The Alchemist and the Mirror

I pace around my hotel room, continually shooting glances into the bathroom. There, in the bathtub and on the counters and even on the floor, is where my miniature travel lab has been set up. A number of beakers full of mana potion are cooking off atop small dragonfire burners on the floor, while in a bucket in the bathtub is the uncooked portion. It’s all pretty normal for what could easily be turned into a hotel room meth lab.

On the countertop, though, that’s the real prize: spell extracts. I haven’t made them in years, but it’s not that difficult, especially when you have access to a princess with some top tier combat spells. Basically, take a spell essence, mix it with the condensed form of your own magic, and then all you gotta do is take a swig and temporarily you are able to cast that spell. Ideally, I shouldn’t even need spell extracts, but if that letter’s right and time is looping, things probably aren’t going that well on previous me’s end. Especially if she’s asking me to bring what I think she’s asking.

Pura lets herself into the hotel room without my noticing, and it’s only when she speaks up that I even realize she’s there. “Mom, what’s going on,” she asks. “You just booked it out of the castle after seeing Princess Twilight, without even stopping to say goodbye to anypony. Nopony’s seen you this serious looking since you tried to put the fear into my first coltfriend, and I thought you were going to kill him then!”

I flick my eyes away from the mana condenser feeding my magic into the extracts onto the counter long enough to get a look at her face. “Can’t say too much, hon, but I’m going away on a trip on behalf of Princess Twilight,” I say calmly, slipping into the bathroom to take the mana potions off the burners. Once I’ve swapped in some fresh potions, I join her out in the main hotel room. “If all goes well, I’ll be back soon enough. If things go wrong, none of this will have ever happened, and there’ll be nothing for you to concern yourself about.”

Her eyebrow shoots up, and her lips tighten. With a shake of her head, she replies, “Yeah, it’s cryptic shit like this that makes me worry more.” Pura glances out the window, towards the Everfree. “I’ve heard the stories of what you’ve gotten up to when you don’t have a voice of reason. You go charging into a forest after a filly being chased by a monster. You literally wrestle a cockatrice to death. You literally get eaten by a giant lamia and blow it up from the inside. All of that inside one day, and none of it really fazed you, Mom. You were impulsive and reckless before you had me and Clara, and you’re still every bit impulsive.

“When you go off without a word, and I find you making potions and talking about a mysterious mission on the princess’s behest, I just know you’re going to get yourself into trouble.” Her eyes are actually watering as she says this. “You’ve got a bad heart, Mom. You can’t just go around like you’re a little filly on an adventure looking for her cutie mark.”

Without a word of protest on her behalf, I sit down beside her and put my wing around her. If she were still a filly, I could cover her completely, but just being able to hug her close works just as well. “I know, Pura, believe me, I know.” With a sigh, I steel myself. “You remember what I told you about the world I come from? How I never used to be a pony?”

She nods, but looks away. “I always thought you were just putting me on.”

With a laugh, I nod. “It’d certainly be nice if I was, but I really did come from a race of bipedal semi-apes.” A wistful smile crosses my face, and I look up at the ceiling. “Anyways, Twilight used to be in contact with a world of humans, similar to mine, where almost everypony in Equestria has a double. One of Princess Celestia’s earlier proteges lives there and Twilight befriended her. Unfortunately, the portal between the two worlds went dark ages ago, until today, around the same time she received a pretty weird message through her magical book.”

Pura frowned, already putting things together. “She can’t or won’t go, and asked you to go through in your stead because you should theoretically be able to acclimate quicker than any other pony?” She actually scoffs at this. “That doesn’t sound like the Princess of Friendship at all.”

“That’s ‘cause she didn’t ask me to go through,” I reply. “I—or a past iteration of me, at any rate—asked me to go through. I’m the one that sent the message she got this morning. I apparently went through once before, but there’s some weird timeline shit going on, and that world may have been in a Groundhog Day loop for the last two decades, with the only variations being caused by Twilight’s friends, or the sudden occurrence of me in their events.”

My daughter pushes away, and stands by the window. “I don’t like it, but it sounds like you’re already made up your mind.” Glancing back at me, she gives me a weak smile. “Just take care of yourself, Mom.”

~ 01 ~

A few hours later, I’m back on the road to Twilight’s castle. My enchanted saddlebags are packed to the brim with potions, bomb flasks, gems, and a few alchemical artifacts that have come into my possession over the years. Nothing too illegal or anything an alchemist of my caliber couldn’t have created, but a few things important enough to have some value in taking. If the story about her Element of Magic retaining its power on the other side holds true—and my alternate timeline doppelganger’s message seems to imply that it should—then my saddlebag of holding, a fairly powerful enchantment in and of itself, should in theory protect all of my magical possessions on the way through. Of course, that’s all a bunch of theorycraft right there. As much as I love to throw theory and intuition at the wall to see what’s not going to catch fire today, there comes a time when I have to stop relying on theory.

For all I know, this isn’t a stable time loop, and the previous me’s group succeeded in whatever they do, and my appearance would be both superfluous and largely confusing. I’m not sure meeting myself is really great for the timeline. Wouldn’t it suck to meet myself, only to be stuck there with me for a while and come to the realization that I’m a complete jerk?

Speaking of jerks, there’s also the whole matter of Twilight keeping the existence of both the portal and that other human world from me. After telling me a bit more about that other world, she actually asked me if I’m angry about her keeping it from me, and if I’m being genuine, I’m not sure of the answer. There’s no absolute answer to how I feel about this whole thing, and it kind of bugs me.

On the one hand, I’m not sure if I would have taken it as an option if she’d come to me about it as soon as she knew the option was there. Sure, I never wanted to give up my humanity and become a pony, but around the time Twilight came by this information, I was both heavily pregnant, and just settling into my new profession; would I even have been able to turn my back on all the studying and history I’d be leaving behind to go back to a human world where I would likely have no skills or trades in order to support my girls?

The other side of the coin, though, reminds me that it was, in a sense, my right to know I had the option to become human again. Even knowing that it wasn’t my world, it wouldn’t have killed her to pull me aside one day and just go, “Hey, Silver, if you ever wanna go on a vacation where you can be human again, I have this portal to a parallel world sitting in my library. You could take the girls and teach them about what it is to be human, or just go on a ‘Me Day’ and leave them with Lyra and Bon-Bon for the weekend.”

So condensing all of that down, am I mad? No, which is part of why I’m going at all. I can’t deny in the least that it’ll be nice to have honest-to-god real fingers again, and I can’t wait to eat a real hamburger and a guilt-free steak. For all the time I’ve spent eating genuine griffon cuisine, you just can’t get real beef in this world, on account of bovine sapience and all, without hitting some real shady and highly illegal places. So many human foods that I can catch up on.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that by the time I’m back at Twilight’s castle’s library, there’s a little streamer of drool coming from the corner of my mouth. There’s only split-second opportunity between the time I step through the door and the moment I realize that fact, Twilight’s already noticed me. Without missing a beat, Twilight covers her face with a hoof, and mutters something about me and food under her breath.

Over the next twenty minutes, she briefs me on things she thinks I might need to know, and a few I likely don’t. People I’m likely to encounter is the first to be gone over, mentioning namely Sunset Shimmer, the staff of the school, and the doppelgangers of the Elements, ‘Science Twilight’ included. I may even end up meeting the other Shining Armor and Cadance.

After that is how to get into contact with Sunset. Sadly, this information is woefully inadequate, especially for Twilight. No cellular number, no home address, nothing more substantial than meet her at the school, or show up at Pinkie’s apartment above Sugarcube Corner. Hopefully, that won’t be necessary. Adult Pinkie still scares the everloving fuck out of me, never mind a human teen Pinkie.

Of course, once she starts talking about her friends and how much she wants to see them again, I have to remind the bloody mare about the very reasons she’d been hesitant to go after meeting her own doppelganger, adding on that the current circumstances only make it more dangerous for her specifically to go. Too goody-goody for her own good.

“I think that’s everything, Silver,” Twilight concludes, levitating the book onto the armature built around the portal. “As much as I want to help protect my friends, I can’t keep the portal open in order to protect Equestria if there really is something going wrong on the other side. If you manage to help them fix everything, the book on her end will hopefully work correctly and you’ll be able to call me to open the portal.”

I stop to ponder implication of what remains unsaid. If it doesn’t work correctly, where would I be then? Stuck in another reality, unable to ever see my family again? Or would my message loop back into yet another timeline, severing the ties to my Equestria, meaning that if that Twilight opens the portal, I could effectively meet myself and cause some kind of paradox? Shit, is that why Twilight is so hesitant to spend time with her human counterpart?

“I see,” I murmur, stepping up to the mirror. “Tell me, Twilight. Is this going to hurt?”

The purple alicorn’s horn ignited, pouring raw magic into the portal machine and bringing the device to life. “Honestly?” she asks, glancing at me as she turns a bit pink. “Only if you forget you’re a biped or walk into a glass door.”

I stick my tongue out at Twilight, holding back a comment about her simply being a complete twit. Instead, I simply tell her, “Unlike you, I was born for this shit,” and run through the portal.

~ One Will Be Forgotten ~

Sunset Shimmer watched in grim fascination as Silver Script, the woman she’d met a mere two months earlier, charged blindly into the mass of writhing tentacles. Never had she met anyone, human or pony, who was that willing to throw their life away on a gamble that their sacrifice would not be in vain, yet there she was, the human turned mare turned human again, trusting blindly in Sunset’s half-remembered conviction that the Elements were only going to cause time to loop back on itself. What hardships caused a person to treat their life as a commodity in the name of the greater good?

As the woman’s shotgun tore into the creature’s seething appendages, Sunset noticed Twilight, Rarity, and Fluttershy cringing away from the sight. She didn’t blame them; they were only kids, after all. It was one thing for them to see simulated violence in the television and internet, but to actually experience it was another thing entirely. Sunset wanted to look away from the display too, but she had to witness this.

“I don’t like this,” Applejack said quietly, her fists clenched at her sides. “She shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“Totally!” Rainbow agreed, inclining her head to regard their leader. “We should be out there with her, kickin’ that thing’s butt too, not sitting here watching her attempt at being a one woman army.”

A low growl escaped Sunset’s throat, and she glared at her friends. “You think I don’t want to be out there helping her too?” She thrust her arm in Silver’s direction as the gray lady was snatched up by the abomination trying to push through into their world. “She’s buying us time in hopes that we can figure something out, to defeat that thing instead of just rolling the clock back, because today’s the day that thing breaks through completely, and if that thing gets loose, this world is doomed.” She clenched her eyes shut, even as the tears threatened to well up in her eyes. “We can’t help her, because if any of you die...” She grit her teeth at the thought. “I’m not sure I have enough power to do whatever it is the elements have been doing on its own.”

Twilight placed a comforting hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “Sunset, it’ll be alright,” she said, forcing Sunset to turn and face her. “So you didn’t manage to save the world this time. Silver Script is right: all we can do is bide our time until you are ready.”

A cry of “Come and get it, motherfucker! I hope I choke you!” reached Sunset’s ears, and she turned her head just in time to witness Silver Script plummet into the gaping maw now protruding from the rip in spacetime. They were out of time.

“Goodbye, Silver Script,” she mouthed. “I hope you’re right about the next world.”

Sunset shut her eyes once more, and began to focus on everything she held dear in this world. Her friendships and bonds, the place she’d carved for herself in this reality, even the hardships and the world itself: she thought of all of this and her desire to protect it, to not let this thing take them away from her. Deep in her heart, a tiny flame of magic surged to life. She embraced it, and nourished it with the hope that she might someday find a way to break this loop, allowing that flame to become a blazing inferno. “It’s time to Pony Up, girls.”

A burning spike of raw magic manifested upon her forehead, while two jets of fire burst free from her shoulders even as her hair lengthened and her clothes reformed into a dress. She opened her eyes and watched as her friends, even Twilight, began to manifest their ponytails and, in the case of Fluttershy and Rainbow, their wings one by one. All of them took up positions around her.

Reaching out with her own magic, Sunset quickly reached out to the essences of Honesty, Kindness, Generosity, Laughter, Loyalty, and Magic exuded by her friends, and gently pulled, dragging it into herself as one would take in a breath of air. The magical power built within her as she focused and channeled it, using her own body as the focus of the spell, as she had against the Dazzlings and even when she had purified the power-mad Twilight.

In that moment of raw, near godlike power, she caught a glimpse of insight, as she had countless times before. The Elements of Harmony would not work against this thing from outside time and space, and they knew it. Concepts and ideas of the most complicated spellwork she’d ever imagined flooded into her head. Greater than Starswirl, Princess Celestia, or even Princess Twilight could possibly manage, and for the fraction of a second it took for her to channel it all into the time travel spell she knew she had cast hundreds of times.

At the same time, a second instant of inspiration surged through her; Silver Script HAD been useful, and something had caused the portal to come alive for her to come through. That was my doing, too, she realized. The Elements certainly gave her more than enough power to do what she needed to do to ensure they had more time, so why not use the excess, rather than letting it go to waste? Even if she couldn’t open the portal permanently, maybe she could open it long enough to make sure Silver’s message went through, and allow someone to come through in the next iteration.

The world flashed around her, fading to darkness before being enveloped in a blinding explosion of color.

~ 01 ~

The ground trembled, rattling and jostling everything in Sunset Shimmer’s apartment. So violent was the shaking that Sunset was unable to sleep through it. She jerked upright, clutching the comforter to her pajamaed form, looking around in dazed alarm. Is it an earthquake? she wondered, fighting off a pang of deja vu.

Just when she was reaching for her cellphone, fully intent on shooting an SMS off to her friends, the tremors ceased. Sunset sat unmoving for many minutes. The idea of waiting to see if she felt any aftershocks before pestering her friends crossed her mind, and she had to admit that it was far more sensible. Was she even sure that it’d actually happened and she hadn’t simply been dreaming or experienced some magic-centric phenomena?

She frowned at this, but snatched up her phone anyway. The instant messaging app was no longer her destination however. Instead, she opened up the Whinny social media app and did a quick search for the keywords canterlot and earthquake. No messages came, even when she switched the feed to live updates. A spike of disappointment wedged itself in her belly, but she did her best to ignore it.

Was it only me that felt it? she thought, swiping ‘No’ when the app asked if she wanted notifications on new messages. It’s unlikely that it was a dream; the shaking persisted after I regained consciousness, and had a vague familiarity, but why?

The portal crossed her mind. It had been a while since Princess Twilight had been back, and the bridge between worlds had been devoid of any magic since then. She supposed if the portal had regained its connection rather suddenly, it would have produced a surge of magic perceptible to those who were sensitive to it. If more of her friends were as attuned to magic as she was, she might even have called them. As it stood, though, it was only Rarity and Twilight who had near-unicorn influence over magic, and both were still largely inexperienced with it.

She grimaced at the memory of Twilight’s first experience with magic. It had corrupted and empowered them, and, though she’d been purified, it left its scars. The girl was doing better, trying to help Sunset catalogue and study the effects Equestrian magic had on the humans exposed, but she hesitated when it came to Ponying Up herself. What would she think if she did experience that?

The clock on her phone told her it was quarter of six in the morning. It was far too early to get ready for classes at Canterlot High, but much too late to make it worthwhile to go back to sleep. Maybe I should just look over my homework until it’s time to get ready, she thought, rising from her bed to fetch some coffee.

She paused in the doorway, glancing back at her desk. Though it had a number of books stacked on it, she could easily spot the enchanted tome in the half-light of the pre-dawn hour. Princess Celestia had given her that book so that Sunset would never be without a means to contact her mentor, paired with a tome of her own. That very book then passed into Princess Twilight’s possession, and even allowed the genius alicorn to force the portal open on her own.

She crossed the room to her desk, wiping the last vestiges of sleep from the corners of her eyes, and looked down at the book. It looked like it always had, belying the cold hard fact that the book was as dead as the portal. When did I even notice that they were both nonfunctioning? No one could even feel the magic in them now.

With a sweep of her hand, her AP Physics textbook tumbled off of the tome. Putting her phone down, she traced her index finger across the beveled representation of her cutie mark, allowing herself a moment of whimsy by imagining that she could feel the stirring of magic beneath her fingertips. The book certainly hummed to the touch, as if it had never been devoid of magic.

Wait...

She placed her palm against the book, and sure enough, she felt the lively pulse of magic, like a heartbeat against her hand. Her eyes widened in shock, and she scrambled to flick on her desk lamp. There was no gentleness in her touch as she thumbed through the pages of the tome to the last entry with a blank page across from it.

Reaching for a pen with her free hand, she froze. There, scrawled across the page in her own neat handwriting, was a message she had no recollection of writing. At the top was a more hastily written one, also in her own handwriting. Am I still... dreaming?

Sunset,

This is going to seem strange reading a message to yourself you do not recall writing, and I can’t explain why in all the times this message has been sent, it hasn’t once reached Twilight. Maybe when I originally sent this, I’d intended for the page to only reach you in an attempt to warn you ahead of time, or maybe I hadn’t forced the portal open long enough for this page to send. Doesn’t matter in the long run, just keep in mind that what’s written here is not a joke.

She blinked. A message from herself? It was a ludicrous thought, yet the message was staring her right in the face. The strange thing was that it actually felt familiar, as if she had not only read it before, but even experienced the deja vu she was now experiencing before. She quickly decided she did not like the implications as she read on.

Sunset

In the coming weeks, Canterlot will be beset by intermittent tears in reality and a creature beyond mortal comprehension. At first, it will not be a problem for our friends, and we will successfully close the tears, but with each incursion, it grows in power, able to open larger and larger holes, before finally, it risks being able to come through. The Elements of Harmony can’t or won’t help, and can only send bits and pieces of remembrance back through time.

You must find a way to utilize the insight of previous timelines to defeat it, Sunset. It will not stop at trying to consume Canterlot or this world, and if it discovers the portal, regardless of its level of dormancy, it could find its way into Equestria, too. From there, it can only continue as a blight across the multiverse. The fate of countless lives and worlds hinge on your success.

Sure enough, at the bottom was her signature.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she groaned, once again reaching for the pen. “I’ve gotta write to Twilight about this. If I can feel magic in the book again, then the portal must at least be dormant again.”

Sunset paused as she flicked to the next blank page; it wasn’t so blank either. She blinked again. Unlike the previous page, this handwriting was messy and unfamiliar. No, that wasn’t quite right, either. It wasn’t messy so much as it was Equestrian mouth cursive adapted for handwriting. The author was incredibly vulgar but to the point. Whoever sent the message was at least familiar with Twilight, but also very familiar with human profanity. The message also implied that the portal was indeed live right now, and mirrored the sentiments of the previous Sunset.

Placing the tip of her pen down on the parchment of the next fresh page, she felt a powerful surge of magic, both beneath the pages of the tome and radiating from the direction of the portal, almost as if the barrier between worlds was fighting something. She couldn’t imagine the threat the two entries had warned against would be here so quickly, nor through the portal, so what...

The portal changes things, she reminded herself. If something came through that wasn’t supposed to be here, like the Element of Magic, the portal would try to resist, or break down the enchantment. Any sufficiently powerful enchantment wouldn’t be able to be broken down without causing a catastrophic error, though, so it’d have to work around it. My book is proof of it.

As quick as the sensation came, it went, and with it, she could feel the magic once again leaving the book. “No!” she shouted in frustration. “Why is the universe conspiring to keep me from getting Princess Twilight’s advice!?”

This time when she grabbed her phone, she did not hesitate to open the SMS app and send a group message to her friends.

Sighing, she closed the messaging application. “If an Equestrian has come through, I better find them before they get into too much trouble; Twilight was a disaster when she came through.”

Sunset glanced down at her phone’s display and then shook her head. Flicking into her contacts, she selected the direct line to Principal Celestia’s office—a number she’d been given to call only in the event of otherworldly matters. The counterpart to her former mentor wouldn’t be in for another hour or so, but she could leave a message. “Principal Celestia, it’s Sunset Shimmer. I am probably going to be absent today. Someone came through from Equestria and I need to find them ASAP. I don’t think this is going to be another Dazzlings or Friendship Games incident—” She didn’t want to mention the messages she’d received until she had more information. “—but I’m not taking any chances after the portal’s been offline for four months.”

With that, she quickly shucked her pajamas into the laundry basket and began hurriedly dressing. If she was lucky, she could still make the bus and get there before the pony got too far. In her experience, it was rather disorienting going bipedal from quadrupedal, and Princess Twilight had only really gained some grace after her second trip through the portal. Even then, the Princess still had ponyesque mannerisms when it came to her hands. How hard could it be to spot one pony turned human in Canterlot?