A Tear in Harmony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

———

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But she saw something that stunned her.

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

She almost felt something snap inside her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just like old times again...

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

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

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

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

It was good to be back.

———

"FIRE!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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