The Whole Is Greater

by flipwix

Rating: everyone
Tags: Original Character, Spike, Twilight Sparkle, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other
Length: 1823

Seasons ago, the princesses used magic beyond their understanding and accidentally created a new, unique being in the process. Now, with the spell’s original creators back from Limbo, they are determined to make things right.

Many seasons ago, the four princesses of Equestria used magic beyond their understanding to defeat a great evil and accidentally created a new, unique being in the process. Now, with the spell’s original creators returned from Limbo, the princesses are determined to set things right.

A long asked for short sequel to my first fic on this site, Sum of Their Parts. Thanks to everyone who enjoyed it enough to push me to write this epilogue of sorts to the original tale.

Published 2018-09-13 04:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-09-13 04:00:01 UTC

Reparations

Hello.

I won’t open this letter by addressing you by name, if only because I don’t quite know if the one we’ve been calling you is truly the one you’d want. From what Spike has told me, as well as the vaguer memories I have of your existence, it wasn’t exactly a name of your choosing so much as it was one you simply accepted. Whether or not you choose to keep it will be up to you and you alone.

I should preface this a bit by apologizing: this letter is no doubt going to be long and wordy and rambling, and no amount of editing is going to help with that, I’m afraid. I should know—I’ve tried. This is my nineteenth attempt at writing it, and at this point I unfortunately can’t afford to waste any more time on it; there are preparations to be made.

Nonetheless, I will try at least to sum up briefly for you here what is going on, in the interest of bringing you up to speed as quickly as possible:

Today is a day for you to exist. Don’t worry about any responsibilities—prior arrangements have been made, and you are free to spend your time with whomever you so choose, though I’m told a particular dragon is looking forward to seeing you again. (That said, I might advise you stay away from Prince Shining Armor. I’d assume the situation might get a little weird there. I don’t really want to think about it too much.)

You will have 24 hours to do with as you please, and after that we would very much appreciate you allowing us to return to our own existence—but not permanently. You will not be permanently gone; we’re going to try and find the time to form you as often as our schedules allow, permitting you want that. Now that we know what we know—that you are truly your own separate entity, with your own thoughts and feelings—it’s the only right thing to do. We created you, and we’re going to do all we can to ensure your existence is the best it can be. It truly is the least we could do.

Now. There’s no need to sit and worry about whether or not you’re truly the same being as before—trust me, you’re part me, and I know that’s something I’d at least do—because we’ve been much more careful this time around. As soon as Star Swirl returned, I know that all four of us thought of you in the back of our minds, wondering if we could finally make things right—but we couldn’t, at least not immediately.

This time we made completely and totally sure we understood the magic we were dealing with. I’ll admit I especially spent what was likely much more time than was necessary checking and double-checking everything. From what Star Swirl and Mage Meadowbrook have told me, so long as we find the time to regularly… well, form you, you’re not going to die. So long as nothing goes terribly awry, that is; Star Swirl and his companions cast the spell multiple times, and each time they did, the entity they formed retained his own unique prior memories.

The residual magic from the spell’s casting lasts for at least five years, perhaps more—so in a way, fragments of your consciousness have actually been with us the whole time, although I’ve been assured that you would never have been fully conscious for it. Your subconscious presence is a different story; during our period of preparation for this, Luna arranged a shared dream on a hunch of hers, and lo and behold—you were there, albeit sleeping, even in the dream world. Luna surmised this was likely because she had to be awake to cast the spell, and that if all four of us had truly been sharing said dream, you would have become truly conscious. But as far as we can tell, you wouldn’t have been before this. At least not after that first time, I mean.

That said, I know you will have our memories, more or less (though from what I recall, they don’t feel like ‘yours,’ and they lurk far enough below the surface that you likely won’t immediately remember me writing this letter, which makes penning it not as pointless as I at first was worried about.) Hopefully they can tell you enough to reassure you that no, you are not somehow facilitating the creation of and subsequent murder of a distinct copy of you at a later date just by existing or dissolving yourself. Your consciousness is the same as it was the first time we cast the spell seasons ago—and so long as we don’t pass whatever arbitrary ‘somewhere past five years’ deadline exists, this will continue to be the case. You’ve just been sleeping, like we will be in the depths of your mind somewhere now. (The philosophical quandary concerning whether or not a pony who wakes up from sleep is the same pony who went to sleep prior aside—that’s not one I really want to try tackling right now.)

Please be assured that this situation isn’t meant to be permanent. While we’re more than happy to form you as often as we can in the meantime so that you get as many chances as possible to exist as yourself, we are doing all that we can with the help of Star Swirl and Meadowbrook (as well as a few other magical scholars I’m close with) to find a more long-term solution. Again—we created you, and we will do all that we can to ensure your existence is the best it can be. Star Swirl is confident that we’ll be able to find a way to isolate your consciousness in time and give you your own permanent magically constructed body, if you so wish. Don’t feel pressured, however—if you truly wish to continue your existence in this form, existing only periodically, that will also be your decision to make. I truly don’t want to feel like I’m pushing you a certain way here. In the end, the final decision will always be up to you.

With all of these more serious matters out of the way (and again—I apologize for the length of this!), I’d like to sign off with a message from all four of us to you:

Could you please pull down the curtain in front of you?

Your quarter-mother,
Princess Twilight Sparkle

——

The amalgamous alicorn lowered the letter to the floor, one large hoof raising itself slowly to touch at her own wet cheeks. An unexpected chill ran through her body at the realization that she was crying her own tears and taking her own breaths—and this time, her brief existence was not colored by the deep, dark understanding that had once settled over her mind, forced to come to grips very quickly with the fact that soon she would permanently stop existing. Now that the threat of permanent nonexistence was off the table, it was as if a doorway inside her mind that had previously been shut tight had been all too suddenly wrenched open and off its hinges; where before, she had identified and pushed away any emotions she felt to keep herself objective and minimize the fear and horror of her situation, the alicorn had been freed from that now.

With a shuddery breath and a half-hearted attempt at drying her face, she turned her attention then to the large curtain before her, taking a few tentative steps towards it. The anticipation and anxiety she felt was overwhelming—but then, all of her emotions were right now, really. Like ripping off a bandage, she told herself after a few moments of deliberation, and with that her iris colored magic settled itself around a bunching of the thick fabric and yanked.

And then, with a gasp like a particularly loud beached fish, the alicorn fusion did something rather unbecoming of a giant, ethereal princess: she fell back onto her haunches with a booming and undignified thump, simply staring up at the wall before her with wide eyes.

It was her. Well, her likeness, rather. Where before, she had spent much of her own time examining the stained glass depictions of each of the mares who had given her form, now the glass she stared into portrayed her own past rather than that of her apparent ‘mothers.’ There she was—a huge, mauve colored alicorn with horn alight, facing off against the skeletal monster known as Hydia. For what felt like only minutes but may well have been hours, she simply took in the art piece without words. Her breath felt trapped in her throat as she blinked at the stained glass; after everything that happened, she had never thought…

A noise from outside the nearby doors startled her from her thoughts, and Nova swung her large head around to peer down the corridor at its source. What could that have been? A brief rifling through of the memories of the princesses, and she had her answer; with a small smile on her face, she rose and made her way to the doors, swinging them open with her magic to look down at the tiny dragon who had stood behind them, waiting for her.

“Nova!” Spike exclaimed, his voice an odd mix of excited and nervous—and then he abruptly waved his little arms about his head. “Wait, not Nova, sorry! I know Twilight said—”

“Nova is fine,” said the alicorn, her smile widening. “No, better than fine. I love it.” It was hers. Spike returned her smile with a grin of his own then, and she bent her neck closer to his level to peer more closely at him. Her eyes felt wet again, but this time the tears did not fall. She had a better handle on them now.

“I understand that I have some time to spend, and there is no creature I’d rather spend it with right now than you.”

She had time now—hers to spend! hers!—and it felt so, so wonderful. For the next day, at least, the world was hers.

Author's Note

i know this isn't the best, and do plan to do another pass somewhere along the line in the future to fix any glaring issues, but on account of recent terrible health issues i really just wanted to force myself to get something out there, and this seemed as good a time as any to finally follow up on my first story.

i know this is very short, and probably pretty lackluster, but i know a lot of people had been hoping for a happy ending for the character introduced in the original fic, so this is my best attempt at providing that. i hope you enjoyed, but if you didn't, that's fine too, and you're perfectly entitled to that opinion! thanks for reading either way.