Prologue
No rest for the Weary
“Oooh my hooves, I haven't danced that much since my birthday.” Twilight Sparkle yawned as she walked the streets of Canterlot in the company of her best friends, exhausted from the partying that followed her brother's wedding. After seeing off Shining Armor and Cadence, the six of them had returned to the garden, continuing the party late into the night. They weren't the only ones; much of the palace and city had been celebrating not only the union of the bride and groom, but also the victory over the changelings.
“You said it sugar-cube. I feel more worn out than Big Macintosh's old plow.” the farm-pony walking next to Twilight chuckled. Applejack had held up better then the others, even outlasting the ever energetic Pinkie Pie, who was now draped over the earth pony's backside, snoring softly. The party pony had been out on the dance floor when she suddenly just stopped. With a yawn as her only warning, Pinkie Pie had passed out where she stood, sinking to the floor with the sound of a deflating balloon and falling fast asleep. The others fared little better; Rarity was practically sleepwalking, and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy resorted to leaning against each other for support as they made their way through the darkened streets.
“I'm glad I put Spike to bed before we got back to the party, he wouldn't have been able to stay awake much longer,” Twlight said, stifling another yawn as they reached the entrance to the Castle's southern towers. “Heh, plus you're glad ya didn't have to carry him back all this way?” Applejack asked with a teasing grin. Twilight could only sheepishly nod. “...maybe just a little. I love the little guy, but after eating all those sweets at the wedding, he weighs a ton.” the unicorn replied with a chuckle. “Well, goodnight girls, I'll see you in the morning!” Twilight said as she trotted away, leaving her friends to find their own beds in the guest tower the Princess had set the girls up in. The unicorn and dragon however, had been allowed the use of their old rooms during their stay. While she had been grateful, that tower still felt like home to her, tonight she really wished she had been in a room closer to the castle. She debated teleporting, but as tired as she was, it was too dangerous to attempt.
Lost in thought, Twilight didn't even notice the other pony until she crashed into him, sending the contents of his saddlebags scattering across the grass. “Ooof! What hap... oh sir! I'm so sorry.” Dazed and apologetic, Twilight stumbled to her hooves and checked to see if the other pony was alright. The earth pony staggered to his feet. “N...no need to apologize. I...wasn't exactly watching where I was going,” he said, mumbling through his apology. The castle grounds were dark tonight, bathed in shadows from the overcast sky caused by most of the weather teams being grounded during the crisis. Twilight had trouble getting a good look at the stallion, straining to make out more then the short cut mane and brown coat. She could, however, make out the shape of an hourglass cutie mark and breathed a sigh of relief that the stallion seemed to be unharmed. “Here, let me help you pick up your belongings at least,” she offered, telekinetically gathering up the odds and ends into the bags.
“Th..thank you.” The stallion replied, quickly grabbing the saddlebags from Twilight's magic after taking a quick look around. “I think that's everything... um, goodnight!” he said, swiftly trotting past her. Twilight wobbled a bit from the sudden movement and started to call out to him. “Hey! I said I was sor...” pausing as her hoof hit something on the ground. Peering at it, Twilight could see it was an hourglass and the unicorn quickly turned around. “Hey, wait! We missed some...thing.” The dumbstruck pony stared behind her in confusion, despite being in a fairly open part of the castle grounds, the other pony was nowhere to be seen. “H...he's gone?” Twilight muttered, rubbing one of her eyes with her hoof. She took another look in the direction he had gone, flaring the magic of her horn to see more clearly, but still there was nothing. With a sigh, Twilight picked up the hourglass and headed to her tower. “I'll try to find him tomorrow... right now, I need sleep too badly.” She yawned, climbing the steps to her room.
***
Though Twilight longed for nothing more then the comfort of her pillows, she was a creature of habit and set the hourglass on a small table near the stairs as she began her nightly routine. “Wash face: Check, Brush Teeth: Check, Check on Spike: Che...cheaah...” The unicorn's thoughts and voice were swallowed by a large yawn as she began to head upstairs. Taking one last look around her former home, Twilight's eyes were drawn again to the hourglass the stallion had dropped. Something about it bothered her since she set it down, though she couldn't quite put her hoof on it. Shaking her head, she started to climb the stairs again, but stopped in frustration. “Ugh... why is this bothering me so much?” Twilight asked herself, as she reluctantly went back down the stairs and took a closer look at the object. “It's just an hourglass, nothing special about that.”
It did seem normal to her, with its gently curving glass sides, silver supports and golden ends. “For the materials, you'd think it would be more ornate, even the sand... wait...” As Twilight stared at the silver grains that should be falling through the stem, she saw what had been bothering her; the sand wasn't flowing down, but up. “How... is this possible? Some kind of spell?” Her face twisted in confusion, she lifted the hourglass into the air with her magic and began to turn it in the air. “This... doesn't make sense,” she said. No matter how she angled it, flipped or shook it, the sand only continued to flow in the same direction it had been. To the purple pony's further frustration, the sand didn't seem to be running out; she had held it for several minutes and still the ratio of sand in the top and bottom of the glass were what they had been when she first looked at it. Exhaustion was temporarily swept away in the face of a new mystery and Twilight quickly set the curiosity down as she turned toward the books that lined the wall.
“Arrrgh! This is hopeless!” The unicorn's cry of frustration echoed through the tower. With a resigned sigh, she let the last book she had access to fall onto the floor with an unceremonious 'thump'. Twilight had found nothing that could help her, ruling out possibility after possibility. “If I had my books from home... maybe I'd find something,” the exhausted pony muttered with a yawn. “Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.” Admitting defeat, Celestia's Personal student slumped to the floor amidst the scattered tomes, ready to let sleep claim her.
The weary unicorn's dozing was interrupted by the sound of footsteps and the voice of an irate dragon. “Really? You just got back from the most amazing party ever and you're back to studying!?” Spike called out from the top of stairs. Twilight lifted her head. “Ugh... Spike, not so loud and can't this wait until morning?” she asked, but her longtime assistant ignored her. “Oh, and don't think I've forgotten that you decided to dump me here earlier...” Spike said, continuing his tirade as he descended the stairs. “...I mean, Suuure, I may have yawned a little bit here and there, but come on! That was the party to end all parties and you made me miss more than half of it!” The sore and overtired pony's mouth was dry, wincing at every word as it pounded in her ears. “Spike, please... Watch out!” Twilight cried out, too late as the dragonling threw his arms out for dramatic effect, only realizing the hourglass was there when he sent it flying.
Spinning end over end like a gilded pinwheel, the hourglass hurled towards the floor. “I've got it!” Spike cried out, lunging into the air with his arms outstretched. For a fleeting moment, it seemed like he might catch it, but the smooth glass and metal slipped through his claws. The would be hero curled into a fetal position as he hit the floor, waiting for the horrible sound of glass shattering. When the sound never came, he opened a nervous eye to see what had happened and breathed a sigh of relief. The hourglass hovered a hair's breadth from the floor, caught in a nimbus of purple light. “What is that?” he asked, reaching out to take it from her.
Twilight, groaning from the growing migraine that was forming in her skull, lifted the glass over to her and rose from the floor. “Spike... I know you're upset about how tonight turned out... but you have to be more careful!” Twilight held the hourglass above her, well out of reach of the dragon as she began to lecture him. “Look, this isn't a... well I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't mine and it clearly has some magic to it... or maybe just the sand inside it, I'm not sure really and I couldn't find a thing about it in any of my...” Still overtired, the unicorn shook her head. “...er, the point is: If this had broke, who knows what would have happened!?” she concluded, just as the hourglass opened up over her head. The unicorn's eyes went wide as the sand poured out, enveloping her in a cloud of silver grains.
At first, Twilight thought she had gone blind, desperately brushing the sand from her face and mane. “Spike! A little help here? Spike?” she called out, but there was no reply. With a growing sense of dread, the lavender unicorn opened her eyes and stared at the room around her. Spike stood like a statue, his face frozen in an expression of surprise. Suspended above her head, the now empty hourglass remained, even though Twilight had long since released her levitation spell from it. “Oh no...” Twilight whispered, desperately trying to keep herself from panicking. In addition to everything being frozen in place, the world around her had taken on the same uniform color as the sand. “Okay Twilight: Think. The sand caused this, maybe it can undo it as well?” she asked rhetorically, peering down at the pile around her hooves. The sight was not encouraging.
Where once the sand had been a silvery gray, now it was a dull black and Twilight's gut told her that whatever power the sand once had, it was now gone. “Well that's just perfect... now I have to find that pony.” With no other options, the unicorn trotted towards the door. She didn't make it far, the stress of the recent ordeal had been the last straw, and Twilight found herself collapsing to the ground, far too weary to move. Unable to fight her body's limits, Twilight at last let sleep claim her, hoping that this was all just a dream.
***
It had sadly been all too real and with the world around her still locked into an unmoving gray, the purple pony awoke and began her search. With no way to measure the passage of time, Twilight found herself uncertain of how long she had been wandering the streets of Canterlot in search of the Stallion she had bumped into the night before. Like Spike, everything and everypony was frozen in a single moment, only moving when forced to by Twilight's interference. Beyond the stillness and the endless gray, the absolute silence of the world disturbed the normally stalwart unicorn. “This. Is. Pointless!” Twilight lamented, sitting down and burying her face in her hooves. “Even if I find him, I won't be able to talk to him. Nopony has responded to anything I've done, not even the Princess.” Twilight looked to the world around her and tears began to form in her eyes. “I don't even know if the world has stopped, or if I'm just moving so fast it seems to have... will... will I be trapped here forever?” Deep within herself, the Element of Magic desperately tried to keep her composure, blocking out the gloomy thoughts. “No! I WILL find a way out of this... somehow.” The unicorn's bravado, curbed though it had been, at the very least had gotten her back on her hooves. Abandoning her search, Twilight needed a new starting point. Falling back on her tried and true traditions and habits, the eternal student headed to the one place that might hold her answers: The Canterlot Archives.
Even as Celestia's protege had begun trotting towards the Castle's library, an orderly list of possibilities had begun to form in her head. “Alright... I know that the basic spell and history books I had with me were of no use, that means that this is either highly obscure or deliberately kept secret... aaand unless I'm dealing with something nopony has ever created before, my best chance to find any information is inside the Starswirl the Bearded wing.” Twilight continued to speak her thoughts and reasoning aloud, a normal habit for her, but this time it served the additional purpose of breaking the endless silence. Soon, the unicorn found herself in the secured archive, thankful her mentor saw fit to teach her the unlocking spell after her humiliating encounter with her future self.
At first, the methodical unicorn chose to go through everything, uncertain of where to begin her search. However, if there was one thing Twilight Sparkle had, it was time and patience. Her thoroughness was rewarded, when halfway through an almost haphazard collection of stories and legends, she found what she had been searching for. “Dust of the Ages...” The studious unicorn felt her heart skip a beat as she read the account. “...also known as the 'Sands of Time,' it is unknown whether the legendary Starswirl the Bearded created this substance, or merely discovered it. However, the only record of the Dust and its nature is attributed to him and given his involvement in the chronomantic arts, this connection seems valid. I have...” Twilight continued to read the dissertation, which also contained an abridged version of writings allegedly written by the ancient spellmaster. “...so, if I'm reading this correctly, this sand can be used to alter the flow of time; with results and relative duration being based on the amount of sand used. Hmm, all it takes is a hoof-full of the sand to start and stop any ongoing temporal alteration.”
It was hard for the unicorn to contain her excitement, all she needed was the tiniest amount of unused dust and everything would be back to normal! “Hmm... there's a footnote. By decree of the Royal Pony Sisters...” she began to read, her eyes shrinking to nervous pinpoints as comprehension set in. “...too dangerous, all known quantities gathered and... oh no.” Twilight's mood darkened as she read the proclamation and her heart sank further when she looked behind her. There stood the great hourglass that dominated the center of the archive wing. There it was, every remaining grain of the Dust of Ages, sealed behind glass enchanted with a barrier only Celestia or Luna could remove. Despair etched on her face, the lavender unicorn pressed against the glass and slid to the floor. “So close... I was so close,” she sobbed, looking around to the collected scrolls and books. “If I could still use that time spell I could go back and get some of the sand before they sealed all of it, or even have left a note for the Princess to leave some of it out for me to use.”
Slowly, the orderly and inventive mind of Twilight Sparkle began to piece together an idea. “If Starswirl the Bearded made a spell that let me visit the past... I wonder.” She couldn't go back in time with that spell, but perhaps with a little creativity, she could go forward. Rising to her hooves, she moved like a purple blur along the stacks and shelves. Scrolls and books went flying as she checked and discarded each one, despite the thorough collection... the unicorn found only the same scroll Pinkie Pie had given her a few weeks ago. “Alright, no preexisting spell to visit the future. So, time for plan B.” Undaunted, Twilight gathered up the scroll and began to study it. “This...seems simple enough to re-engineer, but I've only got one chance to get it right,” she said, her features etched with caution. The plan was straight-forward, at least for one of Twilight's plans. All she would have to do is leave her mentor a note, travel a short distance into the future and get the sand, then return to the present when the spell ended. “Then just use the sand and the world stops being monochrome.” she chuckled happily, adding the last step to her list.
Thorough as ever, Celestia's faithful student didn't just leave a letter for the Princess to find, but also one for Spike, along with a backup letter for Celestia in case the first one didn't get read for some reason. Lastly she left another pair of letters with her friends. The first letter was like the others, explaining the situation. The second one was much, much gloomier.
The bearer of the Element of Magic was no stranger to the risks of spells gone wrong and to be safe, the second letter was for a worst case scenario. It was part will and partially a farewell letter, something the unicorn had dwelt on more and more with every close call. She debated leaving it at all, for although she struggled with the idea of less than logical forces at work in the world, Twilight felt as if she was jinxing her own success. “Still, better safe then sorry... alright, time to do this.” With a deep breath, Twilight unrolled the scroll as she faced the hourglass. “Any where, any when, so long as tomorrow is yesterday. Let's... GO!” Magic arced and flowed from her horn as she wove the spell, inverting the principles of the original and focusing on what might be instead of what had been. The world around her rippled and twisted, and for a moment, Twilight watched time begin to move again. Then in a flash, she was gone.
***
Before Twilight could see, she could feel... cold. A biting, numbing cold that quickly crept into her coat and began to work its way up her flanks. “W...what is this?” She immediately regretted opening her eyes. All around her lay shattered walls and fallen stones, the ground around them buried in hoof-deep snow that drifted and swirled in the icy wind. “Hello! Anypony!?” she called out through the ruins and to her horror, she realized they were exactly that. Where once the archive walls had been, there was only rubble, worn by years of erosion. Little could be seen through the blowing snow, few towers remained standing, their rooftop spires caved in and their sides wrapped in vines, brown and dormant from the chilling weather. “No... How... how did this happen, where am I? When am I!?” she cried out in disbelief. Her tears freezing as they fell from her face, Twilight Sparkle staggered out into the cold, dark and lonely place she wished she didn't recognize.
