“And when I destroy this scroll, there'll be no way for you to change it!”

Spike stared across the gap in the clouds at his backpack, at the scroll as Starlight Glimmer levitated it aloft. The scroll! She had the scroll! As Twilight's number one assistant, Spike prided himself on keeping track of all the little things Twilight was likely to forget, and that included, through every single loop, keeping track of the scroll. Starlight was right, they were powerless without the scroll, and now she had it!

The sound of Twilight's desperate pleas went muffled in Spike's ears as his focus narrowed to just this one thing, this most important thing. He had to get the scroll. He just needed to wait for his moment, wait for it, waaaait for it…

There!

Starlight Glimmer glanced away, deaf to Twilight's reason, she loosed a bolt of magic at the oncoming Rainbow Dash. In that instant, Spike made his move. He leapt free into open air, snatched the scroll, and plummeted. He almost chuckled to himself watching Twilight dart through the air towards him with a cry. For a pony who loved lists, Spike always felt she could learn something about priorities. She didn't even make it in time before both their trajectories changed and they shot upwards through a portal once more.

And once more they were unceremoniously spilled out into the dirt and dust of another ruined world. Spike moaned and held his head, eyes shut tight as he waited for his vision to stop warping. When he finally felt like the whole of the earth wasn't actually rocking like a boat in an ocean storm, he wrenched his eyes open.

The first thing he noticed was that the sky was pitch black. It contained none of the deep and complex navies and blues of nighttime. This was moonless, starless, pure black, dark as the void. The second thing Spike noticed was that in spite of all that, he could see just fine. That was strange, but then each of these worlds had been stranger than the last, and Spike couldn't begin to guess what had caused this latest cataclysm.

None of it really mattered, he decided after a minute, they were just passing through.

Finally his ears attuned themselves to a quiet susurration spinning itself around him, which he quickly identified as Twilight. She had the scroll pinned flat against the Map with her hooves and she was murmuring furiously over top of it. Occasionally, her horn would spark and zap the scroll, working it over with small magics.

“Fine, fine, she wants to play it like that? Well now we know where we're going. She's not the only pony who can modify a spell…”

Spike climbed atop the map and inspected Twilight's handiwork. He noticed a thin brown scar near the center- Twilight had been quick to repair the damage Starlight had done, at least, though he was certain the scroll would have been long gone if the villain lacked a penchant for drama.

“Uh, Twilight, shouldn't we be, y'know, getting back? This place kinda gives me the creeps.”

“We're not going back, Spike. At least not there, that's where she wants us, she has the upper hoof there, and I'm not just going to keep trying and hoping something changes. If she doesn't want my friendship, I'll give her the friend she really wanted.”

Spike looked concerned, the manic edge to Twilight's voice was usually a bad mix with magic. “Twilight, what do you mean? We need to stop her from screwing up the race!”

“We don't need to stop her at the race if she never goes back in the first place, Spike. If she doesn't lose her friend, she never makes her village, so she never comes looking for revenge. We're going to beat her at her own game.” Her mouth split into an unhinged grin as her horn sparked some more changes onto the scroll.

“Twilight,” He used her name like a warning, “Aren’t you worried that's a little… paradoxical? This type of thing happens a lot in my comics and it, well, usually ruins the world. And the comic.”

“Spike, this isn't one of your comic books, this is real magic, okay, and only one of us is an expert on that,” She snapped back, and Spike quickly subsided. There was no arguing with her when she was like this, so Spike took stock of the priorities. With his bag gone, he'd be stuck hauling the scroll around by claw, but at least that meant it'd be harder for Starlight to nab again. Food and drink were the next priority, so he was surprised to take stock of his body and realize he wasn't feeling the need. Whether it was adrenaline or magical nonsense that had kept him feeling full and hydrated he couldn't guess, but at least that meant he didn't have to worry right now.

He distracted himself just watching the barren world around them. It was grey and dusty like a number of the worlds they’d already left behind, no real sign of life anywhere. The dilapidated ruins of Ponyville were barely a blip in the landscape, so the crumbling ruins of Canterlot high up in the mountain were the only landmark of note. Half the city looked like it had slid off the sheer cliff face. Really, it probably had, whatever magic or feat of architecture (really the same thing to Spike) that supported it having long since faded or fallen to pieces. And above it all, that endless abyss of black, black that seemed to call to him, whispering his name, pleading for–

“Ha!” Came a triumphant cry from Twilight beside him, “It's ready!”

Never before had Spike been so thrilled about a pony attempting such reckless magic. At this point, he wanted to be as far away from here as it was possible to get. “Fine, work your magic and let's get out of here, this place is really creeping me out now.”

Twilight nodded and lit her horn, the scroll floating up above the map. A beam shot from her horn to the scroll, and bounced into the Map. Sparks began to fly and a wind seemed to come from nowhere as the alicorn poured more and more magic into the spell. Twilight's eyes began to glow as she put the whole of her being into the complex work. With a flash, the beam from her horn broke loose and faded, and Twilight slumped against the Map.

Both scroll and Map were wreathed in her pink aura, and there was a moment Spike could only interpret as… Hesitation? Resistance? Though lacking magic himself, he was no stranger to being around spells, and this spell seemed to take just a breath longer than it should have. A thought came unbidden, as if thought by somebody else entirely, that the Map seemed confused, like it hadn't expected this turn of events.

Spike wasn't sure where that thought came from. Could a magical map even expect something at all? Maybe in the comics they could.

That was the last rational thought the dragon could manage as the spell snapped into completion like a hasty decision, a fit of impulse. A portal sprung open, tinged pink and whirling violently, and Twilight and Spike fell up, and fell in.

Starlight Glimmer stared helplessly from the doorway as her friend was carried off in a cacophony of cheers and claps and joyous stomps. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, her mind a whirl of confusion. One hoof took a hesitant step back inside, back towards the door. Before she could make another one, the feeling in the air changed. Suddenly there was a presence beside her. A pony. A pegasus? No, an alicorn, an alicorn she had never seen or even heard of before, lavender and resplendent and smiling cheerfully.

“He's your friend, isn't he? Don't you think you should go after him?”

The memory faded into soft, hazy whiteness.

From the moment Spike awoke, he began a mental list of good and bad. A small part of him cursed Twilight's habit rubbing off on him, but she wasn't always wrong. It helped to have a useful list.

Good: Reality wasn't torn apart by a time paradox. Bad: They were not safely back in the castle. Good: He still had the scroll! Bad: He wasn't sure how much use it would be anymore. It looked tattered and worn, dry in a magical way, emptied.

Good: Sunlight filtered in through the windows and gaps in dilapidated wood and stone. Bad: They were in some sort of dilapidated lecture hall of a school he was certain he'd never seen before. Mixed?: The center of the hall bore an all-too-familiar six pointed star emblem.

It was a respectable list he'd managed to assemble by the time Twilight, still slumped against the Map, awoke with a groan. She seemed much worse for wear than him, given the extent to which she had tapped her magical reserves. Even for an alicorn, that was heavy duty stuff. Regardless, good: He still had Twilight with him.

Bad: Almost like an afterthought, another portal sprang open above the map. Another pony dropped through in a blur, and the portal quickly snapped shut. As the pony found her way to her hooves, Spike found himself staring face to face with none other than Starlight Glimmer.

Starlight's head was a mess. It felt like somepony had crawled inside, opened every drawer she had in there, and dumped their collective contents out into the middle of the floor. Then, for good measure, that same pony had dumped their own brain-drawers into the pile too! Half the clutter stalling her conscious thought didn't even seem to belong to her, and yet here it was in her brain.

She forced herself to her hooves, wobbling the whole way, and suddenly she was staring into the eyes of a purple-and-green dragon. Her brain’s reaction to this stimulus could only be described as trying to tear itself in half.

Half of her mind held all the feelings she would expect from seeing the purple little pest. Anger and bitter hatred for Twilight Sparkle, feelings she was more than happy to extend to the precious little hatchling that had earned her her mark in the first place. She was nearly incandescent thinking about how the little brat had ruined her coup de grace, leaping in at the one moment she was distracted. She should turn him into a red smear just for the audacity of it all!

Her horn lit, sparking as she drew every mote of magic she could into it, bearing down on the pathetic beast as he trembled on the spot. The spell formed in her mind, shaping magic into motive force, enough to make a mist out of the dragon. She looked into his eyes as they filled up with fear, and she hesitated. Something in the other half of her mind had tripped her, some buried admiration for him, for some reason she didn't know. The hesitation was all it took, the magics from her horn sputtered out and diffused, and she was racked with uncharacteristic nausea, overwhelming exhaustion, the kind you only got when you pushed your magic just a bit too far. It didn't make sense why the simple drawing of energy had winded her so thoroughly.

She could feel sickening love and admiration for the creature as she stared, vying for dominance against the emotions she expected, the ones she knew were real. These new feelings didn't belong to her.

She took a few nervous steps back, finally looking wildly around her. It was only a small relief that no part of her seemed to recognize the room she was in, but that other half of her, the wrong half, whispered that she ought to know what it was anyways. “What did you do to me…” She whispered to Spike. The little dragon stammered and took a few steps backwards, landing on his rear. Starlight didn't even notice, her eyes had finally found Twilight Sparkle.

If looking at Spike was bad, looking at Twilight Sparkle was thousands of times worse. The halved mind went to war with itself, emotions from across the entire spectrum of pony feeling pitching lances of raw chemical through her nervous system. She saw her nemesis. She saw her hero. She felt righteous indignation and boundless worship. This was the mare who had ruined her life. This was the mare who had saved her life.

Starlight surged forwards towards the map, slamming her front hooves atop it and screaming, “What did you do to me, Twilight Sparkle!?”

The alicorn blinked free of her exhausted stupor, finally noticing Starlight was even there at all. From the way her face fell, Starlight could guess that whatever the mare’s ridiculous plan was, it had failed. That still didn't explain why she was here, now, or how Twilight had broken the loop.

“I tried to put things right, Starlight,” Twilight offered cryptically. Her downcast face was starting to pull other emotions from Starlight, wrong and traitorous emotions of pity and the desire to comfort her. Starlight couldn't stand it, so she scoffed and turned away, gripping the embers of her rage like a life preserver. She sat hard in one of the chair-desks that ringed the hall, coughing and sputtering in the cloud of dust she stirred, and she did her best to diagnose what exactly was going on inside her thoughts.

Meanwhile, Twilight Sparkle and Spike chattered away with little regard for her presence.

“So it didn't work…?”

“Spike, if it worked, we'd be at home, and not… Wherever this is. Where are we, anyways?”

“I don't know, but look.”

A beat of silence.

“But… What? What's my cutie mark doing there? And this looks like some sort of school? We need to figure out where we are, and when.”

“Sure, but… What about her?”

Starlight glanced up. Spike and Twilight both stared at her. She dropped her gaze back to the desk. She had only just dredged some semblance of stability out of the depths of her mind, and just looking at the pair threatened to send her into turmoil once again.

She had achieved a sense of understanding, and it turned out the drawer analogy wasn't so far off. Her mind was full of drawers. Those drawers she was familiar with, the ones that belong to her, her feelings and memories, those drawers lay open. The ones that were closed seemed to contain some other pony, a pony that certainly felt she was Starlight Glimmer, but who was so far removed from who she, the real Starlight, was, that there was no world where they could be her. Somepony hadn't just gone and made a mess inside her head, that pony had all but moved in! Worse yet, no matter how hard she tried, once a drawer had found its way open, she couldn't force it back closed.

Starlight Glimmer found she was quite genuinely of two minds.

“Starlight, are you okay?” Twilight asked hesitantly, her voice thick with more concern than Starlight had ever merited in her life.

“Of course I'm not okay!” She snapped back, holding onto venom and spite as her only path to sanity, “You- you injected me with some kind of mind magic! You think a few fuzzy happy thoughts about you is enough to make me regret what I've done? After you ruined my life!?” Her hooves thumped on the desk, and it replied with a loud crack. The whole thing broke loose and Starlight tumbled forward to the floor. Laying there, staring up at the ceiling, she let out a wordless shriek of rage and slammed all four hooves into the floor. Tantruming like a foal. At least both halves of her mind agreed on this– it was an embarrassing thing to do in front of Princess Twilight Sparkle.

“Starlight…” Twilight's face appeared, hovering over where Starlight lay sprawled, “I didn't do any ‘mind magic.’ I just… Went into the past myself and made sure you never lost your friend.” The alicorn gave a sheepish smile, as if it was a silly little slip-up.

That was the information she needed. Everything clicked into place. She wasn't suddenly two ponies in one mind, she was herself, twice! A self that couldn't be more different from the pony she knew in her heart was the real her, but a version of her nevertheless. It explained everything, and at the very center of it all she could pinpoint the exact memory where her mind had disagreed with herself.

She was alone in her home, friendless and crying. She was sprinting down the street to catch up to her only friend. Only one could be the real her, but she knew with certainty that she had lived through both. She couldn't give an inch to Twilight Sparkle however, who knew how far the alicorn would try to take it. All the way to friendship and redemption, most likely.

“Well, looks like that worked out great for you. Is that how you handle things? The dastardly villain ignores your desperate pleas for friendship, so you go and tweak them with magic until it's all better?”

Starlight loathed how guilty Twilight looked at that. Worse, she hated how that guilt seemed to stab at her own heart. What kind of soft, pathetic, doe-eyed excuse for a mare had Twilight turned her into?

“Whatever went wrong here, Starlight, we'll fix it. Nothing about this place seems right.” Twilight offered a hoof to help Starlight up. She pointedly ignored it, rising on her own wobbling hooves.

“Who’s ‘we?’” She spat back.

“You and us,” Spike piped up, “Unless you wanna stay who-knows-where and who-knows-when for who-knows-how-long it'll take for us to fix this?”

She gave him a glare, then looked back to Twilight, “Why do we need to go anywhere? The map is here, the scroll is here, just cast the spell again.”

Twilight quirked an eyebrow at her, “Starlight, don't you feel it too? This place has hardly any magic. Just levitating the scroll back onto the table left me winded, there's no way I could cast that spell again on my own. We need to know a lot more about what's going on before we can even start to get back to our time. I only know one type of magic that will work even at a time like this.” She turned towards the stairs and began a casual trot towards them, Spike hopping astride her with the scroll clutched close as she passed by. Starlight stood stock still, watching the princess ascend each step, when suddenly she stopped midway and turned back. “Well? Are you coming?”

Starlight sputtered, glared, stomped her hooves a few times, and finally shouted, “Fine!” as she began her own ascent.

Atop the stairs and out the door was a long hallway, one half lined with similar dusty and dilapidated doors, the other lined with broad windows. Some were hazy with dust and age, others shattered or missing entire panes. The view was if not spotless, then at least good enough for the group to get their bearings. Starlight peeked out and her eyes widened as she took it all in.

Ponyville at least looked like it could still in fact be a -ville. Some homes had collapsed, others wore clear signs of deterioration, but all things considered, the town still stood, and carried with it some small signs of life. Flashes of movement and color as some ponies seemed to go about their days. Twilight's castle stood like a beacon in the center, shining, somehow looking more real than its immediate surroundings.

“Spike, if the castle is over there, why did we end up over here?”

“To make sure you know you screwed up, obviously.”

The environment around Ponyville was dull, lacking lustre, but not entirely barren. Only one area could even begin to qualify as lush, the spot that Starlight recalled as Sweet Apple Acres, home of Applejack.

“Well it's not a wasteland. At least. Maybe Applejack will know what's going on…”

Twilight trailed off as her eyes finally registered the same thing that Starlight just had. Beyond Ponyville and into the wilds of the Everfree Forest, there was clearly something wrong. The sky! It was pure black, a slash of impossibility across the basic reality of a familiar sky.

“I've seen that before, Twi. Before you cast your spell, the last timeline looked a whole lot like that.”

“But how could that happen? The castle is there, we got our cutie marks, everything went right this time! We must have stopped Nightmare Moon, but then who…?”

A name leapt to Starlight's mind unbidden. The Pony of Shadows. She silently cursed this new open drawer, knowledge borne from her other half, but it wasn't all bad. This one didn't make her feel all mushy and starstruck, at least, and anything she knew that Twilight Sparkle didn't was a bargaining chip.

Finally, almost as one, they gasped. Scanning along the horizon, just a short distance from Ponyville, they found Canterlot. At first glance, it looked like the city had found a way to sink halfway inside the mountain. However, with closer inspection, Starlight realized the mountain itself was all wrong. It looked brown and papery, fringes peeling off like birch bark. It looked like a wasp’s nest for wasps far larger than anypony dared imagine, built around the whole city, only a spare few towers and buttresses breaking free.

“Changelings…” Twilight breathed, “Now we definitely need to talk to Applejack.”

Starlight just sat staring as hoofbeats tore off down the hall. She heard them slow, then stop, then turn.

“Alright, I'm coming.”

Not like she had anything better to do.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading the first chapter of my new fic. This is the longest thing I've ever written and I'm happy to have it mostly finished. It was a new experience to write an adventure rather than slice of life type stuff, so it has been a lot of fun trying to put it all together.

It will be 8 chapters in total, uploading once a week while I finish tightening up the editing. I hope you'll stick around!