Twenty-Two Minutes of Air
It was fifty-eight paces from the bunker to the hole in the outer wall. Then, another seventy paces to cross the garden to the statue. Once there, Juniper only had forty-four paces to reach the Royal Library.
The paces had been measured over a dozen trips. Everything was calculated, every minute counted, each breath from the tiny air tank (their last one) strapped to her flank accounted. One hundred and seventy-two paces from the bunker to the library — one hundred seventy-two paces back. And only twenty-two minutes of air to accomplish this.
Juniper crossed the first fifty-eight paces in no time at all and vaulted through the hole in the outer castle wall. Rubble and long-dead brush crunched under her hooves as she dropped down.
The breath inside her oxygen mask was hot, and sweat was already pooling in the bottom of the seals. Her brilliant, blue eyes scoured the gloom, watching for any movement in the fog.
Nothing. She had gone unnoticed for the time, but had wasted precious seconds.
Keep it together she reminded herself, checking her heavy breathing to save her air. In and out, twenty-two minutes. Keeping low, she quickly, and as quietly as possible, darted across the garden to her next waypoint — the statue.
Along the way, she passed the barren husks of trees and flower beds, their limbs and branches reaching toward her like the forelegs of rotten skeletons. The dusty air rolled over her visor as she stealthily cut through the fog, the paces, her only map, counting down in her head. Sixty-four, sixty-three, sixty-two.
Visibility extended only a few paces in front of her, her vision perpetually clouded by the poison ash that waited to cut her down the moment she removed her mask. Twenty-eight, twenty-seven, twenty-six.
A thin halo of light overhead was the only indication of day, a remnant of an era that had passed. Thirteen, twelve, eleven.
She should have seen it by now. Juniper's heart ground to a halt as the last few paces counted down. Statue — six, five, four — where is the bloody statue? There were too many ponies counting on her. Retracing her steps would be almost impossible in such low visibility, and with their last portable air tank on her back — she couldn't let that happen.
Then, like a beacon in a storm, a visage of marble. Two...one. Juniper stopped beside the statue and allowed herself a few valuable seconds to calm her nerves.
Her head turned toward sculpture, an everpresent waypoint for every trip to the library. It was all too easy to get lost in the fog. In the beginning, they had lost three. Only Juniper had discovered the route to the library, and the secret to the journey. The statue was right where she had remembered it: a memory from when she was a foal.
Only a few years old at the time, it had been on a school field trip when Juniper first laid eyes on the statue. There were many spread throughout the luscious confines of the royal gardens, but it was this one that had captured her attention. While others towered overhead with plentiful intricacies of the sculptor to boast, this was a much more modest art piece. It was the form of a mare, no base or pedestal to lift her to grand heights, or name to signify its creator. A marble hoof extended outward, reaching for something unknown.
But what had enthralled Juniper at the time had been the eyes.
Here, the sculptor had shown their true skill, for they were full of life. Every line, every wrinkle, the perfectly smooth roundness — the eyes peered into her. Even after all the years, all the death and chaos that had followed shortly after that field trip, Juniper still received the same rush staring into them. Not just a strange rush, but a feeling of familiarity. As if her tie to the statue was more than just a marker to lead her to the library.
Juniper gave the statue her customary greeting, running her hoof along it as she followed the outstretched hoof. I'll be right back, she assured her stony friend and released the marble hoof, stepping out once more into the fog. Forty-four paces left.
"I have a good feeling about today," she allowed herself to hear. "That spell must be in there somewhere."
As she stepped through the remnants of a stained-glass window and into Canterlot Castle, Juniper glanced down to her watch.
Her visor was fogged with condensation, and jets of hot breath wafted over her vision. Eighteen minutes left. Four to get back to the bunker. Fourteen minutes to search for the spell. Fourteen minutes never seemed enough.
Juniper stepped across the corridor, scorched carpet swirling like grey snow beneath her hooves. She slinked past the doors to the main library, carefully watching for any movement inside among the ruined shelves and piles of rotting writings, yet seeing none. It was only when she reached the Starswirl Wing, did she allow herself a deep breath. She savored it.
Thirteen minutes. Juniper stepped into the Starswirl Wing.
Books.
Books upon books.
Books on shelves that stretched to the ceiling.
Books that lay in mountains of their fellow peers, each cover layered with the dust of the twenty-odd years since they had last moved. To find the one book she was looking for would take a pony a full day to locate without help. Today, Juniper had twelve minutes — twelve minutes to continue the search from the section she had left off from. The mare frantically quickly got to work.
The red flag she had previously left behind was on the third shelf, about halfway down. Juniper ripped it out and resumed her feverish task once more. Once her time was up, she would have four minutes to mark her stopping point and reach the bunker before her air ran out.
Tribulations of a Tartarian Terror, Predictions and Prophesies, Seers' Scribing Study... Her dirty hooved rattled over the rows as fast as she could read.
Magics of Minautar Matriarchal Mauraders, Orthros Obedience Ommendum, Attributes of Alicorn Ascension — where is it, where is it!
Eight minutes left.
It was a needle in a haystack. Juniper reached out and began pulling the dusty tomes down. No...no...no! It must be here somewhere! The minutes ticked down one by one, withering away till the time of her departure. The digit on her watch rolled from five to four. Her allowance had quickly depleted, as it always did. It simply was never enough time, hindered by her woefully small air tank.
Yet, despite this, she did not stop. Book after book flew off the shelf. No, not yet. We'll never find it like this, she belittled herself. Two minutes. I can make it back in two if I run. Just a few more rows.
The paltry few seconds drained away rapidly, only increasing her fervor. Book after book flew. She would have thrown away the book in her hooves had she not noticed it was titleless.
It bore no name, no designation or author on its deep blue cover. Only an image of a swirl of stars designated it from its peers.
That mark. Could it?
Hooves shaking, Juniper cracked open the nebulous blue cover, the dust brushing to the floor. The pages were badly yellowed, and the words were a messy scribble of hoof-scratched ink. "Journal of Starswirl the Beared."
Pages flew over the ancient spine as Juniper tore through the entries. Please be here. One minute fifty-two seconds.
The entries ran out, and she found the last notation. The ink letters were thin and spidery, and it was hard to read the cursive. But there was no mistaking what she had found.
"Temporal Bridges and Basic Permutations of Time Dilation. The time spell," Juniper whispered, her eyes glued to the words.
Suddenly, from deep in the castle ruins, a high-pitched screech that pierced Juniper like a knife of ice.
Shadows! One minute thirty seconds.
In an explosion of paperbacks and hardcovers, Juniper dashed from the library, the journal stuffed into her threadbare pack. She lept through the empty window frame, landing in a tumble and rolling into the derelict courtyard.
As she scrambled to her hooves, a cloud, a density of pure black with eyes that flamed torrid red, blew out of the castle. Then three more, the spectral apparitions letting out a howl of wrathful passion — they had found her. Next, they would kill her.
The lead shadow let loose another ear-splitting shriek, tendrils of smoke grabbing for her. Juniper scurried to her hooves, barely escaping the icy grip of the spectral creature.
"Snowberry!" she screamed, clicking on her radio. "Snowberry, I have it! I have it, but there are shadows right behind me," she spat into the microphone, sprinting across the courtyard enveloped in blinding smoke. "I'm almost at the statue! Have the door open! I'm coming!"
If there was a reply, Juniper didn't hear it. The rush of blood coursing through her veins was a roaring waterfall, a tumultuous river of pure will pushing her forward. She couldn't fail, not when they were this close to success.
Through the curtain that blinded her vision, the lone figure of the statue lept into view. Juniper was down to less than a few seconds of air, each taste of oxygen from her small tank tasting a little more stale than the last. The shadows were mere inches behind her as she rounded the statue and bounded for the wall. In her last glimpse of the marble mare, Juniper was caught one final time by those eyes. Those bold, bright eyes, staring into the eternal fog. There would be no time for a final farewell. She knew what she had to do.
Her oxygen was depleted when she reached the cliffs, a solid wall of rock that rose above the ruins of Canterlot. Juniper's lungs fluttered like the wings of butterflies, greedily sucking the air in her mask but finding nothing to clear her muddled mind. Her vision was closing in, her limbs weak.
Juniper slammed through the crevice, a narrow gap in the rock barely large enough to fit a wagon. Rocks of sharp granite tore at her coat as she stumbled. Ignoring the pain, she pushed forward with the last of her energy, falling to her hooves beneath a rough-cut stone archway several paces inside the crevice. Cold iron plates clattered underhoof.
"Snowberry," Juniper whispered with the last of her strength, the shadows swirling through the crevice. "I'm — here. Shut — the — door."
A rumble beneath her answered. A behemoth of metal appeared from overhead, the great slab of steel sliding over the entrance to the overhang. It landed with a resounding boom, the shadows disappearing behind the crack of the massive door.
Juniper had already ripped off her mask as the chamber pressurized, lanterns overhead buzzing to life. She gasped, choking on the stale atmosphere that tasted of mineral and grease. Air. Sweet, sweet air.
Beside her, a hatch set into the stone popped open. The mare behind it rushed to her side, the sweet young face lifting Juniper shakily from the floor. "June, what happened! I thought you were dead when you didn't make it back on time."
Juniper never got to answer. From outside the bunker door, a tremendous crash. Dust and sediment rained from overhead, the mares knocked from their hooves as pebbles of granite rained upon them.
"No," Snowberry breathed, her eyes growing as the door shook once more. "The shadows. They finally found us."
"The Elder," Juniper wheezed, her voice weak. Her hoof trembled as she pulled the journal from her pack. "We have to tell the Elder — we have it." She raised the book to Snowberry's petrified awe. "I found the time spell."
As they passed through the entrance to the bunker, Juniper was met by the inhabitants, the ponies she had promised not to let down. They lined the cramped, dingy corridor like an army of beggars, their bodies wrapped in scraps of soiled cloth to fend off the biting cold and damp of the mountain rock. They stepped reverently aside as Juniper trotted as fast as her delirious state would allow. By now, they could all hear the loud thunders of the things outside forcing their way through the door. The barrier would not last forever, and everypony knew it.
"She has it," they whispered, their fear drowned by their awe.
"Will it work?"
"Can the Elder cast it?"
"Of course the Elder can cast it. She's the Elder"
"But who will the Elder send? Will it be one of us?"
"Who will warn them, those we left behind? Warn them of what is to come."
Juniper couldn't meet their gaze. She couldn't tell them goodbye — she knew it would be herself that would make the journey. It had to be her. She had already brought them this far.
The door at the end of the corridor flung open, and Juniper stepped inside. It latched behind her, and she fell at the weathered desk before her.
It was a small room, only a bed and a dresser beside the small desk. It's scratched and scarred wooden surface was piled high with tattered books and crumbling scrolls.
"Elder," she knelt, presenting the journal. "We have it," she proclaimed. "We found what we have been looking for."
Rising from her creaking chair, the wrinkled mare approached from behind the desk, a solitary lantern with a weak flame casting deep shadows on the cold bulkheads.
The Elder, a sunken pony of countless years, wrapped the moth-eaten blanket around her skeletal form with her molting wings. "His journal," the Elder spoke softly, levitating the book toward her. "It has been ages since I have seen this journal. I can't believe you finally found it."
A thin tear trickled from one of the many creases in her lavender-colored cheeks. "If only I had remembered the spell," she choked, fresh tears washing down her sagging cheeks. Outside, the thrashing on the outer bunker door had grown in intensity. The ponies in the hall would be waiting with their loved ones now. It was only a short matter of time before their haven was finally breached, the ponies resigned to their fate, their only hope knowing that one of their own might make the journey stop the specters before they ever arrived. "So many lost because I couldn't remember how to cast the spell," the Elder cried. "So many more, because I failed to stop the shadows. Equestria — my Equestria — wasteland."
Juniper reached out and pulled the shawl around the old alicorn, drying her regret with a corner. "But we have it now," she assured the Elder. "We can finally warn those in the past. We can stop the shadows this time. I will tell them of the horrors to come so that we may prevent all of this."
"I am not the princess I once was," the Elder spoke timidly. "My magic has faded with the years I have borne. I'm not even sure I can cast it anymore."
"But you can," Juniper said exuberantly, opening the journal to the spell and pushing it toward the Elder. "You can do this. I wouldn't have found it after so long if you couldn't."
The Elder's milky eyes wander over the commutations, studied the arcane writing. Like a match striking tinder, her shawl dropped to the floor, the journal rising to meet her. She levitated it before her, her horn glowing brighter with each line read. "I will only have one shot at this to get it right."
Juniper stepped before the center of the room, her empty tank and mask sliding to the ground with a clatter. She planted her hooves firm, the mountain around her rattling with the cataclysmic shudders of the outer door. "I am ready."
The Elder breathed deeply, the magic coursing through her being, a surge of energy that lifted her from the dusty steel plates beneath her hooves. Her eyes were closed, her horn a spotlight of arcanic power.
Sweat dribbled down Juniper's neck, and she held her breath; she waiting for the floodgates to be unleashed. What would it be like, she wondered? What would she experience as she passed through the eternal fabric of space and time? Would she even survive?
The Elder's eyes erupted with a brilliance of purple light, the orbs alighting the room with their blaze. "Warn them," she commanded. "Warn me, past me. Warn us all of what will happen to Equestria should we fail. Tell them of our future, so that we may stop it."
A final, earth-shattering thunder outside washed throughout the bunker. Then the screams erupted.
"I promise," Juniper cried. "I swear, Princess. I'll fix this."
"The future of Equestria — of everypony and everycreature — depends on it."
And then the light, an obliterating light, filled Juniper's senses, and the world fell away to black.
Light. Sunlight filled her open eyes.
It was life-enveloping sunlight, a light that filled her soul. No shadows, no fog, no death and rot. Just pure, unfiltered sunlight.
The garden Juniper found herself in escaped description. It was awash with color, hues that defied explanation. Leaves rustled somewhere overhead on the chorus of a breeze. Somewhere else, birds sang their praise, basking in the holy light of the sun. And in the distant, Canterlot Castle, her alabaster halls lined with the stained-glass windows, intact in their full glory. The Royal Garden, a bounty of color, was as mesmerizing and miraculous as she had remembered from her school trip as a filly.
Since the fateful day the darkness descended over Equestria, and the door to the bunker had lowered, Juniper had waited for this moment: to smell the sweet scent once more.
Juniper opened her lungs and breathed deeply, ready to accept the sweet nectar of air— only to feel nothing at all. No perfume of roses, or sensation of marigolds, or anything at all for that matter. Her chest did not move. Something was wrong.
Juniper tried to look down, but she couldn't. She found her neck was locked in place, as stiff as steel.
Moving her hooves yielded the same result. Panic embraced her and she tried to move, to move anything, but nothing happened. No matter how she tried to move, or blink, or breath, nothing happened. Her body was as if frozen, her limbs cold and lacking sensation.
In an instinctual, primal reaction, she opened her mouth to scream. Only it didn't open, and neither the smallest peep nor largest cry escaped her. She was muffled, her voice lost.
Something was very wrong, she knew it deep down. Something about what she was seeing — what she could see without turning her head. Her eyes were locked on the castle. And as the sun began to set on the distant horizon, and the pit in her chest grew ever larger, Juniper found herself wanting to cry. No tears would grace her face. Not ever again.
Juniper stopped counting the sunrises after the first month. She stopped trying to scream out at the ponies passing her after the sixth. They rarely gave her more than a passing glance. And the once that waited but a moment more in observing her could neither hear her nor sense her fear.
Please, she would beg, though no words ever came out. Please, you have to listen. Something is coming. Something terrible. All of this will be gone if we do not find some way to stop them! I have to warn the Elder — the Princess. Why can't you hear me!?
Many days she would try to sleep, but even such a simple facility escaped her. Her eyes never closed, never blinked, never stopped staring toward the castle at the end of the garden. Some days it rained; some days the sun scorched everything it touched. And Juniper languished through every moment, trapped in whatever prison kept her.
At times she wished for death. Other times she pondered if she was already dead. That was until she saw the filly.
She was a small thing — barely older than a foal — with a wild mane. And the eyes too, bright, shining blue eyes that gazed with wonder upon all the gardens offered. Then the filly approached her, came real close till she was directly beneath her.
Those eyes, Juniper though. I know those eyes.
The filly studied her, her gaze entirely focused on Juniper. Such curiosity. What was it this little filly saw?
But, of course, Juniper knew all along. The eyes were so familiar because she had seen them almost every morning of her life reflected back at her. They resided in the mirror, or in puddles, or in the polished glass of her oxygen mask. It was a reflection.
Those eyes — those small, little eyes — they were her's. It was herself, nothing more than a filly along for a school trip.
No. No, no, no, no— Juniper knew why the statue in the garden had intrigued her so much as a filly. And why she had felt such a strong connection to it. For it was her tomb.
It was many years later that Juniper saw that same filly again, though she had grown to much more than a filly. It was in the end that Juniper had a front-row seat to the fall of everything she had loved. And just like before, the darkness spread over Equestria, and the shadows consumed the land. The ponies had tried to stop them of course, to fight back against the dark creatures. But the result had been the same. It would always be the same.
Juniper would spend many dark days and even darker nights waiting for the eventual return of the filly. During that time, the rains and wind did their work, slowly weathering her away. It was in her mind; her thoughts slowly eroded like her body. Many months would pass like no time at all, her mind languishing in the husk of its memories and thoughts.
She would scarcely hear the soft patter of hooves approaching behind her one dark day. As she gazed perpetually at the ruins of Canterlot Castle through her occluded vision, Juniper felt a hoof touch her flank. After so long without touching another pony, what was left of her wanted to cry. ButJuniper could never do this of course.
The hoof felt along her side, a pony in a scuffed but polished oxygen mask appearing from behind. The mare stopped and caught her breath.
Don't, Juniper pleaded. Don't grab that book. Something went wrong with the spell. You cannot find that book.
The masked mare looked toward her as if sensing her words, gazed into her emotionless, marble eyes.
Just turn around. Just turn around and run back to the bunker. It's seventy paces to the garden wall and another fifty-eight to the shelter. Whatever you do, don't go looking for that spell. She still remembered the distance by heart.
"I have a good feeling about today," the mare whispered to the statue. "That spell must be in there somewhere." She stepped off into the darkness once more.
Please — don't leave me alone. I just don't want to be alone.
Juniper would only catch the briefest glimpse of herself running madly from the ruined library, shadows hot on her tail, before the world returned once more to its perpetual silence.
Princess, she croaked. Anypony? Is there anypony left.
None would answer.
Over the silent world, she would forever preside. Princess of the ruins and the wastes, forever to wait until the sun rose no more and all of her stars burned out like dying candles, their flames flickering out one by one.
Darkness was upon the world once more, its sole inhabitant forever staring upon the void till even the shadows dissipated to nothing.
And Juniper was left alone, not even a star to keep her company till the last remants of time gacefully slipped away...
