Timelines

by Azure Quill

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia, Dark, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure, Pinkie Pie
Length: 5137

Foreknowledge is dangerous

Twilight has always been concerned about the future, it shows in the way she plans out her life to the tiniest detail, it shows in her obsession over becoming the greatest Unicorn mage that has ever been. She's always wondered about what the future would hold, and so it is for this reason that she suddenly decides that she could, easily, just go and see it for herself.

Is the future the shining vision she assumes it to be?

Or is it something darker? Just how far into Equestria's future does she go?

Foreknowledge is dangerous.

(A/N This is an idea that has been plaguing me for a while now, but it took a thoughtful message from Listic to bring it forth onto the proverbial paper. I owe this fic to him.)

Published 2012-11-21 15:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-01-31 20:00:52 UTC

Chapter 1: Lost and Found

Spike walked down the street, his small figure laden with the various containers of items that Twilight had requested from her old study in Canterlot. The ponies around him gave him odd glances as he made his way down the center of the cobbled streets of Ponyville, wondering why he was carrying so many objects on his own.

Their concern was fleeting however and they returned to their daily tasks readily enough. They’d seen far stranger things in the time Twilight and her dragon assistant had resided in Ponyville, after all.

Ponyville was a mostly peaceful village, and thus, crime was not a major issue and it was for this reason that many of the town’s residents didn’t question why Twilight had left her library door open all morning. The residents were also mostly practical, there weren’t many who sought knowledge from the library and those who did were but rare visitors to the studious unicorn and her assistant.

Twilights close friends had their own trials and tribulations to deal with in their day to day lives and they, like much of the townsfolk, had not yet noticed her disappearance.

Pinkie Pie was another matter entirely. Everypony in Ponyville knew Pinkie Pie, whether they wanted to or not and was a regular sight throughout town, either pranking or taking part in her usual antics. The residents of Ponyville noticed Pinkie's disappearance far more than Twilights, but were simply glad to have not run into the pink menace so much that they were completely unconcerned about her absence.

Who but the mare herself could predict Pinkie Pie, after all?

Spike, being as close to Twilight as he was, knew immediately something was wrong as soon as he noticed the open door of the library and entered, immediately shocked at the state of the library. Papers and books were scattered about the place and one of the desks had been overturned, the various objects that had occupied its surface now lay scattered on the floor.

‘Awww! It’s gonna take me ages to clean all this up! I wish Twilight would be more careful with her experiments...’

Spike noticed a strange luminescent rune in the center of the room, the floor around it was clear of debris of the rest of the library and the wooden floor was scorched slightly, as though a phoenix had regenerated there. Spike set down his load by the door and waded through the mess, hundreds of pages lay scattered about the place, their surfaces covered in hastily scrawled mathematics and complex diagrams. The dragon took no notice of this as his attention was drawn towards the rune.

The intricate patterns glowed slightly and Spike could even see faint wisps of smoke still rising from it. Clearly one of Twilight’s experiments had gone wrong... again, and the mare herself was nowhere to be seen...

Out of curiosity, Spike picked up one of the notes, puzzling over the strange mathematics and magical diagrams. They were incredibly complex, and he could make neither heads nor tails of Twilight’s calculations and the purpose of the diagrams escaped him entirely.

“Gr-Gravi...? Graviton Generation? Temporal Extrapolation...? Leyline Anchoring?!”

This was way beyond his knowledge, and from what he could figure out, it resembled a heavily modified teleportation spell.

There was no way he would be able to figure this out on his own.

He needed help.

Spike managed to salvage some spare parchment from the mess and quickly wrote a letter to Princess Celestia. He wasn’t excessively worried, considering that this wasn’t the first time Twilight had messed up one of her spells.

Spike shuddered as he recalled the ‘Want it Need it’ spell.

Bringing himself from his reverie, he carefully rolled up the scroll and brought it before his face and closed his eyes. He focused on Equestria and then narrowed his focus to Canterlot, and honed his focus even further as he sought out Princess Celestia herself.

He drew in a quick breath as he located her and blew out a stream of luminescent green flame, incinerating the parchment he held before him and turning it to sparkling green ash, which quickly glided away on an invisible wind.

He thought of cleaning up the mess Twilight had left the library in, but thought better of it. He made his way up the stairs, wondering where Twilight was, and what she was doing...

o.o.O.o.o

Twilight’s heart thundered as she registered that it was raining, “The Anchor!” she bolted out from cover and back towards the rune, its arcane glow was already fading as the rain slowly washed away all traces of it from the smooth stone.

“No, no! NO! Celestia damn it all! No!” Twilight shouted out in denial at the rain, erecting a barrier over the arcane rune in an effort to save it from further degradation. She focused her magic again and drew stray photons from the air towards her horn; she paused momentarily at the feel of them.

They, too, were artificial. Just like everything else in this world seemed to be.

Just how far had she travelled?

Twilight discarded the thought for the time being and finished the spell, holding the small globe of purple light at the tip of her horn as she ran her eyes over the rune. The rune before her was what she called an ‘anchor’ it was basically what allowed her to travel through time safely, the principle was that it tied the spell to a particular set of spatial coordinates. Since the sun orbited Equestria, and not the other way around as Sombra’s observations of other planets had suggested, the main use of the anchor was unnecessary, but it did serve a second function.

It provided a way back.

Without the anchor, the spell would go completely haywire, sending those affected spiralling forever through time. The Crystal Empire had avoided this fate only because the entire capital city had been charged with magic, rooting it firmly to reality. This concept only took travel to the future into account; Twilight had adapted the ‘anchor’ to serve as a focal point for the spell to drag her back into the past.

As long as the anchor existed; travel between two points in time was possible. The complete destruction of the anchor was impossible while the spell was in effect, as it was still linked to the physical universe and the time traveller. However, once the spell ends, the anchor becomes susceptible to deterioration by the elements.

Like the rain, for example.

Twilight’s heart fell as she noted several gaps in the runes that made up the anchor. There was no way back now, not ever.

Their only link to the past was broken. They were stranded there.

Even if she could repair the anchor and cast the spell it wouldn't work because the anchor would still be broken at a specific point in time. A gap in a bridge, to put it simply.

“Twilight...?”

She whirled around and faced Pinkie, disengaging the force field that surrounded the anchor; there was no point worrying about it now, what was done was done.

She turned her attention to Pinkie Pie, for what it was worth, she looked genuinely guilty.

Twilight felt her emotions bubbling around inside her, a chaotic mixture of anger and hopelessness and Twilight simply bit her tongue and kept her lecture to herself. Telling off Pinkie Pie would serve no purpose here and would only cause them to drift apart, and Twilight didn’t want to be alone, not here.

She, instead, forced a smile onto her features and gave the only response she could think of, “Yes, Pinkie? What is it?”

Pinkie paused for a moment; the worry in her features was easy to read, “Where are we? Where did that spell take us?”

Twilight had been patient up until now, barely managing to contain her anger, but Pinkie’s question had brought her to breaking point and she shouted at Pinkie, her voice echoing off of the metal buildings and the cold stone and the dark sky.

“It was supposed to take me five minutes into the future, but no! You had to go and ruin everything by breaking my concentration! I have absolutely no idea ‘when’ we are, but I know for certain that this!”

Twilight reared up on her hind legs and waved her forelegs at the surrounding cityscape in frustration.

“Is where Ponyville used to be, and now it’s gone! There’s no telling how far we may have gone but I know that we’ve gone thousands, possibly even millions of years into the future!”

“Oh... couldn’t we just travel back then?”

Twilight stood right in front of Pinkie, their muzzles just barely touching, as she forced Pinkie back into the alley.

“NO! We can’t go back! Do you want to know why?” she gestured at the ruined anchor behind her, its magic completely faded now.

“Because that was our only way back and it’s broken! There’s no way back for us!”

Twilight prodded Pinkie with a hoof as she backpedalled further into the alley, “We. Are. Trapped. Here! Everypony we’ve ever known is dead, buried and their bones have turned to dust! I’m not even sure our race survived this far! We could be surrounded by aliens, for petes sake!”

She finally stopped pushing Pinkie back and glared at her angrily as Pinkie’s eyes began to tear, “I-I’m sorry Twilight! I-I didn’t know, I just didn’t want you to leave without saying goodbye.”

Her anger fled in that instant. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t blame Pinkie for this, she couldn’t blame anypony. If it was anyponys fault, it was hers for not taking more precautions.

She backed away from Pinkie and hung her head in shame, “I’m sorry, Pinkie... I guess I just lost it for a moment there... everypony I’ve ever known is gone...” Pinkie looked thoughtful for a moment her gaze going far as she thought.

She gasped.

“Heeheehee! Don’t be silly, Twilight! The princesses are probably still around, they could help us!”

Twilight’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

Why hadn’t she thought of that? Of course the princesses would still be alive, they were immortal after all. It was possible that they’d mastered magic completely at this point and that they would have a spell capable of sending Pinkie and herself back to their own time, even without an anchor.

It was so simple!

“Pinkie, you’re a genius!”

Twilight wasn’t sure if Canterlot still existed this far into the future, but perhaps she would be able to determine if the capital of Equestria had been moved if she gained a vantage point.

The metal buildings around them might provide her with the height she needed to plan out her next move. She focused on the lip of the roof and took hold of Pinkie’s hoof, her horn glowed a dim purple as she warped the space around her...

“You’re welcome Twilight, but we don’-“

Twilight steadied a disoriented Pinkie Pie as her magic reassembled their bodies on the rooftop. After making sure Pinkie was okay, Twilight turned around to get her bearings and stopped dead as she saw a world transformed.

Dark storm clouds loomed overhead in a thick blanket, casting the entire city in shadow and shrouding the tops of a forest of towering metal structures, their sides reflecting the artificial orange lights from the bustling streets between them.

There was not one shade of green anywhere, no sign of nature at all within this city.

Twilight gazed around at the metal valley and was shocked to see that the mountains themselves were also populated by more dull metal buildings. The entire valley resembled one big sprawling cityscape, far bigger than Manehattan had been back in her own time.

In the distance, Twilight could see several plumes of smoke rising from an area whose buildings closely resembled a griffin industrial block, but Twilight could, just barely, make out the hallmarks of pony workmanship in the design. The sounds of industry could be heard, even from this far away and the dull thumps of machinery echoed ominously.

Canterlot Castle, if it could be described as such in this era, stood at the centre of it all, a looming behemoth of metal and stone that cast its shadow over every other structure in the city. The graceful spires and towers Twilight had known as a filly had been replaced with what could have been mistaken as a shaped metal block that stretched far into the night sky and through the thick cloud layer.

‘This is the future? I-It’s so dark... why would anypony want this?’

Twilight just stood and stared, the light rain still pattering down from the clouds above. Twilight looked to the sky in irritation, only to see that the heavy clouds were beginning to disperse.

“At least it’s stopped raining... Pinkie? Pinkie!”

The pink mare gazed at something in the grey, turbulent sky, her tail shaking with such force that Pinkie’s entire body shuddered.

“Pinkie what’s wrong! What are you looking at?!” Twilight took Pinkie by the shoulders and shook her, trying to get her attention, “Pinkie!”

Pinkie’s eyes diverted from the clouds to Twilight just as the roiling sounds of thunder reached Twilights ears.

Pinkie whispered, her voice quavering with fear.

“Something’s falling!”

Twilight spun and looked up into the dispersing clouds as the sky lit up with waves of fire, and an immense metal object pierced the cloud layer. She stared in awe as it arced over the city; raging infernos of white hot flame dotted its length and the ground beneath her shook as the thing emitted a subsonic rumble.

She watched as the vessel soared overhead, its otherwise immaculate surface pocked and scarred, the metal seeming to have boiled and melted away in several places, revealing the honeycomb of compartments and corridors that lay beneath the surface.

Twilight’s eyes were drawn towards the enormous lettering imprinted into the side...

‘UEDS Approaching Dawn’

Twilight tracked its descent with her gaze, too shocked to do anything else as she watched the vessel fall from the sky, superheated metal plates peeling off and falling to the ground in its wake as it left a trail of thick black smoke behind it.

“By the stars...” the vessel continued its fall, far off into the distance and Twilight watched as, finally, it impacted the earth in the far distance. The prow of the vessel crumpled and ruptured as its weight forced it further into the ground, fire and debris flaring outwards in the places where the hull exploded. The air around the crashed vessel seemed to pause momentarily as a loud buzzing sound emitted from the depths of the vessel. The horizon lit up with a bright white light that blinded Twilight, forcing her to look away as the entire vessel detonated from within throwing what remained of the ship high into the air.

When Twilight's vision returned to her, she was shocked to see the horizon dominated by a plume of fire reaching high into the atmosphere, pushing back the storm clouds as the shockwave approached.

The force of the shockwave dispersed the clouds overhead, revealing a starless night sky, punctuated frequently by flashes of green and blue and the occasional flare of fire high in the sky. Twilight could see no stars, even though it was clearly night; she could not even see Princess Luna’s moon, there were only bright flashes of light and a shining ring cutting across the dark.

The building beneath her shuddered as the shock wave finally passed through the city, the majority of its energy spent. Twilight turned her eyes back towards the explosion in the distance.

She was too enraptured by the event, her eyes glued to the carnage in the distant horizon to notice Pinkie Pie prodding her with a hoof.

Pinkie prodded her further, “Yes! What is it?”

Pinkie simply pointed towards a floating metal object, a single glowing blue eye sat between a pair of twitching circular metal plates. The object hummed with energy as it seemingly hovered in the air; watching them.

“Unregistered unicorn located! Reporting coordinates! Commencing arrest!”

The machines eye suddenly changed from a soft sapphire blue, to an intense, fiery red as it advanced threateningly. Twilight took a nervous step back as the glow in its central eye grew to a bright red, a high pitched whine emitting from it

“Twilight. I think we should go now...” Pinkie said nervously as she tugged at Twilight, trying to get her to move away from the machine.

The machine responded by flaring its ‘wings’ and darting towards them threateningly, and Twilight fell back in surprise tumbling off of the buildings edge and taking Pinkie with her.

o.o.O.o.o

Celestia examined the library carefully, her old, experienced eyes seeing more than the dragon had. She could still feel Twilight’s presence in the room, it permeated the library like a faint scent, coalescing strongly in the sitting room and finally settling around the smoking rune that still glowed faintly among the scattered papers and books.

Celestia focused momentarily, her magic washing through the room in a wave of pale gold, revealing several arcing currents of energy flowing through the room, weaving complex and intricate patterns around a bright, ocean blue sphere.

The solar princess turned her attention towards the magical sphere, probing it with her magic. Celestia could feel Twilight’s magic sustaining the sphere, but she could not see within it.

The sphere seemed to resist everything.

Light, matter and even the passage of time had no effect on the sphere. To put it simply, there was no way it could exist.

Celestia could see it because she had outlined the energy with her own magic, effectively allowing her to see what wasn’t there. The sphere had dimension, energy and form, however, it simply did not exist in reality. She could see it, but it simply wasn’t there, or rather, it was everywhere and it made her uneasy.

What had Twilight done?

Celestia disengaged her spell and turned her attention to the more physical aspects of the room. It looked as though the library had suffered through a magical explosion, the tree from which the building was grown from was saturated with magic.

She focused her attention on the fibres in the tree, closely examining the dissipating magic. She felt the familiar currents of magic often exhibited by her student and quickly set about analysing the energy, probing it with great care and dissecting it in an attempt to figure out what had happened there.

Celestia was shocked to recognise the type of magic upon her close examination.

‘Gravity magic? The only unicorns to have successfully used gravity manipulation are Starswirl and...’

“Oh no...”

Sombra.

Celestia abandoned her examination and worriedly levitated several scattered notes before her eyes, frantically searching them for any clue that could tell her how far Twilight had gone.

She barely recognised concepts on these notes, and her experience ranged thousands of years. Her student had really outdone herself this time, managing to trouble even her usually calm and collected mentor with her experiments.

There was a reason she’d never toyed with chronomancy, it was too unstable, too unpredictable. Starswirl had barely survived his experiments with time magic, and Celestia had no reason to believe Twilight would fare any better.

“Oh Twilight... what have you gotten yourself into...?”.

*********

Props to...

NATOstrike

holyme

Author's Note

I could give you all a whole lot of reasons as to why it took so long to get this out, but i doubt you really actually noticed my absence... so... surprise chapter!

Prologue: Forward Unto Dawn

Prologue: Forward Unto Dawn

The future can be many things to many ponies; it can be a bright thing, a shining jewel of wisdom and enlightenment in the dark of the universe. It can be dark and oppressive, a grim reminder that things lurk in the shadows and that to defend against such things; one must become accustomed to warfare and bloodshed.

Whether it’s one or the other is for the species to decide and the long term survival of the species depends on the path they take. Enlightenment leads to complacency and becomes a prime target for the ignorant and crude who think only of destruction and power, such a civilization would accumulate vast knowledge but the fire will eventually burn out.

Warfare leads to power and it becomes easy for such a civilization to lose itself in bloodlust, devouring entire worlds and systems for the sole purpose of waging war. Destitute as that may be, such a civilization may last for eons, but all empires fade away eventually… everything dies, and everything has its time.

There are still those that straddle the proverbial fence, leaning towards neither option but maintaining a perfect balance between war and peace. Such a state is easy to achieve but difficult to maintain and these civilizations never reach their full potential, but it is these civilizations that last until the end of all things… the end of time and light and matter. Even then they are still powerless to prevent the darkness from engulfing them.

The Ponies of Equestria are one such civilization, they have had their conflicts and they have dealt with them while maintaining a semblance of peace. Over the eons, many forces, internal and external have threatened this peace but each and every time, heroes have been there to meet it.

A civilization is the result of its history, and thus the past shapes the present and the present shapes the future. This future is what Twilight wanted to see, she wanted to see her achievements, to see if she would be remembered. She knew the dangers of creating a paradoxical event chain and she would prepare her trip to the future carefully to avoid such a thing. Regardless of her plans, she still needed a way to travel to said future.

She needed this, she needed to see, needed to know if she would be remembered, it would give her life more purpose.

She needed prescience.

Twilight sought it with a fiery passion, her need to be remembered in history forever driving her towards knowledge. Starswirl the Bearded had only scratched the surface of manipulating time, which was something she’d never understood. His spells had brief limits and uses; he could have traveled far into the future, or the past. He could have learned so much but he didn’t. Why?

She knew there were other unicorns out there who pursued other avenues of foresight, and she thought them close minded. They simply sought the ability to predict, but if she could control time, she would gain the ability to manipulate, to shape events for the benefit of all Equians.

Celestia had warned her that manipulating time was a dangerous concept but she was confident in her abilities. She was Celestia’s prize student after all.

Twilight sifted through her notes one last time, levitating the candle close so she could make out the complex mathematics behind the spell she’d recovered from Sombra’s hidden archives.

It was the same spell he’d used to cast the Crystal Empire a thousand years into the future on the cusp of his defeat at the hooves of the alicorn sisters. He’d almost been able to cast it again recently before his defeat, which would have cast all of Equestria into the dark for eternity.

She ran her eyes once again over the extensive checklist she’d assembled. She’d left nothing to chance, even going so far as to send spike to her old study in Canterlot to get some things as a way to occupy him. She rolled up the parchment and put the checklist down, everything was ready, all she needed to do was revise her calculations and cast the spell.

She picked up the notes again and went through the calculations again. The spell used magic to create a localized ‘Gravity Storm’, intense study on Sombra’s part had revealed gravity to be capable of manipulating time and space but it carried a large amount of risk. The original spell he’d used was crude and had swallowed more than just the Crystal Empire and could have torn the world apart. Sombra had relied solely on the residual magical energy in the Crystal Empire to contain the spell from the rest of the world.

But even then…

It didn’t matter; Sombra was gone and was no longer a threat to them. Twilight had made extensive modifications to the spell and, using her magic as a buffer, Twilight would be able to contain the sheer amount of gravity to a significantly smaller area. This effectively formed a ‘gravity bubble’ with which she could use to manipulate time itself.

It was surprisingly similar to how a teleport spell worked, but on a much larger scale. Theoretically, she could combine the two to shift her body to a different location as well as a different time, but such experiments would come later.

Twilight finished the last of her modifications to the spell so that it would shift her and her only. She lowered the notes back to the desk and made her way to the arcane rune she’d prepared earlier, symbols of light blue traced the floor gracefully. Twilight took a deep breath and began to cast her spell, saturating the air around her and the rune with magical energy. The rune lit up and a semi transparent blue sphere closed around her, sealing her off from the world.

Twilight increased the amount of magic she was channeling into the spell and felt the fabric of time begin to warp as the sheer force of gravity bent time and space around her.

o.o.O.o.o

Pinkie Pie sat bolt upright as she woke up, her front left fetlock was twitching, which meant somepony was leaving!

Without a ‘Farewell-We-Hope-You-Have-A-Safe-Trip-And-Come-Back-Soon-Party’?

Like Completely-Not-Fictional-Human-Tartarus they would!

Her right ear twitched forwards two times in quick succession, that meant it was somepony close to her, it twitched another two times. It was somepony really close. Why would one of her friends have to leave? It was night time.

Pinkie’s left eyelid closed completely for a full three seconds… That could only mean one thing. Somepony who was close to her was leaving! Leaving for a long time!

A very long time, Pinkie amended. She leaped out of her bed and darted out of the open window, seeming to defy gravity momentarily before dropping to the ground with a soft thud. She gave herself no more than a second before darting off again, the sound of a Boeing Airliner following in her wake.

‘Wait. What’s a Boeing Airliner? Ooh it sounds like a cake! I bet it’s a cake of some kind, a giant flying cake with wings that go… what? I like cake it’s all yummy wummy with-’

Pinkie’s disparate thought came to a bone grinding stop along with her body as she impacted the door of Twilight’s Library. She got up, rubbing her sore muzzle with a forehoof as she gazed up at the Library momentarily. A bright blue glow shined from every window in the building and nothing could be seen within.

Pinkie, knowing what Twilight was like, instantly knew what this meant and only had one thing to say before dashing inside, “whoo boy!”

o.o.O.o.o

Time began to bend around her and Twilight carefully molded it, she only wanted to jump five minutes into the future after all, magic like this was dangerous enough without making proper preparations. Her concentration almost broke when she heard her door burst open and a pink blur flashed in.

She made out the form of Pinkie Pie from the corner of her eye and her heart sank.

‘Pinkie Pie! What is she doing here? It’s the dead of night!’

Pinkie Pie hesitated before leaping at her, “Twilight! Stop! Leave the wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff to The Doct…”

Twilight’s fleeting concentration broke completely as Pinkie tackled her and she lost control of the spell as it accelerated beyond her ability to control or direct. She felt Pinkie and herself being whisked away from their current time and she squeaked as a massive wave of vertigo washed over her. She felt the world slipping past her, changing and growing older, her view of it all was obscured by the solid blue sphere as the years flashed past. One year, one hundred years, one thousand years!

It kept going and she shouted at Pinkie who was giggling madly and clutching at her as they flew through time.

“Pinkie! What have you done?!”

Twilight squeaked again as the sphere shuddered under an impact, it was momentary and it passed however, and the winds of time gripped her again, whisking them both further into the future.

She’d lost count of the years that had passed at this point and simply held onto Pinkie, assuming the spell would run itself dry eventually. No spell could run itself indefinitely, even time spells had their limit… Starswirl’s spells certainly did.

Natural gravity took hold of Twilight again and she fell to the ground with Pinkie still holding onto her as a deluge of ice cold rain drenched the both of them.

Groaning from the disorientation, Twilight twitched feebly, still entangled with an unconscious Pinkie Pie. She must have blacked out at some point, which wasn't surprising, the spell was only meant to take one pony and it was a miracle that Pinkie had survived the trip.

Twilight disentangled herself from Pinkie Pie and got up, looking around. She could barely see anything in the rain and dark. The shadows of tall metal buildings loomed over her oppressively and the stone beneath her hooves was cold and smooth, without blemishes of any kind. The only sources of light were strange metal poles with what looked like glowing crystals on the top.

Twilight shuddered in the ice cold rain as she turned her attention to Pinkie, the storm clouds above her blotting out the sky. She nudged Pinkie with a hoof in an effort to wake her up and she stirred slightly, mumbling something about cake. Twilight abandoned her efforts for the time being and focused on finding some shelter from the icy rain.

Seeing what looked like a narrow alley, Twilight levitated Pinkie onto her back and made her way towards it, her legs still shaky from the spell. Twilight deposited Pinkie next to some strange metal cans and lay down next to her, the rain still fell here but the buildings on either side of them shielded them from the worst of the storm.

She watched from the shadows of the alley as strange metal carriages sped past them at obscene speeds.

‘Where are we?’