Ruin

Chapters

Dust
Companions
Shatter
Ponyville
Fall
Aftermath
Funeral
Stranger
Preparations
Forest
Retrieval
Failure
Station
Unstable
Betrayal
Return
Truth
Epilogue
Elemental

Dust

Act 1: Dust

In a dead world, in an abandoned castle, a broken mirror sparked to life.

A high-pitched whirring filled the air. Lightning crackled across the mirror’s shattered surface, and the reflections in those shards of glass that remained seemed to bend inwards. With a bright flash, a connection was made. The surface of the mirror became a hole, and through that hole stepped a figure.

It was a young woman, the figure, though you’d be hard-pressed to tell behind the layers of plastic fabric that enclosed their body; a cobbled-together hazmat suit, of sorts. A metal box sat on her back, spider-like with its many leg-antennae and blinking-light eyes. A cable trailed from the back of the box, running down to the floor and back through the portal the figure had come from.

The figure looked around, peering through the clear plastic that covered her face. The room was dark, the only light two weak and frail beams that streamed through windows high above. Dust hung in the air. She stepped down from the pedestal the mirror sat upon, her boots leaving tracks on the floor, crunching on pieces of broken glass.

“…Hello?” The figure said, voice muffled by the suit, a little timidly.

She swallowed.

“Hello? Can anyone hear me?” A bit louder this time. The air seemed to swallow her voice.

“Is anyone there?”

She paused for a moment.

Nothing.

She took another look around. She was in a library, or what remained of one. Books had been pulled off the shelves and discarded in piles on the ground.

She took a few steps, the cable dragging along in the dust behind her like a tail. There was a balcony, to her right. She headed towards it.

The first thing she saw was the sky. It was a deep grey that spanned as far as she could see. What little light penetrated the clouds of dust that filled the sky was tinged.

She approached the railing, grasped it with both hands and, gritting her teeth, forced herself to look down at the town in the shadow of the castle.

She could only see the very tops of the buildings, and only as shadows; the dust was too thick in the air to discern much else. Still, a shudder ran down the figure’s spine.

Everything was still. Nothing moved. No birds. Only the wind had survived, and even that was only barely alive. The only sounds she could hear was the sound of her own breathing, and her own quickening heartbeat. Everything else was just… silent. Impossibly so.

And not a single pony in sight.

The figure’s gloved hands clenched around the railing.

“Welcome home, Sunset,” the figure said to herself.

“Welcome home.”

The world ended on the last day before summer vacation.

Sunset didn’t hate math. She did hate math class. Her teacher wasn’t a very forgiving one, and her lecture style was…

...well, Sunset was propping up her head with her hand, and if she hadn’t been, she might have faceplanted into the desk.

A faint buzzing caught her attention. At first, she thought it might have been a fly, but no; it was coming in regular intervals, and the noise itself seemed to be coming from her backpack.

Sunset’s eyebrows raised. Glancing up to make sure the teacher wasn’t looking, she reached down and undid the zipper. The buzzing got louder, so she quickly slipped her hand inside and grabbed the journal, the one she and Princess Twilight shared. Touching it was enough to get it to stop vibrating, but the fact that it was doing so in the first place meant that a message had arrived.

Glancing up again (the teacher was facing the blackboard), she cracked open the book, turned to the most recent page.

And on that page, someone had written a single sentence. Ten words long. Just ten words, but they sent a chill down Sunset’s spine.

The message read as follows:

Sunset, get to the portal as fast as you can.

Sunset blinked. Had she read that right? She read it again. Yes, she had. Her stomach dropped.

Her chair screeched as she shot to her feet, journal still in hand.

The teacher spun around. “Miss Shimmer!”

“Sorry!” she said, as she dashed for the door. “It’s an emergency!

She ran, through the hallway, down two flights of stairs. Class was in session; there was no one around to witness her flight.

Sunset burst through the front door to the school. There was a crowd in the courtyard ahead of her, gathered around the statue. She estimated it had to be at least two hundred people.

“What the—”

Sunset ran forward.

“Hey,” she shouted. “What’s going on?”

No one answered her.

As she grew closer, she had a better look at some of the people in the crowd. They looked… lost. Confused. Many of them were sitting on the ground, not standing. Like they didn’t know how to.

Sunset reached the edge of the mob, pushed her way into it. She recognized some of the faces she passed; there was Octavia, and beside her was Vinyl. Mrs Cheerilee was sitting to her left, surrounded by children. And there was Lyra—

Wait, Lyra was in her Calculus class, wasn’t she? How had she gotten there before her?

“Excuse me,” Sunset said, brushing the thought aside. That wasn’t what was important right now. “Coming through!”

Soon enough, the crowd spit her back out in front of the statue. Just in time to see…

With a flash of light, someone emerged from the portal.

And then, right after them, came another.

And another, and another.

Sunset just stared, unable to comprehend for the moment what she was seeing.

Until, that is, one of the newly arrived tripped over themselves and fell to the ground. Sunset, snapped out of her daze, ran forward to help… but two other people got to her quicker. They pulled them to their feet, brought them away from the portal, just as another group came through.

Sunset ran up to them.

“Rarity! Fluttershy!” Sunset said. “What’s happening?”

The girls turned, looked at her. They seemed to be confused, but then recognition bloomed behind Rarity’s eyes.

“Are you… Sunset Shimmer?” she asked.

Sunset gave her an odd look. “Um… yes? We’ve known each other for—

It dawned on her.

“You’re the Equestrian Rarity,” Sunset said. The other girl nodded.

Sunset turned. “And you’re the Equestrian Fluttershy.”

The other girl nodded, weakly.

“Then—” Sunset’s eyes widened “—then all of these people are… ponies?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Sunset said. The world seemed to be tilting on its axis. “Okay, what’s going on? Why are all of you here?”

“We’re evacuating,” Fluttershy said.

“Evacuating? Why?”

Fluttershy and Rarity looked at one another.

“We’re… not quite sure,” Rarity said. “Twilight wasn’t very specific. She just told us we needed to get everyone in Ponyville through the mirror portal as fast as we could.”

“Is she here?” Sunset asked, as yet more people came from the statue and joined the crowd.

“No, she’s still on the other side,” Rarity said. “She wanted to make sure everyone got through safely.”

The wheels in Sunset’s mind spun, but got no traction. Why would Twilight evacuate Ponyville? What emergency would be so great—

“Alright!” came a loud shout from the portal. That’s everybody!”

It was Rainbow Dash, followed closely by Applejack and Pinkie Pie, and then a third girl, who Sunset didn’t recognize. The girl stumbled on her first steps. Sunset ran over and caught her before she fell, then offered a hand for support, which the girl took.

“Are you Sunset Shimmer?” the girl asked.

Sunset nodded. “That’s me.”

“Starlight,” the girl said. “Starlight Glimmer. Twilight told me to find you.” She looked around in a daze. “Where are we?” She looked down at her own hands. What are we?”

“Later,” Sunset said. “Where’s Twilight? Your Twilight?”

Starlight blinked, then seemed to refocus.

“She was behind us,” she said, looking over at the statue. “She said there was something she needed to—”

A sound, like a million pieces of glass shattering all at once, split the air, and all was rendered silent for a moment.

Sunset’s head snapped towards the statue, along with three-hundred and thirty-nine ex-ponies and everyone watching from the school’s windows and anyone else who was in earshot.

A great crack had split the surface, running from the top of the pedestal and snaking down to the bottom, spiderweb cracks splintering off in a myriad of directions.

“What…”

Sunset put her hand on the pedestal’s surface. It was rough. Stone. Just stone.

The portal to Equestria had been closed.

And Twilight was still on the other side.

“—set, can you hear me?”

Sunset put a gloved hand up to her ear, in which sat a small earpiece that connected to the device on her back by a thin wire.

“Loud and clear, Twilight.” Actually, the sound quality wasn’t very good, but it got the job done.

Twilight let out a sigh. “Thank goodness. Sorry for not checking in sooner, we had a small technical issue on our end.”

“Anything major?” Sunset asked.

“No, just some crossed wires,” came Twilight’s reply. “How are things over there?”

“N-not, uh…” she glanced back over the balcony. “It’s not looking good.”

“Oh.”

They were silent, for a few moments. Then a third voice chimed in.

“Guys, we’ve only got enough energy left in the Can Opener for another five minutes.”

“Thanks for the heads up, Starlight,” said Sunset. “I don’t think there’s much for me to do right now. I’ll head back.”

“Roger. We’ll be waiting.”

“Keep the tent warm for me.”

“Will do,” Twilight Sparkle replied, through the microphone she’d… borrowed, from the main office of the school. Principal Celestia had said the school would help in any way it could. And it wasn’t like anyone was using it over the summer, anyway.

The part about keeping the tent warm had been a cruel joke. It was sweltering in their little impromptu laboratory, partially because it was summer, and partially because of the computers and other electronics that sat on the ground around the statue’s pedestal. Sweat dotted Twilight’s forehead.

Two weeks had passed since the incident, and in those two weeks, Twilight had been rather busy. Most of it had been spent working on the Can Opener.

The Can Opener was their nickname for the set of electrodes clamped to the surface of the shattered statue’s base, and the banks of computers and capacitors that kept it running. And what it did was simple: it cut open a wormhole between their world and Equestria, restoring some of the functionality of the broken portal.

Starlight had been the one to compare it to a can opener. The name had stuck, much to Twilight’s chagrin. It was possibly the most advanced piece of technology Twilight had ever put together. Part of that was the nature of the device; fusing science and magic was not an easy task, although she supposed she was the only human qualified to do so. That was something to be proud of, she supposed.

Twilight leaned back in her chair.

“Starlight,” she said. “How are things looking over there?”

“All green,” the other girl said. “That’s good, right?”

“That’s perfect.”

Starlight Glimmer. The ex-pony student of her counterpart in Equestria. She’d proved to be a great asset in their work, particularly where magic factored into the equation. And she seemed nice enough.

Now, Twilight had her manning the data collection terminal. A thick cable ran down from the back of the machine, into a larger spool, the other end running across the ground and through the crackling portal the Can Opener had forced back to life. On the other end, Twilight knew, was Sunset’s Black Box… and, hopefully, Sunset herself.

The Black Box was her own invention. A myriad of sensory equipment had been packed into a wearable ‘backpack’, which transmitted data directly to their computers via the cable that connected the two. Of course, none of those sensors would function going through the portal on their own; the intense electromagnetic radiation given off by the Can Opener would fry any of them in seconds. That was what the box was for: EM shielding.

It was also the reason for the cable. Radio waves couldn’t make it through their little wormhole, either.

“Alright,” came Sunset’s voice, crackling over the speakers. “I’m back at the portal.”

“You’re green for re-entry,” Twilight said. “Be careful stepping through; you may experience some slight disorientation as you cross over the barrier.”

“Roger. See you on the other side.”

She turned her chair towards the wormhole’s shimmering surface and waited, holding her breath without really meaning to.

A few seconds passed, and then a hand pushed its way through the surface, followed by an arm, then a shoulder, and then a torso as Sunset staggered back into their universe.

The girl stumbled forwards as her back foot left the statue. Twilight rose quickly and caught her shoulder before she fell.

“Careful,” she said. “Here, let me get this off of you…”

After making sure Sunset was fine standing on her own, Twilight moved around and began undoing the straps that held the black box to her back. Sunset didn’t say anything, just limply moved her arms as directed. Once the equipment had been removed, she stumbled forwards, falling into a metal folding chair that Starlight had pulled over.

“You weren’t kidding,” she said.

“Sorry.”

Starlight brought over a bottle of water. Sunset twisted the cap off with a shaking hand and drank, three large gulps.

“Haa,” she sighed. “Thanks.”

“So,” Starlight asked. “What did you see?”

Sunset filled them in on her little jaunt to Equestria.

“It was so quiet,” Sunset said. “Like… I didn’t even know it could get that quiet. I thought something was wrong with my hearing, at first.”

She paused. Starlight took the moment to ask a question.

“Did you see any sign of Twilight?”

Sunset shook her head. “No. Nothing. Just a lot of dust.”

They were all silent for a time.

Sunset smiled, though not fully. “But we made it. We actually made it to Equestria.”

That livened the mood a little. Twilight smiled, and Starlight gave a weak one of her own. This wasn’t their first successful test, but it was the first time anyone had actually crossed over the threshold themselves.

Sunset stood up; her balance seemed to have returned. “Let me get changed, then we need to go tell the others. They’ll want to know.”

“I’ll come with you,” Starlight said.

“Sure. You coming, Twilight?”

“I-I’ll stay behind, Twilight said. “The, uh, the data needs to be sorted, and—”

“Sure,” Sunset said. “Do you want my help? I can come back after we’ve talked to the Ponyvillians.”

“Oh, no, I’ll be fine,” Twilight said, hurriedly. “You get some rest.”

“Will do.”

After stripping off the protective layers of her suit and grabbing her phone off the desk where she’d left it, Sunset left the tent, followed closely behind by Starlight Glimmer. The interior grew bright for a moment while the flap was open, and then dimmed as they left, leaving Twilight alone.

Twilight let out a long breath and turned back to her workstation. Numbers scrolled across the screen and populated themselves into the appropriate spreadsheets. She had a long night of number crunching ahead of her.

Her kind of evening.

Normally, the school would have been empty this time of year.

Normally.

Right now, it was serving as a home for the displaced residents of Ponyville. And the majority of them were crammed into the gymnasium, and it was to the gym Starlight Glimmer, trailing behind Sunset by a few feet, was headed.

There were plenty of people out in the halls, little cliques hanging around the lockers and in the classrooms and such. To someone unaware of the situation, it might have looked like an ordinary day of high school. Some of them waved to Starlight as they passed. She tried her best to look reassuring as she waved back, but inside, her chest was tight, and her mouth was dry.

She’d known they probably wouldn’t find Twilight. After all, Sunset wasn’t the first thing to go through the portal. But part of her had hoped that this time, it would be different.

Part of her always did.

Eventually, they reached the open doors that led to the gymnasium. Well, it didn’t look much like a gymnasium at the moment; more like a refugee camp. Sleeping bags and blankets covered the floor like some kind of bizarre patchwork quilt. Many of them had been donated by the students of Canterlot High. Thank Celestia for the generosity of high schoolers.

There hadn’t been enough for all three-hundred and thirty-nine of the pony-siders, as the people on this side of the portal had started calling them, but it was enough to share. Little groups dotted around the gym, talking or playing cards or otherwise idly passing the time. Many of them looked up at Sunset and Starlight’s entrance.

One of the people who looked up was Vice Principal Luna, sitting in a folding chair by the entrance of the gym. She was playing chaperone today; she and some of the teachers had volunteered to do so in shifts.

“Ah, Sunset, you’ve returned,” she said, as they approached. “With good news, I hope?”

Sunset nodded. “Very good news.”

Starlight nodded as well, but she couldn’t shake how strange it was to talk to someone who so resembled a princess from her homeland.

Luna nodded back with a smile. “Go on, then.”

Sunset took a few steps into the gym.

“Hey, everypony!” she shouted. Everyone in attendance looked up. A murmur spread across the crowd.

“We made it to Equestria today!”

Well, there was no settling them down after that. Questions flew, too numerous to discern. Starlight raised her hands.

“Alright, everypony,” she said. “Settle down. You can ask questions, but one at a time, please.”

“Does this mean we can go home?” someone shouted out, almost as soon as she’d stopped talking.

“Not yet,” Starlight said. “We want to make sure everything is safe before we start sending anyone back. Please be patient, everypony.”

“For how long?”

“Give us a week or two.”

“What about Ponyville?" someone else asked. "Is it still there?”

“We haven’t gotten to Ponyville yet. Today’s trip was just a quick experiment to make sure the portal worked properly,” Starlight explained.

“What about Twilight?” Someone asked—Starlight recognized its owner as Rainbow Dash. A lump formed in her throat.

“We didn’t see any sign of her,” Sunset said, taking over the conversation. “But again, today was just an experiment. We didn’t go very far.”

That brought the mood down a bit. “B-but we’re sure she’s fine,” Starlight hastily added. “She may just not have been in the castle.”

“Yeah!” Someone—Pinkie—said. “It’ll take a lot more than that to keep our Twilight down!”

There was a murmured agreement throughout the crowd.

Yeah, Starlight thought. The lump in her throat eased, a little.

A lot more.

Sunset slid her key into the lock of her apartment’s door. It was night, now. The bolt slid back with a mechanical thud.

She entered, making sure to close and lock the door again behind her before dragging herself up the steps to her loft. She let her bag drop to the ground beside her bed as she climbed onto it, letting her head settle on her pillow.

She could hear the sounds of the city around her; the low thrum of other people in the apartments around her walking and talking; the sounds of the cars in the street outside; the quiet murmur of music coming from somewhere in the building, something fast and pop-y.

But if she listened close, she could still hear the silence of a dead world choked with dust.

She brought her hands up to her face and rubbed her eyes. She reached over the side of the bed to her bag, and from it she withdrew a pen and an old, ornate journal, a red and yellow sun emblazoned on its front. She sat up, crossed her legs, opened the journal to a blank page, and began to write.

Dear Princess Twilight,

I made it to Equestria today. The Can Opener worked perfectly. This world’s Twilight wasn’t able to get the magic that changed us back into ponies working, so I was still human, but I made it. I guess I finally came to visit, just like you always wanted.

Your subjects are still doing fine, by the sounds of it. We’re giving them as much as we can, and we hope to be able to start sending them back to you soon. Anything might be better than being packed into the school all day.

Starlight and our Twilight are getting along well. I wish you could have spent more time getting to know our Twilight. I think you two would have gotten along well (and I’m not just saying that because you’re the same person). I think you’d be proud of your student, too.

We all miss you, Twilight. I hope you reply soon.

Your friend,

Sunset Shimmer.

She waited a minute, just staring at the page, willing something to happen. When nothing did, she snapped it shut and laid it on her bedside table before flopping back down onto the bed.

Letting out a sigh, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone and a pair of earbuds. It was going to be a long night.

Companions

“Gah!”

Twilight Sparkle sat bolt upright, the edges of her tangled bedsheets clutched tight in her hands. Her breaths were quick and rapid, and she was covered in a cold sweat.

She sat there, staring straight forward as her heart rate slowly calmed. The low light of the aquarium she kept across from her bed cast long, hazy shadows across her walls; she focused on that and tried to control her breathing. In, out. In, out. Just like Cadance had taught her.

She’d had the nightmare again.

“Twilight?” said a small, half-awake voice at the end of her bed. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, Spike,” she said. “You can go back to sleep.”

“If you say so…”

He was out again like a light. Twilight glanced over at her clock. The red numbers on the display read 4:00.

Groaning internally, she laid back down, drew the covers up to her neck, and hoped against hope she’d be able to fall back asleep this time.

Starlight Glimmer opened her eyes. Early morning light streamed through the high windows of the gym. She glanced at her wristwatch. Weird, that coming through the portal had given her one of those, but handy.

7:28. Time to get up.

Groaning, she slid out of her sleeping bag and stretched her arms out, suppressing a yawn. She glanced around. Most of the others were still asleep, it looked like.

Starlight grabbed the little plastic baggie that held her toothbrush and other toiletries—her only real possessions in this world, donated the same as her sleeping bag—got to her feet, and headed towards the door to the locker rooms.

The locker room was cold, as it always seemed to be in the mornings. It was also empty; thank Celestia for small blessings. Starlight cracked a little smile at that.

She set her toiletries down on one of the benches and began to undress, leaving her clothes in a neat pile next to the bag. Then, she turned to the showers.

There were three stalls, each covered by a plastic curtain. Starlight took the first one. The faucet squealed as she twisted it. She waited only a moment before stepping inside.

Warm water from the showerhead ran down her skin. She stood there a few moments, eyes closed, letting it wash over her face.

She couldn’t wait too long, though. There wouldn’t be enough hot water to go around if she did.

She began to scrub.

When Starlight left the shower, towel wrapped around her hair, she was not alone; two of the other showers were running, and Roseluck was undressing herself. Starlight nodded to her, then went to retrieve her own clothes.

Apparently in this world it was taboo to be seen without clothes on, probably because humans didn’t have natural coats. Well, whatever; that was a human problem. They were all ponies here.

She pulled her shirt on, then her pants. She’d discarded the beanie the portal had given her a few days after arriving; it wasn’t the right weather for hats.

The gym proper was a little brighter when she reemerged. Ponies were starting to get up, stretch out. For the most part, they’d all become accustomed to two legs now. After all, they’d had two weeks to practice.

The mood seemed a little better today, and Starlight found herself smiling a little at that.

She put her stuff back by her sleeping bag, and headed for the tent.

“Hey,” Starlight said, as she stepped into the tent, momentarily brightening the inside. “You’re here early.”

“Yes,” Twilight replied, swapping the soldering iron she’d been using for a screwdriver. “I wanted to get a head-start on the equipment for tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh,” Starlight said. She looked at Twilight dubiously. “You weren’t here all night, were you?”

The screwdriver paused.

“What? Why would you ask that?”

“Princess Twilight used to pull all-nighters all the time. I wondered if you were doing the same, since I get up pretty early and this is the third time this week you’ve been in the tent when I got here.”

The screwdriver resumed its work.

“I don’t put much stock in all-nighters,” Twilight said. “There’s plenty of research that shows that healthy sleeping patterns improve average intelligence, concentration, efficiency, and memory. If I did spend all night on something, I wouldn’t trust it to work the next morning.” She set the screwdriver down. “So no, I haven’t been here all night. Pass me those wire strippers?”

“Huh,” Starlight said. She reached over and grabbed the aforementioned tool off the workbench. “I guess you two aren’t as similar as I thought.”

Twilight bit her lip.

“I guess.”

Starlight took her seat across the tent, and Twilight went back to work. What she was putting together was a new Black Box—or, rather, she was replacing some of the components in the old one with new sensors. They’d collected plenty of data off some of the instruments the day before, rendering them superfluous.

She was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t notice Sunset coming in until she was right behind her.

“What are you working on?”

Twilight started, nearly dropping the small screwdriver she was using. Sunset caught it before it rolled off the desk.

“Sorry,” she said, handing the screwdriver back.

“It’s okay.”

“So,” Sunset said, “what are you working on?”

Twilight explained about the Black Box.

“Gotcha,” Sunset said, once she’d finished. “Anything I can help with?”

“Nothing for now,” Twilight replied.

“Roger. Are we going to use the Can Opener today?”

“We can,” Twilight said, “but it might be better to wait until tomorrow. It’ll need another night to charge up fully, but at full charge, we should be able to hold the portal open for a bit over two hours. I figure we need the extra time.”

Sunset nodded. “Tomorrow it is.”

A day passed.

Sunset stood in her protective suit, facing the cracked stone face of the pedestal. On her back sat the Black Box, outfitted with a new set of sensors and antennae.

“Everybody ready?” Twilight asked.

“Ready!” Starlight said.

Sunset nodded. “Ready.”

“Alright! Discharging capacitors… now!”

The sound of a key being pressed, and then the machinery surrounding the pedestal crackled to life. The lights in the tent dimmed as the capacitors discharged, sending blue lightning crackling across the pedestal’s surface. The arcs seemed to take hold at the center of the stone, sinking in and pooling around it. A hole appeared, ringed with energy; it began to grow, pulled open by the Can-Opener’s power until it was large enough to step through.

“Dilation at 100%!” Starlight called out. “We’re holding steady!”

Sunset took a step towards the pedestal. Then another, and another, until she was right in front of it. She swallowed.

She lifted one foot, and she put it down in Equestria.

Her skin prickled as it crossed over the threshold. Under her suit, she was sure the hair on her arms was standing on end. She closed her eyes as her face passed through. When she opened them again, they fell on a door set into a wall of crystal.

Her back leg crossed the barrier, passing smoothly through the mirror which made up this half of the connection between their worlds. She staggered for a moment, then caught herself. The sound of it echoed off the smooth walls.

She let out the breath she’d been holding.

“Alright,” she said, mostly to herself, then: “Twilight, can you hear me?”

“Loud and… well, clear enough.”

“Great.”

The silence returned.

Sunset took a step forwards, the cable trailing behind her and through the portal. She could feel its weight behind her.

“We won’t be able to go much further if I’m stuck on a cable,” she said.

“Sorry,” Twilight apologized. “I should have something better ready before your next trip. In the meantime, we have about fifty meters of cable on this spool. You can at least explore the castle a bit.”

“Roger.”

She decided first to take a look around the room she was in. It was a library; judging from the view of the balcony, it had to be about halfway up the castle.

Most of the room was filled with shelves, and most of those shelves were filled with books, though many of them had been removed and discarded. Sunset could imagine Twilight, running around frantically, looking through her books for anything, anything that could stop… whatever had happened.

Or maybe that was only in her imagination.

And then there was the portal, crackling softly behind her. It was surrounded on this side by an odd assortment of Equestrian machinery. Sunset assumed that was the device this world’s Twilight had created to keep the portal open. Glass shards littered the floor in front of the mirror; they crunched under her boots as she walked over them.

She cast a glance to the top of the mirror, where a conspicuously lectern-shaped piece of the machine sat empty.

There seemed to be nothing else of interest in the room, so she began to make her way to the door—but something stopped her.

Her eyes had fallen on a book, abandoned face-down on one of the reading tables. It was bound in brown.

Her stomach sank. Slowly, she made her way over to the table.

She flipped the book over.

The cover was blank.

She let out a sigh of relief.

“Everything okay over there?” came Twilight’s voice through the earpiece.

“Yep,” Sunset said, leaving the library—and the book—behind her. “Just fine.”

Sunset’s footsteps echoed off the smooth, crystalline walls of Twilight’s castle. The cable dragged behind her, leaving a trail in the dust.

The crystal that made up the walls of the castle seemed… dull. Sunset had never been in the castle before, of course, but even she could feel that something was off.

And still, it was quiet. So pervasively quiet.

She needed to break the silence.

“So,” she said, peering into yet another empty room. “Starlight, did you live in the castle, or…”

“I did,” Starlight replied through the earpiece. “On the third floor.”

“What floor is the portal on?”

“The second.”

Silence for a few moments. Sunset continued on her mission.

“Where do you live, Sunset?” Starlight asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh, I have an apartment on main street,” Sunset replied.

“Really?” Twilight chimed in. “I’m on 43rd.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sunset said. This next room was a bathroom. It had seen better days. The towels had little stars embroidered on them. She moved on. “You’re close by, then.”

“I wonder why we never ran into each other?” Twilight said.

“Bad luck, I guess,” Sunset said. “So, where did you live before you lived in the castle, Starlight?”

“Oh, uh… eheh… just a little village in northeast Equestria.”

“Were you born there?”

“No,” Starlight said. “I was born in Hockstead. What about you?”

“Canterlot unicorn, born and raised. You could see most of Equestria from my backyard.”

“You have a Canterlot, too?” Twilight asked.

“It’s the capital in Equestria,” Starlight explained. “Princess Celestia and Princess Luna live there.”

The next room had a balcony, facing the opposite direction from the one Sunset had first found. She went over to it. Her eyes settled on the biggest shadow on the horizon.

“Speaking of,” she said, “I think I can see the Canterhorn. Or, at least, its shadow.”

“The Canterhorn?” Twilight asked.

“It’s the mountain that Canterlot was built on.”

“It’s also the tallest mountain in Equestria,” Starlight added.

“Huh. We don’t have one in this world. I wonder why?”

“Not everything has a parallel to Equestria,” Sunset replied. “At least, I don’t. Believe me, I’ve looked.”

She moved on, back to the hallway.

“Sunset, can I ask a question?” It was Twilight speaking.

“Of course.”

“How long have you been in the human world?”

Sunset thought for a moment. “Almost five years, I think.”

“What made you leave?”

Sunset opened her mouth… closed it. She swallowed. A bitter taste filled her mouth.

“I, um…” she began. “I… had a bit of a… disagreement. With Princess Celestia.”

“You knew Princess Celestia?” Starlight asked.

Sunset nodded, then remembered they couldn’t see her. “Yeah. I was her student.”

“Like Twilight,” Starlight said. “Er… Equestrian Twilight.”

“Yeah. We never ran into each other back then, though. She was younger than me.”

“Younger than you?” Twilight remarked. “But she looked the same age as you when we met.”

“Yeah,” Sunset said. “The portal’s weird like that… was weird like that.”

They fell silent.

“So, how old are—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Starlight interrupted. “But you’re running out of cable.”

“Already?” Sunset said, turning around and looking behind her. The cable trailed off back down the hallway.

“Yeah.”

Sunset bit her lip. She wanted to keep going, but...

“Alright,” She said. “I guess that’s enough for today. I’ll head back.”

Sunset was about halfway back to the portal when the earpiece crackled back to life.

“Hey, Sunset?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve, uh… we’ve got visitors.”

Sunset arched an eyebrow and frowned, even though there was no one around to see it.

“Who?”

“Applejack and Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said. “The, um, pony versions. They want to talk to you.”

“Alright,” Sunset said. “I’ll be back at the portal in a few minutes. Can they wait until then?

There was a moment’s pause.

“They say that’s fine.”

“Alright, Sunset said. “I’m on my way.”

The tent that had become their base of operations was not very large. Between the pedestal, the racks of equipment and the two main workstations, it could fit three well enough, but many more than that would be a squeeze.

When Sunset returned through the portal, she brought the total up to five.

“Give her some room,” Starlight said. “It can be a bit disorienting, coming back through.”

“It’s fine,” Sunset said. She staggered a little, but caught herself before anyone else had to. “I’m getting used to it.”

She pulled the respirator mask off of her face and dropped it onto one of the tables, then grabbed a bottle of water and took two hearty gulps.

“Hah! Alright,” she said, sitting down in one of the folding chairs. “What’s up?”

Applejack was the one to answer. “Rainbow and I want to help. And the other girls, too.”

Sunset looked at them curiously. “Help how?”

“Well, it’s just you goin’ by yourself now, right?” Applejack said. “We figure you’ll need more ponies—uh, people—if you want to check out Ponyville.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “And we know Ponyville like the back of our hooves.”

“Right,” Applejack continued. “We figure you could use a few of us Ponyville ponies on your team.”

“Er, no offense, Starlight,” Rainbow added, quickly. Starlight raised a hand.

“None taken. I was only living there for a few months.”

Applejack nodded. “Right. So that’s our proposal, and I bet we could get more ponies on board, too. We’re all itchin’ to do something other than wait in the gym all day while you’re working your butt off out here.”

“And,” Rainbow added, “We think it’s a good idea for us to be there, in case you find Twilight. I mean, she’s probably out there kicking the butt of whatever did this, right?”

“I think that depends on whether or not what caused it has a butt to kick,” Sunset said.

“Well, metaphorically then. Look, point is, she’s probably out there doing something, right?” Rainbow said. “Spike too. So she might need our help.”

Sunset took another drink of water. Her throat was parched.

“No objections here,” she said, “but let’s keep it a small group for now. You said you and the other girls?”

“Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie.”

“So a group of six, counting me,” Sunset said. She nodded again. “That sounds good.”

She turned to Twilight.

“Twilight, we’re going to need five more Black Boxes. How long will that take?”

“If I just stick to the essentials, maybe… a week?”

Sunset nodded. “We’ll have to ask Rarity for more hazmat suits, too. And we’ll need respirator masks, but we can just buy more of those, right?”

“Yes.”

“Great,” Sunset said. She plotted out a schedule in her thoughts.

“Okay,” she said. “We can open the portal for about an hour every two days. We’d probably need more than that for a proper sweep of Ponyville, even with six of us, so let’s say we charge the capacitors for three days ahead of that. I’d like to check out Ponyville myself, first, just to make sure everything’s alright, so that’s another two days, and we need to finish exploring the castle, which is another two days, so… Yeah. About a week, then. That sound good to you two?”

Applejack and Rainbow looked at one another, then back at Sunset.

“Sounds great.”

Moonlight streamed in through the thin windows just below the gym’s metal roof, giving off just enough light to see. A girl tiptoed across the gym floor, taking great care not to step on anypony.

“Starlight?”

Starlight froze. A hand brushed against her ankle. She looked down.

It was Pinkie Pie—her Pinkie Pie, not this world’s. Her head just peeked out of her sleeping bag, zipped all the way up to her neck like a cocoon, and she looked up at her with half-awake eyes.

“Where are you going?” she asked, voice low.

Starlight swallowed. “Just… running to the bathroom.” She put on her most reassuring smile. “Get some rest.”

“Okay, be careful…”

The hand slipped away from her ankle, withdrawing back into the mauve sleeping bag. Starlight continued towards the exit.

Her footfalls were quiet on the cold tile. Most of the lights were off, this time of night, but there was still enough to see by. She didn’t mind.

As she walked, the smile she’d been holding for most of the day slipped from her face. Her hands began to shake. Her breaths began to quicken.

Eyes darting left and right, she spotted a sign she’d had to become familiar with quickly: that of the ladies’ room. She pushed the door open, letting it close before she switched the lights on. Her eyes scanned the stalls, just in case. All empty. Good.

Starlight Glimmer clamped her hands around the cold, porcelain edge of the sink, flicked the water on, and stared intently as it streamed from the tap and circled down the drain.

Breathe in. One. Two. Breathe out. One. Two.

She looked up, into the mirror. A girl with matted hair and hollow eyes stared back.

Breathe in. One. Two. Try not to throw up. One. Two.

Steam rose from the basin. She brought one hand over, cupped it under the running water. She winced, then relaxed as the heat sank into her hand. Its sister joined it, forming a basin which quickly filled to overflowing.

Bracing herself, Starlight brought the water up and splashed it over her face. Rivulets ran down her cheeks, dripping off her chin into the sink below.

She repeated the gesture, once, twice, a third time, rubbing the water down her face, through her hair, into her eyes.

Slowly, the knot in her chest began to loosen. Her breaths became shallower.

She let her hands rest back on the edges of the sink. She kept her eyes closed, letting the sound of rushing water fill her ears. The steam warmed her skin.

Starlight opened her eyes. The mirror had fogged, slightly; she rubbed it clean with a sleeve.

The girl in the mirror, though soaking wet, was smiling. It was the sort of smile that said this: “Everything, no matter how bad it seems, is going to be okay.”

Starlight hoped she could believe it.

Shatter

The buzzing of her phone woke Sunset up before the sunlight streaming through her window did.

Groaning, she rolled over in her bed. Her arm shot out from beneath the tangle of sheets and slapped against the bedstand, groping around until her fingertips brushed plastic. She peered at the screen.

Fifteen new messages? That couldn’t be good.

Group Chat

Rainbow Dash

Hey, has anyone tried to pony up recently?

Rarity

Not me. I’m afraid I haven’t much been in the mood for practice, lately.

Why do you ask?

Rainbow Dash

I woke up early today

Figured I’d jam out for a bit, y’know

But no matter how hard I play, no wings

Pinkie Pie

Weird!

I’ll try

…huh

Rainbow Dash

Anything?

Pinkie Pie

Nope! No ears!

Also Mama’s giving me that look again

What does she mean, too early for drums? It’s never too early for drums!

Fluttershy

I’m not getting wings, either

Rarity

I’ll get my keytar.

Sunset frowned. Now totally awake, she slipped out from under the covers and dropped onto the floor. Her feet made little thudding noises as she descended from her loft, phone in one hand, earbuds in the other.

Her guitar lay where it normally did, leaning in its stand next to the amp. A thin layer of dust marred its polished surface.

She grabbed the cord from the amp and plugged it into the back of the guitar, then plugged her headphones into the amp.

Something simple, she thought. Her fingers played over the strings. E minor seventh. Sixth. C major, E minor. Again.

She paused, pick resting on the strings. Nothing.

Her brow creased. Alright. Something more complicated, then. She launched into the opening chords of The Music in Me.

She made it all the way to her part of the song before she stopped. No magical surges. No sudden levitation. No magical hair extensions. No ears.

She grabbed her phone.

Group Chat

Applejack

Sorry, was out in the orchard

Went through the twelve bar blues

Nothing

I’m not getting anything, either.

Rarity

Nor here.

Rainbow Dash

So none of us can pony up

It looks that way.

Rarity

What do you suppose this means?

Sunset set her guitar down. She ran her fingers through her hair, still knotted from her slumber.

I’m going to go with “nothing good”.

Let’s meet up at the school.

Sunset pushed open the door to the band room.

“Sunset! Twilight!”

Immediately, they were surrounded.

“It’s so good to see you both,” Rarity said. “You’re spending way too much time in that tent of yours for your own good!”

“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash said. “How are we supposed to practice if you’re busy saving another world?”

Rarity elbowed her in the arm.

“I mean, yeah! It’s great to have you back!”

Sunset chuckled. “We both know you girls get on perfectly fine without me.”

Pinkie swept her up in a hug. “That doesn’t mean we want to!”

And so the group hug commenced. Sunset’s heart warmed a little. Nothing beat a good group hug.

“So how have things been going?” Fluttershy asked, once they’d all pulled away. “I heard some of the Ponyvillians talking about going home today. Is it true? Are you nearly ready to send them back?”

They walked over to the middle of the room and sat down, Pinkie taking her seat at the drums in the corner.

“Not quite,” Sunset said. “But we’re going to be bringing a few of them with us to Equestria, to help out with the expeditions.”

She filled them in on what had been going on, gesturing with her hands as she did so.

Applejack clapped her on the back. “Well, that’s great news!” she said.

“Yes,” Fluttershy said. “It sounds like you three are making real progress!”

“Well, we hope so,” Twilight said. Her hand went for her glasses. “We’re still not much closer to finding the source of all of this, though.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Rainbow Dash said, wrapping her arm around Twilight’s shoulders. “With how smart you guys are, you’ll have it all figured out in no time!”

Twilight blushed a little. “Hopefully.”

“I’m sure this will all be nothing more than a bad memory soon enough,” Rarity said. “Now, Sunset, you said you had a favor to ask?”

“Yeah,” Sunset said. “I need you to make more of those protective suits.”

“How many?”

“Six.”

“By when?”

“Monday. I can pay you for the materials—”

Rarity held up a hand. “No payment necessary. Consider it done.”

“Are you sure?” Sunset said. “I know they’re a pain…”

“That may be true, but the fabric is cheap. And besides, I wouldn’t dream of asking for money when so much is at stake.”

Sunset smiled. “Thanks, Rarity. You’re the best.”

“I know.”

“I have a favor to ask, too, actually,” Twilight said. “It’s about your magic…”

“You mean how none of us can pony up anymore?” Pinkie said.

“Yes.” She walked over to the table on the left side of the room and set her backpack down on it. “That exactly.”

She unzipped the bag and withdrew from it a little grey box, out of the top side of which poked an antennae that had been bent into a loop.

Rarity cocked her head to the side. “Is that a theremin?”

“What? No,” Twilight said. “This is a thaumaumeter. It reads magical signatures.”

She crouched down and plugged the box into the wall. It emitted a low hum as it came to life.

“Sunset told me you weren’t able to ‘pony-up’ anymore,” she said. “I want to take some readings from each of you and compare them to the readings I got during the Friendship Games.”

She looked up at them. “I-is that alright? I know things didn’t go so well last time, but I can assure you, this one is one hundred percent safe—”

Applejack smiled at her. “Sure thing, sugarcube. We trust you.”

Twilight smiled back. “Thanks.”

She stood up, the power cable dangling from the back of the thing. She placed it on the table.

“Just hold your hand over the top of the device,” she said. “It’ll do the rest.”

One by one, they did so, first Applejack, then Sunset, then the others.

Pinkie giggled as it scanned her. “Hey! It tickles!”

“It shouldn’t,” Twilight said.

“Well it does!”

“So now what?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight pulled her laptop out of her bag. It took a moment to boot up.

“Alright,” she said. “Here are your magical signatures from the Friendship Games.” She clicked a button, and six graphs popped up on the screen, each with a unique pattern of peaks and troughs. “Think of it like… like a visual representational representation of your magic, laid out on a graph. This is what your individual magics look like.”

“They’re all different,” Pinkie commented.

Twilight nodded. “Yep! Each of you has a unique magical signature. To go along with your Elements of Harmony, going by what Sunset has told me. That’s yours, Pinkie.” She pointed at one of the graphs. “And Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and that one’s yours, Sunset.”

“I… think I get it,” Sunset said. “What about now?”

“Let’s see,” she said. She made a few more clicks, then typed something into the command line. “Here we go… these are your signatures now.”

She hit enter. Just like before, six graphs appeared on the screen.

Sunset felt her heart drop into her stomach.

Every one of the graphs was a flat line.

“What?” Twilight exclaimed. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “That’s… that’s not possible. That can’t be right.”

“Twilight,” Sunset said, speaking slowly. “What does a flat line mean?”

“I-it would mean that the thaumometer isn’t detecting a magical signature,” Twilight said. “But that’s obviously wrong—”

Sunset held her hand out. “Scan me again.”

“But—”

“Scan me again, Twilight.”

Twilight grabbed the thaumometer and held it out to her. It hummed as Sunset’s hand sat over it.

A bar appeared on Twilight’s computer screen. Sunset waited with bated breath as it slowly filled from left to right. They all did.

After a minute, a new graph popped up on the screen. It bore the same dead line as all the others.

“Sunset—”

“Do it again,” she commanded.

“Sunset, I don’t think it’ll be any different—”

“Do it again.”

They repeated the procedure one last time, and once again it had the same outcome.

Sunset got off the table and went to stand by the window, her mind whirring with the implications.

“Are you sure your machine is working properly?” Rainbow Dash said. She grabbed it and began shaking it. “Maybe it’s busted!”

“It can’t be,” Twilight said. “I calibrated it against a controlled sample just this morning...”

“Well then maybe it broke this afternoon!” Rainbow said.

Applejack snatched it from her hands. “I don’t think you shaking it is going to make it any better, Rainbow,” she said.

“You don’t know that! This always works when my laptop breaks!”

“That’s probably why your laptop keeps breaking,” Rarity snapped. She laid a hand on Twilight’s shoulder.

“Assuming everything is working properly…” she asked. “What does this mean?”

“It means…” Twilight began.

“It means that we don’t have magic anymore,” Sunset finished.

When Sunset opened the flap to the tent, the first thing she noticed was the large metal box that sat on the ground in front of the portal, beside a pile of metal rods.

“What’s in the box?” she asked Twilight, who had followed her into the tent. She gestured towards the offender.

“I was wondering, too,” Starlight said. She had already been in the tent when they’d arrived, sitting at her table like she always did.

“It’s a radio transmitter-slash-receiver, and a high-grade antenna array.” Twilight said with some satisfaction. “If this works, then we won’t need the cable anymore. Well, actually,” she backpedaled, “we do still need the cable, but it won’t need to be attached to you.”

“So we can explore the rest of the castle, now?”

“Not just the rest of the castle,” Twilight said. This baby has a range of a few miles. The dust might cause some interference, but that should be enough to get you to Ponyville, right?”

“Oh, Twilight, that’s brilliant!” Sunset said. Twilight blushed a little at the compliment. “How do we set it up?”

“Well, it’ll need to be somewhere fairly high, and near the portal,” Twilight said. “You said there was a balcony?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s perfect. We just need to assemble it on the other side. I’ll help you set it up.”

Sunset blinked. “Wait, like, on the other side of the portal? We only have the one suit…”

“I don’t mind getting a little dusty,” Twilight said. “Anyway, I don’t really need it. I took a look at some of the dust that came back with you last time. It’s just normal dust, organic particulates and soil. I’ll be fine with just a respirator mask.”

“Alright, suit yourself,” Sunset said. “Do you mind staying behind and manning the controls, Starlight? Or—”

“No,” Starlight replied quickly. “That’s fine. I wouldn’t know what I was doing anyway.”

“Alright,” Sunset said. “Let’s go, then.”

“…And now we just plug the cable in to the back, here, and… done!”

The radio wasn’t a very large thing, about the size of a large briefcase. What was quite large was the antenna; fully assembled, it was about as tall as Sunset. Metal rods stuck out of it on either side like a pair of wings.

Twilight stepped back.

“Phew,” she said. “That took a little longer than expected. Ask Starlight if she can hear us.”

Sunset did so (as she was the one with a Black Box, and therefore the only one with an earpiece.

“Loud and clear,” she says,” Sunset replied, after a moment. Twilight smiled.

“Great!” she exclaimed. “Then we’re all set. We just need to remember to unplug it before we close the portal again—we wouldn’t want to sever the cable.”

With a satisfied sigh, she looked up from the piece of equipment—and her eyes fell on the endless grey of the sky.

She looked over the balcony, at the grey world that extended beyond it. It sent a shiver down her spine.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s…”

She couldn’t think of a word to finish that statement. Nothing in her vocabulary could describe the feeling of dread that such a sight instilled upon her.

Sunset nodded. “I know.”

Twilight stared for a moment more. Then, she remembered something.

“Oh, right!” she exclaimed. “I almost forgot something.”

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a slim, black case; more EM shielding. It was attached to a long strap, the kind you’d year over your shoulder. And inside…

“Here,” she said, passing it to Sunset. “It’s a digital camera. Just in case you find something interesting.”

Sunset popped open the lid of the case, looked at its contents, and nodded.
“Great,” she said. “Will do.”

“So how many floors does the castle have, Starlight?” Sunset asked. Her voice echoed off the smooth, crystalline walls of the stairwell.

“Four main floors,” Starlight said, her voice coming in through the earpiece.

Sunset peered up over the banister of the stairs.

“Well, I see three flights above me,” she said, and then she looked down. “And It’s one long flight down to ground level, so I guess this is the main staircase. How much time do I have left?”

“Fifty-three minutes,” Twilight said.

Sunset gauged the distance to the top of the stairwell. The top landing was a sizable distance away… but, at worst, only a four minute climb. Nothing to worry about.

“I’m going to head to the top and work my way down,” she said. “That sound good to you?”

“How high up are you?” Twilight asked. “It might be more logical to start from the bottom, if you’re only on the second floor.”

“The first floor has a really high ceiling,” Sunset said. “I’d say I’m about halfway up. There’s not a lot of rooms down there, either. It’s basically just the throne room and the entranceway, from what I saw.”

“Go ahead, then.”

Sunset started up the stairs. Like the walls, they were made of crystal and very smooth, and once again she was thankful for the rubber tread on the bottom of her boots.

She pressed on.

A few minutes of climbing later, she had reached the top of the staircase, which emerged into the base of a large, open room that Sunset assumed was the tower Starlight had mentioned. It looked to have been being used as a study of some sort, with a desk in the middle of the room covered in wilting paper. A few bookshelves lined the walls, as well as storage shelves filled with all sorts of things, but it was the window which immediately drew Sunset’s eye.

Namely, because the window had been removed.

Bits of broken glass crunched under Sunset’s boots as she approached the gaping hole in the castle’s exterior. A few jagged pieces of glass remained around the edges of the frame; shards of red and blue and green. It had been a stained glass window, then.

And perfectly framed within it was the shadow of the Canterhorn, just barely an ink smudge against the thick clouds of dust. Pointed directly at it was a brass telescope of substantial size, mounted on a metal tripod.

Sunset placed her hands on the windowsill and stuck her head out, being careful not to cut herself on the glass. Looking down, she could see what had broken the window: the desk’s chair, now lying among a collection of glittering shards on the roof below.

She pulled her head back in and turned around. Kneeling down, she brushed a layer of dust off the telescope’s lens and took a peek. She couldn’t see much. Bringing her head away, she instead looked down the telescope’s body, tracing its trajectory.

It was pointed right at the shadow of Canterlot City, jutting off the side of the mountain.

Sunset frowned. What could that mean?

“Hey, guys,” she said. “I’ve got something weird, here.” She pulled the camera from its case and took a quick picture, just in case.

“Yes? What is it, Sunset?”

“It looks like someone smashed a window in the tower,” she said. “There’s a telescope here, too.”

“What’s it looking at?”

“Canterlot.”

“Canterlot?” It was Starlight speaking, now. “Why Canterlot?”

“Beats me.” Sunset bit the inside of her lip. “You didn’t see who was using this telescope, did you Starlight?”

“Probably Twilight,” Starlight replied. “She was teleporting all over the place. I think I might have seen her carrying a telescope? I wasn’t paying very close attention to it, what with the evacuation and everything.”

“So if you’re right, she would have been using the telescope during the evacuation?”

“If I’m right, then yeah.”

Sunset looked down at the telescope.

“What were you looking at, Twilight?” she murmured to herself.

No answer came.

Dear Princess Twilight,

I explored more of your castle today. I saw the telescope in the high tower. What was that for? Were you watching something?

I guess I’ll have to figure that one out myself, huh?

We’re all worried about you and Spike. Please, answer this when you can.

Your friend,

Sunset Shimmer

Sunset set her pen down on the desk and waited. Nothing.

She sighed, snapped the journal closed, and set it aside.

Twilight pushed her bedroom door closed. She moved to turn away from the door, hesitated, then brought her fingers down to the handle and locked it. Just in case.

She set her bag down in its spot beside the aquarium and pulled out a stack of papers, her laptop… and the thaumometer. She carried them over to her desk and set them down.

She glanced over at Spike’s bed. Empty. She wandered over to the window, peered out at the backyard. There he was, running around without a care in the world.

Twilight smiled, then drew the blinds.

She went back to the desk and sat down, plugging the thaumometer into the outlet behind it. It hummed to life as she booted up the laptop. Despite knowing full well she was the only one in the room, she glanced both ways before turning to the set of drawers attached to the desk.

She laid her hand on the third drawer down, took a deep breath, then pulled it open. It contained…mostly junk, a bunch of stray circuit boards and components taken from a dozen odd devices she’d disassembled, all piled on top of a stack of old homework.

Twilight wasn’t there for any of it. She was there for what was under it.

Carefully, she lifted the stack of papers. Underneath, pressed flat against the wood of the drawer, was a black disk, no bigger than a dollar coin. It flashed when she picked it up, a pulsing star-shaped pattern emerging on its surface. Her fingers tingled where they made contact.

It had been a simple piece of circuitry, once. Now, it was something different entirely.

She set it down on top of the thaumometer, right in the middle of the antenna. The pattern on its front continued to pulse and twist.

Wrenching her eyes away from it, she turned to her computer. The keys clacked as she worked, inputting commands one after the other. Initialize thaumometer. Run diagnostics. After a moment, they came up clean. Run scan.

The thaumometer hummed. She glanced over. The star seemed to be pulsating faster, as if it knew it was being observed.

She swallowed. The probability of that was higher than she’d have liked to admit.

After a few moments, the scan finished. She pulled up the graph, compared it to the ones produced by earlier scans, scrutinized it as much as she could for any variation.

She leaned back in her chair and tilted her head up to the ceiling, closing her eyes. There was no difference. The thaumometer was working just as well as it ever had.

She exhaled. So much for that.

Her hand went for her phone, intent on texting Sunset the results—but paused. Her eyes ran over to the disk.

Quickly as she could, she picked it up and dropped it back under the papers, slamming the drawer shut.

She could never tell anyone she had this. Especially not Sunset.

After all, how could they ever trust her again if they found out she’d kept a piece of Midnight Sparkle?

Ponyville

“Alright,” Twilight said. “Today’s the big day.”

They were in the tent. It was a cooler day today, though not by much.

Sunset nodded, took a deep breath. She was already suited up, and her respirator mask hung from her hand by a strap.

Her stomach felt like it was tied in knots. She’d been both anticipating and dreading this day since her first trip through the portal.

Today was the day.

Today, she’d find out what had happened to Ponyville.

“I’m ready when you are.”

Sunset took the stairs down to the ground level of the castle, each footfall echoing off the dull crystalline walls. Her boots left prints in the dust that had accumulated on each step.

Down she went, coming at last to a pair of doors. These opened easily enough, revealing the castle’s throne room, or perhaps ‘thrones’ would be the more accurate term, given there were seven of them, all surrounding a single round table.

“Okay,” Sunset said. “I’m in the throne room.”

“The doors across the room from you lead to the entrance,” came Starlight’s voice over the earpiece.

“Got it.”

“Is…” There was a moment of hesitation. “Is the map still working?”

“Map?” Sunset said. “What map?”

“Nevermind,” Starlight said. “I guess we don’t have any way to activate it, anyway.”

Sunset carried on, circling the outside of the room. Her eyes fell on the throne with a starburst etched into it, and the smaller throne next to it.

They seemed… emptier than the others, somehow.

Sunset shook her head. She continued on her way.

Through the doors on the other end of the room lay a long entranceway; Sunset headed down it. Windows lined the hall, but she couldn’t see out of any of them, obscured by grime as they were.

And there they were: the main doors. Sunset drew up short before them. They were ornate, and taller than she was, and suddenly Sunset felt very small.

She took a deep breath.

Beyond those doors lay…

Sunset placed her hands on the doors.

…lay…

She swallowed.

Grimacing, she pushed the doors open. A breeze blew out with them, like the castle was sighing… or, perhaps, letting out one last breath.

Sunset looked out, from her vantage at the top of the steps. A long dirt path led away from the castle, her eyes followed it up, up…

The dust was thicker, down on the ground. It was hard to see far; visibility was measured in meters, not miles.

What she could see made a knot in her stomach.

“Sunset?” came a voice over the earpiece. Sunset barely heard it, let alone processed whose voice it was.

No, she could do nothing but stare blankly forwards.

She wasn’t looking at a town.

She was looking at the remains of one.

Empty buildings and yellowed grass greeted Sunset as she walked, the crunching of her boots on the path the only combatant against the quiet.

She stepped over a watering can discarded on the side of the path. If it had been full when it had been dropped, it wasn’t any longer. Not that it mattered; the bed of daisies it had been headed for had no doubt already withered.

It was one of many objects left behind, all abandoned. There was a purse, golden coins looking tarnished in the light. There was a fruit stall, baskets overturned and their contents melting into the dirt. There was an empty mug, left turned over on a windowsill.

There was a baby carriage, sitting upright and undisturbed in the middle of the path. Sunset sucked in a breath and peeked inside, but all it contained was a teddy bear with a red ribbon tied around one paw.

She passed what must have been a restaurant. Tables with umbrellas sat in uneven rows; no chairs. Some of the tables still had plates on them. The restaurant itself had collapsed, seemingly under its own weight; wooden beams stood out of the wreckage at odd angles. It was not alone. Many of the buildings Sunset had passed were in a similar state.

Her boot nudged something. Sunset looked down. It was the remains of a bird, just a skeleton and feathers in a pile of… of rot.

She left the bird behind and turned a corner, coming face to face with a… well, it must have been a shop of some sort, judging by the glass window displays on the half that was still standing. The other half had collapsed, a pile of wood and browned thatch. The force of the fall had torn the sign over the door in half. The side that remained bolted above the distorted doorframe indicated it had been a candy store.

The timbers that jutted out of the wreckage were blackened, though not from fire. Approaching the doorframe, Sunset reached out and pressed a finger into the wood. It sank in easily, the surface pliant and spongy under her touch.

“It’s like it’s… rotting,” Sunset said. “Everything’s rotting.”

“Rotting?”

“Yeah,” Sunset said, unable to describe what she was seeing in any other way.

“Can you get me a sample?”

“Sure,” Sunset replied. She fumbled with one of the pockets on her belt; out came a little plastic vial with a lid.

Reaching out again, she gouged out a sample with a gloved forefinger, leaving an angry mark behind. This was scraped into the vial, and the vial replaced in the pocket it had come from.

That deed done, she raised a hand to the plastic of her mask and peered into what was left of the store. Several glass cases formed the front of a counter. One of them had been smashed open by a falling beam, strewing glass across the floor.

A horrible creaking sound split the air. Sunset stumbled back, just in time. Her arms went to her face; she could feel splinters bouncing off of them. Dust exploded into the air.

When it settled, she looked up. The other half of the store had collapsed, taking the remaining half of the sign with it. And besides the sounds of her breathing and her heart hammering in her chest, the world once again fell silent.

“Sunset? Are you alright? We heard a noise—”

“I’m fine,” Sunset said, quickly. “A building collapsed.”

“Collapsed!? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No,” Sunset replied. “Like I said, I’m fine.”

She let out a breath.

“How much time do we have left?”

“Twenty minutes,” came Starlight’s voice.

“Alright,” Sunset said. “I’m going to take some pictures. Then I’ll head back.”

“Roger.”

She pulled the camera out, removed it from its casing. Held it up to her eye. Pointed it at the wreckage.

Click.

When Sunset stepped back through the portal, she did not stumble. That was the first thing Twilight noticed.

The second was the hollow look in the other girl’s eyes as she pulled off her mask.

“Sunset?”

Sunset let out a long breath. She looked over at Twilight.

“It’s bad, Twilight,” she said. “It’s really bad.”

She pulled off the camera strap, tossed it over to Twilight. Twilight fumbled with it a bit, but she got a hold of it, and removed the camera from its black metal case.

Starlight stood up from her desk, made her way slowly over to Twilight, while Sunset busied herself stripping off her suit. Starlight peered over Twilight’s shoulder as she brought up the images Sunset had taken.

Twilight swallowed. She scrolled to the next picture, then the next, her heart falling further and further into her stomach with each successive image.

They depicted the ruins of what once must have been Ponyville. Collapsed buildings. Rotting timbers. Death. The corpse of a town, if such a thing could exist. It looked like it had been abandoned for decades, but she knew that only a few weeks ago it had been a happy, welcoming place. At least, that was the picture she’d dreamed up.

These were not that. These were not that at all.

“I, um, I need to—”

It was Starlight who had spoken. Twilight wrenched her eyes away from the camera, just in time to see Starlight run out of the tent, one hand over her mouth.

Sunset all but collapsed into her chair. She looked like the wind had been taken out of her.

“What do we do, Twilight?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Twilight replied, honestly. “Do we… do we tell the Ponyvillians about this?”

Sunset paused for a moment. “They deserve to know,” she said, but there was hesitancy in her voice.

They did deserve it, of course they did. But still, Twilight couldn’t help but wonder how they would take the news that, when they went back to Equestria…

…there might not be an Equestria to go back to.

Starlight hovered over the toilet, both hands on the rim. She gagged. Something came crawling up her throat.

She emptied the contents of her stomach into the porcelain bowl.

She could feel more coming up. She tried to breathe, but her breaths were ragged and coarse.

In-out.

In—

She retched. Her stomach muscles began to cramp. A grunt of pain escaped from her mouth.

Images played through her mind. Images of dust and ruin. Of decay and desolation.

Because what she’d seen in those pictures…

…was all too familiar.

“Starlight? Are you in here?”

It was Sunset’s voice, Starlight vaguely recognized, before another bout of retching. Yellow liquid dripped from her mouth into the bowl.

Starlight felt a hand on her back, warm. Someone pulled her hair back.

After what felt like an eternity, the sickness passed. Starlight got off her knees and leaned back against the wall of the stall. She took a few deep breaths.

“Are you okay?” Sunset asked. Starlight nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Sunset said.

“No, it’s not… not your fault,” Starlight replied. “I just…” her mind whirled for an excuse. “I just wasn’t ready.”

“I understand.”

“It’s really… it’s really as bad as those pictures?”

Sunset nodded.

Starlight swallowed.

“We can’t show the others.”

“Why not? They’ll find out eventually…”

“Please,” Starlight said. “We can’t… We can’t do that to them. Not now. Wait until after… after the next expedition, with the others. It’ll soften the blow if it’s coming from them. Please, Sunset.”

Sunset looked doubtful, but: “If you’re sure…”

Starlight nodded.

“I’m sure.”

Dear Princess Twilight,

I saw Ponyville. What was left of it.

Please answer me. I’m begging you, if you’re reading this, please answer.

Sunset Shimmer

Fall

“Darling, you look absolutely dreadful.”

It was Rarity speaking, the human Rarity. She’d come by to drop off the rest of the protective suits they needed for today’s expedition.

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” Sunset replied. Her dreams had been filled with dust and rot and decay.

Rarity held up a scolding finger. “You’ll be of no use to anyone if you don’t take care of yourself, dear.”

“Noted.”

“Regardless,” Rarity said, “Here are your suits. From my boutique to your, erm, tent.”

The neatly folded bundles of cloth changed hands. “Thanks, Rarity,” Sunset said, smiling. “You’re a life-saver.”

“I try.”

“Alright,” Sunset said, turning towards the five ponies-turned people lined up against the wall of the tent. “Here you go. Put these on.”

She handed a suit each to Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity (the pony Rarity), and Fluttershy.

“What are these for?” asked Applejack.

“They’re just a precaution,” Sunset said. “But they’ll also keep the dust off of your clothes.”

She turned around, scooped a set of respirator masks off of one of the tables. “These are more important,” she said. “They’ll keep the dust out of your eyes and lungs. You probably don’t want to be breathing too much of the stuff.”

“Got it,” Applejack said.

“And these,” Sunset said, gesturing to a line of metal casings, “are your Black Boxes. Twilight, do you want to explain?”

Twilight nodded. “They’re equipped with a variety of sensors, as well as communication equipment. They’ll allow us to stay in radio contact while you’re in the field, and provide us with a lot of data back here in the tent.”

Half of that seemed to have gone over the ponies’ heads, but they nodded anyway.

Twilight gestured towards the mess of devices and electrodes attached to the pedestal.

“Now, this is the Can Opener,” she said. “The Can Opener discharges a series of arcano-electrical pulses which interact with the remaining magic in the pedestal, temporarily re-opening the wormhole that connects our worlds. The duration that the portal remains open is proportional to the strength of the pulse when we open it, which is why we use that capacitor bank over there. Once it’s open, it self-sustains until the initial charge dissipates.

“Because of this, we don’t have much leeway in keeping the portal open. We have an emergency shut-off, but if we use it, we don’t conserve any time. It’s back to square one.”

“Luckily, we built up plenty of charge over the last couple days,” Starlight said. “So don’t worry about taking things a little slow. You should have a little over three hours before the portal closes.”

Twilight nodded. “Right. But try not to waste time, either.”

“Don’t be slow,” Rainbow said. “Got it.”

“That about sums it up,” Sunset said, stepping forward. “So, here’s the plan. We’re going to split into three groups of two. The castle’s on the edge of town, so we’ll fan out. Each group will go straight on until they reach the end of town, then double back. We’ll regroup at the castle.”

Rainbow scratched the back of her neck. “Why groups of two? We could cover more ground on our own. Heck, I could probably cover all of Ponyville myself from the air!”

Sunset shook her head. “Remember, you won’t be a pony when you cross over. Twilight hasn’t got that aspect of the portal working.”

“Yet,” Twilight interjected. “I’m still working on it.”

“Right,” Sunset said. “So you’ll still be human on the other side. And we’re splitting up into groups of two because it’s safer, just in case… just in case we run into something.”

“Run into something? Like what?” Rarity asked.

“I don’t know,” Sunset replied. “Probably nothing, but… well, we still don’t know what caused all of this.”

“It’s just a precaution,” Starlight added.

“Right.” Sunset nodded. “Alright, everybody. Let’s get suited up, and then it’s back to Equestria.”

Sunset was the first to step through the portal. Her skin prickled, hair standing on end as she passed between worlds, but she was used to that by now.

She looked around. The same disorganized library greeted her.

In her hands was the cable. She dragged it over to the balcony, plugged it into the back of the radio antenna. “Testing,” she said into her mic. “Can you hear me, Twilight?”

“Loud and clear,” came Twilight’s response over the earpiece. “Alright, everypony, we’re good to go. One at a time through the wormhole, please.”

“So we just… walk through?” Rarity asked.

“Yep,” Starlight replied. “The same way you came here.”

It was Rainbow Dash, not Rarity, who came through the portal first. She stumbled a little.

“Whoa,” she said. “That is trippy.”

“It’s always worse on the way back,” Sunset said. “So be ready for that.”

“Roger.”

Next through was Applejack, then Pinkie (”Ooh, tingly!”), Rarity, and finally Fluttershy.

“Well,” Rarity said, looking around. “This place could certainly do with some tidying up.”

“I, uh, think there’s bigger concerns at the moment, Rarity,” Applejack replied. “Where’d all this dust come from?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Sunset said.

“It sure seems like there’s a lot you don’t know,” Rainbow said, “and not a lot you do know.”

Applejack elbowed her in the side. “Rainbow!”

“What? It’s true!”

“She’s right, unfortunately,” Sunset said, settling the two down. “Hopefully that’ll change soon.”

“I think we all want the same answers, darling,” Rarity said, laying a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder. “Let’s give Sunset and the others the benefit of the doubt, shall we?”

That settled, the group began to move. Down the hallway, down the stairs, through the throne room and into the entranceway, until at last they stood before the doors to the castle.

Sunset reached for the door handles, hesitated.

“You, um… you might want to brace yourselves. It’s not pretty.”

“How bad is it?” Fluttershy asked.

“Pretty bad.”

“Well, we’re not going to find anything if we don’t go out there,” Applejack said. She grabbed the other door handle.

Sunset nodded. Together, they opened the door…

“Sweet Celestia…”

You could see the state of things even here, even at the edge of the town. A series of gasps escaped the lips of the ponies.

“What…” Rainbow started. “What happened?”

Pinkie swallowed. Uncharacteristically, she said nothing. Fluttershy seemed to shrink, stepping back behind the other girls. And Applejack… Applejack just stared, stared at the sprawling landscape of browns and greys and silence.

It was Sunset who interrupted the moment of horror.

“I know,” she said. “I know. But we don’t have time to waste.”

And Applejack took a deep breath, and said, “Sunset’s right. We’re on the clock, here.”

This seemed to snap the others out of their daze.

Sunset stepped forward, took command. “Alright, everypony,” she said. “Pinkie, Rainbow, you two are a team. You search that way.” She pointed to the right.

“R-roger!”

“Applejack, Fluttershy, you go that way,” Sunset continued, pointing in the opposite direction.

Applejack nodded her agreement. “Fluttershy’s cottage is in that direction. We’ll check on the animals.”

“Good. Rarity, you and I will go straight through the middle of town.”

“Understood,” Rarity said.

“Try to cover as wide of an area as you can,” Sunset said. “You’ll be in constant radio contact with Twilight, so let her know if you find anything. Starlight will keep you updated on how much time is left. Alright?”

Everyone nodded their agreement.

“Okay, everypony,” Sunset said, turning around. “Let’s get this done.”

“It’s so… quiet,” Rarity said, breaking the silence.

“It’s the dust,” Sunset replied. “It muffles everything.”

The two of them were about halfway through the town, now; a little further than Sunset had made it in her last journey. They continued down the street they were on until they reached the town center. Town Hall loomed over them, a grim tower in the fading light.

“I shudder to think what’s become of my Carousel Boutique,” Rarity said. “Perhaps Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash have come across it. It was in their direction.”

Rarity was doing her best to keep face, but Sunset could hear the desperation that underlay her words.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Sunset lied. She wasn’t sure of any such thing.

“I hope so,” Rarity answered. “I do hope so.”

They continued onward for some time. Sunset had taken the lead, Rarity trailing behind her.

“Um… darling,” Rarity said; Sunset turned around.

Rarity was staring at her gloves. “Is it… normal for humans not to be able to feel their fingers?”

“Not usually,” Sunset said. “Twilight?”

“It might be a side-effect of crossing through the portal,” came Twilight’s voice through the earpiece. “We really don’t know what kind of effects trans-universal travel might have on the body.”

Sunset looked at Rarity. “Do you want to head back?”

Rarity shook her head. “Not at all.”

“Alright,” Sunset said. “Then we’ll keep going. Let me know if it gets worse, alright?”

“Of course.”

On they went, past broken buildings, dead flowerbeds, abandoned items, and the thin layer of dust that seemed to cover all of it.

Eventually, their street (if one could call it that; it was more of a dirt road) ended.

“Which way, Rarity?” Sunset asked.

No response.

“Rarity?”

“Oh!” Rarity started. “Oh, um… left, I should think.”

“Everything okay?” Sunset asked.

“Fine,” Rarity replied. “Just fine.”

“Sunset,” Rarity said. “Do you think we could make a… small detour?”

Sunset turned her head. The other girl was trailing behind, just a little.

“Why?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?”

“Well, my parents’ house is right over there,” she said, pointing. “I thought we could perhaps go and pick up some blankets and such.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Sunset said. “Twilight?”

“You’ve got plenty of time. Just be careful.”

“Will do.”

The two of them headed off down the side street Rarity had gestured towards. Eventually, they came to a house. Miraculously, it was still in one piece.

Rarity let out a breath.

“You okay?” Sunset asked.

“I’m just glad… well, you know.”

“Mhm.”

The door to the house hung open on loose hinges. It creaked slightly as they stepped inside. Sunset found herself holding her breath; it was like she’d intruded on a tomb. But, of course, it was an empty one.

She hoped.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Rarity said, stepping forwards. “The linen closet is at the back of the house.”

“Alright,” Sunset replied. She stood there awkwardly as Rarity disappeared off down the hall, into what looked like a kitchen.

Her eyes wandered. There were photographs on a short table beside the door. One depicted what Sunset assumed was a younger Rarity; the mane certainly matched the girl’s hair. Another was a pony Sunset couldn’t recognize, with a white coat and pink and purple mane, and a bare flank. A third photo showed Rarity and the other pony in front of a pair of adults, a stallion and a mare. Sunset guessed that those were Rarity’s parents.

It felt… strange, to see ponies again, after so long, even if just in a photograph. Sunset found herself staring. She’d just gotten used to humans, she supposed.

It was also interesting to see the pony version of someone she’d only known as a human. Usually it was the other way around, for her. Finding human versions of ponies she recognized. Though she supposed she’d gotten used to that, too.

She was still staring when Rarity reemerged, a pile of blankets in her arms. Rarity followed her gaze and chuckled.

“My parents do love their photographs,” she said. “The house is full of them.”

“Sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?” Rarity looked around. “Perhaps on our next trip I should attempt to salvage some of them. Just in case.”

“Who’s this pony next to you?” Sunset asked, pointing at the family photo.

“That’s my sister, Sweetie Belle,” Rarity replied.

The name brought recognition. “Oh! Oh, right, that makes sense. Our—the human Rarity has a sister named Sweetie Belle, too.”

Rarity’s eyebrows raised. “Let’s hope they never meet. Sweetie may be a darling, but I don’t think either world could handle two of her.”

Sunset chuckled. “Or the rest of her friends, either.”

Rarity did not chuckle.

“Celestia forbid.”

It took a while before Sunset noticed the buzzing. It was quite faint, like a mosquito.

They were near the outskirts of town, now. The larger buildings had given way to smaller cottages, with more space between them.

“What is that?” Sunset said aloud. Rarity did not reply, but Sunset was too focused on the sound to appreciate that.

She listened close. It was an odd sound, out of place amongst the dust-choked silence. It came in intervals; a buzz, then a pause, then more buzzing, a pause, and repeat. On closer listen, it sounded… almost artificial, too rhythmic to be natural. On second thought, not like an insect at all.

“Do you hear that?” Sunset asked, not waiting for a response. It was coming from somewhere in front of them, but she couldn’t quite…

“Sunset, I… I don’t feel…”

And then there was a new noise. Behind Sunset.

And this wasn’t a buzzing noise.

Sunset whipped around. Rarity was on the ground.

“Rarity?” she said, then again, running towards her, “Rarity!?”

She put her hand on the other girl’s shoulder, flipped her over. Her eyes were open; she wasn’t unconscious, but her gaze was distant. The blankets she’d been carrying lay strewn on the ground, forgotten.

Sunset pulled her up by her shoulders. “Rarity, can you hear me?”

“Sunset… I don’t feel… right…”

Sunset swallowed. “Twilight, can you hear me?”

“What’s up?

“Rarity collapsed,” Sunset said.

“What!?”

Now that Sunset was closer, she could see that Rarity’s pale skin had taken on a sickly grey pallor.

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Sunset said.

“Numb… And—”

Rarity coughed. Red spattered across the front of her suit.

“Twilight, is anyone else feeling any numbness?”

“I’ll ask, hold on…”

Her reply took but a few moments.

“Rainbow and Fluttershy say they are, in their fingers and toes.”

“Alright,” Sunset said. “Get everyone back to the portal. Now!”

Sunset slipped her arm under Rarity’s, hoisted her to her feet. “Can you walk?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

She turned back towards the castle, too small in the distance, and began moving the two of them as quickly as she dared towards it.

“I’m going to get you back,” Sunset said. “Just hold on. For Celestia’s sake, just hold on!”

Sunset and Rarity were the last to arrive at the tent. Pinkie, Rainbow, Applejack and Fluttershy had all made it back before them; they looked on in horror as Sunset stumbled through the portal, Rarity barely holding on to her shoulder.

Applejack and Rainbow rushed forwards, took hold of Rarity and gently laid her down on the floor. Sunset collapsed to her knees, her breathing heavy. She was spent.

Twilight ran over to her. “Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Call an ambulance,” Sunset gasped out.

“Wait, we can’t—” Twilight stammered. “W-we can’t bring her to a hospital. She isn’t supposed to exist!”

“And she will stop existing if we don’t,” Sunset snapped. “Call. An. Ambulance. We’ll figure it out later.”

Twilight pulled her phone out, stood up. Sunset took the moment to catch her breath, then focused on Rarity.

“How’s she doing?” She asked.

“She’s breathing,” Fluttershy said; she seemed to have taken over. “But unconscious.”

“Twilight’s calling a doctor,” Sunset said. “Is she going to be okay?”

No answer. Sunset grit her teeth. She turned to Rainbow. “You were feeling numbness too, right?”

“We all were, by the end,” Applejack said. She was panting, Sunset noticed. “And weak. Felt like all my strength was bein’ sucked out of me.”

“So, all of you were… were being affected by this?”

They nodded.

“I don’t understand…” Sunset said. “I’ve never—”

“Alright,” Twilight interrupted. “Paramedics are on their way.” Her phone was still in her hand.

Sunset stared at it for a moment. Why? She wasn’t quite sure.

Her phone.

A phone.

Phone.

Sunset’s eyes grew wide as realization set in.

“I need to go back,” she whispered, then louder: “I need to go back.”

“What?”

She stumbled to her feet. Twilight ran over to her, supported her. “What are you talking about? You’re in no shape—”

“Don’t worry about me. Focus on the others. They’re more important right now.”

“But—”

“I’ll be back in no time, okay?” Sunset tried her best to look convincing. “Promise.”

And with that, she went back through the portal.

Sunset ran. She ran as fast as her weary legs would take her. Through the castle halls. Down the stairs, through the entranceway, out into Ponyville. Past houses and restaurants and candy shops, past flowerbeds and driveways and cottages, until she was back on the outskirts of town, where she’d been with Rarity not that long ago.

She stopped, listened. There it was again, the buzzing, barely audible over her own laboured breaths. She turned her head one way, then the other; the sound was coming from ahead of her. She stumbled towards it.

It carried her further out of the town, off the paths and into a field. In the distance, the shadow of the Canterhorn loomed.

Something white caught Sunset’s eye, then, in the middle of the brown, withering grass. She stumbled towards it. As she grew nearer, the thing started to take shape.

It was a pile of bones. Pony bones. Swimming in a puddle of rot, just like the bird had been, in her first trip to this forsaken place.

Sunset grew closer, her hand to her mouth. She could see a horn, jutting out of the skull…

…and a pair of wings.

“No,” Sunset breathed. “No, no, no…”

She was upon it now. Her breaths were quick, she felt faint. Her eyes were wide, her pupils small.

Sunset collapsed to her knees.

There was only one pony this could have been.

Only one.

Because there, in the skeleton’s hooves…

…was a brown journal, emblazoned with a picture of the sun.

An inhuman wail filled the air. It took Sunset a few moments to realize it was her own.

End Act 1

Author's Note

Ruin will be going on a three-week hiatus while the author makes headway into Act 2. We appreciate your patience.

Aftermath

Act 2: Rot

Sunset did not stumble on her way back through the portal. She was too focused on the bundle in her arms.

“Sunset!” Twilight said. She was standing off to the side of the portal; it looked like she’d been pacing. “Thank goodness you’re back. I was getting worried—” Twilight stopped. “What’s… what’s wrong? Why did you take your suit off?”

Sunset said nothing. Just laid the bundle of plastic and Tyvek down on the ground and pulled off her mask.

“Sunset…?”

“Where’s Starlight?” Sunset asked. Her voice was flat. Emotionless. Her eyes, now revealed, were bloodshot.

“She went with the others to the hospital,” Twilight said.

“Is Rarity okay?”

“I don’t know.”

Sunset squeezed her eyes shut and let out a long breath. When she opened them again, she looked… tired.

“Let me get you a chair,” Twilight said. She grabbed the one from her desk, dragged it over. Sunset practically collapsed into it. Fatigue took over. Her ankles hurt. So did her chest.

“So, um…” Twilight said after a moment. “What happened? Why did you go back?”

Sunset said nothing. Just raised one arm and pointed at the bundle of her suit.

Twilight looked at it. Her brow furrowed. “What?”

“Inside there,” Sunset said, her voice weary. “It’s…”

She lacked the words to explain.

Twilight stepped over to it. “Inside…?” She squatted down.

“Be careful with it.”

Twilight began to unwrap the bundle.

“Are these… bones?”

Sunset nodded.

“Whose…” Twilight swallowed. “Whose bones are these, Sunset?”

Sunset didn’t answer.

“Sunset?”

“Twilight’s,” she said. “The other… the other Twilight’s.”

Twilight’s eyes grew wide. “You… you can’t…”

“I found the other journal,” Sunset said. “There are only three other ponies in Equestria with horns and wings, and only one of them owned that journal. It’s her.”

Twilight looked up at Sunset. “But… but how?”

“I don’t know.”

“We, we have to… to…” She seemed to be out of words. To be honest, so was Sunset. That had been a person, once. A person they’d both known.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Twilight said. Her hands were shaking.

“Go,” Sunset said. “I’ll… I’ll think of something.”

Twilight fled. Sunset just sat, staring at the bundle. She’d already screamed. She’d already cried. Now, there was nothing left. She felt hollow.

Eventually, she looked up. Blinked a few times. Let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Sitting here wasn’t doing any good. She knew that. Better to do… to do something. Anything.

Her eyes fell on Twilight’s desk. On the microphone.

On weary feet, Sunset stood. There was something that needed to be done.

Twilight hadn’t made it to the school. She hadn’t even made it to the steps before she’d tripped and vomited. Now, she was sitting, her knees against her chest.

She felt cold, even under the summer sun. Her thoughts raced, too fast to decipher.

A hand settled on her shoulder. “You alright?” Sunset asked.

Twilight swallowed. “No,” she croaked out.

She turned her head. Noted dully that Sunset was carrying the microphone she’d borrowed from the front office. The observation helped to ground her, just enough to bring her awareness back to earth.

Sunset offered her a hand, which Twilight took. Sunset hoisted her to her feet; it took Twilight a moment to catch her balance.

“Come on,” Sunset said. “We need to go.”

“Where?” Twilight asked. They began to move forward, towards the school.

“The main office.”

“Why?”

Sunset held up the microphone.

“Because we need to tell everypony.”

Sunset’s finger depressed the button on the microphone. Outside the office, the announcement speakers chimed.

“Attention everypony. This is Sunset Shimmer.”

Her voice echoed throughout the school.

“I have…” Sunset swallowed. “I have something to tell you all.”

She was silent for a moment, trying to think of what to say. She closed her eyes, sucked in a breath.

“Twilight—Princess Twilight Sparkle… is dead.”

She paused.

“I’m sure you have lots of questions. So do we. For now, just… try to stay strong.”

Sunset released the button. She covered her face with her hands, breathed out.

Twilight stood off to the side. She felt like she should say something. Anything, to break that awful silence.

For the life of her, she couldn’t think what.

“I just don’t understand it,” Applejack was saying. “By the end there, I just felt so…”

“Weak?” Fluttershy suggested.

“Yeah,” Applejack said. “Weak.”

They were in Canterlot General Hospital, room 228. Light streamed in from the sole window in the room, across the vinyl tile floor, reaching up and onto the bed against the wall. It was occupied, at the moment, by a pale-skinned girl with long purple hair. Her eyes lay closed, but her breathing was steady.

She wasn’t alone, of course. Her friends were there; Rainbow, Applejack, Pinkie and Fluttershy. In fact, the little hospital room was feeling a little crowded.

And sitting beside Rarity, on a stool, hands in her lap, was Starlight Glimmer.

“I felt it too,” Rainbow said. “It was like all my energy was just… gone.”

“But it was slow,” Applejack said. “Like molasses. Just a slow…” She seemed to be searching for her next word.

“And I couldn’t feel anything in my fingers,” Pinkie said. “I was all numb.”

Applejack nodded. Rainbow and Fluttershy looked at each other.

“Just your fingers?” Rainbow said. “I couldn’t feel—

“Everypony,” Starlight said, interrupting. “Come here. She’s waking up.”

The others looked at each other, then in turn they gathered around Rarity’s bed. The girl herself’s eyes fluttered open; they looked around, confused.

“Where…?” she said, then coughed. “Oh dear.”

“Here,” Fluttershy said, offering her a plastic cup of water. Rarity slowly sat up and brought it to her lips.

“Where are we?” she tried again, successfully this time.

“The local hospital,” Starlight said. “Twilight called you an ambulance.”

Rarity looked confused, for a moment. “The hospital…?”

“You collapsed, remember?” Pinkie said. “Sunset had to carry you back.”

Rarity blinked. Her memory seemed to return.

“Oh, goodness… is everypony else alright?”

“We’re just fine,” Applejack said. “You should be worryin’ about yourself right now.”

“And Sunset?” Rarity asked. “Where is she? And the other Twilight?”

“Twilight stayed behind,” Starlight volunteered. “I don’t know what happened to Sunset. I think she went back through the portal.”

“You said she carried me back?”

Starlight nodded. Rarity smiled, weakly. “Then I suppose I’ll have to think of some way to thank her.”

“Thank who?”

Everyone looked up. Sunset was standing in the doorway, Twilight behind her.

Their faces were…

“Darlings, you look absolutely dreadful!” Rarity said. “Whatever’s the matter?”

“Later,” Sunset replied. She walked over to the bed, knelt down. Twilight followed her, but stood back a ways. “How are you doing?”

“I’m feeling much better,” Rarity said. “Honestly, I’m not sure what came over me. One minute I was fine, the next…”

“We were comparing notes,” Applejack said, cutting in. “It looks like all of us were feeling somethin’ by the end, there. But it was a slow thing.”

“Like molasses!” Pinkie added.

“Yeah. Like that.”

“When did it start?” Sunset asked.

“Not long after we came through the portal, for me,” Rarity said. “When my fingers started to go numb.”

“For Fluttershy and me, it took a while,” Rainbow offered. “And for Applejack and Pinkie—”

“We didn’t start feeling anything until after you told us to head back,” Applejack finished. “Or, uh, not feelin’ anything. And we all felt mighty weak by the time we got to the mirror.”

It was Starlight who stated the obvious.

“It’s their race.”

“Hm?”

“Rarity’s a unicorn,” Starlight said. “She was affected first. Fluttershy and Rainbow are both pegasi. And Applejack and Pinkie—”

“Are earth ponies,” Sunset finished. “And they were affected last.”

The ponies nodded.

“But you were all human at the time,” Sunset said, stating the other obvious fact. “Why would…?”

The question was implied, but no one had an answer. The room lapsed into silence.

“Anyway,” Sunset said. “I texted Rarity—our Rarity—and asked her to come here. When you’re feeling up to it, Rarity, you can switch places with her, and that should solve the problem of you not being supposed to exist in this world.”

“Well, that’s good,” Rarity said. “I do hate to impose…”

“I don’t think Rarity would have forgiven me if I didn’t let her help out when her doppelganger needed her the most.”

“A fair point,” Rarity said. “I wouldn’t, either.”

No one said anything for a few moments.

“Twilight, darling,” Rarity said, finally. “You’ve been awful quiet. Is something the matter?”

Sunset and Twilight looked at each other.

“Actually, we…” Twilight said. Her hands began to shake. “We…”

“I found Twilight,” Sunset said, standing up. “Your Twilight.”

Everyone began to speak at once.

Starlight blinked. They’d found Twilight? Then… It was like a weight had lifted off her shoulders. She’d been a unicorn, back in Equestria, but in that moment she felt like she could take off and soar into the sky like a pegasus.

But then she saw the expressions on Sunset and Twilight’s faces, and the weight came crashing back down.

“Where is she?” she asked, speaking loudly, and the tone in her voice made everyone quiet down.

Sunset closed her eyes. Grimaced.

“Sunset?” Starlight said, her voice cracking. “Where is Twilight?”

A pause.

“She’s dead.”

Two words. Only two words, but they brought a deadly silence to the room.

Then:

“What!?”

Rainbow Dash lunged towards Sunset, reached out and grabbed her collar before anyone could even think to stop her.

“What did you say?” she hissed, bringing Sunset’s face close to her own.

“She’s dead, Rainbow Dash.”

“You’re lying.”

“I swear to Celestia, she’s—”

Rainbow clenched her teeth. “If you say that one more time I swear to Celestia I’ll break your jaw!”

“Rainbow!”

A pair of orange arms wrapped around Rainbow’s shoulders and hauled her backwards. Her hand released Sunset’s collar.

“Lemme go, Applejack!”

“Just calm down,” Applejack said. She turned her gaze towards Sunset. “You’re sure? Absolutely, no doubt about it, one-hundred percent sure?”

Sunset nodded.

“No no no no no,” Starlight stammered, “you, you must be making a mistake, there’s no way—”

“I found her corpse, Starlight.”

Fluttershy fell to her knees.

There was more talking, but Starlight didn’t hear it. The world seemed to grow… fuzzy, indistinct, and their voices faded into white noise.

Twilight Sparkle was dead.

The words repeated themselves over and over again in her mind.

Twilight Sparkle was dead.

And then:

This is all your fault.

When she returned to reality, Sunset was explaining what had happened, and Applejack had released Rainbow. Pinkie looked like she was about to cry. Fluttershy was already crying, little quiet sobs, over and over.

“Bones?” Applejack was saying, a hand over her mouth. “She was just…”

“Just bones,” Sunset said.

“H-how is that possible?” Rarity asked.

Sunset grit her teeth. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not the first time we’ve found something like this.”

She explained about the bird.

“It’s like the flesh, the feathers just… rotted away,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Rainbow asked. There was still anger in her voice. “Is that what was happening to Rarity? To the rest of us!?”

“I don’t know!”

“Of course you don’t!” Rainbow shouted. “You don’t know a Celestia-damn thing!”

“Everybody calm down!”

Starlight wasn’t sure what had made her speak. Or stand, so quickly that the stool she’d been sitting on clattered to the floor.

She swallowed. It was only then that she noticed that Rainbow, too, was crying.

“This isn’t Sunset’s fault,” she said. “Don’t take it out on her.”

Rainbow looked away.

Starlight looked at Sunset, at Twilight, who was standing meekly in the corner of the room.

“Maybe it’d be best if you just… left us alone for a while,” she said. Sunset bit her lip—but nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “If that’s what you want. Come on, Twilight. Oh, and Rarity?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, darling,” Rarity said. “You didn’t know.”

“Yeah,” Sunset replied. “I didn’t.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Twilight.”

“Okay.”

Sunset pulled the door to her apartment closed. She stood there, for a moment, hand on the doorknob. Then, she turned around, put her back to the door, and slid to the floor, her head turned towards the ceiling and her eyes closed.

She sat there, for a minute, just breathing. Eventually, however, she opened her eyes.

From her bag, she retrieved two books; the journals, each emblazoned with a different sun. She held them, staring blankly at one, then the other.

After an eternity, she laid hers on the floor. Her fingers played with the corner of Twilight’s journal. She went to open it—

—and then, grimacing, she laid it, too, on the ground next to her, pulled her knees up to her face and began, at last, to cry.

Author's Note

Boy howdy, that sure was a long three weeks, wasn't it? Sorry about that.

Funeral

The summer sun was shining bright overhead. Sunset wished it wasn’t. It should have been cloudy on a day like today. Maybe even raining.

Today. The day of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s funeral.

She wasn’t sure who had suggested they bury Twilight in the school’s garden. She hadn’t even known the school had a garden. But here they were, in a little glade surrounded by trees behind the school. Her, Twilight, and the three-hundred and thirty-nine residents of Ponyville, plus a few extras. The crowd spilled out well beyond the little clearing.

Sunset stood off to the side, with this world’s Twilight and their human friends. She watched as ex-ponies came forward in little groups of two or three to pay their respects to their princess.

They couldn’t even get her a proper headstone. It would have raised too many questions. So they’d buried her under a rock, surrounded it with a circle of smaller rocks. Someone had carved a crude starburst into the surface of it. Twilight’s cutie mark.

It was the best they could do, but it didn’t feel like enough. Not for a princess. Not for a friend.

A hand laid upon Sunset’s shoulder; she started and looked up.

“Principal Celestia?”

The older woman stood tall amongst the students that surrounded her. She wasn’t the only member of faculty there, of course, but she had an air of power about her. Especially amongst the ponies, who couldn’t help stealing furtive glances.

“Sunset,” Celestia said back, acknowledging her student’s presence. Sunset had, of course, grown used to hearing the voice of her former mentor from this woman’s mouth, but still it unsettled her every time.

Celestia looked towards Twilight’s impromptu grave. “I had hoped I would never have to mourn the death of a student,” she said. “We owed Miss Sparkle a great debt. One we may never be able to repay… especially now.”

Sunset said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“I’d like to talk to you in my office, Sunset. Once you’re ready.”

Sunset swallowed.

“When you asked for my permission to start this project of yours,” Principal Celestia said, folding her hands over her desk, “I allowed it under the assumption that it would be the best—and safest—way forward for everyone involved.”

Celestia leaned forward. “Now, I am left wondering if that is still the case.”

Sunset stood across from the principal. They were in her office. Sunlight streamed in from the windows, which faced towards the east: the direction of the rising sun. Sunset had wondered in the past if that had been intentional. Now, she was too focused on choosing her words carefully to think such things. Her mouth was dry.

“I still think it is,” she said.

Principal Celestia narrowed her eyes. “A person was sent to the hospital in an ambulance, Sunset.”

“T-that was a mistake,” Sunset stammered. “We didn’t know the pony-siders would have problems going back to Equestria.”

“I thought sending them back was the entire point of this.”

“It is,” Sunset said. “We just need to figure out what… what happened, and how we can prevent it from happening again.”

“And if you can’t?”

Sunset blinked.

“Then… then…”

“Then what?”

She didn’t have an answer. “Then we figure something else out.”

Celestia sighed. “Sunset, I want to believe in you. Frankly, I don’t have any other options.”

Sunset nodded.

“But…” Principal Celestia said. “If anything else happens, I am going to have to put a stop to this. For the sake of the school, and my conscience… and for your sake, as well. Do you understand?”

Sunset swallowed. She nodded again.

Celestia smiled. “Don’t worry. I have every faith in you and miss Sparkle. I know you’ll do everything you can to help the ‘pony-siders’. I just need you to promise me that no one else will get hurt. Can you do that, Sunset?”

Sunset sucked in a breath.

“I—”

The mood in the tent was grim. Both Twilight and Starlight were sitting at their own desks. Twilight was fiddling with a microscope. Neither spoke. For Starlight, the silence was almost unbearable.

The flap at the front of the tent opened, and Sunset stepped inside. Her expression was sour.

“How was your meeting with Princess—Principal Celestia?” Starlight asked.

“Well,” Sunset said, “she’s given us permission to keep going. That’s the important thing.”

Starlight breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s great news.”

“But we need to be more careful,” Sunset said. “We can’t afford to make mistakes like we did with Rarity and the others.”

“Of course,” Starlight said.

The silence returned for a few moments.

“So,” Sunset said. “Where do we go from here?”

“I think the first thing we need to figure out is what exactly happened to Rarity and the others,” Starlight said.

Twilight nodded. “I might have something on that.”

The other two girls looked at her. “You do?” Starlight said.

“Well…”

“Go on, Twilight,” Sunset said. “What have you got?”

Twilight rolled her chair to the side, offering up the microscope she’d been looking through earlier.

“I want you to take a look at this. It’s the wood sample you brought back for me the trip before last.”

They both got up and headed over to Twilight’s desk. Sunset got there first; she bent down and peered down the microscope’s length.

“The pattern of decay isn’t consistent with any known form of earthly fungus—er, as far as I could tell, anyway,” Twilight said, looking a little bit sheepish, but she recovered quickly. “I thought it might be some kind of Equestrian variant of white rot, but… well, here, take a look.”

“You look too, Starlight,” Twilight said, turning towards her. “Tell me if it looks familiar.”

Sunset stepped to the side, allowing Starlight her turn at the microscope. Brushing her hair back, she knelt down and looked through the eyepiece. Through it, she could see row upon row of rounded chambers, formed by walls of thin filament. Plant cells; she’d seen similar structures in her biology classes.

Less recognizable was the way they seemed to be falling apart. Many of the cells on the right side had split open, their walls fraying outwards.

“There are no signs of colonization,” Twilight said. “Normally you would be able to see little pits in the cell walls where the fungus spread through, but they just aren’t there. There’s no sign of an actual fungus, either, and as far as I can tell, the sample hasn’t decayed any further since yesterday.”

Starlight took a step back. The image had burned into her retina; she blinked it away.

“So what does that mean?” Sunset asked.

“I don’t know,” Twilight replied. “I do have a theory, but I’d need to test it first before I could be sure.”

“Alright,” Sunset said. “So how do we test it?”

"Well..."

“We’ll need four samples,” Twilight said. “Two from Equestria, two from here. Something simple, and easy to get, like a—”

Snip.

The twig fell neatly away from the dead tree it had resided upon and into Sunset’s gloved hand. Nodding, she reached up again with her scissors and found another such suitable item.

Snip.

“I’ll take pictures and thaumic readings of all four samples,” Twilight continued. “So we have a baseline.”

The thaumameter hummed. A graph appeared on the screen of Twilight’s laptop. She didn’t see it, however; she was too busy looking at a sample of one of the Equestrian twigs under the microscope.

“Then, we’ll leave two of them here,” she said. “One of the samples from our side, one of the samples from Equestria. We’ll keep the other two samples in Twilight’s castle. We’ll leave them there over the weekend. Finally, we’ll compare the ones in Equestria to our control group here, and based on the results, we should have a much better idea of what’s going on.”

The weekend passed slowly—or, at least, it had for Sunset. Now, however, it was Monday, and that meant the end of Twilight’s experiment.

“Ready to go?” Starlight asked her, as she put on her respirator mask. Sunset nodded.

“All good.”

“Alright,” Twilight said. “Firing capacitors—now!”

With a crackle of electricity and a flash of light, the portal to Equestria was once again ripped open.

“All green,” Starlight announced. “Go on, Sunset—let’s see what’s happened to our samples.”

Sunset nodded. With a deep breath—this moment never seemed to get any less dramatic—she stepped forward. Once. Twice. Again—and she was in Equestria. The crystal felt firm and solid beneath her boots.

First order of business: connecting the cable back up to the radio relay. That done, she turned her attention to one of the tables, upon which she’d placed their samples, two days before.

“Alright,” she said aloud. “Time to see what’s up.”

The two twigs lay in separate petri dishes, their ends jutting out over the edges. One was labeled “Earth”, the other “Equestria”.

Not that Sunset would have needed the labels to tell the two apart. The one from earth looked essentially the same as when she’d last seen it. The other…

The other was bent. It looked… soft. Like it had sagged under its own weight, little as that weight was.

“Any obvious changes?” came Twilight’s voice over the earpiece.

“Yeah,” Sunset said. “One’s… well, you’ll see when I bring them back.”

She went to pick up the samples, and—

She froze. She’d heard something. A clicking, faint, but definitely there. It was coming from the hallway outside the library.

Sunset swallowed. The sound was getting louder.

“I think something’s here,” she whispered.

“What? What do you mean?”

Sunset made her way to the doorway. “I can hear something. Sounds like footsteps.”

Holding her breath, she poked her head out of the doorway. Looked right; nothing. Looked left—there, movement. Something ducking into one of the rooms down the hall. She couldn’t see what it was.

“Hello?” she called out, timidly, then again, with more force: “Hello? Is someone there?”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea!?” Twilight hissed through the radio. Sunset ignored her.

She stepped through the doorway, headed down the hall to the room. “Can you hear me? Hello?”

She looked into the room.

Empty.

It was just a bedroom, a guest bedroom, by the looks of things, given how bare it was. Just a bed, a table, some shelves…

Bewildered, Sunset stepped inside. She looked around. There was no one there.

“Sunset?” came Twilight’s voice through the radio.

“I’m alright,” Sunset replied. “I thought I saw something, but there’s no one—”

Then came a sound. Behind her. Something dropping down on the floor. Sunset’s eyes widened. She went to turn around—

Something grabbed her by the back of her suit, lifted her into the air and threw her to the ground. Sunset let out a grunt as her body hit hard crystal. Her hands protected her face, but just barely. She felt something sharp—no, somethings—press into the back of her head, push her face harder into the floor.

“What are you,” a voice growled in her ear, “and what did you do?”

Stranger

Sunset grit her teeth.

“I’m not going to say it again,” the voice growled into her ear. “Who are you, what are you, and what did you do to Equestria?”

“S-Sunset Shimmer,” Sunset croaked out. “I’m a pony—”

“You don’t look like a pony,” the voice said. Sunset could feel its hot breath on the side of her face, but she couldn’t see anything. “Not like any pony I’ve ever seen.”

“I promise you, I’m not lying. I’m a friend of Twilight—ah! Twilight Sparkle!”

“Twilight Sparkle?” The pressure let up slightly for a moment—but then doubled. “If you know Twilight Sparkle, then where is she? And where’s Spike?”

“I don’t know where Spike is,” Sunset said. “And Twilight’s… Twilight’s dead.”

“Dead?” Sunset could feel the creature’s eyes narrowing. “Why should I believe that?”

Sunset didn’t have an answer. “Please, if you let me up, I can explain everything—”

“How about you explain everything first,” the voice said, “and then we’ll see—hey! Who’re—”

There was a great crash, then, and the pressure on the back of Sunset’s head released. Sunset looked up, and there was Twilight, standing over her, chest heaving, the remains of a chair in her hands. Splinters rained down around Sunset.

Quickly, Sunset sprung to her feet. She whirled around to face her attacker.

Her eyes widened.

It was standing on two legs, the creature, and reptilian, covered in blue scales that reflected the dim light. A pair of wings sprouted from its back, and a pair of curved horns extended from either side of its head. A tail stretched out behind it, long, with a fin at the end. It was grimacing, rubbing its head; sharp teeth lined its maw.

In short—a dragon.

She was about as tall as Sunset was, and in her right claw she clutched a staff of some kind, tipped with a red gem—a bloodstone, if Sunset knew her gemstones (and she liked to think she did).

Twilight grabbed her hand, shaking her out of her amazement. “Come on!” she shouted. “We have to get back to the portal!”

But Sunset didn’t move.

“Sunset?”

“Hold on,” Sunset said. She turned back towards the dragon. She’d recovered, now, and she looked mad.

“Oh, you’re going to pay for that,” she said, and it looked like she was about to pounce, but—

“Are you… Ember?” Sunset asked. “Dragon Lord Ember?”

The dragon froze. “How… do you know my name?”

“Twilight wrote to me about you,” Sunset said.

“Sunset, what are you doing?” Twilight hissed between gritted teeth. Sunset waved a hand in her direction.

“It’s okay,” she said. “She’s a friend… I hope.”

Ember got to her feet. “You hit me with a chair.”

“You threw me across the room,” Sunset replied. “I think we’re even.”

Ember narrowed her eyes. Sunset swallowed.

“Let’s start again,” she said. “I’m Sunset Shimmer. This is Twilight Sparkle… a different Twilight Sparkle. We came here from another world.”

She extended a hand. Ember eyed it suspiciously.

“We mean you no harm,” she said. “We just came here to find out what happened to Equestria. That’s all.”

Ember seemed to relax a little. She still didn’t take Sunset’s hand, however.

“Then you’re here for the same reason I am.” she said.

Sunset smiled.

“How about we compare notes?”

Starlight hesitated.

Moments ago, Twilight had shot up from her station, knocking her microphone to the floor, and dashed through the portal after Sunset.

Every fiber of Starlight’s being wanted to do nothing more than the same, but still, she hesitated. The sound of an approaching ambulance echoed through her mind.

Starlight hesitated, the crackling, whirling energies of the portal just feet in front of her. Her stomach twisted.

Starlight hesitated.

The radio crackled to life.

“Starlight? Can you hear me?”

Starlight never moved so quickly as she did then. She dashed over to the table, scooped the microphone off of the ground.

“Sunset?” she said. “Are you okay? Is Twilight okay?”

“We’re fine,” came the reply, after a moment. “You won’t believe who we ran into…”

“Twilight must have trusted you a lot to send her subjects to you,” Ember said.

“I don’t think she had much of a choice,” was Sunset’s momentary reply.

They’d returned to the library, and were sitting in some of the chairs that had lain strewn around the room. They were a little too small for humans, but only a little. Ember seemed to have made herself comfortable however, though she still held on to her scepter.

“What about you?” Sunset asked. “What brought you to Equestria? The Dragon Lands aren’t exactly close by. Did you fly here?”

Ember nodded. “Yeah. And isn’t it obvious? The dust brought me here.”

“The dust reaches all the way to the Dragon Lands?”

Ember nodded again. “It doesn’t bother us too much, but it is annoying—it’s not as thick as it is here, though. But there’s another problem.”

“What’s that?” Twilight asked.

“Our food.” Ember leaned back and put her arms behind her head. “Right around the time the dust showed up, all our gemstones started turning sour.”

“Gemstones?”

“Dragons eat gemstones,” Sunset explained to Twilight. “It’s their regular diet.”

“…How does—”

“Magic,” Sunset replied. “Remember how all objects in Equestria contain innate levels of magic? Crystals especially do. Dragons can process that magic and turn it into energy.”

“So that’s how that works,” Ember said.

Sunset turned to her. “You didn’t know?”

Ember shrugged. “Never thought about it. I just eat ‘em.”

“So if the gemstones started tasting sour,” Sunset said, “what does that mean?”

Ember shrugged again. “No idea. I was hoping Princess Twilight would know. That wasn’t all, though. There aren’t a lot, but there are some things other than dragons that live in the Dragon Lands. Fire lizards, some birds. They all started dying. I was hoping Twilight would know something about that, too. Then I got here, and… well…”

A few moments of silence.

“There’s more,” Ember said.

“There is?”

“The day,” Ember said. “It doesn’t change. It’s hard to tell because of the dust, but I’m pretty sure night hasn’t fallen since all this started."

“Then…” Sunset could barely stand to say it. “Then… could something have happened to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna?”

Ember shrugged. “No idea. I came straight here.”

“You must have seen other parts of Equestria on your way here, though, right?” Sunset asked. “How… how bad is it?”

Ember leveled her gaze at her.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

Sunset and Twilight looked at each other. They looked back at Ember, whose gaze was unyielding. Sunset nodded.

Ember closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. Exhaled through her nostrils.

“I don’t know where it was,” she began. “I don’t know pony cities. But it was big. A lot bigger than this one.”

“Probably Baltimare,” Sunset said. “And…?”

“There were corpses in the streets,” Ember said. “Picked clean, like the buzzards had gotten to them. But there weren’t any buzzards. There was just… nothing. Silence.”

Sunset shivered. She could picture it all too well. Cold, icy tendrils wrapped around Sunset’s heart.

“So all of…” she swallowed, and it almost hurt. “All of Equestria… is…”

“If it’s happening in the Dragon Lands,” Ember said, “It might be the whole world.”

“What will you do?” Sunset asked.

“I’ll probably fly back home,” Ember said. “If Twilight Sparkle is dead, and Spike isn’t here, then I don’t have a reason to stick around.”

They’d stood up. There was nothing left to talk about. Twilight had collected their samples, one petri dish in each hand.

“Are you sure?” Sunset said.

“Yeah,” Ember said. “Besides, I don’t want the Dragon Lands falling apart while I’m gone.” She grit her teeth. “I’m sure Garble’s trying to rile everyone up again. As usual.”

“Alright,” Sunset said. “If you’re sure.”

She stepped towards the portal, and Twilight followed.

“Goodbye, Ember,” Twilight said.

“See you around.”

“I’m so glad you girls are okay!”

Starlight’s arms wrapped around Sunset and Twilight. Starlight wasn’t crying, but it was clear from her voice that she might have been close to it.

What brought this on? Sunset wondered, though she didn’t ask it aloud. Instead, she smiled, and patted Starlight on the back.

“We’re fine,” she said. “And we’ve got new info. Plus, Twilight’s samples.”

Starlight released them, and they filled her in on what they’d learned from Ember as Sunset stripped her hazmat suit off.

“So it’s even gotten as far as the Dragon Lands…” Starlight said, once they’d finished.

“Probably farther,” Sunset said. “We have no way of knowing. Whatever ‘it’ is.”

Twilight spoke up. “About that…”

“Just as I suspected,” Twilight said, with no small amount of self-satisfaction. She couldn’t help it, even under the circumstances; it’s just how she was when she was proven correct, which she believed she had been.

“What is it?” Sunset asked. They were still inside the tent; it was past noon, now.

Twilight pulled her eye away from the lens of the microscope she’d been peering down. She blinked her vision clear.

“The samples,” Twilight said. “Our controls, samples number one and number two, exhibited no physical change over the last two days. Accordingly, the sample from Earth still doesn’t show up on a thaumograph, and the sample from Equestria’s considerably higher magical content has not changed.”

“Right,” Starlight said. “Because objects in Equestria contain ambient magic.”

“Correct,” Twilight said, nodding. “And sample three, the sample from our side of the portal that we left in Equestria, has also remained unchanged. No physical change, no thaumic change.

“But sample number four, the twig from Equestria that we left in Equestria, shows noticeable signs of degradation. What’s more, a scan with the thaumometer shows that its magical content has decreased from what it originally was by about thirty percent.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Starlight said. “That shouldn’t happen. That can’t happen.”

“Well, it did,” Twilight said. “And this sort of confirms my theory as to what’s going on.”

“What’s your theory, Twilight?” Sunset asked, leaning against the edge of Twilight’s bench with her arms crossed.

“My theory,” Twilight said, “is that something is destructively removing, or even destroying, the innate magic from Equestria.”

The tent was quiet, for a few moments, as that sank in.

“…Go on,” Sunset said, eventually.

“Okay, so,” Twilight said. “Both of you have told me that all objects in Equestria carry an innate level of magic. I thought: what if that magic is somehow tied to the object’s structure? Then, if you removed that magic…”

“The object would fall apart, yes,” Sunset said.

“Right. On a microscopic, maybe even molecular level,” Twilight continued. “Something that might even look to a casual observer like—”

“Like rot,” Starlight finished, her eyes widening.

“Exactly,” Twilight said. “That would explain the samples Sunset’s brought back appearing to have rotted, even though there was no mold or fungus attached to them. And the results of our experiment conform to that model. The samples with no magic were fine. The sample with magic that we brought back here was fine. Only the sample with magic that we left in Equestria was affected, and it was affected magically.”

Twilight looked up at Sunset.

“Something in Equestria is draining or destroying magic,” she said. “And whatever it is, it’s taking Equestria with it.”

Again, silence, as each girl processed this.

Starlight nodded. “That makes sense with what happened to the girls… to Princess Twilight’s friends. Unicorns are the most innately magical of the three species, so they would be affected the most. Then pegasi, then earth ponies.”

Twilight nodded.

“Wait,” Sunset said. “Wait. Wait. You’re forgetting me.”

Twilight blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m a unicorn, Twilight,” Sunset said. “And I’m from Equestria. Why doesn’t this affect me, then? I have innate magic, too.”

“No, you don’t.”

Sunset blinked. “What?”

“You saw your thaumograph when I scanned the Rainbooms, Sunset,” Twilight said. “You’re as magic-less as any of the rest of us humans.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Sunset said. Her arms fell to her sides.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “I don’t have an explanation for that.”

“How long have you been in the human world, Sunset?” Starlight asked, gently.

“…Five years,” was Sunset’s reply. “You don’t think…?”

“It’s possible,” Starlight said. “Your magic may have… dissipated, while you were here. Slowly.”

“Wouldn’t that have killed me?” Sunset said. “Like everything else in Equestria? Like what almost happened to Rarity?”

“Maybe not if it was gradual,” Twilight said. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Sunset. The fact is, you’re basically a human now.”

Sunset bit her lip.

“A-anyway,” Twilight said, “What about Dragon Lord Ember? She’s the other outlier, here. Any ideas?”

“Dragon scales are resistant to magic,” Starlight said. “A lot of Equestria’s… erm… ‘monsters’ are, but dragons in particular.”

“Maybe they’re resistant to this, too,” Twilight said. “Whatever ‘this’ is.”

“What about the dust,” Sunset asked. “Where’s that come into things?”

“I think that might just be what’s left over after all the magic is removed from an object,” Twilight said. “The leftovers.” She reached out and pinched the end of the twig between her fingers. It crumbled to dust in her hands. “Like this.”

“Okay,” Sunset said. “Alright. So what’s the cause of all of this? What’s destroying Equestria’s magic?”

“I… don’t know,” Twilight said, and here she folded her hands in her lap. “That’s as far as my theory went. Maybe some kind of anti-magic? There’s no way of knowing.”

Sunset sighed.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said again. Sunset shook her head at this.

“No,” she said, smiling weakly. “You’ve given us something to work with. That’s huge, Twilight. Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Starlight said. “Great work, Twilight.”

Twilight blushed.

“So now what?” Starlight asked. “Now that we know all this… what’s our next course of action? What do we do?”

“There’s only one thing we can do,” Sunset said. She stood up.

“What’s that?” Twilight asked.

Sunset looked at her.

“We find the Elements of Harmony.”

Preparations

Sunset stepped through the portal, a sleeping bag under each arm. She walked over to the corner of the library, set her load down, and turned back towards the portal. It was only then that she noticed the room’s other occupant.

“Hey,” Ember said. She was sitting in one of the chairs, her scepter leaning against the table beside her.

“Oh, hello,” Sunset said. “You’re still here? I thought you were heading back to the Dragon Lands?”

Ember waved a claw dismissively. “Changed my mind. They’ll be fine without me. For a little while, anyway. And if Garble tries anything, I’ll just put him back in his place like I always do.”

“Huh,” Sunset said. “Well, alright then.”

“So,” Ember said. “You guys figure anything out from your little experiment or whatever?”

“We think so,” Sunset said. She explained what they’d learned.

“Sounds like a bunch of pony magic mumbo-jumbo to me,” Ember said, once Sunset had finished. “So that’s why our gems have gone bad?”

“That’s our theory,” Sunset said. “It’s probably because the innate magic within the gemstones is being drained.”

“That’s… bad, right?” Ember asked.

Sunset nodded. “Without the innate magic of gemstones, you might starve. Eventually.”

“Great.”

“You’re always welcome to come to our world,” Sunset said, intentionally not thinking about how she would hide actual living dragons from the rest of the human populace.

“Are there a lot of gems on your side of the mirror-portal-thingy?”

“Well, uh… no. They’re pretty hard to get your hands on, actually. And they wouldn’t have any magic in them, so…”

“Then I think we’ll stay here. That mirror thing’s too small for most of us, anyway.”

They lapsed into silence. Sunset went back through the portal, and reemerged a few moments later with two more sleeping bags under her arms.

“What are those for?” Ember asked, as Sunset put them down with the others.

“Camping,” Sunset said. “We’re planning an expedition to the Everfree Forest.”

“Is that the forest on the edge of town?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“There’s a set of powerful magical artifacts hidden there,” Sunset said. “We think we might be able to reverse what’s happened to Equestria with them. Maybe.”

Ember raised an eyeridge. “You don’t sound very confident.”

“It’s the only hope we’ve got.”

Sunset went back through the portal, then reemerged with the last of the sleeping bags. She set them down in the corner, then dusted her hands off.

“You know,” she said, ”if you’re going to stick around… would you come with us? The forest is dangerous, and I’d feel a lot more comfortable with a dragon backing us up.”

Ember was silent for a few moments.

“…You say these magical doohickeys of yours can fix things?”

“That’s what we’re hoping.”

“Alright,” Ember said. “Then I’m on board. When are you heading out?”

“A couple days from now.”

“Not that that means much to me, what with the sky the way it is,” Ember said. “But okay, I’ll wait for you. After that, though, I’m going back to the Dragon Lands.”

Sunset smiled. “Thank you, Ember.”

Ember snorted. “Don’t thank me yet. Wait until after everything’s gone back to normal.”

“Will do.”

Starlight was on her way to the tent when someone called out her name. “Starlight?”

She turned around.

“Hiya!”

“Pinkie?” Starlight said. She was momentarily surprised; Pinkie looked a lot more like her normal, cheerful self. And hadn’t she still been in the gym when she left, curled up in her sleeping bag as seemed to be the norm these days? But then it clicked. “You’re the human Pinkie, right?”

Pinkie nodded. “Yep!”

“Oh,” Starlight said, a little disappointed. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m searching for my other half,” Pinkie said. “Have you seen her?”

“Your other—oh, you mean your counterpart? She’s in the gym.”

“Coolio-doolio!” Pinkie said. “Thanks, Starlight!”

She headed off down the hall. Starlight turned back to the entrance, hesitated for a moment, checked her watch, and finally turned around. Curiosity had gotten the best of her; she headed off after Pinkie.

“Hey,” she said, once she’d caught up. “What do you want with your counterpart anyway?”

“Sunset told me she’s in a bad place right now. I thought I might try to cheer her up a little!”

Starlight bit her lip. “I’m… not sure that’s the best idea.”

Pinkie turned her head to look at her. “Why not?”

“Well,” Starlight said, “we’ve all tried talking to her, but… I think she just wants to be left alone.”

“Maybe that’s what she wants,” Pinkie said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s what she needs.”

“Still, I don’t think—”

“I can’t hurt her more than she’s already hurting,” Pinkie said, cutting her off. “So is it alright if I just try?”

Something about the way Pinkie said those words caught Starlight off guard. She fell a few steps behind.

Soon enough, they reached the doors to the gym. Pinkie pushed them open and walked inside, scanning the crowd for her double.

“Over there,” Starlight said, pointing to their little group.

“Gotcha,” Pinkie said. She waded into the crowd, Starlight following closely behind. They reached the others pretty quickly. Applejack and Rainbow had gone off somewhere, leaving Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie. Pinkie was curled up in her sleeping bag.

“Starlight?” Rarity asked, when they were close enough to hear. “I thought you were…” her voice died. “Pinkie?”

“Human Pinkie,” Starlight explained.

“Oh.” Rarity nodded. “I see. Still getting used to that.”

Human Pinkie stepped carefully over the mess of blankets on the floor and squatted down beside her other self. She put a hand on Pony Pinkie’s shoulder, causing her to start. Her head snapped up.

The difference between the two was night and day. Human Pinkie was smiling and perky. By contrast, pony Pinkie looked like she’d been through the wringer. Bags hung under her eyes, her hair was matted down in several places, and looking at her face it was hard to imagine she’d ever smiled in her life.

“Hiya, other me!” human Pinkie said. “Can we talk for a minute?”

Pony Pinkie said nothing, just nodded after a few seconds.

“Great!” human Pinkie said. “Let’s go over to the corner, okay?”

Pony Pinkie slowly extracted herself from her sleeping bag, and the two walked carefully over to the corner of the gym, out of earshot.

“Two Pinkie Pies,” Rarity said. “I never would have dared to imagine it before I came here.”

“Did she say what she wanted?” Fluttershy asked.

“She said she just wanted to talk,” Starlight answered. “To cheer her up.”

“Well, I certainly hope she succeeds,” Rarity said. “Celestia knows none of us have been able to get through to her.”

They continued to watch the two Pinkies. Human Pinkie Pie seemed to have a lot to say, pony Pinkie looking small in comparison. So engrossed were they that they failed to notice the new arrivals until they had already arrived.

“Hey,” Rainbow Dash said, walking up behind Starlight. “What’s going on?”

“The human Pinkie Pie is having a little chat with our Pinkie Pie,” Rarity explained.

“Really?” Applejack said, joining their little group. “Huh.”

“Anyway, Starlight,” Rainbow said. She thrust a large roll of paper towards her. “We got the map done. And we talked to Zecora. She made some notes for you.”

“Really?” Starlight unfurled the map. It was very detailed. “That’s amazing. This’ll be a big help.”

“Anything we can do to support you guys, we will,” Applejack said.

Starlight rolled the map back up. She looked back at the two Pinkies; it seemed as though they were wrapping up their conversation.

Pony Pinkie began to cry. Big, racking sobs. Human Pinkie held her arms out.

The two Pinkies hugged.

“Well I’ll be,” Applejack remarked.

The two continued to hug for a few moments more, then pulled back. Pony Pinkie wiped her tears with her forearm.

The two headed back over to the group.

“Pinkie,” Starlight said, gently. “How are you feeling?”

“It hurts,” Pinkie said. “But… I’m okay.” She sniffed. “I’m so sorry, everypony.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Rarity said. “We’re just glad you’re back.”

They all hugged, with the exception of the human Pinkie, who smiled, turned, and began to walk away. Starlight, noticing this, broke from the group hug and ran after her.

“Wait!” she said, and the human Pinkie turned around. Starlight caught up with her.

“Yeah, Starlight?”

“What did…” Starlight said. “What did you tell her?”

“Oh, not much,” Pinkie said. “I just gave her a little pep talk and told her that it was okay to feel sad, but also that it’s easier if you share that sadness with your friends.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Pinkie replied. “What can I say? I just know myself pretty well.”

And with that, she turned and walked away, leaving Starlight alone.

A day passed. Now, it was Saturday, and the place was the tent.

Their little expedition team had been assembled. The six of them stood in their protective gear, looking to all the world like soldiers marching off to war. Well, if a bunch of teenagers in homemade hazmat suits could be called soldiers. It reminded Twilight a lot of the last time they’d assembled a team to go through the portal. She hoped against hope that this one wouldn’t end the same way. Or worse. They wouldn’t have the mercy of an open portal home this time, if something were to happen.

Twilight took a deep breath. Too late to turn back now.

“I must say, when you asked me to make these suits, I never imagined I’d be one of the ones wearing them,” Rarity remarked, looking herself over. “Not exactly my most fashionable work, but function over form, I suppose.”

“Well, I for one think they’re pretty awesome,” Rainbow said. “It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie!”

“I’m more of a ‘detective thriller’ person, myself.”

“Alright, everyone,” Sunset said, standing in front of the rest of the group. “Let’s go over this one more time.”

“I think we all get it already,” Rainbow said. “We go in, we find this forest place, we follow the map, we get the Elements, and then we head back to the portal.”

“Right,” Sunset said. “But remember, we can’t keep the portal open while we’re there. Twilight and Starlight will re-open the portal every day at three o’clock until we’re back. We won’t be able to communicate with them, so it’s important that we all make it back by then. You all have your watches?”

They nodded. They were just cheap analogue watches, but unlike digital ones, they would survive going through the portal.

“But please, try to make it back as quickly as possible,” Twilight said.

Sunset nodded. “Now, the Everfree is dangerous. We don’t know what we’ll encounter in there, so it’s important that we all stick together. No matter what you see or hear, do not wander off from the group; that’s the number one rule. Got it?”

“You don’t have to tell us twice,” Applejack said. Everyone else nodded, including Fluttershy, who seemed to be nodding more aggressively than the others.

“Good,” Sunset said. She turned to Twilight. “I think we’re ready, then.”

“…You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?” Twilight asked her.

Sunset nodded. “It’s the only way.”

Twilight let out a breath. “Okay.”

She sat down at her desk.

“Starlight, everything green on your end?”

Starlight looked up with a start. “Oh!” she exclaimed, then quickly scanned the monitor in front of her. “Yes! Everything’s good over here.”

“Okay,” Twilight said. She double-checked her own monitor. “Alright,” she said. “Discharging capacitors… now!”

She pushed a key, and the Can-Opener sparked to life. The portal was ripped open once again.

“Okay, everybody,” Sunset said. “Be careful on your way through; it can be disorienting.”

She turned to Twilight and Starlight.

“Wish us luck,” she said.

Twilight swallowed.

“Good luck.”

Forest

Sunset passed through the portal with practiced ease. It felt weird, crossing over without the weight of a black box on her back.

She was the first one through. The others came through one at a time, their inexperience with the process causing them to stumble. Sunset helped each one as they filed into the library.

“So this is Princess Twilight’s castle,” Rarity remarked, the last one through the portal. “I must say, it fits her rather well.”

“This is just the library,” Sunset said. “Well, a library.”

“Exactly.”

It was at that moment that Ember appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, you’re here,” she said. “Finally.”

Rainbow took a step back. “Whoa! What the heck is that!?”

Ember narrowed her eyes.

“Relax,” Sunset said, putting her hand on Rainbow’s shoulder. “That’s Ember. She’s a dragon. She’s going to be helping us.”

“A dragon?” Fluttershy said. “Equestria has dragons?”

“Equestria has all sorts of things that are only myths in your world,” Sunset explained.

“Ooh, ooh, can you breathe fire, Ms. Dragon?” Pinkie asked.

Ember snorted. Small jets of purple flame billowed from her nose.

“Neat-o!”

Sunset introduced everyone.

“Bunch of pony names,” Ember grumbled. “How am I supposed to remember all of that?”

“Just do your best,” Sunset said.

She turned to the humans and gestured to the pile of supplies against the wall. “Everyone take a backpack,” she said.

“What’s in these things?” Rainbow asked, picking one up. “Rocks?”

Sunset ticked them off on her fingers. “Camping supplies, food, water, first aid kits, flashlights, sleeping bags, a multitool…”

“Gee, over-prepared much?”

“This is the Everfree Forest we’re talking about,” Sunset said. “No amount of preparation is too much.”

“Ooh, I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Fluttershy said, slipping on a backpack of her own.

“Sorry.”

Once they had all geared up, Sunset led them through the halls of the castle.

“So the entire building is made of solid crystal?” Rarity asked.

“Yep,” Sunset replied.

“How exactly did they manage that?”

“It came out of a magic box, apparently.”

“I… see.”

“It doesn’t taste very good, either,” Ember added.

Rarity adopted a look of bewilderment. “T…taste…?”

“You’ve been eating Twilight’s castle?” Sunset asked.

“What else is there to eat? It’s not like anyone’s using it, anyway.”

“Fair point, I guess.” Sunset couldn’t say she was happy about it, but she didn’t want to raise an objection.

They continued on until they reached the main hall. The doors to the outside were still open. The dust was thick, here, but Sunset knew it would only be thicker outside.

“Okay, she said. “Last chance to back out.”

“We’ve all already committed to this, Sunset,” Applejack said. “We’re not going to leave you alone now.”

The others voiced their agreement.

Sunset smiled. “Thanks, guys.”

She turned back to the doors.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s go.”

It was the first time Sunset had been in Ponyville proper since she had gone with the ponies. It was just as bad there as it always had been. Maybe even moreso, now that more time had passed and the magical decay had progressed.

“My word,” Rarity said, as they made their way through the streets. “It’s… It’s so…”

“Awful,” Fluttershy finished for her.

Applejack nodded, silently.

“This is what’s left of the ponies’ home?” Pinkie asked, sounding small. “This is… this is it?”

“Yes,” Sunset said. “This is Ponyville.”

Eventually, they made it to the outskirts of town, and then farther, until they were standing on the edge of the forest. The trees were brown and withered, their barren branches seeming to sag under their own weight. The dust hung thick in the air like a deep fog.

And yet, even still…

“This is the Everfree?” Rainbow asked.

Sunset nodded. “Yep. This is it.”

“I think I’m starting to see why you were so worried,” Applejack said.

Fluttershy let out a whimper.

“R-relax,” Rainbow said, not able to keep the tremor out of her own voice. “It’s just some dumb forest. We’ll be fine!”

Sunset pulled the map from her backpack. She’d spent plenty of time memorizing it and the various instructions written upon it, but having the actual thing in front of her made her feel a little more in control.

“Okay,” she said. “We just have to follow the path as far as it goes. The map will tell us where to go from there. As long as we stick to what it says, we should be fine.”

“I sure hope you’re right about that,” Applejack said.

Sunset swallowed.

“Me too.”

Bare branches overhead blocked out most of the grey-tinged light from above, leaving the ground in a bitter sort of twilight. Dead and dying plants surrounded the narrow dirt path on both sides. Even here, the silence reigned supreme; all there was to be heard was the sound of their boots.

And even still, Sunset couldn’t shake the feeling that something had to be waiting for them, just out of sight behind the tree line.

“So this is a ‘forest’,” Ember remarked.

“Uh… yeah?” Rainbow said.

“We don’t have a lot of trees in the Dragon Lands,” Ember said. “Kinda weird seeing so many in one place.”

“What, um…” Fluttershy began. “What do you have in the Dragon Lands?”

Ember ticked them off on her claws. “Rocks, lava, volcanoes… That’s pretty much it.”

“That sounds kind of depressing.”

Ember shrugged. “It’s everything a dragon needs.”

They pressed on. Eventually, they reached the end of the path. To their right, Sunset could see a tree with twisted branches and a door set into its trunk. Bottles and lanterns hung off of its appendages, and masks decorated the front.

“This must be Zecora’s house,” Sunset said.

“Wait,” Rainbow said. “You mean someone actually lived in here?”

“Apparently.” Sunset consulted the map, then her compass.

“Alright,” she said. “From here we head straight northeast for a while until we hit a river. Also, there’s a note from Zecora…”

“What’s it say?”

“Avoid you must the flowers of blue, lest you find out what they do to you,” Sunset read off the map.

“Why the rhyme?” Pinkie asked.

“They’re all like that,” Sunset answered. “I guess it’s her thing.”

They pressed on. As they did, the idle chatter amongst their group slowly subsided. The oppressive nature of the forest only seemed to grow thicker the further in they got.

At last, they reached the river. The water was grey and cloudy, but rushed on all the same. Too fast and deep to wade through. At least the treeline had receded; they had a little more light to go by.

“So now what?” Rainbow asked.

“We need to cross,” Sunset said, lowering the map. “Somehow.”

“You didn’t happen to pack an inflatable raft in one of these backpacks, did you darling?” Rarity asked.

Sunset shook her head. “Couldn’t get my hands on one in time. We have to follow the river north until we find a place we can cross. There’s a place with some rocks not too far from here, according to the map.”

“I could just fly you across,” Ember said.

Everyone turned to look at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Right,” Sunset said. “Wings. Forgot about that.”

“Can you carry us?” Applejack asked.

“One at a time, sure,” Ember said.

“I don’t know how I feel about, erm… flying,” Fluttershy said. “B-but I’ll do my best!”

“Okay, then,” Sunset said. “We’re in your claws.”

She surrendered herself to Ember’s care. The dragon wrapped her arms under Sunset’s. With a beat of her powerful wings, they lifted into the air.

“Okay,” Ember said. “You’re a little heavier than I expected.”

“Too heavy?”

“Not even close.”

They flew across the river, Sunset trying not to look at the rapids below. She was a unicorn in her past life, after all, not a pegasus.

Ember let her down gently on the opposite bank. Sunset didn’t say it, but she was glad to have solid ground back beneath her feet.

Ember flew back over to the other side of the river to pick up the next member of their little expedition. Meanwhile, Sunset scanned the tree line. Nothing stood out to her, but she knew how little that actually meant in a place like this.

She turned back to look at the other bank. It looked like Rainbow had volunteered to go next; she was grinning ear to ear as Ember flew her across. Sunset snorted. Typical Rainbow.

Soon enough, they had all made it across.

“Thanks for that, Ember,” Sunset said.

Ember nodded. “No problem.”

Sunset consulted the map again.

“Okay, everybody,” she said, turning in the direction the map indicated. “Follow me.”

Some time later, they emerged from the trees into an open clearing. Sunset checked her watch. It was around eight o’clock. She looked at what she could see of the sky. It had not changed.

“The sun really doesn’t set,” she said.

“How much farther is it to the Elements?” Applejack asked.

“We’re a little over halfway there,” Sunset said. She looked back at the group. Their resident athletes seemed fine, Applejack and Rainbow, and Pinkie and Ember seemed okay to keep going. Rarity and Fluttershy, on the other hand, looked like they’d seen better days.

“Alright,” she said. “This looks like as good a place as any to set up camp for the night. Or, uh… whatever passes as night. Applejack, Rainbow, you help me set up the tents. The rest of you can take a breather.”

Rarity let out a sigh of relief.

They set about their task. They had two tents between them, each fitting about three people comfortably. They went up without a hitch.

“We’ll take turns keeping watch,” Sunset said. “We’ll take two hour shifts. I’ll go first.”

“It’ll be better with two people,” Rainbow said. “I’ll stay up with you.”

They worked out an order from there.

“Alright,” Sunset said. “Get some rest, you guys. We’ll take it from here.”

“I hope they’re okay,” Twilight said, back in the tent, her nervous gaze fixated on the solid base of the statue.

Starlight unfurled her sleeping bag.

“Me too.”

Sunset sat in the dirt in between the two tents. Rainbow was sitting beside her. Her colourful hair sat in sharp contrast to the dying browns and greys of the forest and the sky, even restrained as it was by the straps of the respirator mask she was wearing.

“So,” Rainbow said. “That was Ponyville, huh?”

“Yep,” Sunset replied.

“What was it like before, uh…” Rainbow waved her hand in a circular motion. “Y’know. All of this.”

“I don’t know. I’d never been there before this happened.”

“Oh,” Rainbow said. “I, uh… kind of assumed most ponies lived in Ponyville. It’s in the name, y’know?”

Sunset shook her head. “Nope. Ponyville’s just a small town, and Equestria is a big country. I lived in Canterlot. Er, pony Canterlot.”

“Huh.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“So what was pony Canterlot like?” Rainbow asked. “Is it like our Canterlot?”

Sunset snorted. “Not even close.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s built on the side of a mountain, for one thing,” Sunset said. “For another, it’s a lot more… high class? A lot of nobles and wannabee nobles. It’s the richest city in Equestria.”

“Sounds snobby,” Rainbow said.

“It was snobby,” Sunset admitted. “Everyone was vying for power and status all the time. But, well, so was I. So I guess I fit right in.”

“Yeah, you were, kinda…”

“A raging bitch?” Sunset finished for her. “Yeah. I know.”

They lapsed back into silence. Sunset fiddled with the straps on her mask.

“Where was Princess Twilight from?” Rainbow asked.

“She’s from Canterlot, too.”

Rainbow’s eyebrows raised. “She uh, didn’t seem like a raging bitch to me.”

“She was too busy burying herself in books and her magical studies to worry about her status,” Sunset said. “At least, from what little I saw of her back then. She’d changed a lot between then and when I… y’know.”

Rainbow nodded.

Sunset sighed. Her gaze turned towards the treeline. “Not the least of which was becoming an alicorn princess.”

“She wasn’t born a princess?” Rainbow asked. “How does that work?”

“She was appointed Princess of Friendship after she became an alicorn,” Sunset said. Rainbow opened her mouth to ask, but Sunset got ahead of her. “An alicorn is a pony with both wings and a horn. It’s possible for a regular pony to become an alicorn, but it’s extremely rare. I only know of two who’ve done it, and one of them was Twilight.”

“Huh,” Rainbow said. “There’s… so much I didn’t even know about her.”

“She wasn’t big on sharing that aspect of her life, I guess,” Sunset said.

She looked back at Rainbow. The other girl had her gaze firmly planted in the ground.

“You okay?” Sunset asked.

“I’m fine,” Rainbow replied. “Just… it feels like I barely knew her, I guess. I mean, we were friends, and I owe her a lot, but I never thought to ask her about any of this, and…”

She trailed off, before resuming. “I still can’t believe she’s gone, y’know?”

“I get it,” Sunset said, and now she was looking at the ground, too. “I can’t believe it either.”

Once more, the silence prevailed.

“Can I ask you something?” Sunset said, eventually.

“What?”

“It’s about your pony counterpart,” she said. “I think she hates me.”

“Hates you?” Rainbow said. “Why would she hate you?”

“I nearly got pony Rarity killed,” Sunset said. “And I couldn’t save Princess Twilight, and I can’t send the pony-siders home. I think she resents me because of all of that.”

“Well, okay, that’s all true,” Rainbow said. “But you’re still trying your best, right?”

“I don’t think that’s enough for her.”

“Well…” Rainbow frowned, her brow knitted in thought. “I guess I would be pretty upset by all of that, too. I don’t think that’s all of it, though.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I was really happy when you told us about this expedition thing,” Rainbow said. “’Cause it finally meant I could do something. When all this started, I felt pretty useless. I wasn’t smart enough to help you guys with the portal. The most I could do was donate some supplies for the pony-siders and stay out of the way. I wanted to help, but I couldn’t. That was, uh… really frustrating, I guess.”

Rainbow sighed. “And then I found out Princess Twilight was dead, and that only made me feel even more useless.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” Sunset said.

“Yeah, I know. That’s the problem.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, I bet that’s how pony me feels,” Rainbow said. “Only worse than me, because she can’t even be here.” She snorted, and rubbed the back of her head. “That’s what I think, anyway. You know I’m not good at all this touchy-feely stuff.”

Sunset shook her head. “No, that… that makes sense. I would feel the same way.” She looked down. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Celestia, she must be—”

A rustling sound cut through their conversation like a blade. Their heads snapped up.

“What was that?” Rainbow said.

Sunset held an arm up. “Quiet.”

She listened. All was silent for a moment, but then…

There it was again.

“Wake the others up,” Sunset whispered.

Rainbow nodded, and ran over to the closer of the tents.

Sunset grabbed the backpack at her feet and opened it slowly. She reached inside and pulled out her multitool. Her hands shook as she unfolded the knife.

It wouldn’t be enough. She knew that. But it was all she had.

More rustling, behind her now. She whipped around to face it, knife at the ready.

A roar split the silence of the forest, wild and angry.

Sunset grit her teeth.

Whatever the thing was…

…it wasn’t a friend.

Retrieval

Sunset brandished the knife in front of her. Her hands shook and her knees quivered, but she stood strong.

The others were emerging from their tents, now. They looked scared, too.

“What’s going on?” Fluttershy whispered.

“Something’s coming,” Sunset said. “Stay behind me.”

“Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.” It was Ember who spoke. She stepped forwards, put her claw on Sunset’s shoulder and pulled her back. “You get behind me.”

Sunset would have been lying to herself if she said she wasn’t at least a little relieved that someone else had taken charge.

“Alright,” Ember said. “Come on out, whatever you are!”

Another roar emerged from the brush. But there was something off about this one. It sounded… weaker, somehow. More desperate.

A shadow appeared within the treeline. Sunset tensed.

And then, the monster emerged.

It had the head and body of a lion. Bat-like wings sprouted from its back. A scorpion’s tail flicked back and forth behind it. Sunset had only seen its ilk in books before.

A manticore. It stood as tall as she did.

But it didn’t look healthy. Large patches of its fur had fallen out, revealing angry wounds and missing skin. It wheezed, as though it was having trouble breathing. It looked unnaturally gaunt.

It limped forwards, dragging one of its hind legs behind it. As if in spite of that, it snarled, showing off its long, sharp teeth.

Ember took a step towards it. She opened her mouth and let out a jet of flame that shot just over the manticore’s head.

“That’s a warning,” she said. “Next one’s got your name on it.”

The manticore only snarled again and pulled itself closer.

“Alright,” Ember said. “You asked for—”

“Wait!”

The shout had come from behind them. She turned towards its source.

“Fluttershy…?”

Fluttershy swallowed, but then stepped forwards.

“L-look at it,” she stammered. “It’s hurt…”

She took a few steps closer to the beast, passing Ember. She stopped just a few feet away from it.

“You must be in so much pain,” Fluttershy said. She sounded like she was about to cry. She held a hand out to the manticore.

It sniffed her. Its eyes widened. It rose up and—

Sunset tensed. “Fluttershy, get back!”

—pulled itself forward and nuzzled its lion head against Fluttershy’s chest.

Fluttershy reached out and wrapped her arms around it. “It’s okay now. It’s going to be okay.” She ran her hand through its mane.

It whimpered again.

“Sunset, could you bring me one of the first aid kits?” Fluttershy asked.

“Fluttershy,” Sunset said, her voice gentle. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do…”

Fluttershy looked back at her, conviction in her eyes. “Please, Sunset.”

Sunset hesitated… then reached down and picked up the still-opened bag at her feet.

“I need bandages,” Fluttershy said. “And disinfectant spray.”

“I’ll help,” Applejack said, stepping forwards.

“Me too,” Rainbow said. “I’ve had enough skinned knees to know how to dress a wound.”

They spent the next little while attending to the manticore’s wounds, cleaning them and wrapping them in bandages. They had to use several rolls (more than Sunset would have liked) and there was nothing they could do about its leg, but eventually they finished doing what they could.

Fluttershy ran a hand through the manticore’s mane again. “Is that a little better?” Her voice hitched a little. “I’m sorry, that’s all we can do for you.”

The manticore nuzzled her again. Then, it pulled away from Fluttershy, turned, and limped away, out of the clearing and back into the brush of the forest.

Fluttershy turned around and wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” she said. “I just… saw it was hurting, and…”

“It’s okay, Fluttershy,” Sunset said. “We understand. You have nothing to apologize for.”

Fluttershy smiled, weakly.

Sunset checked her watch. “Alright, everyone, back to bed. We’ve got ground to cover in the morning.”

“What is that?” Rarity asked, looking at the ruins that could just be seen from across the bridge.

“It’s the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters,” Sunset answered. “What’s left of it, anyway.”

The night (or what could be called the night, in this land of eternal grey twilight) had passed. They’d set out early in the morning, and had traveled a fair distance to reach their destination.

“Is that where the Elements are?” Rainbow asked.

“No,” Sunset said. “It’s where they used to be. Now, though, they’re in the Tree of Harmony, in a cave below the castle… somewhere.”

She consulted the map again, then turned in a circle.

“There’s supposed to be a path down…” her eyes landed on it. “There it is. Come on, everyone, we’re almost there.”

They took to the narrow path, walking in single file with the exception of Ember, who flew down ahead of them on her leathery wings. They met each other at the bottom.

“We’re looking for a cave,” Sunset said, looking at the map. “It should be at the foot of this cliff, somewhere, but it might be a little hard to find—”

“You mean like that one, over there?” Pinkie said, pointing.

Sunset raised her head. Sure enough, there it was. In fact, it was so large it was impossible to miss.

“Yeah,” Sunset said, sheepishly. “Like that one.”

They headed inside. It was dark; Sunset pulled an electric lantern from her backpack and switched it on. Its glow revealed a straight path forwards. She led the group deeper into the cave.

Something caught the light, ahead. As Sunset approached it, her eyes widened.

It was a crystalline tree. Its many facets reflected and scattered the lantern-light onto the cave’s walls.

“The Tree of Harmony,” Sunset breathed. “We made it. We actually made it!”

But something was wrong. The crystal was dull. Cloudy. And something else was missing, too.

“Where are the Elements?” Sunset said.

Indeed, there were indentations in the tree, each one a different shape. A starburst at the center. A lightning bolt, butterfly, balloon, diamond and apple on the tree’s respective branches.

All were empty.

“I—I don’t understand,” Sunset stammered. “They’re supposed to be here!”

“Uh, Sunset?” Rainbow said. “What are those rocks on the ground?”

Sunset tore her gaze away from the tree and looked down.

Her eyes widened.

There were six of them, sitting in a half-circle around the base of the tree. Stone orbs, each with a carving that matched the indents on the Tree. Sunset reached out a gloved hand. They were solid, and smooth.

“The Elements,” she said, the anxiety in her voice replaced with confusion and a little bit of relief.

“Those are the Elements?” Rarity asked. “They don’t look like crowns or necklaces or jewelry of any sort to me.”

“This is how they looked before Twilight and her friends awoke them,” Sunset said. “They’ve… gone dormant. Why…?”

She shook her head. Now was not the time to ask questions. She picked up one of the orbs. The one with a lightning bolt on the front.

“This is loyalty,” Sunset said. “Rainbow, you take it.”

She handed the orb over. Rainbow held it in her hands. “Whoa, this thing’s heavy!”

“Fluttershy, this is kindness.” Sunset handed it over. “Rarity, this one is generosity. Applejack, honesty. Pinkie, here’s laughter.”

Sunset eyed the remaining Element. “And… I guess I’ll take magic,” she said, picking it up. She could feel its weight in her hands.

She wondered if it remembered her.

They stood there, each holding their respective Elements, for a few moments.

“Okay,” Rainbow said. “Now what?”

“I was kinda hoping something would happen,” Sunset said. “Maybe that was too much to hope for.” She smiled, slightly. “I guess I’m no substitute for Twilight.”

She raised her head. “Alright,” she said. “We’ve got what we came for. Now we just have to head back.”

“Discharging capacitors… now!”

Twilight hit the enter key on her keyboard, and the Can-Opener sparked to life.

“They should be back today, right?” Starlight asked.

Twilight nodded. “That was the plan.”

It was the third day since the expedition team had left for Equestria. Three o’clock, exactly. Just as they’d decided.

Twilight and Starlight both stared at the portal, holding their respective breaths. What felt like an eternity to Twilight passed.

And then…

A figure stepped through the portal.

“Sunset!” Twilight cried out, perhaps with a bit too much relief in her voice.

“Hey!” Sunset said. “We’re, uh… we’re back!”

The others filed through the portal themselves, one at a time.

And one more.

“Ember?” Twilight said, addressing the dragon who had just stepped through the portal. “What are you doing here?”

“I figured I’d take a look at your world, or whatever,” Ember said. She looked around. “Kinda cramped in here, isn’t it?”

“We don’t usually have this many people in here,” Starlight said. “Nice to finally meet you, by the way. I’m Starlight Glimmer.”

She held a hand out. Ember shook it with a claw.

“So,” Twilight asked, standing up. “What happened? Were you alright in the forest? Did you find the Elements?”

“Well, things got a little dicey on the way there,” Sunset said. “But nothing happened on the way back. I guess even the Everfree isn’t immune to the magic drain.”

She smiled a grim little smile.

“But yes,” she said. “We found the Elements.”

She set her backpack on the ground and pulled out the stone orb. The others did likewise, and they arranged them in a small circle on the floor of the tent.

“These are the elements?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah,” Sunset said.

“I thought you said they were—”

“Gemstones, yes, I know.” Sunset said. “This is what they looked like before Princess Twilight and her friends became the bearers.”

“So they’ve gone dormant?” Starlight asked.

Sunset nodded. “That’s my guess.”

“So how do we wake them up?”

“Reunite them with their bearers,” Sunset said. “The real problem is who will take Princess Twilight’s place.”

She looked in Twilight’s direction.

“W-what, me?” Twilight stammered. “There’s no way—”

“Please, Twilight,” Sunset said. “You’re our best bet, here.”

“But—”

“All you have to do is try,” Sunset said.

“I, um…” Twilight swallowed. “Okay. But I really don’t think I’ll work.”

“What about you?” Starlight asked Sunset. “You were an Element in this world too, weren’t you?”

Sunset rubbed the back of her head. “Kinda. But I tried in the forest and didn’t get any reaction.”

“That’s still a connection to the Elements,” Starlight said. “You should try with the pony bearers.”

“Okay,” Sunset said. “But you should try, too.”

“Huh?” Starlight said, taken aback. “Why me?”

“You were Princess Twilight’s personal student,” Sunset said. “If anyone would be her successor, that’s you.”

“I…” Starlight started. “I don’t think I’m worthy, but… I guess we lose nothing by trying, right?”

Sunset nodded. “Exactly. I’m sure that, between the three of us, one of us can revive the Elements.”

Twilight smiled on the outside, but on the inside she wasn’t so sure. But Sunset’s optimism, even if it was tinged with desperation, was infectious. It was easy to believe in Sunset.

“Alright,” Sunset said, smiling. “Come on, everyone. Let’s bring the Elements to the gym.”

Everyone announced their agreement. The Elements were picked up, and the entire group, Ember included, filed their way out of the tent.

Left abandoned, the Can-Opener continued to spark and crackle with magic and electricity, until eventually it died down, and the portal was re-sealed.

No one was around to hear the urgent beeping that began to sound off from Twilight’s computer.

Nor was anyone around to see the flashing warning that had popped up on the screen.

End Act 2

Failure

Act 3: Ruin

“So you really did it,” the pony Rarity said. “You found the Elements of Harmony!”

They’d relocated to the band room, away from the noisy and cramped gym. The pony-siders stood on the left side of the room; their human counterparts stood on the right. In the center of the room sat the dormant elements, arranged in a circle. Sunset, Twilight, and Starlight stood by the door. Ember sat in a chair in the corner.

“Been a long time since we saw the Elements like this,” pony Applejack said.

Pony Rainbow Dash squinted. “Weren’t there only five of these last time?”

“I’m pretty sure there were,” pony Rarity said. “One of them must be Magic, then.”

Pony Rainbow turned to Sunset. “What gives?”

Sunset shrugged. “We just found them like this.”

“So, what now?” the human Rainbow Dash said. “We’ve got the Elements, we’ve got two sets of bearers, what do we have to do to wake these things up?”

“I… don’t know,” Sunset admitted. She turned to the ponies. “How did you all awaken them the first time?”

The pony-siders looked at each other.

“We… don’t really know,” pony Applejack said. “Twilight was the one who did it.”

“Yeah,” pony Pinkie said. “We were just along for the ride.”

“There was a prophecy, as I recall,” pony Rarity said. “Something about a spark?”

“When the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth Element to be revealed,” Sunset said.

The pony-siders all turned to look at her.

“Yes, I… believe that was it,” Rarity said. “You seem to know an awful lot about the Elements, Sunset.”

“I did my research before I, uh…” Sunset started, then stopped. “Actually, it’s not important.”

“Well, I think the spark back then was our friendship,” pony Fluttershy said.

“But we have all six elements here already,” pony Rainbow pointed out. “So does the spark even matter?”

“…Maybe not?”

“Your friendship definitely does,” Sunset said. “At least, it did on this side. That’s how you guys—” she gestured towards the humans on the right side of the room “—became Elements.”

“Okay, friendship’s good and all that,” pony Rainbow said. “The problem is…”

“Twilight,” pony Applejack said, naming at last the elephant in the room.

Sunset stepped forwards. “I think—I’m hoping—that one of us three can act as a substitute.”

“You?” pony Rainbow said. “Human Twilight I get, and I guess Starlight might fit, but…”

“I’ve had experience with the Element of Magic before,” Sunset said.

“You stole it, you mean.”

“Does it matter?” Sunset said. “It’s just a possibility.”

“Yeah, Rainbow,” Applejack said. “Knock it off. It doesn’t hurt us any if Sunset tries.”

Rainbow snorted and crossed her arms. “Fine.”

“So, um…” Starlight began. “What do we do now?”

Silence filled the room.

“I guess we could just… try holding them, maybe?” Sunset said. “Make physical contact.”

“Sounds like as good a plan as any,” pony Applejack said. “C’mon, everypony, let’s give it a try.”

Everyone moved towards the Elements.

“Honesty,” Applejack said, placing her hand on her Element. Her human counterpart did the same.

The two Fluttershys nodded to one another. “Kindness,” they said, as they touched their orb.

“Laughter!” Human Pinkie said, her pony self joining in, but a little quieter. They set their hands on the Element.

The two Rarities placed their hands on their orb. “Generosity.”

The two Rainbows approached their Element. “Loyalty,” they said, touching it in unison.

“And…” Sunset said. She swallowed, looked to her right at Twilight, to her left at Starlight.

They all nodded.

“Magic!” they said. All three of them set their palms on the Element…

…

…and nothing happened.

Starlight stared at the Element of Magic, at all the Elements, waiting for something, a spark, a sign, anything to happen.

Nothing did.

“It’s… not working,” she said. She felt something heavy settle in the pit of her stomach.

“No,” Sunset hissed. “Come on! It has to!”

Moments passed, and still there was nothing.

“Please…” Sunset whispered.

The Elements did not heed her words.

Slowly, giving in one by one, the others removed their hands from their orbs. All except for Sunset.

Twilight spoke up. “Sunset…”

Sunset lowered her head, clenching her eyes shut. Her hand slipped from the Element, dangling down limp by her side.

“I don’t get it,” pony Applejack said. “The Elements have always come through for us in the past…”

“Well, I think the issue’s pretty obvious,” pony Rainbow shot back. “No Twilight. It was never gonna work without her.”

She turned to Sunset, whose eyes were still shut and pointed at the floor. “And there was no way you,” she said, pointing at her, “could ever be her replacement.”

“Hey!” the human Rainbow snapped. “You leave Sunset alone! She’s trying her hardest for you guys!”

“Oh yeah?” pony Rainbow said, turning on her counterpart. “Well that’s not gotten us very far, has it? We’ve got the Elements, but there’s no way we can use them, and she should’ve known that!”

“Why you—”

“No, Rainbow,” Sunset said. “It’s okay.”

She exhaled. When she looked up, her eyes were hardened. She turned to face the pony Rainbow Dash.

“If you want to blame me, that’s fine. This was my plan. I’m the one who thought we might be able to fix things with the Elements. If anyone is to blame, it’s me for giving you all false hope.”

“Sunset, this isn’t your fault!” Twilight said. “You didn’t know the Elements would be like this.”

The other humans nodded their agreement, as did most of the ponies.

“She’s right, Rainbow,” pony Applejack said. “The Elements were our best shot, you know that. Sunset did a mighty good job to even get them back here. We took a long shot and missed. That isn’t on her.”

“Why are you defending her!?” Rainbow shouted. “She’s the one who said we could use them without Twilight!”

Applejack narrowed her eyes. “I’m defending her because you’re being unreasonable. What in tarnation’s gotten into you, Rainbow?”

“I—”

“I understand how you must feel,” Sunset said, and everyone turned towards her. “It must be really hard for you to have to sit around and drag your hooves waiting because you can’t do anything to help your friends. I get that. I would feel the same way if our situations were reversed.”

Rainbow opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“And if you need someone to take out that frustration on, I don’t mind being it,” Sunset said. “Whatever makes things more bearable.”

“That’s not fair to you,” Starlight said. “You shouldn’t have to be Rainbow’s punching bag.” She glared at her Rainbow Dash.

“She’s right, Rainbow,” pony Fluttershy said.

“It’s not nice,” Pinkie said.

Rainbow looked at her friends. “Seriously? Are all of you siding with her!?”

They all nodded.

“You…” Rainbow scowled. “Fine! Have it your way!”

She turned and ran off, out the door to the room and away from everyone else.

“Rainbow…” pony Applejack said. She shook her head and turned to look at Sunset. “I’m sorry about her. She’s just taking this hard. We all are.”

“You didn’t have to defend me,” Sunset said. “But thanks.”

“So, uh…” human Rainbow began. “What now?”

Twilight sat down at her desk in the tent and tried her best not to stare.

They’d brought the Elements back to the tent; they now sat on one of Twilight’s desks. Their other friends had been dismissed and had left one by one after attempting to console Sunset, until it was just the two of them. Even Starlight and Ember had gone away somewhere.

Sunset herself sat in a folding chair on the other side of the tent. To Twilight, she looked defeated. Frail, almost. Like a gust of wind could knock her down and she’d never get back up again.

Twilight swallowed.

“Sunset…”

“I’m so stupid,” Sunset said, holding her head in her hands.

“You’re not stupid,” Twilight said. “You didn’t—”

“I am,” Sunset said. “How could I have ever thought that one of us could replace Princess Twilight? I mean, she’s the Princess of Friendship, and we’re just… I’m just… agh!”

She mussed up her own hair.

“I led our friends into one of the most dangerous places in Equestria for nothing. We could have been killed. For no reason. If we can’t awaken the Elements, they might as well just be plain, un-magical rocks!”

“That’s not true,” Twilight said.

Sunset looked up. “How?”

“W-well,” Twilight said, “we know they can be awakened. We just need to figure out how. If we can’t awaken them with the bearers, then we’ll just have to find another way… right?”

“Assuming there is another way,” Sunset said.

“Well, yeah, but…”

Sunset looked down again. She let out a long breath.

“This was kinda my last hope, y’know?” she said. “I don’t… I don’t know what else to do now. What can we do? If we can’t rely on the Elements of Harmony, then what can we possibly do to save Equestria?”

Twilight didn’t have an answer to that. So, instead:

“I’ll… do some tests on the Elements,” Twilight said. “Maybe I can find out something.” She tried to make her smile a reassuring one. “Don’t give up hope yet. We can still find a way to turn this around.”

Sunset looked at her. She sighed.

“Well, if anyone can, it’s you,” she said, smiling just a little bit, but her voice betrayed her. “Thanks. I, uh… I think I’ll go home for the day. Call me if you find anything.”

Twilight nodded. “I will.”

“Rainbow!” Starlight called out. The girl in question turned around.

They were behind the school; Rainbow was leaning against a brick wall. Starlight ran up to her.

“There you are,” she said. “I was looking all over for you.”

Rainbow’s eyes were hard. “Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly want to be found,” she said. “What do you want, Starlight? Are you here to tell me I’m wrong about Sunset, too?”

Starlight bit her lip. “Well…”

Rainbow closed her eyes and exhaled.

“Rainbow…”

“Look, I get it, okay?” Rainbow said, opening her eyes again. “Everyone else is happy Sunset’s doing her thing. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Fine,” Starlight said. “Then you tell me something.”

Rainbow looked surprised at Starlight’s sudden tone change. Good; that was what Starlight wanted.

“Why do you keep blaming Sunset for every little thing that goes wrong?” Starlight asked. “Even when it’s not her fault?”

“I—she—” Rainbow let out an exasperated grunt. “Because who else am I supposed to blame? She should be doing a better job! She’s in charge of this whole thing you guys are doing and everything still keeps going wrong!”

“But why do you need to blame someone for that?” Starlight said. “Why not blame all of us? I’m as much at fault as Sunset for what happened to Rarity! Why don’t you blame me?”

“Because you’re my friend,” Rainbow said. “I trust you.”

“Why can’t you trust Sunset, too?”

“Because…” Rainbow screwed her face up. “Because I just can’t, okay?”

She turned away from Starlight. “What’s it even matter to you? Why are you getting so worked up about this? Just leave me alone.”

Starlight shook her head. A meaningless gesture, as Rainbow couldn’t see it. “No. I won’t leave you alone like this.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know that won’t fix anything,” Starlight said. “The others think you’ll simmer down if they call you out on it. They know you’re too stubborn, and they’re all busy trying to process their own grief, too. But I…”

Her thoughts went back to the two Pinkie Pies.

“I know that just leaving you alone isn’t going to fix whatever’s hurting you.”

“Well, the other girls are right,” Rainbow said. “I am stubborn. If you think you can change my mind just like that, then maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”

“Maybe so,” Starlight said. “But maybe that makes me the perfect pony to try.”

Rainbow snorted.

“You’ve got guts, you know that Starlight?”

“Yeah,” Starlight said. “I do.”

Rainbow Dash sighed.

“Alright,” she said. “Fine. You win. I don’t blame Sunset for anything that’s happened.”

“You… you don’t?” Starlight said.

“No,” Rainbow replied. “I know none of it’s her fault. I know that, okay? But I can’t help it! Whenever I see her, I just…”

Rainbow punched the bricks. Her fist came away red.

“It’s just so hard for me to know that there’s nothing I can do. And then I see Sunset actually doing things, and when those things go wrong I just need to blame someone because otherwise I just don’t know how else to deal with it.”

Rainbow inhaled sharply.

“Every time I see her, it’s just another reminder that Twilight died while I was doing nothing. Do you have any idea how hard that is for me? I can’t stand it… I can’t stand myself.”

She put her hands on the wall and looked down at the dirt.

“So yeah,” Rainbow said. “I know Sunset isn’t to blame. I know none of it’s her fault. I know I’m not being fair to her. But…”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I just don’t know how else to deal with this.”

Starlight put a hand on the other girl’s shoulder. “Rainbow…”

Rainbow sniffled. “I’m pathetic, aren’t I? I’m acting like a little kid.”

“You’re not pathetic,” Starlight said. “You’re just dealing with things in your own, stubborn way. But you don’t have to deal with this alone. I’m here. So are our other friends. So are Sunset and the other Twilight and their friends. We all lost someone precious to us, and we’re all going through the same thing.”

Rainbow let out a sigh. When she turned back around, her eyes glistened, but she wasn’t crying.

“What should I do, then?” Rainbow asked her. “What do I do, Starlight?”

“You should start by apologizing to Sunset,” Starlight said. “I’m sure that if you settle your differences, you’ll feel a lot better.”

Rainbow sighed.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll apologize.”

She lightly punched the other girl in the shoulder. “You know,” Rainbow said, “you’re pretty cool, Starlight.”

“No, I’m not,” Starlight said.

“Yeah, you are.”

Sunset inserted her key into the lock on her front door and twisted it. She grabbed the knob and pushed her way into her apartment.

She felt… dull. Lifeless. Emotionally drained. She didn’t want to cry; just fall into bed and pull the covers up over her face.

Sunset dragged herself over to the sofa and collapsed there instead. She shut her eyes and focused on her breathing. In out. In out.

She let out one last long breath, more of a sigh than anything else. She turned on her side.

Her eyes fell on the pair of brown-bound books sitting forgotten on the table. Each with a sun on the front cover: one fiery and bright, one calm and regal.

She stared at them for a while. Then, grimacing, she picked up the one with Celestia’s mark on the front. The journal once owned by her teacher, and then by her friend.

She sat up and cracked the journal open in her lap. She flicked through the pages aimlessly, written scrawls and delicate cursive flipping past too fast to read. Soon, one set of handwriting gave way to another.

Then, the pages became blank.

She stopped, began turning the pages the other way, flipping backwards through empty page after empty page, until she reached the last entries in the journal. They were all from her, back when she’d still had hope that there might be a response one day. The corner of her mouth twitched; a grim half-smile.

Then, something caught her eye.

There was an entry in the journal, before all her unanswered messages.

One she didn’t recognize.

Her hands trembled as she read it. The steadiness of the writing lessened as it went on.

Sunset,

I don’t know if you’ll get this message. The magic that powers this journal may already have been consumed, like the alicorn magic that resided in me.

I think I might die soon. It’s taking everything I have just to write this. I can feel myself fading. I don’t think I’m going to make it to Canterlot.

Please, take care of everyone for me. They are all my dear friends. This is the last favour I can ask.

I’m sorry for placing this burden on you. If there were another way, I would have taken it. There was no time to come up with anything else. I hope you can understand.

Goodbye, Sunset.

Forever your friend,

Twilight Spark—

The writing cut off suddenly at the end.

Sunset stared at the page. Her eyes ran over the sentences contained within it over and over. The colour had drained from her face.

But there was one thing that caught her attention more than anything else. One word that re-lit a fire in her that had gone out.

And that word was:

“…Canterlot?”

Station

“Canterlot?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “Why do you need to go there?”

They were in the tent; Sunset had just arrived and voiced her intentions.

“Because Princess Twilight was trying to get there,” Sunset explained. “She said so in the journal. Remember the telescope in Twilight’s castle? It was pointed straight at Canterlot. And I found Twilight’s body in the hills between Ponyville and the Canterhorn. She was definitely headed in that direction for some reason. I want to know why.”

“How far is it from Ponyville to Canterlot?” Twilight asked.

“It’s far,” Starlight said. “I don’t know how many miles, exactly, but it’s definitely too far to walk. It would take weeks to get there. And then you have to climb the tallest mountain in Equestria…”

Twilight looked back at Sunset. “That’s way too risky! The Everfree expedition was bad enough, but if Canterlot is as far away from Ponyville as Starlight says it is, then you would be on your own for months!”

“That is a problem,” Sunset said. “But I need to get there. There might be something up there that can explain all of this! We can’t afford not to go.”

Twilight bit her lip. “Well, you can’t walk… Maybe with some kind of vehicle?”

“We’re not getting a car through the portal,” Sunset said. “Maybe a motorbike? But there’s no way I’d make it all the way up the Canterhorn and back with a single tank of gas. I’d have to bring refills… a lot of refills. There’s gotta be a better option.”

“You could take the train,” Starlight said. “If it’s still in working condition, that is.”

Twilight and Sunset turned their heads towards Starlight, who seemed to recede a little.

“The train?” Sunset asked.

Starlight nodded. “There’s a direct line to Canterlot from the Ponyville station. If the train’s still there, it could take you straight there. Metal seems to survive the magic drain better than organic materials, right? The engine is almost completely metal; it may have survived. And even if it didn’t, we might be able to repair it.”

“Starlight, you’re a genius,” Sunset said. “Okay. We investigate the train.”

“I still don’t like this,” Twilight said.

“We don’t have a choice,” Sunset shot back. “This is our only lead, and the pony-siders are depending on us. Summer break ends soon, too; we’re running out of time.”

Twilight pursed her lips. She could feel the desperation in Sunset’s words, but she couldn’t argue with her logic.

“Let’s at least see if the train is working,” Starlight said. “We can decide our next move then.”

Twilight relented with a sigh. “Okay. Fine.”

“Thank you,” Sunset said. “When’s the soonest we can go?”

“How long does it take to get from Twilight’s castle to the train Station?” Twilight asked Starlight.

“About fifteen minutes,” Starlight replied. “It’s not very far.”

Twilight went to her desk and leaned down over her keyboard. She typed a few commands in and was rewarded with a report on the Can-Opener’s capacitor’s charge levels.

“We can probably go later this afternoon,” she said, standing back up. “Assuming you’re quick.”

“Perfect,” Sunset said. “We’ll just wait until then.”

A few hours passed. Twilight kept herself busy by running through every test she could think to do on the Elements. She was running her thaumometer over the Element of Loyalty when the flap at the front of the tent opened, spilling bright sunlight across the ground.

Two figures entered; the tent’s flap fell closed behind them. One was Ember, right claw gripping her scepter as always. The other…

“Rainbow?” Sunset said, standing up. “What are you doing here?”

“Pony Rainbow Dash, here” the girl in question said.

Sunset’s demeanor cooled. “Oh.”

Rainbow rubbed the back of her head. She looked away from Sunset and scowled.

“Rainbow…” Starlight said.

“I know, I know,” Rainbow said. She looked Sunset dead in the eye.

“Look,” She said. “I’m only gonna say this once, okay?”

“Whatever you have to say, just say it,” Sunset said.

Rainbow took a deep breath in. Let it out slow.

“I’m sorry.”

Sunset blinked. “…What?”

“I said I’m sorry,” Rainbow said. “For treating you the way I have been.”

There was a moment of silence. Sunset seemed to relax a bit.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Sunset said, her voice gentle. “I understand.”

“No,” Rainbow said. “I want to apologize. Just let me do it, okay? Please.”

“Okay.”

“I’m… sorry. For the way I’ve been acting,” Rainbow said. “None of it was your fault. I just needed someone to blame, and you were the easiest. I’ve been acting like a snot-nosed foal, and you don’t deserve that. All you’ve been doing is trying to help us. So…”

Rainbow paused.

“So I’m sorry, okay?”

Sunset smiled. “Apology accepted.”

Rainbow let out a breath. “Phew! Glad that’s over. I’ll get out of your way now. Oh, and, uh…” She looked sheepish. “If there’s ever anything I can do to help,” she said. “Let me know, alright? I hate doing nothing all day.”

“Will do.”

Rainbow left the way she’d came. Sunset looked at Starlight.

“You had something to do with that, right?”

“I might have,” Starlight said.

“Huh.”

Their other visitor cleared their throat. They all turned to look at Ember.

“So,” the dragon said. “When are you guys planning on opening your weird portal thingy again?”

“In a few hours,” Twilight explained.

Ember nodded. “Good.”

“Tired of this world?” Sunset said.

“Hungry,” Ember responded.

“Fair enough.”

Ember grabbed a folding chair and sat down in the corner of the tent. Everyone else went back to what they’d been doing before the interruption, including Twilight, who resumed her investigation of the Elements.

Time passed.

“Okay,” Twilight said aloud. “I’ve run every test I can think of.”

Everyone turned to look at her.

“And…?” Sunset said.

Twilight shook her head. “I still have no idea how to awaken them.”

Sunset seemed to deflate slightly.

“B-but!” Twilight said, “I think I might be able to answer a few of the questions we’ve had.”

“Go ahead, Twilight,” Starlight said, after a moment.

“Well,” Twilight explained, “the first thing that’s important to understand is that the Elements haven’t been consumed by the magic drain. They still have magic; I picked up six distinct magical signatures when I scanned them with the thaumometer, and each one matched the signatures of our friends that I took before you all lost the ability to ‘pony up’.”

“So they still have magic?” Starlight asked.

Twilight nodded. “It’s faint, but yes. They’re still ‘active’.”

“That’s great news,” Starlight said. “That means they really were safe from the magic drain!”

Twilight shook her head. “I don’t think that’s exactly true.”

Sunset tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we know that the effects of the magic drain seem to be stronger the more magical something is,” Twilight said. “That’s why it affected Rarity—a unicorn—the fastest. So if the Elements were able to minimize their magic level…”

Twilight swallowed. “Well, it’s just conjecture on my part, but is it possible that the Elements could have gone dormant, or been made to go dormant, to protect themselves?”

Sunset crossed her arms, one hand going to her chin. “It’s… certainly a possibility. No one really understands how the Elements actually work, but that would make sense.”

“It might also explain why you and the others have lost your magical signatures,” Twilight said. “When they went dormant, that must have cut your connection to them. That’s why you can’t ‘pony up’ anymore.”

“I see,” Sunset said, arms still crossed. “That would explain things…” She sighed. “But it doesn’t get us any closer to awakening them.”

“There is… one thing I can think of to try,” Twilight said. She put her hands up. “I have no idea if it’ll work, though!”

“What is it?” Sunset asked.

“Well, if the Elements went dormant to avoid the magic drain,” Twilight explained, “then what would happen if we exposed them to a strong magical pulse? The pony-siders mentioned the elements being awakened by a ‘spark’ before—what if a magical spark is all we need?”

“That… could work,” Sunset said. “Maybe.”

“We can at least try it,” Starlight said. “How long will it take?”

“I’ll need a while to put together a device that can do it,” Twilight said. “A few days, maybe?”

“Alright,” Sunset said. She uncrossed her arms. “Sounds like a plan.”

The portal sparked to life. Sunset (in full gear) and Ember stood before it.

“Alright,” Sunset said. “How long do we have?”

“About an hour and a half,” Twilight said.

“Great.”

She breathed in, took a few steps forward, breathed out, and crossed through the portal. Ember followed close behind her, and shortly they emerged into Princess Twilight’s library. Sunset took a few steps towards the door; Ember did not follow.

“Alright,” Ember said, and Sunset turned to look at her. “ I guess this is goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” Sunset asked. “You’re leaving?”

Ember nodded. “Yeah. I need to get back to the Dragon Lands. Everyone gets riled up if I’m not around, and I’ve been gone too long already.”

“But your gemstones—”

“We’ll figure something out,” Ember said. “I don’t think I’d be able to do much from here. You guys keep working on your Elements of Whatever. I’ll try to come up with something for us.”

As if to punctuate that statement, she reached out to the wall of the castle and dug out a large chunk of crystal from the wall with her claw. She took a bite out of it and began to chew.

“Flight provisions,” she said.

“Well… if you’re sure…” Sunset said.

Ember swallowed.

“I am,” Ember said. “It’s not easy for a dragon to leave things behind.”

With that, Ember spread her wings and lifted into the air.

“Goodbye, Sunset Shimmer,” she said. “Good luck.”

“You too,” Sunset said.

And just like that, Ember flew out the balcony. Sunset could only watch as she disappeared into the dust.

“It’s still here!” Sunset announced.

She’d walked all the way to the train station, through the decaying streets of Ponyville, at Starlight’s direction. And she’s been rewarded for that trek.

“The train?” Twilight said through Sunset’s earpiece.

“Yep!” Sunset said, allowing herself to smile. “And it looks mostly intact!”

The train’s engine stood there, looking to all like the last bastion of the world before the dust. It had outlived the train station itself, the roof of which had collapsed, presumably some time ago. It had outlasted its own cars, too, whose walls had buckled under their own weight. Its pink exterior stood out against the endless grey.

“That’s great!” Starlight said through the radio. “Check inside, see if it has coal.”

Sunset walked up to the engine and pulled herself up into the cab. It was a little cramped, for her; it had been designed for ponies, after all. But she could fit if she ducked her head.

She looked into the bunker. It was filled with coal.

“Looks like it was just restocked,” she said. “We got lucky.”

“Super lucky,” Twilight said.

“If it’s full of coal, you should be able to take it straight to Canterlot without having to stop anywhere,” Starlight said. “It’ll take about a day. We’ll probably need to refill the water tank, but that’s easy.”

“Y’know, I always wanted to be a train conductor when I was a filly,” Sunset said.

“…Really?”

“Not really,” Sunset said. “I wanted to be a princess.”

“Oh.”

Sunset stepped out of the cab and jumped back to the ground. Her boots hit the dirt hard.

“Alright!” she said. “Looks like we’re taking the train to Canterlot.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

And then…

Beep beep beep.

Sunset put a hand to her ear; the sound had come through the radio.

“Twilight?” she said. “What’s that noise?”

“Hang on, I’m not—”

“—sure,” Twilight said, her vision snapping up to the computer monitor in front of her.

A warning had popped up on the screen, along with the beeping. Twilight scanned its contents.

“What the…”

“Twilight?” Sunset said. “What’s going on?”

“Something’s wrong with—”

“—the portal, you need to—”

Suddenly, abruptly, Twilight was cut off.

“Twilight?” Sunset said, then again, “Twilight!?”

No answer. Just static.

Sunset called out to Twilight a few times more, but there was no response.

“Crap,” she said. She turned away from the train and ran, back through the streets of Ponyville towards the castle’s shadow. She threw open the castle’s doors and leapt up the stairs, ran through the corridors until she reached the library.

Panting, she approached the mirror. She saw immediately why she couldn’t reach Twilight.

The cable was severed.

And the portal was closed.

Unstable

Sunset’s stomach growled. She did her best to ignore it.

She was lying on her back on the floor of the library. Her Black Box sat next to her, useless as it was with the cable to their radio relay cut.

She stared at the ceiling.

Sunset had no idea how much time had passed. She hadn’t bothered to wear a watch for what had been supposed to be a short jaunt on the other side of the portal, and the sky never changed. Her guess was half a day, but it was just that: a guess.

Upon discovering that the portal had closed, seemingly inexplicably, she’d gone into survival mode. She’d known that the portal wouldn’t be reopening any time soon, so she’d busied herself looking for food and water in the castle.

Water she’d found quickly; she’d discovered a bathroom on a previous trip (why did that feel so long ago, when it had only been a few weeks?) and had headed straight there. She’d turned the tap to see if the water was running.

The good news was that it was running. The bad news was that it was cloudy and grey. Certainly not something she’d want to drink unless she was desperate. Which she would be, if worse came to worst. So she’d gone back out into the castle proper and began searching it for something in particular: a kitchen.

She found it after some time. It was a pretty nice kitchen, by her estimation. Spacious. Well-equipped. Of course, her current experience with a kitchen was just the small stove, sink, and microwave setup she had in her apartment, so perhaps she wasn’t the best judge.

She’d gone to the pantry, but she discovered what she’d honestly expected to find: all the food that had been there (and there had been quite a bit) was mostly rotted and decayed. Certainly nothing remained that was edible.

She’d found a few canned foods, and had searched the kitchen for a can opener. But when she’d opened them up, she found more of the same. The magic drain had even affected them, sealed up as they were. That, too, had been Sunset’s expectation.

What she had wanted to find, and had found rather easily, was a glass jug. She’d taken it over to the sink. A dish towel had hung next to it; she’d removed it from its hanger and laid it across the top of the pitcher, leaving a little slack so that it formed a sort of well.

She’d opened the sink’s taps. Sure enough, the water here had been choked with dust as well. This time, however, she’d come prepared. She’d slowed the sink’s flow to a small but steady stream and positioned the pitcher under it, letting water flow into the towel. As she’d watched, the towel had become wet, and soon waterlogged. Water had begun to drip out of the bottom of the towel, into the pitcher.

Sunset had held her little contraption together for some time, letting the water collect. The water was still cloudy, but a lot less so. In contrast, the top of the towel had been stained quite darkly.

And so, once the pitcher had filled with water, Sunset had turned the taps off and disassembled her little water filtration unit. She’d taken the jug of water with her back to the library, where it now sat on one of the tables, the water level about half depleted.

Sunset had tried to sleep, but given the lack of food, it had not come easily. Still, she’d managed to pass some time that way. Now, though, she was too hungry. All she could do was lie there and hope the portal would spark to life soon.

If it ever did.

Yet more time passed. Sunset’s hunger grew deeper. The water level in the pitcher grew lower.

Sunset sat on the opposite side of the room from the portal, her back up against the hard crystal wall. She stared at the mirror, her reflection staring back at her tenfold from each of its fractured pieces.

“C’mon, Twilight,” she muttered under her breath. “Open the portal already. It must be charged by now, right?”

She stared at the mirror.

It did not change.

The pitcher was completely empty of water now, and Sunset’s throat was getting dry. She’d put off refilling it, just in case the portal opened while she wasn’t there, but now she was getting desperate.

She sighed. Nothing for it. She should have brought the dishtowel with her; then, she could have filled it in the nearby bathroom. Instead, she’d left it in the kitchen, which was much farther away. She’d have to risk it. Sighing, she grabbed the pitcher and turned towards the door.

Then, there came the powerful, crackling sound of unrestrained electricity from behind her.

Sunset whipped around to see the portal opening, at last. Her tired eyes grew wide, and the corners of her lips turned upwards.

A figure emerged from the portal: Twilight Sparkle, wearing a ventilator mask.

“Sunset!?” she shouted.

“Right here,” Sunset said, waving.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re alright!” Twilight said. “We were so worried—come on, let’s go back.”

Sunset emerged through the portal into the human world, Twilight supporting her. Starlight was standing in the middle of the tent; she stepped forwards as Sunset stumbled in.

“Sunset! Are you alright?” she said, then turned to Twilight. “Is she alright?”

“Just very hungry,” Sunset said. That was a lie; she felt a bit sick as well, and weak in her limbs. “How long was I on the other side for?”

“About a day,” Starlight said.

Sunset grimaced. “That explains a lot.”

Twilight pulled up a folding chair for her. Sunset sat down.

“Starlight, could you get me some food?” she said. “I really, really need to eat something.”

“Sure,” Starlight said. “I’ll see what they’ve got in the cafeteria.”

She ran off, through the tent’s flap.

Sunset turned to Twilight. “Alright. What happened? Why did the portal close?”

“You’re, uh…” Twilight swallowed. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Okay.”

Twilight sat down at her desk, spinning the chair around to face Sunset.

“While we were waiting for the Can-Opener to recharge,” she said, “I checked through the data logs of the last few times we opened the portal.”

“And?” Sunset asked.

“Well…” Twilight inhaled sharply. “On the last five trips we’ve made, the portal has closed earlier than predicted. It started out very slight, so slight that I could have dismissed it as simply within error tolerance, but now it’s much more significant.”

“So what are you saying?” Sunset asked.

Twilight grimaced. “I… think the portal’s becoming unstable.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight said. “It could be the magic drain sapping away the little bit of magic still in the mirror. It could be that our repeated use of the Can-Opener has accelerated the magic’s decay. It could even be that the link between our worlds is naturally growing further apart.”

Twilight inhaled sharply. Whatever she was about to say, Sunset knew she wouldn’t like it.

“But,” Twilight said. “Whatever the reason, what I do know is: it’s not safe to use the portal anymore.”

And there it was.

Sunset’s heart sank into her stomach. “You can’t be serious.”

“I absolutely am,” Twilight said. Her gaze was firm. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Then how are we supposed to get to Canterlot?” Sunset said. “How are we supposed to get the pony-siders home? How are we supposed to figure out what happened to Equestria if we can’t go there?”

Twilight shook her head. “We can’t. We’ll have to find another way.”

“But—”

“We can’t risk you getting stuck on that side of the portal forever, Sunset!” Twilight said. “I’m sorry, I know it’s important, but I’m not going to let you put yourself in danger. I refuse to.”

Sunset put her head in her hands. Her mind reeled. She didn’t know what to think. She felt like she was being pulled in so many directions, all at once, and all she wanted to do was scream.

“This… this can’t be happening,” she said.

“I know, Sunset,” Twilight said, gently. She stood up and walked over to the seated Sunset, squatted down and put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll figure out something. I promise. But for now, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t use the portal anymore.”

Sunset said nothing.

“Please, Sunset.”

“I—” Sunset said. “I need to go.”

“Sunset—”

Sunset stood up. Her mind spun. Her head hurt. She was still starving, but that was the least of her worries, now.

She brushed past Starlight, who entered the tent just as she left, carrying a tray of food. Sunset grabbed a roll off the tray as she passed. She brought it up to her mouth as she crossed the school’s courtyard and took a bite. She set out for the sidewalk that ran around the school.

She needed to keep moving. It was the only way to calm down the whirling storm in her head.

If she even could.

Twilight let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She closed her eyes.

Starlight set the tray down and took a seat at her desk. “I’m guessing Sunset didn’t take the news about the portal too well,” she said.

“No, she took it about as well as could be expected,” Twilight said. “I…”

She swallowed.

“Maybe I was too direct? I don’t… I’m not good at these things. Should I have been more gentle?”

“Too late to regret that now,” Starlight pointed out.

“I guess.”

They sat there in silence for a few moments.

“So…” Starlight began. “What now?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight said. “I honestly have no idea. We have to come up with some way to get back to Equestria, but I don’t even know how to begin, and… augh.”

She ran a hand through her hair.

“It’s okay,” Starlight said. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Will we?” Twilight said. “Just getting the portal open was a massive endeavor—I practically invented an entirely new branch of science just to get it working! Now I need to figure out how to open a whole new portal. I don’t even fully understand how the existing portal works!”

“I can help you,” Starlight said. “I… I know about magic, so—”

“Do you know how to open a portal to an entirely different universe?” Twilight asked, looking at her. “Especially considering you’re not a unicorn and can’t actually cast spells right now?”

Starlight’s smile faltered. “Well… no. B-but I’m sure the two of us working together can—”

“I’m sorry, Starlight,” Twilight said. “I appreciate your optimism, but right now what we need is a plan, and I don’t think either of us has one.”

Silence.

Twilight inhaled. Exhaled. “Could you just leave me alone for a bit? I need to think about this.”

“Oh… Okay,” Starlight said. She stood up. “I’ll just… go.”

“Thank you.”

Starlight walked to the tent’s flap. She took one last reluctant look over her shoulder, then left.

Twilight leaned back in her chair and cast her gaze towards the ceiling. She needed to think; that much was true. But the wall that now needed to be scaled was just too high for her to even comprehend, and she didn’t even know how to begin to climb it.

“Agh!” she shouted aloud. She mussed up her hair. “I’m so… worthless! I can’t even…”

She let the sentence hang in the air.

Twilight took a deep breath. Let it out slow. She spun her chair around towards her desk, intent on going through the logs on her computer one last time. But her eyes fell on something else.

Twilight stared at the elements on her desk, and the electronic components that surrounded them.

“Could the Elements open a portal?” she wondered aloud. “Midnight was able to open portals when she had the power of the Elements… so maybe…”

But it was a long shot. She’d told Sunset she might be able to awaken the Elements, but that was just her grasping at straws. There was no guarantee that she’d be able to get them working, let alone well enough to open a new portal.

But… wasn’t there another possibility?

“A spark, huh?” she said to herself.

There was one option. There was only one option.

But was she desperate enough to take it?

Twilight swallowed.

For Sunset’s sake…

…maybe.

Starlight let her ‘reassuring’ smile fall the moment she was out of the tent. Her thoughts were racing faster than Rainbow Dash at a derby. There was something squirming in the pit of her stomach.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down, but it did nothing. Oh, she tried to sound optimistic, to be supportive and capable, but that was just an act. Just the role she’d chosen to play for the good of the team, for the good of her fellow ponies.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart hammered away in her chest.

She needed to get away.

Actually, she knew exactly where she needed to go. Who she needed to visit.

She set off towards the school building. Stepped through its doors. Headed into the depths of its hallways. She passed the gym, passed numerous Ponyvillians hanging out in halls and classrooms. She reached the back of the school, pushed her way through a rear door. Set off towards her destination within the little grove of trees that lay to the southeast.

Towards the school’s garden, and a little rock with a starburst carved into its face.

She arrived at the edge of the trees. She inhaled sharply; she hadn’t been here since the funeral. She’s been avoiding it, specifically. Now, though, she felt she could avoid it no longer.

She headed inside.

The garden was beautiful. It was clear that someone had taken a lot of care in maintaining it, even during the summer. Starlight had no idea who that someone was, but she appreciated their service. This place was much more than a garden, now; it was the resting place of her mentor. Of her friend.

And there, in the center of the garden, was her grave.

Starlight approached the stone with some reluctance. She questioned if she even deserved to be here. But she had things she had to get off her chest.

She sat down in front of the stone. Touched it with a shaking hand.

“Hello, Twilight,” she said. She let the corners of her mouth twitch upwards. “It’s… it’s been a while, huh.”

She swallowed.

“I… Celestia, I wish you were here right now,” she said. “If you were here, we might have had a chance… Why did you have to stay in Equestria? You knew it was going to kill you, I’m sure of it. Why? You must have had your reasons, but…”

She trailed off.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said. “All this time I’ve been giving everything I have to supporting Twilight and Sunset, but I know it’s not enough. I know that. And now we’re stuck, and… what am I supposed to do, Twilight? I just want someone to tell me…”

She could feel tears building in her eyes. She rubbed them away with a forearm.

“I’m so sorry…” she said. “This is all my fault, and I don’t know how to make up for that anymore. How I can ever make up for it. “You and all of Equestria and our entire world are dead because of me. How am I supposed to make things right? How can I ever make up for what I did? I don’t… I just don’t know what to do anymore—”

She heard footsteps, behind her. Her eyes widened, and slowly she turned to look at whoever was behind her.

It was Sunset. And she wasn’t smiling. Her eyes were narrowed, her gaze suspicious.

“What do you mean,” she said, “‘because of me’?”

Betrayal

“What do you mean,‘because of me’?”Sunset asked. Her eyes were narrowed.

“S-Sunset!” Starlight stammered. “When did you—”

“Just now. Answer the question.”

Starlight’s eyes were wide with fear. “Please… please just forget what you heard.”

“How am I supposed to do that!?” Sunset said. “You just admitted it was your fault that Equestria is the way it is. I can’t let that slide without knowing why.”

“I—I don’t want—”

Sunset stepped forwards and grabbed Starlight by the collar, pulling her to her feet.

“No. You’re going to tell me what you know right now,” Sunset said. “Before I get angry.”

Starlight’s breaths were quick and short. Panic consumed her features.

Sunset didn’t care.

“I… before I became Twilight’s student, I was her enemy,” Starlight said. “I tried to get revenge on her by traveling through time and destroying her friendships! I created a bunch of alternate timelines, and one of them…”

Starlight swallowed.

“One of them was a wasteland choked with dust.”

Sunset’s mind reeled. She released the other girl’s collar; Starlight took a few steps back.

“I don’t know if I’m responsible for what happened to our Equestria,” Starlight said. “But… it’s too similar to ignore.”

“You didn’t think to tell us this?” Sunset said.

“I’m sorry… I thought if I told you… if I told anyone… then you’d all turn against me...”

“Well, you’re not wrong!” Sunset said, and Starlight flinched. “How am I supposed to trust you now? What else are you hiding!?”

“Nothing!” Starlight said.

Sunset took a step back. One hand went to the side of her head.

“Celestia, Starlight, do you have any idea what this means?” Sunset said. “Princess Twilight could be dead because of you!”

“Do you think I don’t know that!?” Starlight shouted back. “I’ve been living with this since we first saw what was on the other side of the portal!”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Sunset said. “I… you… Agh!”

She looked up at the treetops. She wasn’t even sure what to say anymore. They lapsed into an uneasy silence.

“I’m sorry,” Starlight said at last, sounding small. “I really am.”

“Sorry’s not going to bring back Equestria. It’s not going to bring back Princess Twilight.”

Starlight’s gaze fell. “I know that.”

Sunset ran a hand through her hair. She exhaled.

“Don’t bother coming to the tent tomorrow,” she said. “Or ever.”

Starlight’s head snapped up. “But… you need me—”

“We don’t need a liar,” Sunset said.

Tears welled up in Starlight’s eyes. “But—”

“Get out of here, Starlight,” Sunset said, her voice now dangerously calm. “You don’t deserve to be here.”

Starlight sniffed. “Okay,” she said, quietly. She walked away, out of the grove.

Sunset didn’t watch her leave.

The night passed slowly for Starlight Glimmer.

After her run-in with Sunset at her mentor’s grave, Starlight had wandered the halls of CHS for hours. She’d continued wandering until long after the rest of the pony—siders had gone to bed.

Her mind had gone blank. Her secret, the secret she’d been keeping for so long, was now out. She’d been responsible for what had happened to Equestria. Twilight’s death was her fault. She was sure of these things, now. Before, she’d done her best not to think about them, done her best to push aside those feelings so she could try and make things right. Now, they consumed her.

So she wandered, aimlessly, like a ghost through the halls. She wandered until her legs began to hurt. Continued to wander, despite that.

Eventually, she ended up back at the gym. She was tired, emotionally and physically. So she slowly opened the door and snuck in. Stepped carefully between ponies in sleeping bags and ponies under blankets. Soon, she reached her own spot. She unzipped the bag slowly, climbed in carefully to not make any noise.

It was a long time before she managed to get to sleep.

“Geez, Starlight, you look awful,” Rainbow Dash commented.

Starlight didn’t say anything.

It was morning, now. Light streamed in through the gym’s high windows.

“Did something happen?” Fluttershy asked her.

“…Yeah,” Starlight said. “Something kind of did.”

“Well, spill it!” Rainbow said.

“Is it something to do with Equestria?” Rarity asked.

“No,” Starlight said. “Well, yes… kind of. I…”

She sighed.

“We’re having issues with the portal,” Starlight said. “It might not be safe to keep opening it anymore.”

“What!?” Rainbow said, drawing back. “Seriously?”

Starlight nodded. “Twilight’s working on it, but we’re not really sure what we can do.”

“Well, with Twilight working on it, and your magical expertise, I’m sure you can come up with something,” Rarity said. She put her hand on Starlight’s shoulder. “Right?”

Starlight grimaced. “About that… I don’t think I’m welcome to help anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Applejack asked. “Don’t they need you?”

“No, it’s…

Starlight stared at the ground. She tried to muster up her courage, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

But still…

She exhaled. Looked up.

“I… have something to tell you all.”

“Starlight’s taking a while,” Twilight said.

“She won’t be coming.”

They were in the tent, Twilight at her desk and Sunset in a chair on the other side of the room.

“Huh?” Twilight said. “Why not?”

“Does it matter?” Sunset said, her arms crossed.

“…I guess not,” Twilight said, then muttered under her breath: “Maybe it’s better this way.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Twilight went back to working on the thing on her desk, a hot soldering iron in one hand. The tent lapsed into silence. Sunset was left trapped with her own thoughts once again.

A few hours passed.

“Alright,” Twilight said. “It’s done.”

Sunset stood up and walked over to her. “You finished your spark generator? I thought you said that would take a few more days?”

“I was up all night working on it,” Twilight admitted.

“All night?” Sunset said. “Did you not go home yesterday?”

“No,” Twilight said. “I told my parents I was staying over at your place.”

“That’s… unlike you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Twilight said, a little too quickly. “What’s important is that it’s done.”

Sunset cast her gaze over the machine on twilight’s bench. Cables ran from the Can-Openers capacitor bank to the collection of assorted technology that surrounded the elements. Electrodes ran from the surface of each stone orb to nondescript black boxes and exposed circuit boards, all wired together with precision.

“What’s that in the middle?” Sunset asked. What she was referring to was a small, black, circular chip that sat in the center of the circle of Elements, connected by wires to each of them. A starburst pattern pulsed excitedly on its surface.

“Don’t worry about it,” Twilight said.

“That answer kind of makes me want to worry about it,” Sunset shot back.

Twilight only grimaced. She checked her computer screen.

“Alright,” she said. “There’s enough energy in the capacitors. Are you ready?”

“Absolutely,” Sunset said.

Twilight picked up a dead-man’s switch that was wired into the rest of the contraption.

She hesitated.

“Sunset?”

“Yeah?”

“Please save me.”

Sunset blinked. “Save…?”

Twilight threw the switch. A hum filled the air. Electricity crackled.

“What do you mean, save—”

The capacitors discharged.

The Elements began to glow, each a different colour. They lifted into the air, still tethered by wires to the ring of technology that surrounded them.

Something else lifted into the air, too: the chip in the center of the ring.

Multicolour magic began to flow from the Elements, down the wires and into the chip. It rose higher, until it was above the ring of stone orbs. The air in the tent began to swirl, stirred up by the strange ritual.

“Twilight, what’s going on!?” Sunset said, shouting over the noise. “What is that thing!?”

“I’m sorry, Sunset!” Twilight shouted back. “It was the only guaranteed way to get you back to Equestria!”

The energy from the Elements continued to flow into the chip. Then, abruptly, the flow stopped. The glow surrounding each stone orb winked out, one by one, and each one fell in turn back down to the table, some of them rolling off and onto the floor of the tent as if discarded.

Only the chip remained in the air. It began to spin, faster and faster, as a dark violet aura surrounded it.

Then, with a crack like thunder, lightning in the same colour jumped from the chip to Twilight’s forehead.

Twilight began to scream. She clutched her head in her hands. The electricity did not stop, did not abate; it only intensified. Sunset leaped forwards, tried to grab Twilight, but a strange force repelled her, and she fell backwards onto the ground. She watched from there with frightened eyes.

Twilight’s body wrenched back, her gaze turned towards the top of the tent, still screaming. Magic crackled across her entire body, and she was lifted into the air.

Her skin darkened. Her clothes began to change, morphing into a familliar costume unlike anything the girl would ever wear. Her hair freed itself from its ponytail and turned upwards. Flames burst from her eyes, and a glowing horn erupted from her skull. A pair of raven wings sprouted from her back, extending themselves to their full length.

The lightning stopped. The chip fell back to Twilight’s desk, cracked in half. Its purpose was no more; the demon it had contained was now free.

The being who had once been Twilight Sparkle began to laugh.

Sunset stared at her. This was a creature she recognized. One she thought had already been put to rest.

“Midnight… Sparkle…?”

Return

Twilight opened her eyes and found herself once again in that vast, dark expanse of nothing but stars.

Stars and her other self.

“I told you you would need me,” Midnight said.

Twilight grimaced, but said nothing.

“What?” Midnight asked. “Cat got your tongue? You’re going to get lonely in here if you won’t talk to me.”

“Just hold up your end of the deal,” Twilight said.

Midnight tapped her chin with a finger. “Deal? I don’t recall making any deal.”

“I set you free,” Twilight said. “You owe me.”

“Do I now?” Midnight said. “I think that’s awfully presumptuous of you, Twilight.”

Twilight glared at her counterpart. “I don’t care. Just get Sunset to Canterlot.”

“And what if I don’t want to?” Midnight said. “Sunset was the whole reason I got pulled out of you in the first place. It was all I could do to squeeze myself into that little disk. Why should I help her?”

“Because,” Twilight said. “You owe me.”

Midnight’s smile was venomous. “Hm… I’ll think about it.”

“Midnight!”

“No promises.”

“But—”

“You’re kind of an idiot, aren’t you Twilight?” Midnight said. “Releasing me over something so trivial. I don’t owe you anything, Twilight.”

She smiled.

“But I’ll think about it. Maybe. If I decide not to take my revenge first.”

“Don’t you dare hurt Sunset!” Twilight shouted.

“You’re not in charge of me,” Midnight said. “I do what I want, not what you want.”

“You can’t—”

“Well, it’s been fun,” Midnight said. “But I really have to get going. The real world awaits. Oh, I’m so glad you finally freed me; I can’t wait to stretch my wings again. Goodbye, Twilight.”

“Wait—”

Midnight faded away, leaving Twilight alone amongst the stars.

Midnight Sparkle floated in the center of the tent. Sunset could only look on in awe and fear.

“Oh, it feels good to be back,” Midnight said. She conjured up a ball of magical flame and tossed it from one hand to the other.

“What are—what are you doing here?” Sunset asked, her voice catching in her throat. “How can you be here? You were destroyed!”

“Hardly,” Midnight said. “You never destroyed me. Just cleansed me from Twilight. I survived, and she kept me as a sample. Half of her knowledge of magic came from experimenting with me.”

Midnight smiled. “I’m practically the reason her little ‘Can-Opener’ even exists. She used me to calibrate it.”

“Then… you escaped?”

Midnight scoffed. “Hardly! Twilight freed me. On purpose.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Oh, some nonsense about helping you get to Canterlot,” Midnight said. She floated the ball of fire on her index finger, let it spin. “Her last-ditch attempt to open a new portal to Equestria.”

“Then… she freed you… because of me?”

Midnight narrowed her eyes and smiled an evil smile. “Exactly.”

Sunset’s eyes grew wide. Mer mind whirled. Her heart sank into her stomach.

She grit her teeth. Now was not the time. She could deal with all of that later. For now…

Sunset stood up.

“Alright then,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Midnight laughed. “You really think I’d help you? After what you did to me at the Friendship Games? I don’t think so.”

Her mad smile grew even wider. “I should just get rid of you,” she said. She flicked the ball of fire at Sunset. It landed about a foot away from her, scorching through the tarp. Sunset did her best not to flinch.

“But you won’t,” Sunset said.

“Oh, won’t I?” Midnight said, and scoffed. “What twisted gnarl of logic let you come to that conclusion?”

“You’re an avatar of pure curiosity,” Sunset said. “The only reason you were such a danger last time was because you were willing to tear apart all of reality to see what made it tick. You didn’t want to hurt anyone, you just didn’t care. You just wanted to know.”

“True enough,” Midnight said.

“So then we have a shared goal,” Sunset said, trying to act confident despite the hammering in her chest. “Don’t you want to know what happened to Equestria?”

Midnight stopped.

“I know how much it’s eating me up inside,” Sunset continued. “To you, a being fueled by Twilight’s insatiable need to understand things, it must be almost unbearable.”

She tapped her chin. “Well,” she said. “You’re not wrong. But what’s stopping me from going to Equestria without you?”

“You’re a magical being,” Sunset said. “You wouldn’t survive.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong,” Midnight said. “I know how to protect against the magic drain.”

“You… what?” Sunset said. She hadn’t expected that answer.

Midnight grinned. “You three never figured it out, did you? Twilight should have freed me sooner, it would have saved you all a lot of headaches.”

“How?”

“Well, if you’ll allow me to explain,” Midnight said, floating down to the ground. “Twilight wasn’t far off in her estimations of what’s causing the magic drain. It is a form of anti-magic—particles diametrically opposed to magic itself. When they come in contact with magically-charged particles, both are destroyed. This acts like salt absorbing water; it slowly leeches the magic out of anything it comes in contact with.”

“Anti-magic,” Sunset breathed.

“Equestria is flooded with it,” Midnight said.

“Why?”

Midnight scowled. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to go there.”

“So… how do you counteract it?”

“What, you haven’t guessed by now?” Midnight said. She gestured towards the Can-Opener. “With a precise mix of electromagnetic radiation and archano-electric energy—the same field that Twilight’s little machine generates when it opens the portal.”

“Then… this whole time—”

Midnight laughed. “Not just that,” she said. “That field? It’s the only thing that’s stopped the anti-magic from flowing into this reality as well.”

The colour drained from Sunset’s face as realization set in. “Then… the anti-magic could have been released here, too?”

“Why did you think your Princess Twilight shattered the mirror?” Midnight said. “It was to keep the magically-inclined pony-siders safe.” She grinned again. “The only reason the pony-siders are still alive is because Twilight got lucky. You were this close to killing everyone you were trying to save, and you didn’t even know it.”

Sunset’s knees went weak, all of a sudden; it took everything she had to keep from falling back to the ground. If what Midnight was saying was true…

“Well, not entirely lucky," Midnight said. "I may have influenced her thinking a little bit in order to manipulate her into freeing me—if all the pony-siders had died, it would have ruined my opportunity. But to answer your earlier question, all I have to do is erect a barrier with the same properties of the field generated by the Can-Opener, and the anti-magic won’t even be able to touch me.”

Sunset shook her head. There was nothing to be gained by thinking about that now. She had to keep cool if she wanted to get out of this unscathed.

“You still need me,” Sunset said.

“And why is that?”

“You know nothing about Equestria. It’s my home; I can guide you.”

“Need you? I think you underestimate my intelligence.”

“But it would make everything a whole lot simpler if you had a guide, wouldn’t it?” Sunset said. “You can take whatever revenge on me you want later. But only after we get to Canterlot.”

Midnight seemed to ponder that offer.

“You know what? Fine,” she said at last. “I’ll take you along.”

Sunset let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“But mark my words,” Midnight said, her eyes narrowing. “I will have my revenge on you, Sunset Shimmer.”

“That’s fine,” Sunset said. “After what I made Twilight do, maybe I deserve it.”

She was gambling with her life.

But gambling was all she could do.

Sunset stepped through the tear in reality and set her boot down in Equestria.

They weren’t in the library—Midnight’s new portal had taken them to somewhere in the middle of Ponyville. Sunset didn’t recognize where, but a quick scan of the horizon revealed the location of Twilight’s castle, obscured as it was by the dust.

Midnight floated in after her. A crackling spherical barrier surrounded her, gave her protection from the anti-magic that had consumed this place.

“Alright,” Midnight said. “Where’s Canterlot?”

“If that’s Twilight’s castle,” Sunset said, pointing, “then Canterlot should be…” She ran her finger along the horizon. “…over there.”

“Okay,” Midnight said. “She lifted a hand and her barrier expanded; Sunset felt a tingle as it encompassed her. Sunset rose into the air, surrounded by an aura of magic. “Here we go!”

Midnight flapped her wings; a purely symbolic gesture, as her propulsion was magical. The two of them flew away from the ground at speed, Sunset’s stomach turning over as the ground rapidly receded.

As their altitude increased, so did their horizontal speed. Ponyville zoomed by below them.

“You know, if I dropped you from this height, it would probably break all two-hundred and six bones in your body,” Midnight said.

Sunset swallowed.

Soon, they were flying just below the thicker dust clouds that choked the sky. Sunset was thankful for her respirator mask.

They flew for some time.

A shadow in the dust loomed over the two of them.

Midnight looked up towards the summit of the mountain, hidden by the clouds. “This is the Canterhorn?”

Sunset nodded. “Canterlot is built onto the east side of it.”

“It’s huge!” Midnight exclaimed. “Taller than it is wide? That’s unusual for a mountain. How does something like this form?”

Sunset shrugged. “It was like this when ponies first settled here, as far as the historical records describe.”

“Fascinating,” Midnight said. She sounded just like Twilight.

“Keep yourself focused on the mystery at hand,” Sunset said.

Midnight pouted, but they began to rise all the same.

Sunset braced herself as they floated down to the street. Midnight set her down gently, and her boots made quick contact with the paved road. The dust was thick, here.

They had arrived.

Sunset looked around. This was the first time she’d been here in five years, but it still felt familiar. Too familiar.

“Alright,” Midnight said. “We’ve made it to Canterlot. Now where?”

“The castle,” Sunset said. “It’s the only place I can think of. I’ll lead the way.”

They traveled through the streets, Sunset walking, Midnight floating along behind her. The streets of Canterlot were no longer the pristine wonder that they had once been. The buildings here were mostly made of stone, unlike the wooden homes of Ponyville, so they still stood, but everything was choked under the thick clouds of dust. The plants in the flowerboxes were dead; the flags and decorations hung limp and moth-eaten.

And then there were the bodies.

Sunset inhaled sharply. Bones littered the ground, laid down in pony-shaped piles and picked clean. Sunset had to weave her way through them as she made her way through the streets.

“This is… this is horrible,” she said. Midnight said nothing.

They continued onwards.

“There’s the castle,” Sunset said, pointing. Sure enough, there it was, or rather its shadow, appearing dark through the thick clouds.

“And you’re sure that’s where we need to go,” Midnight said.

“Well, no,” Sunset admitted. “But I don’t know where else Princess Twilight would have been headed”

They kept moving. Soon, however, Sunset noticed something.

“The bodies are gone,” she said.

“Hm?” Midnight looked around. “You’re right.”

Unlike before, the streets were clear of bones. Sunset cast her thoughts back. Had they become lesser the closer they got to the castle? She supposed they had.

“What does that mean?” Sunset asked.

“How should I know?” Midnight said. “Perhaps someone has been collecting them?”

“That would mean that someone’s still alive out here,” Sunset said. Her heart jumped at the possibility.

Eventually, after much walking (floating, in Midnight’s case), they reached the gate to Canterlot Castle. The walls stood tall around it, but the gate itself was largely ornamental, golden and intricately decorated.

It was also open.

Sunset swallowed. Even after all this time, even under the desperate circumstances they found themselves in, she still hesitated. The castle was intimidating; like it was telling her that she wasn’t welcome inside.

“What’s the hold up?” Midnight said.

“Nothing,” Sunset said. She exhaled, and stepped forward.

They passed through the gate and were greeted by the tall towers and parapets of the castle.

“Pretty impressive,” Midnight said. “I wouldn’t mind living in a castle like this. Maybe I’ll conjure one up later… after I’ve dealt with you.”

Sunset ignored the comment.

“So now where?” Midnight asked.

“I’m not sure,” Sunset admitted. “Maybe the throne room?”

“You don’t sound very confident, Sunset Shimmer.”

“I’m not,” she said.

Regardless, they started forwards…

…And then came a voice, not Sunset’s nor Midnight’s. It was small, and disbelieving.

“Sunset Shimmer?”

It came from behind them. It was a voice Sunset knew fairly well.

Sunset spun about. Her eyes fell on the speaker’s diminutive figure.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“…Spike?”

Truth

“Spike?”

The little dragon looked on, eyes wide. He was carrying a sack over one shoulder, which he promptly dropped.

“Spike, you’re okay!” Sunset said. She ran up to him and squatted down to his level.

“So Twilight’s little pet really is a dragon in this universe,” Midnight said.

“But… you can’t be here!” Spike said. “Twilight shattered the mirror portal!”

“Our Twilight and Starlight put together a device that re-opened the portal.”

“No no no!” Spike said. He took a step back. “The null magic will spill into your universe, too! Everyone from Ponyville—”

“Is safe, don’t worry,” Sunset said. “The anti-magic can’t get through our portal.”

Spike stared at her for a few seconds. Then, he let out a breath.

“As long as everypony is okay,” he said. He looked up at Midnight. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Midnight Sparkle,” Sunset said. “She’s… well, she’s our world’s Twilight, technically, just…”

“Superior in every way,” Midnight said.

“…I was going to say ‘consumed by magic and insane’, but alright.”

Spike picked up the sack he had dropped. “Sounds like there’s a lot you need to fill me in on,” he said.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Sunset replied, rubbing the back of her head.

Spike nodded. “Come with me. We can talk on the way.”

Spike led them along a path familiar to Sunset; she could guess where they were headed: the castle’s gardens, though she had no idea why Spike would be taking them there. Regardless, she spent the time explaining most of what had happened since the day the pony-siders came to CHS.

“Wow,” Spike said, once she’d finished. “You guys really went through a lot.”

“Yeah,” Sunset said. “It’s been… it’s been a lot to deal with.”

“Well, I can answer some of your questions,” Spike said. He hoisted the sack up. “Just let me take care of this, first.”

“What exactly is in that sack of yours?” Midnight asked.

“You’ll see in a minute.”

They turned a corner, the corner leading to the gardens. They were a beautiful, colourful, verdant place before; Sunset almost didn’t want to see what they’d turned into now, but she looked anyway.

What she saw caused her breath to hitch in her throat.

The gardens were dead, yes; done in by the anti-magic and the dust-choked sky. But that wasn’t what caught Sunset’s immediate attention.

No; that was the graves.

There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. Each was marked with a stone. They sat in even rows across the open space of the garden and extended back out of sight.

“Did… did you dig all these?” she asked.

Spike nodded. He set off into the improvised graveyard; Sunset and Midnight followed behind him, silent. They made their way between the gravestones. Some of them had symbols cut into them, but these became farther and farther between the deeper they went.

Eventually, they reached the end of the graves. There was one already dug but not filled, with a stone at its head. It was here that Spike stopped. He set the sack down lightly on the dead grass.

“Is that…” Sunset said, “…a pony’s remains?”

“Yeah,” Spike said. He jumped down into the shallow grave and carefully removed the bones from the sack, placing them gingerly onto the dirt.

Sunset said nothing. She felt she could say nothing. All she could do was watch this ritual play out.

Once the sack was empty, Spike clambered his way out of the hole. He walked over a few feet and withdrew a shovel that had been left sticking out of the ground. It was clearly too big for his diminutive size.

“Let me,” Sunset said. Spike looked at her a few moments, then relented, and held the shovel out to her. Sunset took it and began shoveling dirt into the grave. Soon, it was full; she patted down the loose dirt with the back of the shovel.

“Thanks, Sunset,” Spike said, smiling at her.

“It’s a pointless gesture,” Midnight said. “They’re just bones. Eventually, those bones are going to turn to dust, too. What does it matter if they’re in a grave or left out in the open?”

Sunset glared at her and opened her mouth to reply, but Spike beat her to it.

“Maybe it is pointless,” Spike said. “But if it’s the only thing I can do for them, I might as well do it, right? Canterlot was my home once, too.”

“Hmph,” Midnight grunted. She folded her arms. “It’s stupid. You’re wasting your time.”

“Not like there’s much else to do around here,” Spike said. He stood up. “You two are here for answers, right? Come with me. I’ll tell you what I know.”

Spike led them back to the castle, through the grand doors that led to the entranceway. They headed down the corridor to the left.

“A few hours before we sent all of Ponyville through the mirror,” he began, “Twilight got a letter from the Princesses.

“The letter explained that something—Twilight called it ‘null magic’—had begun to spread through our world. That it was draining the magic out of things, and that Celestia and Luna weren’t able to stop it in time. It was coming for all of Equestria.

“Twilight decided she needed to evacuate everyone she could, so she enlisted the help of her friends in sending everyone through the mirror to your world. It was the only option, she said.

“After everyone had evacuated, she tried to get me to go through the mirror, too, but I refused. I could tell she wasn’t planning on going through herself, and I didn’t want to leave her alone. I told her we didn’t have time to argue, and eventually she agreed. She used her magic to shatter the mirror so that the null magic wouldn’t follow everypony into your world. Then, we set out for Canterlot.”

“But Twilight didn’t make it,” Sunset said.

Spike shook his head. “No. The null magic had already reached Ponyville, and Twilight was an alicorn—it affected her more quickly than it did anything else. We were flying when her magic suddenly gave out, and we crashed to the ground. She begged me to go on without her, but I wouldn’t leave. I…”

Spike swallowed.

“I was with her when she died.”

Sunset didn’t know how to respond to that. She settled on: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Spike said. “I’m… I’m glad I was able to be with her. To comfort her.

“After she died, I… I didn’t know what to do. The only thing I could think of was to go to Canterlot, so… I started walking.”

“You walked all the way to Canterlot?” Sunset asked.

Spike nodded. “It took a long time. The day doesn’t pass here, so I don’t know how long. I followed the train tracks up the mountain. Eventually I made it up here.”

They turned down a new hallway. Sunset wasn’t sure where they were headed; she couldn’t remember ever being to this part of the castle.

“Yes, yes, very noble of you,” Midnight said. “Then what?”

“I made my way to the castle,” Spike said. “And I began to search. I knew the source of the null magic had to be in here somewhere. And I grew up here, so I knew most of the castle like the back of my claw, but the place is huge, and I found places I didn’t even know existed. And one of them is…”

He stopped in front of a door.

“…right here.”

He stopped. Looked back at Sunset.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asked.

Sunset didn’t like the tone in his voice. It sounded tired… and regretful.

“Of course we’re ready!” Midnight said. “That’s the whole reason we came here. Right, Sunset?”

Sunset nodded, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

Spike grimaced. “Okay.”

He pushed the door open and led them inside.

The room was fairly large, and circular. It was a rotunda; the ceiling was high and domed.

All of that was just background information, though. What really caught Sunset’s eye, what gained her sole attention, were the mirrors.

There were six of them, standing evenly spaced around the circumference of the room. Each featured a different design, each ornately decorated in one way or another, but in a way that was unsettlingly familiar.

“…Are these…”

Sunset swallowed.

“Are these all mirror portals?”

Midnight flew up to one of them. She reached out with a gloved hand and touched her fingertips to the mirror’s surface. They sank inside.

“They are,” she said. “But… their magic is different from our portal.”

Spike nodded. “Yes. They all lead to different worlds, different Equestrias. Or… I think they did.”

“You think…?” Sunset asked.

“Look inside,” Spike said, gesturing to one of the mirrors. “You’ll see what I mean.”

Though hesitant, Sunset followed his instructions. She walked up to the mirror Spike had pointed at and, bracing herself, stepped through.

She found herself in a room similar to the one she’d just left, mirrors and all. This room, however, had windows. Sunset walked up to one of them and peered out.

All she saw was grey.

She heard footsteps behind her; she turned to see Spike and Midnight had followed her through the mirror.

“So the ‘null magic’ is in this world, too?” she said.

“Not just this world,” Spike said. “In every world. It spread through the mirrors. Every world that’s connected by a portal ends up like this. Including ours.”

The sheer scale of what they were dealing with suddenly set in, and it was too much for Sunset to even comprehend.

“Then,” Midnight said, “the null magic came to this world through a mirror, too?”

Spike nodded. “At least, that’s what I think happened. Come on, let’s go back.”

They all headed back through the mirror they’d come in from.

“This room is where I found Princess Celestia and Princess Luna’s bodies,” Spike said. “They must have tracked the null magic to its source and tried to contain it, but…”

“But it got to them before they could do anything,” Sunset said.

Spike nodded. “They were the first ponies I buried in the garden. After that, I explored through the mirrors, trying to find the source of the null magic, thinking maybe I could do something to stop it, but no matter how many mirrors I traveled through, all I found were more worlds consumed by dust. I must have gone hundreds of mirrors deep, but…”

He hesitated. “I went through so many mirrors, I’m not even sure if this is the same Equestria that I left.”

“Then… you don’t know where the null magic came from?” Sunset asked.

Spike shook his head. “And I don’t think we’ll ever know. There’s just… too many worlds to look through. Maybe even infinite worlds.”

Sunset’s knees grew weak. The raw reality of Spike’s words sank into her heart, made her head spin.

“Then… there’s no answer?” she said, mostly to herself. “There’s… there’s no hope of ever knowing, let alone ever fixing it?”

Spike’s voice was grim. “Yes.”

She sank to her knees. Her mind went blank. The reality of it all washed over her like a tidal wave, and it was almost too much to bear.

But…

But there was something else there, too, mixed in with the feelings of helplessness.

Sunset began to laugh.

“Sunset?” Spike asked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just…” Sunset said. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes. “I don’t know, but… I’m almost… happy? All this time, I’ve been chasing after this answer, and now that I know it’s unattainable, it’s like… like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”

She wiped at her eyes. “I don’t… I don’t know! How am I supposed to feel about this? There’s nothing we can do, but… but!”

Spike walked over. He put a claw on Sunset’s shoulder.

All of the emotions that Sunset had been suppressing suddenly broke through the dam she’d erected in her heart. She was laughing, she was sobbing, she felt like she was being pulled in every direction all at once.

But there was relief there, too. A deep, strong feeling of relief that undercut everything else.

So she sat there, laughing and crying at the same time, until it all ran out.

“Are you okay?” Spike asked.

Sunset sniffed. Rubbed her eyes. “Yeah. I think I’m okay.”

“Well, good for you. But I won’t accept this.”

Sunset and Spike both turned their heads to Midnight, who was scowling.

“What do you mean?” Sunset asked, a little icily.

“That there’s no way of knowing what caused the anti-magic to spread,” Midnight said. “I won’t have it!”

“It’s impossible,” Spike said. “You could spend years searching and not even scratch the surface of the worlds connected by those portals.”

Midnight swung her arm across her body. “No! There is no answer that is unattainable! Not to me!”

“She’s a being of pure curiosity, Spike,” Sunset said. She was choosing her words carefully, now. “Our Twilight’s need to understand made manifest. She won’t just give up like this.”

Midnight turned to Sunset. “You want to know too, don’t you!?” she said. “We came all this way to find out what happened, once and for all! You can’t be satisfied!”

Sunset shook her head. “I am,” she said.

Midnight recoiled. “How can you be okay with this?” she said. “I don’t understand!”

“I know when to call it quits,” Sunset said, standing up. “I have my answer. It’s incomplete, and it’ll always be incomplete, and I’ll probably lay awake at night sometimes wondering, but that’s okay. I’m satisfied with that.”

“I… you…!” Midnight grit her teeth. “Well, to heck with you! I’m going to find out what caused all of this!”

“Not like that you’re not,” Sunset said.

“Oh? And what do you mean by that?” Midnight asked. She floated down until she was just above eye level with Sunset.

Sunset narrowed her eyes. “Not with Twilight’s body.”

Midnight scoffed. “Not with Twilight’s body? It’s my body too, you know.”

“No,” Sunset said. She shook her head. “You have no right to bring Twilight with you across the multiverse on your fool’s errand. You can’t take away her life like that.”

“Says who?”

“Says me,” Sunset said. “Don’t tell me you don’t care about her at least a little bit. You’re a part of her. She’s a part of you. If you want to chase after an answer, that’s fine. But you can’t drag Twilight along on that quest. You won’t take her along on that quest.”

Midnight scowled. She went quiet for a minute. Sunset continued to look on, her stare hard.

“Fine,” Midnight said at last. “You’re right. I hate to say it, but you’re right. I guess I do owe Twilight for setting me free again.”

Midnight closed her eyes. Sunset blinked; it was like she was seeing double, as Midnight began to split into two beings. Then, with a flash of magic, they were apart again. Twilight Sparkle fell to the floor, limp.

“Twilight!” Sunset ran over to her fallen friend. She put her arm under her shoulders and lifted her head up.

Twilight blinked. Coughed.

“Sunset? What’s…”

Sunset hugged her. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”

“Yes, yes, a very touching reunion,” Midnight said. Sunset turned to look back at her. Midnight was smaller, now; small enough to fit into Sunset’s palm. She looked a bit like a fairy.

“Is that what you look like without a body?” Sunset said. “It’s almost kinda cute.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Midnight said. “Even like this, I could have my revenge on you any time I wanted. Be grateful that more pressing matters have arrived.”

Midnight turned. She raised one tiny hand. A rip in space appeared in the middle of the room. “That portal will take you back to the human world,” she said. “It won’t stay open for long. Be quick.”

She turned towards the first of the mirrors.

“Are you really sure you want to do this?” Sunset asked.

Midnight nodded. “It’s more like I have to. I need to.”

“Well, then,” Sunset said, “good luck. I hope you find the answer you’re looking for one day. I’d be grateful if you shared it with me if you do.”

Midnight snorted. “You’ll be lucky. Goodbye, Sunset Shimmer. I hope for your sake we never meet again.”

And with that, she turned into a ball of purple light, and disappeared through the portal.

Sunset looked on for a few more moments. Then, she let out a sigh of relief.

She looked down at Twilight. “You okay?”

“I think so,” Twilight said.

Sunset shook her head. “What were you thinking, Twilight? That was incredibly dangerous! Why would you resort to freeing Midnight?”

“It was the only way to get you back to Equestria,” Twilight said. “And besides… I knew you would save me somehow. You always do.”

Sunset didn’t know what to say to that. So instead, she stood up, pulling Twilight up with her on shaky legs.

“Come on,” she said. “We’d better go back home. We don’t know how long the portal will stay open.”

She turned to Spike and opened her mouth, but Spike shook his head.

“I can’t go with you,” Spike said. “I’ve still got business to take care of here.”

“Are you sure?” Sunset said. “I mean, you’re going to run out of food, here… even if there aren’t magical gemstones in our world, I’m sure we can figure something out…”

Spike shook his head again. “It was nice seeing you again, Sunset. I’m glad to know that our friends are safe in your world. But I can’t leave. Not yet. I’m not ready.”

He smiled. It was a sad little thing. “Maybe I’ll never be ready.”

Sunset tried to smile back, but it came out wrong. “Okay,” she said. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

He nodded. “I’m sure. Goodbye, Sunset. Twilight. Take care of everypony for me.”

“We’ll do our best,” Sunset said.

And with that, they stepped through the portal, Sunset supporting Twilight by the shoulders…

…and back into the tent.

Sunset stumbled a little on the way back through, the typical disorientation hitting her. This caused Twilight to stumble too, and within moments both of them ended up on the floor. The portal winked shut behind them.

Sunset looked at Twilight. Twilight looked at Sunset.

They both began to laugh. Borderline hysterically. Eventually, though, their wits returned to them.

“I guess it’s over,” Twilight said. “Our expeditions to Equestria, that is.”

Sunset nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.” She smiled.

Someone coughed.

Sunset’s head snapped up. They were not alone in the tent, as it turned out. Six people—or, ponies, Sunset supposed—stood around the tent’s entrance. Princess Twilight’s friends, and, in the middle…

“Starlight,” Sunset said, a little coolly. She stood up, Twilight following her.

Starlight flinched. Rainbow Dash saw this, and spoke.

“We get that you’re mad at her,” she said. “And we get why! Starlight explained everything to us. But you’ve got to understand, Starlight was a different pony back then, and she never meant for any of this to happen!”

“That’s right,” Applejack said. “That’s why we’re here. To back Starlight up.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” Fluttershy said.

The other ponies nodded their agreement.

Sunset approached Starlight. The other girl seemed small; her hands were twisted up into fists by her sides. She didn’t meet Sunset’s gaze.

When Sunset was about a foot away from Starlight, she stopped.

Then, she reached out and swept Starlight into a hug.

“W-what?” Starlight said, confused.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Sunset said. “I forgive you. And I’m sorry I got mad. I took out my frustrations on you, and that was wrong.”

“But…” Starlight said. “But I…”

“You didn’t do anything,” Sunset said. “Well, I do think you should have told us sooner. But other than that, you’ve got nothing to blame yourself for.”

Sunset released Starlight and stepped back. She was smiling.

“I’m glad you admitted it to the others, too,” she said. “Looks like they’re better friends than I was. I’m sorry.”

“N-no,” Starlight said. “Don’t… don’t apologize. You don’t have to apologize.” She rubbed her eyes. “It was my fault…”

Sunset shook her head. “You’re fine.”

They stood there in silence for a few moments, Sunset smiling a reassuring smile.

Eventually, Starlight returned it.

“Um,” Twilight said, awkwardly. “What exactly happened?”

Sunset filled her in.

“Oh,” Twilight said. “Huh.”

Silence, for a few moments.

“So, uh…” Starlight said. “What was that portal…?”

“Oh yeah,” Sunset said. “That. We went on a trip to Canterlot. Our last trip to Equestria.”

“How?” Starlight asked. “I thought, with the portal unstable… and how did you get to Canterlot?”

Sunset and Twilight looked at each other.

“I guess it’s not fair to not tell you after Sunset got mad at you for not telling us something,” Twilight said.

“If you’re sure,” Sunset said.

“I am.”

They explained what had happened. Everything from who Midnight was to what they had learned from Spike.

“Wow,” Starlight said, once they had finished. “I guess I wasn’t the only one who was keeping secrets.”

Twilight cringed. “Sorry. I, um… it’s a little… embarrassing?”

“No, no, I totally get it,” Starlight said. “I was kind of evil once, too, so…”

“So was I,” Sunset chimed in. “Turns out we’re all ex-villains.”

They shared a look of mutual understanding.

Rainbow coughed, and they all turned to look at her. Admittedly, Sunset had kind of forgotten the ponies were still there.

“So, uh…” Rainbow said. “What now?”

They all looked at each other.

“Well…”

End Act 3

Epilogue

Sunset stood by the statue and looked out over the crowd of people, formerly ponies, who had gathered on the school’s courtyard. Not quite the full three-hundred and thirty-nine; not everypony had made it, or had even wanted to come, but that was okay. They were in charge of their own lives, now.

Five years had passed since the day the pony-siders had come to the human world. Today was the anniversary. The last day before summer vacation. Sunset could feel the eyes of everyone in the school on her and the crowd, of the students gathered by the windows.

Sunset herself was no longer a high school student; she was in college, now. So was Twilight, standing beside her, and Starlight, on her other side. They’d all gone to the same school, even though Twilight could have easily gone to a better one. Their shared experiences had bound them together; a bond that wouldn’t break.

Even if Starlight would be leaving them soon.

Sunset lifted up the megaphone in her right hand and spoke into it, the volume cutting through the murmuring of the crowd.

“Alright, everypony!” she said. “Everyone who’s going to Equestria, line up over here so Twilight can scan you!”

The crowd began to move. Not everyone was going; in fact, most of them were staying. They all had lives, now, on this side of the portal. Many didn’t want to give that up to try and salvage what was left of a dying world.

But some of them did, and these were the people who moved towards the line. The rest were there to watch. Today was an important day.

The people of Canterlot City had welcomed the pony-siders with mostly open arms. Magic had become kind of an open secret, at the time, and so an earnest explanation as to what had happened had convinced many people to take in the Equestrian refugees. They’d even had some support from the city government. It turned out that Principal Celestia had friends in high places, and with her support, they were able to get documentation for those who needed it.

Sunset cast a glance back at the machine that Twilight had constructed. The new Can-Opener was much larger than the little one they had employed all those years ago. A whole rack of computers were needed to control the output of the massive capacitor bank. The whole thing was about the size of two fridges.

Twilight hadn’t given up on her promise to find a way to re-open the portal. She’d spent the years between studying everything she could about magic and how to control it, and her studies had paid off. This new machine didn’t need the remains of the mirror portal; the wormhole it opened could stand on its own.

Sunset turned her attention back to the ponies, who had formed a line. Many of them carried supplies either on their backs, in their arms, or in wheelbarrows. Things like seeds, farming supplies, tools, building materials, food and water, and more. Everything that they would need to survive In the dust.

It had been five years. That wasn’t a coincidence; it was the same amount of time it had taken for Sunset’s natural Equestrian magic to dissipate. The ex-ponies were basically human, now. They had no inherent magic of their own anymore. Still, they wanted to be safe, and that was why Twilight was scanning each of them with her thaumometer. Things appeared to be going well so far; the ponies who had already gone through the screening were gathering in front of the portal. They talked to each other happily. Hopefully.

Sunset smiled. Among those ponies were Twilight’s friends. They had become leaders, or maybe they always had been. They’d all unanimously decided to go back to Equestria together. To carry Princess Twilight’s legacy back to Equestria with them. To reclaim their homeland.

“I guess I’d better get going, too,” Starlight said. Sunset turned towards her, and smiled.

“Good luck,” she said.

“Thanks,” Starlight replied. “I’ll see you around?”

“I’ll come visit you,” Sunset said. “Count on it.”

“I will,” Starlight said. With a smile, she headed off to join the other pony-siders. Sunset watched her go.

It wasn’t goodbye. With the new Can-Opener, they could visit either world any time they wanted.

Sunset looked back out over the crowd of pony-siders.

She smiled. Then, she looked up at the sun.

Five years had passed. And in this case, and maybe in every case…

…time really had healed all wounds.

The End

Author's Note

The wrap-up blog, where I explain myself somewhat.

Elemental

“I don’t understand,” Twilight said. “I thought you and the other girls were the Elements of Harmony?”

“In this world, yes,” Sunset said. “But in Equestria, they’re a set of magical artifacts. Some of the most powerful magic known to ponykind. Princess Twilight and her friends wielded them against all sorts of evil.”

“The Elements of Harmony,” Starlight breathed.

“Well, if they’re magical artifacts, what if they’re also affected by the ‘anti magic’?” Twilight asked.

“They’re ancient magic,” Sunset replied. “Bound to the very soul of Equestria. They don’t operate under the same rules as normal magic.”

“So you think they might be safe,” Starlight said.

“There’s a chance,” Sunset said. “I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a gamble. But I think it’s our only option, now. If we can use the Elements of Harmony, I’m sure we can undo what’s happened to Equestria!”

Sunset couldn’t keep the desperation from slipping into her words. But there was hope there, too.

“You sure seem to know a lot about the Elements,” Starlight noted.

“I learned about them while I was Celestia’s student,” Sunset said, omitting the part about stealing the Element of Magic and transforming into a demon.

“Where are the Elements of Harmony now?”

“Deep within the Everfree forest,” Sunset said. “Below the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters, within the Tree of Harmony. At least, according to what Twilight told me in the journal.”

“The Everfree!?” Starlight exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

Twilight looked confused. “What’s the Everfree?”

“It’s a forest in Equestria,” Sunset said.

“It’s more than just a forest,” Starlight added. “It’s a wild forest, outside of the control of ponies. It’s an extremely dangerous place.”

“That never stopped Princess Twilight and her friends,” Sunset said. “And we can’t let it stop us now. This may be our only chance to fix things.”

“But making it through the Everfree isn’t something you can do in just a couple of hours,” Starlight said. “We’d have to charge the can-opener for, like, a week just to keep the portal open long enough!”

Sunset nodded. “Yes. You’re right. That’s why we won’t keep the portal open.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked.

“I mean we’ll have to stay in Equestria while the portal is closed.”

Twilight furrowed her brow. “Sunset, that’s incredibly reckless. What if something happens? We won’t be able to keep communications open with you, either.”

“I know the risks,” Sunset said. “But it’s the only chance we’ve got. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

“But you can’t just go waltzing into the Everfree Forest by yourself,” Starlight said. “That’s borderline suicidal!”

Sunset nodded. “Which is why we’ll need to prepare,” she said. “And we’ll need help.”

Taking a deep breath, Starlight pushed open the door to the gym. A dozen dull faces turned to look at the new arrival, then went back to whatever they had been doing.

Starlight bit her lip. For a moment, she thought about going back to the tent. But no; there was no avoiding it. She entered the gym and waded carefully through the mess of sleeping bags, blankets, and pony-siders. The once-pleasant chatter in the room was now quiet, subdued, and ended whenever she drew close.

She made her way to the far side of the gym. Pinkie was in her sleeping bag, her head turned away from the group. The rest of her friends were sitting in a loose circle. As Starlight approached, Applejack looked up at her.

“Howdy, Starlight,” she said. “How are you holding up?”

“Oh, fine,” Starlight said, putting on a smile she hoped looked genuine. If Applejack saw through her facade, she didn’t say anything. Starlight reached the group and sat down.

“First things first,” she said, turning to one girl in particular. “How are you feeling, Rarity?”

“Oh, just fine,” Rarity said, waving a hand. “You don’t have to worry about m—”

She coughed a couple of times. Deep, hacking coughs.

“Ahaha,” she laughed sheepishly, once the coughing spell had ended. “Well, I… suppose I’ve been better. But still, there’s no need to worry yourself over me; I’m feeling much better now than I did even just yesterday.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” Starlight said. “How about the rest of you?”

“We’re doing okay,” Applejack said; the others nodded.

“And Pinkie?” Starlight asked.

“Pinkie’s taking Twilight’s death pretty hard.” Applejack pulled her hat down off her head and held it in her hands. “We all are.”

Fluttershy spoke up. “How is Sunset doing?”

Rainbow muttered something that Starlight couldn’t quite hear. Fluttershy must have, sitting next to Rainbow, because she frowned and said, “She was Twilight’s friend too, Rainbow.”

“Sunset’s…” Starlight hesitated. “She’s throwing herself into her work.”

Rainbow muttered something again.

“Rainbow, if you have something to say then say it,” Applejack said.

Rainbow folded her arms. “I said, ‘she’d better be’.”

“Rainbow, she’s doing her best,” Rarity said.

“Yeah, well, her best almost got you killed,” Rainbow said. “And it didn’t save Twilight, either.”

Fluttershy pursed her lips. “Rainbow, you can’t blame Twilight’s… you can’t blame Sunset for that. That’s not fair to her.”

Rainbow said nothing and turned away.

“Anyway,” Applejack said. “Did you need something?”

“Ah, yes,” Starlight replied. She’d almost forgotten why she’d come. “We need your help. Again.”

That seemed to get Rainbow’s attention. “What?”

“We’re kind of planning an expedition to the Everfree Forest, and—”

“The Everfree Forest!?” Rarity exclaimed. “Whatever could you need from there?”

Applejack’s eyebrows rose. “You’re going after the Elements, aren’t ya?”

Starlight nodded.

“Of course!” Rainbow said, looking visibly excited and smashing her fist into the palm of her other hand. “The Elements can fix anything!”

“But without Twilight…” Fluttershy said.

“Oh,” Rainbow said, deflating slightly. “Right.”

“Perhaps her counterpart from this side of the mirror could fill the role,” Rarity suggested.

“We can cross that bridge when we get there,” Applejack said. She put her hat back on her head. “How can we help?”

“Well, none of us are familiar with the Everfree,” Starlight said. “We wouldn’t know how to get to the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters. But you guys…”

“We know the place like the back of our hooves,” Rainbow said.

“Right,” Starlight replied. “So, could you draw us a map? Or even just give us vague directions?”

“Of course, sugarcube,” Applejack said. “We’ll just need some paper and stuff to write with. Oh, and we can get Zecora to help; she lived in the Everfree.”

“We can get supplies from the Art Club’s room,” Starlight said.

“Lead the way.”

Group Chat

So, um

We’re preparing an expedition to the Everfree Forest.

Rainbow Dash

Everfree? Like the camp?

I used to go there every summer when I was a kid

No. The Everfree is a forest in Equestria. A dangerous one.

…It’s a camp in this world?

Actually, scratch that, it’s not important.

Well

Applejack

You want us to come with you?

…Yeah.

It’s dangerous, though.

I want you all to know the risks before you agree.

Can we meet up somewhere?

Pinkie Pie

Ooh, come to the diner, my shift’s almost over!

Alright

I’ll see you all there.

Sunset took a sip of her milkshake.

The diner Pinkie worked at was retro-themed; real 80’s vibes. Or at least, that was what Sunset assumed. Equestria hadn’t had an ‘80’s’, so she wasn’t totally familiar with the concept except through what she’d seen in movies. She’d been here a few times, even before Pinkie had gotten her job. The milkshakes always seemed to taste better when Pinkie was making them.

She was alone in the booth farthest from the door, but not for long. Pinkie Pie walked up and sat down across from Sunset, having already changed out of her apron and roller skates. She placed a milkshake of her own on the table, this one with a crazy straw that loop-de-looped its way out of the glass.

“Heya Sunset!” she said, cheerily. “No one else made it yet?”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Sunset replied. “I’m sure they’re on their way, though.”

Pinkie took a sip of her milkshake. “Ooh, this is good!” She pushed the glass towards Sunset. “It’s a new flavour we’re testing out. You want to try it?”

“No, I’m good,” Sunset said. She tapped on the side of her own glass.

“Suit yourself!” Pinkie pulled the glass back to her side of the table.

“You seem to be in pretty high spirits,” Sunset remarked.

Pinkie laughed, but nervously.

“Ah… If I’m being honest…”

Pinkie’s smile turned somber.

“I’m not, really,” she said. “Princess Twilight was my friend. She’s gone now, and I’m never going to get to see her again. That’s hard to deal with.”

Sunset tried to hide her surprise. She’d never heard Pinkie talk like this before.

“But there’s no point in being sad,” Pinkie continued. “That’s not going to bring her back. So I’m doing my best to keep smiling anyway. That way, I can help the rest of my friends smile, too.”

“Wow,” Sunset said. “That’s—”

“Incredibly mature of me?” Pinkie said. “Just because I act wacky all the time doesn’t mean I’m a kid, you know.”

Sunset smiled. “I know.”

She took a sip of her milkshake in silence.

“Hey,” Pinkie said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“How is pony Pinkie Pie doing?”

“She’s…” Sunset paused. “She’s having a rough time.”

“I bet she is,” Pinkie said. “Maybe I should go talk to her. No one understands what you’re going through better than yourself, right?”

Sunset smiled. “I think that’s a great idea.”

Pinkie took a sip of her milkshake. She still looked troubled.

“What about you, Sunset?” she asked, once she was done.

Sunset blinked. “What do you mean, ‘about me’?”

“I mean, how are you doing?” Pinkie asked. “You were closer to Twilight than any of us were.”

“I’m…” Sunset began. “I’m dealing with it.”

“Are you sure?” Pinkie asked. She didn’t look like she believed it.

“I—”

“Yo!” said a familiar voice. “Sorry we’re late!”

Sunset turned to look; it was Rainbow Dash, followed closely by Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity. They made their way over and crammed themselves into the booth.

“Alright,” Rainbow said, once they’d all gotten settled. “What’s the deal?”

“Okay,” Sunset said. “You remember the crown I took from Princess Twilight at the Fall Formal?”

“The one that turned you into a raging she-demon?”

Sunset grimaced. “Yes. That one.”

“That was the Element of Magic, right?” Fluttershy said.

Sunset nodded. “Yes. Well, it’s not the only element. There are six in total.”

“I remember Princess Twilight telling us about that,” Rarity said. “That each of us represented one of the elements.”

“That’s right,” Sunset said. She pointed to each person in turn. “Loyalty. Honesty. Generosity. Laughter. Kindness.”

“So you’re saying there’s a crown for each of us?” Rainbow said.

“Right. Well, not a crown, but a gemstone. When combined, they contain some of the most powerful magic known to ponykind. You experienced some of that yourselves when you took me down, and at the Battle of the Bands.”

“And we all saw what our combined magic did to you at the Friendship Games,” Rarity added.

“Right,” Sunset said.

“But we don’t have that kind of magic anymore, right?” Applejack said. “We can’t pony up.”

“Yes,” Sunset said. “Which is why we need to find the original elements. With their power, I think we might be able to reverse what’s happened to Equestria.”

“So what’s the catch?” Rainbow asked.

“The catch,” Sunset said, “is that the Elements are currently deep in the Everfree Forest in Equestria.”

“Yes, you mentioned that in your texts,” Rarity said. “You said it was dangerous?”

Sunset nodded. “Very. It’s full of monsters and dangerous flora and who-knows-what-else.”

“Monsters? I guess it can’t be all rainbows and sunshine in Equestria,” Rainbow said.

“Not even close.”

“And you’re planning to go into this crazy forest, even though you know it’s dangerous?”

Sunset nodded.

“Well, count me in,” Rainbow said, grinning. “Can’t let you go all alone, can I?”

“I’m in too,” Applejack said. “The rest of you can—”

“Nuh-uh,” Pinkie cut in. “I’m coming, too.”

“If it’s to help the ponies, I’d be happy to come as well,” Fluttershy said.

They all turned to look at Rarity.

“Oh, fine,” Rarity said. “I’ll come too. As long as it’s not too dirty.”

Sunset smiled. “Thanks, guys.”

“Don’t mention it,” Applejack said. “It’s the least we could do, for you and for Princess Twilight.”

“So, when are we headed off?” Rainbow asked.

“Give us a few days to prepare,” Sunset said. “Is everyone available over the weekend?”

Nods all around.

“Okay,” she said. “Then we’ll aim for Saturday and Sunday. Tell your parents you’re going to a sleepover at my place, so they don’t wonder where you are.”

Applejack nodded. “Will do.”

“Well, now that that’s settled,” Rarity said, “I think I could use a milkshake.”

The others nodded their agreement.

“Remember to tip well!” Pinkie said.

A vast expanse of stars and nebulae. That was what Twilight Sparkle found herself floating in the center of.

She looked about in amazement. A galaxy drifted past her; she reached out to touch it. It was like running her hand through water, her touch sending ripples through the mass of lights.

She started as she felt someone drape their arms over her shoulders from behind.

“Hello, Twilight.”

She was intimately familiar with that voice.

It was her own.

She looked to her left and saw the face of Midnight Sparkle, so close she could feel her doppelganger’s breath on her cheek. Twilight quickly pulled away from her, spun about and saw Midnight in her full, terrifying glory. Magical flames billowed from her eyes. Her raven wings were outstretched. She was smiling.

“W-what do you want?” Twilight asked.

“Just to talk,” Midnight answered.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Oh, but I have plenty to say to you.” Midnight flapped her wings and drew closer to Twilight. Stars scattered in all directions as she moved through them. “How are your little friends doing?”

“Sunset’s doing just fine,” Twilight said.

“Oh, is she now?” Midnight said. “And the rest of them?”

“They’re…” Twilight swallowed. “Well, I’ve been so busy with the portal—”

“Some friend you are. You don’t even know what they’re going through. They just lost one of their own and you can’t even be bothered to be there for them.”

“I would… I would just make things worse,” Twilight said.

“Typical selfish Twilight Sparkle,” Midnight said. “We never were very good at the whole ‘social’ thing, were we? Things were better when we didn’t have to pretend.”

“That’s not true!” Twilight said. “My friends are important to me! My life is much better now than it ever was before I met Sunset and the others!”

“Ooh, she’s got some conviction now,” Midnight shot back. “She’s even starting to grow a backbone. How cute.”

“Why are you here, Midnight?” Twilight asked, balling her hands into fists. “I know it’s not just to guilt-trip me about my friendships.”

“You’re right,” Midnight said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

Midnight put her hands on her hips.

“I’m here,” she said, “to remind you that my door is always open.”

“What do you mean?”

Midnight smiled. It was a mean, twisted thing. “Don’t you want to know what’s really going on in Equestria?”

Twilight narrowed her eyes. “What do you know?”

“More than you do,” Midnight said.

“Tell me!”

“Nope,” Midnight said. “That’s not how this works.”

“What do you want, then?”

Midnight laughed. “We’re the same person, Twilight, you know exactly what I want.”

“I will never let you escape,” Twilight said, half a statement and half a promise.

“Oh, you will,” Midnight said. “You’re going to need me. Sooner than you think.”

“What are you talking about?” Twilight said. “Why would I ever need you?”

“You’ll see,” was Midnight’s answer. “But in the meantime…”

She flew up close to Twilight, their faces just inches away from each other.

“Give my regards to Sunset Shimmer.”

Twilight’s eyes snapped open. The darkness of her bedroom and the dull light of the aquarium were the only things that met her gaze.

She sat upright. Her eyes fell on her desk drawer.

Just a nightmare.

Maybe if she repeated it enough times, it would start to feel like the truth.