Forever Twilight

Chapters

Nightfall
Timber
Magic
Penumbra
Umbra
Daybreak

Nightfall

Belvedere peered over the nearest architect’s shoulder, smiling at the grand entrance hall the unfinished sketch represented. “Add a flourish to the column bases, something in metal.”

The architect glanced up from his hunched-over position that had stained his snout with graphite. “Metal? But the columns are marble, sir.”

“Exactly. They need a modern touch, something that says we’re not trapped in the stone age.”

A collective chuckle issued from the other architects filling the room, each one hunched over their own drafting table.

“You mean we’re not doing a Canterlot Castle replica? I have to start over now!” one of them shouted, eliciting a fresh wave of laughs.

Belvedere rolled his eyes. “You want to pay for an army of stonemasons, you take it up with the Fillydelphia planning commission. This is their civic center we’re talking about.”

The office door opened, and Cornice trotted in with fresh cups of coffee balanced on her outstretched wings. “Who needs a pick-me-up?”

She tossed a cup to Belvedere before he could say a word. The cup sailed through the air, as graceful as a butterfly, before his magic caught it. “Thanks, Cornice.”

She gave him a nod before addressing the rest of the room in her motherly, singsong tone. “Come and get caffeinated, ponies! Don’t make me drink it all myself!”

Belvedere stepped aside as the thirsty mob descended on his secretary. “Ten workable drafts, and it’s not even two yet. Not bad.”

“Mr. Belvedere, sir?”

He turned to the corner desk and found Miss Brace staring at him. “Yes? Is something wrong?”

She batted her eyes. “Oh, no. I’m just curious about how your day’s going. We’ve been working on this same project for a week, and you’ve been on your hooves for most of that.”

He grinned. “Isn’t it great? We’re really pushing the envelope on this one, combining classical and modern stylistic touches… I can’t wait to show the full portfolio to our clients tomorrow.”

She beamed at him. “That’s great! But what about… tonight? Do you have any plans? I heard the princesses are doing a big thing with the moon, and I know this hill just out of town with an amazing view…”

“I’ll probably spend the night doing paperwork, assuming today goes smoothly.”

“Is that… all? What would you be doing if it wasn’t for paperwork?” She arched an eyebrow.

“Drafting,” he said with a smile, “Once I get started, I can lose a whole day sketching out new concepts for façades or interior layout… Sometimes I even try designing playground equipment, just to change things up. Architecture’s what I live for.”

Cornice tapped him on the back. “Coffee, Mr. B. Remember?”

“Right, right—” he raised the cup to his lips and took a sip “—how about you? Any big plans?”

Miss Brace smiled faintly and returned to her work. “Oh, nothing exciting, I guess. Thanks, Mr. Belvedere.”

He took a long drink, savoring the wonderful mix of well-brewed coffee and well-spent graphite. Life couldn't get any better.

Belvedere’s cheek hammered against the hardwood floor. He kicked his sweat-soaked back legs, which were wrapped up tight in the twisted bedsheets. Crickets chirped outside the nearby window, serenading the moon hanging in the night sky. “Ugh… What time is—?”

Something swelled in his throat, a sudden and inescapable ache bubbling up from his heart like a torrent of stomach acid. He opened his mouth to groan, but only a sob escaped. Tears came with a ferocity that he hadn’t experienced since his parents’ deaths, and his whole body shook as if he was on the cusp of joining them in the ground.

Timber

“I need more paper.”

Belvedere’s whispered words went unheard in his silent office. He leaned into his high-backed chair and regarded the vaulted ceiling. The wall stretched far above the neat rows of framed awards, certifications, and newspaper accolades hanging near eye level. In his mind he could see the wood and steel beneath the plaster just as plainly as the squares of light on the paint, projections from the ornate windows on the opposite wall. Brilliant afternoon sunlight entered through sixteen separate panes of glass, regardless of the rainclouds soaking virtually every other Manehattan rooftop. His office’s lofty perch, seventy stories off the ground, made most other unicorns dizzy, and drove some earth ponies to the brink of panic. Looking down on the clouds was for pegasi, they said.

Most days he’d chuckle and say that kind of talk was old fashioned, a relic from an unenlightened era. Not today. Today he needed a way to banish the remaining third of the pony population from his doorstep. Solitude helped him concentrate.

Even with his door shut he could hear Cornice, his ever-attentive, ever-talkative pegasus secretary chattering away with whoever happened to be nearby. She was talking about him, of course. She hadn’t stopped ever since he’d cancelled every meeting she’d so painstakingly laid out for the week, relegating even the most crucial of tasks to his underlings. He returned his attention to the drafting paper spread out across the table, sketching idly while he mouthed Cornice’s oft-repeated words along with her. “Never comes out anymore… Can’t be well… No living family as far as I know… Still acting like he lost somepony special…”

Belvedere stared at his drawing, that of a stone block shaped like a wedge. His pencil hovered over the paper for a moment, adding a flick of graphite here or there until the stone looked suitably rustic. He lifted the paper into the sunlight. “You’ve got it all wrong, Cornice. I never had somepony to—”

And then he was back on his bedroom floor, his eyes wet, his throat raw, his heart in tatters, and his mind completely at a loss for why. He glared at the paper until the anguish abated. “I don’t have anypony to lose! So why—” his voice grew soft again “—so what’s wrong with me?”

He’d been asking himself for days, ever since waking up on his bedroom floor doused in sweat, tears, and a crushing sadness he’d assumed were aftereffects of a horrendous nightmare. Why did his lavishly furnished home suddenly feel so empty? Why did the decade of heady accomplishments immortalized under glass on his office wall look like they belonged to somepony else, to some other founder of a highly respected architecture company?

“Why do I hurt so much?”

Cornice wouldn’t have an answer, and he didn’t want to press anypony else for one. The stack of pending contracts he was counting on to pay the bills could disappear in an instant if somepony saw him, the company’s president and chief architect, frequenting a psychologist’s office. Not that he was on track to have the current project’s preliminary sketches approved in time, of course. All he’d been able to draw or think about lately was stonework. Nopony wanted to build with stone anymore, unless their job title was Princess.

The drawing traversed the spacious room in his magic grasp. Once it arrived at the far wall, it affixed itself over a picture of him posing with the mayor in front of his then newly opened office building, the crown jewel of his then-young and now-booming architecture empire.

He tapped the intercom button. “Cornice? Can you get me some more drafting paper from the supply room, please?”

Cornice replied in her usual chipper tone with no trace of the worry Belvedere heard only via eavesdropping. “Sure thing, Mr. B. Do you want anything else? How about some lunch? I can have one of the boys run over to your favorite sandwich shop. I’ll even fly down to the grocery store on the corner myself and make you a PB&J if you want.”

Belvedere rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Cornice, but that won’t be necessary.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and her concern came through at full force. “Are you sure? You didn’t have any breakfast either. It’s not healthy! You’re really worrying me!”

“I’m fine,” he replied, his voice all business, “please just go get me more paper.”

He flicked off the intercom and regarded the wall, the door, and the hundreds of drawings that were slowly covering them both. He could almost see it. He could almost see the dream-like scene of a stone wall lurking in the back of his mind.

“I just need more paper. A lot more.”

Pebbles scattered in the distance. Belvedere froze, his thin frame shaking with fear as much as fatigue. The stony outcroppings and tree limbs jutting from of the shadows remained stationary. His eyes traced and retraced the scene in front of him, taking in every inch of the visible, twilit world. Brittle roots stretched across the dirt path, and a few sizable boulders diverted it. The nearest boulder was barely a hoofstep away, but not big enough to hide behind. Worse still, its left side was trapped beyond where the light could reach, within the deep dark that hid rock, tree, and animal alike. For all he knew, an unseen monster was crouched on top of that rock, inches away and yet invisible in the shadows.

He stood there, one foreleg still hovering in mid step, while the dreary world seemed to hold its breath along with him. Finally he heard it, the click-click-click of sharp claws on hard stone. A deep breath came next, as strong and ephemeral as a gust of wind. It had to be a timber; any other creature would’ve taken him by now. Only a timber would sit patiently and wait for him to let his guard down before striking.

Belvedere’s hind legs started to cramp. His muscles were as taut bowstrings, ready to launch him into a run for safety. His brain knew better. He’d get ten paces from the shadow’s edge at most, and the average timber could leap twice that distance. He’d actually seen a set of claw marks a solid thirty paces from the shadows yesterday. Even if he made it out of pouncing range, the timber could easily survive the extra ten seconds of exposure to sunlight required to chase him down and drag him back to its lightless home.

Enough with the shadows. Belvedere glanced up at the heavens instead. The roiling mass of clouds offered little comfort, and the hollow circle of light peeking through them wasn’t any better. The sun’s empty ring offered little heat, and even less light. He shut his eyes tight, half-wishing the timber would just put him out of his misery rather than force him to do what had to come next. I really wanted to eat today.

He fixed his gaze on the sack sitting five paces away, still exactly where he’d dropped it before stepping off the path to relieve himself. He could almost taste the little green sprouts inside the bag. If only he’d just eaten them all when he woke up this morning. If only he’d ignored his high-minded notion of adding them to the garden back home and thereby producing even more food. The best he could do now was not become food himself.

Pain shot down his neck as his horn lit up. How many days of headaches would this magic show cost him? Three? Five? At least he’d be alive to find out.

He couldn’t help crying out while the bag flew through the air, parallel to the wall of darkness separating him from his would-be devourer. His eyes watered as he stumbled around and started to run. He didn’t need to look back; he’d seen this scenario play out too many times already. An abbreviated roar sliced through the silence, and the sack met a grisly end, trading its existence for his own.

The familiar trail flew by beneath his hooves, boulders and tree limbs giving way to bare earth after a minute’s run. A vast, dirt-covered valley stretched out below him, smeared with patches of impenetrably black shadow and dotted with the tiny bonfires of many a tribe. He’d be able to see his home soon: curved stone walls roofed with canvas and guarded by a tall, leafless tree.

“Two days,” he muttered, “two days scavenging. All for noth—”

A ball of white light engulfed the trail and seared his eyes with greater intensity than even fire could manage. His muttering gave way to a scream just as a ear-rattling bang knocked him off his hooves. For a moment he was flying six inches above the path, and then the rock-hard ground was pummeling him from all sides while the sun flitted in an out of view. Over and over he tumbled, each cry of pain cut short by a mouthful of dust and a hard blow to the legs, side, or back.

And suddenly everything was still again. Belvedere lay in a heap, feeling like he’d been skinned alive. He still felt like he was spinning, even though the sun had taken up a stationary position overhead once more. A minute of ragged breaths went by, devoid of all other sounds, lights, or signs of trouble. What was that explosion? Was he losing his mind?

Belvedere’s head stopped spinning a full minute after his body did. Standing up took two minutes more, the adrenaline from his earlier sprint now completely gone. He looked around, first to find a place to hide and then to regain his bearings. Neither took long: a dry stump two paces up the hill looked big enough to crouch behind, and the trail lay three paces beyond it. What he saw next, just beyond the trail, defied all explanation.

His legs moved of their own accord, lumbering up the hill in spite of their painful new collection of scrapes and bruises. Within thirty seconds he was at the edge of the crater, the charred pockmark that had suddenly appeared in a brilliant white flash. Ten seconds after that he was standing in the crater’s base, his hooves inches away from the pony sprawled in its center.

Her coat put the word ‘purple’ to shame. Never had he seen such a brilliant sheen, so completely unblemished by filth and malnutrition. Her mane was more striking still: a deep purple hue almost turned black by the dim light and striped with luscious pink. A unicorn horn graced her forehead, a perfect spire separating her mane and completing a visage that was at once kind and yet elegant. Pegasus wings sprouted from her sides, a bizarre sight on a unicorn, but beautiful in an exotic sense all the same. This was a creature of dreams brought to life, an angel deigning to visit the mortal world.

The timber’s long, low howl brought Belvedere back to his senses. He shook his head and took a second look at the creature before him. She was a pony, and that was all. Strikingly beautiful, perhaps, but just a pony. She was probably from one of the valley tribes, out scavenging for food in his backyard. That didn’t explain the crater or the white flash, but those didn’t matter. What mattered was the timber lurking in the deep dark nearby, and the conveniently unconscious meal waiting here for it. All he had to do was get back on the trail and run. That’s all his survival required.

His own legs wouldn’t cooperate. Every instinctual urge to run and hide failed. Every self-preserving thought of leaving this pony to get eaten, and possibly clubbing her over the head to ensure it happened, fled in the face of her eyes fluttering open. She let out a groan as her legs twitched. “Mis… calculated.”

“Can you walk?” The question came out gruffer than he intended. The gentlest tone in the world wouldn’t banish the timber, of course. Nothing sort of a pony-sized meal would do that.

“Who are you?” She stared up at him, her angelic face distorted by confusion rather than the fear he'd expected.

“I’m Belvedere. We need to run.”

“What?”

Another howl tore through the still air. Belvedere crouched down next to her. “Can you walk?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

“Then you can run. Get up.”

He scanned the landscape from horizon to horizon. They were a good fifty paces from the nearest patch of deep dark. If they made it to a hundred then he’d consider them safe, at least from the timbers.

“Twilight.”

His head whipped around and found the pony standing next to him. “Huh?”

“I’m Twilight. Twilight Sparkle.” She was smiling. Why was she smiling?

He nodded. “See that dirt path right there?”

“Why is it so dark? I couldn’t have been out for that long, and it was the middle of the aftern—”

He bared his teeth. “See the path right there? See how it keeps to the lighter parts of the hill?”

She vanished in another brilliant flash. He shook his head and blinked away phantom images. “Twilight!”

Her reply was fainter than it should have been. “Fascinating! Is this shadow magic? I can’t feel magic here, but I guess with the whole alternate world thingy it still could be… You said your name is Belvedere?”

His jaw dropped. Somehow she was standing at the edge of the light, fifty paces away with her nose nearly touching the deep dark’s void and the light from her horn dying at its surface. “Don’t! Don’t touch it! Are you crazy?”

She flashed out of existence again, this time rematerializing next to him with an apologetic smile. “Sorry! I'm just a little excited I guess. I’m not really from around here. I’m just… exploring.”

“Want to get eaten?” he bellowed. “If you want that so bad then go ahead, just let me get a running start so I don’t have to hear the timbers tearing you to pieces!”

Her ears folded back. “I-I’m sorry. I-I know how weird this must seem. I’m not actually from this world. I’m just conducting a little experiment to see what… Did you say timber wolf? Your world has them, too?”

Belvedere brought a hoof to his forehead. “I can’t understand half the words coming out of your mouth. Please start talking sense or go back to wherever you came from.”

She stuck out a foreleg to shake. “How about we start over again on the right hoof. I’m Twilight Sparkle, and I’m visiting your world as part of an exploratory experiment. I’m probably going to get pulled back any second now, so could you tell me something about your world before I do? Is it close to midnight here? How big is your village? Why is your sun a hollow ring? Do all ponies live in fear of timber wolves?”

He batted her hoof away and glowered at her. “Fine, listen: it’s evening, I’m Belvedere, I live on my own, and I’d really really like to not get eaten today! Oh, and what kind of crazy pony calls a timber a wolf?”

A roar shook the ground under them. Belvedere turned just in time to see the creature leave the shadows. Two front legs came first, each one lined with twin rows of spikes from paw to shoulder. Next came the teeth, a mass of twisted fangs protruding from a gaping, circular maw in the creature’s head. A long, lithe body composed of sticks and branches followed, smooth in some places and riddled with spikes in others. Two back legs and a long tail tipped with a mace-like stinger came last of all.

“Run! Run! Run!” Belvedere said it to himself as much as to Twilight, and kept saying once the timber crashed down a mere five paces short of them. He couldn’t help saying it, even if it was already too late.

The timber lunged forward, its spear-sized teeth moments away from impaling them both, its whole body sizzling and smoking in the light of day.

“Hold on!” Twilight shouted back.

White light seared his eyes again, this time accompanied by a whoosh of air that seemed to pass right through him. The timber howled again, this time from a great distance. Belvedere looked around, elated, confused, and nauseous all at once. He and Twilight were now at the base of the hill, a solid five minute’s run from the crater and the massive creature bounding around it with ear-shattering frustration.

“How’d you do that?” he whispered.

“What is that thing?” Twilight shouted back.

“Timber. They live in the deep dark… sunlight and firelight burn ’em up. Sometimes they get desperate… grab ponies stupid enough to get near their territory… ponies like me.”

Twilight remained silent, which eventually prompted him to look at her instead of the monster fleeing back to the darkness and its wake of white smoke. Her carefree smile was gone. “I should go. I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble.”

Her horn lit up, and he shielded his eyes against what he assumed would be another blinding flash. “Wait!”

Nothing happened. Her horn glowed softly, a purple beacon of magic that he couldn’t help but think was being wasted. He couldn’t fathom how much better life would be with that much raw magic at his disposal. Twilight glanced up at her horn, and then resorted to tapping it with a hoof. “Why isn’t it working?”

“Why isn’t what—?”

“The spell! It’s just simple teleportation… well, celestially amplified trans-dimensional teleportation wrapped in a dozen different enchantments to pull me back just in case anything goes wrong, which it definitely has… but…”

“There you go not making sense again.”

Twilight gasped. “What if I’m stuck? What if the enchantments all failed a-and I can’t get back to Equestria? I can’t be stuck here!”

“What’re you talking about?”

Twilight threw up her forelegs. “Equestria! My home! I have to get back there!”

Belvedere shook his head. “Twilight… Twilight, this is Equestria.”

Magic

“Mr. B! Mr. Belvedere!”

Belvedere’s eyes fluttered open. Cornice’s pale yellow face floated over him, illuminated by moonlight. “Wha… Cornice? What’re you doing in my bedr—?”

“You mean your office?” she shouted.

His whole body suddenly and painfully reminded him just where he’d nodded off. Aches shot up his twisted back, all the way from his still-sleeping hind legs to the cheek he’d pressed against the desktop. “Ugh… what’d I—ah!”

The office chair swiveled as soon as he moved; prompting his front hooves to sweep across the polished desk in search of something to steady himself. Cornice put a leg against the chair to halt it, but never broke eye contact. “What’s gotten into you? You’re not eating, as clear as I can tell you’re not working… Unless you’re trying to pass off a medieval castle as a civic center.”

She nodded to the walls covered in paper. The moonlight made the papers shine, the dark pencil lines making up the stone wall were now a silvery white. “Well?”

He stared at the papers. “Cornice…”

“Who was it? Favorite grandma pass away? Secret girlfriend dump you?”

“Cornice—”

“Because something big obviously got to you. First you cancel all your meetings and hole yourself up in here, and then… whatever this is.”

He nodded. “I… there’s this image in my head—”

“There’s a half dozen expensive rulers in your desk drawer; they’re for drawing stuff to scale, not life size.” She stepped in front of him, her eyes boring into his. “This looks… this looks crazy, Mr. B. Head-in-a-thundercloud crazy.”

He barely heard her. Even with her blocking the view, all he could see was paper and the stonework it represented. “It’s… I know how it looks, Cornice. Please just let me explain… once I figure out how to.”

She reached forward and grabbed his hoof. “Please don’t be crazy.”

“I… don’t think I am. I just… you ever have a really, really bad nightmare?”

“Like thinking how hard it’s gonna be to find a new job that’s even half as cushy as this one?”

“Like when you wake up… you didn’t really wake up… like the horrible thing you left was real and—” He saw her eyes grow wide. She really did think he was going nuts. “I had this bad dream, but there was this image in it that I just can’t shake: this… stone wall. It’s like when I’m in the zone, drafting something, and I the only way that bridge or building is getting out of my head is if I put it on paper… I’m just trying to do that for the dream.”

She kept her eyes locked on his, unmoving and unblinking. “When’s the last time you went home?”

He could only stare back, blankly. “Uh…”

She rolled her eyes and gave his foreleg a tug. “C’mon, Mr. B. Let’s get you some decent shut-eye. That’ll help you get this out of your system.”

He didn’t feel like arguing, not this late at night, and not with his ever-attentive secretary. Somehow his shaking legs held him upright, and Cornice’s wing provided the forward momentum. “You can just call me a cab.”

“Oh no, no smelly cabs.”

“Don’t tell me you’re carrying me.”

“Pfft, to your place way out on ‘money hill’? Just keep walking.”

One wobbly step at a time, he passed through his office door and into Cornice’s domain. Potted plants stood guard outside his office door, and photographs lined the walls, none of them defaced by drafting paper. He paused for a moment to stare at the nearest one, the pivotal moment in his young career when he’d posed next to Princess Celestia herself as Canterlot castle saw its oldest wing, now freshly retrofitted, reopen for business. That contract built this office building. The dozens that followed filled it with fellow architects, shrewd businessponies, and one indispensable executive secretary.

“Almost there, Mr. B. I’m not carrying you an inch, but I’ll drag you a couple feet if that’s what it takes.”

“Feet? We’re not even to the elevator yet.”

“Just keep walking.”

Cornice’s own desk drew closer, a slightly smaller version of the massive slab of wood he himself fell asleep behind. The similarities stopped there. Photographs girded her desktop, along with numerous tasteful knickknacks from the far reaches of the architectural world. How she got anything accomplished with the comparatively minuscule portion of free space she’d left herself he’d never know, but then again she wasn’t the one fighting off mysterious, paralyzing grief.

“Here you go, Mr. B. Home away from home.”

Belvedere followed her gesturing foreleg to the small, nondescript door behind her desk. “That’s a supply closet, Cornice.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Maybe on the blueprints it is.”

His magic sputtered to life, and the door swung open on silent hinges. Instead of filing cabinets and boxes of paper products, Belvedere saw a small cot, a lamp, and a miniature fridge all miraculously tucked into less space than his own guest bathroom. “What in the…?”

Cornice guided him through the door and sat him on the bed. “There’s some food in the fridge, stuff you like. You can even dip into my precious almond toffee if it gets you eating again.”

He stared at his surroundings, unable to rectify them with what he knew he should’ve been seeing. “But… I oversaw the design for the whole building, Cornice. Every brick, every beam… this is a supply closet! The blueprints are in my office!”

She patted the fridge, tittering softly. “Ever notice how when you’re ‘in the zone’ with some big project, your favorite snacks show up on your desk, and I’m always here if you need something, even if the sun just came up?”

He lay on the bed, his near-perfect recall of his own building’s architecture shaken halfway to its foundations. “But… How…”

“You’d be surprised what my corporate charge card can do. Now get some shut-eye. You can fire me tomorrow for misusing company funds.”

His whole body melted into the mattress. It didn’t matter that the springs squeaked, and it didn’t matter that the pillow was lumpy. The cot felt like a warm embrace. “Fire you? I could kiss you…”

Cornice laughed as she neared the door. “Don’t; you wouldn’t look good with a fat lip. Night, Mr. B.”

Belvedere’s walk home took on a slower pace, thanks to his new collection of cuts and bruises from his tumble down the hill and his pounding headache thanks to his using magic. Twilight followed behind him, silent aside from quiet murmurings about enchantments, wormholes, alternate dimensions, and whatever other incomprehensible words he didn’t quite catch. Every time he tuned her out, whether to check their surroundings or just to think for a moment, her next heavy hoofstep pulled him back to reality and set his hair on end. The notion that he had a guest, that he was leading somepony somewhere, could barely drown out the survivalist tendency to flee whomever or whatever was following him.

“How… uh…” He didn’t know where to start. He wanted to know everything, particularly how she possessed enough magic to teleport the two of them to safety.

“Okay, okay, I know I’m rambling—” Twilight took a long, deep breath “—but I can figure this out. I can get back. I just need to calm down and think through the whole situation from the top. So… where are we going?”

“Home.”

He silently cursed himself. It’d been years since his last genuine conversation with another pony, but he could still do better than a one-word answer. “My home. My… house. I built it myself.”

“Is it far? I don’t mean to complain, but… I’ve felt safer in monster-filled forests than out here.”

“I wish I could say you get used to it, counting how many steps you are away from a rock you can crouch behind.”

“You mentioned before that you live alone. Wouldn’t it be safer if ponies banded together?”

He looked out over the valley, glaring at the wavering light of its many bonfires. “Most of them do, down there. I used to, too.”

Twilight’s hoofsteps slowed, distancing herself from him. “Why… um… Why did you leave?”

“I’m not crazy or dangerous, if that’s what you’re thinking… unless you’re afraid of building stuff, anyway.”

He held his breath. Please don’t be afraid of building things. Please don’t be like the others.

“How could a pony be afraid of that?”

He couldn’t smile widely enough. “Do ponies create new things, where you’re from? What’s it like?”

She let out a long, slow breath. “My world is so different… I don’t even know where to start. Ponies live in houses, cities, castles… One of my best friends designs clothing, and another one just built a new barn to hold her family’s farming supplies. So yes, to answer your question, I was actually conducting an experiment when—”

Belvedere froze, his ears straining to pick up the softest of breaths, and his brain replaying the quiet snap of a twig he’d heard a moment ago. Twilight stopped too, right down to holding her breath. There wasn’t any cover for thousands of paces, not until they reached the big, leafless tree adjoining his house.

Don’t just run, he told himself. You’re not alone. You can’t leave Twilight behind.

His eyes flicked downward. “Your hoof.”

Twilight drew a quick breath. “What?”

He slowly raised one foreleg and touched hers. “Did you step on something?”

“I-I don’t think so.”

“Let’s just keep walking. Whatever it is, it might not be after us. We’re two hundred paces from that patch on the left.”

Twilight’s gaze followed his own, facing down the darkness and whatever monsters it might contain. Timbers were just the beginning. As a colt he’d heard stories, and as a young adult he’d heard screams. He stepped forward, and the dull scrape of his hoof against dirt prompted her to follow.

She kept staring at the dark, the void that he’d seen rob young ponies of their lives and older ponies of their minds.

“I build things too,” he whispered, breaking the tense silence, “I always have.”

Twilight gave a small nod. “Your cutie mark is a right angle… how did you get it?”

He blushed slightly. “I used to live with other ponies, down in the valley. My parents’ tent sagged right over where I slept every night, and one day I decided I’d break a couple branches off the nearest tree and improve it. After that I was doing it for everypony’s tent, and then I was carving rocks so they’d stack nicely. I even came up with a mix of clay and mud that filled in the gaps; I was going to make my own house with them. That’s about when the village elders came and told me to stop: stop ‘corrupting the pony way of life,’ or get out of town.”

“They kicked you out for inventing masonry?”

“They probably just wanted to scare me, but that’s when I left. I swore to them, to my parents, to anypony who’d listen that I’d be back when I could prove I was right, that we could all live better than scrounging for moss and living in tents.”

“But… but isn’t moving from tents to stone houses enough? The pony who invented stoneworking in my world is in history books; he’s credited with helping bring ponies into the modern age!”

Belvedere forced a laugh. “Modern age… Your world sounds like mine in reverse. The elders say our ancestors were obsessed with their own creations, that their hedonism destroyed the heavens and earth and that we’re stuck with what’s left over.”

Twilight gaped at him, her staring contest with the void forgotten. “Do you think that’s true?”

“Does it matter?”

As they came to his doorstep, he hesitated. The stone walls curving away from him were rough and uneven in many places, to say nothing of the cracks in the mortar. Normally he’d look past these imperfections; he’d built this mighty fortress with his own hooves, after all. How did it look to Twilight’s eyes? How did this pony from a world that sounded so infinitely better than his own view his feeble, backwards methods? What would she say when she saw what lurked inside?

She stepped forward and rested her hoof against the stonework. “This is wonderful.”

“So are you,” he said, thankfully at a whisper that he himself could barely hear. He cleared his throat and pushed open the door. “Th-thanks. The inside is… something. I’ve been working on a few things besides masonry, I mean.”

He hurried through the door and stepped aside, suddenly eager to see her reaction.

Twilight stepped through the arched doorway, and her gaze immediately traveled upward, just like he’d hoped. A staircase wrapped around the circular interior, winding its way to a small landing just beneath the high canvas ceiling. The ceiling met an interior canvas wall at the center, a curtain that reached all the way to the dirt floor and hid a ten-hoofspan-wide column of space from view.

The rest of the place wasn’t much to look at. A tangle of blankets lay nestled by the base of the steps, and his meagre supplies spilled across stone benches hugging the outer wall and the floor in between.

“Well… this is it,” he said. There wasn’t any point in trying to hide it; he’d never considered the place a mess before, not until having company. Was he supposed to offer her a drink, or a meal? If only he had something to offer. “Would… Would you—?”

“Is that a telescope?”

He’d never heard the word before. “Maybe?”

She trotted to the nearest worktable, the one closest to his bed, and peered through one end of a long, hollow branch. The crystals inset in its two ends gave him a magnified view of her pupil. “How did you make the objective lens?”

“I… there’s some gem deposits up in the mountains where I harvest moss and roots. I scavenged some clear ones and figured out how to grind and polish them.”

The telescope left the worktable in a purple aura, the eyepiece still pressed to Twilight’s eye. “So you just sit around here all day, single-hoofedly reinventing modern technology for fun?”

“It’s not for fun. It’s just sort of what I do… I solve problems. I’ve been doing that ever since I got my cutie mark.”

Twilight’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? What kind of problems?”

He pointed to the telescope. “That’s for spotting food and water, and for keeping an eye on… dangerous things.” He trotted to another worktable and patted another hollow branch carved into a much more exaggerated cone shape “This is for hearing timbers from further away—” he returned to the doorway and kicked the stone wall “—and this… well I guess this one is obvious enough. It keeps monsters out.”

She nodded vigorously, her smile widening. “What else?”

He couldn’t help smiling too. “Seeing and hearing from far away is nice, and so is having a safe place to sleep… but there’s one thing missing.”

She followed his gaze to the canvas barrier hiding the very center of the room. “What’s in there?”

“There’s an opening right next to you. You’ll want to shield your eyes.”

He squinted as her hoof found the curtain’s edge. Even with his eyelids nearly closed, he saw nothing but dazzling white light for seconds on end. As his pupils narrowed to pinpoints, the garden slowly came into view: tiny shafts of verdant green, some nearly two inches tall, pushing up through the soil. Some even sported the beginnings of leaves. A beam of highly magnified sunlight shone from above, eradicating even the smallest of shadows.

“A long time ago, I noticed how the biggest, tastiest plants grow where the sunlight is the strongest. The whole roof’s covered in little crystal mirrors that bounce light off a bunch of other mirrors suspended above the garden with rope. All that light gets beamed down here to help the plants grow faster and bigger. If this setup works, if I can get all the food I need with a little garden like this, then I just might have the biggest problem of all solved: how ponies can live in prosperity.”

The curtain fell back into place, and the brilliant light vanished. Twilight stared at him, open-mouthed. “Wow. I… so your home is actually an example. It’s a model village with strong walls and a built-in food supply!”

“All because my old village kicked me out. I kept thinking and thinking about how we shouldn’t spend the rest of our lives scavenging moss, living in fear of monsters, never trying anything new…”

Her wings flapped for a moment, causing the garden’s curtain to sway. She tapped her hooves next, and a huge smile formed on her face. “This is like living in a history book! You’re on the cusp of reinventing pony society!”

Belvedere chuckled. “That’s going a bit far. I hope I find some ponies who’ll agree, enough ponies to start an actual village. Lots of them won’t ever listen, not even if I drop a saddlebag full of fresh sprouts on their doorstep.”

“How can you say that,” Twilight said, her eyebrows lowering, “how can you… Look, I’ve dealt with unreasonable ponies before, not to mention dragons, yaks, a draconequus… I can’t imagine any of them saying no to suddenly having food and shelter.”

He scratched his head for a moment, partly to hide an eye roll. Alternate worlds aside, ponies just weren’t that nice. “Want to try out the telescope?”

They ascended the staircase that circled the interior wall and stood on the landing just beneath an opening in the canvas roof. Twilight held the telescope in her magic, her eyes fixed on the valley before them and the blotches of black shadow that hid swaths of land.

“Don’t you get tired, doing that?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been levitating the telescope almost nonstop.”

Twilight glanced at the telescope and shrugged. “It’s not that heavy.”

“No, but… I had to throw a big bag of moss and gems just before you arrived, and now my headache isn’t going to go away for days. Placing all the crystals for my garden took weeks because I kept passing out.”

Her eyebrows shot up. She glanced at the telescope and set it in his hooves. “That’s… That’s… I can’t tell if that’s more fascinating or frightening. M-magic isn’t so scarce where I’m from. I guess that could be a dietary problem, or maybe because of the shadow things outside.”

Belvedere’s eyes drifted to her wings. “Is that why you’re a… whatever you call a unicorn with wings, or a pegasus with a horn?”

She glanced at them herself, her feathers twitching. “It’s a long story. I was born a unicorn, but after I completed an ancient friendship spell, I became an alicorn and a princess. That’s why I have wings.”

“And that’s why your magic is so strong?”

“Well, yes, and no. Alicorn magic is stronger, but I’ve never met a fully grown unicorn who couldn’t handle basic levitation. My friend Rarity is a seamstress, and she barely uses her hooves at all.”

He held the telescope to his eye and looked away, if only to hide his frown. She and all of her friends couldn’t possibly possess thousands of times his magic potential, teleportation and other tricks notwithstanding.

“So… was there a reason you mentioned using the telescope?”

After a moment’s pause, he passed it back to her. “Take a look at the bonfires down there in the valley. Each one is the center of a village.”

As she raised the telescope, he pressed down on its top edge, lest she raise it too high. “Focus on the village nearest to us, forget the one at the other end of the valley.”

The telescope glowed purple, and Twilight moved it away from his reach. He stared into the distance with his naked eyes, knowing exactly what she was seeing up close: lean-to shacks and tents inhabited by bone-thin ponies stained with dirt, all encircling a big bonfire to keep the timbers away. At this range, she might even be able to see some of the mushroom plantations. She wouldn’t be able to make out the fine details of the far-away village without his more powerful telescope, thankfully; the stone altar and mass graves would be mercifully indistinct.

“Most ponies live off of mushrooms, even though they're poisonous. Moss is too hard to farm, and scavenging is dangerous. It’s a balancing act, eating just enough mushrooms to keep breathing, but not so many that the hallucinations start; that’s the sign that you’re on the cusp of a fatal dose.” He’d spare her the details, the terrible stories of ponies chasing those death-heralding bouts of insanity, and the one village that revered the experience.

She angled the telescope skyward next, as if she expected to find more than a pale ring of light shining through cloud cover. Sweat ran down her brow despite the chill in the air. “What about the clouds? How long will it be until the pegasi clear them away?”

“How would they do that? I've only ever seen a pegasus reach a treetop before their magic gave out. The clouds are up there all the time, and the same goes for the sun. The only way to tell night from day is when the timbers start howling.”

The telescope vibrated violently and flew into his hooves. “Hey, be careful with this.”

Twilight paced in a circle, her breathing swift and shallow. “No stars, magic deficit, no weather, monsters everywhere, barely any light, mystery shadows, sun’s just a ring… What in the hay is this place? How did I even get here?”

“You really don’t know?”

“I-I thought I did. I thought I did. I—” she shuddered and wiped away a tear “—It’s all my fault.”

“Do you want some water?” Again he silently cursed himself; he was about as comforting as a timber’s jaws.

Twilight sank to the floor, her head resting on the lip formed by the outer wall. “I-I was trying to solve a problem, too. I convinced Princesses Celestia and Luna to… the sun looks different in my world: it’s whole and even brighter than your garden. At night, Princess Celestia lowers the sun while Princess Luna raises the moon, which is about as bright as your sun and…”

Belvedere set the telescope down, the whole of his attention focused the wet trail left by her tears, and the quivering of her lip. He shifted his weight from hoof to hoof and, after a moment’s hesitation, finally sat down next to her.

She gave a great sniffle. “I used to do research and conduct experiments all the time as a unicorn. I-I just wanted to do that again, to really dig deep into how magic works.”

“What was supposed to happen?”

“Teleportation, amplified by the magic of the sun. Nopony really knows how teleportation spells actually work, or why there are so many weird constraints on them like how the inverse square of the distance… I’m losing you, aren’t I?”

“Teleportation, the sun, something something. You listened to me talk about my life-threatening hobbies already, I'll figure yours out.”

She gave a faint smile. “Teleportation is a really, really complicated branch of magic. I created a spell to… slow down the process, to let me spend a full minute in wherever ponies who teleport actually go during the fraction of a second it takes for them to reappear. That’s how it should’ve worked, anyway. Considering you’re not used to seeing ponies popping in and out of existence, who knows what really happened.”

“How can you fix it?” he asked, despite not wanting an answer. Finally somepony understood his passions, even if he couldn’t reciprocate.

“I don’t know… but I’ll figure it out. I have to.”

“You can stay here, if… if you want to, anyway. It’s no trouble.”

She stared into the distance, unblinking.

Belvedere frowned and looked away. So much for spending more time with her, for talking to somepony besides himself, for basking in the glow of her smile. “Sorry.”

“What if… Hmm.”

“What—?”

Twilight turned back to him, eyebrows raised and eyes dry. “Could you help me with another experiment? It involves your garden.”

A ‘yes’ was on his lips, but his apprehension won out. “My garden? There’s nothing magical about that; I’m no earth pony.”

“Just follow me. I’ll explain everything.”

Penumbra

“It’s morning.”

Belvedere didn’t know exactly why he’d bothered saying it, what with his only having the supply closet furniture for company. The fridge and bed remained silent, unlike his heart.

He stared down at his chest, at a loss for why it felt so painfully empty. The image in his mind was the only clue, the stone wall that he could imagine so clearly that it felt more like a forgotten memory resurfacing. Except it couldn’t be. He hadn’t worked with stone in years, and never during an emotional crisis of any sort. Perhaps he could finish sketching it out this morning, before anypony else came in. He’d set the final page into place and everything would just click: his crushing ache would vanish, he’d be back on the civic center project by noon, and he’d treat Cornice to a fancy dinner at closing time.

His stomach loudly announced another sort of ache. When was the last time he’d eaten something?

The fridge’s door flew open, and his magic extracted just what Cornice had promised: golden delicious apples, fresh-cut roses, wheatgrass granola, and a half-dozen other treats that he’d come to associate with marathon projects. An apple would do for now; he could always come back for more.

He left the supply closet with breakfast floating behind him. He started toward his office, his hooves treading silently on the plush carpet, and paused as he came to Cornice’s crowded desk. Unfamiliar ponies stared at him from the picture frames, all of them smiling brightly. Cornice only appeared in one of them, a heart-shaped photo featuring her and, if he wasn’t mistaken, one of his mid-level architects. They were posing in front of a city skyline; she had her hooves wrapped around him, ready to cover his bespectacled face with kisses. “Good for you, Cornice… or should I say very very good for you, Mr… Eave, I think.”

Passing her desk brought him face to face with an entirely different set of pictures. Businessponies and high-ranking officials lined his office’s outer wall. Each photo immortalized a feat of some kind, be it of the business or engineering variety. He appeared on the wall quite often, each time standing next to a client and a newly constructed or renovated building. The names of all but the most important clients escaped him.

He walked up to the crown jewel of the collection, his photo with Princess Celestia, and watched his breath fog up the glass. She was smiling, of course, but not like the ponies in the photos on Cornice’s desk. “You don’t even remember my name. Why would you? I just patched up some old parts of your castle… no big deal.”

Where were his photos of ponies genuinely smiling? There weren’t any here. There weren’t any at home either, save for the old family photo album. That was ancient history, though. Mom and Dad died when he was barely out of university, and there hadn’t been a mare in his life for longer still. “That’s what it took, though. It took focus, dedication, and drive to build… all of this.”

The wall of business smiles staring back at him offered little comfort.

“Well… Time to get to work.”

With the slightest magical nudge, his office door swung open on its silent hinges. The papers covering the inner wall fluttered noisily as he marched by. How many times had he walked through that door with no thought other than whatever contract was currently keeping the lights on? When was the last time he’d been genuinely hungry for something new and willing to stop at nothing to see it built? That’s why Princess Celestia had hired him, after all: everypony else claimed the cracked stonework in the castle’s east wing was completely beyond repair and would have to be demolished. He’d said otherwise, and she’d listened. That’s how he built his empire: solving seemingly impossible problems, just because they were there. Engineering miracles paid well, thankfully.

The apple rose to his mouth and he took a bite. That high-backed chair behind his desk was too comfortable; if he could fall asleep in it, then it wasn’t doing its job. Hadn’t he drawn up most of the Canterlot Castle renovation plans on a donut shop’s counter because his one-room office lacked a square inch of free table space?

He turned around to head for the elevator. He’d borrow a chair from one of the empty cubicles downstairs. It wasn’t exactly a booth in a donut shop, but it was a start. Today would be a fruitful day, just as soon as he finished with his anguish-born obsession. He’d drown his lingering emotional turmoil in passion-filled problem solving, just like always. If he couldn’t find an architectural problem big enough, he’d just have to reach further out. Maybe he’d design playground equipment, or learn clockmaking.

The apple dropped to the ground as soon as he glimpsed the wall.

He’d left the office door open. He’d inadvertently created a hole in his unfinished drawing. “That’s what I’ve been missing!”

Papers leapt off the door and found new places on either side of it. Belvedere paced back and forth, absentmindedly kicking his unfinished apple away as he stared at the wall with newfound focus. “It’s not supposed to be solid. There’s an opening… an archway… right here.”

Belvedere awoke with a start, drawing in sharp breaths that for some reason smelled of damp soil. His forelegs prodded a cloth covering his face and nearly yanked it off before remembering where he’d fallen asleep. Amplified sunlight leaked in around the cloth’s edges, some of it tinged green by the tiny sprouts growing beside him. Twilight’s excitement from the previous night came roaring back, even if he hadn’t understood a word of her rapid-fire explanation aside from ‘magic’ and ‘sleep in the garden and you might feel better.’ Sleeping in blinding sunlight sounded crazy, but then again so did a pony with wings and a horn. Every other pony alive would’ve put masonry and indoor gardening on that list too.

“Twilight?”

Her soft, rhythmic breathing was the only response. At least she’d managed to fall asleep, despite the timbers howling even more than usual last night.

He took a deep breath, got to his hooves, and waited. The headaches were always worst in the mornings, especially those following a day of magic use. He’d only done a little magic yesterday, thankfully. The pain wouldn’t be that bad, nothing like the excruciating episodes that followed constructing the garden.

Ten of Twilight’s breaths went by. Then twenty. After thirty, his jaw started to smart from being clenched so tightly. By some miracle, his head was still clear. Slowly, he raised a hoof and prodded his horn, half expecting to find it missing. “Twilight? I-I think whatever you were talking about last night… I… I feel amazing!”

Belvedere trotted out of the garden and threw the cloth mask aside. “Twilight?”

She was still nestled in his blankets at the foot of the stairs, sleeping soundly.

Nothing about this moment seemed real, her least of all. Yesterday, when he’d found her in the crater, she’d been as alien a thing as a fallen star. Today that same star was wrapped in his blankets, sharing his home, and thinking an astounding number of his thoughts. Here was a pony every bit as excited about the simple acts of discovery, learning, and problem solving as he was, considering her experiments with magic and obsession she apparently had with books. He’d be obsessed with them too, if his world contained little repositories of information on any and every subject. What sort of things would he learn, if he could spend an hour in her world, or a day? What could she teach him, now that she was here? She’d already shown him the value of like-minded companionship. The years between his exile and her arrival felt so profoundly lonely in retrospect. Maybe Twilight would stay here with him. Maybe he’d never be lonely again.

At last Twilight began to stir. Her eyes fluttered open, and her calm expression stretched into a grimace. “Ugh. I had the weirdest dr—oh no, it’s real… I’m really stuck here. I can’t be stuck here.”

All his wonderful ideas turned to ash in his mouth. “I… good morning.”

She pushed herself to a sitting position with one foreleg while she massaged her temple with the other. “Ooh, my head. Why won’t the spell wear off. Why can’t I go home.”

His gaze dropped to the ground, and he pawed the earth with his hoof. “How bad is your headache?”

“It’s nothing some tea wouldn’t help, but… I’ll survive. How are you feeling? How did sleeping in the sunlight go?”

He glanced back at the hidden garden with a touch of his earlier enthusiasm. “Great! I feel like I could take on a timber.”

Despite her drooping eyelids, she smiled. “That’s great! If my theory is correct—” a yawn interrupted her “—our entire concept of magical energy might be incomplete. I might actually be able to write a paper… or something… paper…”

After a moment’s hesitation, Belvedere slipped his foreleg under hers and gently pulled her towards the garden. Maybe whatever helped him would do the same for her.

“Great idea,” she murmured, “sunlight… sunlight’s everything, I think. Everypony thinks the sun’s one of the primary pony magic sources, but based on how you’re doing, it might be the magic source underlying everything else… the reason ponies can do anything… the reason we have the magic of friendship even.”

“I’m sold, if it means I don’t have to wake up with killer headaches anymore. Why don’t you take a nap in there and see if it helps? I don’t know what tea is, but I’ll find us some breakfast, something fit for a princess.”

She leaned against him for support. The warmth and softness of her coat made his legs weak. “I’m Twilight… just Twilight… Sparkle.”

The garden curtain glowed teal with his magic, opening just enough for her to slip through. He remained on the outside, listening to her settle herself and resume her quiet, steady breathing. You’re a princess to me.

Hours flew by without any of their usual monotony. Belvedere had gone through these motions so many times before, scraping moss off of rocks and digging up roots with his senses focused on the nearest sources of danger and his thoughts focused on the future. Someday I’ll be eating from the garden was what he’d usually tell himself on these lengthy excursions, along with how future generations would praise him for his foresight and ingenuity. ‘Someday’ still hadn’t come, but Twilight had. Today his senses felt razor-sharp, plucking out the sound of each pebble his hooves scattered and spotting each dust mote floating through the air. Today his heart was lightened with a much more concrete dream: Today I’ll spend time with Twilight.

Everything prior to her arrival, every day of every year spent polishing gems, chiseling stones into blocks, and tending tiny seeds felt strangely distant. Only yesterday he’d been focused on the distant future, painstakingly gathering greenery from miles around to plant in the garden even as his stomach cried out in protest. “How long’s it been since I saw somepony smile?”

He froze, instantly regretting speaking aloud. His eyes darted to the many patches of deep dark nearby: fifty paces to the left, twenty paces ahead, and a mere ten to the right. Seconds went by in silence, save for the thump of his heart. Maybe the timbers weren’t nearby. Maybe they were all asleep, considering how much howling and commotion he’d heard the previous night.

With the greatest care, he started back the way he’d come, taking whole seconds with each step. The small lump of vegetation in his saddlebag could almost pass for a meal, assuming he wasn’t about to become a meal himself. His ears strained against the suddenly tense silence. If the timbers were ready to pounce, they were holding their breath just like he was.

He never used to be so foolish as to speak near the deep dark. What was he thinking, letting the mere presence of another pony make him do stupid things?

The village elders would’ve had plenty to say on the subject, starting with how it served him right for committing the cardinal sin of stacking one stone on top of another. He glared at the valley, eyes focused on the nearest pinpoint of light, the one he used to call home. His village’s bonfire had been burning for decades just like all the others, a bastion of heat, light, and safety for the ‘civilized’ ponies.

And then another fire caught his eye, a tiny string of lights marching across the valley from its furthest reaches. A large group of ponies was on the move with torches, a near-unprecedented event for the normally insular mushroom eaters. What had them so agitated that they’d strike out into the unfamiliar dark with torches in hoof?

He only needed to trace their heading across the valley to know the answer. At a steady trot they’d reach his doorstep in an hour. Nothing less than an all-out gallop would get him there first.

Umbra

Belvedere didn’t bother with stealth. He tore down the hillside, pushing each hoof against the dusty ground with all his might, devouring a minute’s worth of careful walking in a few frantic seconds.

Each crashing hoofstep screamed the same phrase in his ear: you’re going to get eaten. There wasn’t a timber alive who wouldn’t hear this cacophony.

But they won’t hear. The timbers won’t hear because they’re all down there.

He stole a glance at the line of torches winding across the valley. No wonder the timbers had been howling like crazy last night; new ponies were passing by their territory. By now, if he was lucky, every timber for miles was crouched as close to those torches as the deep dark permitted. The monsters he had to worry about first were the ones with hooves, the insane village that nopony dared visit or disturb.

Their voices carried through the air as he reached the door, chanting their fever-dream sayings in between labored breaths. The timbers wouldn’t be far behind.

Belvedere burst through the door, more desperate to speak than to fill his aching lungs. “They’re coming… they’re coming! We’d better to run for it!”

Twilight turned to face him. She’d seated herself in front of one of his worktables, and the gems before her were well on their way to being organized by color and size. “What?”

“It’s the ponies from the—”

A loud, shrill voice shattered all his illusions of their slipping away quietly. “Find her! Find her!”

Another voice, this one barely distinguishable from a growl, sounded from just beyond the front door. “The star mother arrives!”

Belvedere’s back leg shot out and jammed the door’s crossbar into place. “It won’t hold forever, not when there’s so many of them. Grab something, anything! The plants! Grab the plants!”

He ran left and right, dumping his most prized and portable inventions into his saddle bag. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Twilight doing the same with the garden’s sprouts, thankfully in a much more careful fashion. His hole-riddled spare saddle bag looked ridiculous on her, like spreading mud on a diamond. Still, she had the plants. Resettling somewhere else would be so much easier with the plants.

A heart-stopping boom rattled the front door. Dust leaped off the wooden panels amid a discordant chorus of voices.

“What’s happening? Who’s out there?” Twilight whispered, her voice trembling.

“Ponies from the far side of the valley, from the village the elders wouldn’t even speak of. I didn’t know why until I made a telescope, but… but we’ve got to run for it. Trust me.”

“Why? Are they evil or someth—”

“Worse! Whatever you’re imagining, they’re worse!”

Another pony crashed into the door. “She shall be found within the stone circle! Within the stone circle!”

“Where do we go?” Twilight asked.

Belvedere looked between her and the door, fear overtaking reason. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This couldn’t possibly happen. He’d done everything right, building far beyond the territory of any villager or monster, and never even lighting a fire out of doors.

The front door jolted under another heavy blow. A hoof-sized portion near the latch flew away, and a few seconds later the daylight streaming through it was obstructed by an eye, bloodshot from heavy mushroom abuse. “She shall mend the sky! She shall break the shadows!”

Twilight backed toward the staircase, as if this pony’s stare was physically pushing her. “This way. We can jump down from the top.”

He followed her up the stairs, tripping on nearly every step. His eyes were fixed on his workshop, his bed, his garden, and everything in between. This was his last look at it all. They’d destroy everything he cared about, that’s what village ponies did. These weren’t just any villagers, either. How many ponies had he seen them bury in their mushroom fields? He couldn’t let that happen to Twilight. He wouldn’t.

She called to him from the top of the steps. “We can jump down from here, but then where do we run?” She was scanning the horizon with the telescope when he reached the landing. When had she grabbed the telescope? If only they’d had more time to grab his things. If he’d taken the time to build a stronger door they could’ve hunkered down and waited for the timbers to finish the villagers off.

“Belvedere! If we’re going to run for it, pick a dir—ooh!”

Hearing his own name brought back some of his focus. Why was he worrying about his inventions? He could rebuild his house and regrow his garden. The only irreplaceable thing in the world was the pony standing in front of him. He had to protect her, even if it meant sending her back to her own world.

Twilight jumped up and down, pointing at a distant mountain beyond the valley. “There! Right there!”

“Huh?”

She shoved the telescope against his eye and aimed it for him. “Do you see that?”

He blinked a few times, his brow smarting from having a telescope collide with it, and finally discerned a small point of light. The mountainside had a weird-looking cliffside on it, almost like a series of towers. Atop the biggest tower of all was a faint white light. “What’s—?”

“It’s Canterlot!”

“What’s Canter—?”

“It’s a city from my world! It’s the place where I… but there’s a version here too, so… I don’t really know what it means yet, but we have to go there!”

There mere thought of all the ground between them and that mountain range made him shudder. “That’s impossible, Twilight. Even if we make it down the hill alive, there’s more villages, and monsters, and deep d—”

Something whistled through the air and wrenched the telescope out of his grasp. The objective lens shattered against the stone landing as the wooden spear that had struck it clattered down the steps.

“Star mother! Star mother!” the villagers chanted.

Belvedere looked down and saw a line of ponies encircling his home, each one standing equidistant from their neighbor. Horrifying as it was to be trapped, a morbid curiosity welled up within him too. He’d always assumed the villagers were truly insane; what else could drive ponies to ritualistic murder? Insane ponies wouldn’t form a neat circle to entrap their prey; that was the sort of hunting instinct that belonged to the likes of the timbers.

Twilight’s horn glowed briefly before she yelped in pain. “Using magic really hurts. I-I don’t think I can teleport us. Napping in the sunlight helped a little, but—”

A second spear bounced against the wall a few inches below them. Belvedere followed the perfect line of villagers surrounding them. “Then we’re dead.”

A white unicorn stallion paced around the base of the wall, hobbling slightly on a shriveled hind leg. “No more spears! We can't risk hurting the star mother!”

The stallion gave the wall a grim stare, frowning slightly as his gaze met Belvedere’s. “Release her.”

Belvedere stared into the perfectly normal whites of his eyes. This pony couldn’t be from the same village if he didn’t eat mushrooms.

Twilight gave an unconvincing laugh. “Oh, I-I’m sorry. You must have mistaken me for somepony else. I’m just a normal pony, not a prisoner or a… star mother, so if you could just leave us be…”

“You don’t eat the mushrooms,” Belvedere murmured, “so why are you with these crazies… these monsters? I’ve seen what they do to ponies on that stone altar… and where they bury them afterwards!”

Twilight gasped. “What?”

The circle of ponies started whispering furiously, but the stallion silenced them with a sweep of his hoof. “You wouldn’t understand. Just let the star mother come with us and we’ll leave you and your… rock pile alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, and I’m not letting you hurt Belvedere!” Twilight shouted.

“I don’t know what this lunatic outcast has been telling you—”

“The truth,” Belvedere said through clenched teeth, “and this ‘rock pile’ is proof enough that I’m not the lunatic here. I’m the pony standing in a fortress that you’ll never break into, not before the timbers hear the commotion and come to pick you off, anyway.”

The stallion shut his eyes for a moment, as if lost in thought. “Look… Belvedere, was it? You might think you’re doing the right thing, somehow, but all you’re doing is standing in the way of progress, of a better way of life. Our society is far more advanced than you th—”

“Sacrificing ponies isn’t a better way of life!”

“Those weren’t ponies, not anymore. We cultivate a very particular, very special type of mushroom, quite different from the poisonous variety your kind knows of.”

“I don’t care what you call it, it’s murd—”

“Let me explain; perhaps then you’ll see reason. Our mushrooms act on ponies in one of three ways: some shut down and are used to fertilize the crops, which is what you seem to be getting worked up about. They’re just husks, empty shells. We all accept whatever role we might assume before we first taste of the crop. Some fertilize the mushrooms, while others develop a second sight, an ability to catch glimpses of the near future.”

The stallion gestured to his fellow villagers. “They can forecast our crop yields, predict where the timbers will attack, and even, on rare occasions, see events further out. Every seer pony eventually makes the same prediction: a flash on a distant hillside which heralds a discovery that will change the world forever.”

“A pony with both horn and wing! The star mother will appear!” one of the seer ponies shouted.

“The sky will be healed! No more shadows! No more night!” another said.

“That's why we've come,” the stallion continued, “and why you must release her. She's fated to change the whole world, to heal it, and that all starts with her becoming part of our society.”

“No.” Twilight gave voice to Belvedere’s own defiance. “I don’t care what you think I am, and I don’t care what you think I can do. I’m staying right here!”

Belvedere stood next to her. “You’re not turning us into plant food, or seers, or whatever you are.”

The stallion laughed without smiling. “What am I? I’m the third kind of pony, the rarest of all.”

His horn disappeared in a black flame tinged with green and red. “The kind whose magic recharges a thousand times faster.”

“Look out!” Twilight shouted, moments before pushing Belvedere out of the path of a magical energy bolt. “He’s using dark magic! How is he using—?”

A nearby patch of wall exploded as another energy bolt struck, and the stallion’s voice rang out over the echoing boom. “If you won’t listen to reason, then we’ll take the star mother by force!”

Belvedere coughed up rock dust, his heart pounding. “What’s dark mag—?”

“It’s just what it sounds like. It’s magical energy from a negative source, from something inherently destructive. That might be why his back leg is so weak.”

“No more talk, and no more stalling. You have until I count to ten!” the stallion shouted.

Twilight gave a great sigh. “I… I might have to go with them.”

Belvedere gasped. “What? No! I can’t let you do that!”

She glared at him. “Well I can’t let him blow up your house and all your inventions! If you’ve got a better idea, then throw it out there!”

“Okay. I’ll… I’ll try something. Get ready to run straight down the hill. We’ll head towards the city.”

She nodded, and a smile crossed her face. “Ready when you are.”

Belvedere got to his hooves, in full view of the villagers. “We give up! Please don’t hurt us!”

The stallion nodded, his ferocious counting giving way to an almost courteous smile. “Good. Allow me to help.”

The broken stone blocks now littering the ground glowed with the same black fire and arranged themselves into a crude staircase stretching from the ground to just under Belvedere’s hooves. If the stallion meant to awe him with this show of power, he’d arrived a day too late; nopony could or would ever measure up to Twilight. Belvedere lowered his head, as if to better negotiate the steps, shut his eyes tight, and lit his horn.

In his mind he saw his home, from stone foundation to canvas ceiling to crystal mirrors. His newly strengthened magic reached through his mental blueprint as well as the unseen physical world, touching the hundreds of crystals dotting the roof in turn, and finally settling on the big one suspended directly over the garden. He’d positioned and adjusted each of those mirrors, sometimes pouring all of his energy into a single mirror to just to orient it perfectly. Now he’d be doing the same sort of adjustment, albeit at a much larger scale.

A magical touch became a nudge, and a nudge become a steady pull. Before his hoof touched down on the first step, the crystal mirrors tilted until the garden was left in shadow. White beams of light tore through the darkness, lengthening shadows and searing eyeballs. In an instant the stoic line of villagers was reduced to a group of screaming, blinded ponies, most of them stumbling around in search of escape.

Twilight brushed past him on her way down the stairs. “Come on!”

“No!” the stallion screamed, “You won't take her! I won’t let you condemn the whole world!”

Belvedere dived off the staircase just as another blast of dark magic decimated it. He landed inches from Twilight, half hoping to catch an approving smile before they ran for their lives.

Twilight simply pointed to the valley and the mountains beyond. “Let’s go!”

Their hooves thundered against against the parched earth, kicking up twin trails of dust in their wake that, Belvedere knew, would make them easy to spot.

“What’s the safest path through the valley?” Twilight asked.

Belvedere scanned the sprawling landscape before them, his usual animosity for the valley replaced with hard logic mixed with hopelessness. Shadow-laced land dotted with bonfires lay ahead, each bonfire the center of a village that at best would turn away outsiders and and at worst would bury them in a mushroom garden. In between those bastions of insular, backwards-thinking ponies lay huge swaths of shadow, areas of deep dark that could harbor any number of pony-eating monsters. Tracing a theoretically traversable path through the valley’s open ground wasn’t hard, but actually walking it bordered on impossible.

“Twilight… Twilight I don’t think we’re going to—”

“Don’t say that!” she snapped. “I-I know it looks really bad, but don’t say—”

A beam of dark magic shot by his ear and met the soil a few hundred paces ahead. A brown cloud rose up as a resounding boom shook the ground beneath their hooves. “Bear left!”

Twilight nodded just as another explosion rocked the world, this one to their right. Another followed on the left, completely obscuring their every path forward in a haze of vaporized soil.

Belvedere’s legs suddenly felt heavy. Each moment he stared at the brown cloud masking the way forward slowed his hoofsteps and sped up his heart. Inside of a minute he came to a halt, unable to do anything besides take in great gasping gasping breaths of the warm, earthy air.

Twilight skidded to a stop ten paces ahead of him. “What are you doing? He doesn’t want to risk hitting me, that’s why… what’s wrong with you?”

“I-I… can’t…”

Words failed him. His deepest, most trusted tenet for survival, the rule that had been bred and beaten into him from foalhood, demanded that he stop and pick a different direction. That’s what anypony in their right mind did when something obscured the path ahead. The unknown was where monsters lay in wait. What couldn’t be seen couldn’t be trusted.

The stallion’s enraged voice echoed down the hillside. “Stop right there! I’ve held off killing you to spare the star mother’s feelings, but no more! You’re going to stand aside, either whole or in pieces!”

Belvedere turned to the advancing line of villagers just as Twilight rushed to his side. She threw her foreleg across his shoulders and stared the stallion down. “Then you’ll have to blast us both!”

For a moment all he could think of was how soft and warm her foreleg was. What did his stupid inventions amount to, anyway? There wasn’t a pony alive, save for Twilight, who saw anything in them. The world wouldn’t miss him, or even notice his passing. Just save yourself, Twilight. You’re a Princess. Your world needs you.

The stallion glanced at his red-eyed compatriots, who were staring at the nearby deep dark rather than charging forward. “So be it.”

Twilight and Belvedere shared a gasp. “What?”

“If you’re as strong as the seers say you are, if the prophecies are true… then you’ll live.”

His horn lit with that same terrible black flame just as the other villagers joined in a seconds-long collective scream, which was joined a moment later by a mighty roar. A timber burst into the light, its claws finding the nearest villager and its jaws closing around another. The stallion dove for cover while the monster made its retreat to the darkness with its still-screaming meal, its barbed tail lashing everywhere.

Twilight pulled Belvedere around to face her. With their noses inches apart and her eyes boring into his, she uttered the one and only command that had yet to fail him: “Run!”

They barreled towards the soil clouds still obscuring their only escape route, Belvedere’s heart hammering in his chest and his eyes tearing up as they entered the haze. It’s just dirt in the air. It’s just dirt in the air. Nothing’s hiding in here. Stop running and the timbers will eat you. Panic and the villagers will get Twilight.

He chanced a look towards the horizon and only saw more dust. Where was the mountain? How off course were they? Where was the deep dark? What if they were running directly towards it? “We… we can’t! We have to stop! We can’t go in th—”

Vaporized soil coated his mouth and throat when he breathed in. He coughed and sputtered, one hoof outstretched towards Twilight’s purple form fading in the distance. I won’t let you die in there. I won’t!

His hooves launched him forward with new speed and purpose. He wasn’t racing into the unknown, not anymore. He was chasing Twilight, smart, beautiful, and completely tangible Twilight. She was only five paces ahead; he could close that gap. He could reach her if he sped up just a little more. He wouldn’t let her stumble into the void.

“Twilight!” he sputtered, one hoof outstretched.

Her brilliant purple tail danced in front of him.

“Twilight! Wait!”

He lunged forward, his teeth just missing the tip of her tail as all the world’s light and sound vanished. The air whistling through his nostrils and the dirt crunching under his hooves were strangely faint, like the sounds of a pony far away. The hillside was gone. The villagers were gone. Only darkness remained, a visual emptiness so complete that he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut, and the surest sign that he and Twilight had left the mortal world forever.

They were in the deep dark. They’d crossed into the ultimate unknown, the domain where only monsters dared tread, the void that nopony had ever willingly entered, and from which nopony had ever returned. A chill reached through his skin and found his heart. His legs felt it next, mobility leaving him just like hope. He’d never get to finish the garden. He’d never even get to eat again. All his work and wild aspirations were gone, and all that remained was to wait for the inevitable, for a monster to dart forward and eat him.

Twilight’s horn lit just in front of him, its brilliant purple light falling away to nothing before even touching her hooves. Her lips moved, but no sound reached his ears. She shouted next, her face screwed up with the effort, and he caught a faint whisper. “Belvedere, where are you?”

Something swelled within him, crowding out the paralyzing dread. Twilight was counting on him, and that meant he couldn’t quit or even slow down. She still needed him, and in this nightmarish place he needed her more than ever. He stepped forward, shaking off his previous horror like a coat of dust.

Talking wouldn’t work, not even face to face. Instead he nudged her shoulder with his own. I’m right here.

She immediately wrapped a foreleg around him and pressed her cheek to his temple. “What direction did we come from?”

At last he could hear her properly. “I can’t tell.”

“Maybe we can teleport out.”

“I thought you said doing magic still hurt.”

She nodded. “It does… a lot… but what choice to we have?”

“What happens if you don’t have enough magic left?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—”

A low growl rumbled through the air, louder and clearer than Belvedere’s own heartbeat. The deep dark’s residents had no problem making themselves heard.

Twilight and Belvedere broke into a run.

He followed Twilight’s voice, now barely a shadow of a whisper, while comparatively ear-splitting grunts and roars sounded behind them. “Dark spots like this… they’re not very big across… should be able to… find the other side. Right?”

Belvedere thought back to how far they’d already traveled. A hundred paces? Two hundred? Having no visual landmarks made estimation nearly impossible. “I don’t kn—”

Something hard crashed into his chest. He fell to the ground in a crumpled heap, gasping for breath while tears rolled down his face. “What… ugh… huh?”

His own voice rang in his ears, unencumbered by the deep dark. He tilted his head to the side, daring to expose his face to whatever horror the world had in store for him next, and spied the boulder he’d run into as well as the afternoon sun. “We’re… out! We made it! Twilight, we’re—”

Twilight wasn’t there.

She’d been running right next to him a moment ago. Where was she? His eyes pored over the rocky hillside, avoiding the most obvious and chilling feature of the landscape: the featureless curtain of black directly behind him. She couldn’t still be in there. She couldn’t. She’d been right next to him, and if he’d been able to run straight out, she should’ve been able to do the same.

Another roar sounded, and suddenly he didn’t care if it made any sense. All that mattered was Twilight wasn’t with him, and he needed to fix that.

The saddlebag came apart easily. Inventions spilled onto the ground amid the quiet snapping of threads. His magic made short work of the seams, and reduced the remaining fabric to bare thread just as quickly. He didn’t need a bag anymore, he needed a lifeline, a path back to safety.

With one end of the thread securely fastened to a boulder and the other tied to his foreleg, he turned to face his oldest and greatest nemesis. Standing here, his nose inches from the deep dark, both strengthened and defied his fears. He was at the unknown’s mercy, a mere claw swipe away from timbers and whatever else could see through that dark veil. If he wanted to save Twilight, he'd have to be willing to walk right into their jaws.

He closed his eyes and stepped in. I’m coming, Twilight.

This time he felt the transition from light to dark, into the never-ending black curtain that dulled vision and voice. This time he walked in willingly, and this time he came prepared. He raised one hoof, bringing his hollow tree branch to his ear. “Twilight! Can you hear me?”

The tree branch seemed to amplify the silence itself. He placed it to his mouth next, speaking into the narrow end while pointing the wide one at the surrounding darkness. “Twilight! Twilight, follow my voice! I found a way out! Follow my voice!”

The branch went back to his ear next, and once again only the silence seemed to get louder.

“Twilight! Follow my voice! I found a way out! Follow—”

A long, low breath broke the silence, and an acrid breeze wafted past him.

His heart stopped. Was something watching him? Had he just woken a timber up, or had he just imagined it? Part of him knew this was a terrible plan, the same part that’d been chanting that he was going to get himself killed ever since Twilight arrived.

Still he screamed into the void, stepping further in with the thread dragging behind him. “Twilight! Twilight! I’m here! I’m right here!”

A roar sounded in his ears, followed by the unmistakable thump-thump-thump of huge paws on the ground.

“Twi—”

Something much smaller than a timber tackled him. Warm, shaking legs first wrapped themselves around him and then traced the outline of his face.

Her quaking voice sounded in his ears. “It's coming! Run!”

Another roar shook the ground, followed by the ever-increasing cadence of thundering footsteps. Belvedere trotted as fast as he could, one hoof tracing the virtually invisible thread guiding them back.

Daylight broke around them at last, but they still didn’t stop. Belvedere shoved Twilight to the side before she repeated his crash landing on the boulders, leading her around them and up a steep hill. Barely two seconds later, another roar sliced through the air, but not through solid rock. The sound of splintering wood mixed with otherworldly howling faded into the distance before they could turn around to look. By the time they did, only a few stray splinters were left, all of them smoldering in the sunlight.

For minutes on end, all they could do was breathe.

Belvedere lay on a rock, his ears filled with the sound of his own heart, and his eyes drifting between Twilight next to him and the deep dark at the base of the hill. He couldn’t stop looking Twilight up and down just to make sure she was real. The rise and fall of her back, the wisps of sweat-soaked mane plastered to her forehead, and the dirt stains masking her cutie mark all spoke the same truth to him: they were out. They’d escaped villager, monster, and deep dark alike.

Their eyes met, and he managed a slight grin. “I don’t think anypony’s ever gone in there and come back out again… but we did. We’re out. We’re alive.”

Twilight nodded to the horizon, a smile on her lips. “And look where we are!”

Belvedere glanced up and momentarily forgot how to breathe. This couldn’t be real. He could believe Twilight was real, but not this strange view where the valley’s fires were in all the wrong places. His mind traced the flickering lights again again until the truth hit him with greater force than his crash landing onto the boulders. “We’re on the other side… We’re on the other side of the valley. How?”

“The dark spots aren’t magic shadows. I think they’re a kind of alternate dimension that’s mixed up with this one. Space in there isn’t the same as space out here.”

Part of him still didn’t believe it. He raised a hoof to each fire in turn, tracing the mirror images of the constellations he’d glimpsed every day for years. “Then that means my house is right—”

A thin trail of smoke was visible in the sky, rising from an indistinct speck in the distance that could only be the tree he’d built his home next to. What had he left behind that was so profane? Bits of parchment? Some spare canvas? “Why’d they have to burn it? Why’d they have to…” And then he couldn’t keep looking at it. All his notions of self-sacrifice boiled away. He sat on the rock, forelegs crossed and eyes fixed on the ground “All that work, all that thinking, all that problem solving, that… fixing… just so some idiot ponies can…”

Twilight patted him on the back. “It’s not so… I mean… some ponies—”

He grunted. “Ponies… That’s the real problem. Why’ve I been wasting my time trying to help them? They just destroy, and kill, and burn… I should’ve just… just stopped putting rocks together when the elders told me. I could’ve been dumb and content just like everypony else. Maybe I could’ve even had a family of my own. Maybe I could’ve been happy.”

Twilight’s shadow fell over him as she stood. He didn’t need to look up to sense her glare. “Ponies aren’t like that, not all of them!”

“Around here they are!”

Her wings flared out. “Do you want to know how I got these, how I became a princess?”

“By being way smarter than everypony else?”

She leaned in close to him. “Friendship. I’m the Princess of Friendship. I know things look bad right now, but you can’t just turn your back on who you are, and you’re a pony who helps others!”

“All I have to do is walk back to my village, convince them how I’ve learned from my mistakes, and—”

Her hoof thumped him in the chest. “And then you’ll wind up miserable for the rest of your life, and the rest of the world will be worse off for not having your special talents.”

Belvedere shifted himself on the rock, which felt only slightly harder than her tone. He dropped his gaze to the discarded inventions littering the base of the hill, the trinkets he’d prized in his lonely pursuit of a better life and then cast aside when Twilight was in danger. She was so special, so different from anypony he had or would ever meet. “In this world, ponies don’t have friends. How can they, in a place like this?”

“That’s where ponies need them the most! Belvedere, if you hadn’t helped me, I would’ve been eaten right after I arrived. If I hadn’t helped you, your magic wouldn’t have been strong enough to get us away from the villagers.” She grasped his hoof in hers. “Friendship isn’t an exclusive or secret thing only some ponies can have. It’s for everypony, the poor, the rich, the strong, the weak… When its magic goes away, you get a world like this.”

Her hoof shot out towards the valley. “Villages of ponies too scared to challenge their beliefs and too hungry to challenge their traditions, random dark magic rifts that monsters pop out of… Something like this happened to my world too, with windegos instead of timbers. Your world needs friendship just as much as mine. You need friendship just as much as I do.”

She stepped away, her gaze fixed on the valley. “Maybe it really is too late for some ponies, but you’re proof enough that it’s not too late for ponykind.”

A long, slow breath escaped his nostrils. He’d believed that only a few days ago, hadn’t he? If not, what had he been constructing a model village for? “If it isn’t too late… then what do we do now?”

He didn’t expect an answer. Here they were, stranded in unfamiliar territory with no supplies other than the plants in Twilight’s saddlebag. There was nothing left for them to do, for friendship or otherwise.

Twilight turned to face him and then looked up. “We climb.”

He craned his neck around to follow her gaze. They’d emerged at the base of the mountain upon which Canterlot waited.

Daybreak

Never had Belvedere felt so small and insignificant. His utter exhaustion after their hours-long climb up the mountainside was completely forgotten. A dizzyingly tall stone building capped with a slanted roof stood less than twenty paces from him. Some past conflict had carved huge sections out of it, but still it stood, defying time and decay. “Ponies really built this?”

“Huh?” Twilight had walked right past it. She looked back at him from fifty paces down the cobblestone street, partially obscured by the innocent shadows of neighboring buildings. Getting lost seemed to be the worst danger here, thankfully; there hadn’t been a single patch of deep dark since they entered the city.

“This,” he said, gesturing to the tower and then to the rest of the crumbling cityscape stretching out before him, “ponies built this?”

Twilight smiled. “Yep. It’s pretty amazing what a determined pony’s special talent can do, isn’t it?”

He gave a snorting laugh. “Talent… I don’t have any talent, not compared to whoever built this place… Look at that!”

Her head whipped around and she stepped closer to him. “What is it? Where?”

He pointed over the nearest caved-in rooftops, toward the city center. “Look at that huge arch! Look at how the stones are cut so…”

The heat of Twilight’s glare silenced him. He gave a sheepish grin and continued walking. “I-I mean, lead the way. Lead the way. Nothing to see here… aside from utterly amazing architecture that puts everything I ever did to shame…”

Twilight sighed. “Don’t forget your plants. The ponies who originally built Canterlot would’ve been amazed to see your sunlight concentrator.”

His stomach rumbled, and he looked to Twilight’s saddlebags. “But without one, the plants are just going to wither and die. Maybe we should pluck out the seeds and eat the rest.”

“I wouldn’t mind; I’m starving… but we’re almost there. Look!”

The most impressive structure of all lay directly ahead of them, down the gently winding street bordered by battered and abandoned buildings of every shape and size. He couldn’t quite take the whole of it in, not even when he mulled over the word Twilight used to describe it: castle. Tower upon multicolored tower stretched to the sky, equal parts majestic and gloomy. Shadows filled jagged holes in the outer wall, and most of the spires and balconies were little more than rubble now. Still he could see beauty there, the work of hundreds of ponies over years if not decades, still standing proud on the side of a mountain. His eyes focused on each detail in turn, and his mind undid the untold centuries of neglect. “Those two balconies face each other, but they’re so pointy and… it was a bridge. There was a little bridge right there! How did the surrounding structure bear the weight? Hmm…”

“Coming?”

He blinked. Twilight had journeyed ahead again while he’d managed a single step. “Y-yes. Sorry.”

She waited for him to trot up to her and then nudged him with her wing. “Stay close, please? I know there isn’t any deep dark nearby but…”

“Of course! Sorry, I don’t want to worry you… Where are we going, anyway?”

She stared at the castle, her head slowly tilting back until only one structure could possibly be in her view: the castle’s tallest tower, the top of which was leaking faint rays of white light, as if a miniature sun was trapped inside. “Up there.”

He couldn’t help laughing at his luck. They were headed for the castle’s centerpiece, the tallest structure of all, albeit the one with the most damage to its exterior. “Wow… I can’t wait to see the view of the city from there. What’s making that light? Is it a mirror setup like mine?”

Twilight didn’t speak for seconds on end. “I don’t know… It’s actually got me kind of worried.”

“Worried? Why? Didn’t you mumble something before about how light might be the source of all magic?”

“Sunlight, yes. But that light in the tower…”

She stopped walking, her eyes still fixed on their ultimate goal. “I don’t know why Canterlot is here at all… I used to walk down this street every day with my parents. How can there be an exact duplicate of the whole city in some other dimension… What are the chances of there being another dimension with an Equestria populated by ponies, even?”

“Don’t look at me for answers, Twilight. I’ll count myself lucky if I can figure out how this street was made.”

“I just have this bad feeling that… that…”

“What?”

She blinked a few times and forced a smile. “Let’s just keep going. We’ll climb the tower, and then we’ll eat. Sound good?”

He nodded quickly, the thought of food and a magnificent view lifting his spirits even higher. “Sounds great!”

They walked on in silence, save for his irrepressible marveling at their surroundings. Each abandoned building taught him a new trick, a new architectural flourish to stack stones higher or to have them bridge a wider gap. Twilight led him through the castle gates, past sentry towers, and over small bridges without comment. Even as they stepped through a partially caved-in hole and began climbing the tower’s steps, she remained silent.

“Do you think that light… do you think it’s your way home?” The question slipped out before he could consider whether or not he wanted an answer.

Her lips parted long before words passed through them. “I… don’t know. The closer we get, the less I think I understand. I felt so sure of myself when I set up the experiment, right in the heart of Canterlot with two of my fellow princesses to help me. Somepony even wrote about it in the newspaper, about how ‘Princess Twilight was going to solve another magical mystery using the moon,’ or something… But what do those ponies think now? Did I just disappear? Does everypony I’ve ever known… everypony I love think I’m lost, or that I’m…”

“They’re probably looking for you. If I… I-I mean, I’d look for you. I’m sure your friends are searching all over Equestria.”

“I’m sure you’re right. I just wish I knew what happened, what went wrong.”

“Well… What do you know? Just start there and maybe it’ll make sense. That’s what I always do.”

She glanced at him, her eyes searching for answers he didn’t have. “I don’t know where to start.”

“At the beginning. Just start at the beginning.”

“Okay… It was an experiment to figure out how teleportation works, where ponies go in the tiny fraction of a second between them disappearing and reappearing. There are plenty of theories, but nopony has ever been able to conduct an experiment to really prove anything. Personally, I was hoping Star Swirl’s theorem of magical superpositions turned out to be the correct one, but… anyway, I knew I needed help; this kind of experiment needed huge amounts of magic. After some convincing, Princess Celestia and Luna agreed to help; they’re magically connected to the sun and the moon, so I knew they’d have the power requirements covered. We set up the safety enchantments in the astral tower where the sun and moon are traditionally moved, I counted down from ten and teleported six inches forward while they powered the time dilation spells, and then… Then I was here.”

“Sounds like you know plenty.”

She shook her head. “But nothing important! I don’t know where my mistake was, if it just affected me, or if I ended up hurting…”

They’d reached the top of the staircase. In front of them stood a pair of arched wooden doors that might’ve once been ornate. Now they sagged on their broken hinges, rotten and crumbling. Brilliant light, akin to Belvedere’s garden, shone through the cracks in the panels. Somehow this light didn’t burn like that of the sun, despite its intensity. Twilight’s saddlebags dropped to the floor, but there was no use in pretending they were just going to sit down and eat, no matter how hungry they were.

He stepped forward and gave the nearest door the slightest of nudges. Half of it fell away, blasting them with light that their dilated eyes welcomed in without a hint of discomfort.

Twilight screamed all the same. Her wings flapped wildly, and the whole tower seemed to shudder under their hooves.

Belvedere didn’t know what to think, or even what he was looking at. Before him stood a circular room populated by mouldering furniture and the caved-in roof, and lit by two oversized statues that glowed with ethereal light. He looked from one statue to the other, two unicorns with wings like Twilight, but about one and half times the size of the largest pony he’d ever seen. How could statues glow?

Twilight crept forward on shaking legs, her tears dotting the ancient carpet. She reached out a hoof to the right statue, stopping inches short of touching it. “P-Princess Celestia… Princess Luna… I-I’m so sorry!”

“Huh?”

Twilight buried her head in her hooves, weeping onto the statue’s gilded hooves. “How can you be here… What have I done…”

Belvedere raced forward, hoof reaching for Twilight and wide eyes fixed on the imposing visages standing over her. They looked so lifelike up close. “What are they?”

“This is… was… These are the Royal Sisters, Celestia and Luna… I-I don’t how how I did it, but…”

“But you said you teleported from another dimension or something. How can other ponies from your world be here?”

Twilight shuddered. “Because… I think it means this is my world, my Equestria… somehow.”

“How can it—?”

“I don’t know!” She shot him a savage look worthy of a hungry timber. “But if I can figure it out, then maybe I can fix it!”

Belvedere felt something shift beneath his hooves, a movement so slight that he nearly missed it. Hadn’t he felt something like that before, when Twilight first screamed? A horrible thought crossed his mind, worse even than the deathly uncertainty of the deep dark: they were standing atop an ancient, crumbling tower, hundreds upon hundreds of feet in the air. They were standing atop a tower that, while perfectly capable of supporting itself, hadn’t had to contend with two ponies moving around inside it for eons; sometimes seemly well stacked rocks could be toppled by the tiniest of nudges.

“Twilight, I-I think the tower…”

Twilight stood, her wings flared and her gaze on the two giant ponies. “Frozen in time… except the second and fifth enchantments ensured that we couldn’t accidentally move through time by more than a few seconds. So…”

He felt it again, the unmistakable sensation of movement accompanied by a distant rumble. “We can’t stay here!”

She ignored him. “So assuming those enchantments were cast correctly, this isn’t a future Equestria. But everything is still a ruin, and there are semi-traversable dimensional pockets forming everywhere, so that means….”

“Twilight!”

“We… well I… I broke something with the sun and the moon… the moon must be positioned in front of the sun, blocking some of its light. So that’s why it’s just a ring, and Celestia and Luna aren’t here to move either one of them. But what about the apparent time shift…”

He could hear it now, a distinct crack of freed stones breaking against the cobblestone streets so far below. What could he do? Was he supposed to grab her, to drag her down the stairs before they plummeted to their deaths? Would her wings support them both when her magic was so weak?

She held up a hoof as if she’d heard his thoughts. “Just give me a minute, I can get this! I can fix this!”

Despite his fear, he couldn’t help sympathizing with that attitude. He’d solved plenty of seemingly impossible problems, but surviving a fall like the one awaiting them wasn’t on that list. “Hurry, Twilight. Please, please hurry.”

“So if we accept that the protective enchantments worked as intended, but that the magical power given to them approached the theoretical limit described in the… well of course it did, this is Celestia and Luna we’re talking about! So as the spell’s energy level approaches infinity… Ooh!”

She turned back him with her teary eyes sparkling. “I didn’t travel in time, but this is still my Equestria. It’s our Equestria!”

Belvedere retreated to her side, judging the steadiness of the floor with each step. “Hurry, hurry, hurry…”

“I didn’t travel in time, but I still caused a chronological disturbance because… I’ll show you!”

To his horror, she jabbed the floor with her hoof and scraped it through the dust to draw a line. “Here’s the normal flow of time. I performed the experiment right here—” she pointed to the end of the line “—but when I teleported with the Royal Sister’s combined power, the protective enchantments echoed through time itself and caused the sun and moon to get stuck way back here—” she pointed to the middle of the line “—so time for all celestial bodies basically stopped! The sun and the moon were frozen in place hundreds of years ago, and because Celestia and Luna are connected to them, they’re frozen too! Without full sunlight, pony magic is weaker, and without friendship or any other pony magic, dark magic is overrunning everything. I stopped time… but in the past.”

The wall behind Celestia and Luna crumbled away. Falling stones were cracking against the distant ground in rapid succession. Belvedere ran back to the door, hoping Twilight would follow. “We’ve got to go!”

Her ears folded back. “This is it… I’m going home.”

Her horn lit before he could respond, and her cry of agony soon followed. A jagged purple arc bridged the two Royal Sisters with Twilight’s horn, and a crackling sound echoed through the sky. “I… just need to restart the whole process… give it a nudge… so the enchantments get unstuck… and time starts up again!”

Belvedere stood in the doorway, his attention torn between the staircase to safety and the pony framed in the door’s archway, the pony he’d grown so fond of so quickly. Her being stuck in his terrible world was a problem he had to solve, whether he wanted to or not. “You’re really… you’re really leaving? I-I’d hoped… I mean…”

She grimaced, her legs buckling as if a heavy load had fallen on her back. “C-can’t… do it… h-hurts… hurts so much!”

For once he knew what was happening. No. Not now. Not now! “You don’t have enough magic left; the pain’s just going to get worse if you don’t stop, and if you pass out I don’t know if I can carry you out of here. Just stop and we can… we’ll try something else! We’ll find another way!”

Even he didn’t believe it. His words were nothing more than vain hope, the selfish desire that she’d remain in his life. He couldn’t do that. She deserved better than this world, better than him.

She let out a fresh scream. “I have to restart time! I have to!”

Belvedere’s horn lit. “If the sisters powered your spell, and you just need to nudge it, then maybe if I—”

Her head whipped from side to side. “No, don’t! If you’re connected to the spell when I get pulled back… I-I don’t know what’ll happen. It might destroy you!”

He stepped forward, his horn surging with every drop of magic he had left. “Good. I… I don’t want to be here if you’re not.”

“Belvedere—”

As their magical auras met, a pain beyond anything he’d ever experienced shot through him, rolling through horn, head, and spine. A scream filled his mind but couldn’t reach his lips; every muscle in him burned with a paralyzing fire that seemed to get stronger and more distant at the same time, as if his soul was retreating from his dying body along with his magic. At last he’d solved the ultimate problem, the question of what to do with his life: he’d give all of it to her. “G-good…bye… Twilight.”

Light overwhelmed him. Suddenly he was sailing back through door, and then out into the open air beyond the tower’s crumbling walls, the shockwave that had propelled him still ringing in his ears. He’d hit the ground inside of a minute, and that would be a mercy. All that mattered was the brilliant beacon of purple light hanging in the sky, and the image burned into his mind of Twilight standing inside the arched doorway. Go home, Twilight. Go home.

“So… that’s it.”

There was an air of finality in Belvedere’s voice. Early afternoon sunlight shone through the windows, causing the shadows to retreat to the office’s corners. The papers covering the wall shone brilliantly, each one perfectly aligned with its neighbor, together creating a weathered stone wall and a tall archway that stretched over the closed office door.

“This is what I’ve been so excited about… so obsessed over. It’s just a wall… Just a big, empty archway.”

If only Cornice could hear him. Would she offer him a fresh cup of coffee and tell him about how the civic center project was going? Those were the things he paid her for, after all: keeping him alert and focused on whatever task the company required of its president and chief architect. “But what if… what if that’s not what I want anymore?”

The whispered words rang in his ears.

He returned to his desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of drafting paper, perfectly sized for a sketch, but rather awkward for a letter. His needle-sharp drafting pencil made a thin, crisp capital D on the upper right corner, and he proceeded to write.

Dear Cornice,

Thanks for being such an amazing executive secretary. I wouldn’t be half the success I am without a pony like you keeping me sane. I hope you know that. I hope all the other ponies in your life know how special you are. Don’t ever let them forget.

He stopped there for a moment. Was he really ready for this? Whispering it was one thing, but committing it to paper? Did he dare leave the comfort and security of the empire he’d built with his own hooves and horn? One glance at the currently obscured photographs hanging on the wall, the photographs peppered with business smiles as devoid of true happiness as he’d felt for well over a day, if not for years, got him writing again.

It’s time for me to do something different. I don’t know what, exactly. All I know for sure is I’m ready for a new challenge, a new direction. Most of all, I’m ready to have some more ponies like you in my life, ponies that care if I’m falling asleep on my desk or not eating three meals a day. Don’t worry, this doodle isn’t my Formal Letter of Resignation. I’ll write out something simple and lawyer-friendly on regular letter-sized paper in time for the next board meeting. I just thought you deserved to know fir

The intercom buzzed, and his pencil point tore through the paper. “I’m a little busy pouring out my soul here, Cornice.”

The intercom buzzed twice more, Cornice’s code for “drop everything because there’s somepony important coming up in the elevator.”

Belvedere sighed and pressed the button. “I need another minute, Cornice.”

“No can do, Mr. B, sorry.”

Belvedere stared at the intercom, mildly unsure of who was on the other end of it. “Excuse me, Cornice, but I’m going to have to insist.”

“Me too, Mr. B. There’s some ponies that you just can’t say no to.”

He glared at the intercom, half wondering if he needed to scratch out the gushing declaration of friendship he’d just penned, or skip recommending to the board that she get a raise and promotion. “Like your boss, for example?”

The doors swung open on their silent hinges, and Belvedere threw the pencil aside. “Cornice! I—”

Princess Twilight was standing in his doorway. More importantly, she was standing inside the stone arch, completing it. She was what had been missing all along.

She gave a nervous smile. “Ahem. I-I’m sorry to intrude, Mr. Belvedere. My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I’m looking for a… a lost friend of mine. You might’ve seen in the paper that I conducted a teleportation experiment the other day and—” she looked away and ground her hoof into the plush carpet, “—nopony even knows what happened… where I went and for how long… or why I’ve been scouring Equestria for your name ever since I got back. To everypony else I was gone for a split second, but for me… and maybe for you? Does any of this make sense?”

He was overcome by a million thoughts, all of them so wildly strange they felt like they belonged to another stallion from another world. And yet all of them felt so real, so charged with pain, joy, and every emotion in between, that a lifetime seemed to pass by between his next two breaths. He stared at her, the most important pony in the world, and nodded. “Yes. Yes. I… I think we have a lot to talk about. Have you had lunch yet? I’m up for just about anything.”

She smiled her brightest. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”