Heavenly Sphere

Chapters

Celestia
Rarity
Luna
Interlude: The Poor Mare’s Canvas
Twilight
Epilogue: Some Greater Heaven

Celestia

“Okay, Twilight. It’s just like we practised last time, okay?”

Twilight was aware of how utterly shambolic her attempt to seem calm was.

All the feigned composure in the world couldn’t compensate for a mare who was visibly sweating, and was compulsively fidgeting with the teacup and saucer that Celestia had kindly provided for her. The beverage it had once held was long drained, but Twilight refused to set it down. Anything to keep her forehooves occupied, as she was justifiably concerned that they'd start to shake.

Celestia didn't acknowledge any of this, of course. She just kept reading the parchment and taking periodic sips of her own tea, as if nothing of note was happening.

Once, a few years back, Twilight had been given the chance to observe as the princess conducted oral examinations with a younger filly student. A student who, as it turned out, had displayed the same obvious nerves Twilight always did. She'd asked the princess afterwards why she never verbally reassured the child, and it had been incredibly easy to see through. She cringed now to think of how the cadence of her voice became a whine as she tried to disguise personal investment as academic curiosity.

Of course, the princess almost certainly knew that Twilight was asking about herself more than the student. The princess knew everything. However, she still offered her measured reply of 'The students have nothing to be nervous of in here, Twilight, but I've taught enough throughout the years to know that simply telling them that has little to no effect. They all come around, in time.'

By this point in their relationship, Twilight was very much aware there was no need to be so scared. Celestia was not going to release her as a student if she turned up one bad research idea, the very notion was absurd.

And yet…

Suffice to say, Twilight wished she could come around in time, too.

"Alright," Celestia began, setting the parchment down, and Twilight felt her stomach drop in anticipation.

"It's brilliant. Utterly brilliant, my faithful student. A spell like this, if it could ever be formulated, would be paradigm shifting. We must be ready to present this at the University. This week if you are able."

The relief was wonderful, but nowhere near as wonderful as the look of pride in Celestia's eyes. It shocked Twilight how tangible her mentor's warmth was. Like the aura of kindness was something she could swim in. Twilight blushed at the unabashed praise. The warm, reassuring embrace of her mentor’s approval temporarily banished the self doubt, and the contrast was intoxicating.

"Absolutely princess, I'll just need time to readjust my notes. Clearly I've not conveyed my message as well as I should." Twilight replied, and allowed herself a little smile when Celestia looked at her quizzically.

"I've already formulated it."

HEAVENLY SPHERE

"Esteemed fellows, colleagues, friends," Twilight began. Scanning the sea of faces, she managed to make out Rarity, smiling encouragingly. Twilight was grateful she’d been able to make the trip up from Ponyville, "I am here today to present a new development in my research into new avenues in Thaumaturgy."

The room was filled with academics from all over Equestria. When she gave her first talk here, Twilight had been stunned by how many had assembled. This was until she found out later than many of these scholars were at the end of their research career and more concerned with soaking up as much of the current literature as possible as opposed to producing new ideas. They'd already done more than their fair share of that.

They would have all been here the second they heard there was a talk being conducted, regardless of the subject. And, considering there was at least one talk every week, Twilight wondered whether any of them ever got back to their respective departments.

"There have long existed spells to search through the literature. Indeed, how else would we ever find relevant references without them? Can you imagine going into the Canterlot Royal Library without actually knowing the paper you seek beforehand? You'd never leave!" Twilight exclaimed, prompting a murmur of laughter in the audience. For this crowd, that was effectively a standing ovation.

"There have also long existed spells with which to magically analyse material. What I am displaying today, is a marriage and refinement of both. Using a merged, multi-base enchantment, we can now combine analysis of material with an instinctive literature search, describing a material intuitively and allowing for suggestion of expected properties based on existing research."
This got an outright round of applause. Merging together existing spells was notoriously difficult work, especially ones as fundamental as these two. But Twilight wasn't done yet, not by a long shot.

"But we still have a problem with magical analyses, they require the establishment of an active field around the target. As we all know, unicorn magic has its limits. We cannot establish fields so big as to analyse large geological phenomena. Nor can we establish fields so small and controlled as to manipulate bacteria or less. So, as you may have remembered, this is a multi-base enchantment, not a dibasic one. There is a third element, which removes the need for the use of fields altogether."

They were on the edge of their seats. Literally, in many cases. She had them eating out of her hooves. It was time to bring it all home. She trotted up to the stand she had set up beforehand and removed the blanket covering it. It revealed a glittering, onyx piece of mineral.

"As you are all aware, Dr Sunspire who has kindly joined us today, recently discovered a new material which, if the excitement is anything to go by, is one of the year's most remarkable discoveries." She nodded to Celestia, who left the front row on cue and joined her on the stage.

"Earlier today," the princess began, "With the informed and active consent of Twilight Sparkle, I performed a piece of mind magic for the intent of research only. As you know, while most mind magic is expressly forbade under law, licences can be granted for the purposes of research. And it's quite easy for a pony in my position to obtain such a licence."

The crowd chuckled again, and Twilight allowed herself some awe at how effortlessly Celestia could command the attention of an entire room.

"I can confirm through the usage of a veracity confirmation spell, more commonly called a 'lie detection spell', that everything she is about to say is something that is knowingly true to her."
With that she turned to head back to her seat, but not before shooting Twilight a very quick smile of reassurance.

"My enchantment performs analysis not on the objects themselves, rather it gets all its necessary information from the picture your brain creates. All data is collected in the eyes of the caster. Instead of the establishment of an active field, we can now analyse whatever we can see. Added to this it can intuit properties totally unknown and unprecedented by inference based on existing research."

"Dr Sunspire has not published his research on this material yet, as such it wouldn't come up in any literature searching spell. I have also avoided any talks or preliminary information about this mineral. As confirmed by Princess Celestia, I know nothing about this material... but I can see it, and if I perform the simple bypassing spell to link output to a quill and parchment."

Twilight stared at the mineral, took a steadying breath, and cast the most important spell of her career. For a second nothing happened, until the quill gently rose. In a manner that reminded Twilight of a young deer taking its first, uncertain steps, the quill wavered. Until, quite suddenly, it began to write out a brief passage.

Twilight disconnected her spell, and walked over to the parchment. The crowd watched with baited breath as Twilight scanned the information that had been written down. For a second, she appeared completely neutral, until she broke out in a smile and turned to the audience.

"Dr Sunspire, on the basis of sight alone, my spell determines your material is the highest temperature superconductor found yet," she announced, particular attention on a gobsmacked Sunspire. The stallion was only eight years older than Twilight, and was quite the hot commodity in academia at the moment. A professor in full at only the age of thirty-two. And for all his acclaim, he stared at Twilight in unreserved amazement.

"It is... yes, fully and reliably resistance free conduction at two degrees below the melting point of water," he spluttered.

"My spell cannot tell you everything and is limited by what we know in the literature. These claims would still require stringent experimental experimentation, but by linking to our existing knowledge base and removing the need for field establishment the ability for us to magically analyse has been dramatically expanded. I thank you for your time and hope you will all read the soon to be released paper on this work."

The second she departed the stage, headed for the widely grinning forms of Rarity and Celestia, the crowd began to talk amongst themselves excitedly. Twilight allowed herself to bask in it, especially when her friends began to tell her how proud they were.

Celestia was right. This would change everything.

Rarity

“There’s so many of them, Princess.”

“Don’t be intimidated, my faithful student. Just keep noting them down.”

"It was amazing darling! I thought we'd never get out of there with all of those ponies wanting to shake your hoof," Rarity laughed.

Twilight beamed at the praise. She was hardly in denial of her obvious ability, but acknowledging it had always felt slightly crass to her. But when someone came along and said all those things she wanted dearly to think about herself, she could relax and take solace in their conviction and sincerity.

The cocktails were also helping in this regard. She and Rarity had made their way to one of Canterlot's various bars and were enjoying some drinks on the outside terrace. The whole city was out and about, revelling in the long midsummer night. Twilight couldn't think of a way the day could have gone better.

"It went very well, but any pony with a decent understanding could have done what I did."

"Could have, but didn't," Rarity pointed out, and Twilight grinned despite herself, "I imagine you're going to be the talk of the academic world in the next few days darling."

"Kind of, but not as much as you'd think," Twilight began, giggling slightly as Rarity immediately perked up to protest, "Only because the information won't be properly out there until I publish."

"But won't everyone who was there start talking dear?"

"Oh they'll talk, but they won't give away anything specific. It's considered incredibly bad form to spoil someone's research before they formally publish. Ponies have lost their careers over less." Rarity raised an eyebrow, demonstrably sceptical over the extent to which they could expect the discretion of so many ponies.

"It's like Dr. Sunspire. I was able to avoid finding out the content of his work because it hasn't been published. Then I got his approval to use it in the way I did today. All ponies were saying was 'Dr Sunspire has found an interesting new mineral', and all they’ll say until I publish is 'Twilight Sparkle has an interesting new spell'."

"A groundbreaking new spell more like," Rarity pointed out, making Twilight laugh again.

"Rarity, my head's not gonna be able to fit through the library door at this rate,” she said.

Don’t stop, she thought.

"I know I know, but you never take any credit for yourself darling. Someone has to." Rarity said, a kind smile on her face, "There was one question I wanted to ask though. How did you get it to access so much information?"

"Well," Twilight said, pausing briefly to take another sip of her drink, "The literature is always connected to a magical signal to allow it to be skimmed with a particular spell. It's not just physical sciences either, it's the sum total of Equestrian literature and academia, I'll show you."

Twilight's horn ignited as she performed the spell and peered over at the dress Rarity was wearing. Even someone as non-concerned with fashion as Twilight could tell it was the mare's own creation. Twilight smiled fondly at her friend’s work.

Once she felt it complete, she linked the output to target the condensation on Rarity's glass. Rarity squealed in delight as a bunch of Prench words presumably describing the style of her dress wrote themselves on the side of her drink, and clapped her hooves appreciatively.

"So you see, it can give conceptual descriptions as well as physical ones if the basis is there. Can't say I've read much on the study of fashion personally but it's nice to see it work."

"You've done really well darling. You should be proud of yourself, I know I am."

Twilight did feel proud if she was being honest with herself. She had always been proud to be an Element of Harmony, and of course a stained glass window in the palace is nothing to sniff at. But her heart had always yearned to be remembered for her academic mind. The idea that she might get a mention when the historians of the future were compiling the more significant spells of her time was exhilarating.

It made her want more.

She looked up at the night sky, excited for what was to come next. Once the research was published the real work would begin. Scholars would look at the spell's implementations in full, they'd look at how they could tweak it, improve it. The sky was the limit.

But that was it, wasn't it?

The sky wasn't the limit, her eyes were the limit.

Anything she could see, anything anyone could see, dissected and described with minimal effort. As she stared upwards, she traced the line where the sun’s rays began to lose out to the a much darker canvas. Luna's painting was marvellous, shades of black and blue and purple danced in an understated kaleidoscope, peppered with stars.

Celestia had always taught Twilight to appreciate the night sky, it was a lifelong love-affair at this point.

But there had always been an issue for her. The study of the heavens was always more fit for poets than scholars. Confined to their sphere, they could only look skywards and appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the aether that formed life’s ceiling, high above.

The study of the heavens was a fledgling science due to the impossibility of analysing the spheres with anything other than telescopes, which were a relatively recent invention. Optical telescopes. Telescopes that ponies stared into all day.

Twilight’s smile grew wider.

"...Twilight?"

She snapped her head down to Rarity, stirred from her trance, and found herself being stared at with a quizzical expression.

"Oh, uh, sorry Rarity. Just thought of something to spice up the paper."

"Oh? Care to share?"

"It's okay Rarity. I think I've bored you enough for one night." Twilight chuckled. But it was forced, and performative, done from obligation rather than real consideration. Twilight wasn’t done yet, she wanted to tell Rarity all of her ideas.

She wanted to tell everyone all of her ideas.

And thankfully, the element of generosity was as giving with her time and attention as anything else.

"Nonsense! I may not be a scholar per se, but I'm still interested in the work. What is this new idea of yours?" Rarity insisted.

"Well, it can thoroughly describe anything I can see, yes? And I can see..." Twilight trailed off, and simply pointed above their heads for emphasis, "I'll go to the observatory at the university tomorrow night, see if it works."

"Well," Rarity twiddled with her straw for a second, "Do you want to go now?"

"Celestia above," Rarity gasped when they entered the observatory, "Its enormous!"
"It's the most powerful telescope in Equus," Twilight tried to retain some air of authority on the subject, but she was rather stunned herself.

She had seen pictures during and after the telescope's construction in the university newsletters, but the real thing was in another league entirely. The room was a clear twenty metres high, and the telescope extended up and through the roof.

A series of gears, breathtaking in their complexity, lined the walls. From the controls it seemed like they guided not only the orientation of the telescope, but the room itself. The whole observatory could rotate a clear 360 degrees without a single enchantment.

It was a marvel of engineering, and Twilight couldn't quite believe she'd never gone to see it until now. It was also, sadly, very underutilised at the moment. Twilight hadn't lied about the study of the heavens being only in its infancy. The telescope had been future-proofing as opposed to satisfying some current pressing need. There was quite simply not enough researchers in the field to make full use of the equipment for the time being.

But interest was growing, especially in light of Luna’s return. Maybe Twilight's spell could help with that as well.

The thought was thrilling to say the least.

"So, what are you hoping to find up there?" Rarity began, finally breaking the awed silence.

"It's not so much that I'm hoping to find anything specific. It's mainly just an interesting proof of principle. We know there are four orders of heavenly spheres. Lunae, which orbit the Terrae, which themselves orbit the Astrolae. Then there are things like comets which are classed as Minutae." Twilight explained as she set up a quill and parchment, "It was assumed that the invention of these larger telescopes would lead to a renaissance in the field, but without a way of analysing or interacting with the heavens we're somewhat stunted.

"All the recent advancements tend to be the finding and naming of new bodies such as nebulae or galaxies, followed by massive arguments about where we order them, whether we need new orders, whether we need orders at all and so on. But since my spell gets all its information from image created by your eye. I can't see why I shouldn't be able to analyse heavenly bodies more comprehensively than ever before."

Twilight walked over to the telescope. The number wheels displayed '1008400302', which Twilight assumed was where the telescope was directed. The specific coordinate system being used was a mystery to her, but it didn't really matter for what she wanted to do.

"Okay," Rarity called over, "How about if you look through the telescope and cast the spell, and I can read out what the quill is writing?"

"Sounds great!" Twilight replied. Even with her excitement, though, she couldn't have possibly been prepared for what she saw when she looked through the eyepiece. She realised then what a poor approximation her personal telescope back in the library gave of the heavens. Their majesty was beyond comprehension.

The canvas was awash with a glittering sea of stars. Streaks of colour bled from the void, like the world's most humbling painting. What looked like pinpricks of light without magnification were rendered in awe-inspiring detail. She almost felt embarrassed to have been talking about the four puny orders just moments ago, when confronted with the mind-boggling scale of galaxies.

After the shock wore off, Twilight regained her wits and cast the spell. She allowed a few seconds for it to do its work.

"It just says 'the heavens', Twilight," Rarity called over.

"I thought this might happen," Twilight replied, trying not to sound as miffed as she was. She looked around the controls until she found the dials that controlled the magnification, "At the moment we can't see anything specific enough to analyse. I'm gonna zoom a little and try again. Tell me if it says anything interesting."

"Will do."

She dialled up the magnification by several orders of magnitude. Then, ahead of looking back into the eyepiece, Twilight noted down the current coordinates before changing the orientation to a random series of numbers. She at least wanted to look in a patch of sky of her own if she were to find anything interesting.

"Okay, here we go."

She looked again, and was satisfied to find she had been quite lucky. The blackness of the void was clearly visible in between multiple discreet points of light. To the far right of the view was a colourful looking nebula. While in practise it wouldn't be exactly hard to find something like this, it would have been very time consuming. Twilight had been fortunate indeed.

And yet…

She cast the spell again, staring firmly into the blackness, and part of her was pleased to hear Rarity call out that the quill had written 'space'. At least that meant the spell was working. She looked over to the nebula, and held both her eye contact and the spell.

"What are you looking at right now Twilight?" Rarity asked.

"Why, is it saying something interesting?"

"It's written, 'hydrogen, helium, gas cloud'."

"Rarity! It just told us what the nebula is made of!" Twilight cried out, "This is beyond my original estimations, not only did it confirm that gases that could be found in Equus could be found in the void, but it can separate and individually identify specific components!"

"You got all that from one cast of the spell?"

"The literature must have more applicable research than I had thought. Imagine all the things we’ve not discovered simply because we couldn’t find the right paper!" Twilight replied giddily.

Despite the fact that there were plenty of nebulae to scan, Twilight found her eyes drawn to those dark, boring spaces between the lights. She so often found herself peering into them when looking at the night sky. It was a lesson she’d learned so long ago.

How the boldest secrets could hide in those dark, negative spaces.

And every time she looked into a boring, black space, Twilight had to fight some frustration at hearing Rarity call out that the quill had simply written ‘Void’, or some variation of such.

After a few tries though, Rarity went quiet.

"Rarity, did it write space again?" Twilight asked without looking up.

"Oh! Are you sure you cast it dear? It didn't write anything at all."

"Hmm, I'll try again." Twilight was certain she had cast the spell, but it was new magic after all. It wasn't surprising that it would be somewhat temperamental. She looked at the same area and cast it, only to have Rarity reconfirm that the quill hadn't even moved this time.

Now that was interesting. Twilight reached out for the manual motion controls and moved the telescope until that spot was in the direct centre of the view. She then flicked on a few more magnification levels and made sure to note the coordinates down. It didn't reveal anything interesting however, it still just looked like an unremarkable area of the void. She cast the spell again, and Rarity told her the quill still hadn't moved.

Twilight chewed her bottom lip in a mixture of excitement and anxiety. She glanced at one of the points of light and cast it once more, and Rarity called out that the quill had written 'star'.

That at least confirmed the spell hadn't stopped working, but that didn't make her feel much better. If her charm had an issue, then she could at least fix it. This, however, was way out of her area of expertise.

Twilight magnified it again, to the point that the view was now totally black. There was absolutely nothing in that black either. She really tried, straining her eyes just in case there was anything at all to pick out. But it was futile, the telescope might has well have not been working for all she could see. Twilight shrugged and, deciding there was nothing to lose at this point, cast the spell.

This time, Rarity spoke up.

"Twilight, what are you looking at?"

"Did it write something?"

"Well... what are you looking at?" Rarity insisted, and Twilight could hear how unsettled she was.

"Nothing. Well, nothing that I could see in any case. It just looked like a blank area of space. Did the quill write something down this time?" she pressed, still peering into the black to see if there was anything hiding in there.

"Twilight... it wrote the word 'corpse'."

That was enough to make Twilight look over at her friend, who was already holding up the parchment to show her. Unless Rarity was playing a very uncharacteristic and inappropriate prank, it had indeed written what she had said.

"It's like I said," Twilight began, decidedly not in the same nervous headspace as her friend, "The literature in astronomy is fledgling at best right now. The spell clearly doesn't have enough information to accurately describe what it's analysing."

"But you just said there was more applicable research than you realised. It even knew enough to identify all those gases earlier.” Rarity countered, and, despite herself, Twilight did internally agree that was a fair point, “And even with all that, it chose to write..."

"More applicable research about nebulae, Rarity. This could very well be something totally new to ponykind,” Twilight said, and realised her attempt at reassurance was just making her friend more apprehensive, “Or, it could be nothing at all. This is a completely new spell, Rarity, being honest I’m amazed this is the first issue we’ve ran into.”

She peered back down into the eyepiece and cast the spell again, straining her vision to try to pick out anything in the black.

"Anything?"

"Twilight, I don't like this."

"There's nothing to be scared of Rarity," Twilight bristled, because despite all her attempts to calm Rarity, she was lying. She didn’t believe there was nothing in that area of space anymore than her friend did. There probably was something incredible in there. Something Twilight could be the first to discover, with a method she developed independently, no less.

The drive of being so close to something truly new overrode her usual caring demeanour, and so she shot her friend down and continued to cast her spell. She wanted to know what was out there.

She needed to.

"All the spell does is describe things, Rarity. If we don't have the right frame of reference at the moment, it will use the words it determines to be the closest… Look, we don't have to stay that much longer, just do me a favour and read out the things it's writing," Twilight said, her tone softening.

She heard Rarity huff, but offer nothing in the way of further complaint. Twilight concentrated on the view and found it still to reveal nothing at all. Nothing other than the infinite dark that was the blank canvas of the heavens. Twilight cast the spell again. After a couple of seconds, Rarity began to read aloud the output.

"Corpse, corpse, remains, corpse, dead, death, no escape, no escape, corpse, dead, dead, black, can't escape, dead, impossible, corpse... Twilight enough of this! We need to stop!"

"Just one more try," Twilight murmured. The spell was picking something up. There was enough information in what she was seeing for the spell to give a consistent output, ergo there must have been something in that black. Something in the images made in her eye. Something she didn't even realise she could see.

Twilight flicked the magnification one more time, and at once she heard Rarity cry out and the sound of furious writing.

But Twilight had to know. She stared ever deeper into the void, desperately trying to pick out for herself what the spell had picked up.

Because the spell had picked it up, the black void wasn’t a void at all. The spell could see it, so she had to be able to see it.

She was seeing it right now.

She just needed more information, more concentration, more magnification, more light, more images from the dark, just more…

"Twilight!" Rarity screamed, pulling Twilight away from the eyepiece. At once, the quill fell to the table like a puppet with cut strings. With the spell severed, some sense returned to Twilight and she immediately rushed over to check on Rarity.

"Rarity! I'm so sorry! I don't know what came over me there!" she babbled.
"It's fine Twilight," she replied breathlessly, insincerely, "It's been a bit of an odd night and... it's fine. Can we just go now?" Rarity was clearly quite shaken, and Twilight felt guilt gnaw at her. She should have noted down the coordinates and done this on her own time.

"Of course we can," Twilight soothed, "The night's still young, we can just pick up where we left off earlier."

"I'd like that," Rarity replied with a weak smile, "I'll wait outside while you..."

She didn't finish the sentence, and instead just cast a furtive glance towards the piece of parchment. which said enough.

Twilight looked over at it too. She had completely forgotten about it in all the commotion. While Rarity trotted out into the hall, Twilight took a few cautious steps towards the table on which it lay beneath the now-still quill.

She could see all the words Rarity had called out written in a neat line. Beneath that, however, was the source of the scribbling sound.

The quill had continued to write things like 'corpse' and 'dead' and 'no escape', but in a wild, erratic scrawl that formed a vast circle of ink. And as the words got closer to the centre, so did they get denser and harder to tell apart. Until finally they all seemed to coalesce, forming a menacing circle of deep, pure black.

Luna

“Are you sure that’s all of them, Twilight?”

“Yes! I can’t see anymore!”

“And does that mean there’s no more to be seen?”

And the filly found she didn’t have an answer.

"And how long, exactly, is ‘all day’?" Asked Twilight, and the guard gave her a quizzical look.

"My lady?"

"Well, and I hate to be a bother, but do you mean all of the working day, and that she'll be available later on? Or truly all day? It's just that it's quite important that I see her as soon as possible."

"Apologies Miss Sparkle," she replied, "The princess instructed that she be undisturbed for the whole duration of the meeting. Between you, me and the furniture, the last time this happened she was indisposed until past midnight."

Twilight slumped. It was just her luck. She'd come across a genuine mystery that she needed to discuss with the princess and the nobles chose that day to demand more tax relief. It was a little after three now, and as much as she could wile away hours in the royal library she didn't really fancy waiting around until past midnight. There was no point going back to the telescope at this time of day, and no one had come to Canterlot with her.

This left precious few options, save for heading back to Ponyville only to make the trip to Canterlot again tomorrow.

"Twilight Sparkle?" came a slightly surprised voice from down the hall. Twilight cocked her head to find Princess Luna staring at her.

"Oh, Princess Luna!" Twilight exclaimed awkwardly, "It's great to see you again!"

While Twilight was certainly not unhappy to see the princess, she had not had much contact with her since they freed her from the Nightmare. She was a very austere sort of mare.

No matter how cliched a description it was, Twilight thought their relative heavenly bodies were a very appropriate way of considering the differences between the royal sisters. Celestia was warm and bright, she made you feel safe.

But Luna was more distant, more elusive.

"We see you are waiting for our sister?" she pointed out. Neither expression nor voice gave any hints as to how Luna felt about that fact.

"Yes, no such luck though!" Twilight laughed, though it was somewhat put on, "I see you managed to escape this meeting!"

"Yes. The nobles do not tend to petition us with any of their concerns, and defer immediately to our sister. At a certain point one must just accept one's own limited use it would seem." Twilight cringed, only considering her faux pas long after it could be taken back, "Not that we mind too much being spared their interminable whinging. What were you planning to discuss with our sister, if you don't mind our asking?"

"Oh!" Twilight chirped, grateful to move on with the conversation, "Well it's something I discovered with a new spell I've been working on."

"The spell you presented at the University yesterday, I presume? 'Twas a truly fascinating enchantment, we felt fortunate indeed to see your demonstration."

"You were in the audience?"

"Indeed. Duty forces my sister and We to act the statesmares and keep Equestria running. Our sister took to it as a swan to water, but we always felt more at home pondering the higher mysteries of our world. We don't get much time for such things, but always endeavour to keep ourselves up to date with the more exciting developments in academia."

Twilight stared, mouth agape, at Luna, who returned the look with her unbroken stoicism. Twilight had no idea Luna shared her interests so much. Then again, she'd never really checked. She knew so little about the lunar princess, and felt no small measure of guilt about it.

"Well, we shall take no more of thy time Twilight Sparkle, we hope our sister is able to aid you further in your studies," she gave Twilight a small, polite nod before starting down the hallway.

"Princess Luna!" Twilight called out after a moment's hesitation, "Would you like to take a look at the spell yourself? I mean if you don't mind?"

And, for the first time since her first day back in Ponyville, Twilight saw Luna smile.

The moon princess' chambers were surprising in how similar they were to Celestia's. Twilight felt somewhat silly, but she couldn't help expecting something much more 'nocturnal'. There were differences, of course. The colour scheme was a little darker and Luna was clearly a much bigger fan of incense than her sister, given how misty the room was.

But, by and large, it was the same in many more ways than it was distinct.

The princess had ushered Twilight to a couple of cushions and was preparing the two of them some tea. Twilight wondered for a second, watching Luna mirror the way her sister brewed it, just how significant the sharing of tea had been a thousand years ago. She guessed quite a lot more than it was now.

"So, you say you have discovered something with your new spell?" Luna prompted, not looking up from the tea preparation.

"Oh! Yes, well I-"

"Allow us to guess," the princess interjected, "The first thing you did was take your spell and use cast it upon something no one else could analyse?"

Twilight burned red. Though she knew there was no need to feel embarrassed, her lack of familiarity with Luna made this seem much more like an exam to pass than a discussion. However, when Luna looked up Twilight was surprised to see a decidedly teasing smirk on her face.

"You are much like ourself, Twilight Sparkle. We were also never one for treading the road more travelled," she laughed, pouring Twilight a cup of tea, "Though if you have indeed discovered something totally new, we fail to see how We or our sister could be of much help."

"To be honest, I was more interested in getting the princess' opinion on how I've adapted it."

"Hmm, 'tis bold to begin changing your spell before you have even published your initial research Twilight Sparkle. Save yourself something for the follow up paper at least."

"Oh there'll be time for all that," Twilight replied with a wave of her hoof. She turned on her cushion and fetched a scroll from her saddlebags, "Until this happened, I hadn't realised one glaring flaw in my work."

She spread the parchment out on the table, and both mares levitated their cups out of the way absentmindedly. Luna peered at Twilight's calculations. She had a rather austere look. Though Twilight expected she was appraising the work no less critically than Celestia would, she hadn't mastered the art of hiding it as well as her sister.

The sun princess would be critiquing you as she disarmed you with naught more than a smile. Luna, on the other hand, was much more blunt. It was quite refreshing, in a sense. This way, Twilight knew unequivocally where she stood.

"Astral projection?" Luna asked, her voice betraying nothing of what she thought of this.

"Of a sort, yes," Twilight began, "My spell can make conclusions from existing literature, very effectively. But it can only do a one-to-one comparison. Though its pool of knowledge is considerable, greater than any living scholar, it cannot intuit. And if it lacks the words to say what it has found, then we're stuck."

"Go on," Luna prompted after a curt sip of her tea. Her manner was not unkind, and not simpering with praise. As with her gaze before, it was simply honest.

"So, when the spell starts to exhaust its capability but you still are unable to reliably analyse a material, what to do?" Twilight posited, then pointed to the crucial part of her work, "You put yourself there. Instead of magically analysing the picture in your eye, you put yourself in that picture and allow yourself to examine your subject. To intuit as the spell cannot."

"No you don't." Luna said simply, bringing Twilight's pitch to an abrupt close.

That was decidedly different to Celestia.

"...I'm sorry princess I don't think I understand,"

"Twilight, what is it you found with your spell that prompted you to formulate this?" the princess asked patiently.

"Well... is that relevant?" Twilight asked, and Luna’s manner seemed to soften ever so slightly.

"In your lecture, you brought up the idea of analysing geological phenomena, but we can see mountains and plateaus already. You mentioned bacteria, but these can be seen with the microscopes developed in Our absence. Projecting yourself closer is hardly going to help here, is it?"

"Well, I think that-"

"The burden is on you to convince Us that your spell is worthwhile. The way We see it, you have found something that the spell can pick up, but you cannot see. It superseded your ability to pick out information in your vision, are We correct?"

"Yes," Twilight breathed, dumbstruck.

"So, We ask you again. What were you looking at that prompted you to develop this further?"

"I..." she hesitated, feeling as if she were admitting something terrible.

She recalled conversations with Celestia as a foal. Cheeks puffed, face red, furious with herself for not knowing the right answer. She recalled the princess’s praise, ever so measured, always tempting her to find more.

She remembered a night under the night sky, fumbling over a starmap, struggling for a reply.

But when Twilight looked at Luna, she saw nothing mixed in with that calm, collected defence. The baiting of breath after a stunning intellectual lunge in their incorporeal fencing match.

Twilight. steeled herself.

This was a conversation between scholars. Nothing more.

"I was looking at the heavens, princess."

"...That’s what I feared." Luna muttered, and the room felt like it had dropped several degrees. Luna’s expression had been abandoned in favour of one so utterly, incomprehensibly tired, that Twilight suddenly became acutely, intimately aware of how old the being sat across from her was.

It made her deeply uncomfortable.

That had not been the result Twilight had been hoping for.

"The heavens. There is a new observatory in the University," she pressed on, forcing herself to sound normal in the hope the conversation could return to it’s comparatively simple, if intellectually slightly perilous, previous tone, "The study of your heavens is fledgling at best, princess, I thought that this may provide some much needed illumination."

"They are not my heavens, Twilight," Luna said with a despondent shake of her head. Twilight couldn't help but notice the sudden dropping of her royal 'we', "Your spell works on sight, yes? So what were you looking at? Specifically."

"I don't know princess. You were right, the spell saw something I couldn't. I just saw a normal part of the void."

"Hmm," Luna replied, relaxing very slightly at this news. She took a long sip of her tea, eyes off to the side in thought. After a few seconds one ear flicked, as something demonstrably occurred to her.

"Your spell, it produced words about your findings, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Twilight admitted, feeling her stomach start to turn.

"So what did it say about this 'normal part of the void'."

"Nothing... at first." Twilight replied, cringing.

"At first?" Luna asked, eyes narrowed. Twilight relented with a sigh, feeling like her research was about to reach a swift, unjust conclusion. Her horn lit up, and she pulled out the parchment from the night in the observatory and passed it to Luna. The princess stared at it, not visibly reacting for quite a while.

"Twilight, I must ask you not to pursue this," Luna finally announced, and though Twilight had been expecting it, her shoulders still slumped.

"Why?" she asked, and cursed her voice for coming out more as a whine. A childish, petulant, spoiled sound, reminiscent of nights in the fields outside Canterlot, with a child-sized telescope, of frustration at a sun princess’s endless, interminable stoicism. It was unbecoming of a scholar of her stature and she hated how naturally it came to her.

"I believe you may be about to put yourself in harm's way,” Luna explained.

"I have already looked at this... whatever it is, Princess. It clearly cannot hurt me by looking at it again."

"I am not talking about staring into space and casting your spells Twilight. I am talking about this!" Luna retorted, gesturing to the formulation of Twilight's new spell. The one that could allow her to see whatever this mystery was. The one that could allow her to see what was hiding between spaces.

She couldn't let it go.

"I would simulate myself within an image in my mind! That can hardly be dangerous" she exclaimed.

"Do you think me a fool Twilight Sparkle?" Luna suddenly snapped, and Twilight immediately bit her tongue, "You think I cannot see this obvious teleportation equation here? You think I cannot see the mind-dissociation spells at play? I told you before, this is astral projection, not simulation!"

"Of a sort, yes," Twilight insisted, but she knew she’d been found out, and was unsurprised to find herself provoking Luna's ire once again.

"No, not ‘of a sort’. You can try to dance around the issue as much as you want. You aren't simulating anything. You are directly transporting your consciousness to whatever this object is! That is astral projection, plain and simple. I will admit it's genius, to meld teleportation with the art of leaving one's body. The mass reduction alone-”

“Precisely!” Twilight interjected, “I reduce the mass of the teleportation payload by a factor of trillions, instead of transporting my body, I transport my mind. I could reach what I’ve found with-”

“I will admit it’s genius,” Luna repeated, cutting Twilight off, “But, to throw your mind out...there? What happens when you're up there? What if you find something you didn't expect?"

"It’s harmless!" Twilight bit back. It was so unlike her to get like this, with a princess no less. But she had to make Luna understand, she had to see what she’d found.

"If I find something I somehow cannot deal with, then I end the spell and return to my body instantly! Your aetherial essence can’t be hurt, can it?” she continued, “It’s made of the same stuff as light, for goodness sake. What could hurt light? They're your heavens, I would have thought you would have wanted to know more about them!"

"THEY ARE NOT MY HEAVENS!" Luna shouted harshly, and Twilight fell back in shock. However, when the princess opened the eyes she'd scrunched up in rage, and saw Twilight cowering in shock, she immediately softened.

"Twilight Sparkle... I apologise, I shouldn't get angry. Least of all at you." She reached a hoof out, which Twilight grabbed and pulled herself back onto her cushion.

"Princess Luna, what do you mean they aren't your heavens?" she asked, eager to steer the conversation back to more academic, less impassioned waters.

"What is my domain, Twilight? What am I the princess of" Luna asked, weariness evident in her voice, as if the term itself was bitter.

"You are the princess of the night?" Twilight offered.

"Not technically. I don't correct ponies when they call me the Night Princess, since it's not especially incorrect, but it's an overextension," she explained, and Twilight could tell it was a speech she was tired of giving, " I am the princess of the moon, Twilight, the night is just part and parcel of that."

"But..." Twilight began, and realised with horror that she had no idea how to broach the topic she aimed to bring up.

"Yes, the nightmare would talk about her beautiful night,” Luna replied, making Twilight realise she couldn’t have been the first to offer that rebuttal, “And she did have a small point. I do control how the night sky looks. But it’s all about painting with magic. I can control how many stars one can see when you look up, but that doesn’t change whether the stars are there or not. The stars themselves are way out of my control, Twilight." Luna explained, and it suddenly made a lot more sense.

"But then, why wouldn't you want to know more about what's out there? If the stars are something you can’t control, don’t you want to find out more about them?" Twilight asked feebly, genuinely not being able to understand someone so evidently intelligent not wanting to pursue new knowledge as far as she could.

"Remember with whom you speak," she replied with a bitter chuckle, "There is not one pony living or dead who has ever been closer to the heavens than I, and the time I spent there spanned generations. I know well enough."

"Are you saying you might know what I found?" Twilight asked, unable to fight back the spark of excitement that blossomed in spite of the morose subject matter.

"Twilight Sparkle, if you believe nothing else I tell you then believe this. I have absolutely no idea what you found out in the void, but I would wager it is utterly beyond the limits of our imagination... or our nightmares. When I was up on the moon, Twilight, I at first wanted to busy myself with stargazing. I used to love doing it when I was on Equestria, and now I was closer than ever! It was the single, sole silver lining I could see in my exile."

"What was it like?" Twilight breathed. She had always loved stargazing herself.

"Unimaginable," Luna replied, awe persistent beneath the bitterness and unease, "Up there, where there are no lights from the city, no atmosphere to distort the images, you see it all as it was meant to be seen. The whole of the heavens, the greatest masterwork of creation spread out before me. I am not ashamed to say I wept."

"So..." Twilight began, nervous at the prospect of vocalising her thoughts, "Don't you want to know more about it all? This could help?"

"I busied myself with stargazing for years, Twilight" Luna carried on, unburdened by Twilight's question, "And can you guess what happened?"

"No."

"Nothing. I would sit on the moon and gaze at the sun, at Equus itself. Even a being like myself was stunned by their sheer size and power. I calculated the speed once that I was moving at. To think, my subtle magics down on Equus could throw around a sphere like this at speeds such as that. It made me feel more like a god than I ever had before. And you know, Twilight, the funny thing is… I don't feel at all like a god anymore."

"Oh princess Luna-"

"I need no consolation Twilight Sparkle, though your intention is appreciated," Luna immediately cut Twilight off, and the unicorn saw it was true. This was not the tone of a mare deep in defeatist insecurity. She was making mere statements of cold fact.

"I looked up at those heavens for a thousand years, Twilight, and not one thing about them changed. Points of light didn't move once. In a millennia. The life-forces of millions of good-hearted ponies were created and extinguished and heavens didn't even blink once.

“Celestia and I have existed for countless ages and we will exist for countless more. And when the time finally comes for us to return to the firmament, as it surely will, then I might see those heavens have moved as much as the breadth of an eyelash, if I am lucky. Ponies look to myself and my sister as paragons of constancy, and 'tis a poor joke. Celestia and I are nothing, and nothings that haven't had the decency to admit we are nothing."

"But... if you are... and we..." Twilight stuttered. If the ageless, immortal princesses were so easily dismissed as nothing at all, the thought couldn’t be escaped…

What did that make Twilight?

"I know the feelings you are having, Twilight." Luna said, "But please don’t think on it. ‘Tis all you who are vibrant, full of life, burning with urgency and importance. Celestia and I are the exact same as you all, only we arrogantly distance ourselves with our feeble, borrowed eternity, made of naught but paper and twine. We are all fleeting, it’s only our subjects who have had the decency to admit it.”

“I… but… I just… I don’t understand,” Twilight said, cursing the whine that had come back into her voice, “Doesn’t all that just make you want to study it more?”

“When I was up on the moon, staring out for years, I started to have nightmares,” Luna replied, “I am the undisputed master of the dream realm, Twilight Sparkle. I do not have nightmares very often. I fell into sullen hatred, betrayed the one I love more than anything. I lived the torture of seeing through the nightmare's eyes as it laid waste to all I love and hold dear, and yet the dream realm didn't turn against me once. But up there… I dreamt of things that terrified me."

"What did you dream of?" Asked Twilight, her voice barely above a whisper.

"It's like before, Twilight. I dreamt of nothing. Countless millions of miles of nothing. I dreamt of every life on Equus below, our little planet and sun and moon merely a speck, caught in the lazy beams of light from suns that dwarf that of my sister. Something up there made me scared to go to sleep, Twilight."

"You think... there's something out there?"

"Hahaha!" Luna startled Twilight with her sudden peals of laughter, "Gods no. I would have slept happily if I'd known there was something tangible in that void, Twilight. The thought there was a mind to be met, a challenge to be faced, no matter how horrifying, could have only been a comfort. When I say 'something up there' Twilight, I don't refer to one thing, I more refer to a concept. The whole symphony of it, not one instrument.

“What gave me nightmares was my own realisation that everything out there is, and will always be, utterly beyond the realms of our understanding and comprehension. It was the specific knowledge that I wouldn't be able to overcome anything out there, because to it I was nothing more than an amoeba in the face of god. A real god.

"But, eventually, I realised something, and I stopped having nightmares soon after. The heavens are a cold, uncaring place, Twilight. But Equus isn't. All of us, from myself to a mayfly, are all nothing in the face of the eternal void. We die and nothing save for the others specks on our speck will notice. And in no time at all, barely even a millionth of one single blink for the void, our speck will die outright.

“Down here, though, we are important to one another, and that is the most beautiful thing there is. To live and love and have one another in this incomprehensibly massive oblivion is real magic. I have to ask, Twilight…is that not good enough for you?"

"Luna," Twilight began, and jumped a little when she realised she'd dropped the title. She'd never even done that with Celestia. The princess didn't mind however, and gestured for her to continue, "I’m sorry… I just… I don't agree with you."

It might have been the first time in her whole life, she’d ever been able to tell an alicorn that she thought they were wrong.

"I know you don't Twilight," Luna said with a gentle smile, "I wouldn't expect your resolve to be shaken by one single conversation. To think otherwise would be no less than a slight against you."

"The void is massive, this we know. But we don't know what's out there and we never will unless we try,” Twilight said, because she really, truly believed it.

"And I'm sure you and your peers will, Twilight. I am certain that you will uncover things in creation more astounding than a frightened old mare like me could ever dream of. Your mind is strong, but it is young. This is a good thing, you burn with the kind of passion and ambition that drags our species forward. But I have lived thousands of your lifespan. To be up there nearly broke my mind in two.

Throwing your mind into that void, after this discovery that can only be described by terms like 'corpse' and 'no escape' is folly. I implore you not to do it, Twilight. Not as a sovereign, but as your friend. I fear what you might find. I fear how many pieces you may come back in... I fear you may not come back at all."

"But if no one tries, we'll never know. It's just astral projection, it's harmless" Twilight urged frustratedly. She just had to make Luna understand.

"It is harmless here, but up there? You're not copying your mind, you are throwing it out there into the void. I remain resolute that there is nothing out there of malice Twilight. But there's nothing out there of good, either. Such untapped, hellish majesty as I fear is in the void, it would kill you for no reason at all, with no thought or choice because it's not life. Such primaeval constructs that would send us insane the second we laid eyes on them for their utter contravention of all we know. Do not pretend you think you would be safe simply because it's not your physical form out there Twilight Sparkle. I know you are more intelligent than that."

"What if what I find revolutionises our world? What if it can help everyone?" Twilight pleaded.

What if I never know what it is? How am I supposed to just live with that? I have to know, she didn’t say.

"I would be relieved to find this was the case, Twilight. More likely though, I worry what you would find would reveal to you all the secrets you seek. And if that happened, then I pray for your own sake that whatever you found killed you."

The train chugged along, its rhythms threatening to lull Twilight into a slumber. She peered out of the window, trying to see into the gloom to make out the passing fields and forests and hamlets. But with the light on in the carriage, aside from the bright, full moon, all she could see was her own reflection, staring pensively back at her.

She had gotten the last train home, in the end. That time that she originally didn’t want to spend in the library became some very necessary decompression, and by the time she was done there was only one train left headed to Ponyville. She could see from the moon that it was way past midnight now.

Maybe Celestia was out of that meeting by now.

Luna had offered Twilight more tea, and she had accepted, but the tone had taken a dramatic downturn after that. It’s difficult to have someone tell you that they think your death could be a favourable outcome to any situation and not have it sully the mood at least somewhat.

But as Twilight had stood to leave, once the veneer of personable, academic chat had run its course, Luna had pulled Twilight back, just for a second.

“I know that you still intend to go through with this Twilight. As I said, I wouldn’t expect a single conversation to sway you. But please, at least wait until both myself and my sister can talk to you. Grant an old mare that much.”

Twilight had smiled, and nodded, and of course agreed to Luna’s request. That was just what she did, wasn’t it? The right thing.

The one night recently she’d done the wrong thing, when she was in the observatory with Rarity, when she kept her spell going, no matter how much it was terrifying her friend… that could have ended up being the seed of the greatest discovery of her life.

Something truly new up there.

How often did one come across something like that?

The shrill whistle of the train’s brakes began to ring out, and Twilight could feel them slowing down.

“We just need to come to a stop to let a passing train through. Please everyone sit back and relax, we should be up and running again in a few minutes,” called out the conductor’s voice over the tannoy system.

Twilight sighed. It was already late, after all. Any additional time to her journey was far from welcome.

She hadn’t said the right things… that had been the issue.

When arguing one’s point, especially in an academic setting, one shouldn’t back down in the face of a more exuberant opponent. And that is precisely what Twilight had done. Because she understood Luna’s trepidation, she couldn’t imagine what one thousand years on the moon would do to someone.

And yet…

It wasn’t so easy for Twilight to roll over and accept the cosmos as something to fear. She had to know… she’d always have to know. It was in her blood, a part of her as much as her horn was. She thought back to the other time she hadn’t done the right thing. To a night in a field, so long ago, finally snapping, finally demanding answers instead of allowing herself to be gently led and guided to them.

It had taught her one of her most valuable lessons.

Every time she listened to herself, and pushed for knowledge, she found something remarkable.

And Luna wanted her to give that up.

She looked at the parchment from her and Rarity’s night in the observatory once again, and picked out the different words.

‘Corpse’, ‘Cadaver’, ‘Remains’, ‘Eternity’, ‘No escape’, ‘Impossible’, ‘Death’.

She knew how it sounded. God knows she did, but…

She had promised Luna that she’d wait. Not even that she wouldn’t do it, just that she’d wait until the two sisters had a chance to speak to her at the same time.

And yet…

She looked out of the window, still being unable to see anything in the unbroken blackness, save for her own reflection staring back at her.

But that was the thing, she was looking at so many things right now. Twilight cast her spell, and linked it to the condensation on the windows. At once, words like ‘Trees’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Grass’, ‘Pastures’ began to be written on the window. All the things she was looking at, without really seeing.

Without allowing herself the time to think, Twilight cast the new part of her spell.

In an instant, she was somewhere else.

She could still feel the fabric of the train seat on her body, still feel herself breathing. But she wasn’t in her body, all the same. Twilight’s incorporeal form was out in the wilderness, unaffected by the rain that blew in strong winds all around her. Because of course she wasn’t affected, how could she be? Her body was safe in the train, but her mind?

She had been thrown into the middle of the hamlet. A turn revealed the train was miles away, across a flat expanse of fields. In an instant, she could see everything that the black mirror of her window had obscured from her. The houses were right in front of her face, she could look down and count the individual blades of grass in the nearby fields, every single leaf on the nearby trees.

With a thought, she broke the spell and allowed herself to return to the carriage. She came to, awaking in her physical body like the breaking of a trance. Back in the bright lights and sheltered cover of the train carriage. Far from the hamlet, miles away.

Twilight chewed her lip nervously, looking back to the parchment again. She’d made a promise to Luna…

She looked down the carriage, confirming that there was no one else in there but her. And then she leapt up onto the seat and huddled near the window, covering her muzzle with her forehooves in an attempt to reduce the glare and see what was out there.

It worked well enough, and Twilight was able to see the night sky. And like she so often did, Twilight found herself looking into the spaces between stars.

“Okay everyone, the train has passed and we’re about to start moving again.”

The train juddered into life and Twilight found her standing position had become too precarious. So she sat back down in her seat, and continued to stare at the window the rest of the ride home.

Interlude: The Poor Mare’s Canvas

“Okay, Twilight. It’s just like we practised last time, okay?”

The filly nodded, and began to note down the positions, and shapes of all the constellations that could be seen in the sky. She couldn’t believe the amount, even after they’d practised doing this last week.

“There’s so many of them, Princess.”

“Don’t be intimidated, my faithful student. Just keep noting them down.”

“There must be fifteen, maybe even twenty!” Twilight cried out in awe as she wrote their positions down in her starmap, “And they’re all made up of stars! What’s that… maybe even sixty or seventy stars!”

She looked at her teacher for approval, only to find Celestia was staring into the sky.

“Goodness me, seventy stars in the whole night sky?” Celestia muttered, sounding almost like seventy stars wasn’t a lot! Twilight thought it was a massive amount! “I’ve never been very good at this.”

“Princess…?” Twilight asked, confused at her teacher’s oddly pensive demeanour. However it didn’t last, she was quick to turn to Twilight and favour her with one of her patient, maternal smiles.

“Keep going Twilight, until you’ve written them all down,” she replied calmly, kindly.

“There’s so many of them, Princess.”

“Don’t be intimidated, my faithful student. Just keep noting them down.”

Twilight kept making marks until, after what felt like hours, though was probably only about thirty minutes, the filly called out to her teacher.

“Princess Celestia, I’m done!” she exclaimed, beaming proudly.

“Are you sure that’s all of them, Twilight?”

“Yes! I can’t see anymore!”

“And does that mean there’s no more to be seen?”

And the filly found she didn’t have an answer.
“I… uh… well, I’ve never seen any other stars than this in my whole life, princess, so I’d say that there aren’t anymore to be seen.” Twilight concluded, only for Celestia to cock her head and sigh.

“No I can’t imagine you ever would have seen more stars than this…” she said, with a weariness Twilight had never heard from her.

“Are…are you okay princess?” Twilight asked, surprising herself. She’d never asked the princess a question like that before.

“I’m fine Twilight. Let’s go back to the question, does the fact you’ve never seen any more stars than this, mean there are definitely no more to be seen?”

“Well… I guess I can’t be certain…?” she said, feeling like she had a bit of a headache.

“Very good Twilight! Very good!” the princess said, sitting down next to Twilight and placing a wing around the little foal. It was a gesture Twilight loved, it was always so warm and comfortable.

“It’s important for us to realise that we have to sometimes accept some uncertainty in our knowledge. There are always limits to what we can know, and we’ll cover this more when we get onto epistemology, but tonight, I wanted you to experience some doubt in your conclusions. It’s not a bad thing to examine why we feel we know the things we do.”

Twilight nodded along, doing her best to listen to the princess’s words. But she couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that was coursing through her, now that the princess had posed the question?

Were there more stars?

“Princess?” Twilight chirped up when she had the chance, “Are there more stars? Other than the ones we can see tonight?”

“It’s… the lesson isn’t so much about stars, Twilight. It’s about making sure we are constantly questioning the conclusions we get to,” the princess explained, but Twilight didn’t find it satisfactory.

“But… I understand, princess. But now I’ve learned my lesson, can you tell me whether there’s more stars, I’d really like to know!” Twilight said, trying to sound friendly to mask her growing frustration.

Celestia gave her a slightly inscrutable look.

“I think we should go in now, Twilight-”

“I just want to know, princess! Can you please just tell me this time?!” Twilight whined.

“Twilight!” the princess lightly chided, “Mind your manners-”

“I do my lessons and my homework and always do it on time!” Twilight interjected, switching to that childish bargaining mindset, as if being good bought her points to trade, “But you brought up the stars and told me there might be more and now I can’t stop wondering! Please please please can you just tell me the answer?”

Celestia stared down at the foal, at her straining expression and the frustration wracking her tiny little body.

Surely it couldn’t hurt to just tell her this time?

Surely this one time, it would be alright to just tell her the correct answer, and not leave her wondering?

“Yes, Twilight… there are more stars than this. They’re hiding in the black areas of the sky. You can’t see them, but there’s amazing things in there,” Celestia thought for a moment, before lightly chuckling, “That’s another good lesson actually. Always look in the dark areas, the places between the pretty, eye-catching things.”

“How do you know, Princess, about the other stars?”

Celestia looked at her student for a moment, then back up at the sky.

“Someone showed them to me. The pony who taught me how to paint the night sky. I’ve never been as good as they were, though.”

“A pony who taught you?!” Twilight exclaimed, “ But you’re the cleverest pony in the world!”

“I’m not nearly the cleverest pony in the world, little one,” Celestia laughed sadly, and looked back down at her student. She was unrecognisable from how she’d been before. The nervous, sweating little ball of frustration had given way back to the bright, friendly foal Celestia taught everyday.

And for just a moment, that knowledge, that witnessing of how Twilight got when she couldn’t get that definitive answer, made Celestia look at her student differently. Made her ever so slightly concerned.

But the thought was interrupted by Twilight speaking up again.

“Have you seen the stars, princess? The other ones? What are they like?”

“They’re beautiful, my student. Truly beyond words. I very much hope you’ll be able to see them one day.”

Twilight

The observatory was quiet, which wasn’t surprising to Twilight. She checked the console and found the telescope hadn’t even been touched since she’d been in here with Rarity a few days ago.

Fledgling science indeed, but maybe, just maybe, she could change that tonight.

Twilight flicked the lights on, and then, with a twist of telekinesis, she locked the door of the observatory behind her.

She had meant her promise to Luna, she really, really had… at the time.

But when it came down to it, she could sooner stop her heart from beating that stifle that drive in her to know.

Princess Celestia had told Twilight, not so long back, to give up with supposedly pointless research pertaining to the night sky. And because Twilight refused to, because of that need within her to just know, now the princess had her sister back.

Of course, Twilight knew that misdirection and subterfuge was very much Celestia’s angle. Said rescued sister was altogether more blunt. There was no hidden meaning in her warnings, no task to be completed in her explicit plea for Twilight to not do the thing she was planning.

But it wasn’t that easy, was it?

Twilight huffed, before sitting down at the console.

“I’ll take a look,” she said to herself, while simultaneously wondering who exactly this charade was even for, “I’ll just take a look before I decide to do anything.”

She flicked the necessary switches, and the enormous telescope began to whirr into life. The heavy metal lens cover slid away from the glass, freeing up the behemoth's great, staring eye. The roof itself parted to open, allowing a full view of the night sky. And, in the absence of any new input, the gears read the coordinates, and rotated machinery around enough axes to move the telescope into the same position it had been a few nights ago.

The position where it all started.

As the ceiling fully gave way, Twilight caught a glimpse of the moon. The pattern of craters that formed a mare’s face had disappeared now, of course. In her youth, Twilight had often wondered what the mare of the moon was like.

She didn’t have to wonder anymore, all because she’d stuck to her guns.

And Twilight knew precisely what the mare on the moon would think of what she was doing right now.

With a steadying breath, Twilight linked her spell with a fresh quill and parchment, as was becoming habit, and looked into the viewfinder.

She would have liked to have said there was something she could see in the blackness, but it would be nonsense. This was truly a blank area of the night sky, Absolutely nothing in the unbroken, obsidian expanse of the aether. But whatever was hiding there, she was looking at it right now.

She had to be.

Because the quill had started writing.

But Twilight paid more mind to trying to see with her own eyes what was hiding in the blackness. Maybe if she could actually make it out, there wouldn’t be any need to astral project. Maybe she find her answers and could keep her promise to Luna all at the same time…

But she knew it was folly.

She stared and stared and stared. She flicked the lenses to their maximum magnification, milking all the power and focus and strength out of the enormous, clockwork beast. And yet every single time, there was absolutely nothing to see.

Just inky darkness, a totally empty area of the sky.

A void.

Twilight sighed, and moved her head away from the eyepiece. Her quill had written many things, none of which were particularly surprising. ‘Corpse’, ‘Remains’, ‘Infinity’, ‘No escape’, ‘Impossible’, ‘Cadaver’.

While once these had, admittedly, unsettled even Twilight to a degree, she now looked at them with the same feelings she’d get from looking at a particularly hazardous chemical she needed to use in an experiment.

With trepidation, granted, but without serious fear. There was no room for fear in all this. Twilight was a scientist, she was where was in life because of her mind, and it’s insatiable hunger to put to bed the mysteries of this world. There was almost a sadness to the knowledge that was becoming increasingly inescapable.

Because no matter who was right about those words on the page, whether it was as she said, that they were simply an imperfect system attempting to describe exoctic, unfamiliar phenomena with the only words it had. Or whether it was really dangerous, like Luna and Rarity thought.

Whatever the truth was, the one truth she knew was that she couldn’t keep her promise to Luna. It was simply beyond her, it just wasn’t in her nature to let it lie without knowing.

She fiddled with some knobs, wrote a few needless lines of text with her quill. Everything to look like she wasn’t going to do the thing she knew she was. As if she could take the universe by surprise somehow.

Twilight looked at her parchment.

Twilight looked at the gears in the walls.

Twilight looked at the control module.

And then, Twilight looked into the eyepiece, at her invisible, dark object in the cosmos. And with barely a thought, without giving herself the time to doubt herself, Twilight’s horn lit, and her body went limp as her mind was thrown out into the heavens.

The first thing Twilight noticed was that she was small.

The jaws of the infinite black of the cosmos encased her and she had never once, not in her entire life, felt as utterly miniscule as she had in that moment.

And though she didn’t want to admit it, as she hung there, suspended like a speck of dust, Twilight felt almost relieved that there truly was nothing to see.

Out here, Luna had been right about one thing. It was absolutely terrifying. Even knowing that there was nothing that could happen to her, even knowing that her body was safe and sound in that observatory building. Even still being able to feel the chair she was sat in, pressing into her flank.

Even with all that, she still had never felt quite as vulnerable as she had, right at this moment.

But, as she had feared, as maybe a part of her had hoped, there was nothing. Just endless black expanses, peppered by endless twinkling stars, with paint strokes of colour from galaxies and nebulae.

The void itself was home to such staggering beauty, she could see why Luna found comfort in it. What horrified Twilight though, was getting a scale of how truly far away everything was. Those galaxies she could see would have taken an eternity to get. She imagined how it would have been had she had tried to teleport her body. Without the effectively infinite range given by the near non-existent mass of her astrally projected essence, she would have had to teleport what… a million times? A billion times? A million trillion billion times?

All were likely gross underestimations. The scale quite simply couldn’t exist in anyone's mind.

Twilight decided to try not to dwell on it. The important thing was that she didn’t have to have any regrets now. She didn’t have to spend her life wondering what she might have missed. The spell was defective, that was all. There was nothing out here, save for the void, and the stars it held.

And then, Twilight turned around.

Were it not for the stars, or lack thereof, Twilight might have missed it. Because without those stars, there would be no way to see something black against the backdrop of infinite obsidian she was dangling in.

But the light from the stars seemed to dance and warp around it, lensing to create a horrifying halo of distorted, unnatural lights. It was like it was ripping a hole in reality itself. It was like reality rejected it. A perfectly unblemished, terrifyingly uniform black circle, or was it a sphere?

Twilight couldn’t tell, it was impossible to tell.

It was a void in the void, an area of pitch blackness that made the void itself seem bright. Twilight felt her body vomit all over herself and the mere sight of it. It wasn’t meant to be seen. It was never ever meant to be seen. It was disgusting and obscene and unnatural.

Luna had been right.

And worse, worse than anything, was that it was moving towards her.

And it was all Twilight could do to try to stop herself panicking. She tried to remind herself that there was nothing sinister here, there was no malice, it was simple the cold, uncaring, unliving nature of the void.

And then Twilight panicked more, because Luna had been right. It wasn’t life. It wasn’t joy or hate or evil or good. It was nothing, it was a cold, unsmiling, unsneering, unfeeling monstrosity.

Luna had been right.

And Twilight could hear it. And she knew there was no air for there to be soundwaves in the void, she knew her ears were back with her body.

But Twilight also knew things were different when you astrally projected. You could sense things on another level. Twilight thought the keening, celestia moans of decaying sound was the noise of the cosmos itself being killed by this sickening abomination. Surely nothing could live after seeing this.

And it was still drifting closer, and closer, and closer.

By god, how fast was it?

Twilight tried to make her mind settle so she could cast the spell to bring her back down to her body, but the panic was stopping her from concentrating. All she wanted to do was go home but the more she wanted that the more she panicked and the more her magic would drift away from her and it was still coming.

She kept thinking any moment now it would engulf her, because soon even the lens of light disappeared from view and all she could see was black, and then it still came.

It was the biggest thing she’d ever seen. It was bigger than there could be descriptions for, it was bigger than her mind would allow her to even try to conceptualise. It filled her vision until it filled her vision again, tripling and quadrupling in size every second, growing exponentially. In every instant, the concept of scale was painfully redefined in her terrified, fraying mind.

The black sphere drew closer and Twilight panicked and she couldn’t cast the spell to bring her home and it kept getting closer and Luna was right and it was big so big it was the biggest thing Twilight had ever seen in her life and she could feel its unnatural pull and hear the universe screaming in pain around it as it was moving and always getting closer and ripping and tearing at the fabric of creation and it never stopped growing and Luna was right and it was never meant to be seen and Luna was right and Twilight couldn’t focus or make her magic work and Luna was right.

Luna was right.

In an instant, all feeling from her body disappeared.

She turned around to see that now everything around her was black. The void and all it’s stars was just in a small circle behind her, that was getting smaller and smaller.

Luna was right.

But Twilight could be right too. She was certain if this had happened to her body, whatever the enormous, unnatural monster had done, it would have killed her.

But she was safe, of course.

Because she wasn’t matter.

Twilight was magical energy and light suspended astrally. Nothing could hurt light. Nothing could trap light. All she had to do was concentrate. Forget her panic and…

Twilight cast the spell.

She still couldn’t feel her body.

She frantically looked around, and realised to her abject horror that she was still trapped in the blackness, the stars still in a small circle of light, getting smaller and smaller and smaller as her whole world became blackness.

She cast the spell again, and again, and again.

And still, she remained trapped in whatever she had found. Whatever the ‘Corpse’ was. Maybe that’s what it was? Maybe this is what was left when planets died? Maybe even when stars died?

But Twilight would never know, nor never have the chance to, because everytime she cast her spell, she found that nothing was changing, all except the circle of light shrinking at an even faster rate.

Twilight watched as her incorporeal body began to lengthen and lengthen, until her bottom half was nothing but a long, thin string. And then this began to happen to the rest of her as well.

The circle of light shrank until it faded from view entirely.

Twilight’s form was pulled thinner and thinner and thinner.

Luna had been right.

If Twilight had been able to, she would have screamed.

Epilogue: Some Greater Heaven

Celestia felt suspended in both space and time. It was as if everything had coalesced, crushed into a singularity from which there was no escape. The moment dragged, interminably, eternally, breath steadied and steadied and steadied and finally reached an absolute standstill. Motion ceased, time ceased.

Nothing moved.

And then, she snapped out of it.

“Princess!” called out the baroness, fixing Celestia with an haughty, arch stare, “Did you not hear what I asked? This filly controlled the elements, what would happen were the nightmare to return.”

“Twilight and Luna,” Celestia replied, leaving the noble babbling for a moment.

“I beg your-”

“Twilight and Luna, not filly and nightmare.”

Celestia was honestly shocked when the mare had the decency to at least look somewhat ashamed of herself.

“Uhm… Princess Celestia, if I may…” called out an old earth pony, stepping forward from the throng of braying nobles that were currently crowding Celestia’s throne room, “I think what Baroness Highrise was trying to say was-”

“I know exactly what she was trying to say, Duke Cloud Barrier,” Celestia interjected, her tone wasn’t precisely impolite, but it very much didn’t brook argument, either, “She is concerned about our nation’s safety, and I can understand why. My student was one of the elements after all, and until we find her, we obviously have a vulnerability.”

“However,” Celestia continued, speaking over the Duke and Baroness when they tried to talk again, “Until such a time as that happens, my sister, Luna, your sovereign by divine right, and I are more than capable of taking Twilight’s place, should the need occur.”

“But that’s preposterous-”

“I wielded the elements long before your line had even existed, let alone usurped power from your former lieges, Highrise, I think myself more knowledgeable than you on the subject.”

The crowd went deathly silent, shocked into merciful quiet by Celestia’s acidic tone. It was not a manner she found she had to affect very often these days. But looking over the fear in the eyes of all the braying jackals that had come, for the tenth day in a row, to crow self-interestly at her, she was reminded it had its uses.

It would do them all very well to remember who the princesses were in Equestria.

"Now, my Lords and Ladies, I am very weary, and will be retiring for the evening. Please direct any queries or concerns to the steward," and, pointedly ignoring their cried for clarification, for reassurance, for attention, Celestia left the hall.

The inner residences of the Palace were thankfully for staff only. In here, ponies knew the princess well. They knew her grief well. As such the guards and staff that she passed gave her nothing but plenty of space and respectful nods.

She was grateful for their discretion, their reassurance, though well meaning and kind, would have very unwelcome at present. Still, though she was happy for the wide berth she was being afforded. Celestia couldn't help but feel like the space of the halls was overwhelming.

Gods, was it always so big in here? It had never felt that way when she walked these halls with Twilight.

It felt like a void.

Celestia eventually found herself at the office of her head civil servant, Snowbird. She knocked once before opening the door, whereupon the mare inside looked up from her work and stared owlishly at Celestia.

Across Snowbird's desk was a stack of the daily papers. Celestia sometimes missed the days when politics didn't involve quite so much wrangling with the press. These days though, it was an integral part of the job, and so Celestia was able to get a very good look at all the days headlines.

Every picture of Twilight stuck a knife in her stomach, and every headline twisted said knives.

ELEMENT OF MAGIC STILL MISSING

SPARKLE FAMILY REFUSE TO SPEAK TO PRESS, DO THEY KNOW MORE THAN THEY'RE LETTING ON?

TWILIGHT SPARKLE STILL NOT SIGHTED AFTER NEARLY TWO WEEKS

ELEMENT OF GENEROSITY BREAKS DOWN AT PRESS CONFERENCE

It made Celestia absolutely sick.

"Princess!" the pegasus called out, hurriedly sweeping the papers out of sight with a practised motion of one of her wings, "How may I be of service? Do you need some sustenance made in the kitchen? How about some fresh bedsheets? I can have the castle staff help you with whatever you need!"

She was a faithful, fussy little thing, Celestia thought with a faint smile. Even though she'd been promoted over a year ago, she still had never quite gotten out of the mindset of being Celestia’s palace administrator.

"Snowbird, please, I'm sure you have more important things on your plate than babysitting me," Celestia replied, allowing herself a small laugh. Gods, that felt nice. She hadn't laughed even once in a good few days.

"Of course princess. So, how can I help?" Snowbird asked.

"I was hoping yourself and the steward could handle any business tonight. I was planning to retire, if possible."

"Absolutely, who has stewarding duty tonight?" Snowbird mused, already summoning a clipboard and looking through it, "Ah! It's Wild Lavender. He's one of the most experienced stewards we have, I'm sure he and I can handle anything that comes through!"

Celestia looked at the mare for a moment. She was beaming dutifully at her sovereign, proud of being able to handle anything that Celestia asked of her.

"Snowbird I… I'm sorry. I shouldn't be asking you things like this. You're head of the civil service, not a palace administrator anymore. I could have just asked my secretary to handle these things."

"What do you mean? I'm sorry if I did something wrong princess, I-" Snowbird babbled, worry overcoming her professional decorum. It broke Celestia's heart.

"No, you've not done anything wrong. You've never done anything wrong, Snowbird. I just shouldn't put so much on you, and I'm sorry."

"Princess, it's okay. It's really totally okay."

Pained, worried eyes stared at Celestia, magnified by milk bottle glasses. She had been a student of Celestia's growing up. She was a decade older than Twilight, still very young for a mare in her position, mind.

A decade older… she'd probably watched Twilight growing up in these halls. Like Celestia had.

It was more than she could bear.

"I… thank you, Snowbird, I'll take my leave."

The trip back to her chambers was mercifully quick, and featured no further conversations. She didn't need to tell the guards outside that she wasn't to be disturbed under any circumstances. The implication was more than sufficient, and to hammer it home, Celestia clicked the door's locks behind her.

The room was empty, all the curtains were drawn, but the princess still gave it a moment before walking over to the far wall.

She leant forward, touching her horn to the stones, before muttering an incantation under her breath.

The room was soundproofed, and no one on the outside would have been able to detect anything out of the ordinary was happening. And still, as the walls moved, groaning with the force and friction, Celestia cringed slightly.

When it was done, the princess lit her horn, and began to walk down the gloomy stone passageway that had been revealed.

The trip wasn't long. Not nearly long enough, that was for sure. It was one single hallway, curving ever so slightly. When Celestia reached the centre, she paused. The lights from her room had faded from view, and the lights from her destination hadn't appeared yet.

She snuffed her horn, and allowed herself to be plunged into darkness.

In the void she found herself suspended in. Celestia closed her eyes.

And then, she opened them again, and found there was absolutely no difference to what she saw. Far enough from her room, not close enough to the room she was headed to, it was nearly like Celestia had died.

Something about the darkness seemed to make time stand still. She felt like she could stand here for as long as she wanted, suspended in this one infinitesimal node of infinity, only to find that aeons had passed for the outside world when she decided to rejoin it.

There would almost be some comfort to this.

She kept her horn snuffed, hiding away in the infinite pitch dark. She wondered what Twilight was seeing…

Celestia didn't try to stop the sobs. Great ugly, heaving wails, everytime one left her, it felt like amputation, like vivisection, there was no comfort or catharsis. Each one was a marker of misery, and each passage brought nothing but the promise of more misery to come.

Celestia didn't know how long she cried there, it was hard to judge time frames when simply immersed in a void. A small instant could feel like an eternity.

But, as she always did, Celestia eventually composed herself, took a steadying breath, and continued down the tunnel.

At its end, there was a small, but luxurious, chamber. Luna greeted her at the other end, favouring her sister with a sympathetic smile, and a brief embrace.

Celestia tried to enjoy it, but found her attention constantly distracted by a patient, rhythmic beeping noise.

She sighed.

"How is she?"

"No change, I'm afraid," came the reply from her personal doctor, over in the centre of the room.

In this room were the only four ponies who knew of its existence. Herself, her sister, her doctor, and the royal guard's second in command, answerable only to Shining Armour himself.

Celestia would have dearly loved to have the stallion she'd named captain with them here.

But she couldn't.

She couldn't put him through that.

The fifth pony in the room didn't even know that this place existed, she couldn't. Perhaps she'd never be able to again.

Twilight was only visible by the flashes of mane or tail that escaped from under the sheet she was beneath. When Luna had found her, the unicorn's face had apparently been fixed in such a ghoulish mask of abject terror, frozen in a silent, ceaseless scream.

Celestia was glad she hadn't needed to see that. Luna was always made of stronger stuff, and repeatedly insisted that she was alright. And yet, with no one to watch the dreams of the mare who guarded the realm of the sleeping, Celestia wondered how her younger sister might ever find rest again.

"You don't tell anyone outside of this room, understand? And if my sister and I never explicitly rescind that order, then you take that to your grave."

"Yes Princess," both stallions replied dutifully. She'd told them that every single night now, but even so…

It made her feel better to repeat it.

"Sister," Luna muttered in her ear, "Should we not make our plans to tell her family and friends? We were lucky that no one found her before… before I did. But still, do we plan to just keep her in this room forever?"

"We'll tell them soon," Celestia replied, both taking her eyes off the covered form of her student, hooked up to all those machines and wires to make sure she was still breathing, still living.

And that was just the thing. She did still breathe, totally unaided. Her eyes still reacted to stimuli, her body still functioned. She clearly wasn't dead. But it was like, for lack of a better term, that her soul had been sucked from her body.

Twilight was here, and but Twilight was somewhere else entirely.

"We'll tell them soon, we just need to plan what we're going to tell them," Celestia replied blankly.

"Should… shouldn't we tell them the truth?" Luna asked, and Celestia turned to her.

"If this happened to me, would you want to know? And I mean really, Luna," Celestia pressed, preempting any response that hadn't been fully considered, "Do you think your life would be remotelyimproved by knowing the full, cold truth."

Luna opened her mouth, before faltering. She simply nodded, and turned to face the bed.

Celestia mirrored her sister, looking down at the sheet that covered the unicorn. Ever since she'd grown into an adult mare, Celestia had thought she was so big, nothing like that tiny, stressed out foal that had hatched a dragon.

But now, Twilight seemed more little than Celestia had ever realised.

The beeps continued to ring out, marking rhythmic time. Counting passed, wasted seconds. If Celestia looked closely enough, she thought she could make out the mask of agony and horror hiding just beneath the thin, white fabric.

"Couldn't you have stopped her?" Celestia whispered, and she knew it wasn't fair.

When Luna had told her what Twilight intended to do, she confessed herself much less concerned than Luna. It was as Twilight had said, astral projection is harmless. This shouldn't have happened.

Yet again, not paying enough consideration to Luna’s words had cost her someone she loved more than anything in this world.

Was the universe punishing her? Playing a joke on her? She did her best, for god's sake. What had she done to deserve this?

But, it was like Luna said. The universe cared not for the morality plays of little ponies. It didn't care what anyone or anything deserved. Time passed along dispassionately, with another bleeping heartbeat, heedless of the agony in the room.

"I'm sorry, my sister, I tried my best, I-"

"No, no I'm sorry Luna," Celestia replied, voice tearful and shaky, "You did what you could. Nothing short of locking Twilight away would have stopped her doing this, and even then, I wouldn't bank on it… this isn't your fault."

"It's not yours either, Celestia,"

Celestia changed the subject.

"Do you think… maybe she hasn't come back because she found something wonderful out there? Maybe she found heaven, a real heaven. We can't know, after all, maybe she could be happy out there?"

The princess turned to her younger sister, who did her best to keep the discomfort off her face. The expression told Celestia all she needed to hear, but still. There was something beautiful about being reassured by someone else.

You could just take refuge in their words, their conviction and sincerity, and ignore all that doubt in your own mind. You could allow them to let you think, just for a moment, what you dreamed of believing yourself.

"Yes, of course, Celestia… she could possibly be happy out there."

Luna's smile was somewhere between reassuring and grimacing, but Celestia decided not to dwell on it. Instead she forced herself to believe that, as the heart monitor's tone marked another passing instant of the eternity they found themselves in.