies outside didn’t seem like they were living in a police state.

But there had to be differences…Twilight stood, looking around, before trotting over to the social studies section, levitating out a few books on this Equestria’s government and flipping them open.

At the very top of the government in Equestria sits Princess Celestia. The Princess rules all the ponies of Equestria wisely. She also raises the sun every morning, and raises the moon every night!

In order to help her keep Equestria running, the Princess has created the Ministries of the Sun. Each ministry is run by a Head Minister. The most important ministries are the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Weather Control, the Ministry of Magic, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of War. However, there are many more ministries, each with its own special function!

“Many more?” Twilight echoed. “How many ministries do you need?”

Twilight shook her head, adding the book to her pile of books to look over – but at a glance, this benevolent Corona’s government looked like it was a bloated whale of a thing, probably far larger than it needed to be. Glancing through another book, she saw no mention of a Court, a forum where the duties of each ministry could be condensed. Indeed, it seemed like, although the various ministries ran things on a day-to-day basis, to make any long-term plans or goals they needed to consult with and get the direct approval of Corona. Without looking into this Equestria’s deeper laws, it seemed like all the power here was firmly in the hooves of the Princess, with no true check – that, at least, conformed to Twilight’s expectations.

Twilight trotted back over to her pile of books, resuming reading on all she could. Now that she had a point of divergence, she could see what had happened here…it all began with Corona, or Celestia as she was still called here, banishing Luna - or Nightmare Moon - into the moon a thousand years ago, instead of the other way around. In Luna’s Equestria, the one Twilight knew, the first few hundred years following the banishment of Corona had been a period of rapid expansion and consolidation, lightning-quick games of move and counter-move with the enemies of Equestria until Equestria was surrounded on all sides by ‘natural,’ easily-defended borders of hills and mountains and mighty rivers. But with the annexation of Latigo, Equestrian expansion had ended, and the game had changed. Luna had focused more on setting up friendly regimes in nearby lands, or destabilizing the regimes of unfriendly lands. There had still been wars, but not for territory, but rather in defense of an ally or to preemptively stop the rise of a dangerous enemy. And the exarchies had been created – the nation-states technically independent from Equetria, but with leaders who bent knee to Luna and acknowledged her as their liege. The exarchies allowed Luna’s Equestria to remain safe behind its borders, surrounded by a wall of friendly nations, while those said friendly nations were seeing to their own defense and their own taxes without any money having to leave the Equestrian coffers.

Here, it was different. Celestia’s Equestria had expanded at a slower, more measured pace. Its interests seemed to be primarily internal, building roads and cities and infrastructure. When foreign nations were mentioned at all, it was because they were doing something to threaten Equestria. The wars were less frequent than the Equestria that Twilight was familiar with, but Celestia’s Equestria seemed to be often taken by surprise – they were defensive wars, wars that Equestria had always won, but at a higher cost than had probably been necessary if only Equestria had struck first. And little attention was paid to natural borders: this Equestria, judging by its history, instead seemed to be looking towards species borders, a sort of manifest destiny geared not towards geography, but rather culture and race. It wanted to absorb every pony nation. To its credit, it did so peaceably every time, moving in when royal families died out or when asked to by the native populace – but the point was that defense and safety seemed to be only secondary concerns – important still, but not as important as the apparent goal of Celestia's Equestria ruling over all ponydom.

The lack of concern for external affairs had further been what had allowed the emergence of the second Griffin Empire, born from the ashes of the first, as well as the enlargement of the camel state of Naqah. The presence of a strong Griffin Empire explained the lack of a Hippogriff State, but Twilight still couldn’t figure out what had happened to the Crystal Empire.

Getting up and finding adult books on government, Twilight found that she had been right: this Equestria had a huge, unwieldy government that seemed designed to specifically be able to keep things running but not actually moving without the direct input of Celestia herself. There were dozens of ministries, and scores of sub-ministries, each of them reporting directly to the Princess, and often with a significant amount of overlap in their duties. There was no central forum like the Night Court, no true nobility class – one book mentioned that the nobility still existed, but their positions were ceremonial, with no temporal power and a significantly condensed hierarchy.

Twilight was glad to see, at least, that on an individual level, the rights of ponies seemed untouched. Speech, assembly, the press, right to trial by peer, all these guarantees from the world she knew, were still guaranteed here.

Twilight leaned away from the books. By now, her ‘virtual’ book fort was not ‘virtual’ at all – she was surrounded by a wall of paper and binding, and the various staff of the library were giving her dirty looks at the thought of the re-shelving they would have to do, when they could see her past all the tomes. She wanted to smile sheepishly, but she couldn’t, because everything she had read – all this data, this information – all of it pointed to one thing.

“That wasn’t a teleportation spell I cast,” she said softly. “It was…was some kind of world-hopping spell. I’m not in my Equestria anymore…I’m in some completely different one. One where Luna went mad a thousand years ago, and Celestia stayed sane.”

Twilight blinked as her mind, inevitably, started getting metaphysical at that thought. Was there another Twilight in this world? Had she made the same mistakes that Twilight had? Brought chaos onto a town over an imagined slight? Screwed up her first meeting with the Element of Magic?

Twilight’s eyes closed, as she reached out to the books around her. One by one, they started blinking out of existence, re-appearing in the shelves where she had pulled them from. It wasn’t a hard spell – far from it, she’d practiced it so often over the years that casting it was practically second nature. It didn’t interrupt her thoughts at all as she stood once the last book disappeared, and she left the children’s section of the library, looking instead for the public records – the newspapers. As near as she could tell, despite the more advanced technology that this world seemed to possess, the same amount of time had passed since the banishment of Nightmare Moon in this world, as had passed since the banishment of Corona in her own. It had simply advanced a little faster, is all, but that little bit had added up over the years. Although, on the other hoof, they seemed to have a few holes in their technology – none of the books she’d looked at had made any mention of telegraphs, for example.

Still, the point was that, if she was right, she’d be able to look through the newspapers and see if there was a Twilight Sparkle in this world, if she had screwed things up…it took several minutes of searching through the old newspapers, looking through articles of a periodical called Equestria Daily, until she finally found a mention of a small town called Ponyville…an Ursa Minor running loose…and a pony named Twilight Sparkle saving the day.

Twilight blinked as she looked at the old paper.

PONYVILLE – This small town was ransacked in the early hours of the morning as an Ursa Minor, disturbed from its sleep, wrecked havoc through town. Nopony was injured, but several thousand bits of property damage were dealt before the beast was safely sent back into the Everfree Forest by none other than Twilight Sparkle, the personal student of Princess Celestia and rumored Element of Magic –

“What?” Twilight demanded at the top of her lungs. She didn’t even hear the ‘shh’ that came from everypony else in the library as she continued reading.

Ursa Minor…town saved by Twilight Sparkle, personal student of Celestia…among the damages was the wagon of that up-and-coming showpony, the Great and Powerful Trixie…Twilight Sparkle, rumored to be the Element of Magic…

Twilight’s mind shut down for several moments. When it started up again, she found that she was looking through older newspapers, looking for the articles concerning the return of Nightmare Moon

PONYVILLE – After one thousand years of banishment, Nightmare Moon has been destroyed by the Elements of Harmony, and Princess Luna will be returning to Canterlot in order to resume her duties as the Princess of the Night. The Elements were wielded by six ponies, although the Crown has insisted on keeping their names secret in order to ensure privacy for these extraordinary young mares and/or stallions who have…

Twilight blinked a few times. There was another Twilight…and she was a hero? She was possibly the Element of Magic? How would that even work? Wasn’t it supposed to be Trixie Lulamoon? Wasn’t there some kind of…of destiny thing? Twilight had been about to presume that she was wrong, that Trixie did deserve the Element…but what if she was right? What if, in her world, Trixie was a fraud?

Or – she had to acknowledge the possibility – what if, in this world, things were just different? What if Twilight really was the Element of Magic here, not because of any kind of predestination, but rather simply because this Twilight had happened to be in the right place, at the right time?

It…it was too much to think about – far too much. Twilight put the newspapers back, and left the library, trotting out into Latysława and back towards the Corona – no, the Celestia – statue. The white marble alicorn seemed to be smiling down at Twilight, knowingly.

Element of Magic…personal student of Princess Celestia…in this world, Twilight had everything. In her world, she was a wanted criminal, but only because of her own actions. This world’s Twilight…was she even the same mare? Could she even be the same mare? With the world she grew up in so different, so alien from the one that Twilight knew, could this world’s Twilight Sparkle even be considered, in any way, the same pony? What if Twilight went to meet her? Ponyville was located in roughly the same place – only a train ride of a day or two to reach. What would the other Twilight have to say if she met her? What would she say to the other Twilight?

What could be said? Would they even be able to relate to each other? And, what would the other Twilight – Twilight the hero, Twilight the Element of Magic – think of the one that had brought a space bear into an unsuspecting, undeserving town?

Twilight shivered, and not simply because of the cold. She let out a long, pained sigh as she closed her eyes, set her horn glowing, even as she thought of the universe-hopping spell. She’d had her fun – she’d learned of this alternate world – but enough was enough. It was time to go home.

Twilight poured her everything once more into the universe-hopping spell, and popped from reality.

Then, she popped back.

Twilight frowned, blinking a few times. That…was much less of an experience then her first go at planeswalking – she soon saw, however, that this was because she hadn’t. Looking down at her was an identical Celestia statue, still smiling beatifically.

Twilight frowned. She tried planeswalking again – and one more, appeared in exactly the same spot, a moment later. There was no sensation of falling, forever, hitting everywhere at once. There was no sensation of blackness coming from all around to claim her. There was just…

Pop. Twilight disappeared.

Pop. Twilight reappeared.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop…

Twilight stopped, breathing heavily. She was certain she was getting the spell right – and she was certain that she had recovered enough magic that she should have been able to cast it. This should not have been a problem – she should have been home by now.

Instead, she was here, on a cold November day, as a white marble statue of Celestia smiled down at her. Twilight stared back. Her lips moved of their own accord, uttering two words she did not want to hear right now.

“I’m…trapped.”

Twilight stared at the faux Celestia. “I’m trapped,” she repeated. She shook her head, trotting in place back and forth as she ran numbers and calculations through her head. The power was right, the spell matrices in her head dutifully memorized, her presence in this alternate world proof enough of that. Something was missing…something was wrong. But she didn’t know what. She couldn’t know what: she didn’t know anything about travelling between worlds. All she had was one inescapable truth:

“I can’t go home.”