A Tear in Harmony

Chapters

Era IV – Prologue
Era IV – Chapter I
Era IV – Chapter II
Era IV – Chapter III
Era IV – Chapter IV
Era IV – Chapter V

Era IV – Prologue

Present Day: 1944 A.C.

———

Canterlotian Equestria; The Central State, Capital, Canterlot.

"Princess. Are you sure that it would be a wise decision to send for an extra twice-daily patrol? It's just, after all that things that have happened these past weeks, I..."

The lavender alicorn breathed a soft sigh as her head lolled limply to the right. Her eyes seemed to gaze into a nonexistent dimension, and her eyeballs lolled lazily over and out a window, where green grass and beautiful, colorful flowers grew in their respectable pots. That familiar daily thought of hers stubbornly returned back to her, as it did nearly every day: her life, the life of a Princess, shouldn't have been as hard as it was for her before.

Though her first few years of having the title and duties of a Princess had transformed her into a "tyrant" (as described by her very own subjects), she had learned many lessons along the way. She had grown and gained much experience as a ruler and as a pony, and, though she'd had her fair share of selfish indulgences in the past, she was truly a hardworking pony, especially when it came to important matters at hoof. She had learned that, despite being a workaholic, it was a good thing, more often than never, to hand off some responsibilities to other leading ponies instead of bearing everything on her shoulders. It was this yearning to do everything her own way that had made her such a tyrannical ruler in the first place. At least, now, she was no longer the tyrant she used to be.

"Erm... Your Highness...??"

Twilight Sparkle's head shot up and she reached up to hold her temple gingerly with a hoof. She quickly snapped out of her thinking spree, and her eyes focused on her army's supreme Commander whom she was giving orders to; apparently she had fallen asleep again on the job, but she had at least woken herself up. She made up a reply to him right on the spot.

"Yes, Commander. I, uhh... I'm aware that the amount of dragon attacks rises greatly during the spring..." she thought hard. "... But, I believe that another twice-daily patrol should be needed to... umm..." she lost her train of thought thanks to her convoluted and confused mind. She smacked her face, knowing she had failed to come forth with a legitimate answer to a very important matter.

The Commander looked up at her quizzically. "... Your Majesty, if I'm not mistaken, we were talking about the Chaos forms. We've noticed lately that activity has been rising drastically, especially during the night, More and more of them have been spotted near the edges of the Everfree forest, just a mile or two from the ground directly underneath this city. It seems that they enjoy the dark night very much..." his stolid and expertly controlled face did not betray his amusement and need to laugh inside.

Princess Twilight tried her best to soak it all in, but failed to really do so at all. She sighed and sat up straight on her gold-trimmed marble throne, then stretched her hooves out. "Well..." she strained to speak as she stretched. She was looking for a reply, but her mind drifted to a different subject, barely related to the Chaos forms they were speaking about. Typical Twilight.

"Commander, I believe that we might need to keep an eye on the griffons as well. I can tell by their behavior lately that they're getting antsy and a little shifty, and we really need to make sure they don't do anything stupid or out of line. I would advise setting up a nightly stealth surveillance patrol over griffon territory, and... we should reschedule our Chaos form patrols so they can take place during the night... instead of wasting them during the day when they're not needed."

The Commander took a step back and bowed his head down low for a good four seconds before straightening up again. "Well, then, I respect your decision and understand your reasoning behind it. These patrols will go into effect immediately. Thank you... for your wisdom, Princess," he straightened up and made his way out the door, careful not to turn his flank to her as he left.

When he had gone, she pressed a small application icon on a touch screen on the armrest of her throne. A hologram displaying the time appeared in front of her.

"13:41..." she muttered to herself before the three-dimensional set of numbers flickered away and disappeared. She nodded to the guards on either side of her, relieving them of their duty. "I believe that the Court is adjourned," Twilight spoke before standing up, getting off the throne and trotting down the steps until she was just in front of her throne. She stood there for a while, glancing blankly around the spotless white room.

Princess Twilight liked to believe that she was a humble leader and a good role model for ponies looking up to her, but every now and then her subconscious thoughts would rebuke her, telling her that the evil and corrupt choices she had committed in the past were part of her and could never be taken away. And every single time, she would deny being such an "evil tyrant" or a "heartless donkey". Those days were long gone, and, though she would like to wish that they had never happened in the first place, her conscience would continue to remind her every single day of her dark past.

But now, there was no longer any time to worry about such petty affairs. The main problems in society no longer rested on the inside, with allied ponies, but came from the outside. The Chaos forms were the main worry now; they seemed to be getting stronger every day, and the public always wondered whether or not Equestria was truly safe. Even the government and the army had been unable to deal with these things properly, and they had been purposely restricting this information from the public, if only to stay in power.

She didn't notice her daily mail-delivering pony behind her. Her thoughts were getting the best of her once more, and she jumped for the second time in ten minutes when the Earth pony mare asked aloud, "Your Majesty?"

After she jumped and regained control of herself, she glanced over at the source of the voice, her head turning as quick as lightning. "Y-Yes??" she asked, fixing her stance.

"You have some paperwork to fill out, as always," came the calm reply of the mare with a brown mane and a light yellow coat beside her, who was wearing rather large shades. Judging by those and the line on her ear, Twilight could tell (though she had never seen her before), that she was a new Executive officer.

With a sigh, she took the huge stack of paper in her telekinetic grip and watched as the mare gave her a respectful bow. She then quickly trotted away to resume her royal duties somewhere downstairs underneath the floor they were on.

Oh, was Twilight happy that she didn't have to carry the paper over. All she had to do was fill out, quite literally, a few thousand pages of complete rubbish and pretend to know what those clients or emissaries or treaties were talking about when the time came to talk about them.

When she was finished standing around, she made her way up through the winding castle. The occasional large, seamless windows she passed by allowed her to glance out across the huge city that seemed to extend past the horizon. It was almost as if they were still safe on the ground, but, really, everypony knew that they were standing on dirt and stone supported by nothing except magical clouds. It was a wild concept to any pony who had not heard of such a thing.

When she made it up to her room, she tapped on an area to the right-middle of a door-shaped outline on the wall. Something within flashed continuous red for a few seconds, before turning green and emitting a quick double beep. Then, the outline against the wall sank an inch or two in the direction of the wall before sliding open, revealing a huge suite within.

Twilight trotted inside and set the huge stack of papers on a large, solid black rectangular block that seemed to be an advanced sort of desk. It was pressed up against the edge of the room, flawlessly conforming to the wall's shape. In fact, it was a limited edition, Special Royalty utility desk she had ordered just a few weeks ago.

Immediately after setting the papers down, the desk lit up with various lights, knobs, and controls on-screen for different windowed applications, and began to organize the papers for Twilight to sift through later. It was like a touchscreen computer embedded into the desk itself that interacted with the physical world as well!

"Lights, please!" she called out to the air, sounding a bit annoyed. "Turn the TV on and put it on a decent news channel," she said, calming down a bit as she settled down on a huge, comfortable pillow on the ground. The darker room around her slowly lit up with a warm orange glow as the lights flickered on, and the wall in front of her brightened as a holographic screen appeared. It switched right to a news channel the moment it lit up.

The Royal Suite was, indeed, quite advanced. Out the wide window, there was a perfect view of the huge and vast megalopolis, its extremely tall stainless skyscrapers reaching very high into the sky. Though it was mostly buildings, big parks could be seen from Twilight's tower, parks where ponies went for recreation and relaxation.

Just because the modern pony culture was forced to live high in the sky just to ensure its safety, it didn't mean that life had to be difficult and full of work. In fact, leisure was an important part of modern Canterlotian culture, even more so than it had been back during the Time of the Six Wielders. These ponies wouldn't let a puny little imbalance in nature stop them.

An hour passed, and Twilight was now lying down on her side. The hologram television continued to drone on and on, and the ponies on the news tirelessly relayed information to the public. A few headlines popped up that would have been alarming to the Princess if she had heard them. But alas, she was too involved in her dream to wake up and listen.

Her hooves twitched every now and then.

After all, it would have been very important to know about a night patrol spotting a huge group of Chaos forms meeting up with one or two griffons not too far from the area directly underneath Canterlot. These Chaos forms did not attack the griffons, much to the public's surprise and shock. After all, Chaos forms attacked any organized species they found, including griffons; the lack of violence puzzled everypony everywhere. The headline on the news read, Griffons: Friends or Foes?, and was obviously quite an alarming finding for all the ponies living up on their floating island fortress.

Though these ponies believed they were invincible with their arcane energy bubble and their huge, fearsome plasma turrets, somewhere in the backs of their minds, they knew that they were not as strong as they believed themselves to be. Only time would tell who would come out on top.

And still, Twilight Sparkle continued to sleep as more and more alarming headlines appeared on the screen, most of them having to do with the Chaos forms growing larger and more threatening.

———

Somewhere else in the Central Canterlot Castle, there were the two older, more experienced, and more well-known Princesses in a room that looked akin to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise from Pony Trek. The similarities between the two were quite astonishing.

"Sister? Do you remember the day we were able to bring the landmasses together up in the clouds?"

High Princess, Celestia, wasn't paying that much attention to her younger sibling as she filled out some very important forms.

"Luna, of course I do. But if you can probably see, I'm a little busy right now... anyhow, why do you ask?"

"Ah, well... you know, I have just been wondering... You would think that we would have regarded this as child's play, manipulating the ground and the stars, considering that our ancestors created the universe with the nod of a head and the wave of a hoof. But to us, it is such a great achievement of engineering and magic. We do not have the raw power to change the universe as our previous relatives had, but at least we have technology to our advantage. What do you think?"

"About what...?" older sister replied to younger sister in slight annoyance when she asked her the question.

"About technology and magic. Do you believe that they mix? Or will they destroy each other in the future?"

The elder's eyebrow raised. Her horn continued to glow a bright golden yellow as her pen scratched vigorously on the paper to finish signing a contract for a large engineering firm. She could barely think about anything else besides the words written on the paper, let alone formulate an answer to such a complex question.

"Sister?" Luna's voice snapped Celestia back into the real world once more.

The Sun Goddess sighed deeply and shook her head. She set down the pen, and her glowing horn returned back to its resting state. She thought of her response; her eyes flicked around the room, looking out the window, onto the ground, to a glowing white orb (their light source in the room), and, finally, onto the holographic television that was playing a movie she couldn't quite remember. And, finally, her lips moved to respond to her sister's question.

"You know, Luna, magic will still be superior to technology. You should know this. Metal rusts, breaks down, and rots, and if any sort of machine is built, the environment will take its toll on it. A machine will always degrade and be replaced, and that machine that replaced the older will also degrade and be replaced as well. But magic... magic is the most wonderful thing in the world. Magic cannot be replaced or changed; it just does it what it's supposed to do, whatever its caster tells it to do.

"You and I had spent hundreds of years studying the most complex and ancient magics known to ponykind, and not once have those spells failed us. You know that. Magic has been around ever since the dawn of time, when the Alpha Alicorns created the world. But technology emerged in an efficient working form only about six hundred years ago. It's still primitive and lacks many things that magic can achieve.

"However..." she glanced down, watching her hooves as she made right and left ones touch. Her golden horseshoes glinted and reflected the light from the sun outside. "... If you put technology and magic together, you get more than the best of both worlds... you get a little something called harmony. And that is the ultimate state of pony engineering, and the universe. Harmony. Just look at the cloud generators. Those have been going on for longer than every other machine we ponies have created, and they don't look like they are going to fail anytime soon; this is because they are infused with advanced magic. Think about it: impart the ancient magics into the New Age technologies, and you get something truly amazing. I disagree with what you said, and I don't believe that they will be destroying each other anytime soon," she finished with a smile. "Well?"

Princess Luna had been sitting still throughout her whole spiel and nodded, deep in thought, when she finished. Her mouth opened and she spoke up. "You know, Sister, that was quite a speech you put together at the last second, wasn't it? I thought that that would have been your answer, and to know that I was right..." she took a deep breath.

Celestia braced herself. Knowing Luna, she would launch them both even deeper into the subject.

"So, do you remember that day? The day we built the first skyscraper out of arcane-infused materials? That skyscraper right there?" she pointed with her ebony-horseshoed hoof to a huge, spiraling chrome building a mile or two away from where the upgraded and taller Canterlot Castle was. The said building looked quite unstable in all its glory and curious engineering, which was a quality magic allowed these ponies to infuse into their creations. A huge spiral snaked around the main cylindrical building, and where it wasn't taking up space, windows lined the surface to let light in. Its top floor was a good two or three miles above the surface of the floating islands of Canterlotian Equestria, and was so high it seemed to curve curiously over if a pony looked up at it from its base.

Her elder sister glanced out the window and gave the tower a good look at before nodding in reply. "Oh, hmm, that? Well, I don't really remember a single particular day when we 'built' it, considering it took us forty years to complete, but... yes, I remember now," she began to reminisce, before she shoved herself back into her rational mind. Her brow furrowed. "Luna, why in the world are you asking me these strange questions?"

Luna smiled and chuckled in amusement. "Oh, Sister, it's nothing. I have just been wondering a lot lately about things... reminiscing about the past. You know, when Equestria was still on the ground and nothing except a loose group of cities?" she murmured, sitting her flank down on a rather uncomfortable chair. She sighed and looked over at Celestia, who nodded, deep in thought.

She nodded in reply. "Yes, Luna, I miss those days too. But you know we can't go back, as much as we'd like to. The damage has been done, and there's nothing we can do about that."

Her younger sister nodded solemnly and stared down at the shiny white floor. Then, she thought of something else entirely and stared out the window.

"Sister... do you think we can stay here forever?" she said in a scared-sounding voice. "I mean... we are just on this floating island a mile above the ground... we have to stay here or risk being killed by those things if we go back to the ground again... what is the purpose of surviving anymore, if it is all for naught?"

Celestia stood up, completely shoving the thoughts of the papers-to-be-filled out from her head. She went over and sat in front of her sister, who glanced up to gaze right into her eyes.

"Luna. You know we can't stay here forever. Sooner or later, somepony is going to have to fix the problem down there. Listen, I know you weren't informed of this by our Council, but... I'm sorry to say, you might be onto something."

Luna blinked at her, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

Celestia shrugged and stood back. "I'm just going to give it to you straight, little Sister. You may be right that there is no reason to try to survive anymore, because, well...

"Just yesterday, three of our heavily armed patrols engaged in combat against a few conglomerations of Chaos forms. It has been reported that there were no more than five Chaos forms in total, yet, we were no match for them despite our numbers and advantage of surprise. Sixteen ponies died, and only two survived to report the story; their health is declining as we speak," she said quietly.

"This has been going on for the past two months, and none of these attacks have been revealed to the public news or the Quadrants of Twilight Sparkle and Cadance. Information regarding the matter is highly classified, and we are trying to keep the buzz down to ensure that our subjects can still trust us."

The midnight blue alicorn's legs trembled a bit, and her voice began to get louder and louder as she vocalized her deepest fears. "Sister...! Why are we lying to our subjects? Why have we been doing so for so long?? What if we are attacked head-on? What if these ponies do not know what to do in such a situation? If we do not tell them soon, many will die! We cannot just stand around and do nothing about it, for, if we act when it is too late, this whole... thing... would have been in vain!"

Luna was panting, having spilled her voice as loud as she could regarding the situation. When she regained herself after a session of back-patting by her sister, she relaxed and pressed close to her warm body to stop trembling. She sighed.

"I just want to ensure the safety of ourselves and our ponies. That is my only wish..."

Celestia's eyes began to slowly close, and she nipped at her younger sister's ear affectionately. "And that wish will be granted. We have been fighting for this nation for too long to let it go now. You're right; we really do have to take this seriously and put it on the number one spot on the list of things to deal with. Now that the griffons are suspected with working with the Chaos forms themselves, we really have to get ourselves together and fix everything that has happened. You won't lose your beloved country yet, Sister..."

The Nocturnal Princess sniffled against her sister's neck and heaved a deep, shaky breath. "I know... I would fight to the death for these ponies' lives and well-being..."

The two sister Princesses just sat there on the ground, cuddling together with each other. Though they both wished things would get better immediately, they knew they would have to struggle against these supernatural forces before they would achieve their goal. Harmony would come back to Equestria as soon as the universe willed it to.

But how...?

———

Nighttime. Just past midnight.

Princess Luna donned her gear, zipping up her tight jumpsuit that clung to her body. It shimmered with all of the dark splendor of the universe, and radiated with the extremely complex, interwoven magical energies that it was enchanted with. Her mane was the way it almost always was; it waved smoothly in the air as if a supernatural breeze had picked it up and breathed life into it, causing it to dance like a flame. The dark night sky was reflected in the infinitesimal strands that made up her mane and tail, causing the rest of the patrol behind her to stare...

... At her flank. Of course, the jumpsuit was quite tight to provide a sleek, aerodynamic fit for the wearer, but, alas, it gave the Nocturnal Princess more than what she probably asked for. Her flank was outlined quite nicely in the low-light environment, allowing the stallions behind her to see every curve that her body possessed.

"Now, then. Are we ready?" she glanced back behind her, making all the stallions immediately straighten up and salute to her uncomfortably. An assorted, various plethora of "Yes, ma'am!"'s and "Of course, ma'am!"'s sounded awkwardly before the Princess put her goggles on. The interactive HUD initialized and made a quick background check for integrity before it gave her the all-clear. With that, she arched her back, ready to jump right through the clouds and out into the huge drop below. Just in front of them, on the floor, was a huge rectangular hole leading outside, a vertical drop sticking out of the bottom of the floating landmass. A thick, opaque mist of clouds covered the view to the ground completely, reminding all the ponies that they were being supported only by these wispy, condensed bunches of water.

Now, her well-defined flank was even more visible in the position she was in. Though the whole patrol was seconds from launching into the pitch darkness from the "advanced hole" (which was really just a landing bay drilled into a lower area of Canterlotic Equestria's edge), they were able to enjoy one last look at the sexy flank before them before they had to leave.

And suddenly: "GO!" came the Princess's shout as she shot out from the edge of the bay at speeds rivalling that of a lightning bolt. The rest of the pegasus squad leaped after her in organized order. The eleven ponies revelled in the freefall before Princess Luna, in the lead, spread her wings wide. She caught a perfect amount of air in them and tightly banked port-side, to which all of the other stallions followed seamlessly. The wind whistled fiercely in their ears, and their goggles assisted them in flight. Had they not been wearing them, a great deal of information would not be visible to them, and they would definitely not know where they were going; all they would have seen would have just been gaping blackness and blistering wind buffeting at their bodies.

Up above them, the light from their deployment bay, covered almost completely by the clouds, was fading into blackness. Every pony's suits adjusted to the conditions and developed coverings for their ears, growing tendrils onto their ears and concealing their extremities from the wind like secondary regenerative skins. Now, every pony experienced near-silence until it was broken by Princess Luna's voice through their microscopic headsets embedded in their outer ears.

"Attention, all units. I am warning you: do not approach the ground too closely when we leave this airspace. You have your goggles. Watch your altitudes. Do not go below one thousand feet, and keep close.

We are approaching the shield barrier now, so follow my lead. And please, do not clip your wings on your way out. The opening is much too large for that to happen," she muttered the final sentence in an almost exasperated voice, hinting at the cadets who had done so on the way out in the past.

She stopped talking after she had relayed her message to each and every one of them. Each pony kept in formation, every one of their four legs tucked in aerodynamically as they followed their Princess to their designated opening in the shield barrier.

By now, if a pony looked up, the lights of nighttime Equestria could be seen reflected off of the clouds above. Spotlights danced in the sky and flashes of bright light became visible. An outdoor rave must have been going on; good old DJ-PON3. Oh, how many of the stallions in the patrol wanted to go to that concert.

Suddenly, the atmosphere around them went from comfortable, familiar, and temperate, to extremely cold and hostile as the patrol exited Equestrian airspace through the hole in the arcane shield. Glancing back, a large, irregular amoeba-shaped hole in the shield barrier could be seen, giving a chance to glance back at their familiar Equestria before it closed up. When it closed up, the lights inside disappeared and the area around was plunged into total blackness. Equestria could not be seen; no landmass could be detected. Only the unbroken sky stretched out continuously above.

Ingenious. Equestria's shield barrier also made it completely invisible to any creature outside.

A few seconds after exiting, Princess Luna's voice sounded in each pony's headsets once more to remind them of their mission objectives.

"Hello again, everypony. Just a reminder: this is a special patrol mission, but that does not mean that you will disobey the orders you are usually commanded to execute. You will follow my orders at all times, each and every one of you. Understood? Good. Stay in formation behind me. We will all be out for quite a while tonight. That is all."

The patrol grunted sparsely in reply, before falling into a tighter delta formation behind their leader. Through their night vision, the ruined landscape could be seen where battles between all sorts of different species had taken place, mostly between the griffons, ponies, and the Chaos forms. Though the destruction was far-reaching and devastating, its true extents could not be realized unless it was daytime. But, obviously, a patrol during the day would be in grave danger at all times. Though the Chaos forms were mostly nocturnal creatures, they roamed throughout the environment even during the day, wreaking havoc anywhere and everywhere.

Suddenly Luna slowed down and paused, hovering in front of the rest of the patrol. She then began to descend without warning. The rest of the patrol decelerated behind her and glanced around to see what was wrong; they were getting dangerously close to their threshold of 1,000 feet.

One pony wondered aloud, "What do you see, Princess?" in a very low, hushed voice.

"Shh!!" came the surprising hiss from Her Majesty. Everypony's lips were sewn shut as each one examined their surroundings. It was still just as dark as ever, but nopony could sense any mov—

"There. Do you see them?" Luna breathed, her HUD locking onto two griffons standing beside the forest's threshold. She pointed right at them with her hoof, and the other ten immediately were on their guard. "Engage your stealth camouflage," she ordered briskly.

Right away, each pony melted into nothingness. Only their outlines bent the light travelling directly through them, but otherwise, they were largely unable to be detected.

Now, the Princess began to descend lower to the ground, to which two or three others in the group objected to. "Princess!" one of them breathed. "You're going below our altitude threshold...!!"

But she ignored his warning and continued to go lower. "Stay hidden, all of you, I will call if I need help. I need to know what is going on here..." she told them and passed the limit of 1,000 feet. In her goggles' HUD, the altimeter flashed bright red, and a small, rapid beeping alerted her through her earpiece. She quickly turned it off to remain completely silent and hidden.

The two griffons below were heavily armed, with plasma weapons and various other extras on their shoulders that seemed to be old, retrofitted Equestrian weapons. They glanced around shiftily.

Luna narrowed her eyes at them both and opened a channel to the rest of the patrol. "These griffons look like they are waiting for something. I am not sure what they are waiting for, but I will keep you all informed on what I see, over. If I order you to return back to Equestria, you better not disobey my orders. Understood?" She didn't wait for a response, and began to move closer to the two, making sure her wings were silent as she descended. She was now only sixty feet from where the griffons stood, and she began to use the trees as cover.

Suddenly, her HUD flashed and locked onto something in the corner of her eye. Her earpiece beeped rapidly once more, and she turned her head to see twelve Chaos forms making their way to where the griffons were.

Her blood ran cold, and her muscles tightened. Seven of the twelve of them had wings or some form of airborne propulsion, and these looked highly able to dogfight and defeat an enemy in the air; there was no way she would be able to win against this squadron with the rest of her patrol, let alone by herself.

She put a little distance between her and the ground, beginning to watch from the top of the two hundred-foot tree in the air. She angled her ears towards them, her suit creating a selective amplifier over her ear so she could hear what they were saying.

Finally, after a few more seconds of waiting, the Chaos forms now stood just a few feet from the griffons, who cowered. Luna picked up something on her earpiece, and strained to hear what they were saying.

"Zhatte'nanne armet'st, simatke! Únekwae heggbáred gyev'fortu, et zhatte heggbáred imbis. Ya obe ekosonaga: zhatte'nanne ihyabbágey armet'st... simatke," the leader of the griffons said, failing at being quite as intimidating as he was trying to be. Luna was perplexed; thinking that, by the tone of his voice, this griffon was threatening them. She half-expected the two to be slaughtered immediately.

But the Chaos forms approached the two even closer, showing no signs of attacking them. The two slowly backed away, terrified of these creatures and what they might do to them if they did choose to attack.

Luna was thinking hard. Luckily, she had recorded every word the griffons spoke and would take it to the linguistics department as soon as she could to get it translated when she got back. She was just about to turn and leave, feeling the mission accomplished, when suddenly her HUD picked up a huge radiation spike. It beeped and flashed rapidly to alert her of the potential danger.

"PRINCESS LUNA!!" came a desperate shout from her earpiece. "BEHIND YOU! MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!" One of her guards was alerting her in panic. She turned her head to see whatever it was, and immediately when she caught sight of it, her eyes widened.

A huge bolt of green plasma was approaching her at supersonic speeds. Though her wings continued to keep her up in the air, the rest of her body was frozen in place and wouldn't react. Her brain wouldn't respond either; she would definitely not make it out of the way in time.

Oh, Celestia... No, no, no...

Era IV – Chapter I

"Princess Twilight? Princess Twilight, wake up, please. Something has happened; it's very important."

Twilight drowsily blinked her eyes open and looked around her dark room. It was 23:44 in the night, and she couldn't see anypony at first; but when she heard the calm, yet urgent calling of her name once more, she bolted up and jumped over to the holoscreen. She pressed a few touch buttons and opened up the call to the stallion who was trying to get her to wake up. His face filled up most of the screen when he appeared.

"Why? Tell me what's going on, what's the problem?" she said, not having truly woken up yet.

"Princess Sparkle," the golden-haired pony bowed his head low to his Princess. "Miss Luna has returned from her patrol. She demands to see you in the infirmary immediately..." he informed her, his face straight and stolid.

The lavender Princess immediately came to her senses and shuddered. She licked her lips nervously, trying to form words. Princess Luna... in the infirmary? Something major must have happened if she was in there; what of the rest of the patrol? Did they suffer worse? She needed to know everything that had happened out there during the patrol; there was no way this could be ignored. Though it took her a moment to speak, she eventually did, albeit her voice was breaking.

"Y-Yes, of course. Tell her that I will be downstairs shortly."

The stallion bowed his head low for a moment before turning away. Twilight pressed a button and the image disappeared. She then turned towards her dresser and quickly donned her golden, forged, and enchanted horseshoes, slipping them on properly. She took a brilliant golden jeweled crown and placed it carefully atop her head, before she forced herself to stop wasting time and trot decisively out the door instead. There wasn't a second to lose; she had to know the extent of the damage and the cause before anything else. However, she was very worried about Luna — her friend. She would have to take it slow before she could learn what had happened. After all, Luna's injuries took major precedence.

She made her way outside to the lift just across the hall from her room. This was no time for dilly-dallying; yesterday she used the excuse of being too lazy to do paperwork to have the pleasure of taking the long way up, but this time, a Princess was calling her to come immediately to her. It was a very urgent matter, seeing as there was a Princess in the infirmary, and she couldn't waste time hurrying down the stairs. So, she quickly trotted across the hallway and pushed a button beside the lift doors, waiting for it to arrive.

The doors opened after a moment, and she stepped in. "Ground floor, please," she murmured to the liftpony, who, with his hoof, dragged the icon of a square down to a line on the bottom. The doors closed shut, and the elevator smoothly descended down the six hundred stories of the upgraded Royal Castle until it reached ground level in about a minute. Twilight Sparkle hurried out of the lift as soon as the doors opened, making her way through the large halls bustling with businessponies until she reached the infirmary.

She slowed down when she passed over the threshold of the archway, and licked her lips when she saw the bed Princess Luna was resting in. Surrounding her were four nurses, two of which were standing by a large machine at the situation, while the other two operated a device, connected to the main machine, on her. She moved closer, allowing her to see the nocturnal alicorn.

Twilight gasped in surprise when she saw Luna. She hadn't expected the damage to be this bad... she needed to get to her immediately. Making her way into the bustling infirmary, she passed by the rest of the patrol, who were lying down in their own hospital beds. Most of them were asleep; those who were had bandages wrapped around injured parts of their bodies. Those who weren't asleep stared blankly at the ceiling, their eyes unfocused and their faces frozen in some indescribable expression. The lavender Princess shivered and ignored them, eventually making her way over to stand beside the Princess's bed.

Luna turned her head and gazed up at Twilight, her facial features twisting in pain. She coughed a bit and shook her head. Her mane, usually grand and waving through the air smoothly, seemed to have lost its life; though it still waved, it did so at a much slower rate, and its luster and reflection of the universe within was a bit faded and shallow. The nurse unicorns were at her abdomen, waving the device close to an injured part of her stomach. The device emitted blue flame in the same manner as a blow-torch would, though, when it touched skin, it healed it. The sight of the Princess's organs within, damaged, bloody, and disorganized, were only seen briefly by Twilight before they were reorganized and healed by the blue jet of fire. The patrol must have gone very badly, judging from the major wound Luna had sustained. She shuddered a bit before her gaze turned back to gaze deeply into Luna's eyes.

"He... Oh, sweet Void... He... He was not able to make it..." she moaned out painfully, Her eyes were watery and shut tight as she spoke. "He gave his life, if only to push me out of the... way, but... the bolt it fired, it... it just kept on... going..."

The lavender alicorn couldn't help but breathe in deeply. "W-Who, Princess? And what happened out there? We need to know, for the country's sake...!"

Luna didn't reply to her questions. "I should have been more careful... I should have seen it coming, I... I..." tears began to pour down her cheeks as she remembered the incident which had happened less than an hour ago. "In all of my years in active service fighting any sort of opposition to this beloved country, I..." she kept her eyes shut. More tears poured like waterfalls down her cheeks. "I have never, in my entire lifetime, experienced a gruesome, emotionally impactful death such as this..." she shook her head vigorously, as if trying to push away her negative thoughts.

Twilight didn't know what to say. She turned her head instead and watched as the nurses pulled away from the bed, apparently having finished treating Luna of her injuries; her stomach was completely fine once more. She nodded thankfully to them and reluctantly brought her head back to gaze at her pained leader, her friend. Though she was so curious and wanted to ask so many questions regarding the patrol and the Chaos forms, she held herself back for Luna's sake.

"Sky Shadow, Commander of the Royal Armies, had been a close... f-friend... of mine... for most of his life. I... I met him when he was a colt at only six years of age, and he..." Luna took a deep, gasping breath. "He was so ambitions, he... was always running around the house when I came, shouting something of becoming the Grand Leader of all the armies of the world one day, and..." she couldn't continue.

"I understand, Princess," Twilight gently rested a hoof on her shoulder. She pushed away her questions and focused on the words of the injured Princess before her. "With an emotional attachment like that, it's no wonder you feel this way right now... You've known him for twenty-seven years, haven't you?"

The injured Princess nodded her head. "In three weeks, that number would have changed to twenty-eight years, Twilight. And in five days... it would have been his birthday..." her lips quivered. She took shaky, gasping breaths, forcing Twilight to calm her down.

"Shh-shhh..." she murmured to the midnight blue alicorn, and relaxed when she stopped. "You two... you two were very close, weren't you?"

Luna sighed, now relaxed, and nodded gingerly. "I was a mother to him. His... his biological mother had died two years after his birth, and he was only left with his father... but he did not like the way that father of his treated him. So I decided to visit... his mother was a very close friend of mine... and immediately he... he jumped up into my hooves as I sat down, and I... I held him there...

"He was the embodiment of his mother in a male form. Gentle, understanding... curious..." she couldn't help but smile and chuckle painfully. "I had known his mother since she was born; with my help, as she grew up, she became a very distinguished pony, a master of the arcane arts... and he, though a pegasus, he still had her character... everything about her was in him, too..."

"... But that's not the only reason why you're feeling this way, is it?" Twilight inquired, her head cocked to the side. "You feel guilty because you believe you let him die, and you're thinking that you could have done something about it, am I right?" Twilight butted in rather straightforward in her words.

After a moment, Luna nodded vigorously in reply, not speaking.

The younger alicorn sighed. "Princess, things happen that we can't stop. Sometimes it's best to just... you know, forget about the past and concentrate on the future. And right now, we're going to need your leadership. Ponies can't just dwell on the past if they want to keep going, do they?" she reasoned, and, much to her relief, the Regent of the Moon nodded once more. "I bet you that he would want you to keep going, especially now that he's gone..."

But Twilight had to get to the task at hand. She had to know what had happened, and how every pony in the patrol was in the state they were in. So she asked.

"Princess... if I may ask, what... what exactly happened out there? Why is the rest of the patrol in such bad shape? And please, tell me what happened to you..."

Luna gulped and glanced away from her, out the window where the moon shone. She stared at it and began to speak in a trance-like state.

"I had barely just begun to turn away from this... Chaos form conglomeration when I turned around at... S-Sky Shad-Shadow's yell, and he leaped between me and this bolt of plasma that one of them fired, trying to get me out of the way..." she cringed just thinking about the moment, but continued bravely on. "I was so shocked to see him get hit in the chest, even through all his armor, but the plasma... it just kept going straight through him and punctured my own abdomen deeply, and that was when it all started...

"Six of those... things... took to the air and went after us all... I thought I was going to die, I swore by Celestia's name that I would have died, yet... I was helped up by three more from our squad, who had come to my rescue. I told them to just leave, leave me alone, because they would die if they tried to help, and yet they refused... I cursed at them and told them all how stupid they were, but they just... they kept helping me up and back to Equestria, no matter how many times I told them to leave me be... In the end, three of them were wounded fatally, two more died, and the rest, save two, were wounded in some way..." she shivered. "My... my wings could barely move, I was frozen, I was not able to get out of the way, but somehow I survived..." she craned her head over to gaze at the wounded ponies in her patrol, lying down motionlessly on their beds, "... at the cost of so many lives..."

Twilight nodded, trying to soak it all in. Though the Princess, as she had said, had been in many wars and battles, she was sure that this was the first where they were forced to fight in a hopeless fight. This was most likely her first time experiencing such an event, her first time witnessing the amount of sacrifices given by her fellow soldiers just for a single pony... her...

"Princess, I advise that you don't go on any patrols or participate in any battles for the next two or three months," Twilight muttered quietly. "It's for your own good. I promise, Luna; stay here in Equestria. Our army can handle them all..."

However, though she had answered most of her questions, she was still silent about the Chaos forms themselves. She was about to open her mouth to speak, before a nurse behind Twilight cleared her throat. She gazed right into Twilight's eyes when she turned to face her, and she calmly spoke. "Princess Twilight, I am sorry, but Her Highness needs to rest. The healing machine has yet to take its full effect, and she needs to sleep for it to be able to do so. You can come back in the morning to speak to her again, but I do advise that you be careful. Major mental trauma has also taken its toll on her."

"Oh... I-I understand. I guess I'll come back later on, then," she murmured in reply and glanced over at Luna, who had already rested her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. She gazed sadly at her for a moment before turning away and leaving her bed; a floating curtain obscured the view from the elder Princess so she could not be disturbed.

Damnit, she sighed and began to trot slowly out to the main lobby. Twilight knew that if she had asked Luna too quickly about the things she needed to know about the most, she would regret the consequences of such actions. But she still cursed herself for not asking quickly enough. How would she find out the information, now that the warrior Princess was out of reach?

Suddenly a thought occurred to her. She stopped in her tracks and leaned against a wall to think. She knew for certain that all of the mission footage could be found in the Archives, and her overly curious mind told her she would go there, to the Archive Library to review the mission logs and notes. She was sure no other pony had analyzed them yet, seeing as Luna's injury took precedence; it was the perfect time for her to see exactly what had happened and how such an act could be stopped in the future.

She straightened up again and left the infirmary. She trotted across the huge lobby, her enchanted horseshoes silent against the smooth marble floor. All around her, the activity from earlier had decreased just a bit; though ponies still crossed paths and made their way to the places they were supposed to be, they weren't as hurried as before.

She made her way down the stairs and underneath "ground level". She passed by doors of all shapes, sizes, and colors; the amount of ponies trotting through the halls at any given moment had been steadily declining the further she went, and, now, nopony was going past her or following her on her way. All the doors had disappeared, and the hallway was reduced from a bright, bustling path to a poorly lit, slowly degrading one. Though the normal way to the Archives was to actually go outside and venture a mile or two into the College District, there was an underground hallway leading directly into the Library from the Canterlot Castle itself.

Soon enough, she encountered a set of concrete stairs and began to make her way up them. The air went from the cold underground atmosphere to a warmer, fresher, and more familiar feel as she ascended the long, winding staircase. Luckily, her natural alicorn abilities allowed her to enter the above-ground Archives without getting tired.

When she made her way into the central lobby, a few librarians glanced over at her; when they realized who she was, they stared wide-eyed for a moment before continuing to work on their duties, pretending they hadn't stared at all. She felt their gazes but just smirked to herself as she made her way past the lobby and into the Archive hall.

The Archive hall was a huge, long, white-walled room, with shiny marble floors and, one center aisle leading through rows upon rows of tall holographic screens leading up to the ten-story-tall ceiling (instead of being filled with shelves of books like the rest of the Library was). Huge walls of text and pictures were shown on these screens, which were apparently the huge amount of information that was stored regarding everything ponies knew. A central database provided lightning-quick access of this information to the screens in all the rows they were, with pages of knowledge arranged like an encyclopedia article.

Twilight Sparkle found herself wandering through the center hall idly. She hadn't been to this place in well over a decade, and her eyes were wide and eager to find knowledge of the things she did not know. Of course, she knew many things about what she came here for — the Chaos forms — but she needed to find out what exactly happened during Princess Luna's mission. The logs and recordings would provide her with all the information she needed; at least, she hoped they would. She forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand and quickly snapped out of her blind wandering to go to the nearest Archival monitor to get the information she needed.

She sat down on the desk and leaned in to verify her identity through an eye scan. The computer shortly approved and unlocked itself to her, allowing her to use her magic to directly manipulate the input system. She searched up "Patrol history" and used "Enter", to which an enormous list of patrols showed up, all the way to the ceiling. She scrolled all the way to the most recent patrol, then went down two entries, tapping on one titled "Princess Luna + 10 others". Twilight clenched her jaw and watched as the page loaded instantaneously before her eyes.

Displayed on the screen were all sorts of samples of the mission, ranging from motion sensors, visible video surveillance cameras installed onto the ground below, and the actual information received from Luna's goggles as she flew down low to examine what the problem was. Deeply curious as to what happened, she reached up and tapped one of the many video samples taken during the patrol and tapped on "play".

The screen extended until it surrounded her, and the whole environment Luna was in was imposed on Twilight's senses. She breathed in the cool, night air, and watched through Luna's eyes what the Chaos forms were doing down below. However, she was still jumpy; when she was enveloped in the virtual reality, the first Chaos form she saw in the distance made her squeak in surprise. She forced herself to relax and watch what happened, however.

She heard through the simulation what Luna had heard when she was present. The odd language of the griffons sounded a distance below: "Zhatte'nanne armet'st, simatke! Únekwae heggbáred gyev'fortu, et zhatte heggbáred imbis. Ya obe ekosonaga: zhatte'nanne ihyabbágey armet'st... simatke," the one who seemed to be higher in rank of the two declared shakily to the Chaos forms which had shown up. She flinched in surprise; why would the Chaos forms show up to the griffons and not attack them? She hadn't heard the news from earlier, and, obviously, this shocked her. Twilight curiously dragged the voice sample and placed it in an imaginary virtual container for her to view later.

Moments passed, and Luna's camera turned away from the Chaos forms. Suddenly, out of nowhere, she could hear Sky Shadow's desperate shout before the view was abruptly shaken. The HUD then lit up brightly and began to beep rapidly, showing the armor near the stomach was completely depleted. She could hear Luna yelp and whimper in the agonizing pain, and the view of the camera turned suddenly to Sky Shadow, who was falling helplessly to the ground. His pegasus feathers fluttered in the wake of his death, as she saw Luna's vital signs on the log drop down alarmingly. For a moment, she felt almost as if she was there, watching, from Luna's point of view.

Twilight's heart nearly stopped when she saw this. If this is how she felt when she was experiencing a simulation, how much worse could it have been for Luna herself, especially since she felt so horrible already, though Sky Shadow and her weren't acquainted. She looked away and tapped on the "Pause" button floating beside her hooves just above the ground. Everything went silent, and her hind legs gave out behind her as she stared blankly down at the projection of the ground far below.

———

Outside, the city of Canterlot was still as busy as ever, though it was well past midnight.. Flying carriages continued to go through their respective paths to their destinations, and numerous buildings' neon lights still shone brightly. The rave down on the ground a mile or two away continued on, its lights flashing brightly through the trees in the park. The new Vinyl was doing quite an amazing job, it seemed.

A long distance above the ground, a single light shone in Twilight Sparkle's room. It wasn't a holographic light, or a magical light she created with her own life force, but, instead, it came from a candle. Its yellow-orange glow filled the room rather nicely as she sat there in front of a... wooden desk?... writing on a... scroll of parchment with a quill and ink. Wow, what an odd sight indeed.

She held the quill in her magical grasp, using a basic dictation spell to write down her thoughts. She had been putting the pieces together in her head ever since she had come back from the Archives an hour ago. It was 2:27 in the morning now, and she couldn't get to sleep, either. So she decided to write down her findings to try and figure out how everything came together. As she wrote what looked like a lecture for school, she spoke her words aloud, half to herself; she was never really that good at writing silently.

"Though these griffons seemed to have struck up a deal with the Chaos forms somehow, we need to examine their primal attitudes, as this information may prove useful in figuring out why the Chaos forms act the way they do. We know that the Chaos forms want nothing but destruction and anarchy in the world they inhabit, along with us. They roam throughout the landscape, pillaging innocent villages and destroying orderly things such as alliances and any sort of organized species day in and day out. A closer inspection at their past, however, can help us to figure out exactly why they act this way.

"We know that in the beginning, the Ancient Alicorns created the world. This uncondensed soup of matter and magic was chaotic and had no order, and thus, the Ancients were forced to counteract it with harmony by creating the Elements of Harmony, an immensely powerful magical artifact, to help convert the chaos of the fiery world into things such as the numerous species of this planet, the gentle yet deadly waters of the oceans, and the dangerously hot, yet life-giving sun. When all was said and done, they placed the Elements of Harmony together with the newly condensed Chaos Essences (the result of Chaos coming in contact with Harmony) into the core of the planet to ensure that the world would stay in balance. Though wars broke out every so often, harmony jumped in and balanced it all out by providing a time of peace between times of conflict and war whenever it was needed.

"But, as we all know, the Elements of Harmony were... destroyed. This was caused by a type of... conflict... between the Elements themselves; a Chaos, if you will..."

Twilight stopped writing. She noticed that she was being distracted from her task at hand, that she was thinking of her former friends. She took a deep breath, trying to relax her racing heartbeat. That was all in the past now, and there was no going back.

She glanced over at her dresser. Beside the crown holder was a mysterious black box. She hadn't opened the box ever since the incident so long ago, but this... this recalling of the past made her want to go back and see.

She stood up from her comfortable pillow in front of her desk and made her way over to the dresser. Her horn glowed and she delicately removed the string keeping the box closed. She then brought her magical grip to pull the cover off of it. She half-regretted her decision, but it was too late now.

There, in the box, was her crown. Not the golden crown she wore now, no — it was an ancient crown, worn down by time. One very important of it was missing, however; in the box beside the crown was a shattered five-pointed magenta star, broken off from its elevated position on the rest of the crown. It sat there dully, its once-bright color now reduced to nothing but a dull whisper of what it used to be.

A drop of liquid, right onto the five-pronged star. Twilight flinched in slight surprise and glanced up at the ceiling to see if it was leaking. She didn't see anything, and turned her gaze instead to the mirror right in front of her. Her deep purple eyes seemed to only be wetter than usual, until she noticed a streak of a tear going down her cheek. She glanced down at the drop, which had wetted the star, and couldn't help but take in a shaky deep breath.

"The Elements of Harmony... destroyed..." she suddenly whimpered, the tears now falling continuously from her eyes. More and more drops fell down inside the box and onto the crown. Twilight's emotions were going all over the place; how could she continue on with her life after being responsible for the imbalance in the world?

Era IV – Chapter II

Two days later — 2:36 in the afternoon, or 14:36 Standard Equestrian Time.

"Twilight, what exactly do you mean by this?"

Princess Sparkle cleared her throat and gazed up at the divine, snowy white-coated alicorn Princess who sat up on her throne in the Central Royal Hall. She then opened her mouth to speak to her. "Princess Celestia, I am here to present to you these conclusions I have drawn of our current situation, based solely on the information I had at hoof. Before making any kind of blind guess, I went to the Archives to record data and review footage from Princess Luna's patrol two nights ago, which, I know, had been untouched by analysts and the press during that time. Now, however, I know that almost everypony in this castle knows the details of that, as well as the Chaos forms themselves, but I'm afraid I must present them for contextual sake before I continue on with my report.

"Now, as many of us know, the Chaos forms are the manifestations of Chaos itself in physical forms, because of the previous destruction of... of the Elements of Harmony..." her voice caught for a moment, but she continued on: "... their usual behavior is that they destroy anything that is in harmony that they are able to lay their 'hands' on.

"This brings me to the information I have deduced. As shown by the Princess's patrol, the griffons had been able to meet up with the Chaos forms without being harmed in any way. However, I've come to the conclusion that the only logical reason that the griffons had met with the Chaos forms (and therefore it can be deduced that they have been meeting with the Chaos forms in the past), is because they griffons plan on working alongside them to wreak havoc across the landscape. I have personally translated the recorded griffon sentence that Luna had picked up, and it states that the griffons are demanding an advanced weapons shipment from the Chaos forms themselves."

At this revelation, the soft murmur of conversation resounding throughout the entire room completely disappeared, replaced by silence and receptive ears. Even Princess Celestia herself was left speechless. Twilight had to ask, "Princess?" to snap her back into reality.

The snow white alicorn's eyes immediately snapped back into reality, and she glanced up around her Council. She herself didn't know what the safest thing to do was in this sort of situation, so, in this time of need, she would usually ask everypony for their opinions, and make a decision based on that. And that is what she would do.

"My Council. My fellow advisors, my fellow ponies. The question at hoof is, how exactly do we deal with this dilemma? I would like to hear everypony's opinions on the matter. We'll start with you, Rose Petal. What do you think we should do?" she turned her gaze to a white Earth pony mare with rose-red hair, sitting on the furthest seat on the left. She perked up and slowly stood up to speak.

Twilight sighed and sat where she was. Hopefully this new knowledge would not push these ponies into doing something drastic... however, she knew that unavoidable things like this were truly... unavoidable.

"I demand that we declare war against the griffons!!" Rose Petal suddenly declared loudly, and pounded her hooves on the table. When she had done this, a few other ponies stood up as well, shouting angrily. Phrases like "Kill the traitors!" and "Death to the griffons!" rang out throughout the Council.

The lavender scholar flinched at the reaction and glanced back behind her to Rose Petal with a panicked expression. If war broke out between them and the griffons, chances were that Canterlotian Equestria would be in a critical position. Others would launch coordinated attacks upon seeing them in a weakened state, and the whole landmass would fall right down to the ground in a messier state than it had ever been before. She wanted to voice her fears, and she needed to do so now.

She raised her hoof, which caused the whole Council to fall quiet in a matter of seconds. Clearing her throat, she spoke once more.

"I am afraid that war is not the correct answer during this very critical time. If we attack the griffons, others like the zebras, dragons, and windigos may see that our resources are being strained and attack us as well. If this entire landmass falls to the ground, what w—"

She was cut short by a harsh, criticizing voice from behind, coming from a blue stallion with black hair wearing a charcoal suit. "Young Princess, I am sure that Equestria will not fall at the claws of the dragons or the hooves or the zebras. This city has held out against outsider attacks for as long as Princess Celestia has existed, even while it was on the ground! Our cloud-lift generators have been working flawlessly since they were turned on during the Great Evacuation six hundred years ago! There is no possible way that such uncivilized creatures will be able to cause the destruction of our home right now, since they couldn't before!" he growled at her.

Another pony stood up before Twilight could reply to him; this time, it was an orange unicorn mare who spoke critically. "And how can we be so sure that her conclusions are even accurate? I, for one, find it hard to believe that the griffons are stupid enough to even try creating an alliance with the Chaos things! They've been decimated by them hundreds of times before; they can't side with them at all, especially now!"

"But, madam! Couldn't you see the footage I jus—"

Cut short again. The orange mare continued. "The footage does not tell us what happened to the two griffons in question, Princess Sparkle! For all we ponies know, they could have been killed moments after they went off-camera! We have no definite answer here!"

The mixed conversations in the Council turned heated, and then into quarrels, louder and louder, until Princess Celestia herself lifted a golden-horseshoed hoof up to calm the room down. Just as before, silence overtook the whole place (though it took a bit longer this time around), and everypony was listening intently to their eldest Princess. Some still glared at each other in annoyance every now and then, however.

"My dear friends. Mares and gentlecolts. Two very different opinions seem to be manifesting themselves here: one opinion states that I should declare war against the griffons, and the other says that there isn't any such alliance going on between the Chaos forms and the griffons. However, I would like to present my own say on the matter.

"We aren't entirely sure of the situation, but I trust in my faithful student, Twilight. Though she is young compared to my sister and I, she is still much older than any of you ponies in the Council, and you will respect her conclusions. Therefore, I will take her word that the griffons are indeed working with the Chaos forms, no matter how odd and unlikely that sounds; I will also try to please those ponies in this Council who are asking for war. My final decision is that I will send a negotiation party over to the griffons' capitol to try to make sense of what's going on. Is there anypony in this Council whom opposes?"

To nopony's surprise, none raised their hooves to object. With her more-than-two-thousand-year experience, it was a no-brainer that Princess Celestia's decisions would not be opposed in any way. It was probably because ponies who opposed her would have to present an extremely good reason to do so, or risk punishment. The era of "nice Princess" during the time of the Mane Six was over.

"I believe it's a good enough idea," Twilight chirped. She stood up from where she sat, and turned around to gaze at the Council. "I... I believe I should lead the negotiation group. If they talk to a Princess directly, they're sure to reconsider!"

Some ponies shook their heads or sighed in disbelief at Twilight's innocent suggestion. Princess Celestia spoke up and cleared her throat, prompting the lavender pony to turn around and give her her utmost attention. Everypony else in their seats stopped moving.

"My dear Twilight, I know that this is a very important thing for you, but... do you really believe that you can head a group of ponies to the griffon capitol for negotiations? Judging by their behaviour, they seem extremely edgy and may attack at any moment, especially at the sight of our 'kind'. I suggest that you not go by yourself, and at least have a detachment of trained guards at your side at all times. You will definitely be in grave danger by just being in their territory, you do know that right? I don't want to risk losing you, especially at this grave hour," Celestia finished, and continued to gaze at the young alicorn worriedly.

But the smaller alicorn shook her head and smiled up at her mother figure. "Princess, I'll be alright; actually, now, I believe that I should be on my own. If the griffons see that I'm bringing combat-ready guards or anypony else along with me, they'll be less receptive to a treaty for peace. If I'm there by myself, they'll reconsider their declaration of hostilities with us. And besides, I'm not completely untrained with my defensive spells..." she smirked up at her teacher with a twinkle in her eye.

The Supreme Princess knew she couldn't do anything except give up. She sat motionlessly for a minute or two, weighing the potential consequences of either choice, before reluctantly nodding to her student. "Alright, then, Twilight. But promise me you'll come back... unharmed. Are we clear?"

Princess Sparkle nodded up at her superior and gave her a quick salute. "Yes, ma'am," she spoke before bowing her head down low. She took hold of her research and documents in her magical grip and stood up, turning to leave through the door a distance away to her right.

Celestia watched her leave, not paying attention to any of the sounds coming from her Council or the words they were speaking quite loudly. She sighed. Had she made the correct choice, letting Twilight do something as important as this?

———

"Come on! Stupid spell... work! Work!!"

The target in front of Princess Twilight Sparkle was indeed charred and in disrepair, but it was not in any way fatally harmed. Sure, a few firebolts to the shoulders and knees would have hurt a lot to a real pony, but would that be enough to stop the griffons in case of attack?

She didn't really want to kill anypony, or anygriffon, or anyone else inhabiting the planet, especially now: she didn't arrange to go to the capitol to fight their leader into submission, no — she would go there to negotiate for everlasting peace and an end to the grand scheme of things they seemingly had been planning for years. Didn't the griffons realize that any sort of treaty with the Chaos forms would end up extremely badly, even if they seemed to be helping them out?

Her thoughts got in the way again. Darn... she muttered to herself and sat down. Maybe offering to negotiate peace with a potentially deadly hostile force was the worst idea she'd come up with in months. The Council should have just offered to send an emissary. But she knew that would have gone badly, especially since all the potential emissaries she knew were extremely hostile. She knew for a fact that she was the only pony she could trust with this sort of matter. Or maybe she was just being narcissistic and not letting anypony else do the job, even if they were just as good, or even better, than her?

But that didn't matter anymore. She stood up and began to pace around the room with its stainless steel walls and ceiling and fire-retardant-coated mahogany floors. Her horseshoed hooves made no sound against the floor, as they usually didn't, and the complete silence in the room allowed her to think.

"I have to count up my assets," she muttered, half to herself. "I don't have any deadly combat spells at my disposal, my stun spells are lacking, but enough... hmm, I know that my space-breaking and illusionary spells are much more practiced than they should be, and if the time came, I could easily teleport out of harm's way..." She continued to count her spells and calculate her chances of surviving unharmed, while time continued to pass. Just as she was about to finish her thoughts a few hours after she had started, a doorbell-like beep sounded.

She snapped out of her trance and stood up regally, making sure she looked nice, before she trotted over to the door on the southern corner of the room. She pressed a seemingly random place on the steel wall and the outline of a hidden door appeared before sliding slowly open. A unicorn mare stood in the hallway. She looked up at Twilight with an unreadable gaze, and Twilight stared back down at her expectantly in reply.

"Princess Sparkle," she finally bowed her head after a second or two. "We have sent a notification of your arrival to the griffon capitol of Ur. They will be expecting you in one hour."

Twilight gulped quietly before acknowledging that she heard what she had said. An hour?! I thought that the Council would at least wait a good three hours so I could get myself ready!! She quickly asked the mare why.

"Excuse me, but... can I have a reason as to why the Council only gave me an hour's notice before my departure? I don't really understand..."

"We gave you five hours, ma'am. You left the court at 14:47, and now the time is... 19:56. A messenger arrived two hours ago and rang the doorbell, but he reported that there was no response from within. So we decided to give you an extra hour. The latest time you may want to be there is 21:00. If you arrive there later than the aforementioned time, the griffons may be extremely hostile. I suggest that you move quickly, Princess Sparkle," the mare finished.

By now, Twilight had face-hoofed. Did she really miss that noise two hours ago? She was probably busy thinking, but she thought she had heard something sound nearby... But she sighed.

"I guess I'll go get ready now... Thank you for reminding me, though. I would have angered the griffons if you hadn't alerted me..." she smiled sheepishly.

The mare turned and left, making her way to a staircase at the end of the hallway. Meanwhile, Twilight left the room and turned towards the opposite way the mare had gone, over towards the lift. It was such a shame that the castle was so complex, and to get to her suite, she would have to go downstairs and board another lift. It wasn't so bad, though; it only took about twenty seconds to go from the lobby to her six-hundredth floor room.

She entered the lift and dragged the icon from the top, down to the lobby. This would be quite an intense night of negotiations indeed...

———

"Miss Sparkle. Are you ready?"

Twilight was standing in front of the bay doors in the large, concrete-floored underground warehouse. She would deploy on the underside of the landmass they stood on, out the bottom for quick exit towards the griffon capitol. There was the option of a vehicle, but, of course, Twilight had declined, saying it could potentially provoke them into attacking. So, naturally, she would have to fly there on her own.

She nodded to the engineer pony, who pressed a button. The ground in front of her slowly opened up, revealing near-pitch blackness below, with only her HUD on her advanced contact lenses to guide her. She gulped and sighed quietly. This would be the first time in years that she were to leave Canterlot on her own. Not to mention that it would be her first mission in even more years.

She spread her wings wide and sucked in a deep breath. Stepping forward, she fell forward into the cold blackness, allowing her to fall for a moment before her HUD alerted her. At this instant, she caught the wind in her wings and bolted forward in a single powerful motion, propelling her to two hundred miles an hour. She zoomed along the underside of the landmass, undisturbed, for a few minute or two, before the engineer pony spoke to her through her earpiece.

"Princess, your exit will be just ahead. As always, please don't hurt yourself on the way out. Good luck to you."

Radio silence followed. Her modified charcoal grey nano-suit slowly covered up every inch of her body, making sure the fit was tight and aerodynamic. Her ears were shielded from the harsh drafts she encountered, and her mane and tail were quickly tucked into the suit, much like it had been during her secret night mission to Canterlot so many centuries ago.

A bright, flashing yellow light caught her eye. Her HUD was blinking rapidly, telling her that she was approaching her designated exit through the shield. She narrowed her eyes and tucked her wings in, quickly flying right through it. She glanced back behind her; it melted back into place, looking like a shrinking amoeba; the rest of Equestria was completely undetectable. And just like always, the atmosphere changed from the understandably cold, yet comfortable Equestrian air to a heavy, frigid, hostile outside environment. Down below her, her night vision allowed her to see the ruined landscape. Sure, the logs and video that Princess Luna had brought back were quite impactful, indeed, but to see them with her own two eyes... this was a completely different experience.

Her HUD locked onto the griffon capitol of Ur. Listed at 133 miles away, she sighed to herself and continued to firmly move her wings. Though she had declined the Council's suggestion of a flying vehicle, she had been slightly more receptive to a device that could have aided her flight; a jetpack of sorts. Just as she had done for the vehicle, she still told them that it would cause the griffons to be less receptive. Now, though, she was starting to regret her decision. Sure, she could get there in twenty minutes if she really tried, and thirty minutes if she were to go at her normal pace, but it was quite tiring either way.

And Twilight could swear something was watching her every move...

Era IV – Chapter III

Nighttime — 9:04 in the evening, or 21:04 Standard Equestrian Time, 53 minutes after Princess Sparkle's departure.

Twilight landed in front of the gates of the griffon capitol, Ur, up high in the mountains. It was extremely frigid, and snow fell like a flurry from the sky; on the ground, the snow was so deep that it almost went up to her chest when she set hoof on the ground. She sighed to herself and glanced around as six griffon guards slowly approached her from all sides, their weapons aimed right at her. She could feel the tension in the air indeed; these negotiations with them would not be easy. But... all she wanted was peace between their two nations. Was that too much to ask for?

She turned off her radio to any sort of outside connection to keep radio silence. These griffons wouldn't hear or intercept a single word about Equestria or ponies but from her own mouth.

She made her way towards the gates, wading through the snow up the path from her designated landing pad. The guards slowly encircled her, keeping her in a tight mobile "prison" to prevent her from escaping.

Unlike the immensely advanced Equestria, Ur was a medieval city, less advanced than even the Canterlot of old (even though reports had shown that they had access to stolen Equestrian technology). Its fortress-like walls were gray and dull, and torches lit the way along the entrance. There seemed to be barely any protection from the snow or any weather control up in this very high elevation. In essence, there was no Cloudsdale for this Ponyville.

A single griffon guard, heavily armoured and with a Spartan helmet, stood in the way once she made her way in front of the gates with the rest of her escort. They all halted beside her, their faces straight and stolid, seeming to be waiting for the guard in front of them all to speak.

"So... pony," he spat at her with a sneer as he leaned in to stare at her menacingly. "What is your business with us?" Upon closer inspection, he was battle-scarred, with two slashes over his left eye and a lot of torn-off feathers from fighting. Twilight flinched back when he had leaned in, and she gulped and cleared her throat shakily to speak.

"I am here to address the issue of your alliance with the Chaos forms," she replied firmly, trying hard to seem authoritative.

The guard chuckled darkly and shook his head. "The demons? You'll want to speak to our King about that. But, then again, that's why you're here, isn't it?" He pressed a button and the huge metal doors swung open, prompting Twilight to make her way forward. Her escorts followed, slowly moving to entrap her to continue keeping her tightly guarded.

The inside of the capitol was, at least, to Twilight, in a sorry situation. There was only a single road leading up to the capitol's main building, which was elevated high up in the air to tower above the rest of the city. Though the city was so large, it was, to her standards, a huge conglomeration of slums. The buildings were tall, dark, and bleak; private, single-family homes were stuck or leaning in together as if they were apartments. The sanitation was terrible; Twilight had to be selective about her breathing as she proceeded along the main street.

Griffon residents looked tired and weary, with many of them wearing tattered and torn clothes. Every one of them glanced over at her with gazes of contempt and hatred as she passed, her charcoal-colored nanosuit concealing her distinctive colorful coat, mane, and tail from everyone around her except for her head and wings. Though she didn't truly understand why the griffons hated the ponies so much, she did feel sorry for them; this proud race was much worse off in the war than the ponies were, and she knew they were growing weaker and weaker with each passing day. They were barely protected from the environment itself; how could they be protected from relentless destroyers, the Chaos forms?

She found herself shivering from the amount of warmth she was losing through her wings. She felt her suit slowly grow to cover up her frozen wings in response, and she relaxed, tucking them tightly against the rest of her warm body. They were getting closer now; a flight of stone stairs greeted them, with huge lit firepits on either side. Up above, the large palace of the King sat. She stopped at the foot of the stairs to gaze up at the long flight that awaited her, but her thoughts were interrupted by a rude shove from the griffon behind her. She grumbled and shot him a quick glare before starting to make her way up the stairs.

When she got up to a sufficient height, she glanced over to see the city stretching out far beneath her. Though it was nowhere close to the Canterlot Province in size, it was still quite large. Below her were the snow-covered roofs of the numerous cramped buildings below, and... what was this?

Detached from a the rest of its city, on its east wall, was another walled area. There, Twilight could see that it was bright and filled with what seemed to be thousands of griffons assembling in large, organized groups. She licked her lips rather nervously when she noticed that they were griffon soldiers gearing up for battle, each of them in their respective battalion. There must have been at least six thousand of them ready for battle, and she knew just one packed just as much firepower as a battle-ready Equestrian unicorn.

She began to wonder, barely feeling her hooves carrying her more slowly up the stairs. She found herself staring suspiciously at this display of power. Was it arranged so as to prove to the ponies (or Princess Twilight at the very least) that they were a force to be reckoned with? Or were they actually preparing for a battle? She knew that the griffons rarely went on offensives against the Chaos forms, so what exactly were they doing?

Once again, her thoughts were cut off and she was pushed forward. She stumbled up, expecting another large flight of stairs, but her body relaxed once she noticed they were at the top. In front of her was the huge building, the residence of the griffon King; its outside was well-lit with torches and numerous other light sources (some electric-based and other magic-based). The palace was also guarded, and its large wooden entry doors stretched high up to the second story. She gulped a little as she approached it, but this time, the guards opened the doors for her instead of standing in her way. She made her way inside and relaxed.

The inside was lit up nicely, even more so than the outside, with lanterns hanging from the ceiling and more torches on the walls. The granite floors were, however, cold even against her nano-suit-covered hooves, and the huge, heavy ceiling high above was supported by large marble columns.

When she turned her gaze to where the throne was, her eyes widened in surprise. Hundreds of guards, some of them wielding huge spears, others with halberds, and yet others with assorted ranged weapons, lined either side of the passage towards where the King sat. She gulped a little and trotted slowly up to their leader, glancing nervously either side every now and then to see if the guards would cause her any harm.

She arrived at the foot of another flight of stairs leading to the throne. A huge, thundering voice made her stiffen and stop where she was. "Halt...!" it stated firmly, seeming to come from all around the room. Twilight immediately sat her flank down on the cold ground after feeling the sound wave hit her chest, and her breath spiked when she glanced up at the griffon leader. She, however, kept her nano-suit on, covering every inch of her body except her head, from the throat up.

He was tall, at least one and a half times taller than the tallest of the griffons she had seen. He was very battle-scarred, even more so than the one guarding the gates up in front; his eye had been gouged out in battle, as he was wearing an eyepatch over his left eye which was missing feathers in the path of a huge slash mark. His garments were quite colorful and elegant, decorated by many awards in his own griffon military. It was obvious that he was once a high-ranking officer who had ascended to the throne.

"Beneves, Puelga d'Equestria. Ika eren ikha fase aput'oikop," he addressed her in the native griffon language before speaking in Equish (to her surprise) very fluently. "Welcome to Ur, the crown jewel of our vast Empire. My name is King Odanum. As for you, dear Princess of Equestria, Twilight Sparkle, I am pleased to host you here in my palace this cold evening. Ya spet ke ika obe emat." He stood up from his throne and bowed his head down low to the pony Princess before sitting back down on his elegant golden throne.

Twilight, a bit uncertain about her decision earlier, now relaxed upon experiencing the rather warm welcome from the griffon King. The oppressive and hostile mood throughout the slums and about the guards seemed to go away and lighten up. At least now she would be able to interact with the King in a better environment.

So she cleared her throat and began to speak, diving immediately into the issue. "Yes, Your Highness. I have come here to address an action of yours that we, Canterlotian Equestria, seem to be taking an issue with.

"Of course, you have heard of the Chaos forms; you've been fighting them for as long as we have, albeit — excuse my words — a little less successfully." She licked her lips nervously and waited for him to speak.

To her surprise, he did not snap back at her in reply. Instead, he nodded sadly, and in a rather depressing way. "It is a shame to me, knowing that I can barely feed my subjects, give them good shelter, or protect them from outside intruders," he murmured, seemingly half to himself. In his sad reminiscence, his gaze managed to make its way to the ground. He immediately tore his gaze away from the floor once he noticed he had done so, and turned his head back up meet Twilight's own gaze before he spoke again. "So, Princess... what issue does your empire have with ours?"

The lavender pony had to resist standing up and stating her case harshly against him, even though he seemed so sad and hopeless. As much as she wanted to stay and have some small talk with the King regarding logistics and what she could do to help them, she was here for the sake of politics and the good of the planet's future. So she continued to sit where she was, but began to quiver visibly. "King Odanum. I know that everything is in short supply and these conditions are difficult for you all. But what you've commissioned, this betrayal of the natural system; it's inexcusable and unforgivable! Our patrol has spotted two of your griffons, obviously high ranking officers of your army, striking up a deal with the Chaos forms regarding the trade of advanced weaponry for use against our nation. What do you have to say about this?" she unleashed the issue, waiting expectantly for a response.

Immediately the atmosphere around her went from light and normal to heavy and hostile. She could feel the gazes of every griffon in the room burning into her. She began to shift uncomfortably where she was until the King spoke.

"You must be mistaken," he said innocently. Twilight's face twisted a bit in disbelief; she was surprised that after all she had stated, he still managed to maintain a clear conscience. But he continued on, and what he would say would disturb Twilight beyond belief.

"I have not issued such an order; those two that you saw must have been rogues. We aren't the only griffon society nearby, you do realize that," he stated simply.

Upon hearing the conclusion of his reply, Twilight flinched and sucked in a deep breath. In those two nights drawing conclusions, she had considered the possibility that those griffons weren't part of this society; but now she was wondering exactly why she hadn't thought that that possibility was more probable than anything else. What would she say now? She had accused the griffons falsely of something they hadn't done! Her voyage for negotiations had instead just pushed the Equestrians closer to war with the griffons!

The atmosphere in the room was already heavy and growing slowly hostile, especially after her accusation implying that the griffons could not be trusted. Her thoughts drifted, but something caught her eye, out the window.

She could see hundreds of griffons taking off into the air. Weren't those the same ones she had observed assembling together before she came inside the palace? Where were they going?

One griffon noticed she was looking out the window and harshly cleared his throat, causing her to gasp a bit and turn her gaze immediately back to the King. He seemed unamused by her actions.

She tried to justify herself, to try to hopefully reduce the odds of a hostile conflict between their already tense nations.

"Your Highness... I-I still have to say, however, that your city is still the closest. Our patrol had witnessed this event roughly 90 miles from here, and there are no other griffon organizations or societies (besides this one we are in) for two hundred or so miles in any direction. If those two were really part of a rogue rebel group, then the most likely explanation is that... is that such a group exists within the city itself. Are you... are you sure that city is unified, that there are no dissenters at all that you know of?" she reasoned.

King Odanum narrowed his eyes down at her, seeming to get a little more edgy, but remained calm nonetheless. "Please, do not assume that my griffons are disloyal to me and would provoke you like this. I stand by the facts, and I know that there are no such organizations within this city. I'm sorry that your search had to prove fruitless," he quickly dismissed her.

Twilight's eyes widened at this sudden dismissal. She had come here to negotiate, but now she had realized; what was there to do if there was nothing to negotiate? She reluctantly accepted her situation and nodded, slowly standing up and bowing her head down low towards him before beginning to back away to leave.

But wait. Another thought suddenly surfaced in her head, which made her completely doubt everything the King had just told her. She remembered once more the griffon who stood guarding the gates out in front. She had told him that her business was to address the griffon alliance with the Chaos forms. He had redirected her to the King in reply, but then showed in his following sentence ('But, then again, that's why you're here, isn't it?') that he knew why exactly she was there. This behaviour immediately told her that there had to be something going on between the griffons and the "demons" for sure. Was the King trying to deny it all with blatant lies to just make her go away, so that the alliance could come together flawlessly?

Twilight, however, didn't voice her worries. She slowly continued to back up, making sure to remain as respectful as she was taught; not once would she ever turn her back on the royal leader. She continued to take steps backwards, intending to leave peacefully, but suddenly something blocked her path.

She turned around, greeted by a griffon guard who narrowed his eyes down at her. She gulped. "D-Did I do something wrong? Do I have to follow some sort of ritual before I have to leave?"

When he didn't reply, only continuing to stare at her icily, the lavender alicorn grew fearful and desperate. "Please tell me!"

With a dark growl and malicious smirk, he suddenly aimed his mounted plasma rifle right into her chest and fired.

———

"Princess Celestia?" An urgent voice sounded from outside her door, followed by a double ringing of the bell.

It was quite late in the evening. The drowsy Sun Princess straightened up at her desk, the room dark and the moon washing the entire room in silver light. She looked over at the holographic clock and sighed to herself. Was it already 23:06? Her eyes were tired and her usually ethereal mane was disheveled and unkempt. She turned her head over at the doorway, thinking that she had already gone and opened it; in reality she was just blankly staring at it.

The doorbell rang again, and she snapped to her senses. She groaned drowsily before standing up from her pillow, stretching her limbs. She pressed a single button on her desk with her magical touch, causing the room to fill with dim yellow light. She made her way over to the door and held her hoof against the control unit, standing back as it slid open. Behind it, standing in the hallway, was a single dark brown Earth stallion who looked like he had just woken up. His black hair was messy and his green eyes were very unfocused. However, he managed to straighten himself up and look decent in front of the Princess once she came out.

"What do you need?" she asked him, her brow raised. What in Equestria was so important that it couldn't wait until morning? Her voice was so tired; she hadn't slept for two, almost three whole days, ever since her sister had been injured. And it was very understandable that she couldn't sleep; not only was her sister in a bad condition, but her own student was gone as well, having gone to negotiate with the griffons regarding the universe's worst enemy. Was she okay?

The stallion cleared his throat, snapping the distracted Princess back into reality, and began to speak. His voice faltered a little, but he pushed on. "Princess, we have some... very worrisome news."

Celestia stiffened. Is Twilight okay...? was the first thought that occurred to her. She continued to listen to him.

"Our long range sensors detected a mass deployment of griffons from Ur at 22:38, roughly thirty minutes ago," the stallion continued, trying to keep his voice steady. "At the same time, we also detected a massive spike of activity from what we believe to be are the Chaos forms near the griffons. Both forces seem to be converging together and coming this way, directly towards this city. We don't yet know exactly what they are up to, but by the looks of it, it seems that — I'm sorry to say — they are rallying their forces to attack us."

His last few words barely registered in the Princess's head. Her thoughts were still stuck at "Both forces ... converging together", and she was filled with utter disbelief. Had Twilight's excursion failed? Had she gotten her own student killed by the orders she had issued? It was a distinct possibility... but a possibility she hoped was not the case at all.

She began to voice her fears. "How is Twilight? Is she okay?" she bit her lip.

The stallion shrugged. "We at the control room haven't heard from her ever since she landed. We suspected that she purposely cut off all connections to her headset to keep her negotiations uninterrupted. We don't know anything regarding what's happened to her, sadly, my Princess. I came up here to tell you the news and suggest that you come downstairs," he bowed his head low to her.

She didn't really know how to react. She then shook her head vigorously, knowing that she needed to get her flank into gear. She knew she couldn't waste her time just thinking about something important without acting on it. Many things needed to be done, namely what to do with the sudden uprise which their long-range sensors had detected. And if an attack was truly under way, then what of the ponies sleeping innocently below? Would they just be left there or would they be alerted? There were just so many things to handle...

"Show me the results," she ordered him, her face immediately turning solid and commanding.

At this change of mood, the stallion felt reassured. At least the Princess wasn't blankly staring all over the place any longer, like she usually was. "That's just what I was going to suggest, apart from you coming downstairs anyway. But, well... don't you need a few minutes to get ready?" he asked, noticing that she wasn't wearing her vestments.

"I don't need to put my things on. This takes precedence," she muttered softly and trotted out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. The stallion nodded in reply and began to trot alongside her rather quickly on the way over to the lift, and the two stepped inside and descended downstairs to make their way towards the control room. There was no time to lose, especially after hearing of news of this importance.

The room was gigantic. In fact, though it was the central control room for the entire floating nation, it looked just like a wide movie theatre, except the seats were replaced with desks with holoscreens for workstations, and the main, gigantic wall up in front displayed anything that could possibly be displayed through a three-dimensional projector. The walls were white and the floor was marble (as it usually was for the whole castle), and the whole area was well-lit with a cool blue hue.

They arrived, and the stallion made his way to a computer screen and quickly logged in. The entire place was busy, filled with many more ponies than usual (given the fact that this sudden spike had so many ponies surprised). They all seemed to be working on things related to the griffons lately, including the footage Luna had recorded, the details of the exact things the griffons had said during the recording and what they meant, and the possible outcomes of Twilight's negotiations with them. Up on the large screen were live streams of graphs of the statuses of the Arcane lift generators, energy production and consumption, and production of various materials.

Of course, the ponies had to stay one step ahead of everything else in the world to remain the dominant species, so they had to work hard and be prepared. Yet, the title of "superior species" had slowly been slipping from their grasp for centuries.

The stallion Celestia was with tapped her shoulder, bringing her attention back to the very important task at hand. "Princess. Here's the footage," he muttered, expanding a line graph of forms detected on the long-range sensors between 12 to 23 hours Standard Equestrian Time that same day.

Celestia narrowed her eyes at the graph. Between 12 to 19 hours SET, the line rarely went over 6 hits per hour, with those hits probably being from their own patrols. However, when she turned her gaze to see the transition between 19 to 23 hours SET, she felt a chill run down her spine. The low hum of conversational voices in the room no longer registered in her brain, and she couldn't hear the stallion when he spoke again as he tried to get her attention.

The only thing she saw was the graph go from two hits to twenty-three thousand hits total within 22 hours SET itself. In utter disbelief, she manually refreshed the graph to see if it was a display error, but it stayed. "No... this can't be true," she licked her lips nervously. She reached up and tapped on the tip of the spike to display more information on it, and she felt her blood freeze alongside her brain.

There, displayed above the graph itself, was a reading saying "Roughly 7,000 items were detected from Ur, and roughly 16,000 items were detected in areas nearby there".

"Display hits from all the sensors, now," she muttered to the stallion beside her, who immediately went to work. She then went over to an elevated point in the room.

"Attention, everypony! Drop everything you are doing, right now!" she suddenly called out in her booming Royal Canterlot Voice. Everypony immediately froze and turned their attention to her, with some of them even quivering. When she was sure they were all listening intently, Celestia continued with a slightly amused smirk. "I want every single one of you doing your best to finding more information on these sensor scans. I want every single frequency and every single distance from every single sensor we have on this planet streaming a live feed to your screens and the screen in front. We need to know exactly what the griffons and the Chaos forms are doing so we can act."

Almost immediately, they were on it. Live graphs went up on the 3-D screen in a few seconds, and Princess Celestia made her way over near the front to see. She was joined by Princess Cadance, who stood beside the Sun Princess. She was still just the same height as she always had been.

"Ah, Mi Amore," most of Celestia's stress was lifted by the appearance of the pink pony. She turned her gaze to her and smiled. "How have you been? I haven't seen you in a while..."

Princess Cadance blinked sleepily. Her jaws suddenly opened wide in a huge yawn. "Wh-What? Sorry... I've been so busy the past few days, I've barely gotten any sleep."

Celestia blinked and shrugged. Sure, she hadn't slept for the past three days, but she wasn't going to one-up her friend... right now, at least. "I said... umm... so, how are you?" she said, pretending as if nothing had happened.

She glanced over at Celestia and shrugged. "I've been managing the production of our food crops in the North. You know we've been having shortages lately, especially since the little... incident at the weather control room."

The Sun Princess nodded. "Ah, yes... now I remember. At least we're back on track now. The ponies don't need to worry about too much, what with the constant threat of the Chaos forms over their heads. But there's a chance that we'll have to alert them of an enemy attack very soon..." she murmured quietly.

"Where... where is Twilight?" Cadance suddenly asked her. "I haven't seen her lately, but I think I did overhear a few ponies talking about her going somewhere to negotiate...?"

"She went over to the griffon capitol at her own request. I allowed her clearance after she convinced me enough that she should have gone... I'm afraid for her," she murmured in reply, still trying to ignore the possibility that her student could be dead at this moment.

Mi Amore Cadenza sighed. "Nopony formally told me..." she said in a low voice. "But... I think that with this kind of information we're getting, there's no doubt that an offensive against our nation by the griffons and the Chaos forms is under way. Twilight's negotiations may have failed... In a matter of a few hours, the ponies will be woken up by the sounds of explosions and the shield absorbing bullets. Princess Celestia... are you sure we shouldn't alert the public now, while there's still time?"

She shook her head in reply. "I won't risk a premature alarm to evacuate all of my subjects. There was once a movie I watched (a long time ago, I must say) where the leader of a group of very... heroic ponies said: 'Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.' Now, I follow by that philosophy, and I know that some ponies will be angry — or worse — if they perceive themselves as having been alerted far too late. But I don't want to wake ponies up with a false alarm and make them feel even less protected; would you?"

The younger alicorn sighed and bobbed her head up and down, rather sleepily, though she had understood everything she had told her just fine. "You're right. I still think, though, that the attack will come no matter what..."

Princess Celestia was about to reply before an alarm suddenly blared, startling everypony in the room. She turned her head back towards the working ponies and called out, "Give me a status report! What just happened?"

"Princess! You might want to look up at the front!" a stallion in the front row pointed his hoof right up to the screen.

The two Princesses immediately turned their heads back to the front. The graph was spiking up to just above 28,000 hits, and was staying peaked. The distance graph showed that they were close — too close for comfort. They were just six miles and closing.

"What in the Hells do you think you're doing?! Somepony bring up a visual, now!" she yelled out over her shoulder when she saw. She managed to keep her voice steady, much to her surprise. In reality, however, she was beginning to fear what would become of the nation — her nation — now.

Celestia's eyes were fixed on the graphs up above. A visual of the situation finally went up, and the camera's wide view showed a the two legions of griffons flying through the air, as well as the seven other legions of Chaos forms on the ground, marching in extremely organized groups. They wielded advanced weapons, obviously a mixture of stolen Equestrian technology and Chaos contraptions.

Never in her life had she seen so many enemies approaching her to wage bloody battle against her nation, and never had she thought she could ever even imagine seeing so many. How would she pull through? How would her nation pull through?

And how would she continue to act as if the world would continue to survive if now she couldn't even guarantee its safety?

"Mi Amore... I think somepony needs to turn on the alarms," she murmured in a low voice.

Princess Cadance bit her lip and nodded, turning to face the rest. "Somepony alert the public! We're under attack!" she then turned back to face the front, her breaths slowly became shorter. She turned her head to gaze up at the Solar Princess, just about to ask her a question.

The atmosphere in the room became extremely tense. Calm yet strained voices called out to and for each other, and one pony was seen in the corner far behind speaking into a microphone, her hoof pressed against a button. "Attention all ponies! Equestria is under attack. I repeat, Equestria is under attack! This is not a drill! We need each and every one of you to evacuate to the ground sectors, immediately!" she said in an urgent, yet calm voice.

"Princess... how exactly will we be able to evacuate everypony? We live on a floating island! Where will they go??" the former Princess of the Crystal Empire finally asked her.

Celestia sighed quietly. "You know we prepared for this moment even before the city had gone up into the air. The evacuation protocol is to send each and every pony down to the underground sectors and put them on high-speed escape pods oriented towards the safest location we can find, which, according to my scientists, is a faraway island six thousand miles from here. Everypony will be fine; there are more than enough pods to accomodate—"

"In the middle of a war?!" Cadance suddenly exploded, causing many ponies to stop what they were doing to stare down at the two alicorns. The Crystal Princess continued on. "If the Chaos forms see those pods — Hells, if the griffons see those pods, they're sure to fire on them and chase them down! Sure, deploying escape pods gives these ponies a fighting chance, but that chance is so damn slim!"

The elder alicorn was so surprised that this drowsy, pink Regent of Love could bounce back from a tiring excursion to the North and a sleepless night to yell at her. This whole situation seemed to be getting to her, too.

"Cadenza..." Celestia began to speak. "I love my ponies. But I'd rather give them a chance than to not give them a chance at all. Though you might think that this entire plan was going to fail from the beginning, I'm happy that I was able to give my subjects six hundred more years to live. Aren't you?"

The activity around them resumed at full speed once Princess Cadance did not respond. She only sighed and shook her head, turning away from the solar pony to make her way up the middle aisle. "I'm going to go assist with the evacuations. This nation needs more than a few ponies to help evacuate fifteen million others," she said over her shoulder, and left the room.

The tall mare, leader of Equestria for the past 2,600 years, stood where she was and closely continued to monitor the large screen above her head. She called orders behind to the others every now and then whenever she needed to. She knew that as much as she wanted to flee the scene with the rest of the evacuating ponies, that it was her responsibility to stay and ensure the safety of all and suppress her selfish desires. She would continue to play her role until the bloody end, no matter the cost.

But the fate of her former student Twilight Sparkle continued to distract her from what she was doing. She almost allowed her hooves to collapse to the ground at the sudden thought of her precious little pony dead on the ground.

Please be okay...

———

The city was slowly becoming less and less organized as time passed. Though it was late at night, the alarm had definitely woken everypony up. Large groups were massing together in a hurry towards the nearest evacuation exits leading down to the sub-floors. Though it generally was going without a hitch, it was obvious that everypony was struggling to get to the front of the line as it progressed down underground. The ponies organizing the evacuation tried to stay calm and collected, out there to selflessly help save lives.

Princess Cadance was leader of her own group helping others evacuate in the wake of the announcement. At her presence, many small conflicts happening between each pony hurrying down to the floors were quelled, which made her a major asset. It was no wonder why she had made the decision to come downstairs the help; she knew that she could provide a lot of order to all the ponies.

Many ponies were bringing foals and young colts and fillies with them along with their hurriedly packed bags. Many of them didn't seem to know exactly what was going on, and especially the younger ones were crying quite hard. Parents tried their best to shush their children to keep the atmosphere as light as possible, though sometimes it took the Princess herself to cast a spell on them to keep them calm.

"Come on, everypony. This way, downstairs, please. Everypony will be able to evacuate, don't worry. The pods will be leaving in thirty minutes, and there's room for every one of you. Please don't push and shove," Cadance called out continually. Luckily, nopony misbehaved, mostly because it was she who was organizing this evacuation.

But out of all the ponies who lived in what was left of Equestria, how would just a few thousand ponies manage to evacuate millions of others to safety?

And where would they even be evacuating to?

———

Where am I? What is this place...?

The fallen mare slowly began to become aware of her limbs, her wings, her horn, and the weak amounts of magic flowing throughout her. She felt her senses come to life; first her hearing, then the control and sensory perception of her body, and then everything else. Her eyes snapped open and she gasped for breath, glancing down at her lavender chest to see if it was okay, having just remembered that she had been shot there from point-blank range.

Her nano-suit was gone, having receded back to its condensed form somewhere near the bottom of her mane. She felt herself relax completely upon seeing that her chest was unharmed, with no signs of there being any damage done. She silently thanked pony engineering for such a life-saving feat (and that she decided to keep her suit on); if she had relied on just magic, she wouldn't have had the reaction time to block that shot.

She sighed and glanced around her to try to figure out exactly where she was. She was in some sort of hollow, large container, alright, something akin to a storage tank which held liquids in high amounts. It must have been ten metres in diameter and twenty-five metres tall. She got to her hooves and looked straight up at the "ceiling", and it took her a moment to realize that she was in grave danger. Once she did, however, her positive thoughts were obliterated, immediately replaced by horribly negative ones that drained her completely of any determination she had left.

"Why... Why in Equestria am I in a... a drowning tank?!" she screamed, her purple eyes wide and her pupils contracting. No, no, there was no way she was in a container meant to kill living creatures by the masses! She was definitely still in Ur, or somewhere in griffon territory; only they could still have such horrible gadgets to use.

Her thoughts were cut off by two muffled griffon voices above her. Previously unseen from when she initially looked up at the transparent cover, they were now visible as they leaned their heads over and sneered and jeered at her. Upon seeing her terrified gaze and frantic movements, they laughed heartlessly at her. Twilight could barely hear what they were saying to each other after they finished chuckling.

"I swear, I want to shoot her right now... let me ask you, why exactly didn't you shoot her in the head an hour ago?! You're an idiot, thinking shooting her in the chest would have killed her, with all of that armour! Damn, you could have just stunned her instead of looking like an idiot firing off a fully charged shot at her for no reason! Now your gun's out of commission! It was a complete waste of time and resources having to drag her here with our bare talons, and it still is a complete waste of time, what with us having to wait to pull the lever!" one of them suddenly shoved his friend.

"Bird-brain, if I shot her head, we would'a lost the information her fancy-schmancy contact lenses had! And damn, I shot her in the chest with that fully charged gun on purpose, I wanted to test that shit on her! But if I killed her straight up by shooting her in the head then we would'a lost our only chance! The King Chief said he needed the contacts to tell where the rest of the fuckin' ponies are! And he's just not letting us kill her just yet because if they can't find the information we need, we'll just have to squeeze it outta her ourselves! Besides, I'm happy that she didn't die just yet, 'cause now we can get to see her drown to death when we've gotten what we needed! So let's just wait for it to get done, then we can press the button and see her drown! Ha-ha-ha!!" he ended his speech with a nasty, throaty laugh.

Twilight gasped in surprise. She couldn't hear the rest of the conversation over her noisy, thinking mind. All the pieces fit together now; the entire thing was a set-up! Of course nobody else in Equestria knew where the ponies' floating islands were; they needed a pony to direct them where they needed to go! And what better way than to steal information from the tech of a Princess along with the Princess herself to fall back on in case the technology didn't have the information they needed?

She suddenly felt her heart sink down very low at this point of extreme need. Up above, she could barely hear voices from another griffon coming into the room to tell the other two something, but the voices didn't register in her head as she stayed on the ground, almost feeling her will being drained from her body.

It's my fault... again? she bit her lip so hard she drew blood. Her breaths came shaky, and she collapsed onto the cold, wet ground.

Wait... wet?

Oh, Celestia, it's happening right now, isn't it... I'm being drowned... oh I'm going to die, I'm going to die... echoed through her head. She didn't even bother thinking about survival or doing anything to try to get out; she didn't have the will. She saw a massive torrent of water flowing through an opening in the side of the container, quickly filling up the wide space. A part of her even accepted that she was going to die, because, for all she cared, she deserved it after all she'd done.

Then came the maniacal laughter from the two griffons up above her head. Though she could barely hear them, her sudden hatred for them caused the laughter to increase tenfold in volume. She clenched her jaw and glared up at them, her horn beginning to glow in rapidly restored resolve, and her mind commanding her suit to come to life. It slowly began to envelop her, extending an exoskeleton of tendrils down her spine, around her waist and chest, and all of her limbs except her wings, before the exotic material connected to itself, forming the tight, comfortable fit of the highly advanced protective armor. Without a moment of hesitation, Princess Twilight Sparkle let out a sudden battle cry so loud that it alerted the two griffons above. She unfurled her wings and beat them hard, causing a huge wave of water to eject behind her as she took off straight towards the glass ceiling.

"DIEEE!!!" she screamed and shut her eyes tight, before her horn fired off a massive blast of pure arcane energy. The three-inch glass melted instantaneously as the large projectile collided with it, then continued on to melt its way through the roof of the warehouse, causing snow to fall through the large hole. She flew at blinding speeds out of the quickly filling tank and glared at the griffons, who, in panic, immediately began to fire at her.

Without almost any time to react, she summoned a defensive shield, blocking the rapid succession of green plasma bullets, before retaliating with an enormous gust of pure wind she mustered with her wings. The griffons flinched as the huge influx of visible air rushed towards them at supersonic speeds, and they were hit by the brunt of the impact, being tossed to the wall like ragdolls.

Twilight panted a little and extended her suit to cover her head completely except her eyes. "I need my lenses..." she muttered lowly to herself. Her eyes locked onto the large griffon palace looming over at the top of the city (she was in a far corner of the area), and she immediately shot towards it, ignoring the fact that there were griffons directly below her that could have seen her. There was no time to lose; if the griffons knew where Equestria was, imagine what they could do to it, coupled with the Chaos forms?

She landed at the top of the stairs and narrowed her eyes at the two remaining griffons guarding the front of the palace she was just in. Having just noticed her when she landed, they gasped in surprise and turned their weapons right at her, but it was too late. "IGNÆT!" she cried out, and a huge gout of fire erupted from Twilight's glowing horn much in the same fashion as the wind from her wings in the warehouse had. The griffons were charred instantly, and the nano-suit-clad lavender alicorn stepped slowly through the fire-covered ground to force the doors open.

Once she was inside, she was greeted by a huge volley of rapid plasma shots coming from the griffons taking defensive positions up near the throne. Having foreseen this, she cast her readied spell in time to catch the hundreds of spheres of pure plasma in front of her, before smirking darkly at them all. The eight of them ducked as the magical aura around her horn glowed brightly and she yelled, "IAKULOU!", concentrating them all tightly into a single sphere before casting it straight at them. After realizing exactly how powerful it was, Twilight yelped and galloped into the nearest hallway, waiting for the resulting explosion to push her off her feet. "Dear Celestia...!!" she squealed as she ran as quickly as she could.

The moment the fast-moving green sphere hit a pillar near the throne that one of the griffons was hiding behind, chaos ensued. An immense discharge of the concentrated plasma energy took place, vaporizing everything within an eight-metre sphere around it. The air was harshly displaced, the shockwave of the blast running through nearby time and space itself as it blew a gigantic hole in the side of the building. The foundation of the building atop the hill itself was threatened, as the building lurched towards the site of the explosion. All those griffons were definitely dead.

The huge blast of the explosion continued to chase after Twilight, bringing doors off their hinges and shattering windows along the way. Once it finally caught up to her, it shoved her forward hard, taking her off of her hooves and making her land harshly on her side, knocking the wind, almost her consciousness, out of her.

She groaned quietly in pain and glanced up from where she had run. The hallway was utterly ruined, every piece of furniture damaged or overturned in some way from the blast, and doors were knocked inwards off their hinges. Her head throbbed in pain as she got to her hooves, wobbling over to the nearest room she could find.

"Contacts..." she breathed as she opened her eyes painfully. She looked up and around the room she had just entered and almost flinched. On a barely damaged wooden table in the room (the farthest down the hall), were her contacts, perfectly and conveniently placed, in a sealed glass box. She summoned her magic and conjured up a solid arcane hammer and nail, pressing the nail to the top of the box before hammering it down hard, shattering it perfectly without destroying her contacts.

She picked them up in her magical grasp after dispelling the hammer and nail, and put them up to her eye to see if they were alright. Completely relieved upon seeing that the familiar blinking cursor asking for her password flashed, she quickly placed both of them in her eyes. "Canterlot1944," she recited, to which her lenses both responded to by logging in seamlessly. When she saw what was on her HUD, however, her blood ran cold.

She had expected it, but to actually see what they had done scared her beyond belief. Displayed against her retina were huge lists of information regarding the flight path of Canterlotian Equestria, its coordinates, and at which points its shield opened up to let ponies in. She bit her lip again, tasting a bit of dried blood from earlier, and quivered.

"I can't believe this is happening..." Twilight whispered, hanging her head low to the ground. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she shook them away, taking in a deep, shaky breath. "I... I have to stop them somehow..." she declared quietly.

She could hear angry shouts and shuffling from the hallway. She bolted up immediately and wiped her tears away, closing every application window in her HUD and replacing it with her combat loadout HUD. She wrapped her whole body tightly in the nano-suit and stood her ground. Her horn glowed a bright raspberry color and she narrowed her eyes, knowing she would be ready to take on these guards when they came. After all, she would have to take many, many more out later on when the time came.

Era IV – Chapter IV

Twilight shivered a bit in the cold as she leaped off from the huge hole she had blown in the side of the Palace of Ur. Behind her, seven griffons lay unconscious or dead on the fiery ground. Twilight was relieved; it would be quite a pain to have to battle them just to get back to where she sorely needed to go.

She caught the air in her wings after freefalling for a good hundred feet or so. When she swooped up along the slope of a mountain, gaining height, she reactivated her radio and her position transmitter to allow the ponies back in Equestria to know that she was still alive and kicking. She was certain that most already thought her dead at this stage of the griffons' attack on Equestria. But, little did she know that she was out of range from even her nation's most advanced radar systems. Only by getting closer would she be able to alert them of her presence.

This fact escaped her. All she knew was that she needed to get to back home as soon as she could to stop this madness and the potential deaths of millions of ponies. The feeling of being short on time made her even more scared for everypony, all of her subjects, her friends, and especially the three other Princesses, which she held very closely to heart. These emotions, suddenly showing themselves, made her think hard and think quick.

She flapped her bare wings rapidly in the frigid air, feeling them numb almost instantaneously. Deciding to go against normal procedures in this desperate time, she grew the nano-suit to fit snugly around her feathery lavender wings. Usually, doing so would impede a pony's ability to fly, but this was an emergency situation; she couldn't risk losing her wings on the way back during this time of dire need.

Her speedometer noted that she was travelling at roughly 248 miles an hour. She gritted her teeth; at that rate, she would reach Equestria in just over twenty-four minutes. That would be too much time spent trying to get home; her nation didn't have a chance at this rate! She tried to flap her wings to go faster, but her suit, tight around them, stopped her from doing so. She felt helplessness and hopelessness grow into feelings of anger and annoyance.

"Come on! I need to get home!" she shouted loudly in a burst of sudden frustration. She began to pant at the effort of trying to go faster, but after a few minutes, when she finally accepted she couldn't, she stopped and resumed onwards normally. The harsh snow beat at her, but she was in too much of a hurry to even think of flying above the clouds to avoid the gusty winds and occasional shards of ice. Only by leaving the tall mountain would she be able to remove her suit from her wings to fly faster.

All of these things — nearly getting killed in a mass drowner, seeing the plans of legions of griffons and Chaos forms coming together to attack Equestria, and the harsh environment — caused Twilight to begin losing her sanity. She began to panic, grinding her teeth harshly against each other. She naturally began to think up all of the horrible outcomes that could possibly take place if she couldn't get home. Her earpiece, connected wirelessly to her HUD lenses, beeped rapidly, trying to remind her to calm down. Her heart rate was escalating, higher so than it already was in its stressed state.

Oh, dear Celestia! What if I don't make it back in time? What if the griffons and the Chaos forms already took down the bubble shield? What if they're invading and killing innocent ponies as we speak?! she screamed to herself. These progressively more and more negative thoughts made her whimper and sniffle as she felt tears well out from her eyes.

She continued to fly, but this time, without screaming or shouting in hopeless pain. She flew onwards in silence; the blizzard still surrounded her, and she began to feel as if she would be stuck in it for the rest of her miserable eternal lifetime. She grew more and more depressed in a span of a few minutes and even closed her eyes as she glided shakily towards home. Her vision and her mind slowly descended into darkness, and she felt herself plunge into an odd semi-conscious dream state. Her wings continued to flap toward home, and she felt herself slowly become part of what she was seeing and experiencing: her past, her present, and, to an extent, her future, too.

"... Twilight? Tell me, sweetie, what's wrong?"

"I failed, mom! I failed my test! Now all the other fillies and colts are laughing at me because I'm the only one who didn't pass! What am I supposed to do? I can't go back there!"

The little filly Twilight cuddled against a full-grown mare, her mother, who had a white coat and a white-and-purple mane and tail. Her small frame shook and shivered sadly as she buried her head into her neck and shoulder, wetting it with her tears.

"Oh, sweetheart..." her mother's smooth, gentle voice gently coaxed her to relax as she spoke into her scared filly's ear. "You have to stay strong, or else — heh — the monsters will getcha!" she suddenly pulled away to tickle Twilight Sparkle's belly and neck, causing the little filly to squeal aloud in laughter.

"M-Mommy! Sto-Stop i... ohhff- ah-hahaha!!" she giggled loudly. When her mother pulled away after a few seconds, she was left to lie on her back on the soft bed, letting out occasional tired laughs.

"That's it. Don't be sad, sweetie," her mother smiled and got to her hooves. She leaned down beside the bed and gave her daughter a loving kiss on the cheek. "Always be happy, and don't ever lose hope in yourself or anypony else... okay?" she said in that nice, light-hearted tone of hers.

The small lavender filly nodded and relaxed while her mother pulled the sheets up, tucking her snugly into bed. She gazed up at her with her soft, violet eyes, before closing them sleepily. "Goodnight, mommy..." she yawned and closed her eyes, feeling darkness embrace her once more, pulling her down to pitch-black depths.

"... B-But what am I supposed to do?? The coronation is tomorrow and... and I don't even have any sort of royal vestments to wear! And I don't even know how to act like a Princess, let alone do the duties that a Princess must do... oh, what should I do?" she had to force herself to stop hyperventilating.

"Dearie, listen to yourself! You were born in Canterlot, for Celestia's sake! Your brother is captain of the... the Royal Guard! And his mate is a lovely alicorn, just like you! Of course you should know how to be a Princess, or at least royalty, to some extent!" an alabaster-white unicorn with a curly royal purple mane tried to reassure the scared, newly-turned lavender alicorn. Her voice was tinted by a distinctive Atlantic accent.

"Yeah! And if you're not sure about it, just make it up on the fly when you get there! I don't even think it'll be hard being a Princess; I could probably do it in my sleep!" a sky-blue pegasus mare with a colorful mane boasted as she flew around the main area of the library tree.

"Umm... if I could make a suggestion, I... I think you should ask Princess Celestia or Princess Luna for help. I'm sure they'll always be ready to give out some advice for anypony, especially you!" another pegasus, this time with a long, pink mane and a yellow coat suggested.

"Come on! You're an alicorn! You can do whatever you want!!" a pink Earth mare giggle-snorted.

An orange Earth pony mare sat down right beside her lavender alicorn friend and reached up to give her a light nudge. "Aw, c'mon Twi. Ya can't just give up this easily! Ya aren't that kind'a pony, an' Ah know that for certain!" Her friendly, Southern-accented voice managed to finally put her at ease.

She smiled over at all of her friends and extended her arms out wide as she sat up. "Aw, come on, girls. You five are the best friends a pony could ever ask for," she said laughingly as all of the others came together with her in a big group hug, with her at the center. The big group of colorful ponies, best of friends, smiled and giggled happily in the tight, close embrace. "I'm sure things will go much better than I think they will... thank you," she murmured, hugging them all close to herself.

"I hope..." she whispered quietly under her breath before the other five unexpectedly dog-piled on her, making her yelp in surprise before she suffocated in darkness.

"... Are they all dead? Tell me, now."

"Yes, Princess Sparkle," her guard muttered in a low growl. "The deed is done. How much farther are you planning on going...?"

She narrowed her eyes, her horn beginning to glow as she glared down at him. "You will stay under my command and follow my orders without question unless I relinquish you of your duties, which will be... never," she hissed. "Though, I am quite happy that you miserable little foals were actually able to quell that stupid rebellion back at Ponyville... for a moment I thought I would have to go there and stop it myself..."

The five leaders of her army stayed where they stood, shuffling nervously from side to side. One of them finally mustered enough courage to report to her what he'd been assigned to report.

"Princess Twilight," he stepped forward and gulped.

Immediately her dark violet eyes locked onto him. "Speak," she ordered.

"Ah-ahh... I... I'm here to report that five of the six bodies you assigned us to find have been... recovered," he gulped. "The last one, ahm, well..."

"What about the last one?" she growled harshly at him. "Speak!"

"T-The... I-It's the dra-dragon! W-We couldn't find him, b-b-but we were able to get the other f-five ponies you requested..." he began to breathe rapidly. "Please d-don't kill me, Your Highness...!" he threw himself down on the ground, his face plastered to the floor and his entire body quivering.

The lavender alicorn bit her lip at the news and shook her head. She was furious, but she decided it would be better to let this pathetic little heap of organic material live instead of wasting her strength just to put him down. She growled down at him. "Get up, you blithering idiot," she snapped. "Obliterate the bodies!!" she shouted down at the rest of them, who flinched at the sudden, harsh sound. "I don't want to see those foals ever again..."

"Y-Yes, Your Highness," they all said, before bowing their heads low to her and leaving in a single-file line out the door.

The tyrant Princess Twilight Sparkle sat alone in the large throne room. It was late at night, and the inside was lit dimly only by a few torches.

After a good half-hour of sitting motionlessly on her golden throne, she let out a sigh and made her way up to her room on the tallest tower of her castle. Her castle wasn't too far from Ponyville, being situated down south. She had been assigned the responsibility of ruling over the southern provinces of Equestria, including Ponyville, but the small town's rebellion she finally had the time to put down showed her that these ponies didn't like her way of ruling.

What was it to them? All she had done was impose very strict laws on jobs to increase productivity — for her subjects' own good! And she had just doubled taxes just so she could get herself things she wanted; she was a Princess, after all. If ponies rebelled against her and her way of ruling, then she would be forced to put them down.

"Gotta get some sleep... have so much stupid stuff to do tomorrow..." she muttered and carelessly threw off all her royal vestments into her closet. But she was much more careful with her crown, her beautiful, golden crown topped with a six-pointed bright magenta star. Right now, it was glowing and pulsating quickly, and she gazed at it closely, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

"Stupid thing..." she muttered before setting it as gently as she could onto a bust of her head on her nightstand. It began to pulsate brighter and quicker, and the moment she set it down, it abruptly...

Shattered.

A large crack instantaneously ran straight through its center, immediately extinguishing the bright multicolored flashing within. It even split off from the rest of the crown, falling onto the nightstand. Though usually bright, it was now completely dim and dull, with black smoke slowly rising out from where the cracks were the widest.

The sudden damage done to it made Twilight squeak and rear back in shock. When she turned her gaze back to it to see what had happened, she felt her heart nearly stop.

"My crown... what happened to my crown?!" she growled, her voice growing louder as she spoke. She was furious, beginning to breathe rapidly in building anger. "One of the guards must have set this to explode... they hate me anyway..." she heaved.

Out of nowhere, she felt a thought grip her tight. She froze as her mind brought her back to what had just happened less than an hour ago. The other five ponies were now dead, and their bodies recovered, just as she had ordered.

"The Elements of Harmony...?" she breathed and glanced up at her ruined crown. "Oh no... oh, no..."

What have I done...?

She felt herself being pulled down into the very ground she was standing on, and darkness overcame her once more.

Her eyes snapped open. An unfamiliar landscape surrounded her as she found herself automatically flying high in the sky on the way to go somewhere, though she had no idea where she was heading or where she intended to go. It took her a few moments to gather up exactly what had happened, and she realized that she had come out from utter blackness back to the real world. She didn't remember anything that had happened for the past ten minutes she had been gone, but all she knew was that she was far away from Ur now; the snow below had been replaced with lush, green forests. The dense clouds that were around her were gone now, and up above was a clear, moonlit sky.

But she was still confused as to why she was back. The feeling of hopelessness still lay within her, but... there was something else as well. She could barely feel it within her, but once she was able to figure out what she was feeling, she became utterly confused. They were emotions; very strong, negative emotions like anger, resentment, anguish, and, most of all, sorrow. She tried to figure out exactly what made her feel such things, but once she traced them back to their origins, her heart thumped in emotional pain.

She gritted her teeth. Her nano-suit receded from her wings, freeing them up and allowing her to move faster through the air. Her speedometer now measured 497 miles an hour, much faster than she had been going earlier. Now, instead of wanting to get back to Canterlotian Equestria just because she was a Princess obligated to her subjects, there was a different reason.

She had failed them before. She had made them lose complete hope in her, and, as a result, they rebelled against her. But what did she do? Nothing except order the deaths of the ponies who were once her five closest friends without wondering why they had gone against her. She realized; they wanted her to be a better pony. And she had failed them.

I'm not going to let that happen again, she said firmly to herself. I don't just have obligations to these ponies; I owe them something. Something big. And if I can't save them, then I won't ever be able to forgive myself for what I'd done...

An outburst of noise from her earpiece caused her to yelp in surprise. She almost twisted in the air, destabilizing herself, but she quickly reoriented herself and continued on home. She tried to track where the radio noise had come from, and when she saw that it was coming right from Canterlot itself, she smiled wide in relief and renewed confidence. She opened the channel up to them and began to speak; thank Celestia she wasn't too tired to turn her transmitters on earlier when she left Ur.

"H-Hello? This is Princess Twilight Sparkle. Please tell me what's going on!" she breathed, unable to retain her formal tone since she knew she was speaking directly to those in Canterlot. They had to know what was happening.

"Twilight!"

Her eyes widened, and her wings nearly faltered. She didn't realize how much she had missed her teacher, especially after what she'd been through at Ur, until she heard her. "P-Princess Celestia?! I... I'm on my way back home, but... but..." she felt her heart nearly split in two in joyful relief at the sound of her beloved instructor's voice. Coupled with what she had done in the past that she had just remembered, hearing her teacher's eternally gentle voice was enough to make her cry.

"I was starting to wonder when you'd return," came the staticky reply. Though it wasn't a miraculously clear transmission, Twilight could clearly tell that she had been silently crying. Her voice had cracked, something she had never heard from her teacher before.

"Princess, I'm here now! I'm on my way back to Equestria, and I... I'm sorry for shutting off my transmitter! I didn't know you would be like this... I'm so sorry! D... Did you think I was... d-dead?" she breathed, wondering if that was what her teacher thought had happened.

After a moment of silence on both ends, Celestia finally responded. "Yes... Yes, Twilight," she admitted quietly. "I lost faith... I still don't know what I'll do, especially after seeing these enemies of mine right at our front door... my faithful student, I... we... need help that only you can provide..."

With her recently unearthed memories still in her head, especially her third one, she gritted her teeth, unable to think of anything else she could possibly be talking about. "Princess, you know that the Elements of Harmony were lost six hundred years ago..."

"This isn't about the Elements, Twilight," Celestia replied immediately, which made Twilight shut her mouth to listen to her speak. "We need you to fight them alongside us. Luna is already readying up, and I'm going to be heading out soon myself. These ponies are evacuating in escape pods, and I need to make sure that each and every one of them makes it out of the battle zone unscathed. Please, Twilight... I don't want to lose a single one of them..."

The younger Princess gulped, continuing to make her way back home. So her motives were just the same as Princess Celestia's... except that Twilight felt the need to repay them for what she'd done. And helping the others defend everypony was a task she was definitely going to be up to.

"A-Alright, Princess Celestia," she responded. "I'll help without hesitation... I'm almost there. Just hold on."

"Stay safe. We'll talk more about this when this ends... if it ends..."

Twilight gulped and nodded, and the connection was dropped. She was alone once more in the darkness of the night, and she couldn't help but shiver.

At least now, she would have a chance to redeem her soul to everypony and prove to those she had ever wronged that she truly was sorry...

———

"Come on everypony! Nice and easy, now; you'll be assigned a pod when you get down there. Don't worry, there's enough room for everypony! Come on, now, get along, no pushing!"

Cadance's team of evacuators seemed to be working the best out of all of the groups assigned the job. There was no surprise either; she practically radiated love, calming everything around her, no matter who or what it was. And that was a major reason as to why she had come down to aid in the vacating of everypony from the nation.

There were still crowds of ponies waiting to get in their assigned escape pods. Though many were loaded up already, the engineers were waiting for the all-clear to transport them safely out from the pod bays below. Half a million ponies would be hauled out in each wave, out towards the safety of the target landmass six thousand miles away. Their thrusters were rated as being able to achieve supersonic speeds, aided by their sleek shape. Three hundred would be able to fit into each one at maximum, and it wouldn't take too many to escape their doomed nation.

Directly above, the moon shone brightly. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and the stars beyond twinkled brightly, far behind even the moon.

Down below, however, obscured in darkness, were the two armies of the Chaos forms and the griffons. The Chaos forms stood in the dense forests, waiting motionlessly for the order to attack like a hivemind, while the griffons were perched up in the trees themselves, shifting from side to side. It was so understandable as to why they were so antsy; ever since the dawn of their existence, they had been waiting for this moment for centuries: the chance to finally annihilate the pony race from the face of the planet.

And it was so, so close. They could almost taste it...

In the control room, activity was growing. Celestia was shouting out orders over her shoulder almost every thirty seconds now, though everything was progressing according to plan. The cameras had a clear visual on the enemy armies below, and there was a constant feed showing the Princess the status of each and every pony below. The first, "Equestria", read 15,622,901; the second, "Escaped", was obviously still at zero; the third, the one Celestia was staring at, was still at zero as well; it was the amount of Casualties there could possibly be.

The white Sun Princess cleared her throat and activated her earpiece, establishing a direct connection with her sister. She had been out of the infirmary for a few hours now.. Ever since she was alerted of the incoming Chaos forms and griffons, she had pleaded with her nurses to let her go to help manage the situation, and they had checked her to make sure she was fit to walk and fly. Luckily, her amazing regenerative powers got her through all of the tests she actively had to participate in to ensure that she was prepared for what she wanted to do.

"Luna, are you sure you're up to this task?" the elder of the two spoke. Her voice still cracked a little, and she felt her heart thump at the realization of her sorry state.

"Sister... I would be willing to defend each and every pony in our nation until our very last breath; just exactly the same as you. If you do not allow me to go out and lead the initial maneuver, those escape pods of yours — that you had commissioned to be built five hundred years ago — will be their primary target. I shall lead a battalion of our finest warriors to distract and defend the escape pods below. The moment you see the first shot fired, please, Sister: do not hesitate to launch them all," Luna said solemnly as she felt her sleek, upgraded nano-suit conform to her body and accentuate her curves.

At least, this time, the group of three thousand ponies behind her were a mix of ponies of all races and genders. If a mare caught a stallion staring, she would immediately hoof him upside the head. Earth ponies and unicorns alike wore jetpacks and jet boots in addition to heavy energy weapons on their shoulders. Every single one of them wore a highly upgraded nano-suit made for dogfights and close combat. It would take more than a few shots to down any of these warriors.

Back at the control room, Celestia licked her lips and forced herself to relax. She closed her eyes, taking her gaze away from the projected screen above. The tension was rising; everypony could feel it. The time was coming, and there was no stopping it...

"Alright, sister. Go and do your job and protect our citizens. Come back safely..." she murmured in a very quiet whisper, so quiet that Luna could barely hear what she had said.

The nocturnal Princess smiled gently. "Do not worry for me, Sister. I will come back..." she murmured before glancing back at her battalion for a moment. She then gazed in front of herself and let out a quiet breath. A square drop opened up right in front of her to pitch blackness below, and she arched her back before diving down, freefalling with her wings tucked tightly against herself.

The other three thousand went in after her, splitting into their respective squads before following her into battle.

———

Twilight...

The lavender alicorn, still flying home, flinched. She was only ten miles from home, but a magical arcane thought-message had hit her hard. Though she had received thought-messages before, this one was quite different; it was in a voice that was so familiar to her, yet she couldn't pinpoint from exactly who it was; and she couldn't figure out where it had come from, which was something a thought-message should have allowed the recipient to find out.

However, after a few moments, a massive outburst of magic hit her harder than the thought had, nearly knocking her out of the air. She had to stabilize herself to figure out what had happened. When she had shaken her head vigorously and caught sight of the source, she didn't need to figure out where it came from.

Twilight, you need to follow...

Princess Sparkle's breath caught in her throat. She gulped nervously and shakily replied to wherever the voice was coming from. "I can't... not now...! Everypony back at home needs me... to help them out! I can't just leave them..." She bit her lip. She was torn hopelessly between saving her nation and potentially getting herself killed to find out where she had heard that voice before; the choice should have been easy for her, but she was desperate to figure out who it was and what it wanted with her. The magical force was so strong, and, despite her intention to get back home as quickly as she could to save everypony, she couldn't help but entertain her inquisitive mind. She was falling into the trap of knowledge once more, and her gullible self began to take over, thirsty for answers.

She halted in midair, turning her gaze to the direction the magical aura was coaxing her. Gulping again and clearing her throat, she opened up a channel to the control room back in Equestria.

"Princess Celestia. I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a few more minutes. I've found something... something I can't resist," she quivered. "Just in case I don't come back, don't wait for me... but I swear that I'll be back soon," she promised. Before the Princess could answer or even utter a sound, she shut down all of her transmitters once more, leaving her alone in the dark night.

She mapped her destination out on her HUD, hardening her gaze. After a few moments of contemplating a few final thoughts, she gathered up as much strength as she could in her wings and shot off towards it.

"Oh, I can't believe I'm doing this..." she gulped. The thirst for knowledge was getting stronger within her, and she couldn't take it anymore. That familiar voice... she just had to figure out where it had come from, and she had to figure it out now. She couldn't help herself... And she knew that the fate of her own nation could wait for just a few more minutes...

Oh...! Please make this be worth it... Please tell me I've made the right decision... she whispered as she broke the sound barrier, rapidly closing in to her destination just two miles away, high in a tall, smoke-covered mountain. There was no turning back now.

Era IV – Chapter V

"Sister. It is time. Get ready to sound the all-clear."

Princess Celestia gulped and licked her lips nervously. The final battle was getting closer... would this plan work? Would her sister and the Equestrian army as a whole be able to guard the pods she had spent decades manufacturing just for this moment?

And Twilight Sparkle had been detoured once more. How long would it take until she came back to help them out?

She couldn't think about that now; she promised to come back, and a promise was a promise. She had to worry about more important things, anyways.

"Of course, Luna. I'll be ready," she murmured after getting rid of other intrusive thoughts, and narrowed her eyes up at the monitor. She then shouted over her shoulder to the rest of the control room, "Bring up Luna's live feed! And be sure to include her vital signs and armour status somewhere I can see them!"

"Sister," Luna interrupted her before she could see the status windows come online. "We will soon be making our first pass. Our brigade is split into three battalions, and we will attack from three sides. Our cloaks are active, so none of them should detect us until the last moment before we attack. We expect a highly successful first pass."

Both sisters caught a visual of a group of griffons perched up the trees through Luna's night-vision lenses. Upon closer inspection, it showed that they did not have any other equipment on them besides the weapons that they wielded. They had no assistive thrusters or HUD goggles, showing exactly how weak and poor the griffons were. However, their sharp eyes, wings, and talons, coupled with their artificial weapons, as well as their hardiness in battle, proved that they would still be difficult adversaries indeed.

The Chaos forms below, however, were a completely different story. Their easily-changeable forms allowed them to create weapons and new appendages as they pleased. Their ghostly white default humanoid forms could be added onto and customized easier than even a pony's nano-armour. As far as anypony knew, it was nigh-impossible to defeat even just one. And there were twenty thousand of them readying to attack.

Celestia glanced back behind at the rest of the ponies in the room. All of them looked dumbfounded when they saw the sheer amount of griffons and Chaos forms come together not too far from their floating fortress. She huffed and firmly told one of them, "Keep your hoof on the alarm and don't hesitate to press it when you see the first shot fired. Understood?"

When the stallion had nodded to her and readied himself, Celestia turned back to the screen. She kept her eyes focused on the live feed, and she kept a close watch especially on her sister's health status and the total casualty count.

———

Twilight Sparkle continued on towards her goal, towards the mountain whose peak was obscured with thick, black smoke. Judging by the fact that no other mountains were covered in smoke, she knew for sure that that was a sign that she was going the right way, but... was she making the right decision? Would she just be putting herself uselessly in danger she didn't need to be put into? Her doubts were still clouding her mind, but her longing to quench her thirst to find out whatever it was overrode every doubt she was having.

She continued to track the source of the massive outpouring of arcane energy on her HUD. As she got closer, however, something made her heart stop for a good long moment.

A huge roar erupted from the peak of the mountain designed on her vision. She gulped and double-checked her HUD to see if it was still pointing her in the right direction. When she saw that the marker hadn't moved, possibly continuing to guide her into a danger zone, she began to nervously grind her teeth. A disturbing thought occurred to her; such a fearsome roar could have only come from a dragon. And what did that mean for her? Would she have to get past this dragon on her own just to get what she was looking for? Was it the guardian of whatever she was being drawn to?

But she couldn't make a clear conclusion yet; she had to go on.

She had barely looked at the tracker for a second before it beeped rapidly and lurched, changing outline color from yellow to red. It startled her deeply, and she had to look closer just to see that the tracker was, in fact, moving.

What was this madness? She knew for certain that inanimate objects couldn't move. And if this was pouring out as much magic as it was, then it must definitely have been an inorganic magical artifact that could possibly aid her in some way! But it was moving, bobbing up and down and left to right every now and then, meaning that somepony else was acting on it. But who? Could it have been the dragon using the artifact itself?

Princess Twilight had no idea at all, but there was definitely no way she was going to just turn and leave at this point, especially after this unforeseen turn of events. She was just a half-mile away from the peak. The tension was mounting, and she could feel herself become more and more nervous as she slowed down in the air.

She touched down at an area just below the peak, and a very interestingly familiar sight greeted her in the form of a large entrance in the side of the steep mountain.

"Wait a minute..." she whispered to herself, then gasped in realization. This was the exact same mountain that she had gone to to help a particular red dragon move its smoking mouth somewhere else! And she knew that the last time she had been there, there were large amounts of riches being protected by the dragon himself. Was it possible that this new dragon inside was guarding that mysterious magical artifact hidden among other riches and artifacts? Twilight didn't know, but she was now beginning to regret going there. Her thirst for knowledge had, again, gullibly led her to another death hole.

Yet still, she forced herself to continue. She made her way inside after making sure nopony else had seen her. The black smoke became denser and more opaque as she travelled through, and she had to put up a breather just to keep herself from inhaling the sulfuric dragon vapor. Now she was making her way deeper and deeper into the large cave in the side of the mountain, and her HUD displayed that she was only a hundred feet and closing on the source of the magic. What could it possibly be? Would this artifact help her save all the ponies in—

Her thought was cut short by a sudden, extremely loud roar from the same source she had heard earlier. Her eyes widened and she froze where she was, unable to move, while her earpiece began to beep faster to alert her.

Not too far in front of her, unable to be seen with the naked eye but very visible through her HUD's radar signatures, was the outline of a massive, 30-foot tall dragon. It slowly approached her, huffing and growling. The very ground shook with each step it took, and the closer it got, the more frozen Twilight became. She couldn't move, she couldn't think, and she couldn't even scream; she was stuck where she was in panic mode, and she couldn't do anything to save herself.

But, suddenly, as it continued to move closer, the tracker in her HUD suddenly locked onto the dragon itself. The label beside it began to count down: twenty feet... fifteen feet... ten feet...

Twilight whimpered and clenched her jaw, trying to look away from the face of her doom. The source of the magic was the dragon itself?! Had it just lured her into his mountain home just to... kill her??

Right now, she could only feel one other feeling besides fear: sorrowful regret. Princess Celestia... Luna... Princess Cadance... I'm so sorry... she thought shamefully to herself.

Her radar began to pulse faster and faster as the dragon came closer. The helpless lavender alicorn's legs gave out and she collapsed to the floor, pressing her face to the ground as her wings slammed themselves closed into her sides. The dragon, just a few feet from her now, huffed and growled lowly, and its hot breath was directed towards her mane, ruffling a few hairs. She could feel it spread its wings wide, beating them firmly with a low growl.

Twilight pressed her entire body as flatly as she could onto the rocky ground, expecting her doom. She waited and waited for a painful, horrible death. And waited, and waited, and thought she almost felt a liiiiitle tinge of death grab hold of her...

But it never truly came. In fact, it took her a few moments to realize that she wasn't actually dead. Upon feeling this, she felt her muscles twitch, and prepared herself to stand up to figure out what in the Hells was going on.

She peeked up from her pathetic pose to see what in the world was happening above. What was this dragon doing and what did it want with her if it didn't want to kill her? She shakily stood up, covered in sandy dust, and forced herself to stand straight. At least now her vision was clear; there was no more black smoke in the cave. The large gust she had felt while she was on the ground had probably dispelled the smoke.

But she saw something that stunned her.

Though she hadn't done anything to it, the large, hulking, fearsome dragon had retreated in a far corner in the deep cave. It was lying down, its moderately long lavender-violet protective upper-layer armour contrasting with its greenish-gray underbelly and deep green spikes on its back. It had rather long legs and massive clawed wings, which were the same color as its upper lavender-violet armour. Its head was muscular, just like the rest of his body. His appearance caused Twilight's memory to spin, and she felt herself being pulled back into a time when she lived back in Ponyville with a baby lavender-violet dragon...

She almost felt something snap inside her.

The moment she realized what she did, the dragon in the cave snapped its gaze right at her. His emerald-green eyes were wide, almost as if they were expecting to hear something from her. It was as if he had noticed her sudden outburst of heartbreaking emotion.

Princess Twilight Sparkle licked her lips nervously and stared at the dragon, who was still lying down on the ground, eyes fixed on her. Those eyes of his... they brought her back to experience her horrible memories once more...

The only things she could remember were words. Words that said, I'm here to report that five of the six bodies you assigned us to find have been... recovered. And she vividly recalled who that last body should have been. The body of a baby purple dragon.

She couldn't believe she had condemned him to death. What was she even thinking?

She collapsed on the ground once more. Her legs were unable to support her. Her emotions were going all over the place, and she didn't know what to think any longer. Everything that had happened the past few days had just thrown her back to her past once more. She had broken down more times in three days than she ever had in her life: first, her tears upon seeing her broken crown; second, her near-death at Ur; third, her loss of faith in herself on the way back home from Ur; and now, this.

It seemed that the universe was trying to torture her and get her to somehow leave so that she could never harm anypony the way she had before ever again. Or that it was trying to make her realize something.

And yet, still, there she lay, collapsed on the ground in a pitiful, barely breathing mass of flesh and bone. She couldn't think of anything else but things to say to herself to make herself feel even worse.

I'm nothing. I'm a... I'm a piece of... s-shit. I don't deserve to rule over these ponies, I never have. And all I do is hurt every pony I ever befriend or make an acquaintance with. And my old friends... why did I do such a thing to them? If somepony should be dead right now, it should be me. I should be dead five times over— no! Fifty-five times over! A hundred fifty times over!

She barely felt a scaly hand lift her up from where she was collapsed. It took her a few moments to realize that the purple dragon himself had picked her up and was trying his best to calm her down, stopping her from crying any more.

Twilight would have reacted badly to being lifted up by a dangerous dragon in any other situation, but, given her current state and mindset, she was too sad to care.

"Come on, Twilight. Don't feel bad..."

She almost thought that the voice of Spike had echoed throughout her mind, until she realized that it was actually the dragon who was holding her whom had spoken. So this is who was sending me the thought-messages while I was on my way back to Canterlotian Equestria...

She snapped back into reality, and her sorrowful reminiscence of the past turned into present-day sorrow. But what he said enraged her to much that she couldn't help but explode.

"Don't... Don't feel bad?!" she suddenly screamed at his face, more angrily than she ever had before. He flinched a bit at the sudden ejaculation of the word from her mouth. But he didn't react and just sat there, taking everything his old elder sister figure had to throw at him. "Bad?!" she said again, but in a lower, more resigned and less venomous tone.

"What you did wasn't your fault..." the deeper, yet still very recognizable voice of Spike the dragon replied to her.

Twilight didn't have any energy left to scream at him in disagreement. She just fell onto her side in his large hands as he settled down onto the ground. It took her a few minutes to get her thoughts together just to speak.

"Everything that happened is my fault, Spike," her voice cracked mournfully. "I'm the reason why... Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash are all dead. I was the one who ordered for their deaths, because, back then, I didn't realize what their rebellion was all about. And when all was said and done, I finally figured out that they were doing this for me, because they... because they cared for me, and — and... loved me... and I couldn't see that I had become such a selfish, ruthless, ignorant tyrant..."

Spike remained silent and continued to hold her in his hands. He didn't know what to say, but something inside told him he had to speak his mind.

"Twilight..." he said in that familiar tone of voice. The lavender alicorn below even cringed upon hearing it as she hopelessly tried to hold back tears. "Twilight, that's all in the past now. I brought you here because I knew that we'd spent enough time away from each other. I knew you thought me dead, and I knew for a fact that you'd changed.

"You know, I couldn't care less if you killed me right now, for being a big, scary dragon that could possibly rip you in half. If you still hate me, I... I would take it. I would understand why. But I do want something from you..."

The pony in his hands was motionless as she stared blankly down at the ground. Tears continued to well from her eyes, at an even more accelerated rate after hearing the words his heartbreakingly familiar voice spoke.

"I wish you wouldn't hate me anymore, Twilight. I really do." Even the big dragon couldn't hold back a small sniffle and a crying shudder. He continued to speak: "If you still hated me, I don't know what I would do. If you told me you would hate me for the rest of my life, I would ask you to just kill me right now and end it all. But I still want to believe that the loving and caring you is still in there. So please, tell me..." his voice nearly failed at the last word he spoke.

By now, the regal, royal Princess Twilight Sparkle was everything except regal, royal, and a Princess. She was a sad heap of DNA and protein that served no purpose in the world; or at least, that was what she thought. She was still crying silently and sadly over everything that had happened and everything she had done.

It took her even longer than before to recollect herself to speak. And when she did, she cleared her throat and took in a shaky breath.

"S-Spike..." a small whimper from within her throat graced his name. She mustered up all the strength she could and brought herself up to stand shakily, turning her gaze up at his face. Her lips trembled.

"I... I could never hate you. I never hated you. I just didn't know what I was thinking back then..." she choked. "Please forgive me for everything I've done. Please, Spike, please...!!"

She suddenly burst into tears, wailing with agonizing sorrow in her chest. She had been so bad... even she didn't expect to be forgiven.

"I forgive you, Twilight," Spike replied suddenly, taking Twilight by surprise. The pony glanced up at his face, and was greeted by a warm smile and a teary, scaled face. "And... And I'm sure our friends do, too, wherever they are..."

He lifted her up and held her close to himself. And the two of them stayed there, crying with each other for a minute or two, before Twilight suddenly bolted up from where she was positioned.

"Spike, Equestria needs us..." she clenched her jaw and turned pleadingly to him. "I need to defend it from the griffons and the Chaos forms; please!" her attitude went from sorrow and sad to... this, in just one bound. "Spike, I'm already afraid we're too late. Please help me save all the ponies that need to be evacuated..."

The dragon gulped and cleared his throat. "D-Do you think I can take them...? I saw thousands of them coming this way earlier. I don't even know if I can take down even one. And besides, I'm... a little rusty in my abilities and fighting. I would, but I'm afraid I'd just get in the way and be an unnecessary casualty to this entire thing..."

"I trust you, Spike. I know that you can do this, and that you can help us defend all the ponies that can't defend themselves. Please just come with me..."

It didn't take long for him to make up his mind. And when he did, he silently stood up and stretched all of his limbs out.

An entertaining thought occurred to him. "Heh-heh. Imagine their faces when you tell them that I'm Spike..." he smirked down at her.

Twilight couldn't help but smile a little. She cleared her throat and stretched her wings, forelegs, and hind legs to make sure that she was fit to move and not helpless like earlier. She quickly made her way to the large entrance of the cave, glancing behind her to see that the large, adult Spike was not too far behind her.

Just like old times again...

Twilight smiled and went right up to the edge of the mountain. Midnight had just barely passed, and the moon was still high in the sky. The air was cold, and she knew she would have a tough fight ahead of her.

She turned her head up to her grown-up baby dragon and smiled in determination. Her confidence was back; she felt ready to tackle everything the universe could possibly throw at her. What she was about to face was indeed tough, but definitely not impossible. And with Spike's help and presence, she knew she would be able to make it through.

"C'mon, Spike! We've got a lot to do!" she leaped off of the tall mountain, free-falling for a moment before catching air in her wings and beating them firmly on the way home.

The gigantic dragon followed closely behind her, ready to be her own living shield if she so needed.

It was good to be back.

———

"FIRE!"

The group of three thousand flying ponies finally began their attack, with Princess Luna at the head. As they hurtled past, they swooped down low and fired their high-velocity plasma weapons at the unsuspecting griffons still perched up in the trees, all while staying in tight formation. The three-pronged attack was indeed extremely effective, and it was a great decision for a surprise-attack. After all, General Luna was the leader of the entire army and had been for over the past millennium. Of course she would be one to make the best decisions for this sort of thing.

The griffons were taken completely by surprise. As the huge battalion came down on them with guns blazing, shouts and screams of surprise and painful deaths erupted from the groups of griffons atop the trees. Some stray bullets even hit the trees themselves, catching them on fire and illuminating the immediate surroundings with a bright orange color.

The ponies were travelling at roughly half the speed of sound as they came down. Their sudden attack was silent, accurate, and destructive: half of one of the griffon legions of three thousand was either dead or fatally wounded after the first pass had taken place. In fact, they were so surprised that not a single one of them could fire an effective shot at the ponies in retaliation. These prototype cloaks were working better than anypony could have expected.

"Good effect, good effect! We are doing a great job, and we have not even sustained a single casualty yet. Regroup to our second position, quickly! We have no time to lose. Do not take your cloaks off; we must make sure that they do not see us!" Luna radioed them all. The moment she finished her transmission, she caught a glimpse of the bubble shield surrounding Equestria opening up to let the pods out. Immediately in front of her, however, she could see the thousands of heavily armed Chaos forms below standing motionlessly while the griffons struggled to get back in order. She smirked in success, though she knew that the Chaos forms would be at least a thousand times more difficult to fight than the weak and now-disorganized griffons.

She bunched up her muscles and flew towards home with the rest of her soldiers, knowing that her battalions would have to move onto the next task assigned for them: defend the pods that would deploy. Of course, there could possibly be complications. If a griffon or a flight-equipped Chaos form managed to sneak in through one of the access holes while it was open, it could wreak havoc and kill many ponies still within the city itself.

And that was why the rest of the army was busy guarding the city above and the pod bays below. With one hundred thousand stallions and mares of all races strong, the two sister Princesses were confident that their armed forces would keep the city safe for everypony.

"Sister," Luna panted as she made her way back towards Equestria to take her defensive position. "The griffons have sustained major losses. The Chaos forms do not seem to be reacting in response to our attack. I propose a plan."

"What would that plan be, Luna?" came Celestia's reply through her earpiece. She sounded relieved that she was still speaking, but her tone of voice also told her that she was deeply worried for her younger sister. And she understood why.

"I believe that we should make the Chaos forms our second priority. Right now, it looks as if they are just standing there. I think that we should take the griffons out of the skies first. Do you believe it will be effective in reducing the damage to the city?" the younger sister asked.

"It sounds like a good plan. But I'm worried that the Chaos forms are planning something very bad..." Celestia muttered as she zoomed into the larger, pale white army standing on the ground below with the surveillance camera. "What are they even thinking...?" she muttered, half to herself, before saying, in a louder voice, "Yes. Take the griffons first, and we'll worry about the others later..."

Luna nodded. By now, she was just a quarter of a mile from where the large pods were escaping. They hovered in the air, and each one roared and rumbled with the strength of a nuclear reactor. Their ion engines, the main one on the back, and with secondaries along the bottom and sides, glowed a bright bluish white; their large, heavy metal frames, narrow and plain, still looked good as new. A few ponies watched closely as the first one's engines glowed even brighter, before shooting off from zero to 300 miles an hour into the distance almost instantaneously. The next one went, and then the next one; the first four thousand survivors were being taken to their new home.

There was no doubt that their old floating city would be completely obliterated.

A worried voice from her earpiece snapped her back into the situation. She tore her gaze away from the departing pods and narrowed her eyes. "Yes? What is it? Please repeat your sentence, soldier!"

"Luna! They're coming! The griffons!" a stallion said in a slightly afraid voice. This prompted Luna to tense up and smirk. Two gun barrels formed up on her shoulders, seeming to be part of the nano-suit itself. They aimed themselves directly forward, and her HUD immediately put up a targeting reticle for her to guide her shots through.

"Alright, ponies. This is it. Time to show these bastards what you are made of," the nocturnal Princess smirked. Her target locked onto each griffon as they approached, and the distance was closing: 2,000 feet... 1,750 feet...

Curse thou, rampant miscreants! You shall taste the fury of Equestria!!