Tomorrow was agony.
Twilight knew because she had lived through them all.
She knew that the first of her friends would pass. Applejack, in theory the strongest of them, would choke on the fluid filling her lungs. Everyone would try to reach her in time to say goodbye, but the doctors had told them all that it wouldn’t be that day.
Rarity would be asleep, the constant visits back and to hospital exhausting her beyond measure. She’d never forgive herself, not for the rest of her entire life.
Twilight had once thought that knowing everything that would happen would mean that she was able to change things. That her foresight of her friend’s demise would mean she could be there, could make it so her friends would be there.
Fate, it seemed, was crueller than that.
No matter how hard she tried, she’d be unable to reach Applejack. She’d be unable to contact her friends. Reality seemed to twist in order to make it happen.
Twilight had once thought that knowing everything in advance would mean that it would hurt less.
Fate, it seemed, was crueller than that.
“Twilight, how are you doing? Lots of things on the agenda today,” Spike’s voice called through the closed door to her bedchambers.
She didn’t answer, and found instead her attention was caught by the design on her ceiling. In how many lifetimes she’d never really noticed it before. But now, she couldn’t tear her eyes off the circular, swirling patterns, forming self-perpetuating, cyclic fractals that got smaller and smaller, until it almost looked like they vanished.
Twilight knew better than that, of course.
XXX
“There’s a way out of this.”
XXX
Tomorrow terrified her, because she had no way of knowing what was going to happen.
Tinker tried to remember the phrases that Jet Stream had told her to repeat to herself. Tried to remember that she did this every morning, tried to remember that there was no way of knowing everything, tried to remember that living in the uncertainty was the only way forward.
Tomorrow could have been anything.
Tinker felt herself starting to hyperventilate.
That was, of course, until a wing gently landed on her tummy, and began light, circular motions. Her breath started to come down, she started to believe all her reassurances. She looked over, Jet Stream wasn’t even awake yet, he’d just started to make her feel better without even needing to be conscious.
Tinker loved him so much, she was afraid it would kill her.
Above them, the shelf groaned, and for a moment afterwards, all was still.
But it did that every morning, Jet Stream had told her over and over that it was sturdy, that she didn’t need to remake every bit of furniture herself. He wanted to put his favourite crystal on there, the one he always insisted looked like a heart. Tinker couldn’t see it, but he’d always been the artistic one.
He’d even sat on the shelf for two straight hours, to prove it would safely hold anything they put on it. He’d looked so silly, perched up there, comically screaming to her as if he was so far away she could no longer hear him. She’d laughed so hard she’d barely been able to breathe.
The shelf creaked again, Tinker was so anxious she was barely able to breathe.
It’s okay, Jet Stream showed us it was okay, we can’t keep doing this.
Jet Stream’s eyes fluttered open, he turned over and looked at her, smiling serenely.
Tinker felt her breath catch.
The shelf creaked, then groaned, then gave way.
The crystal fell, directly above Jet Stream’s confused, sleep addled face. He looked up at the rock falling towards him, poised to smash his skull, like one would look at an amusing curiosity. Totally uncomprehending of the lethality.
Tinker’s mind allowed her no such serenity.
She dived over and wrapped her hooves around the weighty mineral, leaping over her husband in the process. A trailing hindleg caught his face, she heard him grunt in surprise. The momentum carried Tinker into their home’s sturdy, clay walls. Her shoulder took the brunt of the impact and she fell into a heap on the ground.
Her earth pony body was more than able to weather any damage of course. But the funny thing about pegasi was that their bodies needed to be light to allow them to fly. They were slight creatures, built for agility. The amount of times Jet Stream needed to call Tinker out to help him when he’d found a particularly impressive crystal, because his hooves were simply unable to lift things that Tinker could manage with ease.
The funny thing was that that crystal would have shattered her husband’s skull and killed him instantly. If Tinker hadn’t been awake, he would have died.
Jet Stream would have died.
“Tinker,” he cried, leaping out of their bed to her side, “Oh my goodness, are you alright?”
She was absolutely fine, a light bruise on her shoulder would be the only physical consequence of all of this.
But Tinker found she was unable to breathe.
She pushed the crystal aside and wrapped her hooves around Jet Stream, before crying her eyes out.
XXX
“How long are we going to keep doing this?”
“That is up to you, Twilight.”
“Does this please you? Do you have any conception of what it’s like? I can’t stop it all from happening over and over and over. I become friends with them, they come into my life, and all the while it’s tainted with the knowledge and experience that they’ll die. My friends die, my mother and father die, my brother dies. Their love has become like ash in my mouth, lifetimes and lifetimes of pain. Do you truly enjoy doing this to me?”
“As I’ve said. There’s a way out.”
“Why don’t you tell me who you are, what your name is?”
“There aren’t enough sounds in your world to tell you my name.”
XXX
“Wow, Tinker, this is ingenious! So simple, yet so elegant!”
“Mhm,” Tinker replied, not really listening, “Sorry it took so long, hard when you don’t have a horn.”
It was true, being an earth pony inventor felt like you were fighting with one hoof tied behind your back. Everything was harder, everything took longer, everything done was laborious and draining. There were some days Tinker would burn with jealousy after having spoken to her contemporaries, hearing of how quickly they could realise their ideas.
And yet, today her mind was too preoccupied to be upset about that.
Tinker’s hoof tapped a nervous rhythm on the dusty ground, and her eyes kept wandering over to Jet Stream’s part of their stall. There were ponies lined up to get a look at his crystals. While he never made reference to it, both of them were aware it was his business that kept them going. Not Tinker’s.
“Here’s the bits we agreed upon. Honestly I can’t quite get the hang of these things still. And this picture of Princess Platinum they have on them! Maybe she looked like that when she was still in her twenties but she's gotta be pushing fifty now! Who are they trying to fool with this-"
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” Tinker cut off the mare, unwilling to get involved in a conversation about ageing. Too many connotations of decay.
The commission had been a device to help speed up the process of addition and subtraction. Mathematics was a relatively fledgling field, and those who practised it, like her client, had quickly realised that doing it all in their head was very unwieldy. Tinker’s invention had been a relatively simple one, but it fit the brief well enough.
A rack of small pieces of wood, each lined with several beads with which one could track numbers by moving them from side to side in groups.
“What do you call it?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t give it a name. I’ll let you come up with it.” Tinker replied, still not taking her eyes off her husband, “Thanks again for your patronage Abacus.”
The unicorn offered some more fawning praise that Tinker didn’t really listen to before taking her leave.
Jet Stream was better with customers than she was.
He downplayed his business, saying it was just there to allow Tinker to carry on working on inventions. But she didn’t remotely agree. Jet would find the most beautiful crystals, they seemed magnetised to him in a way they weren’t to anyone else. It was his special talent, after all.
Someone could go out into those wilds and come back with a couple of shiny rocks, but Jet? Jet would find the most incredible specimens, and he’d do it day in, day out. They adorned every inch of the space around him, he’d sell so many, but find so many still, that they just never seemed to dry up.
They lined countertops, lined display cases, and, right there above him, they lined shelves.
Tinker was finding it hard to breathe.
She hastily trotted over, heedless of the prospective customer who’d been trying to get her attention for the past minute.
“Jet, Jet, can I talk to you?” Tinker asked shakily.
“Hi honey,” he replied breezily, in that voice that was always so bereft of the poison that had never loosened its grip on Tinker’s mind, “Just finishing up with a customer, can I come grab you in a moment?”
“Jet, I’d really appreciate it if you could come over here for a second,”
The urgency in her voice made him look over at her, and suddenly his easy, relaxed expression became one of concern.
“Tinker, I think you’re spiralling again,” he replied, lowering his voice so as to not embarrass her in front of the increasingly curious looking crowd, “Remember what we talked about, okay? Have you done your breathing exercises, they always make you feel better?”
He rubbed her back gently, it was probably the softest hoof in the entire world. It was probably the most lovely feeling under the sun.
But above Jet Stream was a shelf filled with crystals. And sure, he could have pointed out that Tinker built their respective stalls. He could have pointed out that she made those shelves herself, and she’d never be so careless as to not properly weight test them. He could have pointed out that Tinker remembered doing so, and that she’d known he was going to be putting crystals on them and as such made absolutely sure that there was no way the shelves would be so weak as to crack under the weight of several kilos worth of heavy minerals.
He could have said any of those things to Tinker, and all of them would have been correct.
But still.
Was that a creak? Was that a groan, was that motion in the corner of her eye the sagging of a shelf, ready to collapse and drop its payload onto her husband, shattering his brittle bones and bludgeoning him painfully to death.
The breathing exercises and the hoof on her back weren’t helping.
Tinker couldn’t take it.
She wrapped her hooves around him and pulled him out of the stall. The two of them fell into an undignified heap on the ground and Jet Stream yelped as Tinker landed on one of his forehooves.
She’d hurt him.
The crowd chuckled at the ridiculous display. It started low, before snowballing into peals of mocking laughter.
Tinker had hurt Jet Stream.
He didn’t look mad. When their eyes met, he only looked concerned for her. And she knew that he’d reassure her and they’d end the day better than it started.
But tomorrow? Tomorrow he’d head back into that stall, and stand under those shelves.
Tomorrow could have been anything, and Tinker could never know.
Her breathing was laboured, her cheeks burned under the cruel sun and cruel jeering of the crowd. Jet Stream reached out his bruised, tender forehoof. Tinker got out from under him and ran.
XXX
Tomorrow would be a day that Twilight got to spend in the library. She knew because she’d lived it before.
She’d found, in all this time. That some things could be changed. Only the things of no consequence, mind, but just because she’d spent that day on her last go around looking up time magic, and repetition magic, and cyclical sorcery, that didn’t mean she needed to look that up again.
Maybe she’d look up curses, and old magic, and ways to break them this time.
Yes, that sounded like a good idea.
XXX
Tinker tried to steady her breathing and quash the sickening feeling in her abdomen. The sounds of the jungle around her created what should have been a relaxing symphony. Instead, the medley of animal noises and rustling of breeze through foliage felt now like too many disparate things to focus on. Too many variables. Too many things that could go wrong.
There was only one pony in the world who knew about this place other than her. After all, Tinker told her husband everything. But even Jet Stream never came here. No, it was Tinker’s place. It was the one place other than her husband’s embrace in which the anxiety would reliably melt away.
But today? Today felt different. Today was hard to shake.
And if today was hard to shake, then what would tomorrow be like? What if she was always going to feel like this?
Tinker shook, she poured with sweat. It felt like her skull was filled with wasps. She got up and paced around. It only made things feel worse. She felt like she needed to escape. She did need to escape. She needed to go somewhere different. She needed Jet Stream, but she couldn’t. He would be on one of his excursions, hunting for wild gems. Plus, she’d hurt him when she’d pulled him over, what if he never wanted to speak to her again?
What if this was the end?
What if she was going to die? What if he was going to die.
A tree shook under the weight of some unseen creature swinging from branch to branch.
The wood creaked and groaned.
Tinker ran.
She bolted through the jungle aimlessly, knowing in the back of her mind how stupid it was to do this but being unable to stop herself. She needed to leave, she needed to be anywhere other than this place, this body, this mind.
Her hoof sank into the ground, it felt different to the normal terrain. It felt more flimsy.
There was a creak of old wood.
The ground collapsed beneath her.
Tinker instinctively wrapped herself into a ball as she fell through the earth. For what felt like the millionth time today, she bitterly thanked her earth pony resilience as she crumpled to a heap on some hard, cold stone.
The pain was blinding, she opened an eye and saw that she’d fell at least three stories worth of height, if not more. A fall like that would have killed a unicorn.
If he didn’t extend his wings, it would have killed a pegasus too.
She looked around, she didn’t know this place. She didn’t know where she was. This place looked old. Older than anything she’d seen. It was difficult to see, the only light was from whatever sunlight could filter through the hole that she’d fallen through. The multitude of tunnels and passages that led from this room remained pitch black. If she went down any of them, she’d be lost forever.
Her breath stayed quick, her heart thumped. How was she going to get out? She wasn’t like Jet Stream, she couldn’t fly. If she was a unicorn, she could have teleported out. But no, she was an earth pony, hardy enough to survive the fall, but too limited to do anything else. All the other inventors she knew were unicorns, they could use their magic to create, but not Tinker.
No wonder she had to rely on her husband to pay their way. All talent, no execution, waiting on ponies like Abacus who would, for some reason, accept the much greater waiting times associated with an earth pony.
Maybe tomorrow, ponies like that would stop coming to her.
Maybe tomorrow, they wouldn’t have the chance after she dies of thirst in this wretched, stone tomb, leaving Jet Stream to wonder for the rest of his life what he did to make Tinker leave him. Tinker tried to stop her anxiety from spiraling, Tinker tried to remember what Jet Stream had told her.
“Just do your breathing.”
The voice reverberated around the walls, shaking loose dust and debris from old carved rock, untouched for centuries, maybe even longer. Tinker’s heart felt like it was going to stop from fear.
“This can’t be happening.”
Her thoughts once again rang out around her, projected onto every surface, sounding like they were coming from everywhere at once. The chamber suddenly began to illuminate itself. Old carvings flooded with golden, warm light. Tinker could see, in the centre of the room, the unmistakable shape of a workbench.
“What… what is this place?” she whimpered, her tail tucked between shaking hindlegs.
“We’ve heard about places like this. Old, forgotten corners of the world, filled with ancient magic. Lost magic.”
“Who is that?!” she screamed, desperately trying to sound confident in spite of the fear wracking her body and mind.
“You know who I am, who we are.”
“But… but that’s impossible. My thoughts are just… thoughts. Jet Stream always told me that-”
“Jet Stream doesn’t know everything. We love him, but we know that he doesn’t know everything. Are we going to deny our own eyes and ears? We can hear this, this is real.”
Her thoughts rang back at her, Jet Stream felt so very, very small.
“Maybe it’s the magic of this place?” she offered, and at once the lights crawling around on the walls brightened.
“Our parents always used to tell us stories, of all the hidden places in the world. Buried magic from before the unification, from before ponies. Maybe whoever was alive back then made a place like this, so that they could speak to their own thoughts?”
“That would… make sense?” Tinker offered, still wary of the voice… of her own voice, ringing back to her. She knew they were her own thoughts, she could feel herself thinking them. But the magic of this place made it feel like they were coming from everywhere aside from her.
“But how can I be interacting with magic?!” Tinker exclaimed, looking resentfully down at her own hooves, “I’m not a unicorn.”
“Do we think the creatures that made this place were unicorns?”
Tinker could feel the voice reassuring her, and, in that, her anxiety spiked more and more. It was the nature of her mind, that everytime she relaxed for any reason, Tinker would find herself worrying. Worrying about the fact she wasn’t worrying.
Why wasn’t she worrying? Had she forgotten something? Had she forgotten something bad she did, had she thought about all the avenues and possibilities properly, what if she didn’t deserve to be reassured?
“The creatures who made this place were like us. Builders, creators, inventors. It’s the unicorns who don’t belong here, not us.”
Tinker bit her lip. She turned, taking another look at the hole she’d fallen through. Surely there was something in this chamber she could repurpose into helping her get back up?
But then the workbench in the centre of the room throbbed with light and heat once more.
“Surely it couldn’t do any harm if we just had a look.”
“Surely it couldn’t do any harm if we just had a look?” Tinker repeated. She turned away from the hole in the ceiling, and walked towards the centre of the room.
The bench was, like everything else in the chamber, identifiably ancient, but in a nonspecific manner. It was adorned with runes that Tinker didn’t recognise, glyphs and carvings of creatures she didn’t recognise, yet still felt a low rumble of dread upon looking at them.
And still, even with all of that, it was oddly pristine, unsettlingly untouched for all the aeons it may have laid dormant in this crumbling sarcophagus. Tinker placed her hooves on it, and it came to life.
She imagined this was what unicorns must feel like when they created something. Suddenly, her quaint fumbling with wood and tools seemed absolutely pointless, a lifetime spent wasted. All around her, golden glyphs and diagrams floated through the air, ever shifting and mutating into something new. Some new idea, some new concept.
“Imagine what we could do with this,”
Tinker didn’t need to imagine it, it was right there, in front of her. All her worries seemed to have solutions now. In her mind, she conceptualised the idea of a shelf that could never fall, no matter how much weight was put onto it, and as she did so, the solution was revealed to her. All she would need would be to take the materials and infuse them with the magic of this place. Rework the load bearing mechanism, change the brackets, shift them into the non-euclidian, seemingly impossible formations that were now coursing through her mind.
And she could, as well. Tinker knew she could do it, knew that she had the skill. She reached out and touched the magic, and felt it bend. It felt malleable, tangible, it didn’t matter that she wasn’t a unicorn, Tinker could have done it.
“But that’s not what we really want, is it?”
The diagrams and notes about shelves died instantly, dimming the chamber. Tinker chewed her lip. The voice was right, of course, it knew her, it was her. Because sure, Tinker could come down here and make as many shelves as she wanted, and make it so Jet Stream couldn’t ever die from a crystal falling and smashing his head apart.
But what if he died from something else? What if he was set upon by bandits when he was out in the wilds, looking for gems. What if he was ripped to shreds by some monster from the jungle? What if he came looking for Tinker, and fell down this hole, and was so stunned he forgot to fly and shattered his neck on the stones?
The truth was, there was no way to fully protect Jet Stream from the world. There was no way to protect herself from the world, they just had to live in it, and accept that there was no such thing as being free from uncertainty.
That’s what Jet Stream always told her.
“But Jet Stream isn’t here, is he? And we know better than that…”
“I… I don’t know if I should…”
“But what’s the alternative? That we let him die?”
Tinker’s heart thumped in her chest, it almost felt profane. A small part of her felt that Jet Stream would rather die, than for her to do this.
Tinker thought, and thought, until her mind felt it was going to explode, and finally, she placed her hoof on the cool surface of the workbench.
Instantly the diagrams and glyphs and notes returned around her.
And it was so horrible, so disgustingly simple.
The magic in this place could do it, could create something that could show her her entire future, could show her everything that would go wrong, so that she could find a way to fix it.
The magic around her could be her tools, she understood it, she could change it, dominate it. As soon as she made contact with the table, a lifetime of magical ignorance gave way to perfect, total comprehension. She could pour it into the forms and configurations needed. She could see it. All she’d need is a sufficiently powerful conduit, something to hold all of the magic.
Something like a crystal.
Some perfect, massive, stunning crystal.
A crystal that could hold all that furious, boiling magic.
“I could do it.”
“We could do it.”
And yet…
Tinker released her hold on the table.
She hadn’t done her breathing, she hadn’t done her reassurances, her distractions. She hadn’t done a thing Jet Stream had told her to do, in those moments where he held and stroked her hair and kept her in one piece.
She’d done everything he’d warned her made it all worse. She’d ruminated, she’d obsessed.
Tinker didn’t think Jet Stream would want this.
“But Jet Stream won’t want anything if he’s dead, will he?”
Tinker took a moment to think, before once again placing her hoof on the table.
“How do I make a way out of here?” she muttered.
On cue, the chamber responded to her thought. Stones erupted from the ground, forming a staircase up to the hole she’d fallen through.
She didn’t give herself time to think, and instead ran out of the chamber before her thoughts convinced her to stay.
XXX
“There’s a way out of this, Twilight. This could all stop.”
“So you always tell me,” Twilight replied, speaking into the infinite void she found herself in at the end of every cycle, before it all started again, “But somehow, I don’t get the impression that you’ll simply let me free without getting something in return.”
“And you would be correct. It was your own choice to look into the orb, Twilight. No one forced you.”
Twilight slumped, her facade of defiance cracking for a moment under the weight of pain and regret.
“You could be free of it all,”
“So shrewd, so manipulative, such a grand master of puppets,” Twilight spat with disgust, “You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are,”
“I don’t think your concept of intelligence is really something that applies to me.”
“If you want something, why don’t you tell me who you are? Hmm? Stop hiding behind cowardly excuses, your pathetic soliloquising about your grand unknowable name. We’re here speaking, aren’t we? We both know you could tell me what to call you if you weren’t so preoccupied with infantile self-aggrandisement.”
“There was a name that some of your people used to know me by, I could tell you that, if you’d like?”
And for all her bravado, Twilight faltered. Maybe there was a comfort in not knowing that she hadn’t admitted to herself.
“How about another time around, to help you think?”
And before she had a chance to answer, the black gave way to the light, and Twilight’s grip on this place began to slip.
Tomorrow was going to be her first, and Twilight already wanted to die.
XXX
“You scared me,” Jet Stream said, trying to be as stern as he could. But they both knew it wasn’t in his nature. He gently dabbed at her various cuts and grazes with a wet cloth, before anointing each one with a healing salve.
Tinker should have looked into how to come up with panacea while she was down in the chamber, rather than shelves and staircases.
“Where did you go?”
“I… I went to my special place,” Tinker replied, keeping her eyes on the floor.
“I figured as much, I thought it would be best to not disturb you,” he replied.
“Thank you… for putting up with me,” Tinker replied, prompting him to stop.
“Hey hey hey,” he said, walking around so that they could talk face to face, “I don’t ‘put up’ with you. I love you, Tinker, you’re wonderful and caring and the most clever pony I’ve ever met. I only wish you could see that as well,”
“But I hurt you,” she replied weakly.
“Tin’, I’m a big boy, okay,” he reassured, moving back around to tend to her cuts again, “A bruised hoof isn’t going to kill me, besides it was an accident, you were only trying to help.”
“But I embarrassed you in front of your customers,” she whined.
“Tin’, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about. I’ve told you nothing is wrong, okay? You don’t need to keep trying to give me, or yourself, reasons why it shouldn’t be. I’m fine, we’re fine,”
“I’m sorry,”
He stopped again, and sighed. As gently as possible, avoiding her wounds, he swaddled Tinker in a warm, soft hug. She sighed into his chest. She wanted to just stay like this.
“You’ve not done anything wrong hon, I know how you struggle, okay? When I tell you to breathe, to try to get out of your head, to stop thinking about bad things that have happened, or all the things you’ve done that you feel bad about, or all the bad things that could happen, it’s not because you’re doing anything wrong. It’s because you don’t deserve to feel like that. Sure, you’re not perfect, and sure, life isn’t always going to be amazing at all times, but you’re not a bad pony, Tinker.”
And Tinker wanted to cry.
Because he was so sweet, and he loved her so much, and she loved him so much.
And she didn’t believe him.
And one of these days, he was going to die, and Tinker wouldn’t be able to save him.
And then what good would breathing exercises, or mantras to reassure, or distraction techniques do anyone?
Like many things, Tinker didn’t want to think about it.
And that probably meant she’d be able to think of nothing else, maybe for the rest of her entire life.
“How did your hunting go today?” she asked, forcing herself to smile and knowing that listening to Jet Stream get over excited about crystals was the best distraction technique in the world.
“Are you sure you want me to tell you?” he asked, “We can keep talking about this if you’d like?”
“Jet, please sweetheart, all I want right now is to hear about your crystals,” she replied, it was all she could do to stop herself from crying.
“Well, if I’m being honest, today was… quite special.”
“Oh?”
“I found something… well, it’s a big deal,” he said, and Tinker felt her heart swell with affection over how excited he was getting.
“Do you want to show me?”
He grinned and ran over to his trolley. The sacks of geodes and crystals on top didn’t seem to register with him, instead, he opened the secure compartment underneath, and withdrew something stunning.
It was a perfect sphere of clear, colourless crystal. Absolutely pristine from all angles, there was no deviation, no deficiency. It was nigh invisible for its unblemished perfection.
“What is it?” Tinker gasped.
“It’s one of the rarest gems out there. It’s an Emperor’s Conduit. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago, they were used in magic rituals. Tin’, the right buyer would pay us a king’s ransom for this. We could get you a better workshop. We could move to a better home. We could set up the rest of our lives with this.”
And it was a nice thought, it really was.
Tinker could see it all play out, her perfect life with Jet Stream, the pony that meant more to her than anything.
Of course, maybe none of it would happen. Because maybe they’d move to a new place, and thieves would break in and slit Jet’s throat while he slept. Maybe one of the shelves in that nice, new home would break and all those beautiful, gorgeous, sharp, deadly crystals would fall and bury her husband in a tomb that bled him to death while Tinker was lost in her own world. In that nice new workshop of hers.
And all the while, Tinker would have known that there was a way that she could have saved him.
Tomorrow may be the day that Jet was able to sell that crystal, and change their lives. Tomorrow could have also been the day where bandits saw a lithe, thin little pegasus travelling with untold riches on the road, before stabbing him in the guts for his trouble.
“There’s no rush, okay? I can speak to some of my contacts,” he said, walking over to put it back in the secure compartment of his trolley, “And I know when good things happen, you can worry, but there’s no need to, okay? Remember what we talked about, don’t get too bogged down in trying to predict the future, Tin’, okay? Whatever happens, we can get through it.”
He placed the crystal into the compartment.
The wood groaned and creaked.
“Sure thing Jet,” she replied, trying to blink away tears before he could see them.
XXX
Tomorrow was another one of those infrequent, spare days Twilight got. She knew because she’d lived through it more times than she could recall.
She’d go down to the library, and look for solutions to her problem.
How long had she been looking now? Tens of thousands of years? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?
Whatever it wanted, surely it couldn’t be as bad as this?
But Twilight knew, of course, that just because she’d been looking for solutions to her problem for this long, she didn’t have to keep doing it. She knew there were things she could change, small things.
Maybe this time, she’d look up ancient gods, archaic demons.
Yes, that sounded like a good idea.
XXX
Tinker’s obsessiveness had been the bane of her life since she was a foal. The inability to stop worrying, to stop thinking. She really doubted she’d still be here were it not for Jet Stream.
But, as she was able to find her way back to the hole in the jungle floor, even in the dark, she could admit there was the occasional benefit.
The way out she’d made, the large staircase of stone, was still there, allowing her to make a much more graceful entrance this time around.
Her saddlebags bulged with the Emperor’s Conduit. It would be perfect, perfect to hold the magic of the great, archaic workbench. And then, once she had made her device, once she knew everything in their life that would go wrong, she could take the magic out and return it and Jet Stream would never know.
She could finally shake the doubt, it was all going to be fine.
It was going to be fine.
“It’s going to be fine,” her thoughts rang out around her, as the chamber filled with light once more.
She strode up to the workbench, not allowing herself the time to doubt this as well. This was finally going to be the absence of doubt, of uncertainty. She couldn’t allow herself to be swayed now. Not now.
“We’ll make the device, we’ll get all the information we need, and then we’ll restore the emperor’s conduit and it will all be fine. It’s all going to be fine.”
“It’s all going to be fine.”
She touched the workbench, and suddenly, the understanding of magic returned to her, the way to bend it, manipulate it, impregnate it within the crystal.
When she was touching that workbench, it was all so simple.
And after this, it would all finally be fine.
“It will all be fine.”
Tinker got to work.
XXX
“I know you,” Twilight said, the second she arrived.
“Oh? What do you know?”
“I don’t need that name, I found it. I found who you are. It was hard, nigh impossible, but there’s mentions of you, books, glyphs, runes, out there in the world. And I found it.”
“And how can you be sure?”
“Well why don’t we make a wager. If I tell you, and I get it right, you have to tell me if I’m right.” Twilight was posturing, she knew it, she had nothing to wager with this entity.
But, the fact that it seemed to be taking some time to think gave her some hope.
XXX
Tinker wasn’t sure how long the work had taken her. It had gone by in a blur.
But that wasn’t important.
None of that mattered.
What mattered was the clear, crystal orb, floating in front of her, suspended above the workbench.
“I did it,” she muttered.
“You did it.”
Tinker reached out with her hooves, and touched the surface.
What she saw was more horrible than anything she could have imagined.
She saw herself unable to purge the magic from the Emperor’s Conduit. She saw herself be unable to move it, to bring it home. She saw the betrayal on Jet Stream’s face, when he realised that his wife, the love of his life, had stolen from him. Had stolen the most valuable thing he’d ever earned. She saw herself be too worried about him coming down here and touching it himself, that she was never able to tell him where it went, what she did with it.
She saw the light in their relationship flicker, and nearly die out completely.
But of course, things were rarely that simple. Because the light did come back, of course. Jet Stream loved her more than a crystal, he knew about her difficulties, he knew about the way her mind twisted things until she was unable to think straight.
The light did come back.
But it didn’t matter.
Because in a few months from now, Jet Stream would fall victim to a wasting disease. She saw it, she saw him wither away, the weight dropping from him until he was emaciated and corpse-like. A horrifying sight to behold. Milky, nearly-dead eyes that tried to convey the same kindness he’d always shown Tinker, but only managed to terrify her.
And then he would die.
And then the rest of her short life would be nothing save for wasting away herself, from a different sickness. Plagued with doubt in spite of her all-encompassing knowledge. Wracked with guilt and shame for ruining what should have been their last few months together, gaining that affection back only for it to be when Jet Stream was so ill that he wouldn’t kiss her anymore regardless, for fear of transferring the plague that ravaged his body onto his wife.
The vision ended.
The lights in the room had died.
“I…” she could barely speak, her mouth agape in a mask of horror and grief, her mind unable to shake the visions she’d seen.
“Well, this was what you wanted, Tinker,”
She ran up to the workbench and placed her hooves on it. This time, however, it did not light. No inspiration, no illuminating thoughts of innovation came to her.
“How do I fix it?” she said, before her whisper gave way to a scream, “HOW DO I FIX IT?!”
“Fix it? This was something to see your future, Tinker. To experience it all over, and over, and over. Every time you die, another time around. No one ever said anything about fixing it.”
The voice suddenly didn’t feel like her own thoughts anymore.
“Wha… but… I thought…”
“I never said I was you, Tinker, I just repeated your own thoughts back at you. You’re the one who filled in all the blanks, and now you have what you want.”
Tinker’s heart thundered, her breath quickened.
She thought of Jet Stream, telling her to practise her breathing.
And the second she thought of Jet Stream, she doubled over and vomited all over the floor.
“What is this?! Who are you?! Tell me what you are!” she shrieked at the chamber walls.
XXX
“Proceed. Who do you think I am, Twilight?”
Twilight took a steadying breath, before replying.
“Your name is Pneuma.”
XXX
“As I said, Tinker,” the voice replied, addressing Tinker’s frantic wails and pleas to tell her how she could fix it. “You can’t fix it.”
The earth pony looked around like a panicked animal, hyperventilating, vomit dripping from her muzzle.
“However… there is a way out of this.”
XXX
“Very clever.”
“I have a knack for it,” Twilight responded, and suddenly found all strength leaving her. She collapsed, the will to stand had ebbed away of countless lifetimes.
“Are you ready?”
“Wait, just… just give me a minute. Just give me a moment, please.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Twilight.”
“The book I found, the one that finally told me who you are, talked about you being worshipped in a mountain. It talked about you like you were trapped there, how did you escape?” she asked, for some reason she found herself gasping for breath. Even talking was beginning to be too much.
“I remember a conversation I once had with someone. He was a strong one, stronger than I think he ever realised.”
“Oh?” Twilight asked, she could barely lift her head.
“Allow me to ask you a question. Say you had to put something somewhere. Somewhere where it could never, ever be found. How would you do it? You could put it in some enormous terrifying building, maybe? Put signs up everywhere telling ponies to stay away, that it’s dangerous? But then, that’s not going to work, is it? Someone too brave, or too stupid, is going to go into that building one day. And the whole thing is ruined.
“So, how about this instead? How about you don’t put any signs up. How about you act like there’s nothing to find at all? Just bury it somewhere, somewhere in the middle of nowhere and then leave it. I used to think that would be the way to do it, but now I’m not so sure.”
“I think that’s going to keep it hidden for longer. Definitely longer than the other way. But then one day, if someone comes across it, there’s not going to be any warnings, are there? They’re not going to know what they’ve found. So… with that in mind, what’s the point in trying to bury these things?
“You’re right, I used to be free, back when the orb was made, it was made by a mare much like you, Twilight. And then, I was trapped in a mountain. And I was there for so long. And you know what happened because of that, Twilight? Nothing. Someone freed me, one of the countless souls I encountered. All that time I was imprisoned was a blink in the face of eternity. And now, here we are.”
“Who freed you?”
“Enough of this. Are you ready?”
The light started to intensify, banishing the black. Tomorrow was going to be her first, and Twilight couldn’t bear it anymore.
“Please! Just give me a break, please not again. Oh god, not again!” wailed the Princess of all Equestria.
“As I’ve said, Twilight, it doesn't work like that. Of course, there’s a way out of this.”
With all the effort she could muster, Twilight looked up.
XXX
“What is it? What’s the way out?” Tinker asked, her voice panicked and shuddering.
“You made a way out of this chamber, your stairs are still here, you’re free to leave. You can go back to Jet Stream. And you can stay with him while his love for you dies, and then you can watch him waste away, and then you can die, and start it all over again. Knowing what will happen and being unable to change it.”
“What’s the way out?!” Tinker screamed through sobs, “The real way out!”
“The real way out, is that you take me with you. Allow me into your mind, willingly let me take residence within your mind, take me out into the world with you.”
Tinker gawked in abject horror at the walls, she felt a panic attack coming on. She was going to be sick again.
“That, Tinker, is the way out.”
XXX
“And what? What happens when you do that? I let you out and you wear my body, and murder all my friends and family?”
“I don’t mean your friends or family harm, Twilight. I simply wish to share your mind.”
“Find someone else to possess,” Twilight sneered, and would have spat for good measure, had she the strength for it.
“I could tell you that I don’t want to possess you, Twilight, that my intentions are benign. That I simply want to be out in the world, rather than a place like here. I could tell you that, with my help, we could unlock magics that would revolutionise Equestria, and bring in a new golden age for your subjects.”
XXX
“I could tell you that I don’t want to possess you, Tinker, that my intentions are benign. That I simply want to be out in the world, rather than a place like here. I could tell you that, with my help, Jet Stream could find the most incredible crystals the world had ever seen. That we could invent such incredible treasures as to revolutionise the whole world, and that nothing could ever harm the life that you and your husband would be able to make for each other.
“I could tell you all of that, and mean it. The question is, of course…
XXX
… Would you believe me?”
XXX
“And what if you’re lying?” asked Tinker, directing her question to the formless, presence of Pneuma, throbbing and pulsing like living smoke in the pitch black chamber.
XXX
“It’s a fair question, Twilight, I might be lying. And if you think I am, then you should decline my offer. And we can do this over, and over, and over again, for the rest of eternity. You could live your life, for the rest of all lives. You can go through this a million, billion times more. And then once you’ve done that, you can go through it a trillion times more again, and then take all the lives you’ve lived and multiply that by the number of atoms in the universe, and we’ll do it that many times more.”
“And that, of course, is just for starters. You could do all a million times more, and spend every bit of reprieve here with me, at the end of everything. At the absolute moment of universal oblivion, your only freedom spent in a wasteland with not a single soul, not a single particle other than you and me. Here forever.
"The first time you came here, Twilight, I told you that you had seen, but honestly, I'm not sure you had. So let me ask you… do you see now?"
Twilight would have vomited if she had any strength.
XXX
Tinker vomited, expelling contents of her stomach until dry heaves made her throat feel like sandpaper.
“Conventional wisdom would suggest that the equine will cannot match against eternity. Accept it now, be soothed by the knowledge that I mean you no harm, and save yourself the agony.”
“Only a fool would defer to conventional wisdom for a matter like this,” Tinker offered, managing a bitter, humourless laugh.
“A fair point, and, of course, if you’d like a go around to consider my offer, you’re free to leave at any time.”
“Just shut up… just let me think.” Tinker snapped, head in her hooves.
XXX
“So how about it, Twilight? Would you like another go around? At some point, in all that endlessness, you’re going to accept my offer. So why not do it now, and save yourself more pain?”
“Just give me a fucking minute,” Twilight replied, somewhere between fury and resignation, “Just let me think for a minute…”
