I screamed—the first band in my mane buzzed, bolts of energy bouncing off of it as the enchantment activated, allowing me access to more magic. The caved walls and fallen ceilings were enveloped in my magic, but my eyes never left Glowheart's as I teleported the debris somewhere. I might've destroyed them by not having a specified destination, they might simply reappear in a billion years or two seconds, but I'd cross that gap when it became more important.

My body gave out, two of my legs were damaged beyond use. My magic screeched—or perhaps that was me—as it wrapped around my limbs and started to regrow them. I levitated myself into the air, my broken wings unable to do so, and poured my magic into Glowheart's body. First an electric shock. I saw her heart thump as I repeated a steady lightning spell, my magic reaching out and molding her back to the right shapes as best as I could manage.

Her eyes twitched, as did her head as she appeared to writhe in agony as I forced life into her corpse, telekinetic magic reached out like tendrils and wrapped around her limbs, holding her while I healed her. I peered into her chest, her heart was damaged. Without hesitation, I directed the healing magic into it. For one, beautiful moment, as the damage started to close up, I allowed a brief smile. "You'll be okay, don't worry." My words came out sounding mad, even to me, but I had the purest intentions in them I assure.

Splat

I reeled and screamed as her heart atomized into my face, the protective enchantment having engaged. My widened eyes burned and cried, tears and blood draining down my face. "Buck!" I yelled, the sudden and unexpected assault breaking my concentration enough for my body to fall and thunk on the floor, almost limp. My unharmed foreleg reached up and pulled the rest of my battered and bleeding body onto the crushed bed with her, my horn glowed as I cleared my eyes of blood, and my tears doubled their efforts to blind me as I saw her, staring with dead eyes at her slightly opened chest.

Healing magic poured and poured into her again, the second band on my mane fizzing and sparking as more magic flowed from the contained reservoir. "This isn't fair! Not again, I can't lose you again!" My voice bleated out in sobs as I wrapped bleeding and bloodied limbs around her, pulling myself to her. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right. This wasn't how things were supposed to go.

But then, as though the first nail in her coffin, the magic refused to heal her anymore. Yet she still laid dead in my arms. I cursed the world and the unfairness of it, beating my bleeding half stump against the floor in defiance again life; defiance against death; in just plain defiance. But she wouldn't breath no matter how much magic I forced into her, no matter how much I tried to stimulate the nerves in her brain to at least be able to pull a memory extraction. I couldn't even feel her soul anymore, it had left her and fled to the void.

She was dead.

I don't remember how long I left myself lying there, hugging her chilling corpse as I slowly let myself bleed out. I felt the chilling, familiar weakness of blood loss slowly crawling over me, like a quilt of snow that hung in the air. I didn't cry anymore, I didn't sob. I just laid and held Glowheart to me. My Glowheart, my dear pupil and closest friend. This was the second time I held her corpse in regret and remorse, and yet I don't feel it's dampened. The emotions felt just as raw as they tore into my heart again, still without any preparation; without any sense of hesitation.

She came a short while ago, but wouldn't muster the words. Celestia stood some distance away from me, still in quiet mourning, or fear. I hated her, her actions caused Glowheart's death. If she at least hadn't of bound her heart, I could've saved her, and she knew that. "Leave me alone before I do something I won't regret." My voice didn't sound like mine, it sounded vile and hate–filled. The castle is wracked with earthquakes again, more chunks of stone falling and crashing down around me. But Celestia is holding a shield of golden sunshine over me and her. "Stop it!" I curled into Glowheart more, hiding my bloodshot eyes from the blinding light. "Leave!"

"You know I can't do that, you know I won't." Her voice was as calm and collected as though she were taking a tea break. I hated it.

"If you don't leave, I will kill you." I tore my face from my student, glaring madly at Celestia. "I'll crush you and rip your heart apart molecule by molecule."

"Why?"

I flung my good hoof around, slamming into the ground angrily. The stone under it shattered, cracks spider webbing out from the center. "This is your fault! You and your stupid plan killed her!"

"No," She walked over the cracks and rubble, bending down until her face was inches from mine. "I didn't do this. This is your fault. If you had helped me, at least have done something other than run away and hide, she would be alive." Her eyes softened. "I'm truly sorry for you. I can only imagine how you feel."

"Because you couldn't kill me and prevent all of this!"

"Remember what you're doing and why you're doing it." Her eyes narrowed and I flinched, curling my clotted hoof just a little tighter around Glowheart. "You have a fresh idea of that pain now, so tell me." She stood up. "Could you really expect anyone to force themselves to feel this way?"

I reeled my head, my horn alighting with black rage. I had planned on scaring her, but the shadow magic Sombra created had a subtle corrupting effect, and if I hadn't been so blinded by rage I would've seen my intentions being blurred, what originally was the intentions of scaring her with a light show was somehow confused with scaring her by beating her face in with her own wings.

Flash!

Golden light warped her away, likely gone to try and fix things again, along with fleeing from me. She left me, abandoned to my thoughts and rampant emotions. Something above me crumbles and one of my bands buzzed. I turn my gaze up to see a large boulder before it disappeared in black and green fire. The band clamped down on my mane, and with it, it faded it's slight glow as I laid my head back to my bloodied student. My eyes closed, my horn lighting as I cast a simple shield spell around myself and Glowheart, then my vision fades in as the far sight spell engages.

Celestia went through the streets of Canterlot, "Gather the survivors! Take everypony out of the city, relocate them to the base of the mountain." Her orders echoed the streets as the guards and any able bodied ponies helped move the debris. Unicorns—older foals, adults and guards alike all ran through the city, their horns ablaze as they tried to help everypony they can.

With her golden aura, Celestia helped lift the debris of a couple of small houses, one of the royal guards helping her as a small group of two families ran from the rubble to her side. They all hugged her, begging their thanks as they wept and assured her they were alright. When they left, Celestia spotted a piece of parchment fluttering through the breeze, she grabbed it and quickly scrawled a message on it, a quill and ink appearing in a flash of sunshine, before sending it away in green fire and continuing, the ink and quill too disappearing with another flash.

She still hadn't found Twilight, the one pony who might be able to help. Where would I have been had this happened and I were hiding from the Princess?

My eyes opened, the spell dying away. My senses were dull, the world was white and blue. I moved to sit up, Glowheart was gone, the castle was gone. "The astral plane." I said aloud, looking around.

"I've missed you, Twilight." A voice of age and death called out to me.

"Glowheart?" I turned to her, no longer a filly but the alicorn I grew to love for all those tens of thousands for years. I stumbled to my hooves, vaguely noting my legs weren't hurt. My wings flapping frantically, I galloped to her. She walked slowly up to me, still a tad shorter, but her mane nearly as long as mine. "How are you here? What..."

"Shh..." She leaned into me, whispering sweet nothings as she wrapped a wing around me. "I don't have long until my soul welcomes the void again, my beloved teacher. Please, listen to me."

I pressed my face into her, not wanting to lose her again. "Okay." I nearly sobbed. "Okay." My hoof tightened around her as I choked on the words.

Then she pushed me away. Though it was the gentlest nudge away, it felt like she had seared my skin off. "Don't mourn me thrice, Twilight. I don't deserve all that. Dry your tears." I nodded, wiping my face with a wing. When I looked back at her, she seemed to only grow more beautiful. "Don't be sad, though we all miss you, this is not what we want from you. We don't want you wallowing in anguish and despair over us. All your friends are there with me, and everypony forgives you, Twilight." She smiled warmly at me. "Please, don't hate Celestia. She is no more at fault than you were when you and Starfield built the telematrix array." She rested a hoof on my shoulder, "Ponies make mistakes, and you are as much a pony as she is. But even you couldn't have predicted they would detonate, especially so catastrophically."

I shook my head, "How do you know all of this?"

"When ponies die, we go beyond the astral plane." She flicked a hoof, screens upon screens showing my time since I had accepted life again. "Even here we could know everything we needed, but there? We feel the emotions of our loved ones beyond any boundaries. Beyond any form of restraint or spell guard, we become one with those we love."

I walked up, placing a hoof against the panel of me and filly Glowheart laughing over lunch, tears streaming down my cheeks. "And I loved you more than anypony, Twilight. You were always there for me, you were everything to me from the very first day." All the panels faded to show filly Glowheart writing in her diary about me, then my Glowheart sitting behind me in her golden throne, then when she said goodbye when she died the first time. "You were everything to her already." They flashed every memory I had of her, both my Glowheart and this time's Glowheart.

"Why are you showing me this? Why are you telling me this?" I pressed my face against the panel of her walking along side me in the castle of Friendship, I remembered that we were going to dinner with the Alicorn Council, after dinner though was the first time she told me how much she cared about me, and me to her. After all those decades, we still hadn't made it plainly obvious. But then we did. "Do you have any idea how this is making me feel?"

"I could only imagine, Twili–." Her body crack and wrapped before fusing whole again. She sighed sadly, but smiled at me all the same. "My time grows short." She was fading away already, growing transparent. "Promise me you'll do better than this, I know why you're doing it but–" Her voice cut out, but her lips moved further. Luckily I can read lips, I read a lovely book on the subject a long time ago. '–you and I both know that you could do this right, that you could prevent time from unraveling and save everypony this time.' Her voice came back, but it was distorted. "Why won't you even try?"

"It's my fault you all died in the first place." I shook my head. "I have no right to try again. I failed once, I couldn't bare to fail again with the stakes this high. This time I wouldn't just be dooming the ponies I love, but I would be erasing life and existence itself." I choked on the words and sniffed, "I'm sorry! Everything is my fault, I was being selfish!"

She went to speak, but her form faded ever quicker. "Goodbye Twilight. I will always love you and forevermore watch after you my beloved teacher."

I begged and pleaded with her to stay, trying to force her back with magic. But she only smiled, her eyes softening as the last of her face faded away, the panels of memories winking out one by one until I was alone. I gulped, sobbing once as my voice was forced out. "G–Goodbye Glowheart, I will always love you too." Somewhere deep inside, I knew she heard me.

I opened my eyes, the vision ending. I felt fresh sorrow boiling up, my eyes already tearing up and dripping, but with I couldn't mourn her now. All this death and decay, looking at Glowheart again, I knew she was right. My magic reached and my spilled blood rose to crimson tendrils, dancing about the air before it spiraled down and began fusing with my injured hooves. The bones regrew with a red and purple tinge, the muscle and skin soon followed, and then the fur. I sat my healed hoof on Glowheart, her body was already cold and stiff. My horn's aura turned a sickly black and violet, sparks of green sparking and dying within it. I rested my horn to hers, and her body evaporated to a cloud of pitch black smoke.

I collected the smoke, condensing it as I summoned a beaker from the Castle of Friendship. I never changed my organization techniques, I kept everything almost exactly the same. While the beaker was three and a half millimeters too far west, it was close enough for my summoning spell to correct it. I filled the beaker with the smoke and plugged it, before stowing it in my mane like Pinkie had shown me all those years ago.

I rapped my hoof on the floor twice, my magic reaching out and finding the twisted remains of my hoofguards. The metal flowed across the floor like lava, wrapping around my legs and forming back into a shining hoofguards. "Sum dea." I verbally recalled the words of the ancient Roam goddesses in the books of old, the words allegedly spoken by Helios herself in the first Era when protecting against the Caribou invasion.

I chuckled to myself, the irony in the two Roaman words with regard to my circumstance is hilarious. I am no goddess. But I am a teacher. As a teacher, I live to make my students proud, to see them thrive and live another day. I won't forgive Celestia. I never, not in a million years, will I ever forgive Celestia. But I will follow Glowheart's dying wishes, for I owed her so much more for failing her twice.

Blink

My eyes were assaulted by blinding red light when I first opened them on top of Canterlot castle. When I opened them again, I had true appreciation for how horrible messing with the time stream could end up. The sky from blood red, the ground itself was splintering apart and—The screams. The unending screaming, I couldn't decide if it was in my head or not, but it wasn't the scream of a living being. It was horrifying, and crude. Like some makeshift replica of an actual scream by someone who had only heard a brief description of a scream. In the far distance, I saw the split. It wrenched itself up from the center of Trottingham to several thousand hooves into the sky. It shone like a great red sun had been stretched across the sky. Below I saw Celestia and the royal guard helping everypony they could.

I will become a guardian of life again, for Glowheart. My gaze followed the panicking and dying pleas from my subjects below, but I couldn't be weak then, not when everypony depended on me, when Glowheart had entrusted me with this. I closed my eyes, casting a massive search spell. It would tell me the location of every powerful magical creature. I felt Celestia, Luna. In the far distance, I felt Cadence. Discord was in pieces everywhere, likely he was trying to slow the time splits progress, but his magic wasn't suited to induce stability, so it was likely making it worse if anything.

Twilight was in Mount Everfree, the cave me and my—or she and her—friends found when dealing with that one dragon. He turned out to rebel against the dragon overlords in the following century, Fluttershy had quite an impact on him apparently. But his rebellion against the third dragon war ended with his death unfortunately. I latched my magic onto Twilight, shaking my head to disperse the wandering thoughts as I cast the reverse teleport spell. Beside me, the air shifted like a gentle breeze. "Huh?" Twilight mumbled. I looked down at her, she was just waking up. Her mane was a wreck, her face was tear stricken. "What's going on?"

"I'll explain later." She quickly looked up at my strangely familiar voice, "Right now I need to peer into your memories for just a moment." I said this as I did it, touching my horn to hers. Her reflexes were slow from drowsiness, also likely at least partially due to her sorrow, so she barely even reacted before I entered her thoughts.

Flash!

Her mind was blinding even now, so much knowledge in such a small place. I imagine mine would make a mortal mind go insane, so many years of memories, never forgotten but sometimes stored away. I scanned through her thoughts, I knew how she thought so finding the spell was easy. I extracted the memory of how to cast it, leaving a copy, before I exited her mind.

Flash!

"What the–?!" She scooted back, my horn pulling a pale blue wisp from her forehead. Gathering her legs under herself as she struggled to stand, she found her voice again. "Who gave you permission to–" Her sentence trails off as she glances around over the balcony wall. Her mouth moved wordlessly, not even mouthing words. Just moving. She looked back at me, then at the world. "W–What happened?"

"I was lost in the woods," I pointed her gaze to Celestia, fighting and pushing against all odds to save everypony she could. Tearing the walls off prisons and saving criminals even. Not a single pony was left damned in her eyes, they were all her precious subjects. My precious subjects. "But someone who I lost long ago helped me find my way."

She stared at Celestia with me for a moment, before turning her gaze back to me. "That doesn't answer my question."

"I know." I cast my gaze to the tear. "But right now I have a job." I nodded towards Celestia again, "As you have yours."

She hesitated before nodding and teleporting to Celestia's side with a bright purple flash. I saw them exchange hugs and words, I couldn't help but feel resentment and hate towards Celestia, thoughtlessly indulging in her student's blind love, without the sorrow of having lost her, without the regret. Simply content. The tear tore my gaze away from them as it ruptured again, letting the screams of time and space loose in a deafening wail. The fluttering wisp coated my horn in a white sheen before it disappeared, the memory becoming mine. One, two, three—four of my iron bands boomed, drawing the attention from a few civilians down below.

My mane expanded and fluttered in the motionless air, the ends weighed down by the rest of the bands, as I felt power consume me, so much power, and only a third being drawn. As I cast her spell, I noted that she had created it wonderfully. I can only imagine how long it took her to get it this close to perfection. My horn shone like a star at twilight, blazing with power and casting light to the faces of the dead and the dying. I will save them, I am the protector. The spell weaved itself through time, the split shuddering as everything quaked one last time in defiance. Then it fell into itself, like water into a drain. Until it was gone, until the screaming ended.

But the spell was flawed, it would eventually lose strength and the time anomaly would reemerge, but until then I could save these lives. The bloodied sky seemed to be wrapped in blue gauze, the red tinge fading to blue again as order prevailed.

"To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

― J.K. Rowling