What Shall be True

Pain was the first thing Twilight felt when she came to.

It was mostly in her head. Specifically, her forehead, though the whole thing felt like it was a balloon filled with hot sauce. A hot-sauce balloon filled with nerves and suffering and pain.

Along with a few cramps from eating too quickly.

With a long, low groan, she slowly decided to crack open her eyes. Not that it did much. Apparently, it was extremely dark in the future. Either that or it was just nighttime. Or there were stars in her eyes from having run into a solid object. It was hard to tell.

She did her best to stand up, only to wince in agony as her head moved.

Tenderly, she reached up and touched one cramped foreleg to her head. Her face itself was more or less fine, aside from the bruises dotting her forehead.

But the instant her hoof touched her horn, she hissed and winced in the pain that nearly made her black out again. Something was wrong with it. Something bad.

‘Oh, Celestia…what if…?’

Her body ran ahead of her brain, as she located a nearby book and focused on it. Tried to warp the space around it, make gravity go in reverse so it could levitate.

Immediately, her spell backlashed, and she felt a sudden massive pressure in her brain as her spell flipped backwards and pushed on her skull from the inside. The pain knocked her right back to the ground, and she saw stars orbit her head briefly as she recovered.

She struggled to get back to her hooves, her mind reeling with more than just physical pain.

If that was the backlash from something as simple as levitation, then anything bigger might kill her.

So no magic. Not until her horn healed.

So…not only was she somewhere in the future, but she also couldn’t get back. Not for a while.

“Ugh…un…be…lievable…”

That summed things up quite nicely.

“T…Twi…?”

The voice was soft, but immediately set her on guard. It sounded so familiar, and yet…kind of off--

“TWILIGHT!”

A wave of newfound agony screamed up and down her body as Pinkie Pie crashed into Twilight and threw the both of them to the floor.

“AUGH! Oh! Oh, CELESTIA, my head!”

“Twilight, I can’t believe it’s you! Y-you came b-back…”

Pinkie finally released Twilight enough for her to turn upright. Though not for any longer, since just as Twilight turned to her, she received a full-on bone-crushing from…was Pinkie crying?

Twilight could do little more than sit there in shock as Pinkie pulled their bodies harder and harder together, tears spilling from her face as she did. That is, until Pinkie’s face brushed against one of the many bruises Twilight’s forehead now apparently possessed.

She winced. “Ow! Pain! Head! Lots of pain!”

Pinkie looked pained and dejected, until she caught sight of Twilight’s injuries. “Oh! You’re hurt! Oh, I’m so sorry, Twi.”

“Heh. It’s alright.” It really wasn’t, but Twilight didn’t have the heart to say it. “I just…I think I hit something when I got here.”

She giggled softly, almost like she was afraid of the noise but too happy to care. “You sure did. Sc-scared me right out of bed.”

Twilight smiled back at her, taking her in for the first time. It was definitely Pinkie Pie, all right, but it was hard to get a good look at her in the barely-present light. Something about her seemed off, though. Her mane was nearly flattened. Her voice seemed raspier, hoarser. Twilight could only assume that it was a side-effect of her crying for what she believed to be her long-lost friend. It made sense, but it also meant that she’d probably been gone a little longer than five minutes. Maybe a few hours? If she’d left at about noon, and it was nighttime now…

Almost twelve hours? Wow…talk about off course.

But something nagged at the back of her mind. Shouldn’t the moon be out?

Pinkie clasped against her again, sobbing heavily, careful not to touch Twi’s forehead. “I w-waited rig-ght here. Just…just like I s-said!”

Twilight just sighed softly and set a hoof on her friend, only for the differences to become sharp and clear. Her fur was matted and unkempt, and there were one or two places where there just wasn’t any fur.

Twilight just stared, despite the fact that she couldn’t see anything. “Pinkie…do you have a light?”

“W-wouldn’t your magic be better?”

“My magic isn’t working. I think I hit my horn on something when I got here.”

“You b-broke your horn?”

“Not completely. But it won’t work until it heals.”

“And how long will that be?”

“Well, I won’t know until I see it.”

“Oh! I-I’ll go get a light!”

Twilight just chuckled to herself as Pinkie scrambled upstairs. She couldn’t help herself. That pony was truly something else. And as the impossible-to-understand pink partier went off to find a candle, Twilight took in the room as much as she could.

Now that her eyes were adjusted to it, she could see a little bit better. And confirm that she was, indeed, in the Golden Oaks Library. It looked in fairly good condition, too, minus how many books seemed to be missing from the shelves. The table in the middle of the room was gone completely. Her desk looked cleaner than it ever had. But the floor felt familiar under her wobbly legs as she stood up on them, and the shape of the building was entirely unchanged. She could even see (barely) where she’d cast the divination spell, by the dark patch on the floor. But despite being so familiar, it felt so…empty. Like a shell of a home. It wasn’t an easy feeling to put her hoof on.

There was a faint amount of light coming through the windows, and Twilight took a few wobbly steps to better get a look at them. She remembered that window in particular. It was the one Rainbow had crashed through barely moments ago. It looked fine, bizarrely. The glass was intact. But...curtains sat on it that she had never seen before. And the sky outside looked solid black. That nagged at Twilight more than anything. If it was nighttime, shouldn’t Luna’s moon be out and shining? And if it was night, and the moon wasn’t there…what did that say about this place?

She snapped back to attention as she heard Pinkie’s hooves clop-clopping on the stairs. She could make out the other mare set something on the desk. Then…

Boing! Shhhht! Thunk. Boing! Shhhht! Thunk.

“Uhhh…Pinkie? What are you doing?”

She ignored Twi, the first sign that something was really off. As she continued her unexplained actions, the room began to get darker, and darker, and…

Pinkie thudded to the floor next to Twilight as the last light disappeared from the room. Then the sound of her hooves echoed slightly as she casually trotted over towards where she’d left the candle and matches.

“How can you see? It’s pitch black in here!”

“Oh! I’ve done this hundreds of times. It gets pretty easy after the fifty-fifth or so.”

“Hundreds of—“ Twilight’s words left her as the sudden brightness of the match being lit hit her. She ground her eyes shut, turning away, before opening them just enough to let her eyes adjust.

Blessedly, it took less time for her eyes to adjust than before. Perhaps there’s some connection between head injury and pupil dilation?

Twilight turned back to face Pinkie Pie as her vision cleared. And what she saw…

“Oh my…Pinkie!? What…what happened to you?”

She let out a soft, timid laugh as Twilight took in her first good look at the pink Earth pony. Her mane was flat to the point of being lifeless, and her tail was cut short to the point where it was nearly gone. Her eyes kept twitching and turning every which way, like she was scared something would leap out of the shadows from any direction. Her fur was matted and singed in places, and in some areas it was entirely gone, revealing skin and white scars underneath. Two in particular jumped out at Twilight; a pair of thick white scars that covered her entire right shoulder, making a large X shape.

She looked like she’d gone through Tartarus and back.

“Heh… I always wondered what you’d say when you saw me like this.”

That something nagging at the back of Twi’s mind was now screaming at her as she fit the puzzle pieces together. “Pinkie…how long have I been gone?”

Pinkie Pie shifted nervously. “Listen, Twi. Don’t blame yourself. It was an accident, I know it—“

“How. Long. Was I gone?”

She looked down at the floor, pawing at the stairs nervously. “One thousand, nine hundred and eighty-eight days.”

Twi did some quick math in her head. That many days ended up being a little over…

Her feet stumbled.

…five years.

Twilight Sparkle had jumped over five years into the future.

Her head reeled, and she sat down before she fell down.

“T-Twi…”

“Five years…?”

“Listen, I-I saw the whole thing. It was an accident! You can’t blame yourself-!”

“I’ve been gone for…five…whole…years?”

Pinkie took a resumed interest in the floor. “Plus six months, one week, and three days. Four, now.”

Twilight looked over Pinkie again, everything suddenly becoming clear.

“Wh…What’d I miss?”

Pinkie sat down, staring almost absently at the floor in front of Twilight’s feet. “When you left, we…we waited for you to come back. We took turns sleeping here, in case you showed up again. We didn’t tell the princess right away, though. We thought…we thought that maybe you’d messed up and went ahead a week or so. After all, if you’d gone to the past, you’d try to let us know with, like, a time capsule or something. So we knew you’d gone to the future. We just didn’t know how far.” Pinkie started to cry again. “B-But you never…showed up. A little while later, we sent a letter to the princess, telling her what happened. She tried to keep it qu-quiet, but…word got out. And once people found out the Element of Magic went missing...word somehow got to the Ch-Changelings, and th-they attacked.”

Suddenly, her scars made sense. She could even place a few of them. That one looks like a bite mark where the fangs were torn out. That one, a burn from a magic blast. That one, a wingblade from one who had probably imitated a Pegasus.

Sudden pain washed over her. Not the physical kind anymore. But a sudden, sweeping realization that Chrysalis had attacked, “…and I wasn’t there to stop her.”

Pinkie nodded, trying so hard to hold her composure. “They’d been p-planning it for a while. Hiding as g-guards, as nobles. And when they did hit…” she almost breaks down sobbing, but then catches herself, “they hit Equestria all at once. Canterlot, the Crystal Empire, a few big cities and military bases, and…here. We d-drove them out of Ponyville, and there are r-rumors that the Crystal Empire made it. But…” she trails off, and she doesn’t need to finish that sentence.

Canterlot fell.

“What about the Elements?”

“We couldn’t get to the Tree of Harmony. B-Besides, without you, w-we didn’t know if it would work…”

“But…the Princesses? They could have done something!”

“They t-tried, Twi! B-but Celestia got capt-tured the f-first day. Luna and almost a th-third of Ponyville tried to save her, b-but…” she breaks down crying.

Twilight almost asked her what happened. But then it clicked in her brain.

The night was too dark, like the moon wasn’t there.

Luna is directly tied to the moon.

And if the moon isn’t there…

She fell all the way onto the floor, just staring at Pinkie as it all sank in like needles into her brain. She didn’t even know if it was possible for Luna to die. But evidently, it was. And if the Changelings overpowered even Luna and Celestia,

then…Shining…Cadence…

Twilight had to work to keep herself from crying too.

“What about our friends? As long as we’re together, we—“

Pinkie interrupted her with newfound raucous sobs. She could barely even speak, but she managed to choke out a couple words.

“…gone…they’re all…just…gone…”

Just when Twi thought nothing in this future could rend her heart more…

She scooted over to Pinkie, holding her in a comforting embrace even when she wasn’t sure who needed it more.