Prologue
It has been nine years since an evil empire invaded Equestria, Princess Twilight took over the kingdom that was now called Greenwood. After all the darkness in the land had been eradicated, Princess Twilight assumed control over the deadwoods to rename them, and restore their once beautiful looks. Now Twilight sat in her library in her castle researching deep into dragons based on Rainfall’s observations. She then remembered that here in a few weeks was her own version of the Grand Galloping Gala. She had completely forgotten about that, and had to send out invitations to the other princess’s in Equestria to keep up her own reputation.
The next day Twilight went around her own town going door to door in an event like this she always loved collecting volunteers to help put things together. Of course her friends would help, and didn’t expect any much less from them. She had finally gathered a big enough group of ponies up to finally give her speech to the citizens of Greenwood looking up to her. She looked to the sidelines as always to see her friends who always seemed to know when to smile to make her fell better, she opened her mouth, and spoke the words written down on the paper in front of her. “Today we are hosting the Great Gala, our celebration of the upcoming feast of November. Today we will need all your help to gather up some supplies just for today, and start planning for the event coming. This will be very important that everything is perfect for when the other Princesses visit for we are hosting the biggest feast in Equestria here in this kingdom. We have to please everypony with the pre-party just to get started on the feast, we start working on the feast here in about a week. So prepare yourselves for some tough weeks, but all of you will get paid well for your work. Hope everything comes together fine for this party, and here are your leaders to help you get organized.” Twilight turned to her friends who now were approaching the podium. She decided that now would be a good time to send out her invitations to the rest of Equestria before going back to her studies.
Twilight woke up piled in books, as she looked around the area to find that she was studying dragons. She must of had a terrible reaction to all the new knowledge, who knows what unicorns could do with such knowledge. Twilight walked out of the room to find that almost all of her castle was a wreck. She took down a mental note: “I must have learned too much, I should watch how much I read before I go that insane again.” She walked out to her balcony to see how the materials for the Great Gala had been coming along. As she gazed upon her great kingdom she noticed something was wrong, why was there a shadow over Greenwood. “Rainbow, where did all these clouds come from? We’re not supposed to have them delivered until later this week, why did they come now?” Rainbow came down from the sky, and said “I have no idea why or how they got here, but I think our weather team could get them corralled somewhere else for now. Don’t worry Twilight this celebration is going to be great, we just need to get things together.” Twilight looked down to her city, and said “I hope so.”
Down in the city Pinkie Pie, and Rarity sat at small table issuing directions to the volunteers to make things go along nicely. Pinkie of course was taking care of the food and activities, and Rarity was the one in charge of the decorations. Spike was doing a few things around the castle himself, he had missed being in his huge form, but at least he was bigger than he was before he was transformed into a big beast. Spike was in charge of keeping the castle in shape to hold three other princesses, and Twilight. A good kind of shape to be clean, but not clean to the point in which anypony who walked in had to go through a three hour clean cycle before entering. Twilight entered the castle, and said “How are things coming along Spike? I just got a notice saying that not only is Cadence coming, but my brother is coming. We need to have everything done before they get here, notify Chainball that defenses need to be up to Shining’s standards.”
Spike nodded after writing it all down, he opened his mouth, and blew his magic fire all over the paper which then disappeared, and appeared near Chainball. “Everypony we need to assemble ourselves correctly to specific measurements of our defense patterns, we have guests coming. These guest just happen to be apart of royalty, if anything happens to them whoever is responsible won’t receive their pay for a month, DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!?!” Chainball said as he looked across his men who all shook their heads in confirmation, none of them had a single amount of fear that anypony would get hurt during this visit. They all knew that no evil had existed in Equestria, or even in Greenwood for almost a decade. This was the final year, and the final season of the fall of the last evil empire known to ponies. Chainball walked outside of the guard barracks, and looked up into the night’s air. He always had the feeling that evil still existed in Equestria. This was his home, this is where he belonged here setting up his own defenses, and defending those he loved.
The next morning Twilight woke up to find that she only had two weeks left before the princess, and the others would arrive. She needed to make sure that everything was pulling together nicely, Twilight stubbled out of her tower to the balcony overlooking the city’s streets in which ponies moved in their own ways. Everything from this height though looked like an ant colony assembling for some bigger power, Twilight then realized that she was acting as if she was an ant queen. She didn’t want her citizens to act as slaves that obeyed every order she issued, she wanted there to be group, organized groups doing their own tasks. Like that time in ponyville of Winter Wrap Up. She had assembled everypony in a time of need to wrap up winter like they had every year, but that time was on time. Twilight decided that she would have to gather up her friends in order to give out new orders in how they might actually pull things together in this small amount of time, everything needed to be perfect for them. So Twilight organized a few note cards of information she would need to tell them, and would accept questions afterward. She walked out onto the balcony once more to take a breath of fresh air before the meeting begun. She walked downstairs to meet her friends to give out the orders that need to be passed out to their citizens. Once she got downstairs she found herself in an empty room, where were her friends she thought to herself. She looked outside on the bigger, but lower balcony overlooking the courtyard. There she saw only one pony standing, she approached carefully. Twilight got to a distance in which she could barely see the pony’s face. She could tell that she was a part of royalty, she wore her royal robes in which covered her identity. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The pony turned toward Twilight, and said “I thought I might give you an early visit, you seem like you need it. You’re such a mess right now.” Cadence then moved in to hug her, but she was knocked over by what seemed to be the force of a freight train, but it was just in turn to be a hug from Twilight herself. They both entered the main hall where the new meeting was being held, Twilight was a bit nervous about having Cadence there for a meeting about the clean up of the streets.
After the meeting Twilight led Cadence to her guest rooms in the castle for her to go to sleep. After leading Cadence to her guest room, Twilight headed to the study where she was going to resume her research for the day. She had gotten in the habit of learning a new thing everyday to keep her in pace with all of the other princesses all over Equestria that know more about other things than she knows about magic, they all still had a lot to learn about magic before they all got close to Twilight’s level. She knew that none of them were close, she had made her own magic she didn’t think that any other princesses had made their own.Keeping her mind full of things to insert into conversations made her feel better about entering rooms full of ponies. She may have made those six good friends, but other ponies she still felt a little nervous about. Twilight turned around to find a pony standing in the doorway “HEY, WHO ARE YOU?!?!” Twilight shouted at the pony who simply turned, and walked down the hall until it left Twilight’s line of sight. She thought to herself “Am I insane?” She shook her head at this thought, and chased the figure down the hallway to find that the shadow was a cloud of magical dust. Considering all the experiments she had down in the past, this could just be left over chemicals floating through plain space. Twilight decided to go and gather up the dust, so nopony would get harmed from the dust’s compound. She charged up her horn, and moved the dust into a bag that she happened to keep with her. She walked up to the balcony the dust had lead her to, and looked across the streets of her city. “I can’t believe it’s been a decade since the last evil ruled this land. I hope nothing ever roles into Equestria like that again.” She turned to see the shadow that she thought was just magic dust. “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!”
The pony walked toward Twilight as the shadow followed him. “I’m very sorry to disturb your perfect silence here, but I believe this KINGDOM DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU!!” The shadow spread over a portion of the city, and continued to expand as the pony flung itself toward Twilight.
Twilight woke up that moment screaming in horror, Spike came running into the room only to find Twilight screaming with no injuries or tragedies. “What’s wrong Twilight, aren’t you supposed to be asleep, it’s a little late for you to be up Twilight.”
She shook her head, and said “I’m fine Spike, it was just a nightmare. Things just seem to have been keeping me stressed, I should probably take the day off tomorrow. I think that would be good for the both of us don’t you think?” Spike shook his head in agreement, and left the room. Twilight closed all of the books around her, and put them away. A gust of wind hit the windows as she turned to see the hallway door open. All this work stuff has gotten to her head, she need to stop being so frightened about the impossible. As that thought floated through her head she walked through the doorway from her dreams, and fell asleep. The next morning Twilight woke up to a beautiful sun rise, and thought to herself “What a great day to have off” She walked out to the edge of her balcony on top of the castle, and looked upon her gorgeous kingdom. She thought about how great of a princess she could be on this great morning, she decided to think about it as she did her normal morning routines. Once she had finished she looked at the city from the lower balcony, and announced “Everypony gather around, I have an announcement to make.” She took a deep breath as the ponies all gathered up into the courtyard below. “As princess of this city I call a day off for everypony on this beautiful morning, I hope you all enjoy this great day!” The ponies cheered, and moved on with their day. Twilight walked away from the balcony, and entered her own main hall to relax. She knew that some ponies would enter the hall to thank her, but she just wanted to relax.
After several hours of greeting ponies that entered her hall, Twilight decide to get up and do something productive. She walked up to her study room in which she thought she might as well resume her studies on historical events. Not a lot of ponies studied history in their time, so Twilight would have another thing to pull up in the middle of dulling conversations. After a few hours of sitting there learning about the history of the wars all over Equestria, she heard a noise come from the hallway behind her. She looked behind herself hoping it was Cadence, but the hallway was empty and dark. Twilight stood up slowly, she still remembered the dream from the other night where a dark cloud was about to throw her off of her own balcony. She was hoping it was a dream she could remember it so clearly, but she also remembered waking up in the library afterward. Twilight entered the dark hallway, and went on a short walk looking for anything suspicious. The darkness formed behind her, and surrounded her creating a thick cloud of dust around her. This cloud then started to glow with some sort of dark magic, and showed Twilight a vision of the future. This didn’t seem right for Twilight to see, as the cloud dissolved into the air she fell to the ground in disbelief. She woke up the next morning with her head piled in books. She had to look around for an answer to these terrible dreams, she called a meeting with all of her friends to inform them of this and what she was going to do about it. The meeting started, and Twilight stood up to say “I need you five to take care of preparations for the celebration here in two weeks. I’ve been having troubles, and the only pony I know that has any sort of idea how to fix my problems lives far away. I’m going to visit Zecora, I have a big feeling that she will have any idea of how these dark things are reaching my mind. I also hope that she will have a cure to it. I will see you all soon.” She left the room with her bags packed and Spike at her side.
Spike turned to Twilight, and said “What sort of bad things have been happening? I thought everything was fine, nothing bad has been happening around the castle.”
Twilight sighed, and ignored the question. She didn’t want to be rude, but she also didn’t feel like talking about it. “I’m sorry Spike, but I’ll have to tell you another time. It’s happened too recently that I feel not comfortable enough to talk about it.” Spike then sighed, and stared at the ground as the both walked through the woods. Many ponies had decided not to live in the city, but build their own village out in the woods to keep their own small lives to themselves. Twilight decided to take the path that led straight through the small town to rest up, and gather food and supplies. They both arrived in the small town that seemed to be resting for the day, Twilight and Spike walked up to each store hoping that a pony would show their faces, but not a single place seemed to be open. Twilight and Spike decided that if nopony would answer them that they would have to setup camp until tomorrow. In the middle of the night Twilight wandered off into the forest, and experienced the same nightmare she had been getting for the past few days. This dream frightened her because it involved the destruction of her city and her friends. The next morning she was woke up, and saw Spike with all of the supplies that they needed for their journey.
They both spent the next few days traveling along, and talking about topics that Twilight had educated herself with. They finally reached the borders of the Everfree forest, they both decided that taking the original route would be nice rather than taking the path that led straight through Canterlot. This path was the path they had taken when they had accepted the quest that called to them to show the darkness the light. Twilight knew what she would find ahead one thing in particular she was excited about was the first exciting event in their journey the cave that had shown them long distance teleportation. They entered the cave from the back entrance that had never revealed itself, she then also remembered that the entrance was blocked off by rocks. She then said to Spike “We will rest here tonight, I always wanted to travel back her to understand the magic that happens in that room again. Every object just seems to move on their own around one central point, and also had carved out their own paths.” The next day they finally made it to Zecora’s shack, and Twilight had asked for the cure. Zecora had never heard of such a disease, but had heard of several other things similar to it. She brewed up a small potion that might help with this nightmare, Twilight decided to travel back to Ponyville for the day. Everypony there seemed to be very happy to see her, and let her get to whatever she was doing. Twilight took a sip of the potion, and headed off to sleep.
