There was only one throne… and Twilight still wasn’t used to it yet.
For the past few millennia, there had always been two thrones. One of Moon, and one of Sun. Even when Luna had been banished, Celestia had kept her throne right where it was. But now, as rays of multicolored light streaked from the stained glass of the numerous murals light the room with countless colors… there is only one throne. A throne with a star on it.
Her star.
Luna and Celestia were still alive, of course. No doubt enjoying breakfast at Silver Shoals at this very moment, with Celestia preparing several ‘Go Kits’. Twilight remembers asking her what those were when they last visited. ‘What?’ she had said. ‘You really think we’ll just stay ut if another big-bad-whatever shows up? HA!’. All to the sighing eye roll of Luna.
But they were away now, and this was her throne; her Equestria.
“... My Equestria.” she said to herself. Not with fear, or sadness… but awe.
Her gold clad hooves trekked slowly across the tiled floor as she made her way to that throne. All her thoughts focused on the years, weeks, days, seconds leading up to this moment. For all her years ruling, she had never stopped to really grasp all of it. To her, Still sending Celestia notes on her experience running the nation, negotiating with others. Celestia meant what she said, too; Twilight had fought by her side at least three times after the sisters retired. Luna eve took time to teach her the arts of the battlemage.
But now… Luster Dawn was in Ponyville. Just like she was.
Twilight made her go… just like Celestia did.
She was not a stand in. She was not the voice of the eloping Princesses of Equestria. She was Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, Element of Magic!
Ruler… of Equestria.
And now, se was in her throne. Content. Sighing as rays of sunlight, bathed in the colors of past triumphs, washed of her face.
Then she opened her eyes… and there was a pony there.
She blinked twice, looked around the room, and finally let her eyes rest on the strange stallion standing in the middle of the throne room. He was stood no taller than the average stallion, with a dull brown coat. A white suit adorned him, matching his mane save for the grey streaks. Twilight leaned to the side, barely making out the image of a partially opened door on his flank. When she came back, she noticed his eyes… one red, one blue.
“Um… e-excuse me?” she spoke softly. “How uh… how’d you get in here? The throne room isn’t open during this time of day.”
“I let myself in, your highness.”
His voice… it was old. He didn't look it… but his voice carried the same tone as Starswirl.
“Oh… well um, i-it’s very sweet that you’d go to such lengths to see me, but the palace is secure for a reason. You can’t just-”
“I’m well aware, your highness, and I apologize.” He gave her a gentle nod. “But I’ve not come for pleasantries. There’s work to be done.”
Her brow furrowed, and a familiar suspicion entered her psyche. She had heard things like this before. The vagueness of this supposed work, the steadfast and still expression gripping his face.
‘This might be a fight.’ she thought. Her wings grew tense and ready, her horn shimmered faintly, and her hooves dug into the thro-
“No, your highness.” he spoke again. “This isn’t a fight; it’s a choice.”
Twilight relax, eyes wide and eyelids aflutter. “You… you read my thoughts?”
“No… well, yes?” his hoof scratched at his chin. “More so, I know everything you’re going to say and think already.”
“From the future, then?” she pushed.
“Sort of… and the past, and even this present. A multitude from them, in fact.” he answered once more, struggling to explain.
“So… time traveler?”
“Ugghh… that’s… also a yes and no.” he rubbed circles into his forehead.
Twilight gave another in what was shaping up to be a long line of irritated sighs. She had just finished, reading some of Luster’s first friendship lessons. A part of her had hoped that maybe she’d get some time to herself. Let herself sink into the comfy throne she hadn’t sat in for half a day. But no… weird, mind reading stallion in the throne room.
“It’s not mind reading!” he groaned.
Shwe returned his groan in kind “Will you stop that?!”
They were staring at each other now, letting the silence sit and fester between them. Twilight was relaxed now, at least. Years of experience battling evil let her deduce he was anything but. He was just intrusive… and very, very odd.
In fact, he was just odd enough.
“Oh… for Equestria’s sake, Discord!” echoed across the expansive room. “I get that you and Shy like to pull the odd practical joke here and there, but I would reeeeelly like so-.”
Within the next second, the draconequus in question slithered out from behind her throne, clad in a bathrobe and a shower cap.
He looked down at the sitting monarch, his grin widening as he took in her almost panicked babbling. “You rang?” he asked, voice dripping with his usual self satisfaction.
“B-B-B-BU-BU-BUT… BUT!” she stammered at him, eyes tracing all over his body for any possible signs of a copy.
“Yes yes, Twilight, we all love a good butt joke, even myself. Now, why exactly have I been so graciously summoned to your adult-sized highchair?”
Twilight paid his jabs no mind. She was use to them by now. What she did do was point point to the yet unnamed stallion still standing patiently in the middle of the room.
Discord followed her outstretched foreleg, and just as his eyes hit the strange stallion in question, his grin collapses. Moments pass in silence as the two inspect each other. The mystery stallion is still, with only the faintest glint of worry in his eye at the sight of the draconequus. Discord, on the other hand.
“Ah… it’s uh.” he forced out. “It’s… oh wow it’s you.”
“Yes. Me.”
He looked to Twilight… and she could see the anxiety in his face. She rarely ever saw him nervous. So on the rare occasion she did, she knew to brace herself.
Discord saw her anxieties now, his own posture causing her wings to nervously twitch. His claw landed on her shoulder, gripping just tightly enough. Then he cleared his throat.
“Twilight?” he finally spoke. “He’s not going to hurt you… that’s not why he’s here.”
His voice didn’t help Twilight to calm down. Mainly because he was calm.
Him.
Discord.
Twilight’s voice shook now. “Then… then what-”
“I can’t tell you, Twilight. That’s for him to do. However-” Dicord’s claw left her shoulder, gently tapping her head “-I can do this.”
For a split second, she’s lightheaded. The kind of lightheaded you get when you sit up straight in bed, fresh out of a dream. It’s more than that though. It’s like… an understanding. A moment of supreme clarity from some breathtaking revelation. Only here, she doesn’t know exactly what knowledge he gave her, but only that it’s there. Waiting in the back of her head.
It all passes in a single, elongated second, and then the feeling is gone. But before she can look up to Discord, her eyes still wide at this unknown revelation, a claw to her lips renders her silent still.
“You’ll know it when it comes… then the rest is up to you.”
Twilight, while outwardly well composed, could not stop her fur from dampening slightly as she sweat. Discord had never been that serious, before or after his reformation. Not unless Fluttershy was in danger. Her eyes slowly fell back to the stallion in front of her as she pondered what eing could be so powerful as to warrant a straight-faced Discord?
“Okay!” yelled Discord with a clap, his usual demeanor returned in half a blink. “My work here is done! Happy choosing Twilight!”
“Choosing?! Choosing wha-”
“Nah ah ah!” Discord waggled a claw. “You know how much I abhor spoilers, Twilight!”
The giggling chaos entity began to slink back behind the throne, only to stick out his paw just before vanishing.
“One more thing though… this isn’t going to end the way you think it will.”
The paw retracted, his presence vanished, and he was gone.
Now it was just a stallion, and a Princess.
The stallion spoke first, seemingly unbothered by the wait. “If you’re ready, Princess, we can begin to attend to the matter at hand.”
Twilight was visibly shaken now. Discord’s appearance, his ominous last words… this was big. Whoever this stallion was, if he was even a stallion.
So, she did what she had learned to do; she closed her eyes, took a breath, counted back from ten, and then slowly opened her eyes as she exhaled.
“As the Princess of Friendship, and the current ruling monarch of Equestria, I am prepared to help you with whatever problem, friendship related or not, has brought you to my Castle this day.”
The stallion smirked at her. “Then please, if you would, blink.”
Her face took a puzzled expression this time. “Um… blink?”
“Yes… although I do suppose you should probably sit up first.”
“Um… so… just stand and-”
“Yes yes, like that. Do be sure to hold the blink as well. At least for a few milliseconds longer than normal.”
Twilight stood, never taking her eyes off of the stallion. Hesitation griped her as she looked at him… but nonetheless, she followed suit. She blinked. Squoze her eyes shut, holding them for only half a second before-
Before…
The room she now stood in was white all around, save for the grey cushioning of the stallion’s seat and the numerous television screens along the circular walls. Even the teapot from which he poured, and the cup it filled, were a bright white.
Twilight went rigid. There was no spark of magical energy, nor the subtle forward momentum that comes with teleportation. A portal perhaps? No, no. She would’ve felt the arcane energies holding it open as they passed through the threshold together.
No. No explanation. No spells cast or artifacts used. They were both just…
Here.
“I… but. Wha-”
“Are you familiar with the concept of the multiverse, Princess Twilight?” the stallion asks, levitating over a steaming cup to Twilight… despite not being a unicorn.
Twilight took the cup, sipping it as scanned over her surroundings, glancing at the ‘pony’ sat across from her. “How did we get here?”
“As the name implies, it is the concept of numerous universes existing in within a far wider, potential infinite plane of existence. Some of these universes are directly parallel to others, simply existing as different outcomes created by alternate circumstances to the universe it’s mirroring. Other times, they are completely alternate realities, with different rules, different standards for what constitutes as life, etcetera.”
She examined the room with both her eyes and her magic, taken aback for the first time in many years. “We didn’t teleport, we didn’t time travel…”
He sighed at her antics, then cleared his throat. “This room has access to all points of one reality at any given time, giving it the ability to simply pluck certain members of said reality from that universe and simply have them here. In multiversal relation, we are just outside of your universe.”
“Outside… of my universe?” Twilight asked, staring up at the ceiling, face drowned in an expression of awe and wonder. He gave her a nod.
“Is… is this a ship?”
“No.” he answered. “More of an observation room, really.”
“Ah…” she looked back to him. “And you’re watching my universe because…?”
A wave of his hoof brushed the question aside. “We’ll get to that. For now, a question.”
He leaned forward, smiling gently as he sipped. “If the multiverse exists, then what of the concept of ‘fiction’?”
Twilight opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t believe I follow.”
“Think about it.” he continued. “If the multiverse is real, then by its very nature a universe you may deem fiction must exist somewhere.”
“Well… of course, yeah. That goes without saying.”
“But then what does that make us? Are we the creators of countless universes? Does that make us cruel Gods who create beings to laugh, cry, live, and die merely for our amusement?”
“Absolutely not!” Twilight rubbuted. “We have no way of perceiving that universe as real within our own. Thus, any cruel intent we may or may not have would be, in the end, superficial. Because to us, the characters are merely that; characters.”
She sips from here tea again lighting up her horn. Two streams of magic form in the air.
“Plus, if a fictional universe ever did Interact with it’s hypothetical point of origin, the presence of that universe would be enough to diverge it from the path of the fiction we know it from, making it parallel to the original. Therefore, we wouldn’t even be encountering the original.”
The uppermost stream fuses with the other, creating two new streams; one that continues the flow of the fiction, and one formed from a hybrid of the ‘fictional’ universe and its point of origin.
The stallion leaves his seat, walking up beside her as he scratches at his chin. “Well put, your highness… but if I may…”
The back end of the uppermost stream shortens. Almost arriving at the meeting place between the two universes.
“Chances are the story of that universe starts somewhere here. You don’t suppose it merely popped into existence at ‘season 1’ or ‘chapter 1’, do you?”
“Hmmm.” Twilight pondered. “Probably not…why?”
“Because, if there is a past the ‘origin’ universe has not seen, then it can be argued that the universe existed before conception in this one… thus, not entirely under our control. Similarly, it may be equally foolish to for a universe to simply end once the story that we see concludes.”
The streams, once Twilight’s magic but now glowing a light blue, separate and reform. This time, small strands venture out from the ‘fictional’ stream, falling into the other stream, creating lines of light throughout it.
“Thus we can reach at least this conclusion; fiction is merely the result of the echoing presence of other universes. That somewhere, deep in our minds, our subconscious is just barely aware of the infinite possibilities that surround our meager existence, and it pulls from that infinite sea the elements of that universe, the lore, together.”
Twilight Marveled at it for a few seconds, her natural yearning for knowledge gorging herself at such grandiose philosophical implications. Shaking herself out of it, se looked at the strange pony.
“So… is that what you needed me for? To debate on the nature of the Multiverse with you?”
“Oh heavens no!” laughs the stallion. “I’m quite familiar already. No… I’m here because of this.”
With a click of his right hoof against the floor, every monitor flicked to life, . The sound was deafening at first, forcing Twilight to cover her ears.. Countless voices all talking and melding with one another. Some screaming, other’s crying, more than a few laughing. Yet, in the garble bits of conversation she could make out, there was something familiar.
Far too familiar.
With a glance upward, she froze… it was her. Her and her friends, and others too. Laughing, screaming, fighting, crying… but no one group exactly the same.
In one screen, it was the same year, but she bore no wings. Instead, age marked her face just as her friends, and her library had been rebuilt. Luster walked into it and told her Celestia had sent her.
In another, Twilight and her friends were, for lack of a better world, brutal. Covered from head to toe in advanced sets of armor with weapons made to kill. They advanced on Chrysalis’ hive in the night, with Twilight whispering into her coms ‘Harmony-6, going dark’.
Another saw… destruction. Something had happened to Equestria, turning it baren and hostile. But ponies still survived. Some sealed away underground, others braving the wastes as traders or marauders.
Yet another was similar to her own life… except it was Sunburst who took the chariot to Ponyville that day.
They went on and on, every monitor flickering to some new what if; a cascade of the never-was and could’ve-been. She tried to speak, but could not find her voice. With a look at one monitor she felt her heart swell with joy, and yet a glance at another would make her whole body shudder with fear. Tears fell down her cheeks… she didn’t know what emotions were causing them.
“I’m here, Twilight Sparkle-”
Her head snapped over to look at him. Her eyes were red, her breaths were ragged, her wings fluffed uncontrollably.
The stallion was back in his chair, face now devoid of a smile. Instead, it took on a more deadpan expression. Like that of Starlight Glimmer when she requested a student come down to her office.
But that wasn’t all.
Behind him, the wall had cleared itself of the monitors… and to either side of him, a door had appeared.
“-because you need to make a choice.”
