Nightmare Equestria

“Twilight Sparkle, my dearest and most faithful student…”

I screamed and threw the crown across the room. Hastily I looked around the hallway where I was standing, yet nopony was there. My horn flared to life as I fumbled with the candles in the hallway. Finally they lit up and cast back the shadows that eternally shrouded this house. There was still nopony around. Slowly my breathing calmed.

Across the room where the crown landed, its jewel glistened in the wavering light of the candles. Slowly I made my way towards it. I had heard a voice, but what if it wasn’t from in the room? Some kind of magic spell infused in the crown? I looked down at it as the crown lay at my feet.

I can’t allow myself to trust this thing. There were too many stories in the news of the enemy’s desperate attacks on the kingdom. There were also stories of traps the Dark Queen had set for potential traitors. While those stories were rarely spoken of in anything but a whisper and never around anypony who might be a spy, everypony knew the horrifying deaths that awaited those who fell for those traps. Even with all of these cautious warnings inside me, I was still curious.

“I have a hard time seeing the Queen putting such an interest in me,” I said to myself. And in my head I thought, also, if somepony really wants to hurt me, I don’t think that I would stop them.

Even while I assured myself that it was worth the risk, my cautious nature continued to scream warnings. To quite this inner voice I grabbed the chest the crown came in and dragged it into the hall closet, I also threw some of my parent’s old coats on top of it. I wished that I had enough control of my magic to perform transformation spells so I could hide it better, but those were difficult for any but the most skilled unicorns. And were well beyond my own limited control.

Next I grabbed the crown and I made my way up the stairs to my parent’s study. Then once behind the securely locked door I lit more candles so that the room was well illuminated. Finally as assured that I would be undisturbed as I could be, I set the crown on my father’s old work desk. I sat in front of the crown and began to stare intently at it. My horn glowed as I tried to probe the depths of the magic within the crown. But with my limited skill with my magic I succeed only rocking the crown lightly. Giving up on that I decided that the only way I was going to find out what secrets the strange gift held is by putting it back on. I lifted the crown with my magic and took a breath to steady myself, then put it on again.

Again the feeling of familiarity rushed through me, but this time accompanying it was a feeling of correctness, as if there had been something off before. Like a noise in an empty room, that I never noticed was there, until now it was gone and I was relieved by its absence. Slowly growing with this feeling of rightness was a growing magical presence, one I felt I should know but couldn’t quite place. The voice grew in my head and suddenly I was in a different place.

I appeared to be in an extremely fancy room. There was a large fire burning in the fireplace and many open scrolls lay open around the room. Several more lay waiting to be read in a neat pile to the side. In the middle of the floor there was a large purple rug with a golden cushion. On the wall beyond the rug is a tapestry with an image of a shooting star on it.
Suddenly before me was a white pony who seems to shine in the darkness of the room. The light is so bright that I couldn’t make out any of the details of this pony.

“Twilight Sparkle, my dearest and most faithful student. Some disaster has befallen Equestria. I don’t know if you know me but I am Princess Celestia, your teacher, mentor, and friend…”

With a gasp I removed the crown from my head. Immediately the voice was gone and I was back in my parent’s study, sitting at my father’s desk. Why would the banished sun princess be sending me something like this? And why did she speak to me like we were close? Quickly I looked around fearing that while I was listening to the message of the crown that some of the Dark Queen’s soldiers had come to carry me off. But the room was still empty. I took another breath to steady myself again, then put the crown on.

Again I was back in the room, which I distantly remembered to be Princess Celestia’s room, and indeed there is the princess herself before me. Now I could see past the glare to see the Alicorn. She stood nearly twice my height, her coat all a shimmering white, with her great wings arching up over her back. Her flowing mane always seemed to move as if there was a constant breeze in the room. She continued speaking as if I hadn’t removed the crown.

“…your teacher, mentor, and friend. With the growing number of threats and attacks against Equestria I have decided to create a series of magical fail safes. I have made this one in case you ever find yourself without my guidance or without the help of your friends.”

“Friends?” I thought. “What friends?”

“I don’t know what manner of disaster might strike Equestria that I will have to activate this. And I pray that I never do. But it is better for me to be prepared so that you and your friends will be able to repair whatever damage has been done. What you are wearing is one of the Elements of Harmony. The Element of Magic! The Elements are some of the strongest magical devices in the known world. Individually they have massive power, but together they are unstoppable. You and five of your friends are the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. The other five elements are Honesty, Laughter, Generosity, Loyalty, and Kindness. Included in the case this Element came in are several things that you will find helpful on your quest.
Again I pray that I never have the need to activate this but too many things have been waking up, too many old enemies coming back, for me to believe that everything will be as it should be forever. That is all I must say for now, so I will bid you farewell, and hope that you never see this.”

The image of the alicorn princess faded, as did the surrounding room. I was left in darkness. For a moment I wondered if I was back in the study and the candles had gone out. But suddenly the room burst to color again. The background was indistinct, fading in and out of focus constantly. Colored blobs moved around in the background. Distantly as if through a tunnel there was the sound of screams and talking.

Again in front of me was the Princess, Celestia. This time she was not her calm and composed self that she had showed before. Her sides were damp with sweat and her breath came in gasps as if she had just run a great distance at speed. The white alicorn constantly glanced aside at two of the colored blobs, one was dark blue almost black and the other was smaller and brown in color. She speaks quickly, panic written into every facet of her being.

“Twilight! I don’t know how much time I have left. Someone has gone back in time and changed history! Your history, the history of your friends. The change they have made is rewriting everything that has happened since then. I don’t know how things will be different but it can’t be good. In the Elements of Harmony I have hidden a last gift for you and you friends. Where ever they are you must find your friends and reunite them with their Elements. Only then will things be able to go back to the way they should be.”

Another scream echoed from behind the princess. She stopped and turned to look at it. The dark blue blob behind her was growing darker with each passing moment. The distant sobbing changed slowly to maniacal laughter. Celestia turned back to me, there were tears flowing down her eyes.

“Find your friends! Find the elements! Put history to rights!”

She then faced the blob behind her, which was now a deep black color, and addressed it, “I am so sorry. My sister I am so sorry…”

Everything rapidly faded to black. There was nothing, no princess, no out of focus blobs, no explanation.

“How can this be true?” I said to myself. Still in the dark of the magic, there was nopony and nothing else to talk to. “How can history be changed? And if it was, how could I be expected to change it back? I am terrible at magic, there must have been some kind of mistake!”

At this point I was rambling, trying desperately to break the power of the spell over me. Anything to return to my terrible, dark, nightmarish world, while it still made sense to me. I could feel the panic rising in me once again, just as it did in the factory. I could tell that I was going to have another break down.

“Not here! Not in my parent’s house!” It had been my greatest fear for years that one day I would have a break down in my own home and destroy the last place where my family had been alive together. Suddenly I saw a small purple spark floating in the darkness. Quickly I calmed down as it approached me. Here there was no latent fear, no cautious voice. I distantly knew this spark, and want to know it more closely.

Through my horn I could feel that it was some kind of magical container. Using a bit of my magic I reached out and opened the spark.

And it all came back.

All the memories of a previous life. A life now destroyed.

As the memories flooded my mind I collapsed onto the desk in my parent’s study. The spell was gone, but the memories wouldn’t stop flowing. Time seemed to flow backward. I remembered helping my brother and his new wife save the crystal empire. I remembered helping them before that to banish the changeling army. I remembered defeating the monster Discord with the help of my closest friends and the Elements of Harmony. I remember the night at the gala, and defeating Nightmare Moon, the day I first met my friends and learned about the Magic of Frienship.

As I remembered further and further back, I was comparing the new memories with the memories that I now knew were lies. By doing this I found the exact point when the two timelines diverged. The day of my magical entrance exam, the day I first met princess Celestia and became her prize pupil. In my false memories I don’t become the Princess’s pupil, or even gain admittance into the school, instead I go home crushed and disappointed. Shortly thereafter I gave up my dreams of being a powerful unicorn mage, and went to work in the factory. That day was the day when in our real history my good friend, Rainbow Dash, did the first Sonic Rainboom, something that happens when a Pegasus goes fast enough to break the sound barrier, creating a rainbow and a sonic boom at the same time. It was the explosion from this that helped me to pass my entrance exam and drew the attention of Princess Celestia.

Suddenly the realization of everything that I had lost crashed down around me. My brother and parents, are dead in this world but were alive in the true world. My best friends in the whole world, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, all lost somewhere in this nightmare. Spike, my dragon personal assistant and practically my younger brother probably never made it out of his shell, because opening it was what allowed me to pass my exam. And worst of all, Celestia, my teacher and almost a second mother was dead or banished, all because one thing in history changed.

With the realization of my loss cascading over me, and my earlier exhaustion, forgotten till now, combining their weight, I collapsed against the desk, then rolled to the floor, as I passed out.

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