Laughter Died

by Leafdoggy

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Mystery
Length: 25621

Twilight goes back in time to prevent a catastrophe that could very well mean the end of everything

How bad do things have to be to resort to something as dangerous as time travel?

For Twilight, the line is an apocalypse. A world of fear and despair forged by years of failures. Years where she got nowhere. She doesn't know what caused it, or how to stop it. She doesn't even know where to look.

None of that matters anymore, though.

She's out of time.

Published 2020-02-29 17:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-03-11 16:37:51 UTC

Prologue: Why I Went Back

It started with Kindness.

There was nothing special about the day. Average weather, average moods, an average day. That’s how it felt to me, at least, before Fluttershy came bursting into my bedroom with tears in her eyes.

Even looking back now, it feels like that couldn’t have been the start. Surely we’d missed something, not noticed some smaller upset in our lives, but I’ve looked. I spent years of my life asking anypony I could find what they could remember in the months leading up to that day, and there was nothing. It just… Happened.

We didn’t know what was going on. Fluttershy said she felt wrong. Like a piece of her was missing. Like somepony had ripped out a chunk of her soul when she wasn’t looking.

Who knows, maybe somepony had.

That feeling never went away. For all those years after it started, she felt that hollow ache. They all felt it, eventually. They pushed through it, they’re strong ponies, but I could see it in their eyes every time we talked. The fight never stopped.

In a way, it seems almost merciful that Fluttershy was first. From what they’ve said, it sounds like for the others it’s worse. Much, much worse. I would never wish that on any of my friends, but we all know Fluttershy was the least prepared to face something like this. Any one of us would have taken her place, had we been able to.

It took awhile for the news to reach us. We were spending the days in a frenzy, trying desperately to figure out what was happening. I might’ve starved if Fluttershy didn’t bring me food in the library. Always so kind, even after everything.

I think it was about a week. Five days, at least, I’m sure of that. A bird flew—or rather, fell—into Fluttershy’s window. It was so wracked with exhaustion it was unbelievable it was even still conscious, but when Fluttershy tried to treat it, the bird pecked her away. It wouldn’t let her touch it until she brought us the note it had carried from Starlight’s village.

Two words. Stay Away.

In retrospect, we were lucky only the six of us went. If anypony else had gone, we probably would have lost it all right there. It was only our connection to the Elements that kept us safe.

It was hard to tell what was wrong, at first. The village looked, from the outside, to be completely normal. Ponies were still going about their days, talking, laughing. As far as we could tell, everything was fine.

We could have found out more if we’d stayed to hear what they were talking about, how they were talking. We saw it as we left. Cruel jokes at the expense of friends, humiliating gossip, unchecked aggression. It baffled us that they were still even friends.

We’ve learned, since then, that ponies act very strangely when they lose an element. The key to understanding was in figuring out what that even meant. It didn’t seem like they were being forced to be cruel, and in fact they weren’t. They wanted to be cruel, they enjoyed it. Being kind, and having others be kind in turn, it just didn’t make them feel anything. It held no value to them anymore.

There was no missing it once we got to Starlight. She screamed at us, and I mean really screamed, the moment she saw us. How we were reckless, how we shouldn’t have come, how much she hated us sometimes. I haven’t seen her that angry since… Well, ever.

Starlight is still a good pony, though, and she’s still smart. Another sick stroke of luck, I suppose, that it hit her village first. She saw what was happening. How it worked. How it spread. Like a disease, sucking the essence out of ponies before moving on to a new host.

She saw that it could be contained.

Leaving her there was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Quarantined, cut off from Equestria, without any idea what’s going to happen. We did that to them. I know we had to, I tell myself that every night, but… We left them.

A couple of years in, Starlight stopped sending letters. It got to be too much for her, I guess. I went to check on her, of course, but the village was just… Empty. Completely, utterly empty.

For a time, it seemed like that was the end of it. Months passed. Years. No more incidents. We worked on a cure, to no avail. We didn’t even know what made it happen, we still don’t. Without that, it’s unlikely we’ll ever find a cure. Nopony else was getting sick, though.

We started to think, naively, that we were safe.

The second wave hit hard. Like whatever was causing this had been saving up its energy, waiting to strike at the worst possible time. Rarity and Applejack found me at the same time. They both felt it. After the first time, they knew what it was immediately.

Generosity fell in Manehattan. There’s some irony there, I think, if I could be bothered to look for it.

It wasn’t easy to figure out where it was. I mean, how could we look for a lack of generosity? Were we supposed to find ponies stealing cabs, overcharging for things, things like that? They could have just been grumpy. We couldn’t do what we had to do if there was a chance it was just a bad day.

We really only figured it out because Rarity knew so many ponies that lived there. We couldn’t tell with strangers, but we could tell with friends. Some celebrity cancelled a charity event, I think. Something we wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow at if it weren’t for Rarity. Manehattan was probably the closest we’ve come to losing it all.

We barely managed it, but we shut the entire city off. Nopony in or out until we found a cure. Everypony could tell we weren’t even close to that, though. As far as they knew, their world had just become a lot smaller, and it wasn’t going back.

Losing a city of that size hit Equestria hard. I don’t even mean economically, although that certainly took a dive too. No, Manehattan was a source of so many of the ways ponies escaped fears like these. Movies, fashion, food, suddenly it all went dark. Morale was damaged, to say the least.

Honesty… That hit Ponyville.

It started in the school. With the children. There was an argument, who knows what about, and it wouldn’t end. Tempers flared. Lies fueled anger, anger fueled lies. Cheerilee is a patient pony, but she does have a limit. An angry adult, fully willing to tell whatever lies they can think of, well… They can say some pretty cruel things.

From the children, it didn’t take long to spread throughout town. There was no stopping it, no saving part of the population. Children talked to family, family talked to friends. We couldn’t seclude everypony in town from their loved ones. We had to let it go.

Ponyville couldn’t survive losing Honesty. At least, not not without changing. It had to survive, we more or less forced that. We couldn’t let anypony leave, after all. The Ponyville we knew, though, that was gone.

Again, it was a wonder anypony stayed friends after that. It helped that they still didn’t lie all that much. Like with Kindness, it’s not like the element was reversed. Ponies just held no stock in the truth. They wouldn’t hesitate to lie if they thought it would help them, and they knew to expect the same from everypony else. It was like the entire town had become Flim and Flam.

Applejack and Rarity stayed for their families, of course, and Rainbow Dash was never away long. Pinkie did her best, but she started going back to the farm more and more. Fluttershy couldn’t take it. The lying was too much for her. I gave her my old room back in Canterlot.

Equestria changed after that. The first time could be written off, just a one time thing, a fluke, but now it loomed over us all. Any day, it could happen again. Anywhere. Ponies lived in fear. There were talks of closing the borders of every town. That was shot down, but the talks happened, and that… That says something.

I think we all kind of assumed we’d at least be safe for a couple years. The first gap was so long. Surely, we would have time to prepare.

We had six months.

I was afraid it might keep accelerating, that it would go from two to three at once. I was half right. There was only one hit, but it was worse. Much worse.

Was it another stroke of luck, that Celestia was in Cloudsdale when it hit her? Would Canterlot have been worse? It’s hard to say. It was bad, though. I mean, how do you stop it from spreading from somepony like Celestia? You just don’t. You can’t.

That was Loyalty.

Celestia didn’t return to Canterlot. She did what she felt she had to. She took Cloudsdale out of the picture. She just… She left. She took Cloudsdale and disappeared.

Rainbow Dash went after them. She hasn’t come back.

Loyalty is a strange one. One might think that, by disappearing, Celestia was sacrificing herself to protect us. Isn’t that the most loyal thing she could have done?

Well, it turns out she wasn’t protecting us. That much became clear when the sun didn’t rise the next morning. She was getting as far away from us as possible, so that we didn’t spread anything else to Cloudsdale. So they’d be safe if Equestria had an outbreak. She left us to fend for ourselves in an eternal night.

Luna rules alone now. I would help, but all my time is going into research. I have to find a way to fix this. Besides, I thought she should be able to handle it. Luna is stronger than she looks.

Pinkie found me today. She didn’t look good. All I can do is hope it didn’t hit anywhere too bad. I have to work, harder than ever. That’s five, now. I’m next. We’re out of time.

I don’t know what will happen when a place loses Friendship. I don’t know if we can survive it. These quarantines, the isolation, they only work because the ponies being quarantined have others they want to protect. Without friendship, I’m worried they’ll have no reason to want to keep the infection contained.

My research is a failure. I can’t fix this. I’m not willing to give in, though. I have one last card up my sleeve. One final resort, something I never wanted to do again.

I’m going back.

If anypony is reading this, I’m sorry.

1: Not What I Expected

I swore off of time travel for a reason.

That’s all I could think as I cast the spell. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to stop, telling me I was only going to make things worse. I had seen what time travel could cause with my own two eyes. Time travel was the reason I knew what the end of the world looks like.

None of that stopped me, though.

The jump hit me like a sack of bricks. A jolt of lightning shot through my nerves as my body adjusted to being in a whole new world. Everything around me looked the same, if a little brighter, but it felt different. It felt wrong. The universe itself seemed to be pushing back on me, telling me to leave, that I didn’t belong there. That the second I landed in another time, I wasn’t meant to exist.

That couldn’t stop me, either. I knew what was coming if I stopped.

I was in the library, just as I had been before casting the spell. Books all around me, encased in glittering crystal. That old, familiar smell washed over me, a smell you could only get with cared-for books and well-polished rock. It was a breath of fresh air compared to the mustiness I left behind.

The library doors opened, and I cursed under my breath. I chose the library because I expected it to be empty. I wanted to get to Twilight before anypony else. She would understand. She would know how dire things must have been to come to this. It looked like my plans were destined to fail right from the outset, though.

Pinkie Pie wheeled a cart full of party supplies inside as she skipped along and whistled a jaunty tune. She was so happy, so innocent. Her eyes held no pain, no fear, no dread for what the future may bring. It made me overjoyed, and at the same time, it broke my heart. Her life, all their lives, they were still perfect. They were still happy.

And here I was, their harbinger of doom.

Pinkie Pie stopped short when she saw me. “Really, Twilight? You’re supposed to be in town!” If she noticed how much older I was than her, she didn’t let it show.

“Um… Sorry?” I had no idea what to say.

Pinkie huffed. “How long have we been friends, Twilight? You should know better by now.” She ran up behind me and started pushing me towards the door. “If somepony suddenly starts trying to distract you on your birthday, I’m obviously setting up a surprise party, and those really work a lot better when they’re a surprise.” She shoved me into the hallway and pouted at me. “So you better forget you saw this!” Then she slammed the door in my face.

For a while, I was stunned. What was she talking about? Surely somepony was mistaken here.

But, then I thought about it some more, and I felt like the biggest idiot in the world. Somehow, I had forgotten my own birthday. This grand plan of mine just continued to be a roaring failure.

There would be time to mope later, though. I still had a job to do, so I started to leave the castle.

I wasn’t entirely sure where to go next. Pinkie said Twilight was being distracted, but not who was distracting her, or where. What would have distracted me back then? I thought on it, but all that would come to my mind was paperwork.

So, that’s what I went on. If it was paperwork, she was probably in her office at school.

I opened up the grand front doors of the castle, and light streamed in and rolled over me. Then I flinched and slammed the doors shut again. It was so bright. How could anypony stand to live in that? How could I have lived in it for so long? After so long in the dark, the idea felt utterly alien to me.

A quick trip to Twilight’s room later, though, and I was out on the street sporting the sunglasses I knew she would have. They helped quite a bit, but it still felt strange. It wasn’t the same. Everything was so warm and reflective, little bits of dust sparkled in the air. It all made me feel more and more out of place.

I wasted no time in getting to the school. Here and there ponies waved to me along the way, but none gave me a second glance. I suppose I must have aged well. Or maybe ponies just didn’t know what I looked like all that well.

The school was the first place I came across that was truly different. It had, quite predictably, not survived the quarantine of Ponyville. It was still there, serving as living space for the unfortunate ponies who were visiting Ponyville at the time and got caught up in the spreading infection, but it wasn’t a school any longer. It had become a dreary place, a constant reminder of the world we lived in, a place so dire it seemed to drain the color from the world around it. Nothing like the beautiful grandeur of the building I was walking into now.

The students all greeted me warmly, and it brought me back to how things once were. How we reveled in the simple joys of life. Again, I felt that melancholy bliss. That happiness that seemed to weigh on me like an anchor.

I didn’t give the students too much of my time. I had someplace to be. I made my way straight to the headmare’s office and knocked as calmly as I could.

“Come in!” A voice I didn’t recognize answered me. That puzzled me, but I chose to ignore the hesitation and made my way inside.

If that feeling was an anchor on my heart, walking into that office dragged it down into the briny abyss.

Again, I had forgotten. I’d forgotten that I stopped being headmare. I’d forgotten who would be here instead.

I’d forgotten her voice.

It… It broke me. Seeing Starlight, smiling warmly—kindly—at the sight of me, it was just too much. Of course it was too much. The sight ravaged me, tore through me, forced into my mind memories of all the ponies whose lives I’d ruined, all the dear friends I’d failed. Failed worse than I’d even thought. I’d sealed her away, forced her to live alone for years, and then I’d let her disappear and slip out of my life. I…

I’d forgotten her voice.

I fell to my knees as the sobs started. She was up before I hit the floor. She ran over to me, shut the door before anypony could see in, and carried me over and onto her couch. Her entire focus was suddenly on me, on making sure I was okay. On being kind.

I buried my head in my hooves and let out the tears.

Starlight was so gentle. She lifted a blanket up from the back of the couch and draped it over me, then she knelt beside me and rubbed my back. She didn’t say a word, not at first. She just let me get it all out.

I don’t know how long I was crying like that. I know that, more than once, she had to get up to ask visitors to come back later. I know that it exhausted me so much, I fell asleep at some point and woke to see her at her desk, quietly filling out paperwork. She, of course, noticed as soon as I was awake and rushed back over to me. I know that she never left me alone as I let out those years and years of long-held anguish. I have no idea how long it was, though, before the silence was finally broken.

It was me who spoke up first. I had to. It was something I needed to say. It took a lot of effort, but I managed to push my head up and turn to look into her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

She stroked my mane softly. “Twilight, it’s alright. You never have to apologize for being upset.”

I shook my head. “Not that. I’m sorry for… For—”

The fates must have been conspiring against me, because at that moment there was a knock on the door.

Starlight pursed her lips. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and stood up when I nodded.

A strange look crossed her face when she opened the door. She looked back over to me, then to the guest, then back at me. Something had her utterly baffled.

She turned back to the guest. “I think you’d better come in.”

I was terrified at first. Who could she be bringing in to see me? Was it one of my friends? I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. Who else could it be, though?

I felt relief wash over me when I saw Twilight walk in. Finally, a stroke of good luck.

Twilight, clearly, did not feel the same relief. Her face sank in shock and worry the moment she saw me. It was understandable, really. Meeting a copy of yourself unexpectedly is never a good thing. Still, I was a little hurt.

I pushed myself upright on the sofa and met Twilight’s eyes. Starlight came over and sat beside me, patting me reassuringly. I shuddered as I tried to push the sobs away.

Twilight let out a deep breath. “Please don’t tell me you’re—” I nodded, and she frowned deeply. Then she walked over and took a seat nearby, still looking me over with that serious expression. I could only imagine what my own expression was, but with all the crying, the exhaustion, and the pure dread I always seemed to feel, I couldn’t imagine it was good.

Then, Twilight’s expression softened. “Are you okay?”

“Not particularly,” I told her, “but I think I’m past the worst of it for now. I just… I guess I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was.”

Twilight nodded. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“I think so,” I said, “although I don’t know very much. Something is coming, some kind of… Magic, or disease, that cuts ponies off from the elements.”

“A disease got so bad you had to go back in time?” Starlight asked.

I nodded. “We could barely keep it contained, and that containment was going to fail. I don’t… I have no idea what would happen in a world with the elements gone, but it was going to be bad.”

“If you’re me, which you seem to be, then I believe you,” Twilight said. “So, what do we do?”

“I… I don’t really know,” I said. “I’ll tell you and the others the whole story tomorrow morning, but really… All I’m bringing with me is the knowledge that it’s going to happen.”

“Why not tell them now?” Twilight asked.

“Well… It’s your birthday,” I said. “I don’t want to ruin it.”

Twilight smiled softly. “I appreciate the thought. Are you going to come to the party?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I replied. “I mean, a second Twilight is a lot to drop on them all so suddenly.”

Starlight wrapped a leg around my shoulders. The touch was warm and kind and more wonderful than I remembered being held by a pony to ever be. “Of course you’ll be there,” she said. “It’s a party for Twilight Sparkle. That means it’s for you too.”

I smiled weakly and leaned against her. She squeezed me in a loving hug. It was starting to dawn on me that, after so many years holed up looking for a cure, I had sort of forgotten what it was like to have friends.

And, with just that thought, the tears started flowing again.

2: Party Time

I must have fallen asleep again, because I found myself being shaken awake later that day.

“Hey, Twilight?” Starlight was looking down at me with a warm, gentle smile. “It’s about time for the party. How’re you feeling?”

I yawned and pushed myself upright. A dull ache in the back of my mind protested, but I pushed it aside. “I’m better, I think,” I said. “Good enough for the party, at least.”

She grinned. “Well, let’s get going then! Knowing Pinkie, there’s probably a pre-party we’re missing.”

She slipped my sunglasses onto me and practically dragged me out of the school. Not that I didn’t want to go, I was just being too sluggish. I suppose she thought giving me too much time to get lost in my thoughts would end with me deciding not to go, and honestly, she was probably right.

It was late evening now, and the sun was nearly to the horizon. Still, it burned at me. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get used to that abysmal heat.

Starlight pulled me through town, declining any ponies who tried to stop us to talk. Starlight was a lot of things, but she was definitely not a patient pony. It kept her punctual, but it also made her, well… A little rude.

Nopony seemed especially put off by it, though, and we made it to the castle without incident.

I could hear the distant sounds of partying as soon as we stepped through the doors. Loud music, laughing ponies, cheers and yells. It was nostalgic, to say the least.

I mean, it wasn’t that Pinkie had stopped throwing parties after everything that happened. She was still Pinkie Pie, after all. She had to keep ponies laughing. But, well, after Honesty and Generosity, Equestria was just a different place. Pinkie’s parties stopped being just for fun. They became an escape, a distraction from the fear in all of us, and a party like that just feels different.

This, though, was just a party.

Starlight noticed I’d gotten lost in thought and gave me a light shove. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah, just… Remembering the past. Or the future, I suppose.”

“Do you need a minute?”

“No, I’m fine,” I told her. The look of concern on her face made it perfectly clear that I didn’t sound fine, but she decided not to press it, and we ventured further in.

She stopped us right outside the library. The sounds of revelry were clear as day now, and they beckoned for me to join in. “I’ll go get them ready first, so you don’t freak them out too much,” she said.

She walked through the doors, and I was alone.

I was used to being alone, but I’d learned long ago that trying to keep your thoughts at bay when nopony else is around is a fool’s gambit. Trying not to think about something would just make me think about it more. So, it wasn’t a surprise when my memories decided now was a good time to catch up to me.

I remembered another time I was alone in this hallway.

It was years ago, for me, right after Starlight’s village got hit. It had been long enough for things to calm a bit, but everything still felt frantic. Fluttershy was doing… Poorly. None of us understood what she was going through. None of us could understand, not yet. I still can’t.

She was alone in her suffering.

One day we were in a meeting and she just… Walked out. No reason, no goodbye, she just left. Of course, I followed. I had asked the others to stay behind, I think so that she didn’t get overwhelmed.

She locked herself up in the library, shut everypony else out. I knocked, I called out to her, I waited, and I knocked again, but she never replied. I was there for hours, pacing back and forth, knocking every so often. Even if she wasn’t going to respond, I wanted her to know I was still there. I didn’t want her to be alone, and couldn’t understand that she already was.

Eventually, she did walk up behind the door and talk to me. It was an immense relief just to hear her voice. She wouldn’t talk about why she was in there, though. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions, and she definitely wouldn’t come out.

She just wanted to make sure I had gotten something to eat.

It broke my heart, honestly. I told her I had. I lied. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but—

The sound of the library door broke me out of my memories, and I saw Starlight waving for me. “Come on in,” she told me, still smiling so kindly.

The music had been turned down, and nopony was talking. All their eyes latched onto me as I entered the room. I was immediately thankful it was a small party.

Then, Pinkie ended the silence. “Happy birthday!” She sprang at me and wrapped me in a tight hug, and just like that the dam came crashing down and the party was back on. Twilight waved at me from the back of the room while Pinkie squeezed all the air out of my lungs.

Pinkie let go, and I wheezed. “Actually,” I said in a breathy voice, “I don’t think it is my birthday. It wasn’t when I left, at least.”

Pinkie gasped. “You’re right! Oh, I’m gonna have to reschedule everything! I need more streamers more balloons, less glitter…” She walked away, muttering to herself, and I chuckled.

It was good to be able to see everypony like this again.

I walked over to Twilight, who was at a table in the corner, and joined her. “I’m glad they’re all taking this well.”

Twilight nodded. “As soon as I told them you weren’t dangerous, there wasn’t a problem. I guess none of them mind having more Twilight in their lives.”

“Hey, it’s not like we’d have been opposed to it either,” I said. Twilight laughed.

“Twilight, dear!” Rarity called out and pranced over to us cheerily.

“Yeah?” We both answered.

Rarity blinked. “Um… New Twilight. Fluttershy wanted to speak with you when you get a chance.”

“Oh.” I looked past her, and saw Fluttershy looking nervously back. “Yeah, alright. I’ll see you two later, then.”

They said their goodbyes, and I headed across the room. Behind me, I could hear Rarity strike up a conversation with Twilight. “Now, about how to differentiate you two…”

Fluttershy smiled as I walked up, but she was clearly anxious, tapping a hoof on the floor and chewing on her lip.

“Hey, Fluttershy,” I said, and smiled. “What’s up?”

She was looking to the side of me, too nervous to make eye contact. “Oh, well, um… You’re from the future, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well… I just, I know Twilight would never time travel unless something really, really bad happened, and so I guess I’m just, um…”

I frowned. “Scared?”

She nodded.

I sighed and put a hoof on her shoulder, doing my best to be comforting. “I can’t lie to you and say you’re wrong,” I told her, “but I came back to stop it. Not to make it less bad, or to contain it. I plan to stop it from ever happening. I know that those words alone can’t take away all the worry, but try to keep them in mind for today, okay? We can worry about it all tomorrow.”

Fluttershy took a deep breath. Then she nodded. “Thank you, Twilight. I’m glad that…” She looked up now, finally meeting my eyes, and smiled. “I’m glad that, even after whatever happened, you’re still Twilight.”

Looking into her eyes, my heart skipped a beat. They were filled with hope, with warmth, with shining brightness. They glittered with a shine I hadn’t seen since before everything started. It had been so long, I had forgotten just how bright she used to be, and seeing her now…

I always knew the Fluttershy I left behind wasn’t the same after it started, but I realized now that it was much, much worse than I ever imagined.

Fluttershy’s smile melted into a concerned frown. “Twilight, are you alright?”

I came back out of my thoughts, and realized I had started crying. I sniffed and quickly wiped my eyes, trying my best to hide it. “I-I’m sorry,” I said, and before anypony could stop me I walked past her and slipped out the door.

The last thing I expected was for her to follow me.

Fluttershy stepped quietly into the hallway and up beside me. Then, she wrapped a wing around me and pulled me close to her. “Do you need anything?”

I shook my head and, without thinking, leaned into her. “Thank you, Fluttershy,” I said. “I’m sorry, I can’t imagine this is helping you at all.”

“Hey, don’t worry about me,” she said. Her voice was softer than I remembered without the edge of pain to it. “I’m just anxious, that’s nothing new.”

“I’m supposed to be here to help,” I said, “and all I’ve done so far is fallen apart.”

“Twilight, if it was bad enough for you to come back, then I can’t even imagine the things you’ve been through,” she told me. “It’s perfectly understandable that you’d be overwhelmed to be out from it.”

It’s not about what I went through, I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t. Instead I just gave her an affirmative hum and tried to relax in her warm embrace.

“Do you think you’re going to want to try to go back in?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It’s too much.”

“Well, let’s go find somewhere comfy to sit down, then,” she said.

“But—”

She put the tip of her wing to my mouth to shush me. “You know I don’t like parties, anyway. I’d much rather spend the time making sure a friend feels better.”

I relented, and let her lead me away. She was such a wonderful friend. A wonderful pony.

She didn’t deserve what was coming.

3: Planning

We met early in the morning to talk about why I was here. Twilight and I were the first ones there, and it was uncomfortable, to say the least, sitting quietly as everypony else slowly filed in around the conference table. They tried not to look at me with fear on their faces, but there was only so much they could do. They all knew why I was here. You can’t hide your fear of death from the reaper.

They all showed it in their own ways. Rainbow Dash was brash and cocky, Pinkie joked too much. Their anxieties all fed off each other, and by the time they’d all made their way into the castle the air was thick with apprehension.

I decided to jump right into it.

“So, I’m sure it’s obvious that I didn’t come back to have fun.” They nodded and gave sounds of affirmation. “I wish I could say it wasn’t too dire, but if that were the case, I wouldn’t have come back.”

I took a deep breath. How do I tell my friends that the world as they know it is about to end?

“I’m not sure what actually caused it,” I said, “but for lack of a better description… The Elements of Harmony were being stolen from ponies around Equestria.”

There were gasps all around. Applejack started tapping a hoof on the table. Fluttershy bit her lip.

“What does that even mean?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“It was like… Like a disease,” I explained. “A pony somewhere would lose interest in being kind, or having others be kind to them, and anypony they talked to got… infected with it as well. As far as we could ever figure out, the only way to stop it was a quarantine. Complete isolation of anypony affected by it. The six of us could go in and out, for some reason our connection to the elements made us immune, but we were the only ponies who were so lucky.”

Starlight frowned. It seemed she was starting to put some pieces together.

“So how do we stop it?” Applejack asked.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head and looked down at the table, completely ashamed of my incompetence. “We never even learned what was making it happen, and without that we couldn’t know if we could make a cure, or if it could be stopped at all…”

“But you know when it starts,” Starlight said.

I nodded. “I don’t know the exact day, but I know it happened at Starlight’s village, during her coming trip there.”

Again, there were gasps. Starlight winced.

“But that’s tomorrow,” Rainbow Dash said.

“I know.” I sighed. “I just couldn’t see a point in showing up any sooner. If all I know is when and where, our only real course of action is to be there to stop it.”

“Um…” Fluttershy spoke up, her voice shaky. “W-Which element is going to…”

Her voice trailed off, but I understood. My heart ached when I looked up at her. “It’s kindness.”

Fluttershy let out a tiny whimper. Beside her, Pinkie reached out and put a hoof on her shoulder.

I took another deep breath. “Fluttershy, I don’t want to scare you, but… You should brace yourself. If we fail, it’s not going to be pleasant.”

Fluttershy was starting to tremble. I felt like a monster for putting her through this.

“W-What’s going to happen to me?” Fluttershy mumbled.

“I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to tell you that much,” I said.

“Please,” Fluttershy said, “I need to know.”

I looked down at the table, reluctant to say anything, but it wasn’t long before I sighed and gave in. “I never felt it myself,” I said, “but you always said it was like you’d lost a piece of yourself. Like there was a hole in who you were, not big enough to ruin your life, but not small enough to ever forget about it.”

Fluttershy’s face fell. Her ears drooped, and she looked like she could barely focus. “I-I have to go,” she muttered, and before anypony could object she pushed away from the table and ran out the door. Pinkie ran out after her, but the rest of us were too shocked to move.

“I’m sorry,” I finally muttered after a long, painful silence. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You couldn’t keep it from her,” Applejack said. “Like you said, if she knows, she can brace herself.”

I nodded slowly. “Hopefully.”

Twilight glanced at me, then cleared her throat. “Um, does anypony have any questions?”

“Yeah, I do,” Rainbow Dash said. “Do we actually have a plan?”

“Well,” I said, “if somepony is behind this, they almost certainly have to be nearby to do it. If we keep watch over the town, we’re bound to catch them in the act. And if we have everypony in town stay at home, if we fail we can keep it from spreading.”

“We can’t just force a pony to live alone for the rest of their lives,” Starlight said.

“Well, talk to them, then,” I told her. “Tell them what’s up, and let them all decide for themselves if they’re willing to stay in town afterward.”

Starlight pursed her lips. “Fine, but if that’s the plan, I’m staying with them. I can’t let them do that alone.”

“If that’s what you want, we can’t stop you,” I said. “Just, please, be sure that it’s what you want.”

“I will,” Starlight said.

The rest of the meeting didn’t amount to much. We worked out all the little details, schedules and patrol routes and the like. Fluttershy and Pinkie never showed back up, though, so there was only so much we could do. Besides that, it was mostly just questions I couldn’t answer. How fast did it spread, was there a limit to how many ponies it could affect, could a single element be target more than once, I didn’t know the answers to any of it. I’d only been here a day, and already I’d outlived my usefulness.

After the meeting, Starlight came up and sat next to me. “Hey,” she said softly.

I sighed. “Hi, Starlight. Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Of course. I just, I was thinking while you talked, and I remembered how yesterday, in my office, you kept telling me you were sorry…”

I put my head in my hooves. “Because I’m a failure. You were alone for years because of me.”

“I’m sure you did all you could,” Starlight told me. “I never would have blamed you, even if I didn’t care about kindness.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t deserve it.”

Later that day, I was sitting at the table mindlessly eating lunch when a pony walked up behind me.

“U-Um, Twilight?” Fluttershy’s voice was still just as shaky as that morning. “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course,” I told her. I patted the table in front of the chair beside me, and she sat down.

“Thank you,” she said. “I just… I’m frightened.”

“That’s completely understandable,” I told her. “I promise, we’re going to do everything in our power to protect you.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

I looked at her curiously. “What, then?”

“Um…” She was looking hard away from me, anxiously tracing her hoof along the table. “Was it only me that got hurt?”

I sighed. “At first,” I told her, “but… No. As the other elements were stolen, the others got hurt too.”

She made a quiet, concerned noise. “Do you think…”

She trailed off, and I placed a hoof gently on her back. “Don’t force yourself.”

She shook her head. “How do you think that worked?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t really understand magic,” she said. “If specific ponies were being targeted, I was wondering if that meant that, um…”

“If we were being targeted as well?” I suggested.

She nodded.

“It’s possible,” I said. “It certainly crossed my mind that we may have been the main targets all along.”

“So, when kindness was taken away… Could it have targeted somepony else instead of me?”

“I…” I hummed in thought. “Maybe, yes. I hadn’t thought of that, but I might be able to make some sort of magical lightning rod for that part of the spell. I’ll look into it, I’m sure any one of us would gladly take your place so you don’t—”

“No!” She shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want anypony getting hurt to protect me.”

“If any of us deserve protection, it’s you,” I said.

“We all deserve protection,” she argued. “That’s why I…” She hummed nervously and started rubbing her leg.

“Fluttershy, what is it?”

She took a long, slow breath. “Would you be able to make them all hit me?”

I jolted in shock. “What? Fluttershy, no, that’s—”

“Please!” She looked desperately into my eyes and grabbed my shoulders. “I can’t bear the thought of any of you going through what you described, it hurts me more than any spell ever could. You have to.”

“Fluttershy, I can’t.” I looked her straight in the eyes, as seriously as I could. “That way you feel about us is how we feel about you, too. None of us could ever do something so cruel to you.”

Her lip trembled. “Twilight, please, I’m so scared for all of you.”

“Hey. Look.” I put my legs on her shoulders, then pulled her into a hug. “We’re going to stop this. After you, it was years before anypony else got hurt. You won’t ever have to worry about them.”

Fluttershy fell against me, and I heard her start to cry. “You have to be safe,” she mumbled. “I have to keep you all safe.”

I squeezed her and slowly stroked her mane. “We’ll be safe.”

She started to quiet down, but she only squeezed me tighter. I could barely hear her when under her breath she mumbled “I just want everypony to be okay.”

4: Mistakes

Tensions were high as the eight of us gathered in the center of Starlight’s village, setting out routes and schedules so that we’d always be keeping an eye on the town. None of us liked the measures we were taking. All the villagers were locked up in their houses, told they couldn’t speak to anypony until further notice. It felt like a prison, made all the worse by the knowledge that, if we failed, this town actually would become a prison for those who lived here.

Still, things began relatively smoothly. We broke into teams of two, one pony who can fly paired with a pony who can’t, and divided up the days into shifts. Our hope was that, in a town this small, two ponies would be enough to keep a watch over everything.

Those not on patrol would rest or try to keep the town’s spirits high. Bring them food, pass messages along, that sort of thing. Whatever it took to fill the time and keep morale from dropping.

We had no idea how long we would have to keep watch, but we were ready.

Starlight and I took the first shift. Things were quiet. We hardly talked, and we’d gotten there so early I suspected most of the villagers had just gone back to bed. Our friends spent the time milling about, mostly chatting amongst themselves, which we did our best to ignore. We had to stay vigilant.

Then the shift was over, and nothing had happened. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as we passed the responsibility off to Fluttershy and Applejack.

Starlight and I walked into her house and slumped down at a table. Pinkie had already made us some hot cocoa, which helped ease my nerves quite a bit. Or, at least, she had made hot cocoa for somepony, and we drank it.

It was a while before I was calmed down enough to talk, but eventually it happened. “How are you holding up?” I asked Starlight.

“I’m alright,” she said. “Worried, of course, but I’m trying to look on the bright side of things.”

“What bright side?”

“Well…” She paused and sipped her cocoa. “Even if we fail, I can still be here for them.”

I pursed my lips. “You’re staying, then?”

“Of course I am. The ponies here are like my family, I could never leave them alone out here.”

I sighed. “I won’t argue, just… Make sure you’re thinking of yourself, too, okay?”

“I will, Twilight,” she said. “Thank you. I, uh… Hm.” She trailed off, a strange look falling over her.

I didn’t have time to question it, though, because a second later a pained shriek rang out through the air.

I blasted up and out the door just in time to see Rainbow Dash catch Fluttershy as she plummeted from the sky. “Bring here over here,” I called out, and Rainbow Dash flew over and carefully laid Fluttershy down in front of me.

She looked rough. She didn’t seem to be conscious, but still her face was contorted in pain. Her breathing was slow and sporadic, as if she were sobbing quietly.

I leaned down and placed a hoof gently on her side as the others quickly raced over. “I don’t understand,” I said. “I knew it would hurt, but it never got this bad. Did… Did she hit her head?”

I looked up at Rainbow Dash, and she shook her head. “She was already out by the time I caught her.”

I took a deep breath. “We… We need to check on the town,” I said. “Starlight, you should—” I turned around, only to find that she was nowhere to be seen. “Starlight?”

I jumped up and ran into the house, but she was gone. Her chair was knocked over, and her cocoa had spilled all over the table. A trail of chocolate-stained hoofsteps seemed to start heading towards the door, but they only lasted a few steps.

I walked up to the table. There was a note, scrawled so hastily I could barely read it.

It’s me. Don’t come looking.

I stared blindly at the paper. The words sat contextless in my mind, refusing to come together. It didn’t make sense. She just left? But why? We need her! The town needs her, somepony is…

It started to hit me. I swallowed hard.

I snatched up the note and sprinted outside. They all spun to look at me as I slammed the door open, and my heart sank at the realization that I had to tell them all the news.

“She’s…” I coughed and choked back the tears threatening to well up. “She’s gone.”

They all swarmed in on me, a cacophony of worried voices asking “how” and “why” and all the other questions I didn’t have answers to. I didn’t know what to say. I could hardly focus on them. My head was so full of racing thoughts, that I failed her again, that she’s even more alone now because of me. It was too much.

I dropped the note on the ground and just laid down.

A quiet fell over the group as they each read the note in turn. One by one their mouths fell open and their breathing quickened. There were gasps, and there were quiet sobs. All I could do was watch as their world fell apart around them because I failed.

Then Twilight’s face got serious. “I’m going after her.”

“Wait, but—” I started, but she was in the air before I could even finish my sentence, and without a second thought I was behind her.

She shot over to the mountains, to the caves where Starlight had hidden when we first stopped her, and went in. I tried to follow her, to take all the same turns, but it got harder and harder by the minute. The tiny moment it took me to figure out where she was going made me just barely slower than her, and turn by turn she started to disappear from my vision.

Then she was gone, and I was stuck at an intersection with no clue which path she had taken.

I decided to call out to her. “Twilight, you’ll never find her in here!”

“I have to try,” I heard her voice come from one of the tunnels, and I ran after it.

It wasn’t long until I hit another fork, though, and she was still long gone. It was clear this wasn’t going to work for long.

I fought to keep from panicking as I thought through my options. I knew she was here, and that she didn’t have any direction either, and I knew who she was. Maybe… Maybe if I just ran randomly, I’d make the same choices as her.

And so I did. I picked a direction on a whim and ran, turning left or right whenever a tunnel caught my eye. By now I couldn’t even hear her hoofsteps’ hollow rhythm echoing around me, but I pushed on. Eventually, I had to find something.

Then, a noise came. From far away down one of the tunnels, I heard Starlight scream with a fury I hadn’t heard in a long time.

“You idiot!”

I ran after her voice. She was distant, but now I had something to follow. Now I just had to hope Twilight would keep her talking.

“Yes, you could have!” Starlight yelled again. Twilight was still too quiet to hear.

More quiet as Twilight talked. I paused at an intersection to wait.

“Look at you! Can’t you tell, or are you too blinded by friendship to realize when something’s wrong?”

“You’re lucky I was!” I grimaced. That was Twilight, yelling back at her. “Otherwise, where would you be?”

“I’d be right here, and I’d be able to trust that they still had you!”

At least now that they were both arguing, I didn’t have to stop and wait. I was closing in fast.

“So I was supposed to just let you martyr yourself? You’re smart enough to know that—”

I turned a final corner and saw them, lit by the gloomy light of Starlight’s horn, but I didn’t see them for long. As soon as Starlight caught sight of me, her horn flashed and a wall of magic grew in front of me, so thick I couldn’t even see through it, and completely cut off any noise they were making.

I ran up and pounded on the wall, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried to hit it with my own magic, but got nowhere. Starlight had always been stronger than me, and I suspected Twilight might be helping her. There was no way I was getting to them now.

But why? Why cut me off? I’ll be fine if I talk to her, just like Twilight. If she let me in, I could help her, I—

A notecard flew through the wall and landed at my hooves. Again, just a few, simple words were scribbled on it.

Twilight wasn’t immune

My mind reeled. This didn’t make any sense. For years we’d gone in and out of quarantine zones without any problem, why would it be different now? Did they make the spell stronger? But why would they do that, the only thing that’s different this time is…

Me.

I must have made them panic. They saw a second Twilight and they ramped things up, made themselves more of a threat in order to thin out our numbers. If Starlight and Twilight hadn’t realized what was happening, it could’ve destroyed everything right here. Even time travel wouldn’t be an option then.

And the only reason any of that happened was that I showed up.

I forced myself not to dwell on it. I shut out my thoughts and moved on autopilot, picking up the note and teleporting myself back to the village. Then I dropped the note on top of the other one and, once again, laid on the ground.

I must have been away longer than I realized, because the scene had changed drastically since I left. None of my friends were around, not even Fluttershy, and the villagers were all huddled together in the distance, quietly talking to each other. I felt for them. I knew how much they cared for Starlight.

Behind me, the door to Starlight’s house opened. I didn’t look, expecting them to just walk past me, but instead the pony decided to lay down beside me. I couldn’t help but look then, and found Fluttershy’s soft smile looking back at me.

It was nice to see her awake, but… Her eyes had changed. I could see the pain hidden in them.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I couldn’t stop it.”

She reached out and put a hoof on my leg. “You did everything you could. We’ll definitely figure something out before the next one.”

I nodded, unsure of what to say to her.

“Is, um, the… other Twilight still talking to Starlight?”

I nodded again.

“Do you think she’ll be able to convince Starlight to come back?”

I let out a long, deep sigh. How was I supposed to tell her this? What words could possibly soothe the blow?

There were none. So, instead, I reached out and slid the note over to her.

She was quiet for a long time. She never looked up at me, just stared at the note with a blank expression. I felt her start to tremble, and after some time she pushed the note away.

“Y-You said…”

“I know,” I told her. “Something changed.”

“But… But how could she just not be immune anymore?”

“Somehow the magic got stronger,” I said. “It wasn’t supposed to knock you out, either. It changed.”

“But…” Fluttershy started rubbing her leg anxiously. “You said she couldn’t.”

“I was wrong.”

Fluttershy’s voice shrank, and her shaking got worse. “You said she couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

Fluttershy shook her head and stood up. “I have to go.” She didn’t wait for a response. All I could do was watch as she flew slowly away from us all.

5: Rainfall

We got back to Ponyville just as the rain started to fall.

The trip had been quiet. There was simply no ignoring the fact that three of our friends weren’t there. Twilight and Starlight were gone. It was a small comfort that at least they had each other, but to us, they were just gone. It wasn’t like before, when I could have gone to visit Starlight at any time. Unless a cure was found, we’d never be able to see them again.

And Fluttershy… I don’t know. She didn’t come back to the village. Our only hope was that she may have come back to Ponyville.

After we got off the train, we all just stood there, not looking at each other. None of us knew what to say. I wanted to apologize for my failure, but… That wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t bring them back.

After a few minutes, Pinkie turned and started to walk away. “I’m gonna go… I don’t know. Somewhere.”

Rainbow Dash trotted after her. “Pinkie, you okay?”

Pinkie didn’t answer her. Rainbow Dash decided to leave with her, and then they were gone.

Rarity, similarly, turned to leave. “I should go check on Sweetie Belle,” she told us. “Come and find me if there’s anything I can do to help, yes?”

We nodded, and she was gone too.

Then it was only me and Applejack, and we met each others’ eyes. The sullen look on her face dug into my soul.

“I’m gonna go look for Fluttershy,” I told her.

She nodded. “I’ll join ya.”

“Thank you.”

My hooves sank into the dirt road when we stepped off the platform. The rain was getting worse already. There was no sign of a blue sky up above, just dark, rolling clouds, and I could hear the wind starting to whip up.

I pulled up a wall of magic as we turned and started walking towards Fluttershy’s cottage. The heavy raindrops slammed against it, leaving the atmosphere in the bubble loud and hollow.

The streets were, unsurprisingly, empty. No fillies playing, no chatting friends. Here and there were hoofprints in the mud, remnants of some pony dashing home to escape the coming downpour, but even those were rare. It had been clear the rains were coming; few ponies were careless enough to get caught out in the storm.

“Is this what it was like?” Applejack asked. “In Ponyville, after…”

“No, not really.” I paused for a moment to think through my words. “Ponyville changed, but not that much. Everypony still had their friends.”

“Even with the lying? How could anypony trust each other?”

“They didn’t,” I said. “To you and I, not being able to trust a friend would be a horrible strain, but none of them cared anymore. Nopony was honest all the time, and nopony expected honesty from others. The whole idea of honesty was just… Gone.”

A sudden gust of wind roared down the street. It stung my eyes and sent a shiver down my spine, and I felt mud splatter up onto my legs.

Applejack gave out a hum. I wasn’t sure if it sounded conflicted, or if she was just scared. “That just don’t make sense to me,” she said. “I’ve seen the damage lies can do.”

“You’ve seen the damage they do when ponies assume you’re telling the truth,” I corrected.

She didn’t respond. For a while, the only sounds were the wind and the squelching of our hooves as we walked through ever muddier roads.

Finally, the cottage came into view. We were both soaked by then, just from the raindrops that managed to sneak around my magic on the wind, and the wind had caked our legs in mud. The gales howled through the trees all around us and rattled their leaves in an ominous warning.

Fluttershy’s door was banging against the side of the house as the wind slammed into it. Mud and water streamed inside.

We rushed in.

“Fluttershy?” I called out as soon as we were inside. Neither of us even noticed the hoofprints we were tracking all over her floor. “Are you here?”

No response.

“I’ll go check her bedroom,” Applejack said. “You look in the kitchen.”

I nodded, and we split up.

The floorboards creaked under my weight as I moved slowly through the house. I couldn’t explain the apprehension I felt, but I knew it was building, making me heavier with every step. Pellets of rain blasted the windows without end.

When I made it to the entryway into the kitchen, I froze and swallowed hard. Something didn’t feel right.

I pushed on. One leg forward, then the next, I made my way into the kitchen.

It was empty.

But it hadn’t been for long.

Fluttershy’s kitchen was a humble affair. Long and narrow, with hardly enough room for a single pony to move through it. At the far end, a table sat in front of the kitchen’s only window, which looked out over the backyard, and the Everfree beyond that.

The window was open. Rain blew in, drenching the table and floor. A chair was knocked over in the middle of the room, and beside it was a shattered mug in a pool of tea.

I walked up and touched the tea. It was still hot.

Something slammed in the front of the house. I jumped and scrambled back into the counter. Instantly, my heart was racing.

Before I could figure out what happened, a bolt of lightning struck the ground outside the window. Instinctively, my head snapped towards it, and I was blasted by the full force of the crack of thunder that came after.

I winced and shut my eyes, but just before they closed, I saw a shadow move in the forest.

Then Applejack ran in, and everything settled back down. I put a hoof to my chest and focused on my breathing, in and out and in and out until my heart slowed down. As I did, she looked over the scene in the kitchen.

“What in the Sam Hill…” Applejack let out a long breath. “Twilight, we gotta go.”

I sighed one final time and nodded as I straightened myself back up. “I think I saw somepony in the forest.”

Applejack grimaced. “What is this fool girl doin, runnin into the Everfree in a thunderstorm? She’s gonna get herself killed.”

“Let’s go.”

I led us around the side of the house until we reached the kitchen window, then looked out and tried to pinpoint where I’d seen the shadow. Fluttershy’s house didn’t have any trails nearby leading into the forest, and I knew Fluttershy usually didn’t use trails anyway, so I figured this was the best way to start.

It took some time, trying to hold the shaky memory in my head and place everything despite the chaos around me, but I managed to narrow it down to a small patch of trees, and we made our way down.

Applejack saw hoofprints as soon as we got close. “At least the rain’s good for one thing.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s just hope we don’t lose it once we get deep enough for the Everfree’s weather to take over.”

Applejack went in first, keeping a close eye on the trail, and I followed close behind. The trees of the Everfree were thick and tightly packed, and the shrubbery frequently stood taller than us. If I fell behind at all, I was liable to lose track of Applejack altogether.

The rain let up a bit as we crossed under the trees, but not nearly enough for us to stay dry. The ground was still muddy, and now that we were off the streets we had to be careful where we stepped, lest we slip and hurt ourselves. A broken leg was the last thing we needed right now.

Unlike the water, the sound of the storm only got worse. Raindrops slammed down on the trees up above, shaking them so vigorously that the rustle of leaves turned into a wall of pure, indistinguishable noise. It completely drowned out any sounds we were making as we trudged through the forest.

I heard Applejack try to say something, but a gust of wind blew through and made the trees far too loud for her words to reach me.

“What?” I yelled out after the wind passed.

“I said,” she called back, “I think the rain’s gettin worse.”

“So?”

“So, if it gets too bad, the wind could start knockin down trees, and we don’t wanna be out here if that happens.”

“I’m not leaving Fluttershy out here.”

“Then we better be quick.”

Applejack redoubled her effort, rushing through the forest despite the terrain, and I could hardly keep up. I considered flying, but a thunderclap from nearby quickly shot that idea down.

Luckily, before she could outpace me, the sound of the rainfall started to change again, and soon we were standing at the edge of a massive clearing.

We stopped in place and stared. It was clear now where the trail led. The prints were plain as day in the open field, and even if they weren’t, there was only one thing in this clearing.

The Castle of the Two Sisters.

Applejack made a break for it. I don’t know if she was worried or just wanted to get out of the rain, but she was sprinting towards the castle, and I scrambled to follow and ran after her. I definitely wasn’t going to fly out in the open.

I pushed myself, running as fast as I could, but Applejack started pulling ahead of me.

I doubled down, trying to force myself to move faster, but the ground pushed back. I lost traction on the mud, and my legs fell out from under me.

I tumbled across the field for quite a ways, until eventually I slid to a stop in a pit of mud.

Applejack didn’t notice. There was too much noise, too much chaos, and she was only thinking about Fluttershy.

I pushed myself up as quickly as I could, but with all the mud on me it was even harder to move now. I tried to run after her, but it was no use. I could only watch helplessly as Applejack got further and further away from me.

I did make it to the castle eventually, but Applejack was nowhere to be seen. A few muddy hoofprints seemed to go towards one hallway, but they petered out only a few steps in. As soon as I hit a fork in the hallway, I was at a loss.

There was nothing I could do about it now. I was alone.

6: Lightning

A chill went through my body as I wandered the cold stone ruins. The mud splattered all over my body was starting to dry, but my fur was still drenched. It left me feeling stiff and disconnected from the world around me.

The halls were dark and gloomy. The only light came from torches that sporadically lined the walls, flames still flickering after all these years. They gave off decent enough light, but very few of them were still lit. None of this should have been a problem for me, but after the stress, the rain, the fall, I was so exhausted and out of it that I completely forgot about my magic.

“Applejack?” I called out, hoping fruitlessly to be heard. “Fluttershy?”

My words disappeared into the abyss of the ruins, never to be heard again.

I wasn’t moving especially quickly now. I was too tired, and it was too dark. The light around me was getting dim as a torch slowly disappeared behind me.

I pushed open a door on a whim. Darkness. All that met me was a wall of black, and the torchlight was so thin now that it couldn’t even get past the threshold.

I left the door open and moved on.

Not long after that the light stopped reaching me altogether, and I was walking into a world of nothing. I looked back and could still see the tiny dot of fire, flickering with all its might, but it looked to be worlds away. That light wasn’t a part of my world anymore.

I turned away and kept walking into the inky blackness. All that was left to remind me that I was still in the castle was the hollow clacks of my hooves on stone.

Darkness stopped bothering me a long time ago. It had to, once I lived in a world of it.

I often wondered if, wherever they went, the ponies of Cloudsdale lived under an eternal day. The idea seemed worse than anything night could bring, but then, they had almost all of Equestria’s weather-making ponies with them. They could no doubt bring in their own darkness.

There are still things I don’t understand. Things had escalated so quickly, but after the night started it all seemed to just stop. We spent years under the moon, living in constant fear of when the next blow might come.

Was that their goal, all along? To turn Equestria into a world ruled by fear? If so, there was no doubt they had already won.

Maybe there was more, though. Maybe they needed all of Equestria to be broken by their spell, and when Cloudsdale left they had to give chase to finish the job there. Is that why Rainbow Dash never came back?

Or… I didn’t stay long enough to see the aftermath of Pinkie being hit. Could she have turned back up? Could she—

I ran into a wall.

I rubbed my sore nose as my thoughts fell apart around me. I put out my hoof and felt the unforgiving stone of the hallway’s end. Then I looked around, hoping to be able to find my bearings.

There was a second light, now, flickering off in the distance to my left. I turned and started for it.

I started to wonder how long I would be here, wandering this labyrinth in search of my friends, when a shadow passed over the light. I blinked, not trusting my eyes, but there was no mistaking it. Somepony was there.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Wait up!”

I heard the sound of panicked shuffling, and then the light went out. Instantly, I was drowned in immutable darkness.

I started to run towards where I felt the light had been.

Ahead of me, a door slammed shut. I turned towards the noise and sprinted.

It wasn’t long before I met another wall. Luckily, I wasn’t running straight at it this time, but the sudden collision still knocked me off my hooves and sent me tumbling to the ground.

I rolled down the hallway, feeling the world spin around me despite not being able to see anything. When my body finally stopped, my head kept swimming, and I stumbled as I tried to push myself to my hooves.

I made it upright after a couple tries and felt around, trying to find a door or even just a wall, but I found nothing. I spun my head around and strained my eyes, but again, nothing. I had no clue where I was.

“Guys? Hello?” I noticed my voice was starting to shake.

No response.

I waited, trying to keep up hope, until my voice echoed back to me. It rang out around me, and it felt like the castle was mocking me.

Then I heard Fluttershy scream.

I ran in the direction the noise came from. I knew I’d probably end up on the ground again, but still, I ran. The only thing on my mind, from the second I heard her, was finding Fluttershy.

I nearly tripped over myself when Applejack turned the corner ahead of me, carrying a small lantern to light her way. I skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Hey,” Applejack said. She sounded strangely calm. “She’s over here.”

Applejack gestured behind herself, then started to lead me down the hallway. In the faint light of her lantern, I could see an open door a ways down.

When we reached it, she stood aside and let me go in first.

It was the library, barely lit by flickering candles on a few of the tables. In the center, hidden from the light by stacks of books, Fluttershy sat at a table with her head in her hooves.

I walked over and quietly put a hoof on her shoulder. “Fluttershy?”

She jumped when I touched her, but calmed down when she saw my face. “Twilight… I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I told her. “I’m just glad to see you’re safe.”

She nodded and looked at the table.

“Are you okay? I heard you scream.”

“Oh, um… Applejack scared me,” she said.

“That’s it?”

“Mm-hm.”

I took a seat next to her and rubbed her back. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m…” She took a deep breath. “I’m trying to find a way to stop this.”

I frowned. “That’s not something you need to do alone.”

“I know,” she said. “I just… I needed some time.”

I hummed in understanding and gave her a hug.

“What happened at your house? It was a mess.”

“I heard my door open,” Fluttershy said, “and I… Panicked. I thought it was the pony who hurt Starlight, I thought they were coming for me, coming to…” She trailed off.

“Did you see them?”

She shook her head. I tried to hide my disappointment, but I had no idea if it worked.

“How are you feeling?”

She turned her head away from me. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes I am,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I worry about all my friends,” I told her.

“Well then go worry about them,” she replied. There was an edge of frustration creeping into her voice.

I sighed, and sat quietly for a moment as I thought. As I did I scanned the books she’d grabbed. Books on magic, on infections, books I’d read a hundred times. I’d gone through this library more times than I could count, I knew everything she had—

I stopped as my eyes landed on a book I didn’t recognize. I grabbed it from the stack and pulled it towards me.

“What’s this?”

“Hm?” She looked over at it. “Oh, it’s just a storybook from when I was young.”

I looked it over curiously. There was no title, just a picture of a frowning pony and the author’s name. Silver Steed.

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t think it’s called anything,” Fluttershy said.

“Strange.” I turned it over, but the back cover was just a picture of that same pony, except now he was smiling. It made me uneasy, but I couldn’t quite place why. “I’ve never heard of the author,” I said.

“He doesn’t write a lot,” Fluttershy said, “and his books are hard to find.”

“Well, with no title, I certainly don’t know how I’d find this book. Did you find it here?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I recognized it, so I pulled it out.”

“Odd.” I hummed in thought. I knew for a fact that this book hadn’t been in this library the first time I checked here after the first incident. “Well, if you found it here, I guess nopony will object if I take it home.”

Fluttershy nodded without hesitation. I wasn’t sure why exactly I watched her, why I thought she might object, but she didn’t.

“Do you think you’ll be ready to go home once the rain ends?” I asked her.

She nodded. “I think so.”

I squeezed her again, and she leaned against me weakly.

The rain striking the courtyard had lessened to a drizzle, but the sound of the droplets hitting the awning above me still flooded my ears. Every dull thump felt like another blow as the world slowly whittled away at what little hope I still had.

Applejack and Fluttershy were still inside. I hadn’t meant to go ahead, but at some point they fell behind, and by the time I got out of my head for long enough to notice it was far too late to do anything about it.

So I was just waiting here, alone again, storybook tucked under my wing, watching the rain in silence.

A cricket leapt from the nearby grass and landed at my hooves. No doubt it was seeking refuge from the rain.

I must have shifted my weight to look down at it, though, because it leapt straight back out into the deluge and away from me. I watched it absentmindedly as it skipped through the mud, landing on leaves and grass where it could, and made the long trek to the other side of the courtyard, where it found another shelter to hide in.

I heard hoofsteps behind me. I turned around, and Applejack nodded towards me. She was carrying Fluttershy, who had fallen asleep on her back.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. “Just tuckered out is all. We’d best be gettin her to bed.”

I nodded, and we started to make our way home. The wind had mostly died down, so I was able to keep the rain at bay with my magic, and once we were in the forest not even that was necessary.

I could still hear the booming thunder and howling wind off in the distance. The clouds must still have been covering the sun, too, because the forest was dark enough that I had to light our way.

We took it slow. I led the way, pushing through bushes and shrubs, then holding them aside so Applejack could get through with Fluttershy. Our hoofprints from the trek here had long since been washed away, so we had to blindly guess at the direction to Fluttershy’s cottage. My only comfort was the thought that, if we went the wrong way, Applejack would notice. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if she was thinking the same about me.

It felt like an eternity of silence, but when I finally decided to speak the words started to just fall out of me. “So what happened down there?”

“Heck if I know,” Applejack said. “I hardly got there thirty seconds before you did.”

“Really? I was calling out for you, though, why didn’t you say anything if you were that close?”

“I didn’t hear nothin,” she replied. “Maybe we went different ways.”

“I guess so…” I hummed in thought. “So, what? You just walked into the library and found her there?”

“Well, the scream gave me a pretty good idea of where she might be.”

“What?” I stopped walking and looked at her blankly. “I don’t understand.”

She gave me a funny look. “I was lookin around and heard her scream, so I ran that way. Ain’t that how you found us?”

“Yeah, but…” I hesitated for a moment. “Fluttershy said she screamed because you scared her.”

“Huh.” Applejack looked back at Fluttershy, then shook her head. “We can figure this out back home. She was probably just not thinkin straight.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I lied.

We spent a couple of hours just walking through the forest in silence after that. It didn’t feel right, sharing my thoughts on these things with the others. By the end of things before, I’d been researching things alone for years. Sure, there were other ponies scattered about who I’d go to with questions or share some notes with, but I didn’t tell them what I was thinking. They wouldn’t have had all the context, they would’ve misunderstood. I didn’t want to be sent down the wrong track because I took advice from somepony who was missing information.

I didn’t know what I could even tell Applejack, anyway. My thoughts as we fought through the Everfree were hardly coherent. I had nothing past half-baked ideas and unfounded hunches. I couldn’t have Applejack validate my weird ideas about strange books and mysterious shadows, that wouldn’t help any of us. I had to keep those things to myself until I was more sure of them.

I still trusted Applejack. Of course I did. I just had to be careful.

Finally, once we were sufficiently covered in scrapes and rashes, the trees let up and we found ourselves outside the Everfree. A bolt of lightning cracked down onto the horizon as we emerged, and the loud whistle of the wind confirmed what I was worried of. It seemed we’d only been in the eye of the storm. The worst was yet to come.

7: Torrent

We hadn’t managed to find our way straight back to Fluttershy’s cottage, but we were at least at the edge of Ponyville. The rain poured from the rooftops and into the street in a thousand little waterfalls, and together they turned the sides of the roads into rivers. Between the torrents of water that framed the streets, a thin layer of mud glowed with an iridescent sheen.

The streets were, understandably, empty.

Applejack caught my eye and started to talk. “What do we d—”

The rest of her sentence was rendered inaudible as the wind picked up. A screaming howl seemed to rend the air, and the trees behind us creaked with such fervor that I started to worry about one falling on us.

I put a hoof to my ear. “What?” I had to yell, and even then I had trouble hearing myself over the wind.

“I said, what do we do now?” Applejack yelled back. “I don’t think she should be alone.”

Lightning flashed somewhere over the Everfree, close enough that the boom had no delay at all, and a moment later I heard the distinct sound of a massive tree toppling over.

I nodded in agreement. “None of us should be. We should round up the others and go back to the castle to wait out the storm.”

“I can go gather ‘em up,” Applejack said. She gestured back at Fluttershy. “You take her back with you. You can at least try to keep her dry.”

I nodded and floated Fluttershy over onto my back. She was a lot lighter than I expected her to be, and she didn’t stir at all as she was moved. I was starting to really worry, and shifted the magic barrier I’d been using to keep us dry so that it surrounded her, even though doing so got me hit with a wall of water that plastered my mane to my head and obscured my vision. Without thinking, I reached up to brush the locks away from my face and wound up drawing a line on my forehead in mud.

I nodded to Applejack.

She nodded back.

Then we broke apart. Neither of us wanted to be out in the storm any longer than necessary. Applejack sprinted in the direction of the Carousel Boutique, running far faster than I would have dared in the mud, and disappeared quickly into the depths of Ponyville.

I started moving. Trotting briskly. The storm was only going to get worse around me as I walked, I knew as much, but with Fluttershy on my back I couldn’t go very fast. I couldn’t risk slipping in the mud and dropping her to the ground. I couldn’t be that much of a failure.

A bolt of lightning struck the top of the town hall and made me jump. I couldn’t believe Fluttershy wasn’t woken up by the booming thunder all around. Was she okay?

No, of course she wasn’t. I knew what Fluttershy was like before I came back. Distant. Withdrawn. Pain in everything she did. And I’d gone and made it even worse.

Of course she wasn’t okay.

Plus, now there was whatever had happened in the castle. Whatever had made Fluttershy scream. Did whoever is causing this go after her? Did they threaten her to stay quiet, or was she trying, somehow, to protect us? There were too many questions. Too many variables.

Too much rain.

I redoubled my pace. I couldn’t think straight in the storm. Even still, it took me several minutes to reach the heavy crystal doors that led into my home.

I pushed them open. Practically ran inside. Made no attempt to stop them from slamming shut after I let go. The sudden hushing of the outside world, which turned the howling wind and pounding rain into no more than a pervasive white noise, was the most relief I’d felt in years.

I stood there a moment, dripping muddy water onto the clean floors, and took a deep breath. I let go of the magic barrier I’d been keeping over Fluttershy, and let the breath out. A shiver ran down my spine.

Plodding steps started approaching from somewhere deeper in the castle. I braced myself.

Spike walked around the corner, holding a mug of cocoa that he just about dropped when he saw me and Fluttershy. His eyes went wide. “Holy smokes, Twilight, you look awful.”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted. Now that he’d broken the stillness, my legs started moving. I stepped to the side of the hallway and dropped the book on a little shelf that held a flower pot before continuing on my way towards him.

“Where’s, uh…” He clearly didn’t want to ask the question I knew he was asking.

I stopped in front of him and looked down into his eyes. I was trying to give him a caring look, but I think I came off as cold more than anything else.

“I’m sorry, Spike. I failed. Twilight and Starlight aren’t coming back.”

He staggered back. Something caught in his throat. “B-But—”

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what else I could say to him.

I kept walking.

He followed along, as I knew he would. The quiet plods of his steps came rapidly to keep up with my long, squelching strides. I was tracking mud all through the house. I didn’t care.

“Twilight was supposed to be immune.”

I didn’t know why I said that. Was I trying to offer some excuse for my failure? Some justification for taking away his closest friend? Or did I just want him to understand? I told myself it was the latter, but I didn’t believe it.

“But she wasn’t?”

I shook my head.

“And Starlight?”

I nodded.

He stayed silent after that, lost in his thoughts. I let him. I didn’t know how to talk to Spike anymore.

When I first heard Ponyville had been hit, so long ago now, Spike was who I went to first. I had to know if he’d been infected already. I didn’t even know if he could be infected.

He hadn’t been. He’d been holed up in the library reading comics all day. My relief was palpable, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Ponyville was going to be quarantined. It didn’t matter who was and wasn’t infected. It was Honesty. Somepony could just lie about not having been affected.

We couldn’t take chances. Anypony in town that day never left again.

I didn’t want that to happen to Spike. It was selfish of me, it was wrong, I knew I shouldn’t play favorites, but I had to do something.

So, I got him out.

He didn’t really understand. “Twilight, why can’t I stay?” “Twilight, we don’t even know if I’m in danger.” “Twilight, can’t I at least go stay in Canterlot?” “Twilight—”

I blinked. My thoughts dissolved away as I was snapped back to reality.

“Twilight?” Spike was trying to get my attention. “Are you okay? You stopped walking.”

I glanced around. I had stopped, but not because I was distracted. I pushed open the door to Twilight’s bedroom, my bedroom, and stepped inside. Spike followed.

Gently, I picked up Fluttershy with my magic and floated her over to the bed. She was damp and muddy, but I didn’t care. I pulled back the covers and put her under them, trying to make her as comfortable as possible.

“Spike, can you keep an eye on her? I need a shower.”

Spike nodded. “Yeah, of course. Should I do anything if she wakes up?”

“Tell her everypony’s coming over to wait out the storm,” I told him, “and to make herself at home. Show her to a shower if she wants. Let her know where the clean sheets are.” I paused and thought for a moment. “Just try to make her comfortable. She’s not in a good place.”

“Got it,” Spike said, and he walked over and sat heavily in a desk chair. I nodded to him and walked towards Twilight’s bathroom.

I shut the door a bit too hard and walked over to the tub, doing everything in my power to avoid looking at my reflection on the way. Turned on the hot water, let it get steamy, and stepped in.

After the deluge I’d just escaped, you wouldn’t think a shower would be the biggest relief, but it was. I finally let my guard down, let myself notice my exhaustion and anxiety, and the sat down in the tub when the overwhelming sensations made my legs weak.

The water streamed through my mane and down my back in thick rivulets. I tilted my head down and closed my eyes to let it wash over me. It was too hot, felt every second like it was searing away a bit, but I didn’t turn it down. The twinge of pain helped to clear my head so I could work through the day’s thoughts.

I worked backward. “Twilight,” Spike’s voice continued in my head, “will I ever see you again?”

Of course, I had told him. Of course, I had believed. The Dragonlands were far away, sure, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t visit.

Then word got out about the situation in Equestria. The pandemic. The end of the world. And that was it. The Dragonlands closed their borders, and I never saw him again. He might’ve been a fully-grown dragon by the time I came back, and I had no idea. I’d missed it all.

I let out a sigh and laid down, letting the stream of water fall onto my back. Water still rolled down my cheeks. I pretended it was from my soggy mane.

Back. Back to the castle. Back to Fluttershy.

Could it have been her nerves? She’d been through so much, but she was hardly hysterical. The rest of the conversation was fine, it was just that single discrepancy. Somepony wasn’t telling the truth, and it couldn’t be—

Could it?

She’d been so calm. She hadn’t heard my calls. She had a lantern, something the shadow pony had also seemed to be carrying. She’d been alone with Fluttershy when she passed out. Maybe—

It couldn’t be. She was a terrible liar. And she was our friend.

And the cottage. I saw the shadow pony in the woods. That couldn’t have been Applejack.

The water was starting to burn the part of my back it was hitting. I sighed heavily and pushed myself up so it hit my chest instead.

Fluttershy…

What did you see?

9: Downpour

“Augh!” Rainbow Dash suddenly yelled out. “I’m sick of waiting, I’m going after her.” She turned and stomped towards the door.

“Wait,” I said, “take somepony with you.”

“Whatever,” Rainbow Dash replied without turning back. She pushed the door open. “One of you can come with me if you want, but I’m going.”

I glanced around the room at the worried faces of my friends. I couldn’t ask them to go. Not with Applejack missing. They were safer together.

“I’ll go,” I said, standing up and making my way to the door. Rainbow Dash had already left, and I stepped out quickly after her.

As the door shut behind me, I heard Fluttershy squeak “Be careful.”

“Rainbow Dash!” I trotted quickly down the hall to catch up to her. “I’m coming with you.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She gave me a serious look. She was clearly trying to hide her nerves.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said, unhelpfully. “She’s tough.”

“Yeah. Tough enough to be worried about anything that can keep her away.”

“Mm…” I wasn’t sure what else I could say to that, so I changed the subject. “How are you holding up?”

Rainbow Dash quickened her pace beside me. “How do you think? Twilight’s gone, Starlight’s gone, now Applejack might be gone, too. This sucks.”

“We’ll get them back.”

“How?” She snapped at me. “You couldn’t do anything about it last time.”

“I didn’t know about the book last time,” I told her. “If I can study the book, and if it is the source of this, I should be able to reverse it.”

“The book’s gone.”

“We’ll get it back.”

“Ugh.” Rainbow Dash stopped talking, sped up again. She was going fast enough that I had to focus on keeping up, so I couldn’t talk either.

The castle only had so many tubs, and only one in a bathroom that wasn’t attached to a bedroom, so that’s where we went. Rainbow Dash looked ready to just walk straight in, but I stepped in front of her and knocked first.

We waited.

No response.

Rainbow Dash groaned, pushed past me, and opened the door.

Silence for a moment. Then Rainbow Dash came back out.

“She’s not there.”

I frowned. “We would’ve seen her if she was going back. Where else could she be?”

“If she went in some random room to take a nap I’m gonna kill her,” Rainbow Dash grumbled.

“That’s not helpful,” I said.

“I don’t care,” she replied.

“Should we go back and tell the others? Or—”

“I’m gonna keep looking. You can do what you want.”

I sighed. “We really should stay together.”

“Then c’mon.”

Rainbow Dash started moving through the halls, and I followed her. She was quick, methodical, only stopping long enough to check each room as we passed them by before moving on to the next. Following behind her, I started to feel like I wasn’t doing enough to help, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.

Lightning flashed outside and lit the hallway we were in for a split second. Shadows were plastered against the wall like stains, dripping together and distorting in the flash of light. The raindrops that coated the windows cast shimmering waves across the crystals that glittered with life.

And then it was dark again. Thunder boomed through us as our eyes adjusted to the gloom once more.

We kept moving past the dusty, unused rooms. We kept finding nothing. A bedroom, nothing. A dining room, nothing. A closet, nothing. Then another hallway and the whole process started over.

I could tell Rainbow Dash was getting more and more frustrated with every door, but I had no idea what to do about it.

Eventually, it boiled over. She slammed a door shut and kicked the wall pointlessly. “Where the heck is she?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I said nothing.

“We’re getting nowhere,” she said. “We need a new plan.”

“I don’t know how else we could find Applejack.”

“Applejack can take care of herself. We should be going after the bad guy, that way we can—”

Lightning flashed again, and she froze. Her eyes went wide, and she started to stare straight through me.

“Rainbow Dash?”

Her voice cracked as she spoke up. “Something’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” Suddenly, I felt a pit open up in my stomach. “Is it… You know, what I talked about before? Losing part of yourself?”

She looked around for a moment, as if trying to find something, then shook her head.

“What is it, then?”

“I…” She looked out the window, then back to me. “Twilight, why am I here?”

I tilted my head. “What?”

“I could be home in bed right now,” she said. “Why’d I come here?”

“We’re in danger,” I told her, “we all need to—”

“I’m not in danger.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I’m not in danger,” she repeated. “At least, I wasn’t before I came here. Why’d I come here? It was such a dumb idea.”

I stepped closer to her and leaned to the side as if I’d see something wrong or out of place. “You came for us, right? Your friends?”

“I could’ve helped without being here. Heck, I could probably find a way to help a lot more if I just went off on my own.”

“But we’d worry about you,” I told her. “We want you here, Rainbow Dash, with us.”

She looked straight into my eyes for a long, dreadfully quiet moment. Thunder boomed in the distance and echoed off the landscape around us in what seemed like an endless reverberation.

“So what?”

The reply jolted me. It was the last thing I could’ve expected her to say. “W-What?”

“If I’d be more useful somewhere else, why should I care that you want me here?”

“Because…” My words stuck in my throat. “Because we’re your friends, Rainbow Dash.”

“Sure. And I should help my friends.” She nodded. “And I can do that best by not being here. So why am I here?”

“Rainbow Dash, you’re acting strange,” I said. “This isn’t like you.”

“I said something’s wrong.”

“But you’re acting like—”

“Like my element’s gone.” She said it nonchalantly like it was something that happened every day. Like she’d forgotten her lunch. Or tripped over a rock. Like it was some mild, meaningless inconvenience.

I stepped closer and, for some reason, put my hoof on her chest. I don’t know what I expected. I don’t know if I expected anything. All I felt was her slow breathing and calm, steady heartbeat.

“This isn’t right,” I said, staring at my hoof pressed into her fur. “This isn’t what happened before.”

“Do you still feel it?” She asked. “Like, in you?”

I nodded. “It… Doesn’t seem to be contagious. Not to me, at least.”

“What’s that mean?”

I dropped my hoof back to the floor, still staring at it. “I don’t know.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, I don’t really wanna keep looking for Applejack. Do you think I should—”

“I don’t know.” I turned away and shut my eyes tight. “Do you really think I’m qualified to make any decisions at this point?”

“You’re more qualified than me, at least,” she said. “You’re still the smartest pony here.”

“Rainbow Dash, I’ve failed at every turn,” I said. “I can’t tell you what to do anymore.”

“Well… Alright,” she said. “I guess I’m gonna go… Look for the bad guy, then. I’ll be around the castle somewhere if you need me.”

I nodded. By the time I opened my eyes back up, she was gone.

Lightning flashed again. The shapes of clouds danced in the sky before being torn apart by the thunder.

I turned around and walked back to the conference room with my head hung low.

I stood outside the room for a while before going in. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Not only had I not found Applejack, but now Rainbow Dash was gone, too. They’d taken my word about Starlight and Twilight, but how many ponies do I have to lose before they start to suspect me? It was hard to make myself believe this wouldn’t be the last straw.

Still, standing there wouldn’t make it go away. I inhaled sharply, braced myself, and pushed the door open.

They were gone.

I let out my breath in disbelief, but not at their absence. My shock was because of the pony who was there.

Sitting at the table, calmly flipping through a book, was Applejack.

She looked up when she heard me enter and waved. “Howdy, Twilight.”

“Um…” I walked in slowly and looked around. “Where is everypony?”

Applejack shrugged. “Room was empty when I got here.”

“When did you get back?”

“Uhh, ten minutes or so ago? I walked in and it was just empty. So, I figured I’d use the time to get a head start on this thing.” She held up the book to me. A single pony adorned both covers, frowning on the front and smiling in the back. It was the book I’d brought back from the castle.

I trotted over to her. “Where did you get that?”

“It was just on the table.”

“Wh—” I shook my head and sat down next to her. “That makes no sense. Why would they just give it to us?”

“Who?”

“Whoever’s doing all this,” I said. “I was sure the book must’ve been how they were doing it. Can I see the book?”

She slid it over to me and I flipped through the pages without reading them. Just doing that, I could feel that the book was magical, but it felt… Empty. Used-up. Could it only be used so many times?

Then I got to the end and found that a huge chunk of the book had been torn out. “They took enough to keep the magic and gave us the scraps,” I thought out loud. “I don’t get it.”

Applejack shrugged. “I ain’t the thinker here.”

I tapped the cover of the book. “Did it say anything useful?”

“Probably. The whole thing’s pretty close to what you talked about. Some kinda sadness plague.”

“Hmm.” I flipped it open and started reading.

As she said, it seemed to be about a young pony who found a way to spread sadness to other ponies. The book was about his attempts to learn how to use the power to his advantage, at least as far as I was able to read.

It was mostly unhelpful, but there was one bit that stuck out. In the book, some ponies were immune to the contagion. They were happy no matter how many sad ponies they talked to. This frustrated the young pony, and through a lot of experimentation he found out that if he targeted those immune ponies, he could make them sad, but then…

That’s where the pages stop. It was clear something was different with them, but what? There was no way to know.

I slid the book back over to Applejack and looked her over. “Do you think they’re just taunting us?”

“Could be. Could be they just want us to understand.”

I looked closely at her. “How did you get back to this room?” I finally asked. “Rainbow Dash and I should have passed by you.”

She looked into my eyes. “I must’ve gone a different way.”

“Mm…” I looked hard at her, tried to discern any irregularities in her movements. In the end, I decided to just ask outright.

“Applejack?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you been lying to me?”

“Yeah.”

10: Drenched

I clutched the back of my head with shaky hooves. I was at once tense, curled up, and filled with immense energy, a need to do something, anything. It didn’t make any sense. She was our friend! How could she do this to us?

My lips trembling, I finally spoke up. “Why?” I could hardly get the word out, and my voice was hardly more than a croaking whisper.

“I had my reasons.”

Reasons. She had reasons. For betraying our trust, for making us all worry, for making an already stressful time that much worse. It was all perfectly reasonable. If I could just understand her reasons…

“Was it you?” I had to ask, even if I knew she wouldn’t tell me. “Have you been doing this to us?”

“Nope.”

“Are you working with them?”

“Nah.”

“Do you know who—”

“No, Twilight. I ain’t got anything to tell you.”

I got up from my chair abruptly and walked a few paces away from her. “Surely you can understand why this hurts.”

“Sure. I wouldn’t have lied if it wasn’t important.”

“How am I supposed to believe that?” I looked back at her over my shoulder. My eyes were getting damp.

“Do you really think I’d lie without a good reason to?”

“I didn’t think you’d lie at all!” I spun around and held out a hoof in a desperate plea for understanding.

“Well, you were wrong.”

“How can you be so calm?” I swiped a hoof through the air. I felt like I was going to explode, my body was so filled with tension. So much anxiety without an outlet. I wanted to run, to hit something, to do anything to get the energy out, but I couldn’t. I had to deal with this. “Your element is gone, can’t you see how bad that is?”

“Sure, it sucks,” Applejack said, “but I’ve made peace with it. I had to.”

“Why? What is so important that you’d give up your element and start lying to us all about it?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Augh!” I turned away from her and stomped a hoof on the ground. “You don’t know what you’re messing around with here! Magical artifacts like that are dangerous.”

“I’m not messin with anything,” Applejack said. “I wouldn’t mess with this stuff.”

“Then who is?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Tell me,” I snapped. I twisted and stomped a few steps closer to her.

She stared me dead in the eyes. “I can’t.”

I broke. With a shrill, frustrated scream I shut my eyes and blasted a ray of magic towards Applejack.

It took her by surprise and knocked her out of her chair. The strands of magic wrapped around her legs to hold her tight and pulled her up against the wall so she couldn’t move.

Tears fell to the floor as I moved closer. “Tell me!”

“I. Can’t.”

“Augh!” I couldn’t take any more. I stomped out of the room, and only after I slammed the door shut did I let go of my hold on Applejack so she would fall to the floor. As I walked away, not knowing where I was going, the logical part of me screamed to go back, that I couldn’t let her keep doing whatever she wanted, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

Just one more failure to throw on the pile.

Starlight, Twilight, now Rainbow Dash and Applejack. It was all falling apart. I’d completely failed at what I’d come back to do. What now? I could try and stop it from going any further, but what hope did I have in doing that? Whoever was doing this was outsmarting me at every turn. They were taunting me by giving me the book. I was entirely outmatched.

Just as the thought of giving up crossed my mind, I heard the sound of pages rustling.

I snapped my head that way, but all that was left was the sound of hooves racing away and a single sheet of paper floating gently to the ground. I went and picked it up; A page from the book.

That was them.

I ran after them. There wouldn’t be another chance like this.

I locked my hearing onto the sound of their hooves, listened carefully as they twisted and turned through hallways and followed their every move. I knew the layout of this castle perfectly; this wasn’t like the caves, or the castle. There was no chance I’d get lost in here.

Their steps grew louder as I closed in.

Rooms flew by. Rain pounded outside. Our hoofsteps grew together into a frantic cacophony, one chasing, one being chased, one predator, one prey.

Was I the predator here? Or was I a foolish prey, sprinting straight into the maws of my demise?

It didn’t matter. I had to keep going either way.

I pushed myself to run even faster. They heard me catching up and did the same, but I was still catching up fast. It was only a matter of time until—

A door swung open somewhere, and a moment later the steps stopped.

I turned into the hallway I’d last heard them in and glanced around. Doors on either side shut neatly, leading to bedrooms or closets or offices. There was nothing special about this part of the castle.

One of the doors was open, though. I sprinted towards it and went inside.

It was one of the spare bedrooms, kept neat and tidy and decorated neutrally. The lamp on the end table was switched off, and the covers on the bed were undisturbed.

The curtains, though, were billowing into the room wildly, and heavy drops of rain were splattering on the floor and quickly forming a puddle.

I walked over to the open window and looked outside, ignoring the cold rain that started to land on my legs. It was terribly dark out; Night must have fallen behind the clouds. Off in the distance Ponyville shimmered like a mirage, streetlights and houselights reflecting off of slick, muddy roads. The sky was lit up every few seconds by a new burst of lightning somewhere off in the distance, but the sound of the thunder was almost entirely covered by the pelleting the castle was taking from the rain.

There was nothing to be seen. I watched for a long time, staring at a new section of grass every time lightning gave me a second of sight, but I saw no movement. I strained my eyes, looking for hoofprints, but the ground was too far away to make anything out.

It was no use. They’d gotten away again.

I shut the window too hard, making a dull thunk echo through the room, and walked back into the hall. A trail of water followed me, left by my dripping legs.

Now what?

I decided I should try and find the others. To see if they’d been affected, and…

I hated to suspect my friends, but I had to know, and if I acted fast I might be able to catch whoever was behind this before they had a chance to dry off.

I moved trancelike through the halls. I wasn’t going slowly, but I was hardly running. Everything was starting to take its toll on me, and I was exhausted.

Something told me I needed to finish this quickly.

A tremendous boom suddenly shot through the entire castle. I jumped back, crouched into a defensive position before I realized what had happened. Lightning must have hit the castle; that was the thunder.

Somepony had yelped in shock at the scare, though. I made my way towards where I thought I’d heard them. The trail led me to the kitchen. The lights were on, and there were dirty dishes in the sink. Spike sat on a counter, kicking his legs as Rarity worked away on a sandwich.

Spike saw me walk in and waved. “Twilight! Did Applejack send you?”

“What?” I tilted my head.

“Applejack said she’d tell you and Rainbow Dash where to find us.”

“Applejack was lying, darling,” Rarity said without looking up. She sounded nonchalant, almost… Bored.

“What?” Spike looked shocked. “Applejack doesn’t lie!”

“Mm,” was Rarity’s only response.

I frowned. This didn’t seem promising.

Trying to be as patient as I could, I moved over to the little table Rarity was seated at and sat across from her. “Rarity…” I sighed. “Have you lost your element?”

Rarity set her food down on a plate and looked up into my eyes. “Yes, I have. I assume you have spoken to Applejack, then?”

I nodded. “Rainbow Dash, too.”

She clicked her tongue and shook her head. “What a dreadful state we’re in.”

“Are you… Okay?” I asked her.

“No, I am not okay,” she said pointedly. “It feels like somepony’s gone into my chest and mussed up the place. There is no ‘okay’ after that.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“I don’t need apologies.”

I let out a tiny whine. “Alright, well… I’m gonna do everything I can to make you feel better. First, though, do you know—”

“Library.”

I blinked. “O-Oh. Okay. And, um… Did you see who did this?”

She scoffed. “If I’d seen that, I’d have tracked you down.”

“Alright.” I nodded. “Well, thank you anyway, and um… I’ll be back, okay?”

“Mm.”

I got up quietly and looked at Spike. “Look after her, alright?”

He nodded. “Yeah, of course.”

“I don’t need it,” Rarity grumbled as she lifted her sandwich back up and went back to work. “Spike shouldn’t waste his time on me.”

“Well, too bad,” Spike said, “cuz I’m not leaving.”

Rarity nodded. “I thought as much.”

Without anything more to say, I quietly turned and made my way in the direction of the library. Towards my final stop.

It was time for this to end.

11: Flood

The halls seemed to grow colder as I approached the library. The air got thick around me and made it harder and harder to walk. My hooves started to drag on the floor, and all the while all I could hear was the incessant rain.

The noise pounded its way into my head. The low, hollow pops of raindrops hitting the windows, plus the sharper smacks as they landed against the crystal walls, and every so often the cannon-boom of thunder. They joined together in chorus, held together by the howling wind, and set a siege upon my psyche.

What did I hope to do? I’d lost. None of us were safe. I clearly wasn’t capable of stopping whoever was doing this. It was only a matter of time until all the elements were gone, and then what?

What was their endgame?

This wasn’t the world of fear I came from. This was concentrated. Were they trying to get us out of their way? Or was there some other motivation at play? Had everything last time just been unfortunate casualties? That didn’t make sense to me.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of voices as I neared the library.

“—don’t understand”

“If there was any other way—”

“This isn’t like you.”

The voices started getting clearer.

“I told you talking would just make this harder.” That was Applejack.

“I have to go.” Pinkie Pie, then. “I can’t—”

A chair was pushed, hooves started to hurry away.

I turned a corner and could see the open door of the library. Pinkie came into view and caught my eye as she fled my way.

Then another chair was shoved away, and next thing I knew Pinkie was on the ground, pinned by Applejack. She had a knee pressed hard into Pinkie’s side to keep her from moving.

I started to run. Applejack saw me and frowned. “Twilight’s here,” she said, “you’re out of time.”

“No, wait, I can—” Papers rustled. I would’ve stopped dead in my tracks from shock if I wasn’t trying to reach Pinkie.

I recognized the voice.

Just as I made it to the door there was a flash of unruly magic, and time froze.

I was too late.

I slid to a stop as the magic slammed into Pinkie.

This magic would have been dangerous even for experienced magic users, and that wasn’t who was using it. The magic was unrefined, more a blunt tool than one of precision. No doubt she had no control over how powerful the spell was. Maybe if she had time to prepare she could’ve fine-tuned it a bit, made it softer, but with me barreling down on them and the stress of the situation, it went out of control.

And when it hit, it hurt.

Pinkie seized up as her heart was ripped in two, torn apart by the magic. She clenched her eyes tight, and still, tears forced their way out. Her mane and tail deflated as she lost her bouncy happiness.

Applejack staggered backward. Pinkie didn’t get up, instead curling up into a ball and shaking as sobs started to wrack her body.

“W-What happened?” Applejack looked mortified. She turned away, looked at somepony else. “What happened?”

I took the final steps into the library.

There she was. Sitting at a table, rifling through loose pages in a panicked frenzy as tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked awful. Her hooves were muddy, and that mud was streaked all through her frizzled mane. She had dark bags under her eyes. There were scrapes and scratches speckled across her, probably from that plunge out the window.

More than any of that, through, Fluttershy looked terrified.

“I-I-I don’t know!” She was stuttering horribly, hardly getting any words out. “I was scared, and I panicked, and it just blew up, and, and—”

She didn’t look up as I walked in. She was too lost in her fervor.

I took the opportunity to walk over to Pinkie Pie. I put a hoof on her shoulder, as gently as I could, and cast a spell to put her to sleep. It wasn’t much, and she’d still hurt when she woke up, but it was all I could do. She at least stopped shaking as she drifted off.

Then I turned my attention to the cause of all of this.

The pony who was hurting my friends.

The pony who, all this time, I thought had been so terribly hurt.

The pony who had to be stopped.

I didn’t bother with words. I couldn’t risk another panicked blast of magic. I shot a spark at the table, and when it hit it scattered the pages into the air.

“No!” Fluttershy leapt from her seat, meaning to fly after them, but I grabbed her with my magic and sat her back down.

“It’s over,” I told her.

She struggled against my grasp. “A-Applejack,” she choked out, “please, help me!”

Applejack looked conflicted. She looked at Fluttershy, then me, then Pinkie, then back to Fluttershy. “I…” She shook her head. “I can’t. Not after that.”

Fluttershy grunted in frustration as she fought my magic. “I didn’t know!” Her voice cracked. “It didn’t hurt anypony else like that! Do you think I wanted to do that to Pinkie? You saw what happened in Starlight’s village!”

Applejack ignored her and walked towards Pinkie. “I’m gonna… Find her a bed.” She scooped Pinkie up onto her back and made for the door. I decided to let her go; Even after all this, I still trusted her.

“Please, Applejack!” Fluttershy screeched as Applejack walked out the door. “We’re so close!”

It was too late, though. She was gone.

I walked over and sat across from Fluttershy. She coughed, either from a sob getting caught in her throat or from everything she’d been though. A few pages had landed on the table between us, but most littered the floor. By now she’d stopped struggling, and I let her go, content that I could stop her again if I needed to.

I looked hard into her eyes. She looked down and buried her head in her hooves. I watched her there, a broken mare sobbing from… Fear? Guilt? Frustration? I didn’t know. I’m not sure I even cared.

I just wanted to know one thing.

“Why?”

I waited, but she gave no answer.

“Why?”

Again, no answer. I frowned deeply.

“Fluttershy, why did you do this?” My voice rose more than I’d intended it to, and she shrank back a bit. “Don’t you see what you’ve done? Starlight and Twilight are gone, you’ve ruined Pinkie’s life, you—”

“I know!” She burst out, finally talking. “I know. I’ll take whatever punishment you see fit, I just… I had to do something.”

“I was right here,” I told her. “Heck, so was your Twilight!”

“I didn’t know what you’d do! What if you’d hurt yourself? What if giving you the book was what started this whole thing? The me from your time must’ve had a reason not to tell you about it. I… It was too risky. It would’ve been better if I could just take care of it myself.”

“By attacking your friends?” I leaned hard on the table. “Fluttershy, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you!” She choked up as the tears welled back up to full strength. “I wanted…” She looked away from me, and her voice got quiet. “I wanted to use all the magic on myself.”

I stared at her. That was insane. We’d never have let that happen.

She must’ve noticed my silence because she went on. “I-I tried to do it that first time,” she said. “I knew it probably wouldn’t spread from any of us, so I used it on myself, but… It backfired.”

Of course it did. Magic like that only worked because it had pre-set parameters. Changing the target to herself… It just wasn’t possible for a pegasus to do.

Again, she went on. “I panicked. I know I messed up, Twilight, I know. That’s why I had to fix things! But then Applejack found me, and I got scared and…” She buried her face in her hooves. “It all went so wrong.”

“I just don’t get why you thought you had to do it all alone.”

“Because it was too late! If I went to you, you’d assume I was behind it all and send me off to Tartarus and hide the book, and then whoever did all that awful stuff you told us about would find it and do it all over again! I… The only thing I could think of was to use up all the magic before I turned myself in.”

“Fluttershy…” I sighed and shook my head. I didn’t know what else I could say to her. And now I had to work on fixing things.

First, though, that book. I grabbed one of the pages on the table and slid it over to myself. When I looked for it, magic pulsed off of it in waves, powerful energy that coursed through my body. It wasn’t any kind of magic I recognized, but it was… Frightening.

I held the page down, concentrated, and fired a blast of magic at it.

Nothing. The page sat there, completely intact despite the smoldering crater I’d dug into the table around it.

So, destroying it wasn’t an option.

Hiding it? But, I still didn’t know who was behind it all in my time. What if they found it?

There was Fluttershy’s idea, but… Doing that to another pony wasn’t something I was willing to do.

I made up my mind and shoved the paper away. “Fluttershy. Where was the book?”

She sniffed and looked up at me. “W-What?”

“The book,” I repeated. “Before all this, where was it?”

“It was just on my bookshelf… Why?”

I stood up. “Because you might have been right.” I took a deep breath and prepared my magic. “I’m sorry, Fluttershy. I’ll do better this time.”

“What?” Her eyes went wide as she realized what was happening. “Wait, no!”

I let go, and a wave of energy drew itself out of my horn. It enveloped me in light, and I could feel myself being tugged, pulled away from the time I was in, and I let it take me. Back to the beginning, back to before everything, back to—

Something slammed into my side.

I lost control of the spell. It exploded and shot from my horn. Waves of roiling magic made a bubble around me, and as I landed on my side, having been knocked off my hooves by the blow, it kicked me backward in time.

Both of the blows combined knocked the wind out of me and sent my head spinning. My ears rang, and for a moment my vision tunneled too drastically to see.

I fought to stay conscious. I still had a job to do.

Eventually, my vision started to come back and the dizziness quelled itself. The noise in my head softened, I started to breathe again, and slowly the world came into focus around me.

I was still in the library, of course.

And something was on my side.

I stirred and tried to push myself free. “Let me go,” I groaned out in between heavy breaths.

“Twilight, please,” Fluttershy muttered, “don’t do anything drastic.”

I pushed harder, and Fluttershy started to lose her grasp on me.

“What do you want me to do? Nothing? I couldn’t let things stay like that!”

“I know, I know, I just…” She shut her eyes tight. “Please, Twilight, let me fix things! Let me make up for what I did!”

“I’m not letting you anywhere near that book.”

“I know! That’s not what I’m saying, I—”

The door to the library opened with a heavy creak. We both shot our gazes towards it and watched as Pinkie Pie wheeled in a cart laden with party supplies, whistling a jaunty tune as she skipped along.

When she saw us, Pinkie froze and frowned at Fluttershy. “Hey. Come on,” she said, “you know better.”

We both just stared at her.

She huffed and trotted over to us, pulled me up off the floor, then started pushing us towards the door. “Look,” she said, “I don’t care how you distract Twilight, but you know I gotta decorate the library! You could’ve ruined everything!” She gave us a shove as she pushed us into the hallway. “Happy birthday, Twilight,” she said sternly. Then she slammed the door shut.

It took us both a moment to remember what was going on. We glanced at each other after a few seconds, and it all crashed back down on me. My face fell in a sullen frown.

“Fluttershy, we’ll talk more once the book is dealt with.”

“Wait, don’t—”

I didn’t let her finish. With a sharp crack of magic, I vanished from the castle.

An instant later, I was in Fluttershy’s cottage.

Fluttershy’s living room was warm, inviting, and a little cluttered. A pile of mail sat unopened on one end of her sofa, animal toys were scattered about on the floor, and there was a blanket draped over one arm of the deep armchair. It wasn’t enough mess to be uncomfortable; it just made the cottage feel more like a home.

Her bookshelf was nestled under the staircase, built in as part of that wall. The books were loose, and a lot of the space was taken up by little figures and knick-knacks she’d gathered up over the years. She didn’t have much of a personal collection—she knew she could just come to me for most books—and for once I was incredibly thankful of that.

I rushed over to the bookshelf and started to pick it apart. Biology textbooks, no. Cookbooks, no. Journals, yearbooks, no, no, no. I rifled through the books quickly, shoved them aside as I crossed them off. I accidentally knocked a couple to the floor at once point, but I just let them drop. This was too important to worry about how I was treating the books.

Finally, I found it. An old, well-read book with a pony on both covers, smiling on one and frowning on the other. No title. An otherwise unassuming book. You couldn’t even feel the magic unless you were looking for it.

I flipped the book open and ran a hoof down a page. I could feel how the magic coursed through it, how it directed itself, how it was activated. I could gather a vague idea of what it would do, but nothing concrete. I would find that out in due time, though. Once I—

The door shot open, and Fluttershy flew in. I snapped the book shut and just barely caught her with my magic before she slammed into me again.

“Fluttershy, enough!” I set her on the ground and let go of her. “You’re not getting this book.”

“I don’t want it!” She clasped her hooves together in a pleading gesture. “I just want to make things right. Please.”

“How? It’s too late to undo everything you did.”

“I know that,” she said, “but the magic still has to be used up! It’s too dangerous to let it exist, and it has to be used on somepony.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Fluttershy…”

“Please, Twilight,” she said. “I deserve it! I’m the only pony it would be right to use it on. You can’t use it on anypony else!”

“Well, you’re right about that,” I said. “I could never use this on anypony else.”

“Then please Twilight, let me—”

“But I could never use it on you, either,” I told her. “Which only leaves one pony.”

“Wait, what do you—” She watched in horror as I floated the book out in front of myself and flipped it open. Her eyes grew wide when she realized what I was doing, and she tried to snatch the book away, but I grabbed her with my magic and kept her in place. She wouldn’t interfere with this.

I decided to start with Kindness, hoping it would make the others hurt less.

It didn’t.

The second the beam of magic connected my horn to the book, I felt it dig into me. I coughed and sputtered as I felt the magic drive a stake through my heart, and then the kindness started to slip away. I felt it disappear, listened as the voices in the back of my head went quiet. I stopped caring that my friends would be upset by this. I stopped feeling bad that Fluttershy was being forced to watch as I did this to myself. It all just drained away.

All the while, the stake kept drilling away at me, tearing away at my very being. Once it was done, when the stake was gone, that part of me didn’t heal. It left a hole, a gaping wound in my soul.

Then the second stake stabbed into me.

I dropped to my knees at the shock of it. Somehow it had gotten worse. More painful. Not one stake, but a thousand, flying through me like needles and tugging out the Honesty like a loose thread. It was harder to feel this one disappearing, but somewhere in my mind I could tell.

No sooner had that onslaught ended than the third one began. And the fourth. Generosity and Loyalty went at once, tearing me apart like a blade through paper. It started to become a struggle to keep control over the magic. Here and there I’d slip, lose the slim hold I had over the mayhem, and they’d gouge deeper into me, tear away with less precision and take more than they were meant to. I had no idea what I was losing in those moments, but its absence left me sickened.

The fifth assault came for Laughter. I had almost no control at this point, and it was crude, brutal. It was no precision instrument. The spell just tore away at me, devoured chunks at a time as it took aim at what it wanted. By the time it was finished, I wasn’t sure if there was anything left for the sixth to take.

Of course, I was wrong.

At the very least, the final strike was quick. Merciful, in a way. No digging, no tearing, no ripping me to pieces. It came hard and fast, and it slammed into me like a freight train. Maybe there wasn’t enough left for it to take its time; it just hit me and took everything that was left.

I shut off. I couldn’t keep going after that blow. My vision went dark, the world vanished, and I slumped forward as I lost consciousness.

12: Wrung-Out

Where was I?

Heavy pellets of rain slammed into me relentlessly. There was no sun. There was no moon. There were not stars. The only reason I could see the roiling clouds above was the lightning that perpetually danced on the horizon.

I tried shielding myself from the rain, but my magic sizzled out without effect. My mane stuck to my face. I could feel my hooves sinking into the mud.

I looked around. I was in a field. Wide and flat and dark, a sea of unkempt grass. Waves rolled through the greenery as the wind blew by. There were no trees, no buildings, no animals as far as I could see. Just rain and grass.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, movement. Something huge. I tried to spin towards it, but my hooves were stuck; I’d sunk too far into the earth. I craned my neck until it ached, trying to see what was there on the horizon. Was it…

A tornado? No, it couldn’t be. It was too narrow. Too visible. Too… Bright. The rain made it harder and harder to make it out. Drops of water had started to cloud my vision, and I couldn’t raise my legs to wipe my eyes clear. Everything around me was melting into water.

Water. That’s what it was. A massive water spout, a tower of wind whipping the rain together into a solid force.

Was it coming my way?

I had to leave. To get away. But my legs… The mud was nearly up to my knees now. I struggled against it, pulled with all my strength, but it was no use. I was completely and utterly trapped.

Another glance over my shoulder confirmed the worst. It was nearly here. Up close the spire was more imposing, more frightening than I ever could have imagined. I couldn’t even see all of it. It was too big.

And it was going to bowl straight over me.

A drop of water at the edge of the frenzy smacked me in the forehead. It felt like it just about took my head off. My head was spinning, and my neck ached. How could a single drop hurt that much?

Another drop hit my side. Then another, and another. They hit so hard it felt like they should have gone straight through me.

I felt my stomach hit the mud. Did I really sink that much?

The barrage started to pick up. I stopped being able to feel the individual blows as they melted together into a singular pain. Was this it? Was this the end? I couldn’t move, my magic didn’t work. I didn’t know what else I could do.

A drop hit my cheek and snapped my head to the side hard enough to give me whiplash.

I was powerless. The assault was never going to end.

At least I wasn’t going to drown.

I shut my eyes and resigned myself to my fate.

Then, strangely, the rain stopped. I could still hear it, I couldn’t hear anything else over the roaring winds, but it stopped hitting me. I opened my eyes cautiously, unsure of what to expect, and saw a blue bubble of magic surrounding me, keeping out the rain.

Standing over me, looking down with a warm smile, was Princess Luna.

She lifted me up out of the muck and set me down beside her. I was wobbly on my legs and nearly fell over, but managed to somehow stay upright.

I looked up at her, confused. “Princess?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry that it took so long to step in.”

“But how did you know…”

“Well, it’s only natural for me to sense my subjects’ nightmares.”

I looked at her blankly. “Nightmare?”

She chuckled. “Of course.” With a wave of her hoof, all the rain, all the wind, the entirety of the storm melted away and left us in a calm, picturesque sunset.

Looking around now, it felt obvious. Of course it was a nightmare. I suddenly felt very naive, and could feel my cheeks getting hot.

Luna looked off towards the horizon. “So. What is it that’s given you such a dreadful dream?”

“I don’t know.” I really didn’t want to explain everything to her.

“You don’t have any clue?”

I shook my head.

She turned towards me, gave me what I could only assume was a compassionate look. “Twilight, you know you can tell me anything.”

I looked at her blankly. I didn’t know that. That’s not something you can know.

“I know,” I told her.

“We don’t have nightmares for no reason,” she told me. “Especially not ones so… Grim.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

She frowned. “So there’s nothing on your mind that’s troubling you?”

“Not that I can think of.”

She sighed and turned back to the horizon. “Well… Would you mind if I shared my thoughts?”

“I can’t exactly stop you.”

“I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

“Then don’t.”

She was silent for a long time after that. She didn’t so much as glance at me as she stared off towards the sun that hung still on the horizon.

Eventually, I decided to break the silence. “Do you think you could just… Wake me up?”

She looked up into the sky for a moment, as if she were searching the stars for something, then shook her head. “It doesn’t seem like your body is capable of it at the moment.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not just taking a nap,” Luna explained. “Did something happen? Are you in danger?”

I shrugged.

“Hmm…” She thought for a moment. “Perhaps I should go check on you. Where do you last remember being?”

“Ponyville, I guess.”

“Where in Ponyville?”

“Home.”

She nodded. “Alright. Well, the nightmare shouldn’t come back again. I’m going to go check on things.”

“Okay.”

She frowned again. “And, Twilight… Remember that you can always turn to your friends for help, alright?”

“Sure.”

Hesitantly, she turned, took a few steps, and vanished from my dream.

Left alone, I laid down on the damp grass and rested my chin on my hooves. I wasn’t sure what else to do; It seemed I was stuck until my body recovered.

Thinking back on Luna’s words, I scoffed. “Sure,” I repeated. “If I had any friends.”

Hours later, when the realm of sleep finally loosed its hold over me, I awoke to a world of pain.

Except, it wasn’t really pain. I just felt… Empty. It was the first thing that came to me, before I even opened my eyes. I felt terribly hollow. It was like I’d been carved out and turned into a puppet, and something else was pulling the strings.

It wasn’t pain. But it was agony.

I took a deep breath and pried my eyes open. The room was dark, mostly, but not so dark that I couldn’t see. How long had I been asleep? The dream felt like hours, but outside of it, it could’ve been any length of time.

As I blinked away the sleepiness from my eyes, the room around me slowly came into focus. It was clean. Sleek. Light blue walls and a tile floor. I was under a flimsy blanket and on top of a firm mattress. There was an end table beside me full of flowers and cards.

Then I started to register the equipment. The monitors, the sensors tied to me all over. The curtain hung around my bed. I started to piece it together.

The hospital.

So the cards were…

I reached over and picked one up. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw it. I was expecting a get well soon card. This one just said “Happy Birthday.”

I flipped it open. Pinkie’s messy signature sat at the bottom. Above it, she’d written me a note.

“Feel better so I can be mad at you.”

That got another chuckle out of me.

I spent a few minutes looking through all the cards. All my friends had written notes to me. The flowers were mostly from Rarity and Fluttershy; this timeline’s Fluttershy.

There was nothing from the Fluttershy who’d come back with me.

As I was putting one card back, trying to set it up on end like it had been before, I got hit by a wave of that empty feeling and the leg I’d been using to prop myself up gave out. I slipped, and in trying to catch myself knocked a vase to the floor. It shattered.

There was a commotion in the room past my curtain. Somepony got up, started shuffling around. “She’s awake,” I heard them whisper.

“Hello?” I called out.

The curtain whirled open. The room was emptier than I’d expected, but I suppose I couldn’t expect everypony to sit around waiting for me. Just seeing Starlight and Pinkie made me smile. It was always a pleasure to see my friends.

My… My friends?

Before I had time to think on that, Pinkie jumped onto the bed and wrapped me in a loose, overly-cautious hug. “You’re up!” she announced cheerfully. When she pulled away, I could clearly tell that she’d been doing quite a bit of crying.

I coughed and gently pushed her off of me. “Mm-hm,” I nodded. “What’s… How long have I been asleep?”

“Seventeen days,” Starlight said dryly.

I sputtered. “W-What?”

Now that Pinkie wasn’t all over me, Starlight gave me a stern look. I saw her horn light up, and a second later a book flew through the air and smacked me in the chest.

“What were you thinking?” She kept her voice down, but I got the impression that if we weren’t in a hospital, she wouldn’t have held back.

I looked down. It was the storybook, now drained of its magic. What I’d done had, evidently, worked.

“I had to,” I told her. “It was too dangerous to—”

“Talk to us before you do stuff like that!” She pointed an accusatory hoof at me, and I saw a slight tremble in her stance. “You’re lucky we were able to do as much as we did for you after that.”

I put a hoof over my chest. “So…”

“You got your connection to the elements back,” she told me. “That’s it. That’s all we could do.”

I felt a pang somewhere deep inside. “I…” I shut my eyes tight and swallowed hard. “I knew the risks.”

I took a deep, stuttering breath.

Then I forced myself to move on. “When you found me,” I asked, “was I… Alone?”

“I assume you’re asking about Fluttershy,” Starlight said. “We know about her.”

“Is she alright?”

“Well, like I said, we can’t exactly do anything about the pain. She’s hanging in there, though.”

“Alright…” I looked down, away from her. “Starlight, I’m… I’m sorry.”

Starlight sighed and shook her head. “Look, just… Get some rest, okay?”

Without waiting for my response, she walked off out of view. A few seconds later, I heard her leave the room.

I looked back to Pinkie. Tears were welling up in her eyes again. “I’m sorry for worrying you all,” I said.

She shook her head. “Later. Just feel better first.” She sniffed and prodded my chest. “You only hurt on the inside, right? I’m not gonna hurt you if I hug you?”

I tried to give her a warm smile. “Hugs are fine, Pinkie.”

She collapsed against me and buried her face in my chest. I patted her back as she squeezed me.

“Never again,” she muttered under her breath. “Never.”

I frowned. I’d probably hurt them all so much.

Yet again, I was a failure.

But… At least it was over. That book would never hurt anypony ever again.

Closing my eyes, I held Pinkie close and let her warmth wash over me, hoping it might fill the hole inside me, even a little.

It didn’t.

Author's Note

The End.

Thanks for reading! I know this might seem like a sudden stop, but well, to me it feels done. Complete. And so it is.

I hope it was an enjoyable read! I've really loved all the kind and wonderful comments I've gotten on this story, they're always an incredible motivation.

If you'd like to read more stories by me, I have an au you could check out. It's largely romance/slice-of-life, but that doesn't mean there's no drama or intrigue. This story isn't a part of it, but most of my more recent stories are.

As for what's next... Honestly, I don't know. If it's more fanfiction, it'll pop up in the next few days, so hit me up with a follow if you wanna keep apprised of that. If I disappear for a bit, then I probably decided to write a book. We'll see.

💜

8: Thunder

Even after I turned off the water I stood in the tub for a few minutes, stuck in my own head. Replaying everything that had happened since I came back. How had it fallen apart so quickly? And what could I do about it now?

My only solace is what I told Fluttershy. We should have years. Things might have been going differently, but years are years. Surely we’d find a solution in that time.

My gut told me I was being naive. I ignored it.

I used my magic to grab a towel from a cupboard and pull it over to myself. It felt good to dry off after so much wetness. I felt limber without mud caking my limbs. I wrapped the towel around myself like a warm blanket and stepped out onto the tile floor.

I walked, dripping, over to the mirror and finally allowed myself to look in. An old mare I barely recognized stared back at me. I’d started to wrinkle early thanks to the years spent in stressful solitude, studying and researching. There were dark bags under my eyes. The colors in my mane had started to fade together, no longer as cleanly segmented as when I was younger.

I looked nothing like the Twilight of this time. I acted nothing like her. What was the public going to think? This strange, other Twilight appears from the future and a day later their Twilight is nowhere to be seen. It didn’t look good for me.

Would they recognize the difference if I said nothing? Would I be allowed to quietly slip into the empty space left by Twilight? And should I? I knew it would be wrong, it would make things so much simpler.

I decided it was a discussion to bring up with the others later. A few minutes of drying later, I hung the towel up on a hook to dry and stepped back out into Twilight’s bedroom.

It was empty. No Spike, no Fluttershy. Curious, I stepped out into the hall.

I heard voices off in another room, what sounded like the conference room, and headed that way. My steps were heavy on the bare crystal of the floor. The light, airy clicks echoed through the halls before returning to me, unchanged.

The voices got clearer as I approached the doors leading into the room that held the huge, round table we used for meetings.

“—can’t just leave it.”

“Please, have some patience. We’ll talk once we’re all here.”

“We’re not all here. That’s the whole point! I’m sick of sitting around while—”

Shaking my head, I walked past the door. I wasn’t ready to go in there yet.

Instead, I made my way towards the front of the castle. There was one other loose end I wanted to tie up. Another piece of the puzzle.

That book. It didn’t make any sense to me, and hopefully reading it would—

I stopped short as I turned the corner into the front hall.

The shelf was empty.

I rushed over to it and confirmed my fears. Somepony had taken the book while I was in the shower. I checked every other shelf in the hall, just to be sure, but it wasn’t there.

Maybe the others were already looking at it?

I dashed back to the conference room and shoved my way through the doors. I immediately felt embarrassed as every pair of eyes in the room fell on me.

Not everypony had arrived yet. Rainbow Dash was leaning heavily on the table, and Rarity was sitting politely, an umbrella leaning against her chair. Fluttershy was hiding in her own chair, hugging herself tightly and still speckled with grime. Spike was reading a comic.

“Um… H-Hi, Everypony.” They all made some manner of acknowledgment of my greeting.

“Is everything alright, dear?” Rarity asked.

I nodded and made my way over to Twilight’s chair. “Sorry, I’m just… Worked up.”

“We all are,” Rarity told me.

“Twilight, what are we doing?” Rainbow Dash sounded frustrated and slightly accusatory. “This isn’t exactly a great time for a sleepover.”

“I don’t think any of us should be alone tonight,” I told her. “We don’t know who’s doing this, but they’re a lot closer than I expected.”

“So? Let ‘em come!” Rainbow Dash pounded a hoof on the table. “I’ll teach them what happens when you mess with my friends.”

Fluttershy squeaked. She looked like she wanted to say something, but held herself back.

“Rainbow, that recklessness is of no use to any of us,” Rarity told her. “Besides, do you really think that, were we all alone, they would target you?”

“I—” Rainbow Dash huffed and sat back. “Yeah, okay. I still don’t wanna just sit here, though.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I told her. “First, though, there was a book I left on a shelf in the front hall. Did any of you happen to pick it up?”

I looked around at them. They all shook their heads and glanced around at each other.

I pursed my lips. “That’s… Not good.”

“Why?” Rainbow Dash asked. “What’s this book?”

“I’m not sure,” I told her, “but if somepony’s taken it, that means they were in the castle. They could still be here.”

Fluttershy whimpered. Rarity reached out and stroked her shoulder. “Don’t fret, darling, we’ll keep you safe.”

“We’ll all be safe,” I said, “as long as we’re careful. Nopony goes anywhere alone.”

“Oh, come on,” Rainbow Dash protested.

“Unless you’ve developed a sudden immunity to magic, you’re just as vulnerable as the rest of us,” I told her. “We can’t take any chances.”

“Ugh.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

It was at that moment the doors opened once again, revealing our final two guests for the night.

Pinkie was soaked, but it was nothing compared to Applejack. Her legs seemed like more mud than pony, and her ponytail had come undone and left her with a frizzy, tangled mane. Her eyes were bloodshot, her knees wobbled, and overall she just looked utterly exhausted.

I frowned and got up to head over to them. “Applejack, are you alright? You look awful.”

“‘M fine,” she grumbled. It wasn’t a grumpy grumble, just a tired one. “Can I use your bath?”

“Of course,” I told her. “Although, um, I’m really not sure any of us should be alone. Whoever’s after us might be—”

“Twilight.” She looked me hard in the eyes. “I ain’t takin a bath with somepony else in the room, and I ain’t makin somepony wait in the hallway for me.”

I sighed. “Yeah, okay. I can’t really force that. Just… Be careful, okay? And come straight back here once you’re done.”

“Of course. I’ll wash up quick and be right back.” Without waiting for any more conversation, she turned and walked out into the hall.

“Pinkie?” I looked over to her next. “Would you like a towel to dry off, or—”

“Mm-mm.” Pinkie shook her head, then shook the rest of herself and sprayed water all over the room. I flinched back as I was splattered, and when I looked back she seemed almost completely dry. Even her mane had puffed back up to its normal volume.

“Um… Okay, then.” I wiped some water from my face and made my way back to my seat. Pinkie went and pushed her own chair closer to Fluttershy’s, so she could comfort her friend, and hopped into it.

“Okay,” I said once she was situated, “now that you’re all in, I should go over what happened.”

“What about Applejack?” Pinkie asked.

“Applejack was there,” I said, “she already knows. Now’s a good time.”

I waited a moment for objections. They all waited for me to go on.

I cleared my throat. “So, after we got back to Ponyville, Applejack and I went to check on Fluttershy and found her house empty.”

There were gasps around the table. Fluttershy recoiled in on herself.

“Somepony had scared her off,” I explained. “So, Applejack and I followed some hoofprints into the forest, and eventually we came to the Castle of the Two Sisters.”

“Why there?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I-It was the first place I thought of,” Fluttershy said. “I was scared, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

I nodded. “So, we searched the castle, and at one point we got split up. Applejack found Fluttershy first and scared her, so she screamed, which let me find them. She was in the library.”

“Um,” Fluttershy started up, “once I was inside, I calmed down a lot and decided to go look in the library for ways to maybe fix things.”

“And?” Rarity asked.

Fluttershy shook her head sadly.

“There was one book,” I said. “Something Fluttershy found that I know wasn’t there in my timeline. So, I brought it back.”

“And now it’s gone,” Rainbow Dash said.

I nodded.

“Well, let’s go find it!” Rainbow Dash looked ready to stand up and jump onto the table. “It’s gotta be important, right?”

“We should wait for Applejack,” I told her. “Then, we can split into teams of two and go search the castle. If, uh…” I glanced at Fluttershy. “If you’re all up for that.”

Fluttershy swallowed hard. “I-I can do it,” she stammered. “Don’t… Don’t worry about me.”

I tapped my hoof on the table, then nodded. “Alright. All we have to do now is wait for Applejack, then.”

The room fell quiet, and we waited.

Off in another room, a clock rang out and announced the hour. It was getting late.

“We’ll probably have to all sleep in here tonight,” I said absentmindedly.

I didn’t get a response.

Fluttershy coughed. Waved off our concern. Pinkie rubbed her back.

Rainbow Dash got up and started pacing. Back and forth, up and down the room, long, even strides like the slow swing of a pendulum.

Seconds seemed to stretch on to match her rhythm.

Left. Tick.

Right. Tock.

Back. Tick.

Forth. Tock.

The minutes went on and on and on as we waited.

Another chime from the far-off clock, announcing the half-hour mark. Had it really been that long? That didn’t seem right.

Now we were all restless. We couldn’t pretend we were just being impatient anymore. Applejack definitely should have been back already.

Something was wrong.