Five minutes later, we're crowded around a table, collectively scribbling on scrolls, parchment, the empty notebook I've been carrying in my saddlebags since before the looping started, and a stray napkin that managed to find its way into the pile.
"This is sheerest madness," Luna mutters, holding up a succession of equations side by side. "Starswirl's Seventh Law is integral to the field equations which underlie the entire discipline of tempomancy. Every single time spell ever created validates its formulation. To alter it should render the temporal spells we know wholly uncastable. And yet there is a remarkable consistency to the incorrectness of results obtained using the law which Twilight Sparkle proposes. I suspect some deeper truth at play."
"My version of the time spell did work, or I wouldn't be here," I say, my head starting to ache from genuine, good old-fashioned academic focus. It's a nice ache. "And no offense, but this timeline's version of Starswirl was a hack."
"On the contrary, Starswirl was the single smartest pony to have ever lived," Luna says flatly.
Celestia doesn't look up from her furious scribbling; she's filling up page after page trying to subtract the two field equations from each other. "Luna was one of the few ponies that could hope to keep up with him —"
"More or less."
"— and even with the benefit of both of their notes, after Luna's banishment it took me a decade to derive a castable looping spell, and two lifetimes to understand it. So if you're saying that the Starswirl you remember was smarter than the one who created this discipline, forgive me if I'm dubious."
I set down my quill. "Fair enough. But I'm trying to recreate my work on his unfinished spell I cast to start looping — using your Seventh Law instead of my Ninth — and when I do the matrix algebra, the extra variables in the divisors explode out into this ridiculous sequence of additional terms that add three dimensions to the hypermanifold. My brain locked up around the time I had to visualize its discontinuities in n-space. How did pre-looping me even cast this without help?"
"The spell in the archives wasn't his. It was a simplified version of my own completed looping spell, with all of the math pre-derived but missing a few key components a sufficiently clever mage could deduce from scratch."
"Huh." It was Celestia's looping spell I cast in this history? "Then when you —"
"And before you ask, no, I didn't point you at it. I stored it there as a contingency, and you stumbled across it. I've got a lot of those around."
I nod, considering. Suddenly, there's room for my original doubts to creep back in, but on this one the circumstantial evidence is still on her side. It would have saved both of us a great deal of heartache if she'd simply asked me for my help instead of maneuvering me into looping, and no matter her motives, I can still trust her to be smart enough to act in her own self-interest. I try to shake the suspicion and refocus. "So … how are those equations coming?"
"Slowly. Maybe you should take a look." Celestia sets down her own quill for a moment and tilts her head back to work out a crick from her neck. "You know, I always figured a mage of your talents would discover the loop spell someday — but I designed those missing pieces to take several days' work to derive, so I'd have enough lead time to keep tabs on anypony who requested access to the scrolls. Can you imagine my surprise to find out that you had solved it before I even got the report that you'd visited the Archives? That puts you on a level with geniuses like Clover."
I feel my face heat. Did … did she just call me smarter than her? It's not quite me she's complimenting — it's the other, pre-looping Twilight — but even so, my heart skips a beat before my brain notices and kicks it back into its cage. I shouldn't take her words at face value right now, it warns. Maybe she's trying to stroke my ego so I relax and get careless.
… Augh! I hate this! Celestia's paranoia is infectious. She's probably just trying to be nice, but given my situation, I can't afford not to be suspicious. Which means I won't be cooperating fully, which means she'll have further grounds for suspicion, which means she won't cooperate … is that all I have to look forward to if the math doesn't convince her? Suspicion forever?
To my relief, a distraction sidelines that thought before it starts spiraling in earnest. Luna gasps, then leaps up and slams her hooves to the table. "T squared!"
"T what?" Celestia and I chorus.
"T squared! The thaumological constant."
"Again, what?" I ask.
"Oh! T." Celestia turns to me. "That's the base energy potential of the background thaumic field."
"… You have a constant for that?" I say, confused. "I thought Starswirl's definition of 'thaum' was based on energy potential, so by definition that's 1."
"No," Celestia says. "The thaum is based on the energy required to invoke a reference spell Starswirl created for measurement purposes. T is 2.718 thaums per bushel per second."
"The square of which is present as a necessary conversion factor in nigh unto every single equation in modern thaumic theory, including the loop spell you cast four days ago." Luna flips her calculations around and gestures to her sheet. "In the case when both branches are on the same timeline — as we had assumed they must be, if parallel universes were inaccessible — then the magnitude of the branch height minus the prominence will be identical no matter the contact points one chooses. And when one applies last century's discovery of Foaler's Identity …" She taps the first line of her notes, where she wrote the divisor that distinguishes their Seventh Law from my Ninth, and then the final line: = (T * T). "The divisor cancels out wholly with the square of the thaumological constant, leaving Twilight Sparkle's simplified equation."
I snatch the pages from Luna and skim through the equations. "So Starswirl did screw up his math! Your spell's way more complex than it needs to be — so complex that sorting the problem out took you a thousand years and extradimensional help — and he hid that goof by canceling it out with a constant that's complicating literally everything else you cast."
Luna holds up a hoof. "Do not leap to conclusions. You say that you did not expect your spell to work as it did in bringing you to us. Is it possible that our Starswirl outlined a more complete general case, and due to the false simplicity of the equation you used, it only produces the expected results when used within a single timeline?"
"No," I say, a little churlishly. "Your Starswirl was wrong. He went crazy."
A frown flits onto Luna's muzzle. "He was driven to madness by his dark research, but it affected his intellect not a whit. There is no need to impugn his memory so."
"Well, if he hadn't screwed up," I say with calmness I don't feel, "there wouldn't have been a need to torture me, because instead of talking about impossibilities you could have theorized that I was a parallel-universe Twilight and talked things out peacefully. So forgive me if I'm the tiniest bit upset at him."
Luna looks away, emotions warring on her muzzle. "Twilight Sparkle, Starswirl sacrificed everything, including his own sanity, to save us all. Think not ill of him for a single mathematical error. Our mistakes in mistreating you are our own."
"Actually," Celestia says slowly, "I don't think it was a mistake."
Oh, that is it. I whirl on her, ready to say something that hopefully she'll regret more than me, but even as I'm moving her eyes go wide and she holds up both forehooves. "Starswirl! Starswirl's mistake wasn't, because I think he did it deliberately."
I bite back my words, deflected but not entirely mollified — is this some attempt to pass the bit for her screw-up? — as Luna's wings fluff out in a way I recognize from watching Rainbow Dash read a bad performance review. "Sister," she says with quiet menace.
Celestia swallows, caught between us, and some quiet inner part of me giggles in schadenpferde. "Set aside your feelings for him and think, Luna," Celestia pleads. "If this Twilight wasn't unstuck in time by a hostile force, then her very presence suggests her math is the correct one. But if that simpler formulation worked, why would Starswirl write a Seventh Law that created such complications in his own spellcasting? In this Twilight's history, he was able to discover the simpler version, so I'm dubious that the one we knew would have been incapable. And you don't introduce such complexity without some benefit."
Luna sets her jaw, takes several breaths through her nose, and begins pacing. "Thy point strikes true. The additional complexity adds naught but interference with advanced spellcraft." Her wings resettle as she walks. "Literally the only benefit of our Seventh Law over her Ninth is in identifying cross-dimensional contact as impossible."
"Convincing everypony it's impossible," I correct. "Falsely."
Celestia nods. "I agree." That feels like an accomplishment — having her back me up on something. It would feel like more of one if she were meeting my eyes. "We know he tried to bury the knowledge of the Crystal Empire. It would seem that wasn't all he was trying to hide."
"But why would he go to such trouble to lie about parallel dimensions?" I ask — and as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize why she's avoiding my gaze, and my heart sinks. "You think he was protecting you from me, don't you."
Celestia closes her eyes for several moments before answering. "That does appear to be the most likely possibility, yes."
"Princess," I plead, thoughts of more loops of lies already filling my head. With what I know, I might be able to salvage this regardless of how she acts … but, for my sanity's sake, I need this to work. The alternative is that downward spiral. "Don't do this to me."
She sighs. "It's how I feel. Would you rather I lied to you about that? But … at the same time, that's not fair. It's not fair to you, or to Luna. I asked you for a glimmer of hope, and you've offered that. It's clear you legitimately are a different universe's Twilight — I can't imagine you came up with math correcting one of our fundamental magical laws on the spur of the moment — and if I was wrong about that … well …"
Hope cautiously stirs in my chest. "Then you were also wrong about me?"
But Celestia hesitates, and my heart sinks again. "Starswirl clearly didn't want us talking with you, but …" Her muzzle contorts. "No, that's not clear. Maybe it wasn't you he was concerned about. Maybe … maybe … this is a big coincidence." She closes her eyes. "No. That's simply not the way the universe works! At every level of existence, a higher order is imposed upon the lower. There are no coincidences — not unless another higher power like Discord or the Nightmare is stepping in to create dissonance."
"We cannot rely upon that logic to comprehend our situation," Luna says. "This Twilight Sparkle is not from our universe."
"I know," Celestia says, pressing her hoof to the bridge of her nose. "But I don't know what it means. I … don't … know. And I can't. Our evidence is too indirect."
I sigh and step down from my chair. That's it. I keep saying that, but this time it's different — resignation rather than frustration. I can't handle being strung along like this, not after everything I've endured and everything I've tried. "Well, think about it, then," I say heavily, "and call me when you figure out what the hay it's going to take for you to trust me." I ignore the tiny voice in my head pleading for me to bite it back for the sake of diplomacy. "Because here's something I do know: I've gone above and beyond, trying to give you a chance, and I don't see you bringing anything to the table except your stupid and poisonous suspicion. I'm sick of this. I'm sick of concessions. Sick of my fate being in your hooves. I'm sick of trying to save Equestria from you thinking that you're doing something good here, because this —" I sweep my hoof around the room — "is what happened when we tried it your way. I … I can't try any more, Princess. I can't make you be part of the solution, and you're not going to get anywhere but here until you decide to change."
I turn and stomp toward the side chamber. I wish I could say that that felt good, but there's no catharsis in it, only the bitter tang of failure. I didn't get through … back to the lies.
"Twilight," she says in a shaky voice as I light my horn around the door-grip, "wait."
… No. Not going to hope. I'll listen, but I've been jerked around one too many times to expect to hear anything I like. "What."
"You're right."
Rebellious hope stirs just enough for me to look back. "I'm sorry? I didn't hear that. Could you say it again? Perhaps with a little more groveling?"
Celestia looks about as small as it's possible for an alicorn to get. She's sitting on her haunches, legs pressed together, with wings tightly tucked in and head lowered. Even her mane seems wilted, pressed in against her body. "You're right," she says. "Something's got to change. I need your help — which means I have to trust you."
Luna frowns. "Celestia, trust should not be based on such cold calculation —"
Celestia holds up a hoof. "I was going somewhere with that. I have to trust you, Twilight … but underlying that trust, I need to know that our universe is safe from your knowledge. And this is where I'm failing both you and the world. I can't. I can't ignore Starswirl's fears, especially after the lengths he went to. But that's an impossible burden of proof. How could you possibly prove you're innocent of something that we know is coming but not how — something which you seem to know nothing about, which we might trigger by investigating?"
At that, the so-dumb-it's-brilliant voice begins to stir at the back of my brain. I hush it — I want to know where this is leading. "I appreciate that you recognize that. And?"
"And you're right about our impasse. The alternative to reconciling is Chrysalis … and to be honest, I'd rather see the world end than watch everything I love get torn apart, and then spend centuries rebuilding a shattered country the way I did after Luna's banishment." Celestia finally looks at me, her eyes weary. "You said I have to trust you for us to work together. I simply can't think of a way for that to happen honestly. But I do have a codeword that means Luna's investigation cleared you of suspicion. If I give that to you, we can proceed from next loop as if we had found a way to come to terms."
… Hunh.
I have absolutely no idea how to respond to that. "You want me to lie to you?"
She shifts uncomfortably. "I'm asking you to do something impossible; this just lets us proceed as if you had. Everything about this situation is already impossible. Does that really make it a lie?"
The shock of the idea is quickly wearing off, being replaced by the earlier gnawing horror of the trust spiral. "Yes! Yes, it does. I can't believe you're considering that." I mean, I was, but that was a temporary measure to let me go find whoever changed history; she's talking about it as a long-term foundation for cooperation. "You're going to want details, and I'm going to have to cobble together some story that sooner or later will fall apart, and then we're back here again except with even more distrust. Did neither of us learn anything from the teachable moment?"
Celestia grimaces. "Twilight, if I wanted to resolve this with lies, I'd have pitched this idea as some sort of genuine reconciliation, and tried to build some sort of inconsistency into the process that I would notice later on. For Luna's sake, and yours, I'm being totally honest about my position, so that you can move forward knowing exactly where I stand. I'm asking you to help me lie to myself, because it's too important to establish trust, and my suspicions won't let me."
I shake my head firmly. "You're making an effort. I have to give you credit for that. But it's still a horrible idea."
Luna clears her throat, glancing between the two of us. "My sister does raise an excellent point: if trust cannot be established, we all lose. I hardly see an alternative. Twilight, how else do you propose to lay a foundation upon which she may have faith in your motives?"
The so-dumb-it's-brilliant corner of my brain is screaming at full volume now, and with an opening like that, there's no way I can hold it back any longer.
Change the game.
"By doing something that a hostile looper would never do," I blurt out, and before my logic centers can stop me: "Spill the beans on my plan to end the world."
There's a deafening silence, like the aftermath of one of those entropic entanglement experiments that first-year thaumodynamics students use to prank each other, when the spell discharge has cascaded through the room and the metal orb is glowing red-hot in its cradle while frost crystals grow on every inorganic surface in sight. That's a pretty good analogy for the way I've suddenly sucked up every last jot of attention, too. Even Celestia is staring at me open-mouthed, as if she's trying to figure out whether she heard that right.
Luna clears her throat, breaking the silence. "Ah … Twilight, we are ill served by such jokes." The sentence ends with a hesitant upturn in tone, balancing between a question and a denial.
"It's not a joke. I've seen the future, and I've been shown exactly how to destroy the timeline. I reset, say 'Whitetail' —" I hear Celestia draw in a sharp breath as she realizes her codes are compromised — "release the Smooze to create an existential threat that forces the Princess and Chrysalis to work together, broker a cease-fire between them, and then manually trigger the Elements of Harmony into exploding everything after I've talked everyone into stopping their loop spell." With The One Loop gone, I have no idea how I'd make that work, so for good measure, I add: "I tried that already, by the way, but my brain broke. I do appreciate you fixing that." That last bit is aimed at Luna, whose cheeks are turning an ugly shade of grey as the color drains from them.
"You did try to end us," Celestia says slowly, her face contorting somewhere between horror and fury. "Give me one good reason that I shouldn't reset right now and break you."
"Paradox," Luna murmurs. "Twilight …"
I should be panicking right now, but none of the parts of me that are prudent enough to do so are in charge. I look intently into Celestia's eyes, matching her fire with something vaguely resembling Luna's earlier frost. "That. Also, because I really am going somewhere with this. We both know that with your voice trigger, you can reset faster than I can, so there's no reason to do anything rash. Hear me out."
Celestia stares at me for several tense seconds, just long enough for the rational part of my brain to recover and call for a vote to impeach the so-dumb-it's-brilliant part. The Braintown Council passes the motion, but Mayor Dumb vetoes it — she still has a few tricks left.
Finally, Celestia growls, "I don't know what your game is, but I'm hardly in the mood for ultimatums."
"There won't be any." I lean forward. "Because I literally have nothing to gain from telling you this. Wouldn't you agree? I already have what I would need if my intentions were bad. Even if I didn't, all I had to do was shut up and let you give me your trust code, and then, next loop, fish everything else out of a more cooperative you. For the same reason, there's no point in me lying, not when I could have waited and lied to a receptive audience. Any benefit I might get out of speaking up is completely negated by the fact I could have gotten that same benefit more easily and safely by waiting."
She thinks for a moment. "But you have nothing to lose, either, since you have a guarantee we won't remember this."
I feel my chest tighten. This is the point of no return. But it'll work … it has to work.
I steady myself and talk through the logic. "There's another thing the teachable moment taught me. Remember when you stopped me from walking away by pointing out how you could have taken advantage of it? Even when you can't trust words, you can trust sacrifice." Deep breath. "So you're wrong, Princess. You are going to remember all of this … because Princess Luna is going to teach you her memory cache spell, and you're going to record all of this in my brain."
"What?" Celestia thunders, but she's not looking at me.
Luna cringes, pinned like an entomologist's specimen. "Twilight," she begs, trying her hardest not to acknowledge her sister. "Do not do this."
I turn to her. This is the painful part. "I'm sorry," I say. "You trusted me, and I should honor that, but this is a secret you can't hide. You were willing to bend your rules and store a cache in me so that I could prevent you from doing something even more terrible. Well, you heard your sister's suggestion earlier. Without your help, our best-case scenario is a future of deliberate lies and toxic mistrust, adding up to the same problems not just for me but for her, and you, and the whole world. If there's a higher principle worth bending the rules for, it has to be this. We'll be less evil with the spell than without."
"No. It is not necessary. Hold this conversation in subsequent loops, and replay it until it is communicated."
"That won't work, and you know it. We can't establish trust when we're not remembering the same conversation; there's no way to prove we didn't game it. But this is a unique moment to establish honesty. It's the one loop that we can guarantee neither of us is replaying it for advantage — Princess Celestia can't reset without causing a paradox, and I can't reset without repairing my memories, which you would have noticed when you were fixing me back at the start of the loop. So we have to both remember it, and it has to be now."
"Even if it is necessary this once," Luna says in increasing desperation, "once the spell is learned, it will grow into a source of temptation. It will seem the answer to less and less urgent problems, until it is misused, then misused routinely. I have fallen prey to that darkness, Twilight Sparkle, and I cannot allow either of you to do the same."
"Which is why, every time we update our caches, you'll do so too," I say. "Help us, Luna. You know how time loops can change a pony. We need you as a conscience."
Luna closes her eyes, and Celestia takes advantage of the pause. "You told me the Elements of Harmony purged the dark magic from your brain when they cleansed you," she says, quietly but with a hard edge.
"They did," Luna responds, voice faint. "But they did not purge it from yours."
Celestia's jaw opens and closes. "You stored a cache in my mind," she manages. "Unbelievable."
"While under sway of the Nightmare. After my cleansing, I retrieved the cache in secret to learn more of its methods, that I might better recognize and combat it should it return. But I have never dared put that knowledge to use. Even now, had I not failed Twilight Sparkle so horribly, it would yet lie fallow."
Celestia shakes her head. "That is … just … that's not acceptable, Luna."
"I was aware," she says quietly. "That is why I did not inform you."
I feel the conversation drifting out of control, so I edge back in. "You know," I say placatingly, "we've all got secrets right now that we didn't want to come out. Celestia, you almost fought your sister to hold onto yours. Luna, you've been lying to her all this time." They both look away from each other. "Speaking of which, you bet your marks I'm freaking out about what's going to happen to me once we reset and you remember that I tried to destroy the world two loops ago. Maybe it's time to admit we all did some wrong things with the best of intentions — and realize that things have to change, starting now."
Celestia sighs. "This is a lot to take in all at once. What's behind your change of heart?"
Mayor Dumb hadn't thought that far ahead. "Well," I stall as ordinary logic steps back in, "it's become clear to me that, when you're looping, secrets are every bit as dangerous as lies — and we can't afford to waste our efforts playing trust games with each other." Instinct lends logic a helping hoof. "I was too scared of what you'd do to me to come clean right away, but I'm starting to think we've got a bigger problem here that we need to cooperate to solve, and I'm not talking about Chrysalis."
"Oh?"
I look Celestia in the eyes. "The only reason I was trying to destroy the world — and the only reason I know your code — is that, when the Elements of Harmony saved me after your brain-rip killed me and created a paradox, they told me to. They might be broken. Not just exploded-to-save-me broken, but something more fundamentally wrong." I briefly run through my visit with Harmony, leaving nothing out this time. They both listen in shocked silence.
"That's why I started to have second thoughts," I continue. "At the time — especially considering what you'd just done — I was totally convinced that destroying the world was a good thing, but once I started to think critically about it, the idea fell apart. Once I realized the implementation violated the spirit of at least one of the Elements, I decided that I wouldn't do it unless I was able to convince both of you to help. If it's genuinely true that our destruction is the best path, that truth should stand up to study and debate."
Celestia nods, her mind clearly elsewhere. Luna glances uncertainly at her sister.
"… Right?" I add.
"I'm sorry," Celestia says. "Give me a minute."
The room lapses into silence. I try not to let it get to me. Celestia was right — this is a lot to process all at once. But I can't help but feel terror creeping in by degrees. Was this really a good idea? I've built a long and fragile chain with the truth — all it takes is one weak link for her paranoia to sunder, and then I've put myself in her hooves and wrecked my only viable Plan B. And the truth is pretty far out there.
I suppose I could bail out and reset before Luna teaches Celestia the cache spell — but that could be bad, because like an idiot I brought all this up before Luna checked the math on how the Euthanatos affects the lich-necklace-thing. At least I can still emergency-reset if Celestia refuses to trust me, right? … except that now I've given her too much incentive to remember this. In her horseshoes, if I was being paranoid I'd lie and reconcile and learn the spell, and then leave myself a warning in the cache to get rid of looping-Twilight ASAP. So I can't trust her signals —
Luna's hoof prodding at my shoulder breaks me out of my spiraling panic. "Twilight?"
"Y-yes?"
"Given all that has been discussed, I shall do as you requested," she says solemnly. "Once you and Celestia are both prepared, we shall review the memory cache spell."
Something about that nags at me — then hits me between the eyes. I bite my lip, then decide the only chance I've got is to double down on the power of the truth; I'm already sunk if this doesn't work, so I can't afford to sabotage my chances by hedging. "No, we won't," I say. "You're going to teach it to Princess Celestia, not me. I said I had nothing to gain from being honest this loop, and as much as I'd like to know the cache spell, I need that to be true. I hope you and Celestia will consider teaching it to me after we straighten this out with a few resets, though."
"Ah," Luna says, her cheeks burning as she realizes that twice in a row she's handed me a gift a hostile looper could have horrendously misused. "I … ah. Just so. Thank you — again — for your honesty."
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Celestia nod. She stands and turns to me, drawing in a deep breath. "Alright then. You've given me quite a lot to think about, Twilight. I … don't know what my word's worth any more, but if you do follow through by telling us of the memory cache after you reset, I promise I'll treat you honestly and fairly, and we'll work together to fix both our problems. And if — when — you tell us of the cache, I think I owe you." Her voice cracks; she visibly swallows. "A … very … sincere apology."
A wave of jumbled emotion — relief and adrenaline and catharsis and that old unstoppable bastard hope — floods my body, seizing my throat and nearly staggering me with vertigo. I want to cry and laugh and flee in terror all at once; this is the end and the beginning and I don't even know if it's genuine and somewhere amid the tsunami I manage to croak out "we'll cross that bridge later" and stumble from the room, turning back halfway to add "come get me when you're done." I start crying before I'm through the door, breathing in great gasps of cold damp air, and for the second time in half an hour I collapse on Spike as he dashes up to me, and all I can think as I sob onto his shoulder is I'm basically going to owe him infinite ice cream once this is all over with.
I have enough time to pull myself back together — fifteen minutes? Twenty? I hadn't been keeping an eye on the clock — and give Spike an abbreviated version of our discoveries before Celestia and Luna return to the evocation room, side by side. "If you are prepared," Luna says, "we are ready to install Celestia's cache and update mine own — at which point I see no further barriers to reset."
I nod numbly. "Alright. Uh … but what about the Euthanatos —"
"After substituting in your Ninth Law for our Seventh, it was a matter of mere minutes to confirm that there was no cause for concern," Luna says. "As the Euthanatos is self-targeted, it will have the same impact on the structure of your crystalline soul storage that it would upon a living brain. It will terminate your consciousness as expected, and with it, the loop. In the spirit of your desire to gain nothing from your honesty, I will refrain from sharing the mathematics with you until a subsequent loop, but I do wish to reassure you that my sister also independently confirmed my work."
I glance over at Celestia, but I can't read her face. I steady myself with the hoof-extension breathing exercise I learned from Cadence, then nod. "Let's do this."
Luna's cache update is the matter of a few moments of hornglow as she stares into my eyes. Celestia's is far more involved — taking an hour of coaching from Luna, with a lot of weird tingling on my part and a brief moment of intense nausea — but at last they finish, and Celestia tells me her cache trigger so I can relay it to her next time. I take what might be the last breath of freedom I ever remember, and …
… And steady myself, and breathe again, and light my horn —
* * *
"Well, that sure didn't work," Spike says.
I open my eyes to a mercifully non-aquamarine evocation room and glance around. Just me and Spike. Alright, that's confusing, but mostly it's a relief. Opening my eyes to Celestia's face might have been more than I could handle.
With that thought, the door creaks open, and she walks in; I can see Luna looking at me through the doorway behind her.
"Good morning, Twilight," Celestia says, giving me a gentle smile. "Delta-2, T-30, C-13."
"Uh, okay," I say, standing up and noting the weight of the phylactery around my neck. My mind starts racing to match my heartbeat. I try to distract myself with loop arithmetic, but sifting through the confusing mess of unexpected deaths since we last compared notes is too challenging right now. "Loop numbers. Um. Are you cross-checking, or telling me?" I could probably work it out with a quill and scroll and five minutes' time, but —
"Telling. It took us five minutes and two pages of notes to work that out last loop," Celestia says. "At any rate, we've got a big change ahead of us. However, you and Luna and I all thought you'd appreciate a moment to reorient and access your memory cache first, since it might be a shock jumping straight to the change from our big moment of honesty. Your cache recovery password is 'Starswirl's Ninth'; look into my eyes and say it out loud."
I let out a short laugh. It worked. Oh, dear stars in heaven, it worked.
"You know what," I say, "I think catching up on the details can wait for a bit. I'd like to bask in the glow of a pleasant surprise for once. This … is a good change, right?"
Celestia's smile broadens. "Good change. There's a brilliant young mage who's looking forward to helping us."
"Then I think it's time to meet them." I charge my horn, and let loose a Euthanatos —
* * *
This time, it's different.
The world blacks out, then flashes and reforms around me — somewhat reminiscent of the pew-bang of teleportation — except that every sense in my body chooses that moment to go haywire. My eyes are open, but I can't see anything through the starbursts exploding into my vision. There's a sharp tang of ozone in my nostrils. The thrum of blood in my ears. Gravity is pressing down on my standing body, with a weight that's probably the phylactery dangling at an odd angle around my neck, and the cold solidity of flat stone underhoof.
Something resembling a voice makes a short, unintelligible noise from a few cubits ahead and slightly to the left, and as my vision starts to clear and my ears begin to pick individual sounds out from the receding static, I hear that voice's owner climb to their hooves. Vague shifting masses of color solidify into blobs, which coalesce into pony-like shapes, white and midnight-blue and a smaller upright purple and … lavender?
I blink rapidly and the images sharpen. Lavender.
"Well," Twilight Sparkle says, standing in the center of the Vaults' evocation circle and dusting off her shoulder with a hoof, "that sure didn't work."
Author's Notes:
I will reiterate my earlier pledge not to go universe-hopping. There's a simple explanation for this.
Whew! A bit slow to get this posted, but hopefully made up for by the fact that this is my longest chapter yet (which closes the third arc and resolves all the math talk). Check back in two weeks (Weds., May 21) for "Twin Prime Conjecture", and a return to some changeling-fighting action!
To keep providing something new every week, next Wednesday (May 14) I'm contemplating an "Ask Looping Twilight" special feature, and/or launching a Tumblr for it as a modest side project. Any thoughts on that? Any questions you'd like to ask our protagonist?
So they found a way to separate her from their own Twilight?
I maintain that Star Swirl convoluted the math to cover his own tracks after Sam-Becketting his way into an alternate self.
As for the rest of this chapter, I have to say, I'm proud of everyone here. Twilight most of all, but this was a big step for the sisters as well. Honesty is reaffirmed, secrets are out in the open, and the informational difficulties of the Loops have been... well, lessened. No need to abuse the cache and prove Luna right.
Also, now we have two Twilights. As if things weren't confusing enough...
In any case, looking forward to more.
The ending is unclear. Not confusing, but unclear. This 4353996 is what you're supposed to be communicating, but it's muddled a bit too much in my opinion.
But since everyone reads the comments... surprise! That's what happened.
Ooh, this was a fun one!
Simple chapter summary: Twilight uses MATH, it's super effective. She's also a bit of a blind idealist, but rolls a natural twenty so it works for her. She's still a walking abomination against nature and equinity as a whole, but things are improving.
Slightly more coherent chapter summary:
Using the math from the two Starswirls laws (new 7th and Twi's 9th) along with the looping spells they know, they prove that the 7th was designed to hide possible contact with alternate realities. current!Celestia is still suspicious because their Starswirl tried to hide the Crystal Empire too, and this may be one of the other things he was trying to save them from. Celestia suggests Twi lie to her, and Twilight can't accept that. She decides to trust in the elements of harmony (vs trusting Harmony), and tells them everything, ending of the world included. Now they're in a looper memory mexican standoff, but Twilight adds Luna's cache spell, so everypony involved gets to remember this loop.
After another couple of loops (the last stated count was Delta-2, T-25 C-11 and now we're at Delta-2, T-30, C-13, but the first number wasn't reconciled, so I think the T was actually 28 and then 29 after the honest loop), things are looking up. And apparently when using the "new and improved" laws they can separate current!Twilight from looping!Twilight (or narrarator!Twilight if the current Twi is going to loop also), and here (Delta-2, T-31, C-13) we are now!
I expect next chapter to start with a bit of an infodump as looping!Twilight finally accesses her memory cache from Celestia, and catches up on what she's missed. And gets that sincere apology.
Now for some thoughts!
First, I think I called it on looping!Twi casting a completely different spell from the one Celestia is using! Also Starswirl did some very foolish things in a brilliant way, the new 7th law was designed to mimic the 9th that Twi knows, but in a way that makes cross-dimensional contact impossible. Also different values for "Thaum" in their universes. Starswirl here really did go out of his way to make things hidden.
Bonus point for "Schadenpferde" cross-language horse puns!
Luna was hiding the memory spell for a more interesting reason too... it was part of her Nightmare Moon arsenal, and she didn't want to let Celestia know that she still knew it. Speaking of which, as Luna starts updating her memory spell, she's going to be "nearly" a looper, which may change the character dynamic a bit. I wonder if they're going to have Luna access her cache every loop, or only the loops where they want to update their own?
Despite what I say about Twi, this really was her only chance to tell about Harmony's plan and have some proof as well - It's the only time she can show she has extra-temporal knowledge (Celestia's password) without having a way of obtaining it previously.
Also interesting to see that they expect there to be a higher reason for things, that the way their universe is structured, they don't really believe in coincidences as a matter of general policy, because if something happens, then it was meant to happen.
4354043
Wait, hang up a second. The passage is written so that the perceptions of the narrator are unclear. And on a second reading there's the pretty much explicit statement that the narrator of that last passage is actually Spike who's turned into a clone of Twilight. So, sorry, false alarm there. I was just getting a little too into the story I guess.
4353892
So now that they've bound Loop-Entrant Twilight Sparkle to a phylactery, the loops can proceed with her being displaced, and no longer displacing Loop-Initiate Twilight Sparkle. Is she actually a lich now, borrowing an appropriate corpse? Are we going to find out that they bound her into a batpony volunteer? Perhaps Celestia built a metal golempony for her?
I'm not mocking you. I think this is awesome. I hope the answer is outlandish.
4354043
Thanks for the feedback (and for confirming what I was going after). What do you think would have made it clearer?
(Edited to add: I do see your follow-up comment but I'd still like to ask)
4354060
> Also interesting to see that they expect there to be a higher reason for things … if something happens, then it was meant to happen
The way I see it, this is fundamentally MLP, despite all the timefoolery. Where ponies move the heavens, change the seasons and feed the wildlife, and the self-sustained Everfree Forest is some kind of magical abomination. The idea that this is reflected in their core worldview just seemed natural to me.
i'm so fucking confused
Well. That would be a brilliant young mage.
shadenfreude
This comes to mind
Or at least, I thought it was a typo, but other comments told me it was a horse pun... you clever bastard.
Just when we think things can't get any more complicated.
I'd swear I heard trumpets start playing a victory fanfare right about here.
Ooooo.
Dang, when Twilight goes for full disclosure, she really doesn't pull any punches.
Oh hell yeah, I was really hoping that the "brilliant young mage" was going to be this universe's Twilight. And I vote for metal golem that can eventually incorporate magical weaponry. For reasons of awesome of course.
I think the ponies are over looking one very important factor here. Alt!Twi says it is Starswirl's Ninth Law and that it was the very last one he made. So, he comes up with the law but, well, you've got to test these things after you think them up and what happens when you test a spell that transfers your body/consciousness to a random alternate timeline? You wind up in a random alternate timeline.
So he loops back in his current timeline, or part of the universe switch spell also sent him back in time or any other reason, and makes some changes, calling it his Seventh Law instead and purposefully muddles the numbers to keep someone else from winding up on the wrong end of universe shift. He wasn't trying to protect the universe from travelers, he was protecting potential accidental travelers from the universe!
And on that number I like the idea it being the third instead, because he wanted to go ahead and change it before he forgot or something. Maybe he couldn't loop back far enough. Maybe we'll find out, but probably not.
I also want to know what is up with this universes Crystal Empire. Did Sombra get ahold of some sort of bloodline possession magic and took control of current!Cadence and make her evil or something? It's not important to the current problem, so we're unlikely to get resolution on that in story but maybe you could tell us what's up with that in a bit of side information? Or maybe I'm totally wrong and something there will be the key to defeating Chrysalis, never know.
Also, I forget just what point this Alt!Twilight diverges from the first Hard Reset's Twilight. Is this before or after she started doing the loops for fun and sexy times? Because if it's after she now has the whole "Exact Doppelganger; Fight or Fuck?" question in front of her and she would so totally go for the second option.
There would surely be at least one weather-vane involved, maybe some chocolate sauce.
Keep up the great work! And maybe one of these chapters, before the final one, will not end it on a cliff hanger! (ANNNNND THAT"S WHY HE"S CALLED CLIFF HANGER! Can't. Hold. On. Much. Longer!)
I really just need to binge-read this sometime. I have little to no concrete memory of the previous bits of the story, and feel a refresher would help. This type of story kinda requires it...
4354827's theory is interesting. If true, it also proves that Starswirl can't possibly be the only reason for there to be differences between the alternate realities, and indeed that whatever mechanism causes differences between realities cannot possibly wholly originate within those realities at all.
Imagine if all alternate realities were exactly the same. Starswirl's hypothetical universe hopping spell could do exactly what he wants it to and nopony could ever know, because such a spell would move him to a perfectly identical alternate reality that has just lost its Starswirl while exactly one Starswirl from a random identical alternate reality would instantly take his place. This would work the same for anyone else universe-hopping.
The only way for divergent realities to exist is either some fundamental uncertainty in reality (Which is unlikely, given that the time-loop spell allows for perfect reproduction of even extremely complex scenarios.) or that something, somewhere exists outside of time and/or the universe and is still able to affect the universe and/or time.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
This is the first chapter I've been able to read without having a miniature anxiety attack in I don't even know how many chapters. It feels good.
I can't wait to see Twilight 1's awkward attempts to feel out whether or not Twilight 2 shares her feelings for Celestia.
Also, I hope Twilight 1 tries to find out if Twilight 2 shares her feelings for Celestia. That'd be ripe for some much-needed comedy.
4354043
4354148
Wait I didn't get this last part where there seemed to be two twilights at first either, but on a second read, OUR twilight seems to have become conscious in the amulet, while a different twilight (prelooping?) is now controlling the body?
Close? Maybe? No?
The question is how... did the pre looping twilight cast a different spell? obviously the amulet works for the loop as twilight made it, but then killed herself so she could remember it works, but then this crazy stuff goes down....
Sure, how many relationships have you tried out and how many of them actually work in that short time?
I only focus on this part solely for the reason that my head cannot handle the maths in this. The calculations are going way over my head and if they try to enter it, I get a nice headache as a reward. Dang, I need someone to simplify this once I'm done with the story
4355473
"Our" Twilight Sparkle is the Loop-Entrant Twilight Sparkle. She had been displacing the Loop-Initiate Twilight Sparkle (who cast the spell in this altered timeline). I'll call them LE-Sparkle and LI-Sparkle. LI-Sparkle is the one who actually casts the spell, which causes LE-Sparkle to take over and LI-Sparkle to become dormant. In order to save LE-Sparkle after a temporal paradox that was literally destroying spacetime, her spirit was bound into a phylactery. Now, when LI-Sparkle casts the spell, LE-Sparkle gets "reset" into the phylactery. While LI-Sparkle was wearing the phylactery, this caused LE-Sparkle to continue putting LI-Sparkle into dormancy.
This time is different, in that the phylactery was prepared and placed in a nearby location rather than worn by LI-Sparkle. Now LI-Sparkle and LE-Sparkle can actually meet each other, since Loop-Entrant Twilight Sparkle is now capable of being called into the timeline without forcing Loop-Initiate Twilight Sparkle into dormancy. Whatever body LE-Sparkle ("ours") now has, it's not the one she started with. It may be quite a different body. Another commenter even suggested that Spike might have been wearing the phylactery!
LI-Sparkle has the unicorn body. LE-Sparkle has whatever bodily accomodations Princess Celestia provided for her usage. This is very likely the cause of all the sensory distortion that accompanied her resetting into this loop. It's also why she was able to see LI-Sparkle from afar just after the casting of the spell. As far as LI-Sparkle is concerned, the loop spell "sure didn't work", just as our Twilight Sparkle thought it hadn't on the start of the very first loop so very long ago.
LI-Sparkle is about to discover that the looping spell actually did something weird. It summoned a mental doppelganger of herself into the phylactery that Princess Celestia provided, putting that mind in control of the body which was wearing the phylactery when the spell was cast. The meeting between the two of them should be very interesting.
I'm not Horizon, of course, so I could be wrong about all of this. This is only my interpretation.
And that is all . . .
Aaaaand now I'm thinking that the fic's title is a little more literal than I thought.
So who's wearing the Phylactery now,she mentioned having a body,so unless they somehow managed to create a temporary body for her to inhabit,or found a volunteer...captured a changeling perhaps?
4355693 since LE-Sparkle mentions hearing a short and unintelligible sound from off to her left, that could have been Spike, though the "he now wears the phylactery" could also work. My thought was the Twilight body-double we were introduced to earlier.
4355996
If you've read the entire original Hard Reset, then you'd see that this isn't such a change.
Guess: Starswirl is the errant looper. He's looping, changing things, jumping forward in time to see if it worked and then resetting to change things again.
It's driving him mad.
[youtube=MrCPIrs90eg]
Honestly, while I really want to know the -what- of this story, the why and the how, for the last few chapters, it has suffered increasingly from bogging itself down in ever more complicated math-babble.
It's entirely possible - and probable - it's all internally cohesive, but it's ceasing to matter because the story has fallen into 'actively unfun' territory, where it's written in such a way as to be much too arcane.
We went from 'Twilight, Celestia, and Chrysalis are looping' - relatively easy to wrap around, enjoyable - to 'Twilight hops into alternate reality or altered timeline' - to a whole, whole bunch of brain-breaking and paradoxes and interwoven whatever gobbledygook that, when it's gotten to the point when a primer maintained by a 3rd party is necessary to constantly reference to keep up with the story, the story is suffering.
A Song of Ice & Fire is easier to follow despite being exponentially larger.
I do want to finish the story, but it's gone from upvote to downvote because the techno-jargon has just gone way, way off the deep end to becoming a constant active detriment.
Well, this is confusing.
4356592
I appreciate your honesty, and thank you for speaking up. I think the rarest sight on FIMFiction is an explained downvote.
You (and a number of other readers unhappy with previous chapters) will be pleased to know that we're past the worst of the technobabble.
4354325 So, after Celestia, Luna, and Twilight all start using each others brains as memory backups for whenever one of them goes looping, something odd happens. Twilight starts her latest loop outside the circle in a body that's standing upright (and has unfamiliar senses), and inside the circle Twilight's unicorn body stands up and delivers Spike's line. I think you can work out some of the ramifications for this event.
4356592
The good news is, it IS babble - any mathematical expression in the story might as well be another one - so you don't need to follow it directly, just note the characters reactions.
~~~
Now, what I don't get here is why she Euthanatos-ed so hastily. What did she have to gain from it? How could she have expected that to produce a good effect? It seems to me that it would tend to produce a neutral effect unless exactly what happened happened, and in that case she might want a little more prep time.
There was so much positivity in this chapter that it was disturbing.
Why did Twi reset straight away at the end? She wanted to bask in the moment for a bit, but then immediately kills herself to get back to work?
4354148
I'm not the one you asked, but it took me a couple of reads to understand because the "I charge my horn, and let loose a Euthanatos —" really seemed to come out of nowhere, and Luna had specifically mentioned that "As the Euthanatos is self-targeted, it will have the same impact on the structure of your crystalline soul storage that it would upon a living brain. It will terminate your consciousness as expected, and with it, the loop.", and an earlier chapter had Twilight speculating "Since I'm bound to the necklace, what happens to me if I start the loop without it on?".
Because of these things, I had been thinking Twilight would be looping into the phylactery and still controlling her body the way she appears to be in this chapter, meaning a single Euthanatos would reset the loop. The reset from the memory-cached loop did nothing to suggest that she needed any more than one Euthanatos to do the job that time around, and since Euthanatos is explained in chapter two as killing by "vapourising a small area of your brain", it's non-obvious that the other Twilight could survive having it performed if the first casting targeted Twilight's body.
On careful re-reading, the answer seems to be "despite being linked to the phylactery, Twilight is still looping into non-looping Twilight's body initially. Casting Euthanatos kills looping Twilight, but it only kills her a little bit, so she is still attached to the phylactery, and non-looping Twilight awakens in her own body while Twilight awakens in the phylactery. Presumably in the previous loop two Euthanatos spells were necessary to reset the loop, and Euthanatos doesn't so much vapourise a part of the brain as remove the individual casting the spell from occupancy of said brain/phylactery/soul repository.".
There are plenty of ways to make what happened more obvious, but most of the ones I can think of screw up the big reveal at the end by adding information in earlier in ways that are too obvious. Maybe phrase Luna's explanation about the way Euthanatos works in conjunction with the "crystalline soul storage" in such a way that it implies in much stronger terms that the other Twilight could possibly survive it being cast or implies that there's no damage as such to the brain?
Difficult phrasing, probably, but I think you need something to counter the idea that's been strongly in our heads since the beginning that Euthanatos vapourises part of the brain.
So now the philactery probably contains Spike's soul?
Wait...WHAT?! OK. It was the most mind blowing ending yet.
ethicsalarms.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/exploding-head.jpg
4353892
I would recommend making another story for the Ask Looping Twilight. Because it is meta you couldn't publish it, but you could still link to it. And people cold still favorite it, allowing them to be notified of new content without relying on a different website.
I would also recommend moving the Supplemental material and fan works chapter there as well so it doesn't acquire a bunch of comments meant for a different chapter. If you post from the main story page the comment goes to the last chapter, and if the last chapter isn't the chapter that most recently updated it acquires comments that are not meant for it.
4358699
Yeah, the comment accumulation is gonna be problematic. I added the "bonus material" chapter so that the accumulation wouldn't take place on Prawo Jazdy's chapter, since that's going to be removed once Prawo publishes it separately; but that's not fixing the problem so much as slapping a Band-Aid on it. I think I'll take your earlier suggestion and unpublish them both as soon as Prawo's story goes live, which will lose some comments, but at least that way keep the loss to a minimum.
4358699
Also, I think you're onto something with the "unpublished FIMFic story" idea for Ask Looping Twilight. That centralizes it a little more than a tumblr, allows for better comments and crosstalk, and I don't really lose any functionality.
4355294
Oh Celestia, YES!
4356997
You're welcome, and I did like everything up to this latest universe-bending-everything.
I do feel that you could convey the same idea - that Starswirl made a deliberate error to avoid this timeline/world from realizing what Twilight Prime knows - without needing to resort to the degree of convoluted attempted-explanation the story has descended to. The tale that immediately leaps to mind that employs the same thing - a fudged constant - is the Baby-Eating Aliens (First part at Here and links to each successive part are at the bottom). There, it achieves the same result of 'fudged math prevented a realization' but does so without needing to Math.
Though, it stills leaves the weakness of Inception-level loops within loops within Memory-Transfer Dark Magic still serving as something of a dangerous overcomplication. It could well be that the weakness here is that I'm reading the story in serial form, and so when a new chapter comes out, the previous chapter's content needs a refresher; it may be a television construct, but perhaps a 'Previously on'...I'm not sure there's an elegant way to handle it if that is the case.
4357314
For lack of a better way of putting it, babble is bad. There's a reason Voyager is the weakest 90s Trek, and that's because so often the solution/issue was drenched in babble. World-building is good, enjoyable, but when it jumps to the babble layer it ceases to be world-building and starts becoming hand-waving, which is narratively weak.
I'm done. This story used to be a entertaining read. But for the last few chapters its no longer been entertaining at all. Literally just the author writing about how he thinks magic works in mathematical terms. Making this feel like some collage thesis as opposed to an actually entertaining story with plot, progression and character development. I hope for everyone's sake he realizes all of that has practically been stalled for the last few chapters while he "explained" everything.
Regardless I'm not going to tourcher myself trying read the rest of this story. Especially if he comes up with something else and then tries to explain it also later on.
4364110
You're not alone. And, as I told 4356592, this chapter closed out that more psychological/technical arc, and the story is going to stand up and move on from that navel-gazing. Next chapter is Twilight meeting Twilight, and some good old fashioned changeling violence, and moving forward I'll definitely take the criticism about acceptable levels of math to heart.
I do appreciate the time you gave it, and your speaking up.
4364392 Eh, I enjoyed the explanation. I have some attention span.
Other people have been complaining about the complexity and technical details, and I just wanted to let you know I have enjoyed it to a great extent, it was a big divergence of style from the beginning of the story and I am looking forward to a return to that, but magical theory and psychological talks have been a really neat direction to take this story. Do not lose heart! I look forward to seeing what you have planned next.
The best part of the math early on is that it doesn't give me a headache. My immunity is due to the fact that my brain doesn't recognize bushels as a measurement of energy.
That last paragraph on the other wing...
I can see that most people seem to be confused by the last part of this chapter, but I am more confused by the part right before it. When Twilight hears that everything worked out (well, other than that changeling invasion, the Elements trying to destroy the world, potentially being stranded in another universe...Well, the immediate problems worked out, at least), why was the Euthanatos spell the first thing she did? Why didn't she talk with Celestia and Luna or get her memories back or anything else? How is resetting again "basking in the glow of a pleasant surprise?"
Personally, I think this entire story is amazing, last couple chapters included. It would feel less... Real? If you just fixed all these looming issues in a handful of paragraphs.
That, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the back and forth here, as brain breaking as it was at times.
You are, without a doubt, writing one of the best fics I've ever read, mlp or otherwise. Can't wait for your next instalment!
Oh, and the ask crazy looping twilight thing? I'm all for it. How about... What is your biggest regret regarding your looping actions? And or what was your best count with Home Run vs the changelings?
You thought it was complicated before? First we had time looping followed by alternate dimensions and finally paradoxes.
Now we have 2 of the same pony in the same room: one from an alternate dimension. Complication level just went to 11 or beyond.
My brain exploded years ago. If there are gaping logic/plot/otherwise holes in the story, I can't see them at all since the plot makes no sense anyways. Normally, I read stories for the...well...story. But in this case, since it's impossible to follow the story logically, or illogically, I simply now read it for the character-building moments. Which doesn't even work that well since the characters are constantly looping and changing behind the scenes. I really want a guide that explains all this. Maybe a branching timeline chart. Idk.