A Tear in Harmony

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.