Introduction to Finality

Minutes later, Twilight sat at her work desk, fiercely writing onto a piece of fancy parchment. Alistair stood a few paces behind her; looking increasingly worried with each passing minute of Twilight writing more and more onto her letter.

Several parts of the parchment had been ripped by the strong strokes she made with the quill, and every mistake that was made was followed by a loud “Shoot!”, Excess ink splattered between the spaces of the words, making the letter appear incredibly dishelmed and difficult to read.

But even then, Twilight went on. Writing paragraph after paragraph of what looked like scribbles, but was actually in depth descriptions and retellings of Twilight’s recent findings to the Princess.

After some time, she dipped her quill into the near empty ink well one last time and wrote in large curvy handwriting: From Your Student, Twilight Sparkle. She then rolled up the thick yellow paper with a lovely little silken bow and yelled for Spike.

In a flash, the little lizard bolted into the room, breathed green fire onto the note, saluted to Twilight, then ran out as quickly as he had entered. Alistair barely got a glimpse of the little guy.

“So…um…are you done?” He asked, a little unsure with the question he was asking.

“Yes.” Nodded Twilight. “My letter to the Princess has been sent and finished.” She took off her low hanging librarian’s glasses and stiffened herself out of her work chair. “And now I think I owe you some answers to what just happened, Hmm?”

Alistair responded by jarringly bobbing his head a few times in agreement.

Twilight trotted over to a nice stretch of hardwood and crumpled down onto the ground in exhaustion. She took a few breaths then focused her attention back to Alistair.

“Now you saw how I was very…surprised when you revealed that magic, your magic, had been involved with you arriving in Equstria? Well, I had good reason to be a bit alarmed with this…reveal on your part.”

“Why is that?”

“Well…you’re a bit different in a sense, Alistair.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, no duh Twilight. I mean, I am-” He gestured to his face, hands, legs, torso, and entire body, “-A bit different in more ways then a few.”

Twilight giggled. “Yeah, you are. But not only in a physical sense. I meant in a magical sense.”

One of his eyebrows rose. “Go on.”

“Alistair, you possess a very unique form of magic within yourself. Now this magic has its benefits, but it also has its setbacks. And not only to the user can these setbacks apply, it can also affect the ponies around you.”

“You see” she continued “You possess something called: Dimensional Marginalization Transpiration Relocation, or DMTR, for short.”

He half cocked his head in surprise. “You mean the spell I cast…to get here?”

“Yes!” Encouraged Twilight, snapping her hoof. “That and the same.”

“But how can that be special? I just m-moved from one place to another.”

Twilight shook her head. “It’s not that simple. When you cast your spell, you didn’t just teleport; you broke through barriers, barriers to a different dimension.”

He tightened his brow. “What are you talking about?

“Different realms of reality. Alternate plains of existence created by shifting possibilities of both the inhabitants and environment. It’s kind of complicated, but that’s the jest of it.”

“B-But…this place…it looks so…similar to how everything looked before…” His voice trailed off. His speech was starting to become sluggish and sick. Twilight worried he might faint again.

She quickly sprung up from the floor and trotted over to him. “Alistair, are you ok? You don’t sound well.”

“I’m…fine” He mumbled, as he stumbled past Twilight. “This is j-just…a lot to take in…again.”

“Are you sure?” She asked, attentively and still worried.

“Y-Yeah…I’m fine” He maneuvered his lumbering body towards a wall. He grasped the flat surface with both of his hands and positioned his back against it for support. His torso was lurching forward, like he was all ready to fall.

Twilight walked a bit closer, her eyes wide with concern. “Do you feel sick? Does your head hurt? Do you need some water? Do you need me to leave the room? I can leave the room if you want.”

Alistair smiled a shaky grin. “No…please…stay with me. I feel fine.”

“But your body, your face, you seem…distraught, Alistair.”

He continued to smile. “Twilight…I’m not distraught…I’m happy.”

Her face became one of disapproval and her voice was in a scolding manner. “Alistair, right now is not the time to be joking. You look legitimately ill and I can’t have you playing game like this, so please stop it.”

He responded with a sense of desperation. “No really, I’m happy! What you just said, what you told me, it’s amazing.”

“B-B-But you sounded hurt! Like you where about to have an emotional breakdown of some sort.”

“Twilight, I sounded at peace. What you told me…it put some things to rest. And I am grateful for you doing so.”

Her face suddenly became lifted with jubilance. “Wait here a minute.” Twilight bolted up the stairs into her room and quickly jumped back down the stairs. She flipped open her notepad. “What things got put to rest?”

Alistair chuckled at her willingness to archive every thing he said. As he answered her question, he was no longer afraid to tell her the truth, to reveal and retell what he had seen just two weeks prior.

There really wasn’t a proper way for him to tell Twilight; it was that kind of story. It was the kind that you take a long pause to begin with and you quickly fly through it with your mouth jarring off at a mile a minute. A feeling of discomfort fell into his stomach as he was about to open his mouth. He ignored it and pressed on.

“Remember how I told you about my…realm being a lot like yours? Same flora, fauna, and environment?”

Twilight nodded her head in agreement.

“Well it was like that, for awhile. I wasn’t lying to you. The weather was nice and mild, food was easy to get, I even had a nice little cabin down by the river.” He sighed deeply. “But that changed just a few months ago.”

Twilight was scribbling down into her notepad. “How so?”

“Well…first it was the animals. They got, uh, mean to say the least. Snarling all the time, foaming, sometimes even running up and biting me.”

“Sounds horrible.” Remarked Twilight.

He smiled weakly. “It gets worse. Then the sky started being real…real nasty. It’d rain a lot and the winds would be consistently tossing things around. But most importantly, the sky itself, turned black! That’s right, pitch black, like coal. You’d think it was the end of the world, and it kind of was.”

“And after all of this, the ground decided to be mean too. The dirt became rocky and coarse, almost like grey diamonds. And with the soil being like this, most of the trees died. And all those dead trees standing around in the wind…wasn’t a good mix. Going outside at that point wasn’t even an option, unless I wanted to be crushed by flying chunks of wood or cut to ribbons by flurries of splinters.”

“I sat in my cabin, praying that this spell of chaos would be over, that I’d be left alone and things could go back to the way they were.” He sighed once more. “You can see it didn’t turn out that way.”

“I scraped by for awhile, living off stored up food and old jugs of water. But once I got to that last bag of dried beans, I knew it was time to go. I just couldn’t wait any longer.” His voice became chipper, this was now the hopeful part of the story. “So, I concentrated long enough, get the energy built up, preformed the spell, and well…here I am!”

Twilight put down her notepad. “Wait, hold on a minute. Where did you learn the Dimensional Marginalization Transpiration Relocation spell?”

He looked at her, confused. “What?”

“The spell, where did you learn it?”

He paused. “What?”

“The-spell-where-did-you-learn-it?”

Alistair stared at her blankly, still not quite understanding the question. “What?”

She sighed deeply and caressed the bridge of her nuzzle. “Nevermind.”

Twilight wasn’t in the mood for digging any deeper, at least for tonight. Her normal hunger for knowledge and intrigue was being overcome with sleepiness, stress, and “What?”. She figured that at some point, sooner or later, he’d tell her more about himself. Alistair seemed to be pretty awful at keeping secrets, if he was even keeping secrets.

There was still the possibility of him not knowing where he learned the spell or he could’ve just been born knowing it. There’d been stranger things that had happened, especially with magic. For now she’d have to wait, and for once, she was kind of ok with that.

Alistair walked over to the edge of the staircase and stuck his leg out, about to walk down. He stopped himself a moment and turned around to face her.

“Twilight?” He asked, his voice on the edge of something.

“Yes?”

“Thank you…for everything.”

He turned around and walked back down the stairs. Once he had reached the bottom, he waited for a moment then called up to Twilight: “Good night!”

She responded with a returning: “Good night.”

Alistair waited a moment at the foot of the stairs, listening to her familiar hoofsteps go up the small flight to her room and then the normal click to her flimsy bedroom door. Hearing both these things, he slyly double taked, one to his right, and one to his left.

He tiptoed madly toward the front door. Checking over his shoulder, he made sure that nobody in the tree house was following him. “Can never be too careful” he mumbled to himself.

He gently wrangled the door handle with his shaky hands. Little by little, he creaked it open to see if his rendezvous was waiting outside. Seeing her pink mane through the crack, he threw open the door in a burst of energy and excitement.

“Pinkie!” He yelled, immediately realizing his volume and then correcting his greeting in a whisper. “Pinkie!”

“Hi!” she chipperly greeted. “Are you ready for the ultimate display of pyrotechnics this side of the continent!?!”

“You know it!” he shouted.

Pinkie Pie held up her pink box of firecrackers, sparklers, bottle rockets, smoke bombs, sky rockets, Crystal Empire candles, flares, and a mysterious small case full of ‘blasting caps’. “Then let’s go!” she hollered.

The residents of Ponyville were treated to an early sunrise that night, one that showed up at two in the morning, and was full of color…and explosions.