A Tear in Harmony

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...