"Twiliiight," Spike whines, breaking me out of my reverie. "We've been walking all night. Can't we set up camp yet?"
"Not here," I say, gesturing around the Rambling Rock ridgetop. "It's too exposed, and we're right under a changeling flight path. We'll find a sheltered spot down the southern side of the ridge and sleep all day before we reach the Badlands."
The trip from there is surprisingly uneventful. It's a big adjustment walking in darkness — more so since I'm carrying Spike the whole way — but with good planning, night vision, and avoiding the worst of the scorching sun, we make far better time than we did on our run with Crooked Fang.
I follow a route across the flat table of the mesa that takes a wide southwestern arc, avoiding the exhausting climbs and descents by skirting around the Coltarado River to approach the mountain from the west. With that simple change of direction, we only have to cross the canyon once. We're down at the bank of the Coltarado after just one more night's hike, and our third dawn is spent watching the enormous silhouette of our destination cling to darkness against the slowly lightening sky.
"Skyrend Mountain," I say as the sun finally crests over the side of its cone. "I do have to give Chrysalis credit for one thing. Everything about it screams 'evil overlord'. I mean, look at it — it's like a giant black knife stabbed through Equestria and the tip came out here on the other side, staining the world around it red."
"Uh-huh," Spike says.
"Of course, that's just because the mesas of the Badlands are highly ferrous sedimentary rock, and the mountain is obsidian. Which in itself is fascinating! Here's a young but dormant volcano, alone in an area with no other hints of tectonic activity. It's so geologically bizarre it makes my hooves itch."
"Uh-huh."
"But if you comb through local legends about Adiltahi-ya — the mountain's name in the original Buffalo — they say that he was born when once upon a time Father Earth and Mother Sun were fighting. She smote him with her light so hard he gave birth, and their child's blood glowed with her heat for generations. Think about that one. We have witnesses, through an ancient oral tradition, who suggest that Celestia once called down a spell so powerful here that it ripped completely through the crust of the world, down to the lava core, and this volcano was the result."
"Uh-huh."
"… Oh, come on, that was eight hours of library research, once upon a time, after she smiled cryptically and told me to look it up."
"Uh-huh."
"Equestria to Spike! Are you even listening?"
"Huh? … Oh, sorry! I, uh, was just thinking … do you remember, a while back, how you banned me forever from 'Star Horse' quotes?"
The question is so mundane that it takes me a moment to process. Spike has been ceaselessly and repetitively grieving our dead friends for two months of my subjective time now. The idea that he could be distracted by trivia rather than mourning is disorienting. But apparently spending three days getting love and support, rather than dealing with my weariness and his friends' killer, has made a lot more difference than I realized.
"I did?" I stall.
"Back when you were trying to figure out Pinkie Sense. You were staring at some calculations you'd just done and pulling at your mane, and I came up behind you and breathed funny and said 'I find your lack of faith disturbing,' and Pinkie wouldn't stop laughing for a whole minute."
I'm drawing a blank on that part of the incident — but even without the time loops that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. "Um, yeah. What brought that up?"
"Oh, nothing," he says in a voice that means exactly the opposite.
I smile — not that he can see me inside the invisibility cloak. Whatever he's got in mind, it's worth it just to have him acting real again. "Go ahead. Say it."
Spike clears his throat and deepens his voice. "Skyrend Mountain. You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
I groan theatrically.
"Sorry," he says in Opposite Voice.
I let him dangle for a few moments before I can't hold back my giggling any more. "Okay, that was actually pretty clever. Tell you what. If I can steal that line from you in future loops, you are officially un-banned."
"Deal!" I feel Spike slide down from my back, and there's a little puff of dust as his invisible claws hit the ground. He steps up next to me, one hand on my side. "So," he says, voice more subdued, "now that you're here, what are you going to do?"
I put a fore over his shoulders. "We are going to sit out here for a little while, and observe and communicate. You're crucial to this entire plan."
"I am?"
"Absolutely. You remember how we left Princesses Celestia and Luna down in the Arcane Storage Vaults when we snuck out through the one-way secret passage? You're our instantaneous, no-reset-required link to thousands of years of experience and tactical support."
I feel him nod. "Okay, but I don't get it. They're not running Canterlot. How come they didn't come here with us?"
"This is the only way to get the element of surprise. Raising the sun and moon takes such a huge burst of power that every mage in the country can trivially locate the princesses twice each day. This way, they've locked themselves inside hundreds of cubits of solid stone and thousands of years' worth of ponykind's best arcane wards, so Chrysalis won't be able to do anything to them until long after we're finished here. Also, because the three of us fled from her invasion this time around, this makes it look like we're holed up together doing some research or planning. If we were all loose, she'd have to expect some sort of counterattack."
Finally, Celestia had to drain dry some of the highest-powered artifacts in the Vaults and has been spending a solid day of each loop spellcasting in order to disable the ever-more-explosive Elements of Harmony. I don't mention that part.
"I guess I should take a letter, huh?" He pulls back the invisibility cloak from his claws, and they appear in midair along with a quill and scroll.
"Not here. We'll want to obscure the smoke of your sending. We'll set up camp in that shallow gorge to the north."
He climbs back onto me for one final trot, and we settle into cover. I've barely dictated the coordinates of Skyrend Mountain to him when his face squinches up and he belches out a letter.
"My faithful student," he reads, "my apologies for my vagueness when you asked me about Triangle-2 T-24 C-7. The 'research' I referred to was the week's worth of external reecoh …"
"Reconaissance."
"External reconaissance you and Spike performed last loop. There would have been so much to discuss that it would have delayed your departure considerably, and last loop's journey to Skyrend Mountain was so fast and uneventful that it was best not to risk altering the trip. While you were traveling, however, I wrote up everything you shared with me. Scrolls follow. Celestia." His eyes skip down a bit. "P.S.: We agreed I would reset, since you didn't want to remember all the hot, miserable walking and climbing. Clover."
"Clover?"
"That's what it says. Clover."
I'm puzzled for a few moments until I remember my secret code words. That's the "this is on the level" one I made up. Oh! Excellent.
Spike quickly belches up a series of scrolls. Several are horn-drawn maps, showing various external views of the mountain with features marked and labeled, accompanied by some old photographs clearly cut out from books. There are six routes into the interior of the mountain: the huge vertical shaft of the now-dormant volcano; a large cavern near the peak whose entrance has been collapsed; a pony-sized tunnel directly underneath the cavern; sizable northern and southern entrances into the changeling lair near the base of the mountain; and another pony-sized tunnel below mesa level in a canyon to the southwest, which appears to be a wastewater drainage.
There's a listing of all the observed departures and arrivals from the northern and southern entrances, along with the routes of their external patrols and the sizes and schedules of the guard details posted there. Finally, one scroll estimates the size of the hive from the volume of the tailing piles, the inflow and outflow of traffic, and the number of patrols. I feel the blood drain from my cheeks. There's at least ten thousand changelings in there.
I send an acknowledgement and spend an hour committing it all to memory, having Spike drill me on the facts until I can rattle off everything I learned without hesitation. (I make a mental note: Ask Celestia for advanced memory aid spells. Given her demonstration with her 340 deaths, she's got much better ones than the basic charms I've been using — which only stands to reason, for an immortal alicorn, much less a time looping one.) Then I dictate a quick letter: "Time for internal recon. Will scroll or reset within 24 hours."
We wait until there are no patrols nearby, then walk south to the drainage tunnel, quickly locating the entrance. It's halfway down a vertical cliff in a secluded canyon — but Celestia thoughtfully added some light climbing gear to my pack, and it's nothing a little impromptu rappelling can't handle. I magically work loose the piton once we're in the tunnel mouth and repack the rope.
I glance back once I feel Spike's weight return to my back, double-checking that he's still wearing his invisibility cloak. "You ready?" I whisper while I cast a night-vision charm.
"Actually," Spike whispers back, "there's been something bugging me. You said we came here to get leverage, right? Something you could trade her to stop her from killing our friends?"
"Well … yeah." Technically, something we can threaten her with to force the trade. You can't stand up to a bully without throwing a few punches, but in light of my recent revelations, there are still some uncomfortable questions about morality involved. I brace myself. "Why?"
"Is there really anything that Chrysalis cares about as much as we care about them?"
That's a whole different sort of uncomfortable. "Well. Um. Yes? I mean, that's what we're here to find out." I swallow and try again. "Celestia certainly thinks so."
He's silent for a moment. "I hope so."
"This was her idea, and I have faith in her."
"Yeah. But, I mean, I love our friends a lot."
"Me too." I cast a silence bubble around us, so we can walk up the drainage tunnel while we talk. I quickly realize I'd have had to do that anyway — an inch or two of thin, odorless green sludge is flowing in a steady stream under my hooves, splashing every time I step. "But I'm starting to think that ruling her hive is super important to her. According to Crooked Fang —"
"Who?"
"Long story. Anyway, Chrysalis apparently started looping to keep herself from being overthrown. The hive was ripe for a coup as recently as a week ago. With another looper on their side, I think a changeling rebellion might be a significant enough threat to get her to flinch."
"Hmm, okay."
I plod uphill through the featureless darkness for what seems like forever. A tiny star in the distance slowly brightens in intensity, finally expanding out into the tunnel's far end. The first thing I notice is the thick iron bars across the mouth — shiny and free of corrosion. Behind them is a large room whose rough-hewn walls are the lighter grey of rhyolite, ringed with crystal magelights of a foreign yet naggingly familiar design. Most of the room is taken up with a pool of the same sludge I've been walking through; more of it flows in through smaller tunnels that pepper the walls, and there's an irregular stream of changelings hauling buckets of it in. Two changelings wearing red sashes are slumped against the wall near the room's only proper exit, staring dully at the inbound traffic.
"Alright, Spike," I say. "I'll need to tighten up the silence charm from here on in, so we won't be able to talk, but for the moment I don't have anything more ambitious planned than getting the layout of the hive. Turn yourself around and ride backward, okay? Kick me once if there are any changelings behind me that might bump into us. Twice if you want to talk. Three times if we've been noticed. I'll pat your leg when we're about to start moving."
"Got it."
I take a deep breath to steady my nerves. I'll still have the opportunity to restart the loop as soon as I slip up, but it's taken me three and a half days to get here, so it feels like there's actual consequences riding on doing well without resetting. It's … huh. It's actually scary, in an oddly nostalgic way.
I tease that nagging thought out from the back of my mind. What does this all remind me of? Spike and I, alone against a malevolent tyrant wielding powerful magic … plunging into the unknown after a long walk through the darkness … my heart pounding as I try to piece together unfamiliar fears. Of course! It's just like when we saved the Crystal Empire from Sombra.
How I ever pulled that off without time looping, I have no idea.
An uncomfortable idea begins to gnaw at me. Did I pull that off without time loops? I didn't know the spell then, but because I changed history, Celestia was looping at the time. Did she help me get it right, observing from afar and resetting me by proxy? Did she watch me fail, over and over again, giving me a new nudge each time with a lecture and test that focused my mind differently?
How many times did that fear trap destroy me before she finally maneuvered me into taking Spike north with me, just like she convinced me to take him on this trip? How many resets before she convinced him to make a promise not to help me, so that I'd agree to take him down those dark stairs?
There are so many places, so many ways, that trip could have gone wrong. Statistically speaking, it's a near certainty that at least one of them did. There's got to be something that helped me beat the odds to get here … and now an obvious explanation is staring me in the face. In Celestia's place, I would have been foolish not to tip the odds that way.
I don't think I'll ever be able to not see time loops again.
Speaking of which … was I being helped out even before I changed history? I've been through more close scrapes than I care to count. The same logic applies, and even if Celestia wasn't looping at the time, there's still that thousand-year-old mystery looper to deal with. What's been going on behind the scenes? I've been focusing like a hornbeam on the invasion, but it's getting increasingly clear that powering through this and sorting out all the questions afterward wasn't a smart plan.
Spike's hindclaw taps my side twice, breaking me out of my reverie.
"What's up?"
"… I was going to ask how we're getting through the bars. But didn't you say you were going to tighten the silence spell?"
"Right. Sorry." I give him what I hope is a reassuring laugh. "Just lost in thought. Remembering the Crystal Empire."
"Oh! Yeah. Just like old times, huh?"
I wince. "Yeah. Just like." I change the subject to the first thing that comes to mind. "Do you think changelings read much? I hope we find some books in here. That library in the Crystal Empire was hooves-down the most amazing part of the trip, though I have to say that Due Date was a lot friendlier once she got her memory back."
"Who?"
"Um …" I'm disoriented for a moment. "That was her name, right? Due Date. The librarian."
"Twilight … the Crystal Empire didn't have a library."
I sigh. "Well, it did before I changed history."
He's silent for a beat. "But you only cast your time loop spell a couple of days ago. How —"
"I reset the loop of someone else who was anchored long ago." And, for some reason, that changed the civic planning of an Empire that vanished before the Celestial War. The question of cause and effect there is noteworthy enough to spark my curiosity. "Hey, when we were exploring the city … do you remember the, uh, second building on the right on South Street? A block deep and three stories high. Gryphon statues out front. If they aren't storing enough books inside for a 10:1-scale recreation of Fort Summer, what are they using a building that size for?"
"Well —"
"Wait. Wait, wait." A more urgent thought leaps forward. "No library? If there wasn't a library, how did we learn what events to plan for the Crystal Faire?"
"The what now?"
I can feel my eye starting to twitch. "Okay, Spike, please tell me that somehow we managed to beat Sombra and restore the Empire anyway."
"Of course we did. Did the time spell mess with your head, Twilight? The eight of us went through all that together."
"Once upon a time, yes, but then I … changed …"
My words trail off as something Celestia said an apocalypse ago finally catches up to me: All that the loop spell has power to do is add new memories from potential futures. That's not what's happening here.
I'd been writing off mismatching memories of Invasion Day morning as a side effect of the loops' intersections … but my trip to the Crystal Empire was months ago. Spike's right — I did live through it with him. If all the loop spell does is add memories of prior loops to my brain, why don't our pre-looping memories match? Even if I changed my own history, the me that's standing here in a sewage pipe talking with Spike did go to a Crystal Empire without a library a few months ago — and, right up until I cast the looping spell, presumably I remembered it that way.
Now those memories are gone.
Did the time spell mess with my head? Spike's question hits uncomfortably close to home. Something's wrong here. Something's very wrong.
I glance into the hive. Three and a half days of walking … but no. This absolutely cannot wait. Memory is my only weapon in this war, and I need to be able to trust it.
* * *
"Well, that sure didn't work."
I sit up. "Princess, we've got a problem."
Celestia's staring at me in grim silence. Her face has got an odd aquamarine tint, and I quickly realize that's because everything in the room does except for me and the floor of the evocation circle. Spike is standing at her side, glancing back and forth uncertainly between us. Luna, on the other side of the circle, is staring at me as well, though her expression is blank.
"Princess?" I try again, stomach twisting in knots. "… Celestia? Um. Delta-2, T-25, C-8."
That, at least, stirs her to conversation. "Delta-2, T-25, C-9. Please, come join us."
I roll to my hooves and stretch a foreleg out toward her. At the edge of the evocation circle, it hits sudden resistance and stops. The air darkens at my touch, and then I hear a high-pitched crackling. Pain sears up my leg, and my hoof is shoved back. "Ow! What's going on?"
"You tell me," she says. "You were the one who set the ward's password."
I stagger back to the center of the circle. "Th-that's not funny."
"It's not a joke." Celestia's eyes flick over to Luna. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Luna give a slight nod in response.
I swallow through a dry throat. "Did I explain how I'm not remembering correctly what happened before this afternoon? We … we talked about that in the missing loop, right? I want your help with that. I'm not going to lie to you about it."
"That's not the whole issue," Celestia says carefully. "There were … complications. I'll explain after you help us clear up one or two details. Would you mind terribly singing the Crystal Kingdom Anthem for us again?"
"Huh? Uh … okay." I don't like where this is going, but the best way to fix this is to cooperate until she tells me more. I force a cough and clear my throat; if I'm going to be singing for the Princesses, authenticity demands that I use the proper archaic pronunciations and the harder Presolar consonants that I researched back in the Empire.
<The fires of thy Crystal Heart,> I sing.
Luna gives Celestia what I suspect to be a significant glance, keeping her face carefully neutral. Spike looks at me, confused. Celestia's grim expression doesn't so much as twitch.
I falter for a moment, but press on. <Were ever bright and glistening. Thy spires, ever from the start, to hymns of light were listening …>
"I think that's enough," Celestia interrupts. "You remember a significantly different history. That much is clear."
"Yes," I say pointedly, "and that's the problem I came to you about. What's with the containment ward?"
"An unfortunate but necessary precaution," Celestia says, "though it may have outstayed its usefulness." She brings a hoof up to her chin in thought for a few moments. "The password is three words relating to the pony who was most important to you growing up."
It's immediately obvious where this is going: some sort of identity verification. She said that I was the one who came up with the password — most likely based on the exact same prompt she just gave me. If she's not telling it to me outright, she must want to make sure that now-Twilight and pre-loop-Twilight are thinking the same way.
It's a trap, the paranoid part of my brain screams. She wouldn't have gone to all of this trouble if it weren't some kind of setup. But the calm, logical part points out that Celestia just had me, out of the blue, sing something I haven't thought about in months — something which, if the Empire doesn't have a library now, nopony else would know that I know. Was she concerned about a spell trigger tied to that? Nothing happened when I sang it — hopefully that's exactly what she was looking for.
I steady myself with a long breath. I need Celestia on my side if we're going to figure this out, and the current worrying circumstances aside, she's done right by me ever since we got that "teachable moment" thing straightened out. I tamp down my paranoia and speak the obvious answer to her riddle: "Sunshine ladybug dance."
Nothing happens.
"Um," I say as Celestia looks at me expectantly. "Sister in law?" Nothing. Panic begins to creep into the edges of my brain. "Empire's new ruler? Crystal heart butt?"
Luna inhales sharply.
"Stop," she says, first softly, then with more urgency. "Stop."
I shut up, increasingly lost, while Celestia walks over to her sister and touches a hoof to her shoulder. "Never?" she says with quiet steel. "Not even now?"
Luna stares at me in anguish for a moment before turning away toward a small box with dozens of locks and wards. "It is true. Tia … I concede. I see no other choice." She lifts an ominous black circlet from the lockbox, and places it on her head. Her voice hardens. "Stars help us all."
"Wait! What choice?" My heart is hammering in my chest. I glance at Spike, who won't meet my eyes, then back at Celestia. "What's true? Princess, for all stars' love, what is going on?"
Celestia returns my stare, the grim detachment on her muzzle finally curling into emotion — a fearsome and icy resentment. "What is going on," she says quietly, "is that I allowed foolish hope to blind me, when our downfall was right under my nose the whole time."
"What?! That's absurd. How could you think that?"
"Where should I start? You introduced yourself as a looper by offering your aid against the threat of an attack which conveniently started at the moment of your arrival. You sold me a literally impossible cover story by lying over something unrelated, deflecting all my suspicions onto it, and reconciling with me after a fierce argument over my own honesty — that was quite clever, by the way, I have to give you that. Then you sabotaged the only plan which could have ended your distraction decisively. Now, at least, we know why."
"That's not true. None of it is true. Stop. Talk this out with me."
"It's too late for that. You tipped your hoof. I can only hope it's not too late for Equestria." Celestia turns toward the door, wrapping Spike in a wing and pulling him away. "You shouldn't watch this."
"NO!" I shout, terror taking fully over. Celestia wouldn't bother with this setup if they were just going to do something to me that resetting would fix. I lunge at her, slamming my hooves into the force field, and there's a noise like a thunderclap as it flings me back to the center of the circle.
I scramble back to hooves I can't feel, overbalance, and faceplant. "Princess," I sob desperately, stretching out a leg weakly to her. "Wait. This is a mistake." She continues walking slowly, deliberately, away. "I asked you for help! What are you doing?"
Spike looks back at me, eyes filled with tears, but Celestia shifts her wing to block his view. "We'll do our best to save her," is the last thing I hear her say before she pushes him outside and closes the door.
To heck with this. The instant she leaves, I fire up my horn for a Euthanatos; it won't change my situation, but it'll give me more time to squirm out of it. But a wall of feedback from the ward slams straight into my brain, ripping the spell into sharp, tiny fragments, which dissolve painfully back into my memory. A few hot sparks scatter uselessly from my horn. I don't even know why that surprises me — it would have been criminally stupid not to account for it.
I climb to my knees and turn toward Luna, who is reading an ancient and fragile-looking scroll. "Stop. Please. Let me explain."
"Hush," she says, not looking up. "This shall be resolved soon enough."
"Why are you going along with this without hearing my side of the story? Luna! It's me! I saved you from the Nightmare!" She continues reading; I rear up and strike the floor with all the hoofpower I can muster. "Look me in the eye and tell me I don't deserve that same second chance!"
She meets my gaze with the calm implacability of a mountain. "I am afraid you are mistaken."
A faint "Huh?" is all I can manage in return.
"It was Twilight Sparkle who saved me from myself. It was Twilight Sparkle who cast Starswirl's spell a minute ago. You, to whom I now speak? You are not Twilight Sparkle." Luna's horn flares out into an ultraviolet antiglow that seems to suck space itself into the black hole of the circlet, warping the lines of the room.
"…," I protest as my lungs implode and spasms jerk my limbs.
"And it is time," her voice echoes as everything goes dark, "to discover what you truly are."
If you're curious what I did with the week I took off:
I wrote a story called Thou Goddess and submitted it to AugieDog's Luna competition. It won (despite competition that included FIMFic superstars like Skywriter and Pascoite!), amid a flurry of hyperbolic word-of-mouth.
If you're interested in a short but rich romance about sleep poetry and Princess Luna, go see what all the buzz is about.
Oh dear, what has Twilight gotten herself into this time?
,,,what just happened?
What the fuck is going on
If anyone remembers at the start of the fic, my saying that I was at a worse cliffhanger then the one that ended with, this was the one...
--arcum42
4069978 COULD YOU PLEASE STOP BEING SO AMAZING THANKS
Preparing for the coming plague, are you?
... Nooooo Not a cliff hanger!!!!!! A WEEK LONG cliff hanger Evil Evil Evil!
I salute you.
The best sleeper agents are the ones who don't even realize that they are.
I LOVE WHERE THIS IS GOING.
Im thinking hard.
Holy mother of Celestia, FSM, and Yoda all at once... What in heavens just happened?!
I don't even know how to even try to process this. Could someone really have played Celestia and Luna the entire time?? I... I just don't know! Arg! *head asplode*
Why not a little sooner? The weekend seems ideal.
Agent of Discord, calling it.
All of the what?!
Time travel is my thing, and now even I have no idea what is going on.
Well done!
OH MY CELESTIA THAT CLIFFHANGER GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I can't wait for the next chapter, this one was so intense! Twilight and Celestia are now from to different pasts! Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
You bastard.
You know who I am. You know my verbosity. And that's still all I have to say to you.
....What's that pink stuff on the floor? Oh. it's my brain. you melted it. Ow, by the way.
What the heck is going on!!!???? Now Twilight's not Twilight?? I'm So confused!!!
My brain was already straining and now I fear it might explode!! Somebody please explain to me what just happened.
I am confused!!!
4070277
Hmm....interesting choice, and very possible.
After some more thought, I'm going with: Chrysalis found a way to reset, get to Twi, and turn her into an unwitting double agent.
Please tell me this isn't going to go into alternate universe stuff. Infinite alternate universes, some of them messing with others, always breaks my suspension of disbelief because whatever consequences of an action someone deals with there are a bazillion alternates that actually exist and live and suffer a lack of fish and chips.
What's happening....
"The eight of us," Spike said. Changes can be additions. Now what could this mean...
Also, I get the feeling Celestia is going to find herself begging for forgiveness by the end of this. Come on, Tia, why would an imposter expose herself so blatantly?
In any case, looking forward to more. And congrats on Thou Goddess winning the contest!
Oh, I was about to kill you. You better update when you said!
Oho? Seems like this has suddenly become a three-way war. I wonder how Twilight will break free from Celestia now.
And was also wondering when Twilight's reluctance to help would come back to bite her.
Oh dear, so the missing princess Cadence is likely our Loop Delta manager, and may be using a Wish-type reality modification rather than the standard loop that the other three have been using? Sounds like fun.
You know how I called this an incomprehensible mess several chapters ago? My apologies for that. I was very much incorrect. This, what just happened here, THIS is an incomprehensible mess. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. I just have no freakin' clue what is happening here.
Aegri Somnia Vana. If Google Translate isn't lying to me, it roughly comes out as "The patients Dreams are vain".
Ominous.
Ehhhhhxxxxxxxxxcccccccccccellent.
Twilight is not Luna/Celestia's Twilight. Celestia seems to have taken this revelation poorly, but we already know she can't defeat the changeling invasion on her own... if she thinks that keeping Twilight trapped will change that, perhaps stop the invasion, then she's going to have to rethink things...
Aegri Somnia Vana: A sick man's dream/hallucination.
Well, I certainly hope that the next chapter explains what's going on, cause right now, I'm just staring at me screen thinking "...What?"
Also, can't you update on the weekends?
So, it would seem that Celestia is only just now understanding that loop Twilight is from the original timeline, and that her baseline memories were set before triangle looper changed everything? Huh. I thought she already understood that, or maybe the ramifications just hadn't set in until now.
4070468 The best sleeper agents are the ones that don't even know it.
4070810 But the spell is only supposed to add memories, and she should therefore remember the original history in addition to the new history.
4070826 I thought the whole "the spell can only add memories" was intended as one of those comforting and mostly accurate oversimplifications. It's essentially true when the intersecting loopers are close enough together, but doesn't hold up when one loop is far removed from the others.
Hell, the 'physics' of intersecting loops, that Celestia has shown she mostly understands, doesn't hold up at all if it really only adds memories.
4070826 No... that's not true. Think about Sweetie Belle Chronicles if that was a time loop rather than dimension jumping.
Sweetie wakes up in the same spot to the same exact thing happening, like her sister screaming, but does something different each time. (The crossover chapters with The Best Night Ever are a perfect example of this part of the equation, but it's too simplistic.) One day, Sweetie wakes up to her sister screaming, walks downstairs, and finds a group of Storm Troopers and Darth Neighder in her house, her sister dead at their hooves. She runs outside, and the entire world's a desert. But, within this set of loops, the day before should have been the same as she remembered: grassy, sunny, and cheerful.
But not this time. This time, the loop's been bumped by something else, something that caused Equestria to become a wasteland Sunshine and Fire's Daymare Sun (Oh, how original, yes?) would be envious of. Sweetie doesn't remember it, because it happened after she went into the loop, but changed within a loop that she was looping and can no longer remember.
For example:
Sweetie wakes up to sister screaming, Blueblood is at the front door, she skips school, and tries to collect the Fragment of Twilight. She fails, loop resets.
Sweetie wakes up to sister screaming, Blueblood is at the front door, she skips school, and tries to collect the Fragment of Twilight. She fails, loop resets.
Sweetie wakes up to sister screaming, Blueblood is at the front door, she skips school, and tries to collect the Fragment of Twilight. She fails, loop resets.
Sweetie wakes up to sister screaming, Blueblood is at the front door, she skips school, and tries to collect the Fragment of Twilight. She fails, loop resets.
Sweetie wakes up to sister screaming, Blueblood is at the front door, she skips school, and tries to collect the Fragment of Twilight. She fails, loop resets.
Sweetie wakes up to sister swearing, Tank Dempsey is at the front door, zombies have overrun Ponyville, and she gets eaten while trying to protect her friends, loop resets.
The deviation is so little at first, so very insubstantial, that most probably wouldn't even notice it. But this time, Sweetie's not looping synchronously with Blueblood, rather, he's either not looping at all anymore, or his loop has suddenly jumped back five years, he's freaked out even more or something, and now Sweetie has only one day to get the fragment before it resets, but now instead of an easy trip to where it's hidden, she has to climb the mountain by hoof while fending off Unicorn, Pegasus, and Earth Pony zombies. She can either leave her friends behind to die, or take them with her, further prolonging her journey. And that's not the half of it, since there's also someone else looping, that goes even further back than Blueblood, who's the cause for Blueblood's insanity, and the reason why the zombie breakout happens on the exact day that Sweetie keeps reliving.
This is a proportionally greater example of the looping discontinuity that Twilight's experiencing. While she's expecting Sunshine and Rainbows, Sweetie's been dumped into Fallout: Equestria (Pink Eyes), and a similar but less obtuse thing is happening to Twilight.
Now, this probably didn't make much sense at all, but it's the best I can manage, especially if I'm trying not to spoil things in the story. Such as Sweetie's being turned into a Changeling Tracker/Sleeper Agent by Chrysalis within TBNE's loops partially against her knowledge.
4070860 Mind checking over my example here 4070907 and tell me what you think? As someone else who disbelieves the "memory addition" thing (if maybe in slightly different ways), I'd like your opinion.
4070935 I think you picked too complex an example. I've read the Sweetie Chronicles, and I was still confused. If I hadn't read it I'd have no idea what you were aiming for. TSC involves both universe hopping and time loops, so it is probably better to make your point a different way.
I'm fairly confident you are making a sensible point, but I don't think I'm fully grasping it through the added complexity. Mind dumbing it down?
An update, you say? Answers to what just happened? On my birthday? Awwwww, you shouldn't have.
This just went beyond awesome.
4070974 Alright, here it is simply(er[ish]):
Twilight keeps looping in position A.
Every time she fails, she's sent back to position A.
"Well, that didn't work."
This is Hard Reset, by Eiken: The Super Abridged Version Exclusive Monthly Edition.
A Mysterious Circumstance happens to make someone who was Looping other than Twilight reset, causing Twilight, who was Looping in position A, to suddenly appear at position B.
"Well, that sure didn't work."
Since Twilight A remembers Position A and History A (which preceded Position A consistently), she notices something different right away: Spike's speech pattern.
Twilight A Loops back into Position B ***, where Celestia B is also Looping. History B and History A, which are the two different pasts that are suddenly being welded into one future (Future Ba), where one set of Historical Knowledge is made obsolete because the other overrules it, because the Mysterious Circumstance happened in such a way to "unplug" certain events that happened in History A, reworking them so that they don't in History B, which leads us back to Position B, wherein the Crystal Empire has no library, and something has happened to Cadance, or she didn't exist.
I could probably pack it even tighter, but I'm not quite sure how yet.
Edit:
***Because the Mysterious Circumstance that happened in Position A jumped backwards into History B, where it's broken away not only itself, but also the Twilight that must have come into contact with (or triggered) it.
Yes, here's an even more basic version:
Twilight A's Memory Save and Character Profile overwrote Twilight B's, but Position B has been Position B for longer than a Thousand Years due to the Mysterious Circumstance, that by the very definition of thought/memory decay, the "memory" of History A that Twilight A holds is not enough for it to exist/overwrite History B.
In even more detailed-shorthand, Twilight A has more memories due to the Loops from Position A, but at the same time, all those memories happen all at once in a single short length of time, basically creating a memory spring that, when Twilight B casts the spell, Twilight A's Loop Memories (which are based off her knowledge of History A) to 'spring backwards,' and wiping out Twilight B's personality and the like, including knowledge of History B.
There, I think I've completely and totally patted my own back until it hurts with all this.
4071080 No need to pack it tighter. We are on exactly the same page and agree completely. Well summarized.
4070108 SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING!!!
Including my brain.
It's so full of wat right now.
4071108 Thanks! I actually did do an even shorter-hand summary at the very bottom, and I am honestly kinda overly proud of it.
4071125 Hey, what do you call it when Grif smokes weed?
A red stoner!
Wait, wait, wait. A pony sized sewage pipe sticking out of the back of your super evil fortress of DOOM? Really?
But of course Chrysalis would have thought of that and left it there oh so invitingly, but filled with deadly traps and changeling ninjas...of course that's just what she knows we would expect, so instead, it simply connects back out the other side of the fortress, with no actual way in, thus leaving the heroes to wander about in sewage wondering if there was some sort of trap spell that is leading them in circles...but of cour-*thunk*
We're terribly sorry about that, so now for something completely different.
Hehe, Book Fort
Book Fort Vs. Time Looping Chrysalis and now apparently Sombra/Starswirl the Bearded, since we never did get an end/origin story for them (in this story), who may or may not have destroyed the Crystal Empire Library in an attempt to destroy the looping spell with him as the only one who knows it.
AND WE STILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE
[SPOILERS]
4071080
Well done good sir.
meh brain hurt don't get chapter anymore gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it hurts
Hmmmmmmmm.... "Aegri Somnia Vana", The Sick Sleep Idly. (Or something like that...)
Interesting...I wonder if this means time-looper Delta possessed Twilight, which caused the inconsistency of the library...
So mysterious. I'd bet $10 that the possessor is
Sweetie BelleKing Sombra. He certainly fulfills the age requirement, would explain why the library (The source of King Sombra's initial defeat) was never built in the altered timeline, and seems to possess motive for altering Twilight's life. On second thought, perhaps Sombra planted the true memories of Twilight into altered Twilight's mind so that the Sisters would turn against her.,,...Only time will tell. Keep on keeping on, dearest Horizon. You have our attention, so the question now is, what are you going to do with it?
..
On a side note, I noticed that subtle explanation for the Elements of Harmony not nuking Equestria. Smooth.
Twilight may have decided that "This Loop Matters," but Celestia is clearly too pragmatic for that, and if they had a magical spell that reveals the true nature of a thing, it wouldn't be worth quite this much of a build up. So they are going to torture Twilight.
Who actually is Twilight, because this fourth looper really did alter things.
At some point during the torture, Twilight will manage to kill herself somehow, and then will live it again. By the time Celestia realizes her mistake, Twilight will already have the memory and knowledge of it, but if things are merciful, not the true depths of it. Either way, that's the sort of thing that can really sour the combination of mentor and mother that Twilight looks at Celestia as.
Theory: Cadance no longer exists because of a change made by Sombra some thousand+ years ago. This is the root cause of many changes Twilight is just now noticing/hearing about. Sombra is a looper and was not killed in the current Hard Reset 2 timeline; the canon timeline and/or the Hard Reset 1 timeline/tree occur following Sombra's death (when from Sombra's perspective, he looped). This implies that reset timelines all still exist and continue after the looper's death, which makes sense.
Hmm I think I see what's going on... or I assume I do.
Theory time!
Since Twilight can't remember anything about her current timeline self it is entirely possible that Twilight is some kind of sleeper agent for Chrysalis. Since Chrysalis starts looping before both Twilight and Celestia, it IS a possibility that Chrysalis can nab Twilight before Celestia gets to her and plant her as a sleeper agent against Celestia via venom or changeling magic. I'm assuming changeling magic since lack of any mention of a bite, which Chrysalis had plenty of time to master I'm sure. And judging from the Wedding episode, compared to how she used it on Shining Armor, one zap should be able to last much longer and have more effect. And the pony entranced acts pretty much normal unless Chrysalis starts interfering. So with this assumption I'm guessing Twilight's sleeper ruined her current plan or attack Celestia last loop on Chrysalis's orders which are probably to attack when she has her back turn or is defenseless or some such. The kicker is this can be a totally new development for Chrysalis or something Chrysalis has been doing for a while. It's also possible she knows Twilight is a looper and it's also possible she still hasn't a clue yet.
But then again that's just my theory. And it doesn't quite explain Celestia's accusation on Twilight
I also have one on how this could just be Celestia being paranoid. But I like this theory at the moment.
Stupid guess, but two different Twilights from two different time loops somehow intersected paths and switched loops with each other.