Celestia felt her sensitive ears prick up in alarm at the sound of … was that dripping water of all things? She immediately stopped her aimless march through the winding corridors of Canterlot Castle and reached out with all of her keen, alicorn-enhanced senses to track down the source of the noise. An irritated expression flashed across her muzzle when she realised that it was to no avail. No storms had been scheduled for this night that she knew of, and the Everfree Forest hadn't been acting up recently, so unless somepony had been so thoughtless as to leave a tap running somewhere in the castle, it was unlikely to actually be running water.
Hefting an impassioned sigh into the cramped hallways, Celestia continued on her way to nowhere in particular. When she couldn't sleep – which seemed to be all too often these days – she simply walked until exhaustion took her; wearing out her body was simple exercise, but the raging torrents of her mind could not be quelled so simply. Much like whatever it was causing that splashing, it seemed.
I've never felt at home in the night. Not like you, Luna. Too many strange noises, too many strange things lurking within its arcane depths.
It didn't help that the soft amber glow given off by the lanterns made the passages seem so constricted either, filling her with a rather claustrophobic sensation as she probed deeper into the inky nothingness; intellectually, Celestia knew just how tall and wide the hallways were, but the more primitive parts of her brain insisted that every shadow was a lurking menace, waiting to pounce on her when she was at her most vulnerable.
If only all those ponies who looked up to me could see me now. Cowering like a filly.
She let her head hang limply, knowing that, just like when she'd been a filly, she was letting her baseless fears get the best of her; her mane flowed distractingly across her eyeline and interrupted her train of thought, and while it was still an impressive, glittering sight, forming as it did such a sharp contrast with her alabaster coat, it was somewhat muted without the additional lustre of the sun to add to its brilliance.
With the return of Luna, Celestia had silently hoped that her sleepless nights would finally be at an end; the Princess of the Night had come to reclaim her domain, and she had done so with a verve and tenacity that had impressed her, but still … something itched at the back of Celestia's consciousness. Nothing tangible that she could readily put a hoof on, but she just had an eerie sensation of continually being under surveillance nagging at her no matter how much she told herself that it was all in her head. “Maybe I just worry too much?” she said to one of the statues lining this particular intersection.
The statue did not reply and Celestia favoured it with an abashed smile. Summoning up the mental effort required to trawl her long-term memory for his name struck her as being too much hard work at the moment; while it pained her not to know who this particular pony was, he must've been a great servant of the crown to have been immortalised here.
I should be able to rest easy knowing that my dear sister is keeping a constant vigil over the sleeping world, so why can't I? What is it that seems off? Or am I just going senile in my frail dotage? She couldn't help but smile ruefully at this thought. There were those who thought that the alicorn race was immortal, invulnerable to harm, but the truth was a little bit more complex than that. They were tough, they were long-lived, but ultimately they were still flesh and blood, and eminently capable of succumbing to death like every other pony in Equestria. Lies - or creative misdirection, as Celestia preferred to think of it - were preferable to the truth in this case: fear of what would happen should the alicorn rulers come under attack made all but the most pernicious of enemies think twice.
Trying to shake herself free from these morose thoughts, Celestia padded softly across the plush, velvet carpet – semi-tempted to remove her shoes and feel the feathery, silken material tickle against her bare hooves – and approached one of the many stained glass windows that were installed throughout this wing of the castle. In the moonlight, the enchanted glass used in its construction glowed with a pale waxy aura and she took in its breathtaking panorama of shimmering sapphires arrayed against impassioned cardinals, gasping gently at its raw beauty. It had been heavily stylised by the artist, of course, but Celestia had no problem in identifying the scene that it portrayed.
Our first battle against the Lord of Chaos, Discord.
The memory of that time sent a shiver through Celestia's spine and she inwardly shuddered; even with nopony else around, she couldn't quite bring herself to drop the mask of stoicism that she routinely employed. The day itself had been the furthest thing from aesthetically pleasant, but the pony who had designed this tableau had saw fit to render Celestia and her sister as ethereal, almost goddess-like beings, unleashing the prismatic fury of the Elements of Harmony against the vile usurper, Discord.
Following the battle, Celestia had gradually become aware that something in Luna had … changed. Something Discord had said to her, she had always suspected, but she'd never taken the time to speak to her younger sister about it; he might have been encased in stone, but his toxic words lingered in the mind of Luna for months afterwards, slowly poisoning her until she let herself succumb to the influence of the Nightmare spirit.
But that's in the past. And what's past has passed.
Still, though, trying to erase one thousand years of regret was no easy task. Even for an alicorn princess as powerful as she. Celestia allowed her eyes to fall to the floor, tracing a few loose threads in the carpet with her hoof, the glow of the window all but encompassing her entire form, but she did not cry. No volume of tears that she could produce would wash away a millennium of loneliness and despair.
A thousand years ago, I would not have rued the darkness as I do now. Before the rise of Nightmare Moon, Celestia had barely taken any interest in the subject of the night; as far as she was concerned, that was Luna's job, and she was quite well aware that it had been her lack of appreciation – Equestria's lack of appreciation – which had given her sister the necessary impetus to subsume her will to the Nightmare's. It could've been so, so different, if only she'd paid any attention to the signs.
No amount of apologising will make up for my short-sightedness, dear sister. I can only think myself grateful that you have never spoken ill of my treatment of you.
It had taken a thousand years and the loss of her sister, but she had finally attained that most precious trait of a good ruler: wisdom. Knowing what she did now, Celestia had resolved never to make the mistake of taking anything for granted again; without Luna's guidance, the darkness, the shadowy realm between the sleeping and waking worlds, had becoming a breeding ground for all sorts of repugnant creatures.
Without Luna's power acting as a bulwark, the Castle of the Two Sisters had collapsed into the mire of the Everfree Forest; the beings there were allowed to run rampant and uncontrolled until they had come to dominate that land, and now it was nothing more than a bizarre and unnatural place that continued to birth daily a plague of devils. More than once, Celestia had considered razing it to the ground, but life – even if it differed from pony-kind, even if it was completely inimical to pony-kind – was still sacred and she couldn't justify killing.
I need to try and find a more cheerful window before I can even think about going back to bed! During the day, her sense of direction was unparalleled; at night, she wasn't so certain, but she had an inkling that the pane depicting Twilight Sparkle's coronation was around here somewhere. She set off in what she assumed was the correct direction at a brisk pace. Fast enough, she hoped, that the encroaching darkness couldn't catch her.
She wasn't certain at what point she'd noticed it; subconsciously, she had simply chalked it up to the fact that there was an open window somewhere, and that it was nothing more than a stray gust of wind blowing out some of the lanterns, but this darkness was altogether more … palpable. Almost alive. Creeping toward her, bringing with it that strange dripping sound that so worried her, though she could not for the life of her work out why it caused her such disquiet.
It seemed to Celestia that it was pressing on her from all sides, but no matter which way she looked there was nothing there, only the constant, distant sound of flowing water. It seemed off somehow, though. Straining with all of her sensory-enhancing abilities, she listened for the wrongness. What was it? That it sounded as though water was being sucked backwards into a faucet? As if a stream were flowing uphill? She felt stiff, rooted to the spot; gritting her teeth, an uneasy tingle thrilling through her, uncertain as to whether or not it was because of her own drab thoughts or because of what she imagined to be out there. All of a sudden, her castle, her sanctuary, didn't feel so safe any more.
Get a hold of yourself, you're not an easily-startled foal any more!
Twilight's window! She had found it after a short dash down the corridor. She breathed a sigh of relief at seeing her former student, even if it was only via the medium of an over-elaborate piece of decorative glass. Somehow, her presence, whether real or imagined, relaxed Celestia and she found that some of the nervous tension was allowed to drain out of her body at last. The image was every bit as glorious as the day itself had been; capturing, as it did, both the grandeur of the occasion as well as the radiant beauty of the newest princess. Picked out in a delicate shade of purple, the golden highlights of her royal regalia serving to emphasise her form, she shone as brightly as she did in reality.
Wait! There's something wrong here. I just can't quite figure out what it is. Looking more closely at the window, Celestia narrowed her eyes until she spotted the mistake. Twilight's eyes were wide open when they had been closed in silent reverie before; more than that, instead of the mulberry orbs shining with the life and compassion that one would expect, there were only two shiny black stones in their place. Celestia took a step back from the window, her face creasing in distaste at the image. It was completely anathema to the true form of the Princess of Friendship.
Twilight looks so … soullless.
So wrapped up was she in her dismay, it took her a moment to realise that, as crazy and as baffling as it sounded when she gave voice to her concern, those black stone eyes were staring back at her. Staring back with hatred.
The dripping sound got louder and Celestia let her head dart back and forth as she worked feverishly to triangulate its position; when she could bear it no longer, she tried covering her ears with her hooves, pressing the tips of her golden shoes into the holes, but still it pulsed over and over, never wavering in its insistence.
The noise. It's … a warning? It's trying to tell me something. But what?
She backed away quickly from the window, her flank colliding painfully enough with the cold brick of the opposite wall that she uttered a short, sharp, “Ow!” She gently rubbed the bruised flesh until the throbbing subsided somewhat.
Collapsing to the ground, her every possible escape blocked by the all-encompassing darkness, Celestia found herself looking up; the window behind her changed before her very eyes, melting away as if exposed to intense heat and reforming into an altogether different image, and she was forced to twist her neck around awkwardly until she could see it more clearly.
King Sombra. The day we defeated King Sombra!
Except … it was different, for now he held aloft the Crystal Heart in his dark magical embrace, and dozens, hundreds, of ponies lay dead at his feet as a river of blood threatened to drown the Crystal Empire. Celestia heard sick, braying laughter accompanied by the incessant undertones of the dripping. Princess Cadance and Shining Armour begged, pleaded with her to save them, but she was powerless to do so.
Dragging herself to her hooves, Celestia reared up and set forth down the hallway at a gallop, ignoring the protests of her bruised behind; out of the corners of her eyes, she could see that every single one of her precious windows was changing, and she was powerless to do anything about it: Nightmare Moon was bathing Equestria in Eternal Night, Twilight and the other Elements of Harmony pinned to the walls of her onyx castle like butterflies; Discord, freed from his stone prison, wreaking chaos across the land for eternity; Tirek, escaped from Tartarus, draining the world of all of its precious magic until he was unstoppable by all; Changelings as the dominant race, ponies having been driven to near-extinction by their incessant frenzy of feeding; finally, a culmination, a reckoning. The most powerful villains that she had ever faced, that the Elements of Harmony had faced, came together in a brutal clash that left Equestria … dead.
A desert wasteland. Nothing. No survivors. Just a few bleached white bones in the sand. No vultures to feed on the carcasses, no anything.
Celestia screamed. She screamed until her throat was raw and the only sound that emanated from it was a hollow, empty groan.
She knew not how long the scream lasted, but when she finally stopped she turned her gaze back on Twilight's window; lying at her hooves was a familiar pale figure, battered and broken, and Celestia heaved.
No, no, no. She refused to believe it.
She understood now, and she cursed herself for not recognising the signs sooner.
Then again, what difference would it have made had I known?
The dripping noise, the drastic changes to the windows, the oppressive darkness that stalked her every move … something or somepony had altered the flow of the timeline using Star Swirl the Bearded's forbidden spell. He had taken steps to ensure that the ruling princesses would always remember the original timeline no matter what so that they could undo any damage done. The windows were looking glasses into alternate histories, alternate futures, able to provide clues as to what had gone wrong.
For all the windows to have changed, however …
Not only has somepony changed the timeline, they are still actively engaged in doing so. But to what end? What could they be after that's so important that they must continually undo all of our triumphs? What of Twilight's window? What does it mean?
In no version of history, no matter what horrors might have befallen her, could Celestia imagine Twilight Sparkle as that malevolent abomination with the eyes black as obsidian. Despite the circumstances she found herself in, she still felt a pang in her heart that she had failed Twilight as she tried to picture what sequence of events had brought about that particular incarnation of her beloved student. Her mouth hung agape, her brain throbbing and numb as the full horror of the situation washed over her.
What do I do? What CAN I do? What must I do?
Her breath quickened and she felt the bile rising up in her throat.
No, I have no time to be sick!
With her vision darkening, Celestia backed away from the window and tried to run; the dripping noise continued to get louder and louder until the sheer weight of its urging blotted out every one of her other senses, and she brought herself to a sudden halt, unsure as to where she could go that was relatively safe. If the timeline was in a constant state of flux, everything outside of this protected wing of the castle was mutable.
Luna. Twilight. All of my little ponies, gone.
In that moment, with Celestia slumped over, the full horror of her situation pressed down on her; unnoticed by her, all of the stained glass windows came to life at once and bore down on her.
Spectrally glowing crystalline representations of Nightmare Moon, Discord, King Sombra, Queen Chrysalis and Tirek surrounded her in a loose circle, advancing menacingly. Their glassy muzzles hissed and cursed at her, but they spoke no understandable language.
It was just pure, untempered hatred.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to another figure, however: Princess Twilight Sparkle. Still ethereally beautiful, but also terrifying as her blank eyes regarded Celestia with disdain, a cruel smile carving her muzzle in two. Rows of razor sharp glass teeth were bared, glistening coldly in the vivid pearl light of the moon. She took her natural position as leader of this motley assembly of villains.
Those teeth weren't in the original, Celestia thought dumbly as they jumped her as one writhing mass of evil.
Laughter rocked the hallways, accompanied by the dripping; the last thing that Celestia was consciously aware of was of all the windows shattering as one, raining hot shards of glass down on the carpets, and more importantly, on her. She winced as the debris slashed her skin, but it was nothing compared to the onslaught of the crystalline doppelgängers of her greatest foes.
And her faithful student, of course.
All of them united for one singular purpose: to destroy her.
The Darkness consumed her.
*
“Sister,” Luna said urgently, her voice panic-stricken. Silver-clad hooves shook Celestia's shoulders firmly. Tears streaked her bloodshot eyes. “Sister, will you please wake up?”
Celestia's eyelids opened slowly; so slowly that Luna didn't stop shaking her right away, and she blinked several times, regarding her younger sister with confusion. Her first impulse upon consciousness reasserting itself was to back away in fright, the vision of a Nightmare in crystal attacking her still fresh in her mind, but all she found was the comforting bulk of her padded headboard and her long legs becoming entangled in the covers. She looked around to see the muted cream walls of her bedroom. Calming herself with several cleansing breaths, she said, “I'm safe? At home? In bed?”
“Yes, sister,” replied Luna uncertainly, her eyebrows narrowing in concern. “What's wrong? What happened in there?”
Where to start? “First, tell me something: why were you shaking me awake?”
“You've been asleep for three days,” Luna said, her hooves snaking around her sister's neck and pulling her into a tight embrace. Celestia felt Luna's rapid heartbeat thrumming against her own and she couldn't help but loose a heartfelt sigh at the warmth of the hug. “When I tried to probe your dreams for an explanation, I was repelled by a darkness. Something that I've never seen before, and so full of negative energy that it resisted my every attempt to dissipate it.”
“I see,” Celestia replied, extricating herself from her sister's forelegs. How she wished that it was something as simple as a dream. But the images were too stark, too vivid, to be anything other than undiluted reality. True, not the reality that she was acquainted with, but still reality all the same. “Um, how is everything?”
Luna shot her an odd look, but simply said, “Everything is fine, sister. In fact, Princess Twilight sent me a message just a few short moments before you woke up to report that she was successful in apprehending Starlight Glimmer. She has promised us a full account just as soon as, and I quote, I work out all of the details for myself first.”
Celestia swallowed slowly, unsure as to whether it was wise or not to go into the specifics of what she had experienced. “Did she happen to mention anything about … Star Swirl's time-travel spell?”
“No, she did not.” Luna's muzzle became a mask of concern. It wasn't like her sister to hold back, to keep a problem to herself, and it frightened her. “Sister, just what did you see in ... there?”
“Perhaps your time spent on the moon has eroded Star Swirl's protective enchantment,” Celestia said, rubbing her forehead thoughtfully. Frankly, though, the truth was that she was completely bewildered by the fact that Luna hadn't been pulled into the darkness with her. Both of them should have been brought into the spell together in order to combat the changes to the timeline as a united force. With their combined powers, they could have beaten the darkness back long enough to examine the changes in the timeline together.
Perhaps it's because I have such a keen connection to Twilight Sparkle, and she was somehow involved in this whole incident?
“Sister-”
“-I'm sorry, Luna, I'm just a bit distracted. There's a lot going on in there,” she said, tapping her temples softly. “I was in the castle, in the wing with the stained glass windows. They changed in front of my very eyes, all of our hard-fought victories turning to defeats, as somepony was using Star Swirl's spell to undo everything that we sacrificed so much for.”
Luna chewed on her bottom lip, her muzzle becoming a frown. “And you think that this Starlight Glimmer had a hoof in these events?”
“Seems a pretty big coincidence otherwise,” Celestia replied, stifling a yawn, “but I suspect that we shall find out when … we hear from Twilight.”
“What was that about?”
“What was what?”
“Sister, I will tolerate a certain amount of evasion from you, but no more than is necessary. You hesitated before speaking Twilight Sparkle's name, something that you've never done before.”
Celestia almost smiled at that. Her younger sister was so perceptive. Speaking quietly, she said, “One of the alternate realities I saw depicted in the windows was of Twilight as a cruel tyrant with black eyes.” As the image repeated itself over and over in her mind, Celestia shivered. It was a soulless abomination and yet … it was still Twilight Sparkle. It was not something that she wanted to spend too much time thinking about it, but … a certain grim curiosity was taking root within her. Twilight Sparkle was almost as gentle and as caring as Fluttershy, and the idea of her utilising dark magic, of ruling Equestria with an iron hoof, was absurd. And yet, this window had proclaimed that it was at least a possibility.
Smiling at her sister though she wasn't really feeling it, Luna said, “You know as well as I do that there are literally an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to time-travel. It will do you no good to fret so over this one. The Twilight Sparkle that we know and love hasn't an evil bone in her body. Whatever created this tyrant that you saw never came to pass here, nor will it ever.”
“Yes, I know, but-”
“-But what could have caused one so noble and pure of heart to stray down a dark path, you wonder?” asked Luna, one eyebrow raised slightly.
Celestia had to smile at that, silently grateful for the fact that, no matter what else might happen, her sister would always understand her. She nodded.
“The only thing that I can think of,” Luna said, “is if she were to lose her faith in the one thing that she prizes above all else.”
“Me?” Celestia pictured her dead body lying at Twilight's hooves. That vicious smirk on her face as her crystalline copy advanced for the kill. Whatever the Celestia of that universe had done to provoke Twilight's rage, the young alicorn had certainly enjoyed her revenge. “Hm.”
“But this is all semantics, anyway.” Luna clapped the hooves of her front legs together, employing the time-honoured method of enforced cheer in order to slake the dark thoughts that had overtaken them both. She used her magic to levitate the duvet off of Celestia's body. “It's time for you to get back to your day job.”
Groaning weakly at the joke, Celestia dragged herself tiredly out of bed; despite the pain, it felt good to be moving again after three days of lying down. Her muscles protested every movement, but she paid them no mind as she made her way shakily to the balcony. Yes, Luna could do this while she took some time to recover, but her body ached with an altogether different kind of pain: it ached with the need to be connected to the sun again.
It seemed a shame that the elegance of the night had to give way to the fairness of the day, she thought as she ignited her horn, but everything had its place … and time. And just this once, as sun’s light banished the darkness from Twilight’s eyes, she didn’t mind that so much.
