Twilight walked out of the auditorium, lost in thought, she was certain she saw Starlight sitting in the crowd but when she looked again there was no one there. She sighed and rubbed her temples, it must have been the stress from planning out the speech. After clearing her thoughts of Starlight she continued her way out of Celestia’s School only to run into Chris, literally, as she rounded the corner. She nearly fell but he caught her with his wing before she got too far.

~Chris~

I looked at the purple alicorn that I had held in a wing, “Well fancy meeting you here.” I said with a smile before holding out my hand, which she readily took, allowing me to retract my wing back.

She righted herself with my help before brushing off her shirt, “Thank you, Chris, but I’m the one who should be asking you what you’re doing here. I had a friendship lecture today.”

I thought on that, oh yeah, she did, I forgot she mentioned that, “Well, you remember how I’ve been tracking down Starlight on the side for the past… year or so right?” She nodded, “Well I heard rumor she was seen around here but I can’t find her, I think she might’ve figured it out and teleported elsewhere.”

Twilight’s color literally drained from her face making her look like a more humble Rarity, “I-I…. Oh no.”

I cocked my head to the side, “What?”

“I think I saw her during my lecture, but when I looked back she was gone and there was no left over residue from a teleport so I thought it was just stress getting to me. It wouldn’t be the first but…” She started.

“With my information its becoming blatantly clear that isn’t the case.” I finished before sighing, “Fuck, well she’s gone for now.”

“Y-Yeah, but something about this is unnerving, why would she show herself to me now after over a year of being in hiding?”

I shrugged, until a thought crossed my mind, “You don’t think she’s taunting you is she? Maybe she created another Our Town? Have you checked the map lately?”

“I haven’t, no, it's been pretty inactive these last couple of months so it just slipped my mind, that wouldn’t be a bad idea though.” She said, her horn lighting up.

My eyes widened, “Wai-!”

In a bright purple flash we were in the entryway of the Castle of Friendship, “t!” Oh god, I bent over to prevent myself from throwing up, trust me, an ice dragon’s puke would freeze most things, I don’t think Twilight would appreciate that. After I regained my composure I stood up and glared at Twilight, “Never again Twiggy, you KNOW I hate teleporting.”

“Hehe, sorry, but come on, let’s go see if that thought of yours has any weight.” She said leading the way to the map room.

+Are you doing ok?+ Ixis asked me, knowing full well I wasn’t.

‘You already know the answer to that.’ I told her slowly following behind Twilight, stomach still churning slightly, she just chuckled. I finally caught up to my sister in law as she stood at the open door. I hurried up to see why she just stood there to see that Starlight was floating into the air into some insane magic portal of some kind. Once she saw me she gave a wicked smile and waved.

My instincts were screaming at me, I had to stop her, but she was already near the portal, even at my fastest I wouldn’t reach before she got sucked in… unless, “ICE DRAGON’S FROZEN TIME, 100%!!!” I yelled out, forcing my magic to freeze everything and for a second it work, only for a second before my spell shattered and the backlash of all my magic rushing back to me slammed me into a wall.

“Ohohoho… that looks like it hurts.” Starlight said before looking up at the portal, “Toodles.” And then she was gone and the portal closed.

“Chris!” Twilight ran over to me, helping me up, “Are you alright?”

I shook my head, “I… yeah? I think so? Whatever that spell was canceled out mine, it canceled out Ice Dragon time magic.” I looked up at the chandelier that was over the map, sparkles of magic still dissipating.

Suddenly Spike came rushing in behind us, “Twilight, Chris… what happened?!” The teenage drake asked looking around, something on the crystal floor catching his eye and he made his way over to it.

“Starlight is what happened, she was here in the Castle, she cast some spell that blew back even Chris’ magic.” Twilight told her little brother.

Spike turned to look at us, hold a scroll shakily in his hand, “Twilight… I think this is Starswirl’s time travel spell.”

Twilight levitated the scroll to her, “That can’t be right, that spell was much stronger than the one I used, and even if it was it would only send her back a week.” Her eyes widened in some sort of sudden realization, “No way…. She managed to fix Starswirl's spell, there's no limit to how far you can travel back with it. I would be honestly impressed if this didn’t hold so many dangerous implications.”

I fully cleared my head, honestly that knock back did not help settle my stomach at all, “Urp…. do you think you can use it to pull her back?”

Twilight read over the scroll one more time, “No she has to be brought back physically or by her own will.”

Oh no, “Oh no no no, I’m being dragged on a friendship thing aren’t I?” At Twilight’s somber nod I sighed, “Alright… well how would we even know when she went to.”

“Luckily it seems the spell was hard coded to send you back to only one point in time, it can be edited to send you further or shorter but no need this will send us to the exact same time that she went to.” Twilight explained her horn lighting up, the same spell that starlight used ripped open above them slowly sucking them up towards it starting with Spike and ending with yours truly.

“I really hate pony magic sometimes.” I groaned out before I felt my body being ripped into nothing but molecules of light, the immense pain and burning from it was unbelievable, I truly thought I was going to die and as soon as the sensation began it ended and I was spit out into the sky mid freefall. I looked down to see that I was above Cloudsdale, strange thought it was a time spell… unless, “Fuck that’s not good!” I planted my arms to my side, tucked my wings in properly and like a bullet rocketed for the race track where I could see Spike and Twilight already waiting, time magic is weird. Before I hit hard cloud pavement, I flipped around and flared my wings out slowing my decent fast enough to create a huge gust of wind that almost knocked them both over.

“Careful, but glad to see you made it in one piece.” Twilight said.

“Didn’t feel like it was in one piece going through that hellscape of a spell.” I retorted back.

“Tell me about it, you’ll never guess where we’re at.” Spike said.

“Roughly 20 odd years in the past at the race when Rainbow Dash first performed the sonic rainboom giving you all your cutie marks simultaneously.” I told them, making them look at me incredulously, “What? It’s a time spell not a space spell, well I guess it's technically a time space spell but still primarily time. Not that hard to figure out.”

Twilight opened her mouth to retort only to sigh, “Come on, lets go hide in that cloud cover, see if we can find Starlight without disturbing the timeline too much more.” She flew up, levitating spike in her magic before setting him down in the cloud, I followed shortly.

We sat and watched the race unfold, no sign of Starlight yet. To be frank I wasn’t exactly looking for her, my eyes were solely locked on FLuttershy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her as a filly, she reminded me of Goldy, tall for her age and lanky, and absolutely adorable. At one point Rainbow zoomed past her without really any regard for her safety causing her to fall. I was about to fly after her before Twilight grabbed my shoulder and shook her head, I sighed and sat back down, crap that’s hard to watch, but close to the ground I could see a giant pink mattress of butterflies catch her and I breathed a sigh of relief. Back to the race an air cone was starting to form around Rainbow and she had the widest grin on her face. Right before she broke the sound barrier she was grabbed in a teal glow and a shockwave rocked through my core, causing me to double over in pain.

“Chris!” Twilight shouted out trying to grab for me but the time rift opened up sucking us back into it. And once again I got ripped apart and reassembled at a different time, my chest still hurts so much though.

“Chris, Chris! Are you alright?” Twilight asked though her voice came through muffled before all of a sudden the compressing pain on my chest disappeared.

I took a deep breath, “Y-Yeah I’m okay.” I looked around, the grass was all dead, the trees were barren and there was smog in the sky but I knew this area, this was where Ponyville was supposed to be, but there were barely houses, barely ponies.

“Well, ain’t this a strange sight.” A familiar southern drawl could out. Twilight, Spike and I all turned to look to see Apple Jack but she was in a plain beige hazmat style suit and wearing a hair net.

“Apple Jack?” Twilight asked.

Said pony backed up, “How do ya know my name stranger?”

Twilight laughed nervously, “What are you saying Apple Jack, we’re friends.”

She shook her head, “Sorry, Ah don’t know no purple… Alicorn. What are ya doin here? The other Princesses finally sending some extra hands?”

“What are you talking about, extra hands? Extra hands for what?” Spike asked.

Apple Jack regarded the drake for a moment, a puzzled look crossing her face before she shrugged, “Ya don’t know? Well, Ah suppose ya wouldn’t, yer kind refuses to help us so the few who wander inta Equestria are always confused about what's going on.” Spike looked hurt by that but said nothing, after all he had no idea what’s going on either.

I finally stood up fully, “This isn’t right, something isn’t right, the magic of the world is off. Did, it did didn’t it?” I rounded on Apple Jack, “Where’re Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie?”

“Woah nelly, i don’t know what’s got yer snakes all rustled up but I aint heard of no Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie, but Rarity? She’s working in the mines, digging up metals to forge into armor and Fluttershy? That old pegasus shaman? What do you want with either of them?”

I stomped my feet, “God DAMN IT!” I shouted, feeling a hand on my shoulder.

“Chris what’s going on?” Twilight asked.

“She succeeded in stopping the rainboom, that stopped you from gaining your proper cutie marks which means that something drastic happened in the timeline since Equestria didn’t have the Elements.” I told her.

She looked up to the sky, “It’s not night time so Nightmare Moon didn’t escape?”

“Oh no, she did. Princess Celestia waged a war on her with the help of Princess Cadance and since then we’ve been stuck in conflict after conflict, but none worse than this one.” Apple Jack cut in.

I turned and thought about the timeline of events, “Cadance is around, so Chrysalis either didn’t happen or got stopped. The world doesn’t seem like a wacked out fun house so not Discord… that leaves…. no… No…. NO….. NO!!!!!!!” I took off to the skies,not waiting for anyone, not giving an explanation.

“Who… who are you all fighting?” Twilight asked Apple Jack.

“King Sombra, why?”

Spike and Twilight paled at that, “Oh no…”

Author's Note

And here we go, this is something I was waiting for, this arc is the start of well, everything, the true start to Chris's story the true... well Rise of the Ice King, thats the prototype name for this story. I know I only changed one word but the whole 'Dawn' thing is a nod to Dawn of a Dragon, from the legend of spyro series. Anyways, I just have one last thing to say, hope is a very powerful thing.