The Tower Of Kairos

by Orthoros

Rating: everyone
Tags: Alternate Universe, Original Character, Mystery, Slice of Life, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 6118

Rickety Gear, the earth pony maintaining the Ponyville clock tower encounters some time related mishaps.

Rickety Gear has been proudly maintaining the Ponyville clock tower all his life. A task that had been entrusted to his family for generations. But his family has also been working on something else in the shadows, and now, the project is finally coming to an end. After years of construction, all that's left is to activate the machine.

But will it really go according to plan?

Cover image used with permission by Konsumo
The picture

Published 2020-08-19 23:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-08-19 23:50:01 UTC

A Monument To Your Sins

I cringed away as I put my hoof protectively in front of my face, shielding my eyes from the sun. The blinding light was a harsh reminder that I had, once again, worked through the night without pause. I set down the wrench that I was using moments before, taking one last look at the gear I just tightened before walking over to the window, taking a look outside.

The residents of Ponyville were already out and about, early risers, one and all. I took a few moments to watch them, setting up their stalls in the nearby marketplace, preparing the front of their stores, or leisurely strolling to their place of work.

From time to time they looked up towards me, although not at me. No doubt checking the time on the clock just above me, while I remained hidden in the shadow of my little crawlspace.

Yes, maintaining the clock tower of Ponyville was my job, and I took great pride in my work. Ponies relied on me to guide them through their day, and I took satisfaction in knowing that. A slight smile appeared on my face, as I decided that it was time for me to open up shop as well.

Carefully, I started making my way down, passing by countless gears and other well-oiled machinery, making sure to keep my eyes out for anything out of place. For many, the Ponyville Clock Tower was barely anything more than a bigger clock. Yet, few knew, just how intricate and demanding its upkeep was. If even the smallest gear of the whole was awry, the tiniest screw rusted, everything would fail, and time would stop.

And that had a certain beauty to it.

Arriving at a small door, I pushed my way through, coming out behind the counter of my store. My ears were greeted by a cacophony of ticking noises, originating from hundreds of clocks lining my shelf, and it was music to my tired mind. I took a deep breath, relishing for a few seconds in the orchestra of sound, before going about my usual routine.

I opened up the blinds, letting the light flood into the store and went about polishing every glass surface that needed it. I paid special attention to the big grandfather clock, making sure that I could see my reflection in it clearly. The critical look of a brown coated earth pony with a dark mane staring back at me from the glass.

Nodding to myself in satisfaction, I turned my attention to my entrance and went about unlocking it, preparing myself for another boring day behind the counter. The bell above the door gave a little jingle as I went outside, propping up my signs, before going back in, lazily trotting to my counter, turning to face the door and getting comfy on the little cushioned chair behind it.

“Good morning, Rickety Gear!”

A joyful bundle of pink sat in front of my counter, her wide smile revealing a neat set of teeth. I hadn’t heard her come through the door, neither had I any idea where she could’ve come from otherwise, but when dealing with Pinkie Pie, the pink menace herself, it was best to not think about these things too much.

“Good morning, Pinkie Pie,” I replied, much less enthusiastic. “And how can I help you today?”

“Oh, you know me, Rickety!” Pinkie replied happily. “Just checking in on my friends, like I do every morning!”

“Last time I checked, we weren’t exactly friends, Miss Pie,” my measured reply didn’t seem to phase her as we went through our daily spiel. “Although if there is something I appreciate about you, it is how punctual you are every morning. Like clockwork.”

“I know that’s how you like it!” Pinkie replied with her signature smile while producing a cupcake with brown frosting from her mane. “And similarly, I know you like chocolate frosting on your cupcakes!”

I carefully tracked the tasty treat that Pinkie was waving around in front of me with my eyes. Usually, I was a bit more stoic, but ever since she found out I had a bit of a sweet tooth, she became able to bait out my softer side.

“Alright, alright,” I sighed. “I’ll take the cupcake, how much do I owe you?”

“Silly Rickety! You know I don’t charge my friends for their morning surprise cupcakes!” Pinkie snorted, barely reacting to my eye roll. “That would be insane.”

“Yes, I’m sure it would be,” I nodded along with her statement, taking the cupcake off her hoof without putting up any more resistance. “Thank you, Pinkie.”

“You’re welcome!” Pinkie positively beamed at me. “Well, I gotta go! I still gotta go surprise a lot of other ponies, so you make sure you have a wonderful day!”

“You know I always have a good day when I’m surrounded by my beloved clocks,” I shot Pinkie one of my admittedly rare smiles, which in turn made hers even bigger. Even though that seemed physically impossible.

I watched her prance away through my storefront windows, watching her enthusiastically greet everypony she came across. Wondering how a single pony could possibly contain so much joy without dying of a heart attack, I took a bite out of the sweet treat I was given. The taste of chocolate assaulted my taste buds in the best of ways, and I let out a small sigh of enjoyment, making short work of the cupcake.

The sugar helped me stave off some of the sleepiness which came along with staying up too late, helping me wake up a bit. Not as effective as a cup of coffee, but definitely a lot tastier. With renewed vigor, I took a last look around the store, before doing what I did best: Fixing clocks.

I turned the clock in front of me this and that way, taking a good look at its insides. An elderly mare brought this one in yesterday, complaining about it displaying the wrong time. Even if she did correct it manually, it would always desync itself after a while. It was probably just one of the gears inside being worn down by time, as this was a clock that had been passed down for generations, and this would be as simple a fix as replacing the offending gear.

A distraction presented itself in the form of my store’s entrance bell, announcing the arrival of a customer. I lifted my head, away from the intricate interior of my current piece of work, and my vision was filled with the color purple. I recoiled slightly, before remembering I was wearing magnifying glasses. Carefully taking them off, I looked at who entered my store.

“Miss Sparkle, it’s always a pleasure to see you. What brings you here today?” I asked enthusiastically. “Do you need anything fixed?”

“Good morning, Rickety,” Twilight nodded at me while displaying an amicable smile. “I’m not here to get anything fixed today. Rather, I’m bringing something in for you.”

“Oh?” I raised a pleasantly surprised eyebrow as Twilight approached my humble counter. “Does that mean you actually managed to do it?”

“Yes, I have your crystals right here,” Twilight nodded and levitated four purple crystals out of her saddlebags, making them float in a neat row in front of me. “Even though I’m still rather curious about what you could possibly need these for… Mana crystals haven’t seen much use in the past one-hundred years.”

“Well, you know…” I traced a little circle in the air with my right hoof. “Us earth ponies can’t exactly charge stuff without the help of a unicorn. So the crystals are nice to have, so I can work on my project without somepony having to be present and helping.”

“So, as I suspected, you really are working on a magical device?” Twilight asked, her curiosity seemingly peaked. “Would you be willing to show me? I might be able to help out!”

I had obviously flipped some sort of switch in Twilight, and the whole town knew that it wasn’t easy to deter Twilight once she had set her mind on something. That was why I originally ordered the crystals from her while brushing off her inquiries to the best of my abilities. As it would seem, she had let her imagination run wild while making them and came to her own conclusions.

“I suppose I could let you see it,” I replied with a sigh, realizing that it’d be a lot easier, in the long run, to just come clean. “But I’ll tell you right now, compared to the things you’ve seen, my past time tinkering probably won’t be that impressive.”

“Please don’t worry about it, Rickety,” Twilight displayed a gentle smile on the outside, but her eyes told a whole other story. She seemed incredibly eager to see what I had crafted, so I figured there was no point in prolonging the inevitable.

“Well, I just barely opened up for the day, but I do suppose I could take a small break right now, don’t you think?” I chuckled as I trotted past Twilight and flipped my open sign around, to let ponies know that my store was closed for the time being. “Shall we?”

I led Twilight through a door to the left of the counter, making sure to grab the mana crystals on my way. We passed by my living quarters, which was furnished in a rather spartan way, and towards a hatch that I had left open the day before. We carefully descended a set of stairs, and as we did, the numerous tickings of my shop’s inventory faded to silence and was instead replaced with a deep, thrumming sound. Once, exactly every second, it would reverberate against the walls around us, utterly mystifying Twilight in the process.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, where the sunlight from above had grown sparse, and reached for a light switch with practiced ease. I heard Twilight gasping behind me, as the wall-mounted lamps illuminated my highly unusual basement.

“Is this all part of the ponyville clocktower?” Twilight looked around in awe. “I never knew it was this complex… or extensive…”

“Do not fool yourself, Miss Sparkle,” I shook my head with a slight smirk. “All of this is separate from the tower above. It’s something entirely different.”

Twilight’s eyes darted around, trying to take in everything she saw. Years ago, I had my basement expanded, until it was almost as deep as the tower above was high. Since then I had been working tirelessly to build the perfect clock within. As such, directly opposite the stairs, a giant clock-face was telling us the current time.

Seemingly every other available space was filled with gears, rods, bolts, and pendulums, all working in perfect sync with each other. There were about five feet of dirt ahead of us, before it was replaced by a narrow scaffolding, which was what allowed me to reach every well-oiled piece making up my masterpiece.

“And you made all of this yourself?” Twilight peered over the scaffolding, seeing that it was mechanisms all the way down. “That’s incredible!”

“Well, I didn’t exactly make all of this, I’m just putting it together,” I chuckled. “Most of the credit here goes to my good friend Heavy Anvil who works at the local smithy. You might have heard of him.”

“Oh yes, I’ve actually worked with him on a few projects as well,” Twilight seemed to come to an understanding. “But that leaves the question… why hide something this amazing underground… and what are the mana crystals for?”

“I’m sure Ponyville wouldn’t appreciate a huge construction site blemishing it’s quaint image,” I carefully carried one of the mana crystals towards the left wall. “Especially one that would be there for over twenty years.”

“You’ve been working on this for twenty years?!” Twilight sent a shocked look my way before critically re-evaluating everything she saw.

“Well, I did, yes,” I smirked as I embedded the first crystal into a perfectly fitting slot in front of me, preparing to do the same on the right wall. “But this project has actually been worked on for generations… What can I say? We Gears are a bit obsessed with anything to do with time.”

“For generations?” A slight twitch appeared on Twilight's left eye.

“For generations,” I confirmed again as I embedded the second crystal. “Well, most of it was them planning this whole thing out. I’m just the one that gets the honor of actually building it.”

“But why spend so much time and effort into designing and building what seems to be… for a lack of a better description, a slightly more complicated clock-tower?” Twilight had sat down by now, her eyes following my every movement.

“Ah, I know it might not seem like much right now,” I tittered, picking up the last two crystals. “But this isn’t just a simple clock-tower. It’s so much more! Or at least, it’s supposed to be. One way or another we’re about to find out whether it actually works.”

“This… This isn’t going to be dangerous, is it?” Twilight furrowed her brows, suddenly starting to worry. “What is it supposed to do?”

“You’re about to find out,” my own anticipation was starting to rise, as I embedded the second to last crystal into the minute hand of the clock-face. “But rest assured, at the very least I’m sure it’s not going to explode. Anyway, the moment I insert this last crystal, we’ll finally know…”

I turned the last mana crystal around in my hoof, a contemplative look on my face. My family had been working on this project for decades, trying to accomplish what nopony had done before. And now I was this close to finally bring the dream to fruition. All I had to do was stretch out my hoof and push.

Slowly, I looked up, eyeing the empty socket on the tip of the hour hand. The next moments felt like forever, as I finally put the final piece into place. The crystal fit perfectly, a satisfying click sounding out as it locked into place. I took a few steps back in awe, as the crystals started to glow.

A deep thrum sounded throughout the entire basement, and for a few tantalizing seconds, nothing happened. I waited with bated breath, until finally, something happened. The familiar clicking that occurred precisely once every second, jarringly sounded out slightly too late. The seconds seemed to become slower and slower, and I feared for the worst.

My fears eventually came true, as the whole contraption came to an agonizingly slow stop.

“No… No, no, no, no!” I cried out, frantically looking at the deathly still gears around me. “This isn’t supposed to happen!”

I flitted from wall to wall, trying to spot anything out of place, anything that wasn’t perfect. I couldn’t see anything out of place, which stressed me out even more than I already was. Frantically, I let my eyes wander over everything I could see and I started hyperventilating. In a final bid of panic, I remembered that I had a genius unicorn in the room with me. Surely she’d know something, anything that could help me out!

“Miss Sparkle, I’m terribly sorry, but this wasn’t supposed to happen,” I approached her as quickly as I could. “I just don’t know what went wrong! Would you maybe be willing to help me look for the source of this malfunction…”

My words trailed off as I realized that something was very, very wrong with my visitor. Twilight wasn’t moving a single inch. Her left hoof was half raised, whatever for, and her eyes were still locked on the clock-face in front of her, where I was just standing earlier. Tentatively, I poked her shoulder, which elicited absolutely no reaction from the lavender mare.

Confused, I alternated between looking at Twilight and what was supposed to be my family’s magnum opus. Now, it was my eyes turn to start twitching.

“Oh no… that most definitely wasn’t supposed to happen…” terrified I ran outside of my basement in a dead sprint. Hoping against all hope that my suspicions weren’t true.

I weaved my way through the ponies occupying the market place, making my way towards the town's best and only apple stall. Without even saying a word, I picked some of the apples up and threw them in a small basket on my back, opting to start eating one of them right away. With a satisfying crunch, a juicy sweetness spread throughout my mouth as I left the stall again, intent to get myself some more groceries.

Just a few days ago, I most likely would have gotten a very stern talking to by the orange mare behind the stall, not only for just taking the apples, but most importantly because I didn’t even pay for them. As it stood right now, there was little she could do against my blatant theft. In fact, there was little anypony could do right now.

Aside from me.

None of the ponies with me in the marketplace were moving. Not a single inch, like they were a photograph, frozen in time. They all looked so happy, a permanent smile plastered across their face, unaware of what was happening. Or at least I was hoping that was the case for them. Not like I had any way of confirming my suspicions, since none of them could interact with me in any way.

I snaked my way through a group of colts and fillies that were stuck in an endless game, their ball suspended mid-air between them. I came to a table that was filled with neat rows of apple cores, and added another one to their lines. A quick glance revealing that this was apple number twenty-six.

I had done many things when I first realized what had happened to me. Despair, chief amongst these things. After going through every conceivable emergency solution, and none of them working, I started to get hungry. So naturally, I raided my fridge at home. As the “days” passed by and my rations grew sparse, I resorted to coming to the marketplace.

Actually, I wasn’t completely sure as to how many days already passed since I got stuck in this moment of time, but I was doing my best to at least try and keep track. I continued on my way to get my nourishment for the day, trying to enjoy the perpetual sunny day I was having.

The sun didn’t move in the sky, and my sleep schedule wasn’t to be trusted, so the only thing I felt I could somewhat trust to occur regularly, was my hunger. Yet, even that was sketchy at best. So as I got my groceries for the day, I’d put an apple core on the table, another tally mark on the wall in this prison of my own making.

As I put a few stalks of celery in my basket, I turned around, looking at the silent crowd behind me. Seeing the ponyville residents, some of them my good friends, stuck like this brought a great deal of pain to my heart. They may have looked happy, but that was only because they didn’t know.

They didn’t know that I had cursed them to an existence devoid of time, empty of joy, barren of autonomy. Doomed to remain in this singular moment, unaware that their existence had been ended, while at the same time existing inside an infinite singularity. As far as I was aware, they might not even exist anymore, little more than a soulless snapshot of the moment they all died, with me being the only living being left.

With a sigh, I averted my eyes, before I continued to think too much about things that could be, as they were simply too depressing. I started making my way back home, trying to think of other things, such as how to actually help them escape this plight. Thankfully, my home in the Ponyville clocktower wasn’t too far away from the marketplace, and it wasn’t long before I was able to unload my basket onto my kitchen counter. Grabbing another apple, I made my way to my basement.

I made my way past a frozen Twilight, careful not to step on any of the schematics that littered the floor, as well as any other free space in the basement. One of them was impaled on Twilight's horn, so that I wasn’t able to see her face. All of these schematics were being used by me to cross-reference every little detail about my doomsday clock, in a desperate attempt to find just what in tartarus went wrong.

Once again I started examining every single screw, gear, metal rod, pendulum, welding point, support beam, thaumic line, and everything else that made up my family’s penultimate creation. I had to find the mistake, I just had to. Even if it took me all of this stagnant eternity, I had to eventually solve this mystery.

I owed it to the rest of the world to right the wrong that I committed.

I sat on a hill outside of Ponyville, overlooking the whole town. Recently I’ve found myself out on here more and more often. By now it had been more than two months, according to my self-made, not to be trusted, calendar. I had gotten somewhat used to the stillness that came with time that didn’t flow, yet it was still creepy to see a whole town just… stop. There was something uncanny about looking at a pony that was alive, yet at the same time, not.

My eyes wandered, taking in the town as a whole, before slowly drifting to the castle resting on the mountainside behind me, that could be seen in the distance.

I had done damn well everything I could think of on my own, and had exactly zero results to show for it. The machine was perfect, with not a single gear out of place. And without the expertise of an experienced spellcaster, there was no way for me to accurately test the magical side of the project.

At this point, the only feasible solution that remained in my mind was to go to Canterlot, and check if maybe the princesses were unaffected, even if only partially. Looking at the magnificent castle, I made up my mind. Today, I’d spend preparing for my trip, and “tomorrow”, I’d start walking.

Celestia knows what I’d do if the princesses were stuck as well.

With a sigh, I turned around and started making my way back home in order to prepare, yet, I immediately bumped into something big… and orange. Confused I took a step back and looked up the orange thing, which appeared to be a neck, which terminated in a face.

“Hello,” the mysterious visitor said, with a big, disarming smile aimed at me.

“You… move?” I eventually stammered out after processing what was happening.

“What a weird thing to say to somepony you just met,” the stranger answered, looking over my head and into town. “Although I do understand why you’d ask. How long have you been trapped here like this?”

“Hard to say, maybe a month? Two? It’s incredibly hard to keep track of time in a place where it is absent,” I replied without thinking, all the while observing the tall pony actually move. The mere fact that she was not frozen stiff was mesmerizing, and my eyes were starting to water a bit at the beauty of it. During my observations, I finally noticed the horn and wings adorning my orange visitor. “You’re an alicorn?”

“Yes, Amber, the alicorn of time,” she replied, looking back at me. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I wasn’t aware that there were more alicorns aside from our princesses,” my eyebrows creased as I tried to remember any other old pony-tales like Nightmare Moon, yet coming up empty.

“Most ponies aren’t,” Amber chuckled. “That’s because we like to stay hidden from the general populace while we do our… things.”

“We? There’s more?” I asked with wonder.

“Yes, I suppose there’s me too,” a voice behind me suddenly announced, causing me to yelp and jump. “Excuse the scare, I wasn’t intending to hide, but your attention seemed to be captivated by my companion here.”

Behind me stood a somewhat elderly looking stallion with a blue coat and white mane. A small beard adorned his chin, a practice not often seen in today's day and age, as it was seen as unfashionable.

“Terribly sorry about that,” I apologized for ignoring him. “I’m just so happy to meet somepony who isn’t frozen stiff, I suppose my attention has been a bit monopolized.”

“Don’t sweat it,” the stallion waved me off. “Name’s Starswirl by the way. Yes, the Starswirl the Bearded.”

“Oh…” I took a moment to realize that I was in the presence of an, apparently, still living legend. If news got out that Starswirl was still alive, the outcry would be huge.

“Well, now that introductions are out of the way, I’m sure you already understand why we’re here, right?” Amber asked, dispelling the awkward atmosphere that was creeping up.

“Well, seeing as you are the alicorn of time, and Starswirl the Bearded is with you, I can wager a guess,” I replied with a bit of hope creeping into my voice. “Are you here to fix this… mess?” I gestured to the whole of Ponyville as I said that, hoping, nay, praying that the answer would be ‘yes’.

“That would be correct,” Amber nodded. “We came by as soon as I felt the fluctuation in time, which was almost immediately, by the way. It’s amazing that so much time has passed for you in here despite that.”

“Is… the whole world frozen over like this?” I asked sheepishly.

“For you, yes,” Amber smiled. “It might seem like everything is frozen in time, but truthfully, it’s just you that got stuck in it. Time outside of this chink in time is flowing normally, and, while it may sound weird, you have already been freed from your temporal prison and continued on with your life.”

“I… but… I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“Well yes, but actually, no,” Amber awkwardly replied. “You see, time is… weird. You might assume it is a straight line… but it’s actually more like a big ball of… wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff. So while you were already freed in the blink of an eye from your time prison because time wouldn’t be able to go on outside otherwise, you still need to spend the time that you’re supposed to in here, or it never would have happened.”

“I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this,” I said while looking to Starswirl for help.

“Nopony ever really does,” Starswirl replied. “And if we don’t stop her here, she’ll explain your ear off for another month, which I’m sure neither of us wants to happen. Suffice to say that time is wonky, we’re here to help, and technically we already did.”

“So what will happen if you dispel this space? Will my consciousness just skip to where time currently… is?” I was still trying to figure out the specifics, and imagining losing two or more months of my life was a bit unpleasant.

“No, you’ll carry on from where you left off,” Amber said, now a bit grumpy because her explanation was cut short. “After all, while all the stuff already happened, it still needs to happen to you,” she poked me in the chest with a hoof to drive her point across. “Well, then, why don’t you lead us to where this all started, so we may undo this mess.”

“Oh, yes, of course!” I got excited as the end of my torment was finally in sight, and started leading them through Ponyville, towards the clocktower that housed my supposed magnum opus.

As soon as we entered my basement, I could hear two exclamations of surprise behind me. Albeit it seemed to be for different reasons.

“Twilight’s here… I should have known she was involved,” Amber said while looking at the frozen unicorn with schematics taped over her face.

“This… is this supposed to be the tower of kairos?” Starswirl seemed panicked all of a sudden. “This isn’t supposed to exist! Just how did you build this?”

Starswirl was suddenly all up in my face, his eyes practically forcing me to give up the answer.

“My family started designing plans for this a few generations ago, it was slowly perfected over time until it was finally my turn to build it!” I sputtered out. “I swear I don’t know who it was that started it, nor do I know what it was actually supposed to do.”

“Listen here, a long, long time ago, I was in a similar predicament to what you are in right now.” Starswirl started explaining. “My friend back then, tried all sorts of things to help me, since Amber didn’t really exist at that point yet…”

“Technically I did,” Amber chimed in. “But I also didn’t, at the same time!”

“Yes, we get it, you’re special,” Starswirl rolled his eyes. “Point being, she didn’t come to help me out until much more time had passed than the two months or so you spent here. The tower of kairos is but one contraption my friend built in an attempt to help, and after testing it, he deemed it too dangerous, yet kept the blueprints, as he did with all his creations.

“These blueprints should be in a place where so many security spells are in place nopony, not even an alicorn should be able to force its way in there. Yet here we are, with an incomplete, scuffed version of the tower! Tell. Me. How. This. Happened!”

“I really don’t know!” Starswirl had pushed me into a corner by now, and I was scared, since the situation seemed a lot more serious than originally thought. “This task was passed on to me by my father, who received it from his father and so on. Nopony knows who started it, just that it was “vital” that we complete it.”

“And you just kept on going, without knowing what would happen, with all the reason you have being, “Because you gotta”?” Starswirl sent spittle flying into my face. “That’s insane!”

“Now, now, Starswirl, why don’t you calm down a bit?” Amber physically pulled Starswirl off me, giving me some room to breathe.

“Calm down? Calm down?” Starswirl's right eye started twitching. “Don’t you understand? Somepony managed to get into the vault and steal something! Granted, it didn’t seem like they got the complete blueprint, but even that should have been impossible! Then they send this random family on a wild cult-like goose-chase without telling them how or why, instead of doing it themselves, even though they have to be extremely powerful!”

“What you’re saying is, whoever took the blueprints has some weird ulterior motives by having this tower constructed?” Amber asked, now starting to sweat a bit too.

“Yes! You!” Starswirl pointed at me. “Show me the completed blueprints, I need to see what this tower is supposed to accomplish.”

“Yes! Absolutely!” Not one to go against a frantic unicorn and alicorn duo, I immediately started gathering the blueprints scattered around the area, including the one taped on twilight's face, and obediently hoofed them over to Starswirl, who immediately started analyzing them in detail while muttering complicated sounding jargon.

It took a good while, but eventually Starswirl seemed to come to a conclusion. He beckoned over Amber, and they held a hushed conversation, which seemed to get heated up for a bit. Before coming back over to me. Starswirl's mood seemed to be in the gutter, which made me even more nervous than I already was. Amber was all smiles, though, I could tell it was forced.

“Excuse me, but something came up, so we need to speed things up a bit, if you don’t mind,” Amber told me in a strained voice. “Would you please go stand close to where you were when the tower activated?”

I nodded my head, questioning my life choices even more than I already did and stood in front of the huge clock face. My back turned to my rescuers.

“And don’t even attempt to build anything similar to this, or I’ll come for you,” Starswirl seethed. “And not to help.”

I gulped when I heard a horn fire up behind me, before a magical wave washed over me, making my skin feel all tingly, which caused me to shudder.

“It… stopped?” I heard a slightly disappointed voice behind me, immediately recognizing it as Twilight Sparkle’s. “Did… did it fail?” She asked tentatively.

“Yes, Miss Twilight, it would seem so,” I sighed and turned around to face her, happy to see her animated face, after having to see it frozen for a long time.

I walked back over to her, while enduring her look of empathic pity. If there was anypony who could relate to an experiment going wrong, it was probably her. So I just accepted her condolences and started leading her out of the basement, even while hearing creaking coming from what was now known as the tower of kairos.

“This doesn’t sound good, do you think it’ll be okay?” Twilight asked, looking over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the contraption.

“It probably won’t,” I replied in a quiet voice. And true to my word, not long after, a deafening crashing sound could be heard from my basement, and a huge dust cloud spilled into my living room.

Both Twilight and me had a bit of a coughing fit as the dust invaded our lungs. It took us a while to calm down, and I eventually sat down on the floor, absent-mindedly staring at the entrance to my basement. Down there were the ruins of my life’s work, now destroyed. I could understand that me and my family did something bad, although I couldn’t possibly know what that was.

“Oh no! Your contraption!” Twilight exclaimed, trying to rush back down to check on it, but being blocked by my outstretched hoof.

“Don’t go down there, it could be dangerous and unstable,” I kindly told her. “Also… I think it might be better this way.”

“Better? What do you mean?” Twilight asked, tilting her head in confusion.

“If you don’t mind, I don’t really feel like talking about it right now,” I sighed. “Could you maybe just leave me alone for a bit?”

“Oh, yes… of course!” Twilight replied. “Just, let me know if I can help you in any way, please? I’ll be there if you need me.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate it,” I shot her a weak smile, and watched her leave, although hesitantly. There was a huge pile of garbage in my basement now, and I’d have to clean it up eventually.

Deciding that that time wasn’t now, I got up and started making myself some tea to calm my nerves. What I needed right now was a few nights of good sleep, and maybe after that, I’d be ready to face what really happened down there.

“Are you sure?” Amber paced between a few trees. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“I’m not sure about anything right now!” Starswirl shot back. “But the thing is that any other theory I have is even more impossible! So following logic, I have to be right!”

“But he’s been imprisoned so securely, there’s no way he could’ve pulled this off!” Amber whined, kicking away a pebble.

“There’s no such thing as an impenetrable prison, and you know that,” Starswirl sighed. “Now that it’s come to this, all we can do is just go there and check up on him. But if I’m right, and I have the feeling I am… Stagnate has escaped.”

Author's Note

I started writing this back in March... It was based off a writing prompt, and I started writing it to see if I could get back into the swing of writing more regularly. Obviously that didn't happen. I'll see where life takes me after I post this, I left the possibility open to continue it anyways...

On that note... Stagnate gets namedropped, incredible. A name some of you might recognize from my blogposts.

This chapter wasn't proofread by any human eyes, since I just want to post it now that it's finished, so take it with a grain of salt ^^

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it :)