Twilight peered at the filly. She didn't look like much: she was a bit on the scrawny side, her mane done up into a pair of sloppy pigtails, and her eyes were bright and shining with happiness as she stacked books with her gamboge-coated friend. Were it not for the fact that she already knew otherwise, Twilight could have easily dismissed her as an ordinary little foal.
But she did know otherwise. Starlight Glimmer was anything but ordinary.
"Sunburst and I did everything together," said the filly’s grown-up counterpart softly from beside Twilight. "In fact, I don't remember us ever being apart. Until today."
The book stack that the filly and her friend had been building up groaned and collapsed. It would have showered filly-Starlight with books, if little Sunburst—the gamboge unicorn colt—hadn't jumped up and heroically caught them in his magical aura.
As the younger Starlight looked to him gratefully—adoringly, Twilight thought—a ring of magic on Sunburst's flank signaled the appearance of his cutie mark. He whinnied in surprise and delight and galloped out into the street to show it off, leaving behind a dejected heliotrope filly who merely sat and watched from a distance.
"And just like that, my friend was gone," Starlight continued. She sounded as heartbroken as her younger self looked. "His family recognized his magical talent and sent him off to Canterlot. I never saw him again."
"Well, why not?" demanded Spike.
"Because of his cutie mark! He got his, and I didn't! He moved on, and I didn't! I stayed here and never made another friend because I was so afraid another cutie mark would take them away, too!"
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Twilight snorted a little. "That's ridiculous. A cutie mark can't take your friends away."
"Not everypony's lucky enough to get her cutie mark at the same time as her friends," Starlight hissed.
It began to sink in that this was what Starlight had been so upset about the entire time. Twilight had nearly died multiple times because of this pony's inability to deal with losing a friend when she was a filly. Some of those worlds had lost thousands, maybe millions of ponies. This was what had created all those nightmarish alternate realities. This was what had created Our Town.
This pitiful grudge.
“This is why you did everything?” she blurted out.
Starlight cocked her head slightly. “What do you mean?”
“This is what made Our Town? This is what made all those broken worlds? You—You had a falling out with your friend when you were eight years old and you never got over it?”
“Don’t… Don’t put it like that… It sounds pathetic when you say it like that…” muttered the unicorn.
“That’s because it is pathetic, Starlight. I’m really sorry, but you need to understand that.” Twilight gently touched a hoof to her shoulder. "It makes me angry, too, because you're a smart mare, with a lot to offer the world, and yet you've spent your life consumed by... Well, this."
When Starlight replied, it was through clenched teeth. "Stop patronizing me."
"I'm not patronizing you... I'm trying to help you understand that there's more out there than this well of hate you've trapped yourself in. It's pathetic. All of this is pathetic. And you deserve better than a pathetic life dictated by this petty grudge. You deserve happiness."
Starlight's eyes narrowed. She let out humorless bark of laughter and jerked away from Twilight. "Who do you think you are to tell me what I deserve?"
"I know you deserve better than this," insisted Twilight.
"You don't know anything, then. You know nothing at all!"
"You're right," said the alicorn carefully, "I know nothing. I'm just... I don't want you to have to live your life without friendship, Starlight Glimmer. Being all alone is something I'd never wish on my worst enemy."
“You couldn't possibly understand what it’s like to have no friends!” Starlight snarled, her posture quickly turning aggressive. “And how could you ever possibly understand? How could you ever know how much it hurts to be alone? You’re the Princess of Friendship! You’ve always had friends! Y—”
“Twilight didn’t even have any friends before she moved to Ponyville!” interrupted Spike. “She thought it was a waste of time! But she didn’t make a whole creepy cult about not having cutie marks and not being friends because of it, unlike some ponies!”
“At least I chose to start fixing the problem instead of becoming part of it!” Starlight was unmistakably blinking back tears now.
“Please, Starlight,” said Twilight, “please think about what you’ve been doing. You just visited an entire future where everything was wiped out because of you and you're still trying to say that what you’re doing the right thing! This isn’t worth it! I’m so sorry, but it’s time t—”
She didn't get any further, because Starlight was on top of her then, slamming her forehooves into Twilight’s face. Though Twilight fought back, her horn was already smothered by Starlight's own magic and Starlight herself seemed an immovable object atop her. The unicorn's face had twisted into a mask of rage; when she spoke it sounded more like the fury of a wild animal than the words of a pony.
"What do you know?” Starlight snarled, bringing her hooves down as hard as she could. “You don't know anything about me! It's his fault! He left me alone! You don't know anything! Don't ever tell me what's worth it! You're just a pretty princess with a pretty princess cutie mark! You don't know anything about being worth it! You don't know anything about earning your wor—"
Mid-sentence, mid-word, Starlight recoiled with a screech and scuffled away from Twilight, leaving the dazed alicorn roll over and half-crawl away from her attacker. Once she’d reconnected somewhat with the world, Twilight gingerly got back to hooves, though with her balance still not quite right it took a couple of tries.
She found Starlight holding Spike several feet above the ground with her magic. Two claws’ worth of deep gashes had almost completely replaced Starlight's left cutie mark with a mess of blood and muscle. It was Spike, Twilight realized, who had stopped the unicorn from beating her half to death.
"So this is how we're going to play," panted Starlight. Not only was she ignoring her bleeding wound, but she seemed almost invigorated.
"Put him down!" Twilight ordered, trying not to let worry seep into her voice. "Don't you dare hurt him, Starlight!"
"Don't worry, Twilight! She can't hurt me!" yelled Spike, which prompted Starlight to spin him around so she could leer at him.
"Can't I?" she asked.
"No, you moron! I'm a baby dragon. There's, like, pretty much nothing you can do to hurt a baby dragon!"
"Oh, well! Clearly I made a mistake tangling with you, didn't I?"
A victorious little grin crossed Spike's face. "Yeah, you did. Now lemme go or I'll roast you alive!"
Starlight threw back her head and laughed. It was a crazed laugh, the kind that maniacs gave in magical theatrics. "Did you hear that, Twilight? I should let him go or he'll roast me alive! Do you think I should let him go?"
"Yes!" replied Twilight immediately. "Let him go. He's, uh, a very ferocious dragon to his enemies!"
"Well... He does seem like the type, Twilight! I’m very afraid! Mister Spike, are you a ferocious dragon to your enemies? Do you like to set them on fire?"
"Yes I am! Lemme go!"
The unicorn whickered loudly. "If you're so ferocious, mister Spike, I dare you to set me on fire!"
"I… I will if you don't let me go!" said Spike, though he sounded more blustery than anything now.
“Oh, no, mister Spike… I think I’ll await your firebreath. Come on, give me your best shot.”
"Starlight, for Celestia's sake, let him go now!" Twilight lit up her horn, only to have Starlight rapidly project a telekinetic lasso onto the alicorn's horn that squeezed the base until Twilight's nebulous spell died away.
"Tch. You've obviously never had to fight for your life, Princess," sneered Starlight. "Here's a tip: raw power isn't all there is to it. You can cast all the shield spells and teleport all you want, but I'm just used to casting faster."
A small crowd had gathered around the group by then, whispering about the mysterious purple princess and the dragon and the bleeding mare who apparently looked like one of the ponies in town. Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight saw filly-Starlight peeking out from a doorway to watch with wide eyes. She wondered, for a moment, what the foal must have been thinking about this exchange, and if she realized that the heliotrope mare with the bloody flank was her own adult self.
"Dude, if you don't put me down in, like, thirty seconds, I'm gonna burn your fa—"
Starlight plastered some turquoise magic over Spike's mouth, silencing him. "You and I both know you're not going to set me on fire. The only thing that could convince you to harm a pony is protecting your hoard… and your hoard is clearly your friends. I’m not hurting any of your friends right now, am I? No.”
She turned back to Twilight.
"I'm angry," she explained—rather unnecessarily, as Twilight had figured that out a long, long time ago. "You took advantage of me."
"What do you mean?" asked Twilight, a bit confused by the accusation.
"You tricked me into showing you the worst moment of my life, Twilight. The moment when everything went wrong. You made me think that maybe I could trust another pony, and then you mocked me when I told you how I was hurt. You are just like everypony else, but you are worse. You made me trust you just so that you could hurt me."
"Starlight... I didn't trick you. I was angry and I'm sorry—"
"No excuse," sneered Starlight. "You are the embodiment of ego and inequality. You think that the world revolves around you. I was like that too, once." She glanced ever-so-briefly at the filly version of herself hiding in the doorway. "I thought the world revolved around me. But now I know it doesn't. I'm going to teach you about the world, Twilight."
There was something horrible in her eyes as she said it.
Then Starlight cast a spell that made her horn glow golden. Something far in the back of Twilight's mind remembered that only very powerful spells were able to override natural horn auras and produce unique colors, but consciously she was more focused on the fact that Starlight's spell conjured a spear of light through Spike's heart.
"SPIKE! NO!"
But she knew the spell, and she knew Spike could not survive it. No dragon could, for it was created solely to kill them. Twilight watched, seemingly for an eternity, as Spike's warm eyes went cold.
Eventually, Starlight's spear of light faded away, leaving a gaping red hole behind, and she flung the body over towards Twilight. The sound of the little dragon scuffing against the ground broke a spell Twilight hadn’t even been aware of. She threw herself on his motionless body, desperately searching for some sign of life—but there was nothing.
"Welcome to real life," she heard Starlight say, just before a roaring vacuum opened up over her head and pulled her into the familiar tunnel.
Moments later, she tumbled into the fluffy white skies of Cloudsdale. Feeling impossibly drained, Twilight just flopped over onto a cloud and cradled Spike in her hooves, wrapping her wings protectively around him, and cried.
"Oh, Spike, I'm so sorry," she sobbed. "I should have protected you…"
She stroked his spines gently. He'd only been a baby dragon; only twenty, the mental equivalent of about ten for a pony, as dragons matured very slowly. This was not his time to go. He was supposed to live for thousands of years and reign across Equus as Spike the Brave and Glorious.
This was not how Twilight had imagined parting with her… well, she didn’t really know what to call Spike. Her number-one assistant; her best friend; almost a little brother, almost a son; a creature she'd raised from the time he'd hatched from his egg. And now he was gone.
"Hurts to lose a friend, doesn't it?”
Twilight whipped around. Starlight Glimmer was floating in the air not far from the cloud, surrounded by a turquoise aura. She had a strange I-told-you-so expression plastered across her face.
“You!” snarled Twilight. "You murdered Spike! How could you?"
"I wanted to make a point," Starlight explained, shrugging.
"A point?” Waves of anger rolled and crashed within the alicorn’s heart. "You wanted to make a point?”
"I didn't feel like you were taking me seriously. Now you'll listen."
"That's it? You murdered Spike just to get my attention?”
"Well, he did also give me this horrible wound. And he was your friend, and I hate your friends. But that's beside the point. What m—"
Starlight was indeed very fast: she'd had the glittering turquoise shield up before Twilight even finished casting. Twilight recognized it as a variant of one of Shining Armor's favored defensive spells.
A barrage of spells bounced harmlessly off the bubble. No matter what Twilight threw at Starlight’s shield, it simply wouldn’t break. Few ponies could have been able to maintain such a complex shield under such a bombardment—but Starlight hardly seemed to be straining. Either the unicorn possessed the magic of ten alicorns, or else she had modified the shield spell to make it more efficient.
Twilight tried teleporting inside the shield, but always found herself back on the same cloud each time. Even smashing a hammer of pure magic against the thing did nothing. She tried funneling her own magic into it, overloading it, but found that Starlight could simply cast two shields at once and leave one to handle the overload.
At last, Twilight was finally unable to summon the magic to cast another spell, and sank down into the cloud with tears flowing freely down her cheeks, too exhausted even to stand.
"Well, that was certainly worth the effort you put into it, wasn't it?" said Starlight as she approached the spent alicorn and settled into the cloud with a soft puff.
"I hate you," sobbed Twilight. "I hate you..."
Her words triggered a cacophony of derisive laughter from Starlight.
"You think you hate me?" the unicorn sneered, lifting Twilight's chin with telekinesis so she could look into her eyes. "Oh, Princess, you don't know the meaning of the word! But I'll show you. I'm going to make you hate yourself almost as much as I hate you. More, even, perhaps. You can't hate somepony else if you don't hate yourself, after all! I'll make you hate the air you breathe!”
Twilight began to cast another weak stunning spell, but Starlight telekinetically punched Twilight in the horn, further disabling her already exhausted magic.
"I almost fell for it, Twilight. Almost. You had fooled me into thinking that maybe I could trust you; that maybe you really were just trying to help me. You made me think that you didn't deserve this. But then you ruined it. You showed me what you're really like. You laughed at me and you said those things to me. You brought this on yourself."
"So you murdered Spike to punish me?" Twilight blurted out, cutting off Starlight's rambling. "You killed an innocent baby dragon just to hurt me!"
"No, no, I killed the dragon to show you that I'm serious," replied Starlight, almost giggling now. Her eyes were darting from one side to the other. Twilight couldn't tell if she was excited or nervous. "You weren't taking me seriously, Twilight. You were playing with my mind, and it's not supposed to work that way.
“I was weak when I started!” she went on. “I made this scroll for you, but I was afraid. I had doubts, and I let you manipulate me because of my doubts. You took advantage of me. You almost made me rip up the scroll, even! But now I know better. Now I don't have any doubts."
For just a moment, Spike's death wasn't on the forefront of Twilight's mind anymore. Rather, she was rapidly being consumed by a mixture of confusion and alarm. She’d thought Starlight’s plan was to erase the sonic rainboom from history—but the unicorn seemed to be thinking along a different line.
"Starlight," she said, "w-what are you talking about?"
Starlight's eyes opened unnaturally wide and she grinned manically. That horrible thing that had been present when she'd killed Spike was there in her eyes again. "Twilight, I'm going to... teach you some things, hmm? You like to learn, right?"
Twilight backed. away from Starlight’s frightening gaze, only to have the unicorn follow her. Starlight pressed her nose up against Twilight's, glaring into the alicorn's eyes.
"I'm going to teach you about equality. About reality. About... about... Don't you get it? I'm no better than you. You're no better than me. We're hardly that different, Twilight Sparkle. Once I break you of your ego, you'll see that. You just need some practical experience."
Shoving Starlight away, Twilight snarled, "You're wrong, because I'm not a murderer, unlike you! We weren't that different until you murdered Spike!"
"I can bring him back," said Starlight, almost offhandedly.
Twilight's breath hitched. "W-What?"
"I take it you didn't actually read the entire scroll," sneered Starlight, holding up the scroll and waving it around a bit. It vanished into thin air a second later; probably deposited into a pocket dimension for safe-keeping. "It doesn't just loop time back to that particular day in Cloudsdale, you idiot. How do you think I managed to bring us to a different time and location? It's certainly not just a single spell!"
"But... necromancy... what it does... you can't do that to him! I won't allow it!" Twilight shuddered at the implications. She did not want Spike to end up as a mindless zombie.
"For Aequitas’ sake... Didn't you read the documents about me that’ve been circulating around the Royal Guard offices? I thought you liked to read."
"N-No... I mean, yes, I like books! But I didn't even know they had information on you. The Guard, that is—"
Starlight just laughed outright upon hearing this.
"You truly are a special pony, Princess. If you'd done your homework, like a good student, you'd know that one of the fields I specialize in is chronomancy. Expanding windows of time, altering perceptions of chronological passage, clock stuff, and so on. And I've gone further than any chronomancer ever has, even Starswirl the Bearded! This scroll lets me control time absolutely! I can do things that were hardly even theoretical before I perfected them!"
"...Chrononecromancy," Twilight realized. "You’re talking about reversing the events that led to death."
"Very astute. Yes, the spell includes chrononecromancy. Perfect chrononecromancy, I'd like to add."
"Y-You can really bring him back?" Tears welled up in Twilight's eyes.
A horrid little smile bloomed on Starlight's face. "Yes, Twilight. I can resurrect the dead—Anypony, not just the dragon. I can bring back your friends, too. I can kill you and resurrect you as many times as I want. I can and will reset this timeline as often as I please. There's no escaping from what I've created for you. You are my student now."
"Your student?" repeated Twilight. “I’d rather not learn how to b-brainwash ponies, thank you…”
“But Twilight, I thought you loved to learn! And, anyway, you don’t have a choice. You’re going to learn whether you want to or not. This is a life lessons class, dear.”
Twilight shuddered and hugged Spike closer to her body. She wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. But she knew the only way to get Spike back was to get the scroll from Starlight, and if Starlight was as intelligent as Twilight knew she was, she’d made it so that only she herself could retrieve it. That meant she had to deal with Starlight if she wanted to get Spike back. And, anyway, she didn’t think her horn was up for a teleportation spell yet, and she had a feeling Starlight would just drag her back if she tried to fly away.
“You are going to learn the meaning of life,” continued Starlight, her voice strangely soft and hollow. "Life… is about loss. Hurt. Abandonment.
“It is about knowing that every pony you care about is going to throw you in the garbage one day, and that there is nothing you can do about it. It is about realizing that no matter what you accomplish, you will never, ever be worthy of love, and accepting it instead of fighting uselessly against it. It is about recognizing that you yourself are no better than the pony you blame your problems on. You are all equally worthless."
"That's... that's such an awful way to look at the world," mumbled Twilight. “No wonder you grew up to be such a… such a… a monster… if that’s how you see things.”
"Yes," Starlight said, in a tone of general agreement, "but it's the way things are. I'll make you understand. We have all the time there could ever be, Twilight. We'll never age thanks to my spell, and we'll never run out of resets. I can do this forever... quite literally."
"I don't... I don't understand any of this," Twilight admitted. "What's your goal? What's the point? Why are you doing this?"
"I'm doing this to hurt you," the unicorn said with another smile. "I made this scroll for you, just so that I could torment you in our own private hell forever. You took everything from me, Twilight Sparkle. I made one tiny place in Equestria for myself, a place where the ponies were as worthless as me, and you destroyed it and left me to drown alone. I'll take your friends away from you a thousand times. I'll kill everyone you love. I'll make you watch as I rip, and cut, and mutilate the innocent, your friends, and again, and again, and on, and on.
"And you'll join me in the madness, Twilight, because you're just like me. We're not different; you just think we are. Oh, you're going to be afraid at first, but soon, you're going to find that you can't contain your hatred for me anymore. And then I'll give you targets. And it'll be my face you're thinking of, but you're still cutting the throat of an innocent pony. You'll see. I'll break you. I'll drive you insane. I'll make you into the beast that haunts your own nightmares.
“This is what a pony is, Twilight Sparkle. It's a seed of insanity. A monster.”
Twilight stared at Starlight's mad grin with wide eyes, fighting back the urge to throw up. "You're crazy… You’re completely, totally crazy… You’re the monster…”
"I'm a pony," spat Starlight. "I never said I was anything else. Not even in Our Town. But I was content there, and you ruined it, and now I'm going to cut you down to size, so shut up."
She flicked her horn casually and a turquoise spell shaped like a buzzsaw whirled out of it. The thing was almost a meter wide; nearly the size Twilight felt her eyes grow to when she connected Starlight's comment with the spell. But the magic was apparently not meant for Twilight at all, and the words seemed to have been incidental: the spell whizzed off into some clouds and vanished. Noticing that Twilight was shaking, Starlight raised an eyebrow.
"What are you so nervous about? That wasn't aimed at you. Just someone you'll never know in a few years. Hey, do you think you might forget them if you stay in here long enough? Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to keep them fresh in your mind. Eheheh."
For a moment, Twilight didn't understand what Starlight was talking about... and then she remembered where and when they were. Her breath caught in her chest and her ears pinned back in horror. Starlight hadn’t been aiming for Twilight at all.
For a split second, Twilight pictured two lifeless blue chunks tumbling, inevitably, to the ground far below. A lump grew in her throat.
"So, here's the deal.” Starlight was no longer sitting on the cloud—she'd gone back to levitating again. "You have a couple of options. You can kill me, take the scroll, and reset everything to your liking. I don't go down easy, as you’ve seen, so by the time you manage that, you'll have so much innocent blood on your hooves that you'll never be the same pony again. You'll have become the abyss you gazed into, so to speak.”
She paused to idly file a section of her hoof that had been chipped slightly, probably when she’d attacked Twilight not long before.
“If you want to play along with me,” she went on, “I'll reset everything, but only after you've completed your life lessons and become enough of a monster to please me. Alternatively, you could just refuse to take part in violence at all, and so instead I'll just kill everyone you care about again and again for the rest of time. You'll go insane that way, too, and I’ll probably have even more fun. It's safe to say that no matter what you do, I'm going to win."
Still gazing out at the vast expanse of sky where Starlight’s spell had probably slaughtered Rainbow Dash, Twilight didn’t say anything for some time. What was on her mind was less the words Starlight had spoken to her, and more the realization that the unicorn now wanted to utterly destroy her and everything that was dear to her.
Starlight was far more unhinged than any of them had ever suspected, Twilight now knew; there was no telling what she was capable of.
And at the same time, she knew that she could not let Starlight break her. She thought of her friends, and all the things they had taught her over the years—Rainbow’s loyalty; Pinkie’s laughter; Fluttershy’s kindness; Rarity’s generosity; Applejack’s honesty; and all the other friends she’d made since she’d come to Ponyville. Twilight thought of her family, and the Princesses, and poor Spike, and really everyone she’d ever met.
Each and every one of them had helped her learn something about the magic of friendship, and now each and every one of them were counting on her to make sure that some version of the things she cared about survived.
“No you won’t,” she said at last, turning away from the open sky and facing Starlight again.
They had been sitting in silence for so long that Starlight asked, “Excuse me?”
“You won’t win,” explained Twilight. “You’re not going to break me.”
Starlight's eyebrow rose skeptically. "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. The world is counting on me. I won't let them down."
"Spare me your narcissism.” Starlight rolled her eyes. “You haven’t even seen what I’m going to put you through, Twilight. I’m sure you’re thinking it can’t be worse than what you’re already going through. But you’re wrong.”
"We'll see about that," Twilight murmured.
Starlight grimaced. “I suppose we will indeed.”
Twilight gathered up Spike and cradled his body close to her chest. She might have lost him, but she could still get him back, and she would never, ever allow another pony to fall in the same way.
There was a long, empty silence, and then Starlight made a show of popping her joints.
“As much as I’d like to stay here and mope,” she said cheerfully, “We do have to get going. Time waits for nopony but me, Princess! Before we start our adventure properly, though, I’m going to allow you a few questions—just in case something went over your head.”
Author's Note
Hello and welcome to Don't Break
I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this story. There's a list of people on the front page. Don't Break will update once a week with chapters of 1000 to 2500 words.
This story was originally going to be highly interactive, but I decided to tone that down a bit. However, you're free to give suggestions for what Twilight should do. In fact, I highly encourage people to give suggestions and discuss ideas, since each chapter will end on a choice that Twilight has to make. The important points of this fic have been scripted already, but there's a lot of room for improvisation in between!
Let's see if Twilight can keep her mind in one piece!
Twilight's head buzzed with a dozen conflicting feelings. She didn't quite know what any of them were, beyond the void of grief that flared whenever she thought of Spike, but they were powerful, and each one pulled her in a different direction.
She wanted to race after Rainbow Dash, to make sure that her friend was alright after what Starlight had done. This version of Rainbow had never spoken to her, or to any Twilight Sparkle for that matter, but she was still a loyal little filly who deserved better than to die in the crossfire of a revenge scheme orchestrated by a mad mare.
Her life, and every life, was worth something and deserved to be defended.
But… there was a tiny voice in the back of her mind that whispered, too—Rainbow could not possibly be alive. Starlight Glimmer was too skilled a spellcaster to have missed that shot. And that little part of Twilight’s mind conjured horrible images of what she might see if she tried to save Dash and found her already… gone.
"Tick, tick, tick," said Starlight. "There's only so much time in the day, filly. Better get to your questions."
"Shut up. Please, just shut up," Twilight mumbled.
She looked from Starlight to the hole the sawblade spell had sheared through the clouds. Once again, she couldn't help but imagine Rainbow falling towards the earth, screaming for help that would never come as red blood spouted from a severed wing or a missing leg.
"D—Did you kill Rainbow with that spell?" she asked in a tiny voice.
Starlight shrugged noncommittally. "It depends on whether anypony can sew the pieces back together. If they didn’t liquefy when they hit the ground, that is."
The very thought of having to look at Rainbow’s remains smeared on the dirt was too much for Twilight. Ears pinned back in distress, she took a deep, shaky breath.
“You k-killed…” she stammered. “You murdered…”
“If you don’t ask a real question in five seconds, I’m going to grind you and your dragon into paste.”
Twilight’s mouth worked fruitlessly for well over five seconds before she was able to string together a coherent request.
“Why… Why did you d-do it?”
“I’ve done a lot of things in my life. You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“All of this…”
“We already had this conversation,” Starlight sneered. “You destroyed my world, so I’ll destroy yours. Next question.”
“But—”
“Next question, Sparkle!”
Twilight recoiled slightly. “O-Okay… Sorry… Um…" She said nothing for a while, and then: "How did you… break time... like this?”
“I see what you’re doing,” said the unicorn, tutting, “and it’s not going to work. That’s my secret, dear, and mine alone. Suffice to say it’s related to this rotten filth on my flanks. You could never replicate it anyway.”
Biting her lip, Twilight glanced at Starlight’s flank, which, she hadn’t realized until then, was still bleeding from the wounds Spike had inflicted on it. Her heart clenched horribly at the thought of his fate, and she searched desperately for something to distract herself.
“What… what is your special talent, exactly?” she blurted out, realizing she didn't actually know.
Starlight’s eyes met hers. They were suddenly darker than Twilight had ever seen them before. “It’s magic.”
“Oh…” the alicorn whispered, drawing back from Starlight's unusually aggressive response.
“You have something else you want to ask me, don’t you?” It was a statement, not a question. “Something about my cutie mark, perhaps?”
“I-I don’t know what you mean,” said Twilight shakily. She really didn't; Starlight's cutie mark was of no particular interest to her.
To her surprise, Starlight actually dropped the matter. “We’ll see about that. One last question, then.”
“I don’t have any other—”
“One more question!”
Twilight fiddled with her hooves, looking down at the earth below. She felt very small before Starlight, which was absurd since Starlight was probably one of the most piteously thin mares she’d ever met, and was perhaps two-thirds of the alicorn’s height. It was the willingness to murder that truly terrified her. Even Tirek had only drained magic; a terrible fate, yes, but at least he left his victims alive. That look on Starlight’s face when she’d killed Spike, the sheer exhilaration—
And then she knew what to ask: “This... isn’t the first time you’ve killed, is it?”
Starlight’s reaction was, in some ways, predictable based on her previous behavior; and in other ways, it was far, far more frightening. At first, she looked shocked and offended at the accusation; then she pasted that monstrous grin across her face; but her ears were pinned back, her eyes kept nervously flickering every which way but at Twilight’s own—
“Yeah,” the unicorn finally admitted. The absolute hate remained, but at the same time, she looked mildly bothered by the turn their chat had taken—like a schoolfoal trying to avoid talking about a homework assignment they hadn’t done.
“How many? Who were they?” Twilight croaked, but Starlight held up a hoof.
“Don’t pry into things that aren’t your business, please. It’s not polite. And you should be polite to me, Twilight. I’m your only real friend.”
A soft puff drew Twilight's attention to the cloud in front of her. Starlight had conjured a set of saddlebags, emblazoned with the iron-grey equalization sign on each side, and tossed them over. Opening the pockets, Twilight found that they were empty. She looked questioningly at the unicorn, who rolled her eyes and scoffed.
"For the dragon," Starlight explained. "And whatever other sentimental garbage you want to stuff in there as time goes on."
“The dragon has a name, and it's Spike! He's not garbage and don't you ever dare call him anything of the kind, you—you—evil bitch! You are not my friend, and you never will be!”
"Hmm," said Starlight, unperturbed. "I give you nice things, and you call me a bitch. I'm almost tempted to reevaluate my decision to give you a second chance at saving your colorful little friend."
Twilight blinked a couple of times. “What?”
"This is your first time, Twilight," the unicorn explained, her upper lip drawing back into a sneer. "The world isn't gentle—but I'll be. Just for you, just this once. I'll give you a chance to do everything over. Maybe this time you can collect the rainbow filly's pieces before they splatter on the ground. Does that sound appealing?"
“Yes,” said Twilight in a strangled voice as all her indignation simply drained away. "Please... let me help Rainbow. Don't let this be her fate."
Starlight crossed her forelegs and laughed caustically. “Put the dead dragon in the saddlebag, Twilight. We're going for a ride, whether you like the destination or not."
Giving Spike a small, gentle kiss on the forehead, Twilight slid him into one of the saddlebag's pockets and closed it, leaving a small opening in the flap for him to peer out of. He was dead, but it seemed wrong to simply throw him into a bag and forget about him. Now he could watch what went on along with Twilight.
“I love you, Spike,” she said to him. The idea that he could hear her and was cheering her on made her feel a little less awful inside. “I’ll always love you. You’re the best dragon.”
"Now here's what's going to happen..." the unicorn was saying. "I altered the scroll to only reset the timeline when I command it to. I can do all kinds of things with it that you haven’t even seen yet. But you’re about to. Are you ready?"
Twilight just nodded slowly.
“I want you to say yes,” Starlight taunted. “Say it out loud.”
“I... I don't suppose I can convince you to just sit down and talk a little first...?" Twilight replied with a deep, heavy sigh.
The manic grin on Starlight's face turned into an ugly snarl for a brief moment. "Of course not, you incomprehensible idiot."
"Alright… then… yes, I’m ready.”
“Excellent! Off we go!”
An enormous sucking sound overhead signaled the return of the vortex.
It was all over very quickly, leaving Twilight to flounder about in the air for a moment before she regained her bearings. As soon as she confirmed that she wasn’t flying straight at the ground, she checked to make sure Spike was still safe—He was—and then she looked wildly about for Starlight Glimmer.
But Starlight had vanished.
Twilight immediately channeled as much magic into her horn as she possibly could. Though she was still exhausted, she was able to get just enough energy to achieve a proper teleport spell and send herself to the site of the race, whose location she'd memorized from teleporting around it constantly during her earlier battle with Starlight.
They hadn't started yet. Rainbow and the colts were at the starting line, and Fluttershy was holding the flag between her teeth. Quite a few of their peers were milling around the sidelines, watching. Spreading her wings, Twilight took a powerful leap from the clouds and raced towards them.
"Rainbow Dash!" she cried. "Rainbow Dash, you need to get out of here right now!"
Rainbow, as well as most of the other fillies and colts, turned to look. She wore an expression of mild irritation.
"I'm allowed to fly here!" Rainbow yelled back, voice squeaking indignantly. "My flight ban doesn't apply on or near the foundations 'cause they're technically not school grounds, they're public domain! Cloudsdale v. Stuka, go look it up!"
A distant, mostly disengaged part of Twilight's brain—the same one that had wanted to know about Starlight's time magic—was more than a little curious as to how Rainbow Dash was able to quote legal findings to support her activities as a filly. The majority, however, was more focused on the fact that the seconds were slipping by even as she touched down near the race's starting line.
"Rainbow, you're in danger and you need to get as far away from here as possible," Twilight explained, panting. The speed at which she'd been flying had taken a lot out of her. "There's a pony somewhere around here who wants to hurt you very badly. She already killed y—She already killed another filly not too long ago and she's after you now."
She half expected a cocky response along the lines of "I'm Rainbow Dash! I can handle anything by myself!". Instead, the filly's eyes grew wide and she took a half a step back. Rainbow tried very hard to hide a stammer when she spoke, but it worked its way into her words nonetheless.
"R-Really? She k-killed a filly? Oh, man... Not cool... Not cool..."
"You have to get somewhere safe, Rainbow," the alicorn insisted, even as she scanned the clouds for any trace of heliotrope. "Please! She could be here any minute!"
Dash bit her lip. "But then who's g-gonna race for Fluttershy? I gotta do it, I said I would, I-I can't leave her hangin'..."
"Dude, chill out. We can race tomorrow or somethin'. It's not a big deal," said one of the colts.
"Yeah it is, Hoops! If I don't beat you, you're gonna keep bullyin' her!"
Glancing up at Twilight, Hoops said, "I've never bullied anypony in my life, Dash. I dunno what you're talking about. Not unless you wanna tell the Princess there about what you do to Whirlybird."
"You shut up about that! Whirlybird is an awful tribalist piece of sh—"
"BE QUIET!" Twilight yelled, wings flaring to their full, impressive span in her agitation. "We don't have time for this! Rainbow, we need to leave now!" Look, this mare, her name is Starlight Glimmer, and she's absolutely insane. It's a long story, but she wants to kill Rainbow, and she's—"
"—been here this entire time." Starlight rose slowly into the center of the open racetrack, seated comfortably on thin air and glowing with a turquoise aura. "Really, you should have just grabbed her and run, Twilight. Now your friend is going to die."
There was a wild, blissful grin on her face—like that of a mare who'd spent her entire life in captivity and had just tasted freedom for the very first time—as she swiveled her head toward Rainbow Dash and her horn lit up with a spinning rainbow of colors.
Starlight wound up her left hoof, which was starting to glow as well, and made a violent underhanded tossing motion. A pinwheel-shaped rainbow of light erupted from it and spun rapidly through the air with a distinct whining sound, much like the larger buzzsaw spell she’d cast earlier.
Twilight did the very first thing that came to mind: she cast a very simple, very basic summoning spell on Rainbow Dash. The filly, who'd been staring at the rotating wheel on the end of Starlight's horn with wide, frightened eyes, was yanked off her hooves and dragged into Twilight's grasp. As soon as she felt Dash squirming in her forelegs, she cast the most powerful shield spell her still-recovering magical reserves would allow, hoping she'd been faster than Starlight.
But the spell never touched Dash, nor Twilight, nor the shield; in fact, it had not been aimed anywhere close to the two. It whirred past them until it hit home and bit into flesh—and then it produced a sickening sound like an overripe pumpkin being sawed in half for just a moment.
"Lesson One," said Starlight, voice shaking from an apparent adrenaline rush. "Every choice you make has consequences."
Distantly, Twilight was aware of Rainbow screaming and trying to thrash out of her grasp, but she kept her forelegs locked tightly around the filly's body.
"To save one life may well be to take another."
Hoops looked pale and shocked; he was staring at the mess, but Twilight wasn't sure if he was really seeing it anymore.
"To help your friend is to harm your neighbor."
Many of the fillies and colts who'd come to watch the race had taken off. They were screaming, terrified by the sight on the little cloud at the starting line.
"Heroism is no better than villainy."
There lay Fluttershy, her body sheared in two by the pinwheel spell. She was still alive, still aware, still looking around. Still quietly requesting that someone help her, because she couldn't feel her legs and she didn't know what was wrong.
"Nopony can act and not harm another somewhere down the line."
Rainbow bit Twilight very hard, and she finally let go long enough for the filly to zoom over to Fluttershy's side. Starlight completely ignored her, as well as the chaos of the foals trying to find a way out or a place to hide, and focused on Twilight instead.
"You immediately went to protect your friend Rainbow Dash, leaving your friend Fluttershy open to be harmed," the unicorn finished, drawing nearer and nearer, "What does that say about how you prioritize your friends' lives?"
She stopped in front of Twilight, her eyes strangely both hateful and full of an almost innocent, foal-like joy at the same time.
"Ah, well," the unicorn breathed, "c'est la vie."
Then she turned and flicked her horn at Rainbow Dash, producing a bolt of greenish-white light that made Twilight’s hackles stand up. Rainbow—who’d been scrambling to get Fluttershy off the cloud, probably to take her to a hospital—swayed when struck, then simply fell off the cloud like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Twilight watched her fall until she could no longer see Rainbow’s body anymore, and then she found herself looking into Fluttershy’s dazed eyes. Amazingly, the filly was still alive, despite having been cut in half, though it was clear she wouldn’t last much longer.
Twilight wept.
“I'll bet you think this is the worst it's going to get, too,” said Starlight. She tilted Twilight’s head up with a hoof. Twilight tried to jerk away, but she was held there with magic. “But one day you'll understand: no matter how deep and dark the chasm gets, there's always a darker place below.”
The last thing Twilight saw was a pair of evil blue eyes piercing into her own—and then Starlight simply blinked out of existence and the world lurched. Whatever Starlight did this time was distinctly different from her earlier methods of resetting the timeline, for it produced an awful sucking sensation on every particle in Twilight's body, and made her feel as though she were caught in a vacuum that came from every direction.
Everything around Twilight suddenly lurched into motion; after a moment, she realized that she was watching, and hearing, the events that had just happened, but in reverse and sped-up. Fluttershy's wounds knitted together, the fillies and colts landed, and Rainbow and the other racers returned to the starting line.
Starlight was literally rewinding time.
"If at first you don't succeed," came Starlight's voice, and Twilight realized that she was actually speaking backwards to make herself intelligible in the mayhem, "try, try again."
It left her dazed and roiling awkwardly about, struggling not to throw up, while she tried to make sense of what was going on around her. Once the world had resolved into something she could properly comprehend, Twilight panicked, flapping her wings wildly as she realized she'd been in midair when the spell was cast, and it didn't seem to reset the positions of unaffected ponies. She still spent precious seconds flying back up to the clouds.
She found a very different scene than the previous one: Fluttershy was cowering on her tiny cloud, and Rainbow was precariously balanced on the edge of it with her wings spread to their full extent and her teeth bared, scanning the skies for threats to her friend. The former looked almost catatonic with terror, while the latter resembled more of a wild animal than a pony.
"What's wrong, Dash?" Hoops taunted. "Finally realize you're outta your league?"
"Sh-shut up, Hoops. I died. Oh, Celestia, I-I died. I was d-d-dead."
"What the hay are you talking about?"
Twilight landed softly on a nearby cloud. "Rainbow Dash? Fluttershy? I—"
"Y-You stay away," Rainbow choked. She was shaking very badly. "You 'n' that spearhead, a-all'a you stay away from F-F-Fluttershy 'n' me, ya hear?"
They remember, Twilight realized, horrified. She let them remember.
"I'm here to help," she said. "I tried to help, Rainbow, I tried, but I thought she was only after you, not both of—"
"Just go away, just—T-t-take the s-spearhead with you! Fluttershy didn't, she didn't do anythin'!"
Twilight felt her heart break more with each word she spoke to the crazed filly. "I can't go, Dash! She'll kill Fluttershy anyway! She'd kill you to get to her!"
"R-Rainbow... j-just let h-her help... p-p-please..." Fluttershy whispered. "She s-seems... n-nice..."
"Nnno way I'm lettin' her c-come near y-you! A-All'a'ya juh, just, s-stay away f-f-from me'n'we're g-good, o-okay?" Rainbow was shaking like a leaf by the end of her threat; it was obvious she wasn't feeling nearly as confident as she was trying to make out.
"Rainbow," said Twilight, switching to a softer, more soothing voice, "I am a Princess of Equestria. You can trust me. Please, if you value Fluttershy's life at all, you have to come with me right n—"
A whirring sound made her ears perk up. As quickly as she could, she cast a shield spell around both Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy—only to find that many-colored pinwheel was already inside it. She had not heard it coming until it was too late. Rainbow’s wings continued to work perfectly for a couple of beats, her hooves reaching up to scrabble at her face, most of which had been sheared off, and then she started mistiming beats and her dying body began to fall, dripping blood and brain matter with it.
The air shimmered oddly a short distance from the starting line and turned into Starlight Glimmer.
"You really should have expected that one," she tsked, idly watching Dash's body fall. "You're oh-for-five now, Twilight."
"You... You..."
Starlight held up the scroll again. "Let's try this again and see what you've learned, shall we? I daresay your negotiation skills could use a little work. You got held up by filly logic, and that’s just silly."
At that moment, Twilight's anger simply erupted. With speed enhanced by alicorn magic, she slammed her hoof into Starlight's face. As Starlight reeled back, surprised and disoriented, Twilight spun around and bucked her as hard as she could in the jaw.
"How could you—Spike, Rainbow, Fluttershy—Foals! Foals, Starlight! You're killing foals! I'll throw you into Tartarus myself! No, that's too easy! I want you to hurt first—You should hurt so much I can't even describe it! I hate you! I'm going to hurt you and I'm not even going to feel bad about it!"
She tried to land another blow on Starlight, but turquoise magic held her hooves back and encircled her horn.
When Starlight rose, groaning, Twilight noticed her lower jaw was rather severely broken: there was no way she would ever be able to speak or eat properly again without several surgeries, at the very least. But the unicorn just spat out some blood—as best she could with her mouth in the condition it was—and fired up her horn.
Her jaw slowly began to reconstruct itself in a distinct reversal of the events that had given her the injury in the first place. Twilight knew of this branch of chronomancy. Chronoremedium, it was called, and it could only be performed by a few specially trained and licensed chronomancers.
What was more, Starlight's brand of chronoremedium worked at mind-boggling speeds compared to the months of intensive sessions and sealing spells it should have required for her to heal such a wound. Within moments, the heliotrope mare was able to open her mouth and close it a few times, then feel it with her hoof, as though working the stiffness out of it. Then she grimaced.
"What exactly did you hope to accomplish by doing that?" she asked.
“How did you do that so fas—”
"Shut up! I've given you a lot of breaks, Twilight, but you're really starting to test my patience."
"You're murdering foals!" snarled Twilight, her anger flaring again at the reminder of who she was talking to. "And you say I'm testing your patience?"
"Let's think for a moment, Twilight... which one of us has the power to bring the little dragonshite back to life and put everything back the way it was in your idyllic little fantasy world? Oh, that's right, it's not you; it’s me." Starlight unfurled the scroll again. "Do you know what? I think I'm going to just kill all of them this time."
Before Twilight could say or do anything in protest of her decision, the world started moving backwards again.
Fluttershy was cowering on the cloud again. Rainbow was no longer there to protect her; instead, she had one hoof pressed to the side of her head and was hyperventilating. She had an expression of complete terror on her face.
"Woah, Crashie," said Hoops. "Take a breather. At this rate you’re gonna crash harder than you normally do.”
The whirring sound alerted Twilight to the pinwheel once again. This time, with enough of her magic recharged that she could put up a reasonable fight, she decided to go straight for the cause of death itself: she charged her horn and fired a sizeable blast of energy that pulled a cloud into the path of the pinwheel and transformed the puffy white substance into a solid chunk of iron, stopping the spell dead.
At the same time, Rainbow, who had apparently heard the sound and recognized it as well, cried out and leapt onto Fluttershy so that she could shield the other filly with her body. Even with all her bravado drained from her, and even after already dying repeatedly, Dash was still willing to give up her life for her friend. It was a sight that filled Twilight with determination to protect the two fillies.
But Starlight was already a thousand steps ahead of her; and it was simply by virtue of her cold-blooded brutality.
The heliotrope unicorn burst through the clouds, galloping across the empty air at a respectable speed. Her horn lit up, creating a spiral of light whose ends became a hundred points with a hundred colors and textures. Then, like missiles, the hundred curses fired all at once and sped on ahead of Starlight in a blaze of magic.
They were not aimed so much as fired wantonly in the general direction of the race line and its spectators. There was a moment, between when they first began emerging and when they began striking, when the sky was lit up with the wicked energies of Starlight's barrage, where Twilight was distinctly reminded of an old painting from the pre-unification era that depicted a small group of pegasi standing against an entire army of cloudwalking unicorn mages who were all casting at once.
She threw up a shield as fast as she could—but Starlight really was one of the fastest casters Twilight had ever met. Unnaturally fast, really. Pockets of air around her shield turned translucent silver as Starlight transfigured it into a gaseous form of irorbicorbitum—a substance known to react violently with certain branches of magic.
Why didn't I think of that when I was attacking her? Twilight thought numbly as the gas burned enormous holes in her shield all around. It's exactly the kind of thing I should have thought of...
The shield was fizzling and collapsing on itself within seconds, and the first wave of curses easily punched through what remained. Twilight tried recasting a short distance away, but the irorbicorbitum cloud was rolling forth like a fog, strangling any attempt at shield magic. And when she heard the screams, she inadvertently dropped the shield in sheer panic anyway.
Each curse was different, and to add to her ever-growing horror, Twilight only recognized a few of them. The first one that hit home was a medical bone-breaking curse; a greyish-white spell that snapped a colt's leg upon impact. Nearby, she saw an unknown pink spell strike Hoops in the chest, and he managed a few steps before falling over. Little red disc-shaped spells whizzed around beside the prismatic pinwheels that seemed to be Starlight's favored murder weapon.
It wasn't even just with her horn that she cast, either. Starlight's horn maintained the military-grade spell spiral from which her curses spewed forth, but as she drew nearer she also rocked back and began using her hooves to fling precisely targeted spells at any colt or filly who tried to flee her. She could, Twilight realized, harness the magic of the other tribes through her whole body; a feat limited to only the Princesses and a few legendary mages.
Strangely, the worst part was not the blood, or the screams; it was that Starlight wore an expression like that of a filly who'd just discovered it was possible to burn ants using a magnifying glass. It was such an equine look, and yet there was something so inequine about it.
Twilight Sparkle had once believed she'd known what fear was. She'd felt it when she confronted Nightmare Moon, when she'd fought Discord, when she'd fought Tirek, and on many other occasions. She learned how to face her fears and laugh at them. How to giggle at the ghostly. But at that moment, Starlight Glimmer was a creature from another plane; a lovecraftian monstrosity with the power to drive her insane due to its mere presence.
How in Equestria am I to stand up to a beast like this?
Author's Note
Sorry about the wait, guys. I was on vacation for a little while, and then I had to get all my old stuff from the house where I used to live, and then my laptop broke so I had to get a new computer, and then I got a little bit distracted playing ARK.
Some of you might notice that your responses were integrated into the story, to a greater or lesser degree. This chapter is actually longer, but I cut it off in the interest of not making a huge mess of a story like I did with Solitary Locust.
As before, your suggestions for Twilight are freely accepted! What should she do now? Attack Starlight? Run away before the carnage tips her sanity meter? Rescue some fillies/colts? Do nothing? Assist Starlight in the slaughter? Your choice. Remember, Starlight probably isn't even through showing off the things she can do yet, so be careful if you think openly opposing her again is the best option...
Comments about the story are also welcome! :3
People who helped with this chapter (I'll add links in a bit):
GuyWhoWritesThings
Majin Syeekoh
Snowybee
Pearple Prose
Shardikku
Manaphy
Thunderbolt Sentinel
Jman14102
If I forgot anybody, please let me know.
