Piece of Parchment

Twilight barely understood what happened next. An eye-searing flash, quaking ground, and the brightest sunrise against the colors of insanity that once again had claimed the sky. Grass, then bushes, and then trees grew a thousand years in a couple of seconds as sunlight filtered through the canopy of the reborn forest. Before she knew it, chirping birds and the rustling leaves greeted the ponies. The damp warmth of the forest returned. A distant memory of the dead and cold wasteland vanished away like something that never existed to begin with.

“Oh, my gosh! Is everypony alright?” Twilight cried, despite immediately finding them exactly where they stood moments ago. All sat on their haunches and frantically hoofing at themselves before they calmed down.

“I think we’re all fine!” Naminé sighed like she had let go of a burden of straw.

“What the hay was that?” Rainbow yelled at Twilight, just as more complaining arose from the others.

“Girls!” Fluttershy’s cry silenced them, just as she pointed at the black and white griffoness standing with them among the trees.

Her face mirrored the shock and confusion from Twilight’s friends while she, too, sat on her haunches and patted herself several times before her frown shifted into annoyance. Landing one paw on the ground for support, she massaged her brow and let her crown of black feathers fold behind her head with a groan.

Only then, Twilight understood they had skimmed over the initial events of the creation of the world. A new cycle had begun, and they stood before the Harpy. Just as she came to the same conclusion with a proper griffon-like expression.

“Stupid grass-eating nag…”

Starlight yelled at the others to follow as the griffoness started walking. It was a good thing they did because Twilight missed her cue to do so. They followed as the Harpy beelined among the thick trees and scared tiny animals out of her way. She walked with an angry sureness, as though she knew the path by heart. The others followed, but that was a touch scary, and it showed in Twilight’s frown.

“Are you okay, sugarcube?”

A soft grimace escaped, but Twilight smiled and chuckled at her friend. “Yes. Just a little shaken.”

“It sure was something. Just starting over like that.”

Satisfied at the smile and response she got back from Applejack, Twilight focused on not tripping on the roots and soft terrain. At the back of her mind, she kept reminding herself of just how freaky it was that she, too, knew exactly where to go. Even without the Harpy leading the way. But she said nothing, as there was already enough weirdness in that vision of theirs. It was probably some creepy side-effect of Naminé’s spell.

Along the way, Twilight wondered if Naminé’s own perception of the passing of time dragged theirs along. That would explain the initial process rushing past them as a new cycle started. Maybe even their placement in the newly created universe, right by the griffoness. Or maybe Twilight was overthinking. Regardless, she did as the others did and followed the Harpy.

A short walk took the ponies and griffoness to a clearing past the bushes and trees. The Harpy stopped and cocked her head just as the sun gleamed on her scowling visage, which became an angry growl.

“What in the Scorch did she do now?” she cried.

Instead of a meadow, a palace made of milky-white crystal occupied the clearing. It seemed out of place, surrounded by the forest with roots and grass growing through the cracks in the surrounding foundation. Something told Twilight there was more to it than the eye could see. Literally. Like a metaphor, or an allegory. A hunch, or an old memory coming back, she preferred the former. The latter was too scary. Regardless, the palace seemed more ‘magical’ than any usual building in her world already suffused with magic. Almost like it belonged in a dream, or somepony’s imagination. The griffoness didn’t wait for Twilight to examine the place. The Harpy complained under her breath and started following a path of crystal blocks towards the building.

Twilight and the others meant to follow but stopped when Cadance gasped and flared her wings. “I know this place! I mean… Kind of. It is the same palace I saw in my dream!”

“Are you sure?” Twilight turned to her. “Your description of it included a lake of ‘shiny pink stuff’”.

“Yeah… Not exactly. Some details are off,” Cadance responded with a frustrated pout.

“Is it the same or not?” Rainbow frowned.

“I thought the spell was supposed to show us events in the past! Not dreams from the princess’ noggin!” Applejack accused.

“Memories. Recollection.” Naminé raised her snout like the earth pony had criticized her work ethic. “We are witnessing memories of the princesses’ souls. It is just weird that I usually experience these as though I am living them, not watching them. But other than that, the spell is working as it should. And I can say I definitely never saw this place!”

“It’s doing something it never did, but also working as it should?” Pinkie asked with a confused frown while Applejack raised her eyebrow.

“Maybe this is the creation of that place the princess saw?” Rarity offered in a conciliatory, mildly annoyed tone, with Starlight Glimmer following her lead.

“We know it was a mental representation of the self. A place where all the things that made a creature became that creature. It sounds reasonable that we would witness its creation when watching the creation of our kind. Uh… Right?”

While Applejack and Naminé started arguing semantics, Fluttershy kept trying to get them to stop. The argument being ‘this is made-up nonsense’ versus ‘this is an interpretation of something deeper and sacred’, Starlight Glimmer had more useful insight to offer. “I wonder if all we are seeing is actually the goddess’ interpretation of what she was doing.”

“Assuming Naminé can see her memories in you and Cadance, of course. Or, maybe, this is our own interpretation of it. Maybe this is because the spell is working as it should, but Twilight and Cadance have special souls.”

“But they aren’t here!” Rainbow said. “It’s just the evil griffon lady and Princess Celestia.”

“What if it is all a bunch of imaginary cuckoo nonsense?” the farm pony insisted.

“Technically, nothing is real. Everything you see, feel, and touch are your interpretations of what your senses tell you. I can imagine magic to create living creatures, but if this place is supposed to be inside our heads. Maybe this vision is a combination of inside and outside.” Starlight explained, waving her hoof at them. “That we have access to because Twilight and Cadance were part of the process. Somehow. In a way that we just don’t understand yet.”

“Don’t go scientific on me, Counselor Missy!”

“We don’t have time to argue!” Shining Armor pointed at the griffoness walking down the path.

A hasty walk took all of them to the palace’s grand entrance. A gigantic crystal portal mimicking luxurious grand doors of wood and decorative panels. They shone with their own light, which pulsated like a heart. The griffoness sat and looked up while they opened like they recognized her. A comforting warm breeze escaped as the ponies entered after her, and then the doors closed by themselves only after all of them had entered. It put a bug behind Twilight’s ears. A grimace escaped her, but she kept her mouth shut.

Inside, Cadance told them again it differed from her dream. Instead of a corridor leading into a central hall, the latter filled the entire structure. It resulted in an impossibly tall room within impossibly thin walls. It was far from empty. A water mirror took most of the floor, surrounded by white marble and a strand of light rising from it, reaching all the way to a miniature sun at the top. Or a glorious beam of light, not unlike the summer sun peeking through the clouds to shine over a serene lake.

Twilight and her friends stopped by the entrance. There was a granularity, details within the beam of light which escaped a first, non-committing stare. It was so much more than a wobbly ray of luminescence. As her eyes focused, the beam of light bared itself to Twilight. It unfolded before her eyes with a myriad of threads within a thick bundle. They danced with each other, each made of more threads, all connecting and disconnecting on their way down to the water mirror.

Twilight blinked. It was so much more than a pretty light show. Each of the strands of light held a distinct meaning, and her eyes singled out one of them. It rushed to the forefront of her thoughts like curtains opened too fast in the morning. A wave of nausea stole the up and down from her and kicked her in the stomach. Where did the floor go? The knowledge which filled her left no place for it.

That was the Fifth Strand of the Sah. She also knew what the Sah was. More than a strange name, it was the part of the soul which distributed mana to the rest. Why would she know such a thing? That eluded her as much as her heart quickened at the realization that she knew things she should not know. Things like that the Fifth Strand of the Sah connected to several strands in the Sah Cluster, and others, carrying a vital function in regulating all the other clusters.

There were no fields in the formal scientific knowledge which explored such subjects. There were no books which spoke of the connection between the soul and the Pool of Souls and could explain that the Fifth Strand of the Sah was the first to connect as a soul was summoned from the Pool, and the second to last to break when their body died. Much less that the last was the Primary Strand of the Ka, which would tether the soul back to the Pool, only to disconnect when the journey was finished, and the soul would dissolve into the Pool.

Her head throbbed and her jaw hung open, but no air seemed to fill her lungs enough to fill her need for air. The flood of recalled details would not stop!

She also knew necromantic spells would exploit a vulnerability created by the former to penetrate the ‘Sekhem Barrier’, which was supposed to give form to the soul and isolate it from the permeating magical energies, much like the skin of the body. That was what creatures using necromantic spells were doing, even if no such details could be found in the forbidden knowledge once found in King Sombra’s cache. Even Lord Tirek exploited such a mechanism, but he would not know.

Such attacks would damage the Sah, irreparably injure the soul, and disrupt its connection to the Pool of Souls. It was the first step in creating an undead being. Of course, further corruption would follow as such spells found different mechanisms to infiltrate the Akh and destroy the cognitive processes of a now critically damaged soul. Nightmares came to mind, and they employed a similar process, but they were irrational beings and again, no such knowledge should exist.

A scream was the only thing that made it stop. It derailed her train of thoughts. Silenced the voice in her head that summoned facts and presented them like an intrusive butler. When she came to, she was on the floor, breathing so fast her lungs hurt. Shaking so violently, she had pulled her limbs before she even noticed.

That was not real. It could not be real. But it was, and it hit so much harder, that she knew not only it was real, but she understood it. And she understood it was locked away from the mundane, forbidden to the eyes of the mortals. And that was more than insane.

Cadance looked down at her with wide eyes and a hanging jaw, speaking softly, petrified in place, not even daring to lower herself to talk. “You felt it too… It makes sense.”

“What in the flaming haystacks was that?” Applejack cried while Shining helped Twilight stand. Her friends mimicked her shock, except for Naminé and Shining Armor, who showed only confusion.

“Wait!” Cadance cried. “You guys too?”

“What are you talking about?” Worry crept into Shining Armor’s voice.

“There was something in it,” Fluttershy whispered, her wings fluttering with distress as she stepped away from the beam of light. “There is something in it! It told me something, but I didn’t understand what it said!”

While the others agreed with her, and added their own repetitive perspectives, their words merely confused Naminé and her confused wince showed it.

“Oh, my gosh… They can’t see it, Twilight.” Cadance gasped. “Shining Armor and Naminé can’t see it!”

“It’s pretty and kinda inspiring, but it’s just an ol’ beam of light out of the sun,” Naminé moaned. “What’s scaring you ponies so much?”

“Never mind that!” Applejack cried. “What is that weird thing?!”

“What are you talking about?” Shining shook Cadance in his hooves. “You’re freaking me out!”

“It’s a representation of… It’s a pony soul!” Twilight said. “A prototype. I can see all the little threads that make it up and connect to the… To the… The Thing!”

“Wait, that’s what it is?” Pinkie drooped her ears. “Why does it feel so weird to look at it?”

“It is as though I have seen this before.” Rarity examined the beam of light with a quizzical frown. “At the same time, I feel like I’ve never seen it at all!”

“The sun?” Naminé asked, letting her ears flop. “Yeah. It looks like the sun is hanging from the ceiling.”

“Not the sun! The Pool of Souls!” Twilight yelled and turned her eyes from the twirling tendrils of light before she lost herself in it again. “I mean, it is the sun! It is the Pool of Souls! And it is the sun! And it’s all connected! And we can see it! And you can’t! Oh, my gosh!”

“But why can we see it?!” Rainbow Dash hovered in the air, pointing at the ball of light at the top. “I’m not some freaky alicorn weirdo! And how do you just know what it is? What the hay is going on?”

Twilight knew the answer. It burned at her throat and a part of her begged for her to tell them. They had a right to know, but she refrained. It was too weird. Too impossible. Looking back at the strands of light, there it was. The most wondrous magic, the mechanisms, bits and bobs of a soul. It was the framework of Life, and she knew it like it was a summer vacation project. The inner workings in the deepest fathoms of Life, forbidden to mortal eyes. She shook her head and held it in her hooves. It was insane. It was madness.

Regardless of Twilight’s turmoil, Cadance scrutinized the beam of light. Her eyes shifted excitedly. She tilted her head in curiosity. Shining Armor, next to her, looked one way and another in confusion. Twilight wanted to smack her, like just looking at that thing was dangerous. But Cadance didn’t care. A grimace slowly took over Twilight’s expression and a deep breath dragged on. She could not decide what she really wanted to do… Look at that thing, and surrender, or yank Cadance’s eyes from it.

Rarity’s hooves, smelling of orchids, brought Twilight to focus on her eyes. “Calm down, darling. I imagine this is difficult for you. I am a bit freaked out myself. But whatever we are witnessing, whatever the meaning of what we are experiencing… Understanding it can only help us going forward. We came here with a mission, and it has become patently obvious it is important we see it through. What we are witnessing is wondrous. Confusing too, and a touch weird. But it is mostly wondrous. It is the beginning of our kind. Whatever we see here… Our bond can only strengthen.”

No! No! She didn’t understand! But how could Twilight even explain? Letting go and holding her feelings to herself was just easier. Even if she appreciated that Rarity meant to help. In the end, Rarity’s words helped Twilight focus on her friend and not on that… Thing.

Nor on Cadance’s judgmental stare. Her hardened eyes startled Twilight, but she did not judge the other princess herself. Their journey had not been easy on Cadance, and she had voiced her disillusionment with the lack of information from Celestia and Luna since her dream. The pink princess would rather embrace all that and step back into the world, ready to claim a new place and demand just treatment. At least what she believed to be just. Twilight’s ears flopped. Maybe she was a coward, but the title of goddess did not seem to fit little Twilight Sparkle.

“This is not half bad.” The Harpy’s thoughtful chirps distracted them, especially once they turned to a haughty, mocking chuckle.

She pranced around the water mirror, looking up at the beam of light, as absorbed with it as the ponies were, before she finally turned to the alicorn. The magical beast had been standing there, but nocreature had paid her much attention. In fact, only then had Twilight even noticed she was there.

What they saw surprised Twilight, Cadance, their friends, and the Harpy alike. But her cat-like scared jump and raised hackles beat all the half-amazed, half-shocked stares from the others. In retrospect, Twilight kicked herself because of how obvious the changes actually were. She even rolled her eyes at how silly and obnoxious it was.

Instead of white, the magical alicorn showed the oranges and azures of the failing lights from day and night combined in an impossible magical dusk. It was an alicorn alright, and she had two sets of silver-streaked golden wings of flames on display, shedding magic into the air like a mirage, playing tricks with their eyes. And on the matter of eyes, the creature had four of them. Bronze and silver, bright like the distant, unfathomable stars and hot like the sun. Gone were the mellow, innocent eyes of a doe. Those unfathomable wells, overflowing with plumes of magic, held intelligence behind them.

The ponies remained where they stood, awestruck, watching the renewed magical beast. Their amazement turned to grimaces and gasps when it walked with the ungainly steps of a newborn foal. Even the Harpy cringed and retreated a paw from the floor, so ungainly the sight was.

A thick pane of glass covered the surface of the water mirror, and the alicorn walked on it with tottering steps. When she stopped, she let her head hang from the neck, looking down at it. Her horn of magical fire waved and flickered like living flames as the creature directed her magic at the mirror below.

The griffoness was not impressed, much less amused. In fact, her tone reminded Twilight—and Shining too, she was sure—of the tone her mother used when she returned home, and the miscalculating siblings had not cleaned their mess.

Honestly, her reaction was the sanest thing to happen in the last few days.

“What madness is this?” the Harpy yelled. “What have you done?”

“This is the prototype of the Mind Construct!” Not only did the alicorn’s expression and mannerisms fail to meet her peppy tone, but the creature spoke with eerie combined voices. Like two entities sharing a single body. It was so bizarre that the Harpy winced again.

Twilight twisted her muzzle, desperately telling herself those were most certainly not Celestia and Luna mushed up in a single eldritch being. Its mannerisms were completely different, more like an artificial construct. More than a foal, a golem. Even then, the alicorn’s presence was majestic whenever it wasn’t trying to move, and her magical aura was a thing of awe. One that definitely fit, though.

The Harpy cocked her head and stared blankly for a second before she could summon up the words. “I know what this is! What I mean is… this!” the griffoness yelped again. She flared her wings and her crown of black feathers. “Did… did you just talk? How is… How did you do this?”

“We don’t understand you.” The alicorn’s stare turned blank as she awkwardly raised a fiery hoof from the glass floor. “We are sisters. We are Sol. We are Luna.”

The Harpy mumbled a couple of words before she could form her next proper sentence. “You are not a lifeform capable of having a sibling, you bumbling idiot! You do not share parenthood, have no parents! Only rogue magic with delusions of sentience! How did this happen?! How are you talking?! Are you even aware that you are literally two entities in one body?!”

“No,” the weird alicorn said plainly and tilted her head. Twilight had to admit she had a certain creepy charm. “We are Luna. We are Sol. We theorize. It seems the new Cycle of Creation has changed us. Our failure has informed the creation of a new cycle in which we are two parts in one. We are body. And we are mind. We are Sun and Moon. We are instinct and we are reason. We are two halves of self-awareness.”

“Shut up!” the Harpy screeched and held her head. “I am having a headache just listening to you abomination talking! You do not know what you are saying!”

“What are you doing here?” the alicorn let go of her magicking and glared. Or tried to. Her facial expression never met the proper frown and intensity that her tone called for. “Intelligence is heavily taxing on biological systems, and we are busy calibrating the prototype.”

The conversation ceased to be interesting after devolving into accusations and petty bickering. With annoyed frowns, Twilight and the others turned their attention to the water mirror and the rest of the room. An eerie anticipation hit her, just as she looked down at it, but this time, she was ready.

The more Twilight stared at the mirror, the more she saw the depth of the details beneath the glass where they stood. Unsurprisingly, given what she had seen in the beam of light, but also much less traumatic since she expected something similar. The first thing she saw was the double lightning cutie mark emblazoned on the glass, and beneath it was indeed a water mirror. It had a proper curved bottom, and the correct depth, but Twilight didn’t see her reflection looking back at her from the mirror. Even if what she saw never punched her in the same way again, her stomach still dropped at the sight, at the meaning behind what she saw.

Inside the water mirror was a sea of stars, deeper than the Mareana Trench, filled with dancing specks of light. Each shiny dot extended itself and touched another. A complex map of intertwined, connecting, and disconnecting motes of light. Bright specks of radiance reaching, jumping from one another, and another, never stopping.

“Pretty!”, as Pinkie declared, but it was much more than that.

With each passing instant, Twilight found more details to focus on and let her eyes, and who knows what else, guide her on this time. Each dancing light became a collection of glyphs. Luminous, scratchy griffon letters dancing within the specks of light. They changed, connected, and reformed in an ever-changing tapestry of intricately connected units, each with their own collection of symbols and shapes.

Again, a myriad of details came to her thoughts as the symbolic depth and the meaning of it all unveiled itself from the deepest reaches of her own memories. Not unlike what she experienced before, but her calm mind eased the intruding memories into understanding.

The literal train of thoughts revealed its gears and sprockets. Secrets like growing grass: chains of connected roots supporting the blades of grass above ground. The emergent processes of the conscious mind never saw the former. Only the final sparking connections, strong enough to raise, came to fixate themselves above the rest. And with each one, their own tendrils below the threshold reached into the depths and brought other processes. Responding emotions brought forth physical sensations, and then everything began again, in an unending cycle, and that was the mind making itself.

It was like the old crochet art her grandma used to make. A collection of seemingly chaotic and pointless lines underneath became a clear image on the other side. Constantly changing, however. Much like the zoopraxiscope, recently invented by mister Mull Berry, giving the illusion of developing and changing images, while hiding the actual mechanism that made it happen. Presenting the mind with the results as it so cleverly thought itself the agent of such insights.

Rather than an eldritch monstrosity never to be witnessed, it was knowledge to learn. Twilight stared into the abyss, and not only did the abyss stare back at her; it told her everything that she was and that she held no mysteries. The beauty of it never diminished, as to the enlightened mind, understanding made it more real than the fictional creations of, ironically, that very system.

A cycle, intentionally or not, much like Creation itself, always strengthening what worked, learning and refining. The meaning of it all reached her and her jaw hung slack at the imperfect perfection she witnessed.

“We will now succeed where we have failed before.” The dual alicorn declared, both proudly and categorically at the same time.

“Will you now?” The Harpy’s grin failed to get an external reaction from the other, but it gave Twilight chills as the griffoness walked onto the glass and her talons clicked at it. In a moment of panic, it dawned on Twilight just how fragile that system was.

Harsh gray eyes scanned the lights under the glass and Twilight, now joined by Applejack and Rarity, observed the griffoness. It didn’t appear she meant to destroy it, and while the Harpy was busy, Twilight let her eyes wander upward to the surrounding room. Outside the palace, the walls showed nothing but pristine crystal. Inside it was another story, literally.

The walls held colorful and unorthodox murals of multicolored glass. After the familiar pony aesthetic style, each one represented one of the major systems of a pony’s body with archetypal imagery. A skeleton dominated one with images of cut bones filled with red and yellow ligaments. As informative as it was simple. Another showed the trajectory of food once swallowed, complete with all the annexes to the digestive tube and the complex choreography of reflexes and autonomous movements. A rampant pegasus pony with a luscious coat and flowing mane showed off her coat. It was the same pink and purple mare with a double lightning cutie mark.

A triptych showed a pony’s nervous system, with all its ramifications, complete with separate images for each of the three tribes—no alicorns—complete with the specialized structures required by the horn and the wings. Not to mention that the next showed their muscles represented by a proud pony showing its mighty legs with a kick, or the powerful muscles that powered the wings. Genitourinary systems for male and female were two versions of the same pony posed like they were in one of ‘those’ magazines. Twilight doubted the weird dual alicorn meant it in such a way. It was merely a symbol, like a proud representation of her… Their… Of its creation.

But all that was at a first glance, like everything in that place. The most important were not the representations themselves, it was the meaning they held. They morphed and shifted along with strings of magical notations, alluding to all which would be possible. They didn’t show precise ideas, but ranges of possibilities. Impossible images filled with magic and possibility, rather than precise meanings. The bones of a pegasus were lighter, hollower, against the strong hammers that were the earth pony’s limbs, after all.

“What do these weird symbols mean?” Shining mumbled, like the others bending his neck to look upward at the mural with the blood vessels sprouting from the heart. His words came with no surprise at all to her, following all the drama about the pony soul on display.

“It’s just a weird jumble of symbols.” Naminé frowned at them. Twilight merely nodded that it was reasonable.

“I can see a heart and a bunch of veins.” Pinkie frowned at the two. “You know, from school.”

Rainbow pointed at another. “Yeah. This one is about muscles and stuff.”

“You two don’t see it either?” Cadance frowned at the two, and they confirmed it with confused nods. Her hoof clicked twice at the mirror. “What do you see?”

“I see myself…” Shining told her, but Twilight doubted he meant in the profound way she thought.

“Ah… What does this mean?” Pinkie made a worried frown, but the Harpy’s outburst distracted them again.

She sat on her haunches, on the glass above the mirror, so her forelimbs would be free, and she made wild, angry gestures with them. “You are out of your mind! You literally copied my memetic architecture! Even the engram codex is the same!”

“You give yourself far too much merit.” The dual alicorn responded, walking around the mirror with its set of four eyes scanning the sea of stars below. Eventually her magic shot down and changed something so infinitesimally small Twilight could only imagine what she did.

After a short walk, the magical alicorn stopped and glared at the griffoness with her two sets of eyes. “That you have locked the initial parameters of the magic of Life, and those of consciousness, means little. It would have happened one way, or another, given sufficient time.”

The griffoness’ eyes flared with anger. “I created you! Without my work, none of this would exist!”

“False.” The dual alicorn told her coldly. “You have created the need for us. We are the creation of Harmony, and we are the will of Harmony manifested in the world. Much as the laws of physics do not resent the wings which fly, and the bird is free to soar, so were you to create and I am free to give it flesh and mind.”

“I laid the foundation!” The Harpy closed her fists. For a second a sad frown peered through her scowl. “All of this is mine, obnoxious nag!”

“That does not grant you ownership. And even if it did, it was taken from you and given to us. All you created was pain and suffering. We will bring joy and Harmony.”

While Pinkie grimaced with a ‘sheesh’ and most stares judged the griffoness, Twilight found it curious that at no moment she attacked the alicorn or her creation. Was there something keeping her from doing so? Twilight doubted it was out of decency or respect.

“My children will forget me.”

“That is your own fault.” The alicorn held the griffoness in its uncanny four-eyed stare. Her face showed no sympathy, and neither did her tone. “They must distance themselves from us, else their ability to self-determinate will never flourish, for they are drawn to us.”

“You are talking about yourself!” The griffoness opened her forelimbs in frustration. “There was never anything keeping me from living with my children!”

“Your insistent presence on the world has stunted its capacity to fully evolve. Our magic is too powerful. And those are the reasons our Little Ponies must forget us once they are ready, and so should you have done with your children. Free will is their birthright.”

“Free will?” To Twilight’s surprise, the griffoness laughed. First an explosive, stunned guffaw, and then a hearty laughter. “Free will? It is an illusion. Even to my children, it gives them a sense of self, and a motor for their higher reasoning abilities. You are wasting our time. To discourse about it is to delve into the unfathomable intricacies of Chaos.”

“True.” The alicorn agreed. “But then, the same applies to us. You have gifted your griffons that which Harmony has gifted you with. We are saving Creation from your sanctimoniousness.”

They made a moment of silence and Twilight almost felt like congratulating the bizarre alicorn before the griffoness smiled. It was a conceited and arrogant smile. “You lack the understanding to give it to them. I alone know how to bestow it.”

The alicorn had again turned its four-eyed stare to the sea of stars inside the mirror. “You misunderstand us. We cannot give it to them, but we need not. We will give ourselves to them, and enshrine ourselves inside them, and we will guide them from our place in the sky.”

“That makes little sense.” The Harpy frowned like she was staring at a defective machine with a broken gear.

“We will share their first steps, and we will teach them. And once they have learned, we will leave them to think for themselves. We are ‘just a string of magic’, as you have put it. But that shall be sufficient.”

The Harpy almost said something. Then, hiding her face from the alicorn, she turned it to Twilight. A hanging beak, and eyes opened wide. She made silent words, and whatever she was going to say, she restrained herself not to. Those elegant griffon fingers clenched and trembled. Her own talons almost pierced her skin. The subtly quickened breath and her restrained crown of feathers showed more than she wanted to give. Her sagged wings were almost like a pony’s drooped ears. The unfocused stare that refused to stay still. Twilight saw all of those and she knew them very well.

In an instant, and with a gasp, it all shifted back into her arrogant, all-knowing sneer before she turned back to the four-eyed alicorn and declared with triumphant glee. “You are dooming them to failure and wasting time.”

“Fortunately, we believe time is not in any shortage,” the alicorn responded, barely minding the griffoness anymore. “And we disagree with you, anyway. What are you even doing here? We destroyed you.”

The griffoness, sitting on her haunches, folded her forelimbs and raised her beak. “Apparently you cannot do anything right.”

“We don’t believe you did particularly well, either.” The alicorn replied, all cold pettiness.

Their exchange became so childish, Twilight and Applejack both rolled their eyes. The others took the discussion more seriously, which was not to mean Twilight did not. She simply saw needless bickering when they might as well be working together. Twilight sighed: the creation of her world had been reduced to petty drama. Yet, something was missing, and Twilight could not put her hoof on it, and before she could identify it, Applejack approached her.

“This birdbrain don’t know nothing.” They watched the two still arguing back and forth on absurd cosmology and hermeneutical details of the cosmos. “She’s as confused as this goof.”

Twilight nodded in agreement, while Pinkie added her opinion from afar. “She’s a mean-head!”

“As if griffons ever did anything good…” Naminé grumbled, also from afar, amid the others, keeping a safe distance from the griffoness.

“So, what do we do now?” Rainbow flared her wings. “This place is kinda creepy.”

“I suppose we wait,” the princess shrugged and glared at Cadance and her petulant frown upon being glared at. “Somepony wanted us to see all this instead of looking for the things we set out to investigate.”

With no other choice, they waited for what seemed like days, but those bizarrely rushed past them. The argument ceased, with both sides tired of trying to convince the other. The magical alicorn worked diligently, with a focused stare, either at the floor or at the murals on the walls. Twilight blinked and out of nowhere came a small community of what could only be called caveponies.

She and her friends, as well as the griffoness and the alicorn, were back at the meadow with the muddy pond. A village of hundreds of little homes took shape around the pond and a bonfire. To Naminé’s delight, their homes were much like the shared habitation in her village and housed a small community of colorful ponies.

Twilight’s friends quickly understood the new situation and comments were at a minimum, while they watched. At the alicorn’s command and direction, the individual herds of twelve-odd ponies went about their simple lives in their sheltered clearing. Different from the previous cycle, the alicorn made the night and day change regularly and the ponies responded by resting at night and working, teaching the others during the day.

As she sat on the grass to watch, it dawned on Twilight that between the two cycles, the creator—or creators—seemed to have realized the original ponies were too simple. The new ones not only talked amongst themselves and with the alicorn, but they also gained complexity as much as their creator did. They gained experience and learned things. Her friends too noticed it, but there was little else for them to do other than comment and wait. The griffoness… After a few attempts met with harsh rebukes, the ponies stopped trying to engage with her. She seemed satisfied with laying on the grass and seething from a distance.

Twilight and her friends walked amid those ponies, who might as well have been their distant ancestors, watching and commenting among themselves. The alicorn’s little ponies spent their days teaching and building homes. Crafting tools, exploring and returning with fruits and herbs. Others dedicated themselves to welcoming the new ones as the double alicorn pulled them out of the muddy pond. It was a happy, growing little community that endeared itself to Twilight and the others. The alicorn herself never left her wooden mannerisms, but her strange voice filled with joy day after day. And in the distance, the griffoness seethed.

Did they ever notice the alicorn placed carefully designed mundane obstacles? A log here, a hole there. Thick bushes over yonder, on the way to those juicy berries. It seemed they didn’t, and certain ponies, with obvious cutie marks such as a stone and a pestle, took an interest in healing the eventual injuries from those activities. They naturally drifted to certain activities. Some became very good at repairing damaged homes, others had an uncanny sense of where to find the best fruit, even among the bounty of their shielded meadow. Cutie marks, informing ponies of their destinies since the dawn of time. Literally.

While the others spread around, either to watch the alicorn or the other ponies work, or even monitor the evil, bored griffoness, Twilight walked among the working ponies. They were not too different from the ponies of Twilight’s time, but they were.

There were fewer ponies, and they had much simpler jobs to be done; they defined those ponies. Earth ponies took care of the animals and tended the gardens. Pegasi spun clouds and coaxed the rain out of it. Much lower and smaller clouds, though. As to not remind them, there was a dead wasteland on the other side of those mighty perennial trees.

What was it that defined unicorns? Unlike the unicorns in Twilight’s past, those didn’t need to care for the sun and the moon. The Goddess(es) did it. The realization threw a metaphorical wrench in Twilight’s gears, because if the Goddess had planned for that, she ought to be training them already. Was the whole thing a lie? Like Twilight had suspected back in Chrysalis’s library? Back during dinner at the warship, Princesses Celestia and Luna had told them that the unicorns did care for the celestial bodies before they needed to take over. Yet, they could be lying. Why, though? Why was that detail so important? The realization burned like live embers in Twilight’s chest, and she wasn’t sure why.

Twilight followed a unicorn until he settled with a group. They greeted each other, speaking a bizarre ancient Equestrian that Twilight understood. But that barely registered after the previous events. More importantly, the unicorn set to work. He, like the others, magicked plant fiber into comfy beds and sitting pads of straw and soft green grass. They had wool from the random sheep that just showed up when Twilight wasn’t looking, but the grass one seemed to be a favorite.

Those were extremely well-crafted little meshes of plant fiber, well above what the earth ponies and pegasi typically achieved before they got bored and moved on to other tasks. It was their magical telekinesis that helped unicorns distinguish themselves, but it was not a unilateral affair. The earth ponies had their own uncanny skills at making edible things and materials alive. Even things which did not match the climate in the meadow: they used aloe vera for healing plasters.

Pegasi practically controlled the clouds, far above the skill of unicorns who tried their magic at it. And that was a fact all the way to the present day, as was that earth ponies were the best with living green things. But that did not deter the unicorns from trying to do everything with their magic. From manipulating items to eating and meddling in the affairs of other ponies. It all corrected itself, though, as they seemed to prefer jobs they were better at. In fact, unicorns would either excel or not do at all.

Watching from outside of the unicorn’s world, Twilight approached him and stared with no deterrence. There was some hard to pinpoint difference between that pony and the ones Twilight knew. His horn was the right size, his body was the same shape. A blue gray covered his muscles and while Twilight preferred lighter colors, like oranges and gold, he shared a handsomeness with all the surrounding ponies. It went beyond even Shining Armor’s battle-ready fitness. Perhaps the right word was not ‘handsomeness’, but ‘conformity’. There was much less difference between those ponies than there was between what could be called modern ponies. It was the best way she could put it, with a frown and a rubbing hoof at her chin.

Whatever the meaning behind that, his crafting was more interesting. Weaving and interweaving bundles of grass went up and down, one way and another, under the cyan of his telekinetic magic like they were alive. For a pony used to watching Rarity work, that might not seem too amazing, but Twilight was mindful of her own skills and that of others. The level of dexterity that the unicorn showed would give Rarity a run for her money and leave most others in the dirt.

He was far from alone in this. As if guided by an unspoken rule, the unicorns immersed themselves in tasks that demanded great dexterity, and they excelled at each one. Knitting clothing out of plant fiber, for example. Their attention to detail could border on obsession, and the key difference laid in their use of magic. While all ponies wielded magic, it was an integral part of everything unicorns did, amplifying their meticulous nature and channeling their prissiness to an obnoxious degree.

“Hi!” a cute yellow earth pony mare with a pleasant smile said in that weird language of theirs.

She startled the princess before Twilight noticed the pony was talking to her unicorn subject. A little hop threw the neat bundle of fresh grass she carried into the air. Upon landing, the twine broke, and the grass sat neatly right into the dwindling pile the unicorn was using for his craft. “Is that enough?”

“Thank you,” he said enthusiastically while looking at the pile, at the busy, pony-creating alicorn, and then at the houses still being built. “We’ll probably need more. Lots and lots more.”

“You got it!” she chirped before scampering away.

Looking past the hard-working unicorns, Twilight found other groups of ponies building their homes, and it showed her something interesting. Unicorn telekinetic magic was precise rather than strong. They could shape bricks of mud and feed them into the earthen ovens and even cut the wood. But so could the others with stone knives and hatchets, and they were the ones minding those tasks. The unicorns needed sleds tied around their shoulders to pull cargo around, and the earth ponies just hauled much more. Unicorns, working in groups, moved heavy wooden beams, but pegasi extended their flying magic to their sleds and groups of them craned the heavier pieces above. There was no point in unicorns using their magic for such tasks, and the others managed enough precision to assemble the structures with hooves.

What the unicorns then did everywhere was manage. They coordinated efforts to ensure that overeager ponies trying to help didn’t become a hindrance or caused accidents. Trigonometry was instinctual as they told the others where the heavy wooden beams should go. ‘A little to the left! Just a little more! That is it! Down. And… perfect!’ they shouted, and the others did.

Elsewhere, a unicorn’s telekinesis organized all the flowers into baskets so the others would haul them to where needed. Of course, yet another told them where to go. None of that was surprising; what stood out was the trust and immediacy with which the other ponies responded to their requests.

Twilight thought back to the prototype of the pony mind and wondered: could that be an inherent trait? The ponies organized themselves into tasks with minimum involvement from the alicorn or other ponies, almost as though they knew what to do from the start. A myriad of questions popped up inside Twilight’s head and made her think back to Winter Wrap-Up, but there was also the fact that they lived in such a controlled society.

The point remained. Unicorns said, and the others did. They didn’t even seem to disagree amongst themselves. But then again, there was little to disagree about inside their protected little world.

“Huh…” Twilight frowned.

The days passed in a blur, blending together with the rhythm of their routine. Only on a second look did the strangeness of it unfold. Time seemed to flow unevenly in that shared dream, like trying to piece together a story from a book she kept putting down, interrupted by the random distractions. At least now that Twilight convinced herself she’d seen the important bits.

Interesting, and some might even call it important, because all of that–her observations and the events they witnessed—had little value as evidence of their creation. Most reasonable ponies would call it a weird group illusion, or a delusion of Naminé’s own beliefs. The others… well, they’d become Naminé’s followers. How would Princesses Celestia and Luna feel about that? How would other races feel about that? Twilight drew a blank, but knew she was not comfortable.

On the matter of important details, there was more. The others distracted themselves by watching the ponies. The griffoness sat by the sidelines, silently smug, biding her time like the predator she was, appreciative that the ponies had left her alone. After a while, Twilight finally understood what she was so smug about: only adults occupied the clearing.

Twilight sighed and hoofed at her brow before glaring at the magical alicorn Applejack had called a goof. It was so unbelievably foolish, but the bizarre alicorn never noticed it. She probably simply lacked the insight to understand the problem, like in the previous cycle.

After that, waiting, watching her excited laboring, knowing such a simple flaw doomed it all before it even started, was almost painful. Only understanding that it would work out in the end made the powerless monitoring bearable at all.

Years within seconds rushed past their eyes like the fading memory of a dream that insisted on glossing over the details in favor of the juiciest parts. Their host commented on the novelty of it all and how valuable were the memories of the alicorns. Pinkie giggled at ‘the trip’, and others compared it to magic and dreams. Twilight simply waited, steeling herself for when the failure became obvious.

They had witnessed the fiery alicorn teaching her little ponies all she could about the dangers of the world outside the Green Harbor. They watched while the ponies readied themselves for their journey outside. Celestia’s words from their dinner at the warship returned to Twilight with the painstakingness of it all. Curiously, Twilight had no recollection of the princess mentioning the Harpy during the process.

Her back crawled with the realization that Naminé had no way of knowing of her presence, either. Twilight’s prowess at theory crafting had earlier led her to think that Naminé might have been making it all up. The sinister realization that Naminé couldn’t have known of the Harpy’s involvement or the discrepant unicorn’s lack of control over the sun loomed. It chilled like a bucket of snow.

While she was still grimacing, the great day came. Eager colorful eyes and a multitude of different mane styles gathered before the alicorn. Packages, sleds, and little carryalls bursting with supplies stood ready by their sides. Like graduation day, eager anticipation filled the rustling of the leaves with happy neighs and excited clops on the beaten dirt of their sprawling settlement. In their place, Twilight would have been much more nervous. And the Harpy was there. Watching. Seething.

The alicorn raised her hoof and pointed at the unknown beyond the brown and green of the forest. “Go now, my little ponies. The world needs you. We have given you the gift of Life to fill it with its bounty.”

Obediently, determined ponies adjusted the weight on their backs and off they went.

“You absolute buffoon…” the Harpy’s harsh tone swept the smiles from Twilight’s friends while they watched the rainbow congregation of marching ponies. A malcontent, grim scowl had replaced her smug smile. “You have condemned them to dwindle away after you filled them with purpose and joy.”

“You cannot take away from us the sweetness of success,” the alicorn glared at the griffoness like she had dissed her. Twilight noted her emotion showed much more in her countenance. Was she learning?

“Graceless abomination.” The Harpy’s voice filled with disgust, oozing past a grimace of loathing in her beak, blemished only by arrogant mocking. “You will watch them weep and wither into nothing before you put these foolish ambitions to rest. Arrogance makes for a lofty pedestal from which to fall, sun and moon incarnate.”

“Does anypony else want to see her eating a hoofful of comeuppance?” Shining Armor glared at the griffoness that could not see him, but the others all agreed. Twilight grimaced and watched.

“I’ll settle for just a hoof…” Rainbow commented.

“No matter, the die is cast,” the double alicorn declared, oblivious to their conversation. “It is time we occupied our place in the sky.”

The feeling which took Twilight was like teleportation, but it missed the momentary disorientation that followed. Everything vanished, replaced with the destination, when the destination was nowhere. Twilight’s friends screamed again, but the commotion soon subdued, overpowered by the same curiosity which conquered Twilight.

With a blink of their eyes, they had themselves vanished, and they were above Equestria. So far above they could hold the entire world in their eyes with its twin continents and the massive bodies of water framed by the empty and starry specks of light beyond. Amid more oohs and aahs, Naminé and Shining Armor all but freaked out, screaming until Cadance’s voice soothed them.

Twilight was busy. She scoured the stygian wasteland below. Something she failed to fully comprehend drew her attention to the bright dot brimming with the magic of Life. Another glance, and it showed itself to her as the sanctuary of green surrounded by gray chaos. But if she focused, she could see them: the ancestral ponies braving the ashen wasteland against the stormy wind and the hectic magical rain. Just like the descriptions both Cadance and Starlight Glimmer had provided, like tendrils of light conquering the dark.

Thousands of them spread in all directions from the forest. Heroic ponies bringing Harmony beyond their green harbor. They avoided magical monsters, born out of the inherent chaos of magic and fought bravely to defend their own when needed. If the storm became too strong to bear, or its magical effects were too dangerous, they built shelters and hid. They knew what they were doing and eventually the first groups succeeded where their predecessors in the previous cycle failed. They arrived at their destinations.

They built their homes like their creator had taught them, and life flourished around their settlements. The grass sprouted from the soil and the seeds they brought from the Green Harbor took root, strong and fruitful. But even as individual groups made it to their destinations, not too far from their birthplace, the obviousness of impending failure weighed like a cold icicle in Twilight’s stomach. Was it her feeling? Or was it the goddess’ despair reaching across to her through Naminé’s magic now that the magical alicorn understood what it was the Harpy meant?

Hooves tripped on stones, and bones broke. The sharp claws of monsters ripped through the flesh. Injuries happened, and even though their creator had taught them how to help and nurse their friends back to health, sometimes it was too much. They would die and leave sad ponies behind. But the most horrifying of all came with the voice of the griffoness, gloating, shrouded in false sympathy as groups disintegrated along the way.

“You condemned them to dwindle away. The last of your creation will cry, alone in the darkness and chaos of a failed world. They will wonder what they did wrong, but you know it was your fault.” The griffoness’ words echoed as a cruel narration to the images of the last ponies surrounded by dead companions and the shards of broken promises. Shattered sanity was all that remained; broken pieces of the marvelous magic they had witnessed. Sobbing and stomping hooves were the symphony of the collapse once their beloved sun turned inside out. It swallowed the light it once shone upon what lands they had claimed and stygian darkness took everything, and most of all, the hopes of the goddess that sobbed with her children.

“This is not fair!” Rainbow Dash’s disembodied cry echoed in the Aether as though she could bargain with the memories of the past. “They did the best they could!”

While the others discussed and agreed, Twilight’s focus remained on the feelings that inundated her thoughts.

That could not be.

That monster had, somehow, cheated.

They could still fix the problem if Harmony would let them.

Maybe the Harpy was right, and it was never to be. The incompetent goddess who, despite knowing all there was to know about the magic of Life and of the Mind, again failed to foresee their limitations. They stood a chance, but were too few, and incapable of replenishing their numbers. No matter how smart they made their little ponies, they could not make stones softer or gravity kinder. There was no avoiding all accidents, and their little ponies suffered because of their naivety.

They would try again, and next time, they’d get it right.

“You will try nothing, dimwitted clot. You will do what you should have done to begin with and relinquish my world back to me.”

“This would be easier if you helped us,” the goddess’ conjoined duo of voices had unraveled from itself, and now, it was in Luna’s voice, which sounded more like a whimper, a sheepish supplication.

“I deny it. There is no existence in which you will succeed. Even if I gave you the solution, you would remain missing the key to their survival, and I will give you no answer.”

Searing brightness followed, and the surprised group of ponies found themselves, once again, in the forest, next to the shocked, squawking griffoness. Regaining her composure while the witnessing ponies reoriented themselves, she let escape a deep, long-winded sigh along with her sagging wings.

“She will not give up!”