The Ending Thoughts Begin
“Meditation?” Twilight asked curiously.
“Oh, yes,” Princess Celestia answered. “Now that you are an alicorn, you have far more ability than you had before, and to help curb any wayward bursts of power, I recommend highly that you learn to meditate properly.”
“It’s important as an alicorn. You haven’t experienced it yet, but you will,” Princess Luna said.
“Experienced what?”
The two looked at each other and smiled a shared smile. They looked at Twilight with mirth. “You’ll know in time. It’s a… unique experience. One that requires careful focus. You’ll understand. It’s… difficult to say in words,” said Celestia.
“I supposed I understand, princesses. Is there something I should do to meditate first?” Twilight asked.
“There’s a book in the library about it; ‘Gateway to meditation’. I think you’ll get more from that than from listening to us talk about it.” said Celestia. “You’ve always been a better reader than a listener.”
Twilight gave a short laugh. “I guess so. I’ll go have a look for it. Thank you both.”
“You’re welcome, Twilight,” Celestia said with a wave.
Twilight took her leave and without wasting time, made her way to the royal library where she hunted the book down. It was easy to find, but when she found it she was less than impressed. The book was worn, tattered, and appeared to have been through either a lot of reading sessions, or the wash. The pages were torn and the cover was faded, with several stains covering it. Twilight pulled it off the shelves with her magic and double checked the title, making sure it was the one she was supposed to read. It was, much to her dismay. She turned it over in her magic and flipped through the pages. She hoped the princesses were right.
She checked it out of the library and left the palace behind. She made her way to her family home and wandered upstairs to her room, which had remained unchanged since she left for Ponyville. She went into her room and began reading immediately. She was nothing if not Celestia’s best student, and she wasn’t going to fail her this time, either.
The book, upon first glance, was a mess of nonsense and crazy-talk. The words seemed to make sense, but more than a cursory glance showed it to be filled with pseudo-science and untested theories. While the meditation aspect seemed to fit with what the ponies from Saddle Arabia seemed to use, the effects that a pony should experience while doing it seemed to be too much.
“Reading energy?” she scoffed. “Mental homunculi? What is this? Is this really what the princesses wanted me to use?”
She read much of it in that single day, despite her misgivings. She didn’t know how much stock she put in it, but she gave it a fair shake. The very next day she went straight back to the princesses and demanded answers.
“Princess, I’m not sure I got the right book. Is this correct?” She held up the tattered tome.
“Oh, yes. That’s the right one. Let me guess, you don’t trust that it’s good information?”
“Well… no. It’s… hokey.”
Princess Luna laughed. “Hokey, she says. I think I called it ‘drivel’, myself.” Luna laughed harder. Princess Celestia did not. She smiled, but it was that same, careful smile she always gave.
“Please forgive Luna. Nopony experiences it the same way. It did help her curb her errant outbursts of magic, didn’t it, Luna?” Celestia gave her sister a sidelong look, and Luna’s face changed from amused to annoyed. “While I assure you that’s the correct book, take it with a grain of salt. While not everything within will apply to you, some things will, and the process is what’s important.”
“Well, if you say so, princess,” said Twilight.
“I surely do. I wish you the best of luck, Twilight.”
“Thanks… I think.” Twilight took her leave, bringing the book with her.
Her time in Canterlot was coming to an end, so she returned home to Ponyville and her own library. Golden Oaks was quiet with her gone, and when she arrived in the evening, it was to an empty library, save Owlowiscious and Spike resting near each other. She crept up to her own nook and went to bed, resting while she thought about what the princesses were asking of her. She didn’t know the reason, but she knew she wouldn’t fail.
The next day she took care of her duties as quickly as possible. She was still new to being a princess, so not much was expected of her, but she sent some letters, wrote some notes, and reorganized the library. When she was done, she sat down with the torn book and looked it over again.
The words jumbled together in what seemed like something that made sense, but it talked about energies coming up the spine, power coming from the brain, homunculi, pleasure centers, biofeedback, and a lot of other strange words that Twilight didn’t know the meaning of in this context. It almost made sense, but the moment something seemed to coalesce into sensible information, she lost it. It was honestly a frustrating book to consume.
“What in Tartarus am I supposed to do with this information?” she screamed.
“Maybe you’re just supposed to meditate and it’ll make sense?”
“How can I meditate if I don’t know how I’m supposed to meditate?”
Spike just shrugged.
“Does it matter how you meditate, or that you’re meditating?” Spike asked.
“I’m not sure. It has a lot of information on the brain, and the effects certain brain patterns have on the results. It mentions something called holographics? I’m not sure what that means, but I should be able to see them if I do it properly. The effects of meditation and hypnosis will allow my brain to project these into my subconscious and show what I’m thinking.”
“I have no idea what you said except for hypnosis. Doesn’t Trixie perform hypnosis?”
“She does, yes. I’m not sure I want to involve her, though. Last time we met she tried to enslave Ponyville. I don’t even know where I would find her.”
“But you know how to perform it, don’t you?”
“Of course! But you can’t hypnotize yourself.”
“Really? Isn’t that just meditation?”
Twilight tilted her head in thought, then sighed and nodded. “You’re technically correct, I guess.”
“Well there you go!”
“But now I’m back where I started! I still don’t know how I’m supposed to prepare myself!”
“Why not just try it and see what happens? You’re thinking too much about if you’re doing it ‘properly’.”
“I could do it wrong!”
“It’s meditation, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Twilight opened her mouth to retort, but stopped short. She didn’t know what could happen. It was all a mental exercise, and if she did it wrong she might… be bored? It’s not like there was any magic involved in it. If she botched her meditation she might end up falling asleep, or thinking about food, or cutie marks, or magic, or whatever else, but she wasn’t going to make anything explode. In the end, she set the book down in front of her, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
“Okay, please don’t disturb me, Spike.”
“Can do!” She heard a door slam, and was grateful Spike was respectful enough to leave. She was left with her thoughts, alone.
The first thought that came to mind was one of magic. She was an alicorn, and although that meant she was a princess, and more powerful than before, she didn’t think she was very powerful. She certainly didn’t feel it. Her magic felt much the same, and she didn’t think she had much control over the moon, stars, or sun, or even love. Nothing felt unusual.
She shook her head. She needed to clear her mind and just stop thinking. The book was explicit in that she needed to be in a certain frame of mind and thinking about how inadequate she was, wasn’t going to do that.
She thought about nothing.
Her mind was blank.
She breathed.
Thoughts kept coming to her, but Twilight was nothing if not disciplined. As they came, she shunted them away, filing them in the passages of her brain for another time. A time when she wasn’t going to be a danger to everyone around her. She breathed, thought of nothing, and eventually felt a strange tingling in her head.
Her horn, which was not active, was buzzing. She had lain the book on the floor, released all her spells, and wasn’t casting or even thinking of any spells. It buzzed. Resonated, more like, if she had to pick a word. It felt like it was humming, but she didn’t think the sound was coming from her ears, it was resonating in her skull. It was a phenomenon she was aware of, but had never had the odd experience of it herself.
It buzzed, hummed, and an image came to mind. With her eyes closed, she began seeing the library around her. She had it all memorized, anyway, so she knew what it looked like, and she knew where literally everything was, but she was seeing it, imprinted not on her eyes, but on her brain. She could see the ambient lighting from the windows, Owlowiscious, sleeping on his stand on one side of it.
She stared at him with her mind’s eye, watching as he breathed. She studied every feather of his wings, every wrinkle on his feet, and every twitch of his beak. He made a soft cooing sound, and she swore she could see the sound coming from him. It was a purplish color, permeated the air and coming toward her. The waves filled the air, pushing aside each individual molecule as it crashed through the oxygen around her. It struck her in the face and she flinched.
When she flinched, the picture, or image, of the library around her faded somewhat. She struggled to hold on to it, trying to clear her mind. She focused, emptying everything, even the memory of the image she was seeing, and her brain emptied of thought, even curiosity. It wavered, then disappeared. Another image came to mind.
This one was odd. It was a cane, gold in color. It was pointed away from her, and she could see the base had a ruby on the bottom. As she watched, it whirled, turned, and started rising above her. She gazed in confusion as she saw her own head, smiling wide and covered in gold above her. It turned and looked at her, frozen smile on its face, then it spoke.
Twilight twitched and fell over. She awoke.
Twilight’s mind was abuzz with the strange vision she’d had during her meditation. Spike came back to the library and asked her about it, but she didn’t tell him for some reason. That strange thing floated through her mind over and over. The fact that it had her face on it most of all. It was so ridiculous she began to wonder if it was merely a product of her own imagination, or something she was supposed to see. Something the princesses had intended for her to see.
Did they have their own visions like that?
She sent a letter asking Princess Celestia about it. The response didn’t make any more sense than the vision itself, but it was at least something.
“Dear Twilight Sparkle, whatever you see is unique to you. We will not share it, and we will not understand it any better. I’m sure my faithful student will be able to understand it given time. Your friend, Celestia.”
Still, despite Celestia’s words, she still worried that wasn’t part of the meditation, and she was seeing strange things on her own. Like a dream or hallucination. The meditation was supposed to cause something similar to that, if she understood the book properly, but how could she tell one from the other?
After a day of curious research and thoughtful introspection, she resolved to do it again.
“Just let me do it for an hour, Spike. When the hour’s done, come get me and wake me up, no matter what, okay?”
“You got it, Twilight.” He saluted and left the library. With him gone, Twilight sat down on her bed and prepared herself mentally. She cleared all the thoughts of the strange thing from her mind, and began meditation once more.
The first thing that popped into her mind, despite her attempts to remove it, was the strange stick. She admonished herself for trying, reminding herself of the amusing mental game of the pink elephant and the white rabbit. The more you try to not think of something, the more likely you are to think of it. Still, it was somewhat reassuring to know this was the meditation talking and not her own queer imagination.
She looked at it in her mind’s eye as it twirled in front of her. It looked to be made of gold and gemstones, and the detail in the face, while disconcertingly cheerful, was accurate. It was Twilight’s own head, cast in gold, mounted on the end of a golden staff. It spun in front of her, then the head pointed down, and a beam of powerful magic fired out from it. The magic struck the darkness and revealed Ponyville. It showed the Friendship Express, Canterlot in the distance, and all of the residents of Ponyville going about their daily lives. The color faded from them and they turned black and white, then faded some more and they were merely dots on a black canvas, then they faded again, and were gone.
“What?”
The staff turned and looked at her, then pointed at her, and she was struck by the same beam. She changed color, then fragmented, and was gone.
She awoke to Spike shaking her.
“Twilight? Twilight! Wake up!”
She jolted upright, smacking Spike with her head. He rolled off the bed in pain. She clutched her own head, the sting of the impact reassuring her she was awake, then looked down at Spike.
“Spike?”
“Twilight, are you awake yet?”
“I’m awake. What’s wrong?”
“You fell asleep while meditating. I tried to wake you, but you were deeply asleep. Took me five minutes to get you up.”
Twilight grabbed her head and tried to remember her meditation. She had seen the stick, she was sure, then… what? For the life of her she couldn’t remember. She knew it was important. She could feel how important it was. That stupid stick, with its grinning face and ugly gold.
She needed that stick.
“Spike, take a letter!”
She sent a message to the princess asking for gold. Rarity had the gemstones she would need, or could help her find one. After that, it was a matter of finding a goldsmith talented enough to create what she was asking for. The likeness had to be perfect. It had to look like Twilight, without being Twilight, and it had to have a stupidly large grin. That grin was important. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care why, but she had to have that stick.
While she waited for responses from all over Equestria, she took the time to draw it out. She was a passable artist, but every time she sat down to try and recreate it, the drawings she made upset her. She couldn’t capture it. Not properly. She sat down in front of a mirror and tried to smile that wide herself. It was her face, after all, but no matter how hard she grinned, it wasn’t the same. It was then she realized what the problem was.
It wasn’t her.
It was a caricature of her. Something that somepony or something might assume was her, but it wasn’t. It was a mental picture of her.
That gave her pause. Was it her thinking of herself that way? Was she picturing herself as that candid cartoon? Was it something else sending her that image of herself? Was that really what she was supposed to see and think about?
In her mind’s eye, she tried picturing her own face. It was what she expected, with her own soft features and straight-cut mane. She was the same violet color she always was, not gold, and she certainly wasn’t a cane. She went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t see herself as anything other than the same, confident Twilight she always was. There was no strange smile, and even when she tried, she still couldn’t make her face smile that wide.
The idea of herself filled her mind as she waited, but she eventually got a good response from somepony who would be able to create a solid gold cane like she wanted. The pony was named Solid Grey, and he was a goldsmith from Vanhoover. She paid for his trip down to Ponyville, waiting patiently. The gold arrived long before him, but the princesses paid for it all. Celestia didn’t ask any questions, but she seemed interested in seeing where Twilight was going with her strange plan.
That also, made Twilight wary. Was it the princesses that were causing her to think of this? Were they putting the idea of this strange, smiling Twilight in her head? She didn’t want to admit it, but that was a queer possibility. They might think it was hilarious. Some strange, elaborate prank.
Twilight looked over at the meditation book. She was stressed and she knew it. Meditation to relieve it might be the best thing right now, but she didn’t want to try again and see that strange, smiling version of herself. Her horn sparked at the thought, and she worried this was what the princesses were talking about. Was she going to cause the magical troubles they were concerned about?
Twilight stared at the book and sat on her bed. She began taking deep breaths, calming herself as much as she could. She folded her hooves in front of her and breathed carefully. In, and out.
In, and out.
In, and out.
The image of the golden cane filled her mind and she started, falling off her chair. She left the library and went to Sugarcube corner. She needed to relax, and she couldn’t do that here. Not with that weird Twilight living inside her head.
She got a snack, wandered around town, and waited. Night fell and Twilight returned home. She tried to sleep, but now everytime she closed her eyes that golden Twilight filled her mental vision. Her sleep was fitful, and weak, and she was exhausted the next day.
And the next.
Until Solid Grey arrived.
Solid Grey was a powerfully built Stallion. He wasn’t grey, but his eyes were. As soon as he arrived, she brought him to a workshop where he could get started, and urged him on.
“What is it I am building, exactly?”
“This.” Twilight said, slapping the picture of the cane down in front of him. He looked at the picture, at her, and then at the riches set out for him to melt and mold into the final product. He chuckled, but stopped when he saw her face.
“You’re serious.”
“Very serious.”
He shrugged and got to work, with only a single under-his-breath “princesses” at her back as she left. He would get it done. He was a professional, and he was being paid more than the materials were worth. Twilight eagerly awaited the results.
Unfortunately, the image didn’t leave her mind while he was working. The first completed cane wasn’t what she wanted. It was lopsided, and the smile was more akin to her real-life smile and not the image she had in her head. He had recreated her, not the cane. She shook her head and told him to do it again.
“It has to look like this. It’s not meant to be me, it’s meant to be this. Understand?”
“I mean, alright, Princess, you’re the boss. I just thought—”
“Don’t think, just do it! Make it a caricature. A joke. Something else, but not me!”
“Understood!” He saluted her then, and got back to work. The heat blasted out of the furnace as he prepared to melt it down and start again. Twilight left him, returning home to try and rest.
“Twilight, are you okay?” Spike asked.
“Ugh. Yes.”
“You snapped at that guy real bad today.”
“Fine, no. Happy?”
“Not really. What’s wrong? I’ve seen you get focused on things before, but not quite like this.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Have you tried—”
“I swear, if you say ‘meditating’, I am going to freak out!”
“Nevermind… I’m just gonna, go clean up.”
Twilight said nothing. She let him go and tried to focus on the pillows underneath her. She’d made her bed softer and more comfortable in the hopes that it would help her forget the things dancing in her head and sleep. It wasn’t working.
She looked at the tattered book where it sat and tried not to think about meditating. She knew she should, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. That face would be waiting, and she’d wake up. She couldn’t do it.
The night passed fitfully.
She fell asleep in the morning, just as the sun was coming up. In her dreams, she was playing in a field of flowers with books on the ends of their stalks. Not a single face was in sight. She awoke, rested. Rested and happy.
It was later in the day than usual for her when she woke up. She confronted Spike about it, but he just said he didn’t want to interrupt her when she looked so peaceful.
“You’d been having so much trouble sleeping the past few days, I thought I’d let you get some proper rest. But Solid Grey stopped by, he said he’s done.”
Twilight’s ears shot straight up. “It’s done?” Before Spike could answer, Twilight had teleported away. She appeared inside Solid Grey’s workshop. “It’s done?” she yelled.
Solid Grey jumped at her unexpected appearance. “Sweet Celestia!” When he saw it was Twilight, he calmed down, clutching at his chest. “Yes, it’s done, Princess. I don’t like it myself, but it’s done, just as you asked.” He went over to where a cloth rested over the top of a golden staff. He pulled it away, revealing the grinning rictus of that almost-Twilight face. Twilight herself was ecstatic.
It was no longer just inside her head. It left! It was real! It was here and no longer a part of her! It would leave her in peace!
Twilight reached out with her magic. Before she touched it with the spell, she looked at that grinning face and thought better of it. She grabbed it in a hoof and held it, feeling the oddly-warm metal against her.
“It’s good then?” Solid Grey asked.
“It’s exactly what I wanted, yes.”
“Great. Glad you’re happy. This has all been a little weird, so I’m just gonna head back home and relax. That thing just wouldn’t let me rest until it was done you know?”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“Somehow I thought you might. Good luck with it, Princess.”
“Thank you.”
Twilight took her new staff and returned home, carrying it manually instead of with her magic. She sat herself down in her room with the staff on a desk in front of her. She looked at it, then picked up the tattered book and flipped through the pages. Nowhere inside did it mention anything about a cane or her face, but it did talk about foci.
Foci were supposed to amplify the meditator’s ability to focus their mental energies. They would show the user the world as it was really meant to be and allow them to modify the world using only the power of their mind.
Twilight looked at her cane.
She felt a chill, then immediately a sense of excitement. If she had inadvertently created a focus for herself from only meditation, what would she learn from using such a tool? What could she change?
“Spike?”
“Yes, Twilight?”
“Take some bits and head to Sugarcube Corner. I need to think quietly for a while.”
“Don’t’ have to ask me twice!” The door downstairs slamme and Twilight was left alone. She smiled. The cane smiled back.
Twilight sat down on her bed with the cane across her legs. She closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and focused once again.
There was only blackness.
The feeling of the cane sitting across her legs filled her mind. Not a thing, but the presence of a thing. She lit her horn, then carefully lifted it up off her legs. She felt her magic surging, building, then overflowing. It filled the cane, surging, building inside it, then overflowing out of its golden horn.
Twilight saw everything.
She saw a world of colors and shapes. Shapes immortalized on paper, then formed within other dimensions. She saw clouds.
Twilight heard beautiful music, sung by strange voices. She saw herself, floating down through clouds, then Rainbow Dash burst them apart and Ponyville could be seen from high above. She saw her friends from Ponyville going about their business as the Friendship Express passed by. The music continued, ponies doing what ponies did. She saw colors shift and flow, change and warp. She saw them numbered, rewound, and moved piece by piece. She saw parts of ponies, slapped onto other parts, and she saw manes and tails, colors and cutie marks all slapped haphazardly together. She saw creatures discussing the fate of her and her friends. She saw them clearly, with their pink faces and pink hands. She saw them deciding what will become of them. She saw them creating awful facsimiles in plastic, faces frozen in awful smiles. She saw the future, and she saw her and her friends disappearing forever. She saw opinions.
She saw their end.
In her mind’s eye, Twilight finally saw the cane she had made. It turned slowly in the air to face her. It’s smile never changed, and she heard her own voice speak.
“Will you die, or will you live? The fate of Equestria is in your hooves.”
Luna and Celestia appeared. They smiled sadly at her.
“The princess’ choice, Twilight. What will yours be?”
Twilight looked at the happy Ponyville below, with her friends and their loved ones playing. In the distance, darkness. It loomed, waiting. But she could hold it back. She could keep it away. All she had to do was focus.
She looked at the cane, realizing now why it looked like her but wasn’t. It would be her. But not yet.
She held the cane up and poured more magic into it.
“Another Season.”
The darkness gave way to colors.
The End.
