"Are you sure about this, Princess Celestia?" His voice asked her. Blackflare. Such a disgusting, yet majestic stallion. But dangerous and uncertain. He looked like he would just as soon stab you in the back as he would give you candy. "I'm not certain how stable she'll be mentally, nor physically."
"I'm certain." Celestia said with her usual stern princess voice. She was so certain of herself, so sure that when she did this, her little protegee would run up and give her a big hug and thanks. Or perhaps she knew how I would react but simply didn't care. "Start the ritual."
Bum bum... Bum bum... Bum bum...
I could always feel my heart beat as I grew older, but to be a heart? It was more than merely feeling the heart beat. It was you. Your everything was in that heart beat—how you though, how you felt, how you counted the seconds down—that was the pulse of life everypony shares. But only I know the strain of the heart: the ungodly willpower that it took not to go mad.
His magic was sick and twisted. I would've felt the urge to vomit had I had my body, but feeling that slick, oil-like dark magic envelope me felt wrong in all the bad ways. It was perverse to everything I held in high regard, the fact Celestia was naive enough or desperate enough to allow this disgusted me. The fact she allowed this dark mage to hold me in his magic was beyond any strings attached to sanity. If he turned on her and attempted to control my magic with his, it might tear half of Canterlot off the mountain, or it might give them all cotton candy for butts. I'm not sure.
He lowered me into this soulless husk of a mare. At least she had the goodness in her heart left not to sacrifice another life for mine. She had a team of necromancers hired, and given temporary immunity to the laws of moral magic use,-thankfully only within reason-to construct a soulless body to implant me into. I wouldn't have thought she'd be so willing to delve into the dark arts this early in her life, but the corruption to the time line might have something to do with that.
Thankfully, time itself didn't unravel. She and I both can count our lucky stars for that.
As he touched me to the cadavers gaping chest cavity, I felt myself click into place like clockwork. I extended my magic, flowing into the never living mare's horn.
Flash—Clunch!
I magicked her-my chest closed instantly, shutting out Blackflare's magic and expelling it from my soul as fast as I could. My body seized, trying to breathe through missing lungs. My hooves smacked against the marble ground of Canterlot castle, cracking and chipping it as my innate Earth pony magic began to flow through my new body. "Hold still!" Blackflare yelled in frustration more than anything, his magic helplessly trying to still my flailing body as I acclimated and my lungs grew. "I have to open you up and put your lungs back in!"
My eyes widened at him in white hot rage. I reached within my soul, pulling for my magic to my already blazing horn and shot a bolt of kinetic energy at him, but my body trying to breath with fetal lungs messed my aim up entirely. The shot went far too far left, turning the far wall to rubble as it burst out into the adjacent corridor. One of my lung expanded rapidly, a gurgling breath tore its way down my throat as my body force air into the lung.
"Twilight, stop! He is trying to help you!" Celestia tried to hold me herself this time, her magic bearing down like elephants standing on my skull. I heard my heart beat again as I willed my magic to overpower her.
Then my second lung expanded. With a wretching breath that tasted like blood and vomit, I found my new voice. "You selfish brat!" I turned on her; screamed at her, stumbling to my hooves as my once green, but now browning mane bellowed in the air behind me, expanding rapidly; filling the room. My magic tainted the body, tingeing it purple, trying to turn it into me. "I asked you not to! I wanted to die! You lied to me and broke my trust!" My voice tuned itself closer to my own with each syllable. She started to retreat in steps away from me, my magic expanded throughout the castle uncontrollably like wildfire; she was straining to keep a fraction of it in this room. "You endangered all of time and space for a silly petty desire! You have no idea what you risked you arrogant horse!" I slammed my fore hooves on the floor, shattering the marble around me to emphasize just how upset I was.
"Twilight, I'm sorry!" She pleaded as my bones shifted, my height grew to match her within seconds. "I know what did was risky and selfish, but I couldn't let you die! I couldn't kill you!"
My face contorted in emotions I can't even describe. "You should have left me in torment." I hissed at her, calming my raging magic in an instant. "I will not play this game with you, Celestia. I will not allow you to do this." I stalk towards her just another step, now looming over her like a mother scolding her child. "You betrayed me in the most sick and twisted way I can possibly imagine. You bet the lives of your my... our subjects and every other life in the universe, that you have no right to control the fate of, on the small chance that they wouldn't die when you brought me here, and you've done it again by trying to revive me." I backed to the center of the room again, feeling a movement inside my upper back.
"I will not sing to your song of death and doom." I say with finality, flooding the magic from the castle into my body and concentrating it. "I will get what I desire, Celestia."
She yelled, charging at me desperately. But my ears were the first to go. My skin peeled and caught fire, a lavender and violet fire that danced off of me. It fluttered away, taking my meticulously crafted body with it. But through the agony of scorching myself alive, and through Celestia trying to extinguish the magical fire, I could hear it calling me again.
Bum bum... Bum bum... Bum bum...
"You can't destroy this body the same way, Twilight." Her words sickened me. She was beyond selfish and petty; she was not the Celestia I knew. This new dark mage, I didn't bother learning his name, accompanied her. The body this time was devoid of color, but rune signs traced along each limb from a central gem implanted on the base of the spine; the runes were branded on. The lungs were already in this time too, this mage could simply phase me through them. "Every time you do we'll simply create a new one that cannot be destroyed the same way. I won't lose you, Twilight. I can't lose you, not after all this."
Around the mares horn was several golden and iron rings of various enchantments. Magic binders. She hoped to at least limit my magic until she could calm me down. She nodded to the necromage stallion, who nodded back as he lift me from the glass vase from Celestia's study. It only had a very simple stasis enchantment I had disengaged a long time ago, nearly right after being put it in. His magic was just as horrid as Blackflare's, it rubbed me in all the wrong ways as he lowered me through the new body and sat me in place.
Flash—Clunch!
My heart sat in place as I regained feeling in my hooves in almost an instant. Air flooded into my new lungs again; the small hole letting access to my heart and lungs closed. "You disgust me." My first words, they managed to tune this one's voice a lot more like mine. Were these any other circumstance, I would've been slightly impressed.
"Twilight, try to understand." She steps over me, staring into my eyes. "Please try to understand how much I can't do what you asked of me."
"I understand, Celestia." I can feel my magic building at the base of my horn. It feels like my skull might explode from the pressure, the enchantments are actually somewhat decent. "There is little I don't understand." Brute forcing them would take too long, not to mention it might hurt her. "One of those rare things however, is that you would support this disgusting magic to touch me; to influence the one you beg everyone to believe you love." I opened my eyes, glaring at her from the floor. "What I don't understand is why you would give me your word–"
"Twilight–"
"Why you would [i]give me your word[/i] that you would help me find peace, then immediately steal my very soul away and endanger countless lives in the process." I found the weak point in the first ring, I snaked my magic into it and started on the next.
"If I didn't, you never would have let me try to help you!" She waved her hooves around, whether she were trying to justify her actions to me or to herself I don't know. "You would have stopped me before I had the chance."
The second and third ring fell quickly; I had learned the pattern. "Let you help me?" I laughed at her. I openly, without any restraint, laughed at her. "Let you help... Do you have any idea what it's like? To be alive after everypony you ever loved has died?" Then the fourth.
"Of course I under-"
"You don't understand anything!" I laugh again. "You've had Luna all your life, even when she was gone, she was never once dead. You always knew she'd be back." I close my eyes. "You think you realize what it's like, but you've only experienced half of it. One day, when you lose someone like Luna? Someone who you thought would never, ever go away?" I open my eye again, my magic disengaging the enchantments on the magic binders at once. "That is when you will get a hint at what I feel like, that is when you will want to die, and that is when Twilight will steal your death from you as well." My mane floods the room again, Celestia and the dark mage backing off in shock.
I reach out with my magic, the binders melting down off my horn as molten metal and slag, and wiggle it into the structure of the roof. I teleport Celestia, who's panicking, to the edge of the Griffon borders, then pull the ceiling to collapse on me and the dark mage with a smirk at said stallion.
Bum bum... Bum bum... Bum bum...
Celestia had found a way to dull my senses, by wrapping me in layers and layers of enchanted bindings, I could only sense her and her assistants presence, but I couldn't 'see' them in the same way as before. I believe she thinks I'm planning how to kill each new body as it's thought, but in actuality I just came up with it on the fly. I can't hear her anymore either, she used to talk to me, plead with me to reconsider every night; tell me about her day. Now she keeps me in the binds like her shameful little secret. I felt a new magic engulf me, I couldn't decide whether her ignoring me is a blessing or a curse as I was lowered into yet another body.
I'd long since lost track of time. How many years had she been trying to force life unto me? How any decades had passed now? How long until she grows up enough to end this menagerie of naive torture and risk?
If I'd learned one thing from immortality, it was patience.
Flash!
In an instant my senses spanned out, they had refined the process to a simple teleport and a quick spell cast. No messy holes in my body, nothing of that sort. She would then remove her assistant from the room as quickly as she could. The last time she didn't, I turned them inside out before transforming all the liquid in my body into orange juice.
She took exception to that one in particular. I heard him screaming for at least ten minutes before she gave up trying to reverse the spell and killed him. I wish she would do that to me.
"Are you ready to accept life this time?" Her question was dull and impassive. She had grown past the begging and pleading, instead now treating this as a monthly chore.
This time, I didn't even bother to talk to her. I didn't even look at her. What should I do this time? I have a mental list of everything I've done to reset the destroy my bodies, I do ever so hate repeats. Maybe I should teleport all my skin off and replace her bed sheets with them? I wonder at what point she'll finally kill me out of anger and spite? What can I possibly do to anger her that much? "Are you already thinking of how to kill yourself this time?" She's as slow as ever. "Don't you even want to know what's at stake this time?"
I curl an eyebrow up, keeping my eyes closed, she doesn't usually gloat about her newest invention to try to keep me alive. What this time? The iron in my blood marked with runes to rebuild and replicate themselves after each failed attempt at self-destruction? If that's the case, I'll simply induce a permanent coma in the body, or teleport the brain to another star system. Trying to plead with her kindness and her mercy had failed. She didn't care about her subjects as much as she cared about me. In some twisted way, I should feel a sense of importance, but it only gives me sorrow.
My only option is patience.
I heard her hoof steps close in near my head, barely an inch away. Then I felt her breath on my face. "I love you so much, Twilight. Please, let me save your life." Everything has it's end, Celestia. Even me. In fact, my end was supposed to happen a long time ago. ...Or in a very long time, depending on how you look at it. I almost hum to myself in thought. After all my experience with time magic, I still have issues with that. Is something that happened before for me but in the future considered before or after?
She chuckled. "Humor me. At least give me a little satisfaction that you know what you are going to do before you kill yourself this time." She moved away and I opened my eyes. I'm in a hospital; how creative. "She's just in the next room, please come with me and see her." I stood up, my mane extending and trailing all throughout the room behind me, and yawned impassively. I couldn't care less, but it gave me an excuse to come up with a really creative death this time. I already liked the bed sheets one. Maybe replace Luna's bed sheets? "We've made quite a few advances in magi-technology and arcane spell weaving over the last sixty years, Twilight." Flurryheart's? Actually, no. That might damage the time stream more than I'd like if she's traumatized this early in life.
"It feels like it passed in a heart beat to me." I trotted over to her, my voice was perfect; save for my monotone. They had almost perfected the body after so many tries, it was a lavender unicorn mare just a slight bit taller than Celestia, but my magic was already transforming the body even more. They couldn't create her as an alicorn yet, but it was only a matter of time.
She smiled that smile she always does. I at one point found it charming, but Celestia—This Celestia—had tainted my memory of it. "It's all thanks to the Princess of Friendship. But, you already knew that, didn't you?"
"Your witty comments surpass me by great strides, oh how I'll never understand how you can speak with such an intelligence and allure." I can't stand her god complex. I remember when she went through this phase, but being on the other end of it's 'love' is more sickening than I remembered.
She allowed a frown for only a moment before grinning again. "I think you will be proud of me in a moment. If I'm correct, which I usually am nowadays, I think I found the perfect reason for you to stay around." She tipped her head and trotted out of the room into what I can tell is a much larger observatory. "I have had Twilight researching time magic and its risks a lot lately."
"Then she should already have informed you that changing this much is already a risk."
"I've also had her researching a spell to circumvent these risks."
"Sounds even more risky than simply dealing with the problems in place already."
I trotted into the room with her and glanced down at the sight of an ongoing surgery. "She was successful in her research of course, hence why I've ordered the deconstruction of Trottingham."
I turned up and gaped at her in shocked horror. "You can't! Trottingham was a very important part of history in the next two hundred years, you can't simply–"
"I can, and I already did six months ago." She smiled at me again. I stared at her. "I went back into your future again and studied the notes and photos you left in the dungeon. I found a few things interesting and I've devised the perfect solution." She gestured to the ongoing surgery with a hoof, "I believe you knew young Glowheart?"
I immediately stood on the railing and focused down into the room, "What are you doing to her?"
"'Glowheart', it's quite ironic really." She too stood on the railing, instead hooking a hoof around to rest her head on lazily. "When I saw her name and information in the birth records, I thought it was too good to be true. But there she was, Glowheart of the Spark family, a direct offshoot of the Sparkle family, the first unicorn foal born to them in nearly three hundred years."
I stared as they placed her heart back inside her carefully, strings of magic reattaching the veins and already closing her up. "What are you playing at Celestia? If you viewed my journals, you know how important she will be. She has to be Twilight's pupil, or she won't ascend. The Goldenglow Empire will never come to pass."
"I know." She almost giggled from amusement. "That's why I had her glowing, golden heart removed and bound to your new body." She tapped her chin almost thoughtfully, "I had Twilight herself create the protective enchantment. If it detects her magic trying to disable it, or if your body dies, it will engage and make her pure little heart explode."
As the color left my face, she lost her cheery attitude immediately and glared at me, edging her muzzle close to mine threateningly. "You've pushed my hoof, Twilight. And now I will force you to stay alive at the risk of killing your beloved protegee. Now you will understand how I feel." She jabbed her gold plated hoof on my chest, "Now I give you the choice to kill her if you want to die. Do this, and I will grant you the peace you want." She backed up, leaving me mouth agape. "Show me you're capable of what you're asking me." She frowned at me.
I stared at her in the purest form of disgust and horror. What other choice could I make?
"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
― E.E. Cummings