Running Out of Twilight

by Ephraim Blue

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Tragedy, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 1817

Not everypony wil last forever; their time must come. For Twilight, that might just be a little different from others.

A spell Twilight was learning has an interesting effect on her. Using it, she learns more about her friend's and even Ponyville's resident's pasts.

But the spell has another feature. Twilight's time is coming to an end, but not in the way some might expect.

Inspired by the picture, which was brought to my attention by Unbridled Dolly. Thanks for that.:twilightsmile:

Published 2014-11-19 22:10:09 UTC
Last updated 2014-11-19 22:10:09 UTC

Chapter 1 - With a Book, Unread

A tree is home to many woodland creatures. Birds, bees, squirrels, chipmunks, and many more creatures you would find wandering in the forest.

But you wouldn't believe me if I told you a pony lived in one; much less a unicorn.

Unicorns are magical creatures that lived in fairy tales and dreams of our children. They are happy creatures that lived in peace.

But what if unicorns were the opposite of what we thought them to be? What if they didn't live in peace? What if they weren't happy?

Nonsense, I say. Complete and utter nonsense.

But with some stories, I would find even my own words to be false. Even with fiction, there are some truths hidden in the words. And with truth, there can be lies found behind them.

But none of us are here to look at what is fiction and what is not. We’re here for a story. I would find it unbelievable at first, and so should you. But you might find that if time went on, we’d end up believing something that others would surely go against.

So what is a story about? A story can be about many things, or few things. It could be about fantasy, it could be about truth. It could be about reality, it could be about lies.

You may find some of what I said in this story, but you would most likely find all those things in another story. Because that is not what this story is about.

For this story is about a unicorn that lived in a tree.

Twilight opened the door to her library, stepped through, and closed it again. She had what she wanted, and the outside world was of no convenience to her now.

“Spike!” she called out to her assistant. “Are you here Spike?”

There was no answer for her in her dark library. Hmm… she thought to herself, he must be out.

“No matter,” she said aloud. “I don’t need him to do this. I have all I need,” she paused and pulled out a dusty book from her saddlebags, “right here.” She blew on it, causing all the dust to fly into the air and linger there.

She coughed many times as some of the dust entered her airspace and she accidently inhaled it. When her coughing stopped, she moaned a bit before placing the book on the pedestal in the center of the library’s main room.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m not doing that again anytime soon.” She trotted over to her broom closet and picked up a duster in her magic. She went back over to the book and brushed it off from a distance.

The dust flied from the book and into the air. Once Twilight had gotten all of it off the book, she swiped at the air where the dust flew with her duster, spreading all of the dust across the library in small enough clumps that it wouldn’t cause any more disturbance.

Satisfied, the purple unicorn put the duster away and came back to the book. The book was old and worn to pieces. Some of the title remained, but not all of it was clear to be read.

T e Lo t Jou al of
ta wi l the rd d’s
F I EN ND DAN Time S ells

None of it made any real sense to her except for the last two words. It said ‘Time S ells’, which could easily be referred to a limited time offer on something they were selling, but Twilight knew better.

She had taken a look inside the book earlier and found it filled with hundreds of spells of great complexity. All if them were a new sight for her to behold, for she hadn't seen any of them in her entire life.

She opened the book again as it rested on the tabletop in front of her. Last time she had skimmed through the book, and barely noticed what any if the spells actually did or meant. All of them were time spells, obviously, otherwise the book wouldn’t have ‘time spells’ as the end of the title.

But then there were those words with the colors on it. They seemed newer, but still seemingly old and rotting with the cover of the book. She tried to figure out what they meant, but found no avail and no possible solution to it.

She was looking though the book now and something odd struck her. On most of the pages were notes upon notes of work. They crowded the spells on each of the pages, making them harder to read than they were in that small print.

Another thing she noticed is that about half the pages in the book weren't rotting as much. Every other page in the book seemed to be placed in, as to only be filled with notes.

She turned to one of the pages and began to read.

The Spell of Travel is a spell made for making the trips between two points shorten. By the spell’s theory, it theorizes taking one pony and moving it instantly between two points. Further examination and experimentation with the spell have proven that the spell does indeed work, but at a huge cost of magic. After much more experimentation, I have learned that the spell is not a solution to any distance. You cannot travel more than 1000 metric feet, no matter how much magic you use. Any further distance will be a complete waste of magic. Further examination to this spell is required. In the meantime, to shorten, I shall now be calling this spell Teleportation. Further examination is required to determine whether spell is safe or not.

Twilight stopped reading that after the first paragraph. She was bewildered about finding the origins of the teleportation spell. The rest of the page consisted of notes about the teleportation being able to go further, but were also worn out and mostly unreadable.

She flipped through the book, constantly looking at the original notes, added notes, and anything in between.

Some of the spells didn’t have notes or anything. They were all mostly crossed out, unable to be read.

She eventually reached the end of the book, with one page and the back cover left. Surprisingly, it didn’t look like the rest of the notes in the book. The page was completely fine but still looked old. The letters seemed brand new, even though the page looked about to crumble apart. Curious, Twilight began to read.

“Out of all my years I have never been so foolish in my entire life. I was once a young and happy stallion with a wife and two kids. Now… Now I am just foolish. I should have never found this book. I should have left the secrets of a dying stallion to rest; never to be found again. I should have burnt it when I had the chance. But now it’s too late. I only now see my mistake, and if anything, I wish I could take it back.”

That was it. That was all it said. Nothing more, nothing less.

Twilight tilted her head. Pondering to herself, she said, “That’s strange… This journal doesn’t seem like it was written and noted by the same pony at all. The notes are newer than the pages, and the hoofwriting is completely different.”

She tilted her head straight up again. “Who in Equestria would find an old journal filled with spells and completely vandalize it with notes?” Her eyes suddenly went wide and she blushed slightly at that. “Besides me of course.”

She flipped through the pages of the book again. While she was doing that, a sudden burst of wind shot open the window and rattled around the library. “No!” Twilight exclaimed as she witnessed the book in front of her flip random pages, tearing out both old and new ones.

She tried to catch them in her magic, but they were all flying randomly and she couldn’t get a grip on all of them. Instead, she focused a bit more on some of the pages that looked older and were actually a part of the book, not the notes.

Thank Celestia she managed to catch a few of them. More specifically, two of them.

The rest of them were not so fortunate. The gust of wind from the first window tore open the rest, and every other page flew out of the tree.

“No!” Twilight said in dismay. Almost all of what she was doing; gone on a single gust of wind.

“Augh!” she screamed. “I only just got that book, and after five hours of searching! How am I supposed to do my research now with only two of the pages?!”

She focused her magic to slam the windows shut, peering put one of them to witness the pages flying off. She grumbled to herself, “Can’t go out there now… I’ll lose any general direction any of the others might have gone.” She quickly ran off to the other windows to try and find out where they might have gone.

Sadly, they were already gone.

Twilight groaned. “Ugh… I’ll just have to go find them tomorrow. It’s too dark to see right now and it looks like a storm is brewing. Looks like Spike isn’t likely to be coming home today either, considering he knows better to go out on a storm.”

“Whoo!”

Twilight looked up at Owlicious who had caught her attention. He was next to one of the windows, pecking at it before turning back to Twilight. “Who! Who!”

“What?” she asked. “Do you want to try and get the papers back?”

“Who!”

“I can’t do that Owlicous. If I let you out during a storm, you can get seriously injured. I’m not going to have you injured on my account.”

Owlicous flapped his wings several times in annoyance before finally flying off to his perch.

Twilight glanced at the two papers in her magic for a couple minutes until her eyes lit up. She smiled. “Maybe I don’t need the rest of the book. I’ll certainly go find the rest of it, but maybe this spell will take a lot of research on its own.”

Author's Note

Well, here it is. After some advertising this story for the past month or so, I have it begun.

Any like, comment, favorite, follow or anything else you can do to help is greatly appreciated. Anything else might be, but not likely.

I will try to have the second chapter, Through a Storm, Unsought out by next Wednesday, the 26th. If it's not out by then, I'll put it up on the Saturday after that. That's how the chapters are going to be.

Welp! I hope to see you all in the next chapter!