The library walls shuddered ominously as yet another spell slammed home, the tell-tale chorus of anguished screams and disintegrating masonwork accompanying the strike. Twilight shook her head as clouds of plaster and stone invaded her already-unkempt mane, throwing scroll after scroll into the steadily-growing pile at the centre of the room.
“Come on,” She pleaded to no-one in particular, focussing her attention on the next bookshelf in turn. “There has to be something here. A spell! A hex! An ancient ritual! Anything!”
“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash called from the next aisle over. “What am I looking for? This egghead stuff is going completely over my head.”
“Anything that would help us stop Tirek!” Twilight replied, pausing for a moment to examine a potentially-promising scroll, only to shake her head and throw it into the pile of rejects. “We need a miracle at this point, and this is the last place in the Archives I can think of looking for it!”
“Yeah, but I’m not you, Twi. How am I supposed to know what our miracle spell looks like?”
“Oh for Celestia’s sake!” Twilight exclaimed, throwing an entire box of useless manuscripts into the pile. “At this point, the only thing that I can think of that could stop him is a time travel spell!”
“Time travel?” Rainbow asked, dubious. “Is that even possible?”
“I have no idea!” Twilight answered, pulling a particularly large and heavy tome from the rack, only to groan and toss it when she spotted the title. “There are rumors that Starswirl managed to travel through time, but there are also rumors that he invented a regenerating block of chocolate!”
“Seriously?” Rainbow asked, popping her head over the bookshelf. “Unlimited chocolate?”
“Rainbow!” Twilight admonished. “This is not the time!”
“I dunno…” Spike said, dumping a pile of scrolls he had finished with into the pile. “Chocolate sounds pretty good right now…”
“How can you be thinking of chocolate at a time like this?” Twilight asked, pulling tome after tome off the shelves and onto the floor. “We are literally about to die, and all you can think of is chocolate?”
“I’m hungry,” Spike moaned. “So I apologise for nothing.”
The room shuddered again, far more violently, as another magical strike impacted the castle. Sections of cracked stonework fell from the ceiling and slammed into the bookshelves, sending scrolls and ancient manuscripts scattering onto the floor. The yells of what few royal guard still remaining in the fight were dimly audible over the sounds of destruction and chaos that wafted in through the window.
“That was a lot closer,” Twilight said, looking worriedly at the window. “We haven’t much time.”
“I hope the others got out okay,” Spike said, clearly worried.
“I’m sure they’re okay,” Twilight lied, turning back to the shelf and resuming her search. “Though we won’t be for much longer. Maybe the two of you should get out of here and to safety.”
“And what about you?” Rainbow demanded. “I’m not leaving you here to get done in by that monster!”
Twilight groaned. Rainbow was about as likely to abandon her at this point as Rarity was to wear a neon-green saddle through Ponyville while singing showtunes.
“Besides, where am I going to go?” Rainbow asked, popping back down into the bookshelves to resume her own search. “Tirek’s destroyed most of Equestria by now. Canterlot’s all that’s left.”
“Not for much longer,” Twilight muttered, trying to tune out the cacophony of devastation wafting through the Archive windows.
Her current shelf emptied, Twilight moved onto the next, pulling tome after tome at an increasingly frantic rate. It was all useless, tricks and illusions surpassed and forgotten centuries ago catalogued in tomes stashed within the darkest corner of the Canterlot Archives. When she had heard of the existence of the mythical Starswirl the Bearded wing, Twilight had nursed a glimmer of hope at the possibility of finding something that could help them in their predicament. Such meager hope had long since faded to embers.
She hated to admit it to herself, but the only reason she was still searching was because it gave her something to do in the few remaining minutes before Tirek cut down the few Royal guards still stationed outside the Archives, found her, and assimilated the final drop of free magic into himself. It was either that or sit down and wait for her fate to arrive.
Such was the completeness of her resignation that she didn’t even react when the Archive doors slammed open, admitting a single exhausted Royal Guard, clad in purple-and-gold armor.
“Time’s up, Twilie,” Shining yelled, slamming the door closed and barricading it with an empty bookshelf. “Please tell me you found something!”
“Nothing!” Twilight exclaimed, throwing yet another useless book into the air. “Oh, sure, plenty of this work would be completely groundbreaking under normal circumstances, but there’s nothing here that can help us right now.”
“So, what,” Shining said, his words jamming in his throat as the implication set in. “We failed? We lost?”
“I’m afraid so, B.B.B.F.F.”
“No, there has to be something.”
“You’re welcome to look, Shining,” Twilight gestured to the bookshelves, almost entirely picked clean. “But we’ve been through it. It’s useless.”
“And headache-inducing,” Rainbow piped up, dumping another pile of scrolls into the centre of the room before heading back to the nearly-empty shelf she had come from. “This kind of stuff is so far beyond me…”
The room shook again, the thunderous crack of a spell impact echoing through the library. Twilight felt a twinge of foreboding when she didn’t hear the corresponding wails or cries from outside. The last of the Royal guard must have fallen.
“Sounds like we’re all that’s left,” Twilight sighed, gazing around the room at the mess they had created. In a few minutes, it would likely be nothing more than ash.
“Don’t give up, Twilie,” Shining said, still managing to smile despite it all. “There’s still hope.”
“Really?” Twilight asked, a hint of panic working its way into her voice. “We’ve failed, Shining. Tirek will claim the last free magic in Equestria from us, and then move on to do Celestia-knows-what. It’s over.”
“Panic if you want, I intend to go down fighting.”
“Good luck with that,” Twilight said, voice dripping with contempt as she kicked at a nearby bookshelf. “Stupid books! Fat lot of good you did for me! Right when I needed it the most, too…”
“Hey, Twi,” Rainbow called. “I think I found something…”
“Oh?” Twilight groaned. “What did you find? Starswirl’s last daffodil sandwich recipe?”
“Would that help?”
“Rainbow!”
“Well…” Rainbow began sheepishly, fishing herself out of a pile of scrolls, holding a particularly ancient-looking one in her hoof. “You said that that guy, Starswirl?”
“Starswirl the Bearded, yes.”
“Right, Him. You said that he made some sort of unlimited chocolate spell…”
“You found the unlimited chocolate spell?” Spike shouted, dropping his current investigation and running over to them.
“There is no unlimited chocolate spell! I was joking!” Twilight shrieked.
“Oh…”
“Well, anyway,” Rainbow continued. “You said something about time travel as well, and that it might be able to help…”
“Yes, I did. What’s your point?”
Rainbow gestured to the scroll she was holding. Twilight stared at her incredulously, glancing back and forth between the scroll and Rainbow.
“That’s not funny, Rainbow.”
“Yeah, I’m not laughing.”
“You found a time travel spell?”
“That’s what it says,” Rainbow tossed the scroll and dusting her hooves off. “I dunno what most of it means, but it sounded like it was talking about time travel…”
“It was probably some story somepony made about Starswirl,” Twilight guessed, unrolling the scroll and reading. “You’d be surprised how… common…”
“Twilight?”
“This is a time travel spell.”
“It is? I was right?”
“Yes, you were,” Twilight said, scanning through the spell. “This is an honest-to-Celestia time travel spell. It’s… beautiful, if a little underwhelming…”
“Underwhelming how?” Shining prompted urgently.
“Well, I can only send myself back, and I can only stay for a few seconds,” Twilight explained, reading through the notes. “Not enough time to really make a difference, but maybe enough time to send a warning…”
“It’d have to be a good warning. Who could you warn? Celestia?”
“No,” Twilight answered, thinking. “It would need to be something early and local. Something that could stop Tirek before he ever gets enough power to be a threat…”
Another crash echoed through the room, shaking loose sections of the ceiling and sending it crashing to the floor, crushing tiles and bookshelves alike. Magical backwash swept through the room, turning everyone’s manes into frazzled messes.
“He’s close!” Shining yelled, trying desperately to reinforce the improvised barricade. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast!”
“Okay, okay!” Twilight said, racking her brains. “We don’t know exactly when Tirek escaped. That would be too easy.”
“Yes, we know that much,” Shining confirmed, straining to hold the door in place as it was hammered at from the other side.
“Before Celestia was taken, she said that she thinks Tirek escaped when Cerberus left his post at the Gates of Tartarus a few years back. They eventually found him, but he was loose for months.”
“So, how does that help?” Rainbow asked.
“I know roughly when Cerberus was found, I just have to jump back a few months prior to that date and warn somepony about it in time to deal with it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know!” Twilight yelled, holding her head in her hooves. “It would need to be somepony close to the Tartarus Gate, who has skills enough to find and capture Cerberus and return him.”
“Fluttershy?”
“Don’t be daft. How do you think Fluttershy would react if I just appeared, looking like this,” She gestured to herself, soot-covered, scarred, wearing a black catsuit and eyepatch. “And started raving about a three-headed dog? She’d freak out!”
“Okay, who then?”
“Well, Ponyville is close enough, but… wait… I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“I warn me!”
“Come again?”
“I go back, and warn myself! I’ll be the easiest to convince, since I know I can trust myself, and I know I’ll be able to handle capturing Cerberus. It’s perfect!”
“Great!” Shining shouted as the door almost gave way under another blow. “Do it then!”
“Right!” Twilight yelped, grabbing the scroll and scanning through it one last time, assembling the spell components in her head. “Here goes nothing!”
The door disintegrated, along with most of the wall and ceiling, revealing a livid blood-red centaur.
“Twilight Sparkle!” Tirek bellowed, pointing a finger at her. “I have come for your-”
The words were cut short as Twilight discharged the spell, the Canterlot Archives dissolving in a flash of white. An overwhelming sensation of vertigo overcame her as the world seemed to be falling in more directions than she could count. Her lunch, what little of it there was, threatened to breach the confines of her stomach and scatter itself across space-time.
Eventually, the world resolved into a familiar visage. Twilight felt a pang of loss as she took in the interior of Golden Oaks Library, a home that she had long since lost. Wasting no time, she clambered to her hooves, and dashed to her past self.
“Twilight! You’ve got to listen to me!”
“Who are you?” Past-Twilight demanded, pointing a hoof at her time-travelling counterpart. “I mean… You’re me… But I’m me too! How can there be two me’s? It’s not scientifically possible. You are not scientifically possible!”
“Twilight, please! I have a very important message for you from the future!”
“You’re from the future?”
“That’s right, now listen-”
“What happened to you? The future must be awful.”
“Please! I don’t have much time!”
“Is there some sort of epic pony war in the distant future or something?”
“No,” Twilight replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m from next Tuesday morning. It’s not important right now!”
“I can’t believe time travel is really possible! How did you, I mean, I figure it out?”
“The time spells are in the Canterlot archives. But that’s not-”
“Really? Where? I’ve never seen them.”
“They’re in the Starswirl the Bearded wing. Now, you have to listen to-”
“Is time travel fun? Or does it hurt? I have so many questions-”
“I have something extremely important to tell you about the future, and I only have a few seconds, so you’ve got to listen! Whatever you do, don’t-”
Author's Note
There is only one rule of time travel.
DON'T
