A Tear in Harmony

"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?