The Birth of a Rebellion

Chapters

Back Home
Unexpected Visitors
A Short Rest After All
Preparations
An Unpleasant Walk
The Spectre of Glory
Shadows and Stripes
Undesired Side Effects
A Long Night
Leaving Everything Back
Epilogue: The Game
Prologue: The Ruler's Will

Back Home

Crimson Zephyr slowly woke up as the loud screech of the brakes resounded in the cabin. The train had arrived to Manehattan.

His sleep had been restless since the incidents at the expedition, and this time wasn’t an exception. Crimson stretched and stood up from the bench as he floated his saddlebags and trunks. The trunks almost fell to the floor, clearly exceeding the load he expected. He had to take his whole collection of books from Canterlot, as he didn’t expect to return soon…

He walked onto the platform two of Manehattan’s train station. Several ponies were welcomed by their families, and Crimson looked at them with jealousy. This time no pony would come to receive him. During the expedition he imagined this moment, the moment he arrived to Manehattan’s train station, welcomed by a crowd. He smiled at the idea, realising how pretentious that was. As he slowly floated his entire luggage out of the train, he suddenly felt a hug. Losing all his concentration, Crimson lost the grip on the luggage, dropping it on the platform’s floor. As he turned around, he found a face he didn’t expect to see.

“Opal Shine!” He shouted as he saw the mare behind him. She was a dark blue coated mare with a golden mane. Her strawberry coloured eyes were the only thing Crimson truly missed from this city.

“You supposed that you could arrive to Manehattan without me knowing, Crimson Zephyr?” She asked with a smile on her face.

“I… I just expected no pony would come to welcome me, that’s all… How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks! I’m glad to see that you still care about others life, overall taking into account that last time you came to Manehattan you visited no one” She said with a clears sarcasm tone in her voice.

The last time Crimson came to Manehattan, he just came to pick some books and organise the expedition. He was so excited about it he just spent two whole days shut up inside his flat, gathering all the information he could about the Sister’s Royal palace in advance. He revised almost all of his books searching for the smallest bit of information he could find about it.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. The last time I came to Manehattan I was a bit busy, but now I’m planning to have a long rest…”

A very long one indeed, as the Canterlot Academy had expelled him from the Archaeological society until he retracted from my theories, something that he wasn’t precisely willing to do.

“Is that rest related anyway to that scar in your cheek and to your missing ear piece?” she asked, as fast as she noticed the differences.

“That’s something I would prefer to speak elsewhere.” He replied harshly. He had only spoken of what happened during the expedition to Copper Compass, one of the headmasters of the Academy, and he found hard to tell any other pony.

“Perhaps we should head to my flat?” Crimson said trying to use the friendliest tone he could, as he realised how dry his previous answer was. “It’s getting late and there I could answer all your questions while we have a cup of coffee or something.”

“That’s a deal then!” she said as she picked with her mouth one of the cases and started walking to the exit of the platform.

As he concentrated again lifting the remaining luggage to the air, he stared at the train. Would this be the last time he took this train? Would he ever return to Canterlot? Although he hated many things of the lifestyle of Canterlot, he had to admit that he loved the cosmopolitan essence of the city, where the culture and discoveries in the fields of arts and music were part of the everyday routine.

Manehattan was also a cosmopolitan city, gathering in fact many strangers from zebra lands and even a big community of griffin citizens, but it wasn’t like Canterlot. Here the investigations carried on the academies had a technological orientation, focused on the development of machines and devices rather than on the “development of ponies’ soul”, or at least that was what the elder master of the Academy said. Crimson didn’t give too much credit to that kind of statements. Many times it seemed like ponies from Canterlot just feared changes, and they haven’t proven Crimson anything different recently.

“Hey Crimson, hurry up! I’m not going to wait you here forever while you stare the floor!” She said, finally annoyed of observing him while he was lost in his train of thinking.

After having a final glance on the train, Crimson turned around and followed Opal to the sleepless city.

“Here we are…” Crimson sighed as we arrived to the building where his flat was. “Opal, would you mind to pick the key from my saddlebag and open the door? I don’t know if I will be able to do it while I float all this stuff…”

“No problem dear” she mumbled as she dropped the case she held and introduced her head inside the saddlebag. After a few seconds poking, she took Crimson’s key ring with her mouth and introduced it in the bolt. The door opened with a slight screech as she turned the key and pushed her way inside the building. He followed her closely as she went up the stairs, lifting the luggage behind. It was a hard task, as it proved to be more demanding than he expected, overall taking into account how tired he was. Crimson felt lucky so lucky when he remembered that his flat was in the first floor…

As Opal opened the door he smoothly left the luggage on the landing and sat on the floor sweating. She left the key ring on the bowl that laid on the sideboard of the hall and turned to him.

“Are you alright, Crimson?” she asked worried

“Yeah, don’t worry. I’m just a bit exhausted. The last two weeks have been… hard.” He said, rising up and floating the luggage. With a final effort he pulled it inside, making a bang on the floor as he released his grip.

“Finally back…”

The flat was messy and filled of dust. The piles of books filled up with marks and notes covered everything, not only the tables, but the floor of almost all the rooms too. Even thought enormous shelves filled every available piece of the wall, the incredibly high amount of books didn’t fit in them, spread in piles of organised chaos. The table of the studio, visible from the entrance, seemed more like a castle rather than the table of an archaeologist, a fortress made of walls of paper.

The moonlight filled the living room. While both walked in from the hall, Crimson remembered all the preparations and plans he made while he was shut away here. He picked the matches and turned on all the lamps available, giving the room a warm light.

“Well, let me order this a bit…” he said as he floated some books out of the living room, trying to free as much room a possible on the sofa and the table in front of it. “Just get yourself comfortable.” he said to Opal while he went to the kitchen. He opened several drawers and larders until he found what he sought. Coffee! A nice cup of coffee was what he needed. Crimson wondered if he would have spent all of it while he planned the expedition, but this relieved him. He would need something to cheer him up while he told Opal everything.

“So?” Opal asked. She had sneaked right behind Crimson from the living room. Now she stared directly at him, awaiting an answer.

“I think I owe you an explanation, but first I would like to make some coffee. If you want to hear the complete story this is going to be quite a long night.” Crimson answered as he started to boil water. He kept feeling her stare right at the back of his head, needling him. It turned to be unbearable. “Why don’t you make the coffee while I take the luggage to my room? Just to clear the hall of stuff…”

Crimson was clearly avoiding the accusing looks Opal was glancing at him. She had been patiently waiting for an explanation all the way home, and she was not going to be patient anymore.

He floated a couple of trunks and started to head to the office. He looked at the kitchen, where Opal was concentrated on the water, not boiling jet. Suddenly he felt his magic failing again as both trunks felt to the floor and opened, scattering the books they contained all over the floor. A thin book caught Crimson’s attention. It had a black hard cover and “War logbook” written with golden letters as a title. It belonged to the group of books that he had been able to smuggle from the ruins of the sister’s palace without the academy noticing. He picked that book with the mouth and put it on top of one of the closest book piles. I would certainly have to read it later. He started picking the other books and putting them into the trunks. It took him a while, but finally he started to drag one of the trunks to the office.

“The coffee is ready!” Opal said from the kitchen.

“Nice! The sugar is inside the pot on the stove top.” Crimson said while he bit the handle of the trunk again. I must not forget to read that book…

As he left the second trunk inside the studio, Crimson looked back to the living room. Opal stared at him while she laid on the couch. While he approached, he looked to the coffee cups. Steam floated from them up in the air, filling the room with a pleasant smell.

“Well, let me go with this straight forward. I have told nothing about this to any pony except Copper Compass, so I would like you to be discreet about this.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be a tomb, I swear.”

“Ok… I’m sure you heard about the Elements of Harmony don’t you?”

Opal nooded and gave its coffee a sip.

“Those elements where found at the Royal Sisters palace by their actual bearers, the six mares of Ponyville. The location of this palace remained secret for a millennium, protected deep inside the Everfree forest. Thanks to the instructions that Twilight Sparkle, the Element of Magic, gave to Copper Compass, the main cartographer of the Academy, we were able to plot a relatively secure path through the forest, even thought it was longer than the one the element’s bearers took. Our route started from the Ponyville’s side of the forest. The investigation group was formed by six ponies, myself included. We had to be discrete at the size of the expedition as the princess itself had commanded so. She wanted us to go unnoticed, thing that wasn’t going to be a problem once we where inside the forest. Our first stop was the hut of a zebra that lived near Ponyville itself. I remember perfectly that visit. She spent like two hours warning us about several poisonous plants and dangerous creatures that lived in the inner parts of the forest, all recited.”

“Wait a moment… You mean recited, like reciting poetry?” she asked. Crimson nooded and took a sip of coffee. It was warm and relaxing. While he recalled the way of speaking of that zebra and he couldn’t stop a giggle.

“Zecora was her name. She told everything as short poems, which gave all she spoke about a mysterious aura, even when she asked us if we wanted something to drink” he joked. “Twilight herself asked her to prepare some brews for our expedition, and as she completed them, we spoke about my expedition to zebra lands.”

“I remember when you departed to that expedition. You returned with some books, some really good stories, that unbearable vice of smoking and a couple of weird masks.” She said. While he looked at her, intrigued by the tone she used to refer to the masks, she replied “Hey, don’t stare at me like that! They were creepy…”

“There is no need to apologize. They are stored just because of that same reason” he said with a smile. “But you have reminded me of other thing I like a lot…”

“Oh please don’t tell me you are going to start smoking right now! You know I hate that smell!” she said, clearly upset. But it was late; he already approached the studio’s table and opened one of the drawers, taking out a pipe and a little bag of tobacco. The tobacco was stale, but that wasn’t a problem for Crimson.

As he laid down again on the sofa he lighted the tobacco inside the pipe with a match and inhaled the smoke with pleasure. Smoking was one of the things that lately were able to make him happy, helping him to forget momentarily about the problems he had, focusing only on breathing. Many ponies just rejected the possibility of breathing smoke as something that could bring any kind of pleasure, but during my expeditions on zebra lands, he discovered this little... vice. Thought there where other herbs that zebras smoked with all kinds of effects, some of them even magical, Crimson found that tobacco suited him most, as it left reasoning capabilities untouched. It allowed him to work with a clear mind. Smoking tobacco had become a way of concentrating and thinking while writing for him. Anyway, the majority ponies just found the habit disgusting, as Opal did.

“Well, where was I… Oh yeah, Zecora’s hut. We spoke long about the expedition at zebra’s land. I lived in the capital during a year, where Zecora lived before moving to her hut, so she was eager to know what happened while she was away. When the brews where ready, we prepared to leave. As the other ponies waited outside, Zecora gave me some herbs and tobacco, as I mentioned her I liked smoking. She advised me to be careful with the herbs she gave me, as they produced strong effects. I wondered what she meant, but the other ponies shouted me to hurry up from outside of the hut. As I gave her thanks and promised coming back to keep telling her more about my expedition, the other ponies started to pack everything and to prepare to keep on route. The next three days passed without any problem, as we went deeper inside the Everfree forest. It was curious to see how the trees seemed to grow twisted and creepy as we advanced. The fourth day the problems arrived, as we had to cross the manticore territory. One of the brews Zecora prepared would grant our safety as we made our way through it, turning us invisible. I was really impressed by the effect that brew had. I already knew from my previous expedition that zebra’s lack of magic was widely compensated by the domain they had on brews and magical potions, but I had never experienced it myself. The manticores seemed to feel our presence, but as they saw nothing, they didn’t move. Once we crossed the manticore’s territory, we prepared our camp and stopped for a rest. The whole trip across the territory was tense, so sleeping before the last part of our trip to the palace started was something everypony agreed about.” Crimson paused a bit, seeking with his eyes the cup of coffee, lifting it and having a long swip. It was cold now.

“What does a manticore look like? I mean, you said you walked past them when you where inside their territory. I’m sure you could see one close enough.” Opal asked.

“Well, they are creatures with a lion’s body and head, a couple of dragon wings and a scorpion tail. And they are really big… May I ask you why you want to know this?”

“It was just curiosity, Crimson, nothing else. Don’t get paranoid please. Now keep telling me about the expedition, I still want to know how the Royal Sister’s palace looks like”

“Then let’s keep with the story. The next day we woke up surrounded by fog. It was the thickest one any of the ponies that composed the exploration party had ever seen. But the maps Copper draw where so precise we found our way without any problem. By midday we found the bridge that Twilight spoke about, arriving to the Royal Sister’s palace. We started to settle the camp and to prepare the materials. We decided to postpone any exploration of the palace until the fog cleared. The next day, luckily, the sun shined in the sky and we could see the ruins of what must have been one of the most beautiful architectonic creations of all times. We had camped in one of the great dance halls. It was wonderful Opal…” Crimson knew that he wasn’t going to be able to word how beautiful, though almost destroyed, were the halls of the palace, so he remained silent for a few seconds, until he gathered all the possible details he could remember.

“Everything was just perfect. The stairway that lead to the rest of the palace was a wonderful combination of white and black marble dividing into two different paths that lead to the palace. From its top, we could see the whole dancefloor, that was a gigantic mosaic with an image of princess Celestia and princess Luna, each one rising the sun and the moon respectively. But it wasn’t the most beautiful thing we found there. Remains of statues, paintings and other art forms where conserved in some of the closed halls of the palace. But, there was something that didn’t fit the original version of the battle between Celestia and Nightmare Moon.”

“What you mean with “original”?”

“Just that what I found there didn’t fit what the textbooks hold.”

“But those textbooks were written by Celestia itself. She was present there! I can’t believe that you are calling her a liar!” Opal outraged. It was curious how almost everypony reacted the same way when something was opposite to the word of Celestia.

“Hey Opal, relax. I haven’t said anything about Celestia being a liar; I’m just saying that… what I found in that palace just doesn’t fit the history she tells.” As her face started to burn in anger again, Crimson quickly said “Please allow me to explain before shouting again.”

“Ok, I’m paying you all my attention.” She said, lying again on the sofa. She took a sip of coffee and stared at Crimson with a mixed expression of expectancy and sarcasm.

“Many of the sculptures I found represented Nightmare Moon. That lacks of sense, as the palace was destroyed during the battle between the sisters, and abandoned soon after, as the ruins of the old capitol city. Even though the battle was long, longer than a day, no artist would have had enough time to represent Nightmare Moon with such precision. It would have been barely possible, and less taking into account the huge magical energies that crushed and destroyed the city that laid in what now is the Everfree forest. Anyway, the statues did not represent Nightmare Moon in an aggressive position. Her expression was like… peaceful. That’s not the typical representation of a fallen enemy.”

“And that’s all?” Opal asked. Her tone, that was midway between anger and compassion really offended Crimson. With a huge effort to control himself, Crimson decided that the moment of telling her about the library had arrived. He told nothing to Copper about it, as he wouldn’t have believed him, but he was so annoyed by Opal’s attitudes that he wanted to shut her m I couldn’t believe that she underestimated my judgement enough to say that. I would have to tell her about the library…

“I found more, but not exactly using… traditional methods. Do you remember about the magical herbs Zecora gave me when we stopped at her hut? Well, I remembered the effects of those herbs especially from zebra lands. They were smoked by shamans to enhance their perception and the effects of other brews. But the effect on unicorns is completely different. They enhance magic!”

“Wait a moment!” Opal interrupted, glancing at me a sceptic look “You are telling me that when you made your “great” discovery while you were high with zebra herbs! Are you expecting me to take you seriously?!”

“That’s up to you Opal. But wait to hear what I found. My prospecting spell had not been strong enough to find it before, but what I found was marvellous.” She looked at me sceptically.

“Are you sure that the “marvellous” discovery wasn’t a side effect of the herbs?” Crimson bit his lip as he put in a lot of effort to ignore that comment.

“I found a whole library, buried below the ruins of the palace, keeping it safe from the erosion and the uncontrolled climate of the Everfree forest. I was able to teleport inside without seeing my objective, probably another effect of the herbs. The library was enormous. Even the strongest glow of my horn wasn’t able to light the ceiling. The shelves were higher than the columns of the main dancehall, and the walls that were not covered by shelves had enormous frescos. Those frescos where the main cause of my doubts, as they represented Nightmare Moon ruling peacefully over ponies. I can also remember that she was accompanied by a black dragon in almost all the frescos, but I couldn’t relate it to nothing I knew. I spent there what to me seemed days. When I realised that the effect started to fade out, I hurried to pick all the books I could. I feared that without the magical enhancement I would not be able to teleport out. So I packed everything I could and left.”

Crimson wasn’t telling her all the truth. The black covered logbook was in that library, but not in an ordinary shelf. It was floating in a magical field in the exact middle of the library. Crimson knew that book had to be important to be conserved in such a way, and that probably it had the answer he looked for, but he was unable to read it as he had to hide all the books he was able to smuggle inside Canterlot from the ruins to avoid the royal guards and other authorities…

“I was really excited about what I found, but when I returned to the camp I was too late and the other ponies where asleep, so I decided to sleep for a while.”

Crimson’s expression turned dark and distant and he remained silent for a moment.

“Now comes the part of the story where I get these.” He said, as he softly touched his scar and his pierced ear.

“Finally…”

“That same night I woke up sweating. I thought I had heard something so I went outside the tent, only to find the whole camp in alert. All the ponies woke up at the same time, and then… it started. Manticores started falling from the skies. The one that landed first grabbed the pony that was beside me and with a bite it ripped off his head. The blood spilt everywhere making me return to reality, I had to react fast, picking the brew we used to cross manticore territory and the books I had collected from the library. The manticore that had killed the pony took a swipe at me, hitting me in the face. The pain was unbearable, but I had to get inside the tent and get the brew. I dragged my self to the tent. It took me like two seconds to find the bottle with the brew, but they where eternal. When I found the bottle, the manticore pulled the tent off the floor, roaring the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard. I drank the brew as fast as I could and immediately turned invisible. The manticore just smelled the air and left. Then I remembered the other ponies. Recomposing myself, I stood up and tried to find other survivors to give them the brew, so they could also escape, but it was late, they were all dead… So I just left, ran across the bridge and left…”

Crimson looked back at Opal. She seemed terrified. His whole body shivered at the moment he recalled the pain that the manticore’s pawn caused. He didn’t want to imagine how much could all the other ponies have suffered…

“And that’s all. I arrived back to Canterlot a week later, and told this same story, except for the herbs part and the books I smuggled, to Copper Compass in private. He told me a couple of days later that I would have to retract from my theories or I would be expelled from the academy, so I left. And here I am now. After a couple of weeks in Canterlot fixing some paperwork and speaking to the families of the dead ponies here I am… back home.”

“I’m so sorry Crimson, I did not know…” she said, almost apologising for her previous scepticism.

“You couldn’t have known. It’s up to you to believe me in the historical part, but the manticores attack was a fact. I’m the living proof of that” Crimson touched his half cut ear and the scar that went across his eye, Luckily, just one claw touched him, and the attack hadn’t damaged his eye, but the scar seemed worse than it truly was.

HE looked outside the window. The sun hadn’t rise jet, but the light of dawn already lighted Manehattan, allowing to perceive the silhouettes of buildings and skycrapers as black paintings over a light blue sky.

“It’s almost sunrise… You can sleep in my bedroom Opal; I’ll sleep in the studio. I think I’ve had enough storytelling for today.”

She nodded and headed to Crimson’s bedroom. Her face showed concern, but also condescendence. Crimson disliked it, but realising how tired he was, he decided to let it go. While he headed to the studio he saw the logbook on the top of the pile where he left it before, but he was too tired to read even a single line…

Unexpected Visitors

Crimson woke up with a shout. He was sweating and he had the heart accelerated. It was that dream again… It was too realistic. Almost every night since the attack, he could see everything again, with all kind of damn gore details. Those images haunted him.

There was something he hadn’t told to anypony about the attack. He didn’t run immediately, but he stayed and checked if he could save somepony of the expedition. They were all already dead but one mare. He could clearly remember her look, full of pain and suffering. Her eyes full of tears looked to the sky awaiting his death impatiently. In the dream, as he did after the attack, Crimson approached her, still invisible by the effect of the brew. Thought the manticores had left, she looked anxiously in all directions as she heard Crimson’s approaching steps. Once near, he could completely see the damage that the manticore attack caused. It was horrid. She had both hinder legs where broken, being the bone completely visible as the manticore pawn had pierced the skin. The rest of the body wasn’t better. A deep cut went from top to bottom of the trunk, bleeding substantially.

Her look was confused now, like wondering where the noises came from. Crimson approached his mouth to her ear and said “Is there anything I can do?”

Crimson wasn’t a healer, and he barely knew anything about healing spells. At that moment he wished more than ever that he had any knowledge of healing.

The pony recognised his voice and said with a weak and tremulous voice “Crimson… I’m glad you are fine…” she coughed, spiting blood to his invisible face, revealing its contour. “Just end this… please”

Crimson was shocked when he realised what she wanted. He couldn’t even recognise which of his companions she was, completely covered by her own blood, and she was begging him to kill her. One tear started to slide over his face, until it fell from his face to hers.

“Don’t hesitate… just do it… I beg you…”

Crimson grabbed her head with both forelegs, and took his time while he remembered how to do it. It was one of the finishing moves of Fallen Caesar’s fight style, the one that zebras taught him during his expedition.

“Forgive me…” he said with trembling voice before doing it.

She closed her eyes as he made the move. A loud creak sounded as her neck broke. At that moment Crimson forgot about the manticores, the time the brew would work and the discoveries he made. He could just focus on what he did. He stood in front of her for hours, just crying. He would never be able to forget that sound, and he asked himself if he would ever sleep again without dreaming with that moment…

Crimson tossed and turned on the bed wondering how much he had actually slept, until he looked through the window. The light of dusk coloured in red the front of the buildings. Definitively it was late…He woke up, stretching himself, from the cushion that served him as bed that night. It haven’t been a pleasant sleep, and, as always, he was still tired. He looked at the studio’s table and smiled. There laid a tray that Opal had left with breakfast prepared. She surely left some hours earlier, heading to her jewellery in the centre of Manehattan. The sandwich looked delicious, and she had also prepared coffee. For a moment Crimson wondered how she got all the food, as his fridge was completely empty and turned off. He gave a sip to the coffee. It was cold, but it tasted delicious.

With a glow of his horn, Crimson started to float the tray to the living room, taking care of not hitting any of the huge piles of books that filled the entire apartment.

“If I pretended to live here for long I should organise everything again, including the new books…”

At that moment he remembered. The logbook! He left the tray on the living room’s table as he sought for the black book. After searching on the top of a couple of book piles, he found it. The cover was perfectly conserved, and even thought the book was a thousand years old the paper was still as white as a new one. Perhaps the magical field followed other purpose than standing out the importance of the logbook? The library had some of the oldest spell books and one of the best treatises about dragon anatomy Crimson had ever seen, but this book was chosen to be conserved in better condition. This book had to be very important to somepony. Impatiently he opened the book and started reading…

Introduction

To any pony that is reading this book, there is something you must know. What is written here represents accurately the story of this war. I don’t know when this book shall be read or even if it will ever be, so believe me when I promise that I haven’t twisted or changed any fact. The truth may be uncomfortable sometimes, but what is told in this book, whether seems fair on not, or simply horrid, should never diminish your faith in ponykind. We are capable of wonderful things when it’s our purpose to do them.

Some things told here are beyond imagination. Forbidden magic has been used during all this conflict, a magic that no pony should know. A magic I domain widely and that I have used without any limitation. Even though I don’t regret any of the decisions I took, I must warn you that the lack of moral is a common factor in those decisions, decisions that I took because I believed in our cause, a nation that was once called the Lunar Republic.

Taking into account the actual course of the war, I perhaps should assume that you, my estimate reader, don’t have any idea of what a republic is. Even thought you had, I would like to transmit you my vision. Many things could be said about a republic, but I will describe it with a single word: freedom. I have fought for it during the last fifty years, always as faithful as the first day of war.

“Fifty years!” Crimson shouted and stood up in happiness.

But he instantly calmed down. He did not know what war the author was speaking about. Anyway, the author was right assuming that the reader would not know what a “republic” was. Perhaps if he read more he would find out the answer.

While he laid again on the sofa, Crimson heard a knock on the door. Visits always arrive in the best moments.

“Open the door Crimson, I know you are there! I think half of Manehattan could hear you shout!” A voice said from the door. It was the voice of a mare, but she wasn’t Opal. Could it be…? Crimson approached the door with logbook still floating by his side. When he realised, he hid it fast inside one of the saddlebags that hung from a hook on the wall. He wasn’t willing to let anyone see it by the moment.

“Frost Clo…” He tried to say as he opened the door. He was immediately knocked to the floor when Frost Cloud dashed in faster than lightning. She was a light gray, almost white, coated pegasus. Her mane was light blue, coloured in a tonality similar to ice. She wore the black uniform of the Ponytec company, where she actually worked as a technician and researcher.

“…ud.” Crimson finished from the floor. “How are you? How did you know I arrived to Manehattan?”

“Well,I’m fine thanks! Opal told me today you had arrived from Canterlot and I couldn’t wait to see you. Wow… The scar is bigger than anything I could have imagined!”

“So Opal told you…”

“Yes, she did… But she wasn’t very descriptive. Anyway…How long has it been since the last time we met?”

“Five or six years.” Crimson said as he stood up.

When he left Manehattan, he flew away without telling barely anyone he left, and he never returned. Not until now. All the time he lived in Manehattan, he wanted to leave. The indifference ponies had regarding towards what happened to other ponies just made him feel uncomfortable and he thought that if he flew away to Canterlot heI would find something different. He was completely wrong, but the knowledge that the academies and universities in Canterlot offered was just too tempting and he stayed.

“Yeah, you know that you could have sent a letter or something, do you?” she joked. At that moment Crimson felt really embarrassed, as it was true he haven’t barely wrote a letter to any friend since he left to live in Canterlot.

“Well, look at the positive side, now I will have more stories to tell you” He said, as he closed the door. It was sincerely the worst excuse he could have ever imagined, but she just smiled and looked at him.

“And you will tell them to me. Now hurry up and pack what you need. I told Opal that we would meet her in half an hour in the Central Café. And we will…” She stopped speaking as she realised the condition of the apartment. As she looked around she fixed her eyes on the tray with the half-eaten breakfast, and quickly looked back at Crimson.

“You just woke up, right?”

Crimson nodded.

“Then take a quick shower, we are leaving as soon as you finish.”

She lifted him up in the air, carrying him to the bathroom’s door, dragging him across almost all the flat.

“Remember, be quick, or we will arrive late.”

Crimson opened the door and sighed. It seemed that the truth would have to wait a little more. While the water fell on his head he meditated. He couldn’t risk anyone to read the book. Based on the reaction that Opal had when he told her what he suspected, nopony would believe what the book said. They would think that it was a forgery, and he couldn’t risk that to happen. Crimson promised himself that the deaths of the ponies in the Royal Sisters’ palace wouldn’t be in vain. But he jet had to imagine how to tell everypony the truth. He dried himself with a towel and put his vest on.

“Ready?” Frost asked as she threw him his saddlebag.

“Yes, lets leave” Crimson said as she opened the door.

The dusk in Manehattan was wonderful. The moon was rising up bright in the sky, empty of clouds as the pegasi weather patrol took them away. Crimson walked side by side with Frost Cloud through the streets full of ponies. They didn’t care about anything apart from themselves… If they knew that the history of Equestria they knew was a lie, how would they react?

“Would you mind to leave your meditation for later and pay me attention?” Frost Cloud protested.

“Sorry, I was…”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know what you where thinking of. I just need you to pay me attention.” She said as she stared at him. She just couldn’t stand when Crimson got lost in thought. After ensuring he paid attention to her, she kept speaking “Opal has got a free place at the jewellery”

“Are you… offering me a job?” Crimson asked, shocked. “I didn’t thought I gave the impression of being in such a need jet…”

“It isn’t difficult to guess that you aren’t here sent by the academy, as you aren’t absorbed by huge piles of books this time.” She said sarcastically. “Anyway, Opal told me that you had a clash with Canterlot Academy. I’m sure that, whatever happened, you were right.”

Crimson smiled as he thought about how right she was, though he couldn’t tell her.

“She also told me that she has a free place at the jewellery. But you are too proud to accept it and she is too timid to offer it to you. So I beg you, please ask her for the job.”

Opal and Crimson had been friends since they where fillies and, even thought he left Manehattan to study at Canterlot, they sometimes mailed to keep their friendship.

“Thanks, but I need to think a bit about it. Anyway you must know that convincing ponies is not my special talent precisely, right?” At least lately it wasn’t. But he didn’t expect to take the work as he needed time for reading that logbook…

“Come on, you’ll be just fine. A pair of tips and you will be selling jewels to the stuck-up ponies of Canterlot in no time”

Crimson couldn’t stop a giggle. She truly knew how to cheer him up.

A couple of minutes later they arrived to the Central Café. It was at the top of one of the highest buildings in all of Manehattan. While they waited until the waiter took us to our table, they took a look through the windows. The sights where amazing from up there. Manehattan seemed like a light sea.

Crimson realised how much Manehattan had changed since he left. As he kept thinking Frost Cloud told something to the waiter he didn’t got to understand, and he took them to a table near the large window that substituted the wall of the building. There sat Opal, already driking her coffee.

“Hi Opal!” Frost said while she sat down. “I’m sorry for being late, but it seemed that Crimson needed more sleeping than you thought”

“No problem, Frost. I knew he would oversleep.” She said, while she gave a sip to her coffee.

“Yeah, I’m sorry for travelling all the day and speaking with you all the night.” he commented sarcastically. Crimson hated when they spoke about him like if he wasn’t in front of them. It was something they commonly did when they were foals, and some things don’t change.

“Oh, come on Crimson, don’t be so sensitive. Let’s get a couple of coffees and let’s enjoy the meeting” Opal said. She gazed around looking for the waiter. When she made eye contact she shook her hoof.

While the waiter approached Crimson opened his saddlebag. There was the logbook. He forgot to take it out before leaving! He quickly closed the saddlebag and looked around, wondering if someone saw the book.

“We would like another two coffees, please” Opal ordered.

As they waited until they got their coffees served, they chatted a bit about how things had changed in Manehattan. The recent discovery of, among other things, a way to magically charge gems had changed the landscape of the outskirts of Manehattan, filling them up of factories.

“I’m actually working with magical crystal technology at M.C.A. Company, as a consultant. Our team is the main developer of the machines used in the factories all over Equestria.” Frost said proudly. She had always been amazing at the development of machines, and now she could automate them using the power of magical gems, she was happier than ever. “Our main investigations are focused on the development of smaller and more efficient crystals, and we are expecting to generate more portable sources of energy soon.”

Development... that word meant so little for Crimson. He didn’t found any pleasure in looking into the future, and focused as he was on his expeditions, he took no time to see what changed in Equestria recently. It wasn’t his way of thinking. The factories have brought prosperity to Manehattan, implying a boom of population and new whole neighbourhoods around the industrial zones.

“When we achieve it, the possibilities will grow infinitely!” She continued.

“You know what I think of the arrival of that technology. Factories have brought many ponies to Manehattan, not all of them friendly. The outskirts have become dangerous during the night. Even thought the Manehattan police has tried to catch up with the growth of the city, they are now barely able to control that zones.” Opal Shine whispered “It is rumoured that even a black market of products of zebra lands has settled there”

“Fine, then now I know where to buy more tobacco” Crimson joked with a smile in his face.

“This is serious Crimson. Things have changed around here, the city is not the same it was when we where foals.” Frost could really sound fatalistic when she got serious.

“Don’t worry, I’ll not approach the outskirts without you, I promise”

“We both know that’s not true Crimson. Your curiosity has always been your special talent, and I know you more than enough to guess that you will eventually end up there. Just be careful, please…” Opal said. She was right. When they where foals, the three friends got in all sort of trouble because of it. It was in one of those adventures where Crimson got his cutie mark, a magnifying glass.

They chatted during a couple of hours. Frost was so excited about her project that she almost didn’t spoke about anything else, but Crimson found out that it was indeed interesting. He asked her how the magically powered devices worked. Her explanation was perhaps too technical for him, but she told him that the spells to configure the crystals were easy once you understood their basis, or at least the technical unicorns that worked with her said so…

“I’ll show you the labs when I get permission, I promise. But only if you promise me first not to go to the outskirts without me.” Frost said.

“I will keep my promise, trust on it. Now let’s go home, its getting late.” He answered as his horn glowed in grey. He picked some bits of his wallet and paid the coffees.

“Yeah… Anyway, we should arrange something now so we met soon again” Opal said.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea!” Frost quickly replied.

Crimson doubted, as, if he kept meeting with them, he’d never be able to read the logbook. After hesitating for a couple of seconds, he made up an excuse.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend at least tomorrow sleeping all the day long, I’m exhausted. If you want, we can meet after” He excused himself. He couldn’t tell them about the logbook, and the curiosity was too strong.

“Alright then… We will meet other day, but now that you are in Manehattan, I’d like us to meet more, just like when we were young, all the day together!” Opal said

“I’m pretty sure that you will leave the city as soon as you have an excuse, so I’d like to make the most of your visit” Frost added.

We left the café at the top of the building and said good bye. Crimson still couldn’t believe they wanted to stay with him, not after leaving Manehattan the way he did. Overall he couldn’t believe Frost forgave him, not after what he said.

As they disappeared among the crowd, he started to think again about the change the city had experienced while he was away. He reflected on how he got to be such an absent-minded pony, that he didn’t realise that the world was changing around him. It could be part of the spirit of Canterlot, a city stuck in the past, chained by old protocols and its fairy tale atmosphere.

The ponies from Canterlot didn’t care of anything apart from their social meetings and keeping their fortunes and prestige. Crimson wasn’t like those ponies. He hated the formality of the Academy and always preferred the field work in order to be as far away as possible from Canterlot. Even thought he tried to prevent it, it was like the essence of this spirit chained him to the past as much as other ponies were. Thought he hated the idea, he couldn’t avoid thinking it was right. The only thing that relieved him was the fact that the logbook could contain the answers that he looked for, and they could change everything, and perhaps free him…

He finally arrived to his building. When he approached the door of his apartment, he saw light under the door.

“I didn’t left any light on…”

He approached his ear to the door, and heard some noises like… Somepony was inside! He approached the key to the door and opened suddenly. This seemed to surprise the robber that stared at him paralyzed as he rushed into the room. The thief wore a black complete outfit that covered his whole body, hiding the colour of his coat and his mane. He also wore a snood and sun glasses, covering his face completely.

Crimson charged with his horn, leaving the robber almost no time to think. But he dodged the assault in the last moment, rolling to one side. He took a knife out of a sheath hidden in his suit.

“Damn that is unfair!”

Crimson dropped his saddlebag to the floor, as he stood on his hinderlegs, preparing himself for the counterattack. The thief jumped with the knife in his hoof and tried to stab him. Dodging it just by a bit, Crimson threw a hoof, and using one of the techniques he learned of Fallen Caesars style, he hit his throat, leaving him breathless. Though this wasn’t a deadly technique, Crimson could remember that their effects weren’t pleasant. The robber fell to the floor seeking for a breath he would not get until he released his grip.

“I will release your throat when you agree to tell me what you are doing here. Decide fast, or you will asphyxiate.” Crimson told him. As soon as the robber nooded Crimson released his grip slowly, allowing him to take a deep breath. As he woke up, he spread a couple of wings. He was a pegasus! Taking advantage of his surprise, he kicked Crimson back and started to fly to the window. Crimson tried to grip one of his hinderlegs with his magic, but it was too late.

As he flew away Crimson stared at the knife he tried to stab him with. These kinds of weapons were completely forbidden in Equestria. Its sole possession meant banishment, unless you got direct permission from the princess itself to have them.

“Why would any pony try to rob me?” He thought. It couldn’t be because of the books he took from the Royal Sisters palace, no pony knew they existed. He had told no one about them, except to Opal. But what else could it be?

Crimson fell to the floor as his hinderlegs trembled. The attack itself had left him exhausted. He stood up and went to his room, the knife floating in front of him. When he arrived to his bedroom, he opened the drawer and quickly threw the knife inside. After he closed the door, he collapsed on the bed. The logbook would have to wait again.

A Short Rest After All

Crimson woke up suddenly. That dream again… That face, that sound and that voice. They haunted him in his dreams, turning them into the worst nightmares…

“Perhaps if I erased those memories magically the dreams would disappear…” He said, thinking out loud, but he immediately discarded the idea. He wanted to remember what happened that day.

He got up from the bed, and stretching himself, looked outside the window. The moon rose up high in the sky, almost full. Its light got through the window, giving the room a bit of illumination.

His thoughts went back quickly to the attack that happened this night and to the logbook. Could they be related anyhow? It couldn’t be possible, as he didn’t told anypony about the books he smuggled, except Opal.

Crimson went to the living room and, with a glow of his horn, several candles levitated around him. He personally preferred the light of candles instead of the electric one. Concentrating, he ignited all the candles at the same time. That spell had always been useful, overall in the Canterlot library. You just couldn’t turn all the switches on when you wanted privacy in that library, and Crimson used to get inside the library without permission. Finally assuming that he wouldn’t get asleep again, he picked the logbook and started reading again. Just one page had almost fulfilled his expectative about what he was going to find inside, and he couldn’t wait to read some more.

The war began before the first battle, much before. In order to understand the reasons that lead to the conflict, we must go back to the origins of Equestria itself, before the rule of the Royal sisters.

After the creation of Equestria as a new nation for all ponykinds alike, discovered by the rulers of each pony nation, ponies from all around the three kingdoms migrated to this new land, attracted by the utopian histories told about it. Ponies ruled in harmony and peace and started to build new cities on the terrains that were claimed. The soil was fertile and the water clean. Nature seemed to be kind to ponies in this land, and, with the help of everypony, prosperity came.

There where several developments in the fields of magic, arts, sciences, politics, philosophy... An atmosphere of respect and unity was the perfect seed for the growth of Equestria. The land was laboured, and roads where built. Around the cave that served as a refugee to the first ponies to put their hooves on this land, a great city started to develop, eventually becoming the capital city of Equestria. Academies, concert halls, theaters… Everything was built to follow the cultural developement. A whole new architecture was developed, to suit this new land and its rich resources. Buildings of marble and stone, with gates of the finest woods, rose from the floor.

No longer focused on trying to protect ourselves from hunger and cold, ponies could concentrate on investigation and development of the pony society. A new parliament was created, having thirty parliamentary; ten unicorn, ten pegasi and ten earth ponies representatives, ruling fairly. Those ponies were chosen amongst the noble lineages of each kind, being the parliamentary seat inherited. Thought this was a great step to democracy, it wasn’t definitive. Some ponies still thought that the best way to rule ponies was through monarchy, and there were a plenty of those ponies inside the parliament itself. The only thing that withhold them from setting up a monarchy was the fact that nopony that belonged to a noble family had at that moment a lineage that included all the kinds of ponies, what made impossible the task of choosing a ruler. The parliament stayed as the sole government organ.

Thought I was interested personally on what happened in the parliament, my information was limited. I didn’t belong to a noble family, which limited my political aspirations considerably. Instead, I focused on other of the emerging knowledge sources, one in which I was pretty talented; Magic.

Joining other unicorns we formed the first official magic Academy, where unicorns from all of Equestria came to improve their talents. It was rewarding. At the academy the developments in magic grew exponetially, as new fields of investigation emerged from the curiosity of ponykind. Seeking the control of the elements of nature, the unicorns at the academy started perfecting elemental magic, one of the most basic kinds of magic, together with telekinetic magic. Though unicorns knew of this kind of magic, the level of perfection achieved in the first years the academy run was amazing. Meanwhile, politics grew more complex, as Equestria grew and prospered.

Raising his head from the book, Crimson looked through the window. The glow of dawn started to light the streets of Manehattan. He approached the window. Seeing the sunrise was a special moment for him, a peaceful moment in which he usually got to think with clearness. He suddenly remembered his pipe. Approaching the drawer of the studio’s desk, he levitated it and put inside the few tobacco left in the bag. Floating a match, Crimson turned on the tobacco, breathing out a dense cloud of smoke. He could have lighted it with magic, but this way he found it tasted better.

He approached the window again and waited patiently. Breathing slowly, the tobacco consumed inside the pipe. Suddenly, the moment he waited for came. Rising between the buildings of Manehattan, the sun came out. Its warm light illuminated the living room, cheering him up.

Crimson approached the sofa again. There laid the logbook. It seemed to have been written fast, with a rough calligraphy, but it accomplished its purpose. He wondered under which condition it was written… Thought it had given him more unknowns than answers, it was more than he expected. But something on the information that it contained shocked him. The way the author described the pony society, ruled by ponies and not by Celestia seemed… idyllic. It was like, even thought thirty different ponies governed and there were serious differences of opinion respect to the way government should be, there was peace and agreement. Also the way he described the developments achieved, thought brief, was forceful. But overall, Crimson was surprised by the way the author described some of the kinds of magic. He said that elemental magic was… basic. That wasn’t the opinion of most of the unicorns that studied magic. At least, while he stayed in Canterlot he had the opportunity of speaking about recent magic developments with several researchers of the Celestia’s School for gifted unicorns. They spoke him of the difficulty that supposed the domination of elementary magic, and here was defined as one of the most basic kinds of magic. He couldn’t imagine what the ponies that lived a thousand years ago could consider as complex.

The tobacco inside his pipe finally finished. Crimson dropped the ashes in the bin and started looking for some tobacco, until he realised that that was the last bag he had. That annoyed him quite a lot. He floated his pipe back to the drawer of his studio’s desk.

He laid on the sofa again, and with a glow of his horn, all the candles turned off simultaneously. The sunrise light was enough for reading right now, so he wouldn’t need them anymore.

Crimson floated the logbook again, so the sun ray that came through the window made the pages readable.

The growing size of Equestria meant that the workload that the Equestrian parliament had to stand increased. To reduce the amount of decisions the parliament had to manage, the first city councils arose. This was the first true step to democracy. Ponies of each city decided who their representatives on these councils were, increasing the influence of non-politician ponies on the future of Equestria. The decisions of greater importance were still managed by the Equestrian parliament, remaining as the most powerful organism of Equestria. But the direct influence that it had was reduced, something that some ponies of the noble families disliked.

The utopia kept growing in size, as the knowledge of ponykind did. The Academy grew in size and importance, as new powerful branches of magic were investigated.

Healing wounds that would kill ponies in minutes, cancelling the effects of poisons without the need of an antidote, welding broken bones in minutes… Everything was possible with the understanding of the healing magic. Developments in the control of fire magic allowed ponies to create new metals and to craft the most wonderful jewellery. Telekinetic and teleportation magic developed amazingly fast, allowing the creation of permanent teleportation portals between the different cities of Equestria’s territory.

All these discoveries brought great benefits to ponykind, but afraid the non-unicorn ponies. Some considered that the Equestria’s society began to rely too much on unicorns magic, and the growing power of our magic didn’t helped. This fear brought envy, and envy brought distrust. The parliament became more a forum rather than a government organ, discussing constantly about what eventually was called “the unicorn issue”. All investigations where interrupted, and the Academy of magic dismantled. It was shameful that the distrust that we managed to avoid came back, growing strong enough to stop the progress.

Protests started all along Equestria, as unicorns felt discriminated. The situation started to be uncontrollable, with disturbs in some of the main cities. And at that moment they appeared. The Royal sisters, Celestia and Luna, came back after defeating Discord, and what they found disturbed them. Equestria was a complete chaos. Trying to take fast control over the situation, both sisters went to the Equestria’s parliament and found one of the most humiliating scenes of pony history. The thirty representatives of ponykind were literally in middle of a clash. And in the middle of the fight, the rulers of each pony tribe fought. When they noticed the presence of the two strangers, they immediately stopped fighting. Even thought they were not alive when the princesses went to hunt Discord, the prophecy of their return was passed down through generations of ponies. Slowly, the struggle calmed down. Shocked by the presence of the princesses, all the parliamentaries went silent. But the harm was done, and Celestia took the control. She passed judgement on the situation and decided that ponies where not prepared to rule their selves, and she proclaimed Luna and herself as rulers of Equestria. This could have been easily avoided if some of the ponies at the parliament hadn’t desired a monarchy.

As the peace was restored, ponies regarded the come to the throne of the Royal sisters as a blessing and their reign consolidated. The sisters built a Palace in the Capital city, where their court was established, and ruled all Equestria from there. Nothing would be again the same. The parliament power faded out, but it remained as a consultory organ as an attempt to make the parliamentarians feel comfortable as Celestia and Luna ruled. Fearing future riots, the investigations on magic remained censored. The portals where closed, and all the progress ponykind achieved was forgotten. It was a dark moment for Equestria.

But there were several ponies that felt this wasn’t right, myself included. We started to avoid the censure, investigating magic and technology secretly, hiding from the authorities. When the censure started to cover other branches such as literature and philosophy, the hidden rebellion extended. Just in front of Celestia’s snout, a whole intellectual revolution started silently. And we were not alone. In total disagreement with the strict censure that Celestia had imposed, princess Luna supported our cause. She was captivated by the concept of democracy itself, and she started to encourage the ponies that sought any kind of forbidden knowledge to do it. The capitol city became a prosper source of culture and free thinking. Thought no documents or books were officially published concerning these investigations, the knowledge just spread as fast as lightning. Copies of forbidden books were printed and flowed through the hooves of all the ponies ready to assume the risk of reading them. It was wonderful, but couldn’t last forever. Eventually, Celestia realised what happened and found the intellectual rebellion as a threat to her authority, and decided to react with severity. She sought the source of any forbidden knowledge, reaching the core of the rebellion. She banned us from Equestria forever.

Crimson raised his head from the book, overwhelmed by what he read. He found impressive how easily Celestia and Luna got control of the situation, cancelling the power of the parliament. They managed to obtain the approval from the parliament itself to do it. It was just impressive. The intelligent movement required to achieve this would have required a deep analysis of each parliament’s opinion, and they did it just looking a hall for a few moments. That had, for sure, involved some kind of magic. Anyway, this left many questions without answers. What happened to the exiles? How did princess Luna reacted to the ban of almost half of the intellectuals of Equestria, rebels that she supported? This still didn’t explain the rise of Nightmare Moon…

Suddenly somepony knocked on the door.

“Crimson, open the door! It’s me, Opal! You’ve got to see this!” She said excited. He opened the door and she came in running him over. This was becoming a habit…

“Have you read the papers?! All of them speak about the “first” official expedition to the “Royal sisters palace”.” She said, as she showed me the Equestria daily. There, at the front page, was a photo of princess Celestia speaking to Copper Compass.

“What?!” Crimson exclaimed with a sceptical expression at his face. He couldn’t believe it. They were organising a new expedition! He wondered why Copper Compass would like to go there after what I told him. The attack of the manticores should have dissuaded him … In the fifth page there was an interview to Copper. Crimson spent a few minutes reading it, trying to discover anything useful about the route and the planning they would follow.

“I will not let him to destroy the proofs of my theory, and less to discover the library.” Crimson said to himself After scanning the text again, he found what he sought.

“I must do some packing right now, Opal” He said while he trotted to his bedroom. He opened the closet and picked some clothes and a big backpack. That backpack was the one that he used almost on every expedition he had made. It was a bit old, but it still served its purpose.

Crimson started packing everything he had that could be useful to follow Copper’s expedition across the Everfree forest. Suddenly he saw the knife. It was at the floor of the closet. Crimson remembered throwing it there last night, just after the attack… After looking it for a few seconds, he decided to take it also, hiding it inside one of the lateral pockets the backpack had. Opal came inside, with a worried expression.

“Where are you going, Crimson?” She asked, though she knew the answer.

“I can’t let them do it Opal, and you know it.” He told her, trying to sound as resolute as possible, though the idea of going back terrified him. “I’m pretty sure the Academy has organised this to cover up the fact that the history they tell isn’t true, and I can’t let them do that.”

“Are you mad?! Have you even read the main article?” It was true he hadn’t read it, as he focused on the interview to Copper. “They are going to have a complete unit of the royal guard protecting them during all the expedition. You expect to beat twenty of the best trained ponies in Equestria by yourself?”

“I have a plan” Crimson lied, as he kept packing things. He started to trot to the kitchen, in search of the few food cans he found there. Opal followed him across the house, as he picked all that could be considered as useful. As he had to safe as much space as possible, Crimson decided that he would only carry the logbook. The other books he smuggled would have to stay here… Though he couldn’t stop thinking that the burglar would have free access to anything he wanted when he left, Crimson knew that this was more important.

“Don’t lie to me, Crimson. It’s not nice” Opal said, bothered.

“And what if I do? This doesn’t concern you anyway!” He shouted.

“Hey, I’m just trying to bring you back to your senses; there is no need to be mean…”

“Opal, I’m perfectly sane. I don’t need any pony whose only objective in this life is to sell jewellery to posh ponies tells me what to do with mine!” Crimson immediately regretted saying that.

“Crimson…”

She left through the door. And he didn’t stop her.

“I am such a big mouth…”

He kept packing some things, thinking how ho could fix this, if that was even possible… Crimson could be rough sometimes, but he usually knew how to control himself, but this time he had been just offensive on purpose. Opal took care of him, and he paid her shouting at her. He hadn’t been fair.

“Crimson?” somepony asked from the open door. It was Frost Cloud “What happened here? Opal seemed really upset.”

“How can you know?” He asked.

“Well, I ran into her as I came here, and she was crying a lot.” She said with emphasis. That made him feel worse.

“I’m a big mouth Frost, just that.” He had to change of topic before it drove him mad. “Anyway, why were you dropping by?” He asked

“I read the newspapers, and I wanted to come here before you left without even saying goodbye. Again.” She said with sarcasm.

“So you thought I would leave and go with the expedition… What did Opal exactly told you about my issue with the Academy? ” Crimson asked. Probably he would have to tell her the whole story…

“Just that you had some kind of problem with the Academy and that you were here because of that” She answered.

Crimson thought for a moment. Should he tell her what happened?Would she understand? Finally, he decided that she deserved to know.

“Get in and get comfortable while I prepare some coffee. This story is long, and I don’t have much time…”

“So that’s why I’m leaving. I can’t allow the princess to hide the truth. Not after the death of all those ponies. Not after what I had to do” Crimson concluded. He had told her everything. Everything about the trip, the excessive secrecy, what he found there, including the library, the manticores attack… Everything. He even told her about the pony he had to kill, and she was horrified. Though she understood what lead Crimson to do it, she just couldn’t accept it. Anyway, she was sceptic about the idea of following the expedition.

“I must know something Crimson. Are you completely sure about what you saw there? It’s pretty obvious that the manticore attack had a profound impact on you, and that could have, combined with the herbs…”

“Wait a moment… You don’t trust me either?”

“It’s not that Crimson, I just don’t think that you should ruin your whole career for something that could have been a mirage provoked by zebra herbs and the shock of the manticore attack.”

“I think that I can take that decision by myself, Frost. I haven’t given up my whole career for a mirage, I’m not stupid. I know what I found and I know what I must do.”

“Anyway Crimson, just try to be reasonable. Tell me what you expect to do when you arrive there? You will go to the middle of the camp and just fight all the members of the expedition? Or have you got a miraculous plan to avoid them from just getting whatever they want from the ruins?”

She was right; He had no opportunity of preventing them from doing what they wanted with the sculptures, the paintings and many other texts and proofs of the long reign of Nightmare Moon on the castle, it was a full expedition with an armed guard of twenty ponies. But he could stop them from finding the library.

“I’m going anyway. Trust me when I say that it shall not be useless. One way or another I will proof that I’m right. Even though I cannot stop them from destroying proofs or manipulating them, I can safe some...”

“Crimson, don’t be stubborn! I can understand why you are angry, but you must realise that we can do nothing. They are too many, and we are only two…”

“Wait a moment… Did you just say “we”?” Crimson said, realising what she wanted to do “No way. You are not coming with me Frost Cloud. I’m not risking anyone I care for in this. This is something personal.”

“But Everfree is too dangerous to go alone…” She replied. He wasn’t going to let her finish. He had to leave, but he couldn’t allow her to come and he didn’t have any time to loose in an argument that wouldn’t end. His horn started to glow, as he casted a soporific spell. With a slight touch of his horn, Frost fell to the floor, asleep.

Crimson floated her to his bedroom and laid her on the bed. Picking his backpack from the bed, he headed to the door.

“You can’t imagine how sorry I am, Frost” Crimson said as he left the room. A painful expression formed in his face as he realised he could have lost two friends today…

Preparations

The train slowly stopped as it arrived to Ponyville’s train station. It was amazing that so many things happened in those two days, since Crimson arrived to Manehattan. And now he was back to Ponyville, where his trip started. Crimson wondered if anyone noticed thier presence the first time his expedition arrived to Ponyville. They were commanded to tell nothing about their trip. Only Twilight Sparkle and Zecora knew something about it…

He picked his backpack from the storage compartment and headed the door. When he landed on the platform he realised that many ponies got off at Ponyville. After a bit of observation, Crimson noticed that they were all journalists. Copper Compass had always been a bit of a show-off, and now that he had the opportunity to boast that he was the leader of an expedition, he had gathered all the possible media. This would help him to go unnoticed, as the amount of strangers that crowded Ponyville would have increased for sure.

The town was just like he had imagined it. Little houses of two floors painted in shiny colours that were organised around the town hall. When he came with the expedition he had almost no time to see the town. But he expected it to be less crowded. It seemed that Crimson wasn’t the only one that came because of the expedition. The streets were full of ponies shopping. It seems he also arrived in market day. He approached one of the stalls and bought a delicious apple pie for a couple of bits and laid on the grass of a nearby park to eat it. The sound of a river flow covered the noise of the market, creating a relaxing atmosphere. When he finished his pie, he laid under a tree and enjoyed the shadow. The day was wonderful, without a cloud in the sky. He could have stayed under that tree relaxing forever…

Suddenly a pink mare started to trot to him. She had a messy curled dark pink mane and blue eyes and a big smile on her face. He wondered who she was. Crimson started to wake up, picking what was left of his apple pie and turning his sight for a second. When he turned back the pink mare had disappeared. I wondered where she could be…

“Hi!” Said a voice at his back. Startled by the voice, he turned around quickly. It was the pink mare that was far away in front of him just a couple of seconds ago.

“How did you… but just a second ago you were in front of me, how could you…” Crimson mumbled. He couldn’t even imagine how she moved that fast.

“I’m pleased to meet you too! My name is Pinkie Pie. You must be new around here” She said quickly as lightning. “When I saw you eating alone I thought “Oh! He’s new around here, he must have no friends” and that’s too sad so I came, but now I realise you are not the only one… AH! I’ve got a lot of work to do, too many new alone ponies! They need a welcome PARTY!” She sentenced, and as fast as she came she disappeared.

Crimson was still shocked by what happened. That pony just appeared from nowhere and disappeared as fast as she came. This was too confusing, but at least he was lucky he wasn’t the only new pony around here. If you want to be unnoticed getting a party thrown for you isn’t the best way to do it. Crimson decided to have a walk before Pinkie decided to return as mysteriously as she left.

The town was full of activity. All the ponies at the market picked up their stalls as the meal time approached, while the other ponies headed to the restaurants of the town. He had to book a room somewhere before the town’s hotels filled up. Crimson spent the next hours looking around the town, trying to get some accommodation for the night, but it was useless. The journalists of almost every newspaper had occupied any kind of hotel, motel or anything remotely similar in the town. He could not spend the next two nights sleeping out in the open. HE was going to have enough of that during the next couple of weeks at least… After laying on a bench of the park for a while, he got an idea, something that he usually did when he arrived to new cities and didn’t got where to sleep.

Crimson headed to the library. Perhaps sleeping on a cushion on the floor of the library wasn’t the best rest you could get, but this method served him well on his trips across Equestria. But at those trips at least he could use as a pretext that he was in research mission for the Academy. He would have to imagine something better this time…

The library was a tree treated with transformation magic. Crimson had no chance to visit it the last time he was in Ponyville, before the expedition, and that was something he regretted then, but now he was grateful for having the opportunity. As he approached the building, he remembered why it was famous, considered by several architects of Equestria as the best building achieved with these kind of magic. Indeed it was wonderful. he knocked the door. He remembered that Twilight Sparkle herself lived here. He was so lucky that I haven’t met her jet. If she recognised him his entire plan could be spoilt.

The door opened, but instead of a mare, it was a little dragon that stood at the entrance. He stared at Crimson, and he stared back at him, pretty impressed. They spent around two seconds staring. Finally the little dragon broke the silence and asked.

“Yes? Do you want something or are you going to stand there staring at me?” The little purple dragon said. Crimson still could not stop looking at him, overall at his green spikes.

“Yes, sorry I… My name is Crimson Zephyr, and I wanted to speak with the librarian.” He said. The dragon still looked at him. Crimson started to get nerveous… “And I’m sorry. I’m just not accustomed to see young dragons like you are. I hope that these awkward moments don’t occur to you usually…” He tried to apologize.

“Don’t worry; this only happens when someone new arrives to town, something that lately happens everyday… My name is Spike!” He said, smiling. Crimson was glad he wasn’t offended by the awkward moment. “I’m sorry, but Twilight isn’t at home right now. She’s at Zecora’s, but I guess she’ll arrive soon. Anyway, what do you wanted?”

“I’m a journalist of the Manehattan Daily. I came here because of the expedition, as you may guess… But I’m doing another research also, and I heard that Ponyville had an interesting library. I wondered if I could take advantage of any of the books here, so I decided to give it a try.” He said as he wondered if it would be enough for the young dragon to let him in.

“I think Twilight wouldn’t mind, but you will have to wait until she arrives to take any of the books. I don’t want you to pry on her notes. It’s nothing personal. Get in.” He said. He clearly distrusted Crimson, but at least he let him in.

The library was amazing. Thousands of books covered the walls, organised in bookshelves integrated in the tree itself. Only a couple of doors and a staircase interrupted the continuous lines of books. Spike headed to one of the doors and turned to me.

“Do you like coffee?” he asked. It sounded like Celestia’s blessing to Crimson. “I’m going to make some. Twilight told me to prepare a lot for tonight; it seems that she’s going to be busy.”

He nodded and smiled. A coffee was something he just needed right now. He spent some time speaking to Spike. He was kind and extrovert. Crimson asked him about how he could have ended up living in a library in Ponyville and how he met Twilight. He told him about his life in Canterlot and the adventure that brought them to live here. Crimson was captivated by his story. He had heard a bit about the story of how Twilight and the other bearers of the Elements of Harmony beat Nightmare Moon before, but hearing it directly from one of the protagonist was amazing. They spoke until Twilight arrived, a couple of hours later.

“Spike! I’m back!” She shouted as she opened the door smiling. After noticing Crimson’s presence, her expression changed. “Spike! I thought I told you that I didn’t want journalists at home! I’m upset of the interviews, and I’m too busy right now for another one!” She said, clearly upset.

“I’m so sorry if I’m not welcome, miss Sparkle. But you must not blame Spike, as he followed your orders perfectly.” Crimson quickly intervened. “I’m not here to interview you or to ask you anything related with the expedition. I came here because I needed some information for an article I’m writing and I wondered if I could use some books of this library.” He said, giving Spike a wink.

“Oh! Of course…” she said, relaxing. “I can help you to look for any book you may need, if you tell me what your investigation is about.”

Crimson’s mind was blank. Quickly trying to think about something before she could suspect anything, he started to recall his expedition to zebra lands, seeking for something that could be curious. Suddenly, he got an idea and, though it was a bit weird, he decided to give it a try lacking of nothing better.

“Well, I’m actually doing a very specific research, comparing the zebra guerrilla tactics with the old pegasi war tactics.” He answered, trying to sound as convincing as possible. Twilight stared at him, puzzled by the answer.

“It is a curious field of investigation indeed … But I think I have got something that might help.” She said, and turning to Spike she asked “Spike, can you bring me that old copy of Pegasi History and the copy of Pegasi across the ages?”

“Yes Twilight!” He said, and instantly he ran to one of the bookshelves, looking for the books.

“For the zebra part… I’m not sure if we have any book related to their war tactics here, but it’s true that I never looked for anything related to that matter…” She said as she turned to me. “Anyway you are free to use any book here in the library, but if you don’t mind seek before we have dinner. I’m going to have a busy night and I will need this whole room for my investigation. You can use the studio behind that door to do your research.” She said, heading to the staircase. Suddenly she stopped and turned around. Looking at Crimson she said “And I’m sorry for being so harsh before, I’ve had a hard day.”

“Don’t worry.” He answered. Apparently satisfied, she turned around and went up the stairway.

Crimson stood thoughtful in the middle of the room. For sure Twilight was doing some research for the expedition so Crimson would have be careful and leave tomorrow early in the morning. He couldn’t run the risk of being discovered by any of the members of the Academy… Suddenly he felt a touch at his back and turned around. It was Spike.

“Here you have the books Twilight recommended” He said. Crimson grabbed the books with his magic and floated them to the table at the middle of the room.

“Thanks Spike.” He said, and started to look at the bookshelves. Perhaps the idea of researching about zebra guerrilla tactics wasn’t bad at all. Zebras were well known for their flair for camouflage and infiltration, something that was more than proven to Crimson during his expedition to zebra lands. Using these natural abilities, combined with their talent for brews and potions, they developed techniques that enhanced them, such as the body combat Fallen Caesars style. Perhaps reading about these tactics could help on his adventure. Taking into account that Crimsom’s plan was to be invisible until he got a better idea, it could really be a great help…

He spent the next two hours searching among the bookshelves for anything related with zebras, until he found a book called “Pocket guide for the zebra explorer”. This book caught his curiosity. It wasn’t surprising that Twilight didn’t noticed the existence of this book, as it was really thin and stuck between two huge tomes of potion making. Opening it, Crimson realised that it hadn’t more than a hundred pages. Heading to the index, he found that the book contained more information that it could seem initially. Brews for invisibility, tracks detection, poisons and antidotes, camouflage in forests and plains… the book contained almost everything any pony who wanted to be on somepony’s track could desire. Crimson smiled, realising that his luck started to change.

“Found anything?” Spike asked. Thought he actually found something, Crimson wasn’t sure if wanted to share his discovery with Spike and Twilight. This book could prove to be really useful, and having it would help him for sure.

“Thought I did, but it was just another book about zebra brews” He lied, as he sliced the thin book under his vest. “I think I’ve searched enough. I guess you don’t have the books that I need to make the analysis of zebra tactics, but anyway the books about pegasi should be useful”

Suddenly he noticed the light of the dusk coming through the windows. It was time to take everything to the studio, and to have dinner. He decided to go to a restaurant, trying to pretend that some companions of the Manehattan daily where waiting for me. Before he left, he dropped his backpack and the pegasi history books on the desk of the studio and picked some bits to pay his dinner.

Crimson looked for a restaurant. Every place was full, again. After searching for a time and realising that Ponyville wasn’t prepared to host such a big amount of visitors, he just gave up the idea of eating in a restaurant. Desperate, Crimson approached one of the waiters at one of the restaurants and almost begged him if he could make him a sandwich. After waiting for almost half an hour, he got his sandwich and, trying to stay as far away as possible from the mass of ponies that crowded Ponyville, he headed to the same park where he had lunch. The moonlight now reflected on the smooth surface of the river and the murmur of water created a relaxing atmosphere. Laying on the ground, he started to eat. He was starving.

After eating his sandwich, he gave a fast review to everything that he had to do before the expedition. Buying some canned food and materials should come first, followed by a visit to Zecora’s. He had to get some more herbs, and overall the invisibility brew, if he wanted to follow Copper’s expedition. Also some kind of cloak could be useful, as the unpredictable weather of the Everfree forest could become a problem. With this in mind, he started to head to the library. He decided to make a checklist.

Ten minutes later, he was at the library’s door. Knocking, he patiently waited until Spike opened the door.

“Hi Spike.” Crimson said as he walked inside. The room was a complete chaos, with gigantic piles of books spread in regular circles, almost as if they where pillars holding up the ceiling.

“Be careful with the piles. They are pretty unstable, and touching any of them will probably make them all crush” Spike said, almost whispering.

“I guess Twilight has started her research.” Crimson said, as both headed to the studio’s door. Crimson turned around, and when he found a hole in the wall of books, he got to see Twilight. She was floating several books around her, scanning them at an impressive speed. He noticed that Spike opened the door of the studio, and, as silently as possible, he got in. He now understood what she meant with needing the whole room.

Crimson opened his backpack and got the logbook out. He hadn’t read the logbook since he left Manehattan...

We were outcasts, exiles. Many of the founders of Equestria were considered now as criminals. All we wanted was to express ourselves freely, developing the culture and technology of the ponykind. Resigning ourselves to this new situation, we headed to the north, to the old lands where ponies used to live in. We thought we could use any of the now abandoned old cities to settle down and try to prosper. We weren’t few, and our knowledge was great. Many ponies that were not directly exiled sympathised with us, and joined our exile. Earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns, all together sought a new opportunity, far away from the land we loved.

We settled down at the old former capital from the unicorn’s nation. The castle and the surrounding lands were devastated, so we made all the possible efforts to settle down a stable agriculture, in order to sustain our “new” city. After a year, the change was noticeable. Green fields surrounded the castle, restored to its former glory. The city was rebuilt using all the advances that we made in pony technology and magic. The streets had magical empowered streetlamps and we started to build a teleportation portal, difficult task due to the lack of gems necessary to complete the proyect. But we didn’t surrender, and we progressed.

A new spirit rose between the exiles. Once we settled down, and had a stable sustain, most of us were able to return to their former investigations. Everyone contributed on everything possible. Turns where organized, making every pony, no matter if he was an earth pony or not, work at least one day per week at the fields. Though criminal behaviour wasn’t common, we set down a police force. Bit by bit we progressed, as the lack of resources was compensated with great efficiency and hard work. The atmosphere of brotherhood and camaraderie favoured the appearance of what I had desired for so long… Democracy. We founded a new parliament, but this time it wouldn’t be composed only by “noble” ponies, rather than by anyone that got enough votes to get in it. It was wonderful. Ponies were finally ruled by ponies again, and all our efforts were compensated. With time, new exiles came to our city, as the word of our success spread through Equestria and Celestia’s regime grew stronger and repressive.

After a couple of years, we received an outcast by own will that we never expected to receive. Princess Luna itself, accompanied by her own personal guard, arrived to the city, now named Philopolis, a name that I personally disliked, but most ponies found adequate. She requested to speak at the parliament. There, she stated that she decided to exile herself, indignant by the repressive attitude of her sister’s regime. She spoke with conviction when she spoke about how she admired what we achieved during our exile, and that she wanted to be part of it, part of the democracy. Many critical voices rose up, as many of the parliaments distrusted the princess. Even thought she helped us during our peaceful rebellion against the censure, some ponies thought that she was the one that betrayed the rebellion, as the attack Celestia did to the rebellion’s core was of surgical precision, impossible to achieve without a great amount of information. The debate on the “princess issue” carried on for days. Meanwhile the princess was allowed to stay in the city. When the debate finished, the opinion was unanimous. She would be allowed to stay, but she would be unable to present herself to the parliament as a candidate. This last part was more polemic, but it was finally approved by majority.

The next few years were…

Crimson stopped reading as the door started to open. He quickly hid the logbook under one of the books about pegasi history that Twilight had recommended me, fearing the she would get in and discover it. Instead, it was Spike carrying a coffee cup.

“Twilight thought you might need a coffee to stay awake.” He said, smiling.

“Thanks Spike, it was just what I needed”

“If you need anything else just give me a call” he said, closing the door behind him.

He turned and uncovered the logbook. It was almost unbelievable what ponies achieved at least a thousand years ago… Crimson heard rumours that said that stable teleporting portals were being investigated right now, with unsuccessful results, and that was only one of the things considered as impossible that this book said that existed a thousand years ago. But how could all this knowledge had been forgotten?

He stared for a while at the books Twilight lend him. If he wanted to protect his cover, he would have to take some notes about what was in the books… That wasn’t difficult, but it wouldn’t allow Crimson to do anything else tonight…

He headed to the door, opening it. He saw Spike lying on a cushion next to the staircase, sleeping. After, he turned his sight where Twilight was before. She was exactly in the same position, but now surrounded by floating papers and notes. Crimson didn’t want to break Twilight’s concentration, so he approached Spike silently. Shaking his arm smoothly, he woke him up.

“Sorry Spike, but I need some parchment, ink and a quill to take some notes. Is there any left?” He asked, thinking on how much parchment Twilight could have used to have such an enormous quantity of notes floating around her.

“Yeah…” He yawned. After stretching himself a bit he headed to the closest drawer, opening it and taking out a quill, an inkwell and parchment. “We have a lot of these hidden all around the library. Anyway, Twilight always manages to run out of everything… Anything else? I’m a bit sleepy…” Spike said, yawning again.

“No, that’s all.” He said, floating everything in the air. “Thank you Spike.”

He nooded and turned around, collapsing on the coushing. Crimson went back to the room, and opening the books on pegasi history he started to read…

Crimson woke up with his head lying on the table. He spent some hours reading and taking notes before falling asleep. After scanning the first chapters of the book, the ones corresponding to the period before Celestia’s reign, he found something interesting. Pegasi were excellent warriors. Crimson found at least four wars against griffin recorded, each one with detailed war tactics and strategies used against them. After taking notes of everything he found interesting, he just rested his head on the table and fell asleep. The library of Ponyville, despite its size, was really well provided. He took his notes and the logbook from the table and floated them inside his backpack. Today was going to be a long day, and he didn’t want to leave anything back. He floated the books on pegasi history and opened the door. The main hall of the library was now completely tidy. It was incredible, regarding how the room was last night. Crimson walked into the kitchen, where Spike prepared more coffee.

“Good morning Spike. Did Twilight finish her work?”

“Yeah, she was still awake when I woke up, organising everything again. She’s been under a lot of pressure these days, as the princess herself asked her to do a report about the dangers of Everfree forest for Copper Compass, the leader of the expedition, two days ago, and she’s been snowed under with work since then.”

“I guess she’s sleeping right now… Would you mind to tell her that the books she recommended where exactly what I needed? And also give her thanks for allowing me to stay for the investigation. I need to do a lot of work and I doubt I’ll be able to come back to tell her by myself.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered” Spike said, as he passed Crimson a cup of coffee. He drank it in one long gulp and headed to the main door.

“I must hurry now; I’ve got tons of work to do. Nice to meet you, Spike!”

“See ya, Crimson.”

The day was bright and cloudless, but he wasn’t going to have time to enjoy it. Today was the day the expedition would leave Ponyville, and Crimson had to go to Zecora’s and get some invisibility brew for himself. If the expedition followed the same route he did, it would cross manticore’s territory, and they will have to stop at Zecora’s.

He headed to the market. The checklist he made last night should contain all he could need. The first thing was getting the food. He would need more than the one that he could bring from his apartment at Manehattan. Shortly afterwards he had almost filled his backpack with all the possible kinds of canned food he was able to find at the market, and still he had some bits left for the cloak and some ropes though he didn’t know where to buy them, and the time was of essence. After a while asking ponies around town about where he could buy the cloak, Crimson was sent to a boutique in the outskirts of the village. As soon as he got in, he was received by a little white unicorn filly.

“Welcome to Rarity’s Boutique. My name is Sweetie Belle. How may I help you?” She said as fast as lightning.

“Sweetie Belle!” said a white unicorn from the rear of the store “I have told you that I do not need any help around here! Just go out with Scootaloo and Apple Bloom.”

“But sis…” she complained “I just want to help! You are just far too busy to take care of everything alone!”

“Just don’t complain and do it Sweetie Belle!”

“Shoot…” said the little filly as she walked through the door.

Crimson felt pretty awkward.

“Is this a good moment?” He asked, as he realized how stressed did the mare look like.

“Yes, yes… It’s just that I’m a bit overwhelmed by work, that’s all. How may I help you?”

“Well, I was looking for some kind of dark green cloak with a hood…”

“It seems like the cloaks had become trendy after all. I’m sorry, but I can’t sell you any of the ones I have got, they are all reserved for the expedition members.”

It seemed like Copper Compass had planned everything carefully. But Crimson needed a cloak, and he wasn’t willing to spend more time searching, so he decided to improvise.

“Oh, that’s a pity.” He said, using the most pompous and stuck-up accent he could achieve. “I admired the incredible labour you were doing for the cloaks of the expedition, and I decided that I should take one of those wonderful cloaks to Canterlot. I had a party tonight there, and I wanted to show this wonderful product to all my guests” He said, while he lightly touched one of them. He turned to look at her. She had a spark in her eyes.

“I got her” Crimson thought

“Oh well, perhaps I can arrange something... But only if you promise to promote this boutique”

“But of course, my lady. I’m a stallion that keeps his word.” He said with that accent again. He could barely stand hearing himself speaking like that.

She headed to the back part, and quickly she brought a dark green cloak with a hood. It was just what he needed.

“Thanks my lady, I guess this will cover the cost of this wonderful cloak.” As he said this, he gave her the bits left in his bag. He would have nothing left for the ropes, but he could manage without them. She looked satisfied, so Crimson turned back and left the boutique. Vanity was such a defect, so easy to take advantage of. He still felt bad for her. It was obvious that she had been working so hard to make each coat for the expedition that he felt guilty for lying to her.

Suddenly Crimson felt a hit on his side. He flew some meters on the air until he landed on the floor. Confused, he tried to stand up, but suddenly something stopped him. He looked up, trying to discover what had attacked him.

“Crimson! You owe me an explanation!”

An Unpleasant Walk

“Crimson, you are telling me right now why you did what you did to me, or I promise I will pick you and fly so high that you will be falling for an hour when I drop you.” Frost threatened Crimson, as she looked him directly in his eyes.

“I guess you didn’t found amusing my little spell yesterday”

“Oh, really!” She yelled.

“Ok, ok! Just let me stand up, please!” Crimson said. She stared at him for a few seconds, breathing deeply. Then, she released her grasp, allowing Crimson to stand up.

“Thanks…Now, I’m telling you why, but not here. Let’s head to the forest. I need to arrive to Zecora’s house before Copper does, and the expedition is almost going to depart.”

Crimson dusted himself and they silently started to walk to the Everfree forest.

“Well, I guess you want to know what I’m planning, because I think you are smart enough to guess why I tried to avoid you getting involved into this.”

“Yes, you told me it was dangerous and many other things. I’m not letting you go alone. It’s also dangerous for you.”

“This is something personal, Frost, that’s why I didn’t want you to get involved. And if we get caught, we will be banned, or something worse. As you are here, and I guess you will ignore me if I tell you to leave, I want to be sure you understand this.” Crimson said as he stopped. This was his last chance to convince her, so he tried to be as assertive as possible. But then he saw the look in her eyes. Crimson realised she wasn’t leaving; it was the look she put every time they had an adventure on sight, and it meant she was eager.

“That look… It has been a long time since the last time I saw it.”

“Then you know what my answer is.”

“I guess so. I hope you brought a backpack, and some food. I got all that I could buy and carry by myself here, but it will not be enough to feed us both during all the expedition.” Crimson said, pointing my backpack.

“I’ve got one with some supplies at the hotel.” She answered. Crimson wondered how she was able to find a bucking free room in Ponyville.

At that moment they arrived to one of the entrances to Everfree forest. The path continued inside the shades of the forest, covered by a smooth mist. The sight was a bit creepy, with twisted branches creating terrifying shadows. When he looked into the forest, Crimson only could remember that pony, that kill. He felt his face turning white under his coat…

“Anything wrong Crimson?” Frost said as soon as she noticed that Crimson was worried.

“Nothing at all. Just go to the hotel as fast as you can and get the backpack, I’ll wait you here.” As fast as he said this she dashed out and flew to the hotel.

Crimson stood still, thinking. Frost still trusted him enough to leave him alone, even after the trick of the soporific spell. He could have run into the forest, leaving her there, instead of dragging her into an adventure Crimson knew he hadn’t planned at all, with all the chances to go wrong by his side. He played around with the idea for some minutes. If he left her here, he would never recover her friendship. She came from Manehattan, following him, because she was worried, because she was his friend… He couldn’t leave her behind.

She arrived a bit later, carrying a backpack that seemed to be designed specially for pegasi. Its shape allowed Frost to fly comfortably, still being big enough for being used in long trips. It had an auxiliary belt that went just behind the wings, to make the bag stable.

“I thought I would have to search for you inside the forest…” She said as she landed.

“I can’t deny that the idea of leaving you back crossed my mind, but I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Thanks… now lets hurry up. As I came here I saw the expedition making preparations. I guess that after a short speech of the Ponyville’s mayor they will leave.”

Crimson wondered if Zecora would give him the invisibility brew or the herbs. If he wanted to keep up with his almost nonexistent plan he would need them.

They walked for some minutes until they found the main path that lead to Zecora’s house. Perhaps they could find a way to do this without the invisibility brew, but the herbs were something Crimson would need to get into the library, and the only place he knew for sure he would find them was at Zecora’s.

The sound of some birds singing and the branches slowly dancing at the rhythm of the wind was the only thing that broke the silence of the forest. Crimson, annoyed by the silent atmosphere, started to think about his argument with Opal. Perhaps Frost could tell him something…

“Frost, I’ve got to know… Did Opal tell you anything about our argument at Manehattan?”

“She did. She was truly angry and didn’t stop repeating that if you wanted to go alone you should have just asked it instead of being such a…”

“Stop, I think I don’t want to hear that.”

“Well, as a summary, I just tried to convince her to come with me. But she was really mad at you…”

They arrived to the hut. It was surrounded by a light green fog, probably produced by the great amount of brews Zecora had to make for the expedition. Crimson knocked the door and heard some hoofsteps inside.

“Hi Zecora. I have returned, as promised. Sorry for the delay.”

“Don’t worry, my friend. Come in, hurry, and tell me what happened” She said with that peculiar and poetic tone she used with every phrase.

They went inside. The atmosphere was heavy with the vapours that the cauldron sent out. Everything was exactly the same as last time Crimson visited. The same masks, all the herbs hanging from the ceiling… everything was the same. And it still crept him out.

“Zecora, this is my friend Frost Cloud. She will come with me to the sister’s palace.” Crimson said as Frost Cloud shook Zecora’s hoof energetically.

“I must ask you a favour.”

“Tell me first why your visit was delayed and why you came back with a scar across your face” She told me. Crimson could guess why she asked, as the scar wasn’t precisely small.

“Zecora, I understand you want to know, but we haven’t got much time before Copper’s expedition arrives, and I need enough invisibility brew for us two to cross manticore’s territory at least one time and more of the herbs that you gave me last time we met.” He said. She looked at him doubtful. “I promise to tell you everything when we meet again. I swear it.”

Zecora nooded and headed to a larder full of different herbs. Extracting some little bags, she threw them to Frost.

“Here you have the herbs and some tobacco as well. And this time take care, as yours is one story I would like to hear. As for the brew, I’m afraid there is nothing left for you.”

“Don’t worry Zecora, I understand it. Thank you for the herbs anyway, they shall be useful. Now we must leave, Copper will arrive at any moment, and we should not be here when that happens. By the way, please, don’t mention our visit. It’s important that he doesn’t know that we are following his expedition.” He said.

Crimson risked everything trusting on Zecora, but he decided to go straight forward with the truth this time. He had the feeling that Zecora would understand.

“Take care, my friend. I’d like to chat with you again …” she said as they got outside.

Frost and Crimson hid inside some nearby bushes. As they waited for Copper’s expedition to arrive, Crimson started to mentally review his plan. They would follow them until they arrived to the boundary of the manticore’s territory. At that point would come the difficulties. As Zecora was unable to give them invisibility brew, they would have to follow the expedition without it. Frost Cloud could still fly over the territory, but Crimson would have to surround it. Crimson gulped as he realised that, if Copper chose to follow the manticores route, surely was because surrounding it and going through the forest was even more dangerous…

They heard some hoofsteps approaching. It was Copper Compass, with five of Celestia’s guards. He was a tall light brown coated unicorn with a blond mane. He was the official cartographer of the Academy, as well as one of the most powerful unicorns Crimson had ever met. His domain on magic was pretty impressive, and he hadn’t developed it just because he found no interest on doing it. He found much more interesting travelling and charting all the places he visited. Crimson met him during the expedition he did to zebra where he truly met him and where he became his friend. But something changed during this last years. He forgot about his friends and focused on his career completely. At that point they started to get distanced, until they finally lost touch.

“I guess the other members of the expedition followed directly another path” Frost said, waking Crimson up from his reverie.

“Perhaps. But trust me, just follow Copper. I know him well enough to know that he will not allow the other members of the expedition to keep moving without him.” His ego grew a lot these last years. His successes at several missions for the academy granted him promotions, and as he was promoted to more relevant posts, he grew big headed. He became a conceited idiot, and that made him predictable.

They waited for an hour hidden inside the bush. Crimson could distinguish Copper’s voice while he spoke with Zecora. The guards remained completely silent. Meanwhile, outside they could hear the wind moving the leaves of the trees around us, creating a creepier atmosphere. Crimson shivered. He hated Everfree forest. Suddenly, a thunder sounded just above their heads.

“Nice, a storm is approaching.” Frost said. “Better pick something to cover yourself; this sounds like a big one”.

Crimson had always wondered about the bond that pegasi had with the weather and how they were able to understand it and control it.

“One question Frost… Why pegasi are unable to control the weather over the Everfree forest?” He asked while he opened his backpack to get the cloak out

“Well, I must say I don’t know it for certain, you know that weather control was something that never interested me… But it’s true that somepony I asked about it told me that the magic this forest had was too strong, so if pegasi wanted to control the weather here they had to be aware of the new clouds appearing from nowhere, the old ones disappearing, the ones that start raining alone…It’s almost an impossible task.”

“That explains why Copper hadn’t used the weather patrol to clear this storm… But still they could have avoided that a big storm like this appeared for a while, no?”

“They could, but the cloud that has formed seems too big for a single squad, so I guess it would have been useless anyway, as Ponyville has only got one.”

As she finished saying this, both covered their heads with their cloaks, expecting the rainfall soon. They turned around as they heard Zecora’s door open. Copper trotted outside first, followed by the palace guards ,that carried several bags each. Copper waited until all the guards were out and turned around to say something Crimson was unable to hear. After that, all the guards flew away leaving him alone.

“Why would he send all the guards in advance? It doesn’t make much sense to bring protection if you make it fly away.” Frost said. She was right, it didn’t make any sense. Unless…

“Frost, fly and follow the guards as fast as you can! Copper’s going to teleport!” Crimson remembered he was able to use that spell, but he didn’t took it into account. This changed his plan completely.

“But that means that you will have to go by feet alone!”

“I don’t care, if we lose the track of the expedition this is over!” He said, as a bright light flash indicated that Copper had already teleported. “Hurry, I’ll handle myself!”

Frost disliked the idea, but she couldn’t deny that Crimson was right. As he lost all the maps to the Royal Sister’s palace during the attack, they relied completely on his memory. Even though he could remember almost all the path he followed, the day the fog surrounded them Crimson had to rely completely on those maps, so he couldn’t remember the last part of the trip. She started to flip her wings, rising from the floor. She turned around and stared at him.

“Please, be careful.”

“Don’t worry, just go! At dusk pay attention, I’ll use a flare to show you my location.” Crimson said. Then she nodded and dashed away. He was on his own again.

He knew the path to follow; he could remember it perfectly from the last time, he walked it, but… Every moving shadow reminded him of the manticores, ripping apart the ponies of his party. He stared the path for some time, trying to overcome the terror that wandering alone into the Everfree forest provoked him. Suddenly a felt a slight touch at his back woke him of his reverie.

“You must go again, or you will not know the truth that lies at the end.”

Zecora…

“At the end of what?” Crimson asked without turning around. The raindrops started to fall from the sky followed by a thunder.

“Life is a path, my dear, and you must walk it to know what will appear.”

Taking all the courage he had, Crimson started to walk inside the forest. He had to do it; he couldn’t allow Copper nor the Academy to keep their lie. He had to protect that library and find a way to tell the truth to everypony, but to do it first he had to walk.

The day was almost over and Crimson was exhausted. He stopped at the edge of a clearing, lying down under a tree. The heavy rain was slowly substituted by a light drizzle, as the clouds started to clear up in the sky. The sight was wonderful. The dark blue sky was covered with fire red clouds, ignited by the sun that hid in the horizon, hidden from his sight.

He had spent several hours walking alone with the only company of the sounds of the forest and his thoughts. Trying to find and follow the track of the expedition, almost erased by the heavy rain that falled during all the evening, was a hard task. The raindrops hit his hood almost rhythmically. They were just like drums beating in his ears.

At the beginning, as he walked deeper in the forest, the trees grew taller and twisted, and the amount of rain that got through the thick layer of leaves that the trees formed got smaller. Anyway, it was enough to almost erase the track of the expedition. Crimson had to be fast, and the muddy soil of the forest didn’t made it easy. Finally, after an hour, the rain erased the track and he had to follow the path by myself, using his memories about his own expedition to do it.

When he arrived to a clearing, he decided that it was the moment. Concentrating himself, he accumulated all the possible magic on his horn, generating a plasma ball. This kind of sorceries always left him exhausted, but it was the only idea he had to make a flare. With a final effort he sent the ball high into the sky, hoping that Frost saw it. Now he just had to wait…

Staring at his backpack, he remembered the logbook. He could use his horn to get some light and read a bit. He needed something else to think about rather than the image of the forest getting darker in front of his eyes.

The next few years were of great progress. The princess herself collaborated at the investigations carried at the New Academy for Magic Development, inaugurated soon after her arrival. Her vast experience on the use of magic was truly helpful, and her will to help and to integrate with the ponies that surrounded her only grew with time. She was indeed really wise, and even thought she wasn’t allowed to have any political or administrative position, her word was heard in the parliament and respected, and her advice was usually sought. I didn’t saw her ever again as happy as she was during these days, seeking for knowledge, teaching and learning. But that was long ago.

While everypony collaborated, everything worked well. But the arrival of new ponies, attracted by the success of democracy, impaired our capability to generate enough food. Hunger started to spread through the country. The soil of the old pony lands couldn’t compete with the fertile terrains of Equestria, and that was something that many ponies knew, and that the parliament debated thoroughly. Some ideas arose from the parliament sessions; ideas such as expelling the last ones to arrive back to Equestria, using magic to improve the productivity of crops, or even invading Equestria. Princess Luna was present that day at the parliament, remaining silent during all the delirious session, in which crazy ideas arose due to the hysteria of ponies. When the night arrived, she stood up, remaining in silience. After a few seconds, all the parliaments were silent, awaiting for the words of the princess. Her speech was long. She spoke about all the ideas she heard during the session, arriving to the conclusion that magical investigations should be carried to obtain the food. She rejected any other ideas, as she considered them uncharacteristic of a developed nation as ours. She was horrified at the idea of invading Equestria. What she wanted the less was a war between ponies. At the end of her speech, the parliament voted, being chosen the idea chosen by the princess.

We were aware of the presence of spies from Equestria among our parliaments, but what we didn’t expect was the chain of events that came next. Celestia started to distrust our jet little country. The mention of the possibility of war during our parliament session was disturbing enough for her and she started making invasion plans. We knew this through a contact we had in the palace, and our counter-planning was carried with the greatest secretism. Even though Luna was informed of the situation, she refused to contribute in anyway to war plans. She was outraged by the idea that her own sister planned an attack to a nation created freely by ponies, after all the efforts they made to defeat Discord and restore peace. It was something she condemned and she defended diplomatic dialog as the only solution. Though many ponies disliked war, the idea of living again under the yoke of Celestia’s reign was worse for them. But anyway the advice of princess Luna was followed and a diplomatic mission was sent. After a couple of weeks, only one diplomat returned, bringing a message from Celestia “My reign will ensure long term peace, and to do that, your nation shall disappear”. It was a threat that we couldn’t ignore, we had to react.

This was the first true battle of the war. It happened at the northern frontier of Equestria. The plan was simple, to stop the advance of Celestia’s army before she reached our territory. For that we positioned a limited group, formed by the few volunteers that offered to accomplish the mission. I was among those volunteer ponies. As I said before, I have fought for democracy since the very first day of the war, and I will fight for it until my very last one… Everypony that volunteered for the mission had never seen a war or the effects of brute unleashed violence. Though we lived the period of conflict between the pony tribes, we didn’t saw anything like what we witnessed that day. The army Celestia summoned for the battle was colossal. Ponies of all races, equipped with armours golden as the sun charged against our position and our little battle force was overwhelmed easily by the numbers. The images of the massacre were something that shocked me at that moment. Now that many years have passed and many blood has been spilt, the coldness with which I remember it only convinces me more of the horrors of war. We retreated as fast as we could to Philopolis, where we intended to organise our last stand against Celestia. No other city in the Republic was as fortified as Philopolis was, and there was where…

“Crimson!”

Crimson raised his head from the logbook. Frost Cloud approached him slowly, flying with great effort. He put the logbook away inside the backpack and stood up.

“Are you alright?” Frost asked, as she landed difficultly.

“Yeah, I guess. How was the flight?”

“Exhausting. I never flew so much distance at once…”

Frost approached the tree where Crimson laid a few moments ago and sat under. Her breathing was laboured. Her blue mane was filled up of green leafs and little branches and her white wings where pretty dirty. Crimson stared at her and then he observed himself, almost fully covered in mud. They were awful.

“I thought that I was going to be the only one that got dirty this time.”

“You don’t know how difficult is to fly low, near the top of the trees. It was the only way to follow the expedition without being noticed. Copper had a couple of guards on the air all the time, and sometimes I had to…”

Crimson started to laugh. He could guess what truly happened.

“It’s not funny, Crimson!”

“Of course it is! You crashed!”

Crimson kept laughing for a while. When they where foals, Frost wasn’t a strong flyer, what supposed that in some of their adventures she had some catastrophic landings. Because of her lack of ability in flight, she was expelled from the flight academy, so she invested time in her true passion, machine creation. Slowly Crimson stopped laughing.

“Have you got enough?” She asked, annoyed.

“Yes, yes…” He said, trying to get his breath back. “What took you so long? I sent the flare like an hour ago”

“Copper sent some flying patrols to search for the origin of the flare. It seems that it wasn’t such a good idea after all... If I had tried to search you at that moment, I would have been discovered for sure. You were really lucky that, once grounded, no pony could see the origin of the flare… We can camp here, Coppers camp is a mile away, so we can catch them tomorrow”

“Yeah, good idea… I don’t think I would be able to walk more anyway”

Crimson got the mat that hanged from his bag and laid it on the floor. It wasn’t as comfortable as a sleeping bag, but it was lighter, and with the cloak as a blanket it would be a nice bed.

As he laid on the mat, Crimson looked at the stars. The sky was naked, and the moon was bright. It was a beautiful night.

The Spectre of Glory

Crimson gazed upon the camp the Copper’s expedition was setting, hidden in the grass of a nearby hill. The frenetic activity was completely coordinated by Copper that, standing in the middle of the main dancehall of the palace, shouted orders to everypony that crossed his sight. The tents and canvas soon rose from the floor, efficiently set by the soldiers of Celestia’s guard. Meanwhile, several members of the academy set several tables under the biggest of the canvas, carrying inside several instruments and tools for the excavations. Also, some of the guards started to set a perimeter around the camp, starting several fires at regular distances.

Crimson turned around to see Frost Cloud that rested against a fallen column, part of what once seemed to be a shrine, covered by her own cloak, sleeping. Both were exhausted by the trip through Everfree forest. Following Coppers expedition had proven to be a harder task than they thought. In order to have enough time to surround the manticore’s territory, Crimson and Frost had to pass Copper’s expedition, something that implied that they had to spend some complete nights walking without any rest.

“Wake up Frost; it’s your turn to stand guard…”

As Crimson shook her, Frost grumbled a bit.

“Come on, I know you’re tired, but I also need to sleep.”

Frost yawned as she stretched, waking up with a painful expression.

“This column isn’t a very comfortable place to sleep… Anything new about our friends down there?”

“Nope. They keep finishing the set up, and the perimeter, that’s all. But anyway we shouldn’t lower our guard. They shall start to patrol the surroundings soon. After my sleep we should move and find a better refuge inside the palace’s ruins.”

Crimson approached the place that Frost occupied a few moments ago, trying to make himself comfortable. He took off his cloak and put it on as a blanket, preparing to sleep, closing his eyes.

“I don’t think we’ve got time for that…” Frost said, as she gazed upon the camp.

Crimson approached the top of the hill again, intrigued by her words. At the middle of the dancefloor, ten of the Celestia’s guards stood in formation in front of Copper as he gave them their orders.

“Shoot! It seems like patrols shall start right now… Get your backpack quick, we must move to the palace. Here we are too exposed” Crimson said, as he put on his own cloak and backpack again.

They couldn’t rely on camouflage for not being discovered. The low grass and the grey colour of the soil made their cloaks useless for that purpose. Crimson took a quick look on the southern wall, searching for an entrance. They could try to fly through one of the huge window holes that covered the walls of the palace, but that would make them catch the attention of the guards… No, they had to find a stealthy entrance. From what he remembered, the south side of the castle was the most damaged one, so he decided to give it a try and walk. Perhaps they could find a hole in the wall.

The guards started their patrol, flying above them slowly. Crimson pushed Frost inside a bush near the wall of the palace, hiding them both inside. After being sure the guards had flown away, Crimson turned to Frost.

“Stick to the walls of the palace, and pray for not being seen”

After walking for a while, they found a big hole on the wall. The huge blocks of granite had been melted by what should have been a really big explosion of magical energy.

“Wow, that was a big shot…” Frost said as she saw the hole on the wall

“Shot?” Crimson asked with curiosity.

“Yeah well, it’s part of something that I’m investigating. The magical crystals can be used for producing energy and automating machines, but the can also be used with military purposes. They can be built as projectiles that, with the right spell attached, can produce explosions of high temperatures. I must admit that the way we discovered this wasn’t pleasant…”

“So you are telling me that you are developing weaponry? Why would Celestia need to do that? Equestria haven’t had any conflict in a millennium…”

“I don’t know… I just know that she is encouraging us to go deeper into these investigations and financing us.”

“I wonder what she is up to… Let’s get in, we must take shelter and find a place to rest. I doubt I can stay awake for long…”

The hall was gigantic. The floor and the walls were covered by black marble with white veins, almost impossible to distinguish under the thick layer of dirt and rubble from the half-demolished vault, but visible in the places that the rain had cleaned recently. The windows where cracked and broken, but still some pieces of the blue and purple stained glass remained. Coming through them, the branches of big trees came into the hall, probably belonging to an inner garden. Though the holes it had were big, it was still possible to see that the vault was once covered by frescos that represented the starry sky of the night. At the end of the hall, now illuminated by a lonely sun ray, there was an obsidian statue with silver ornaments representing Luna, with her wings spread and looking to the skies. It was a wonderful image, majestic. The detail of the statue was amazing. Behind the statue, a big wooden door, made of almost rotten and eaten away ebony, lead to a stairway.

“Wow, when you told me about the palace, you didn’t told me about this hall. It’s wonderful!”

Crimson still gazed the hall with an absent look. Apart from the statue and rubble from the vault, the room was empty.

“I never got to this part of the palace. When I started to explore the palace, I headed to the north, so this is the first time I see this part.”

“So… how big is this palace?”

“At least twice as Canterlot’s. And the buried parts may make it even bigger. This place is full of secrets. I can feel them calling me. It’s the same feeling I had the first time I came here… Let’s move to the stairway, probably there are rooms upstairs.”

The spiral staircase went through a tower, turning around a single mid pillar. Several holes in the wall revealed the wonderful vegetal vault of the Everfree forest, so huge that it got lost in the horizon. They saw some guards flying around the palace, too concentrated gazing the ground to notice their presence. After going up for a minute, they reached the door of a new floor.

“Opal, stay put, I’m going to open the door.”

Crimson stuck to the wall as he opened the door. You never knew what could be behind a closed door in this kind of places. After assuring that the path was sure, they got into the corridor.

“What is this place?”

“It’s just like Canterlot’s palace. These were the service rooms. They are placed above the great dancehalls and so they can be quickly summoned if needed. Just behind this door should be the room of the servants head of this side of the palace, usually the bigger one…”

Crimson opened the door and while he looked Frost took a step forward, just to find that there was nothing to step on. Reacting quickly, Frost caught Crimson’s cloak, pulling him inside. The open door now revealed a hole that got through several floors of the palace. Frost approached the edge of the crater. Looking up, she saw the sky. The hole went through all the floors of the palace, digging deeply inside the foundations. Breathing heavily and with his heart beating wildly, Crimson stared at Frost, unable to say a word.

“That was a close one... Next time look at the door you are opening!” Frost said.

Crimson nodded. After he laid for a while against the wall, recovering his breath.

“Ok, lets try the rooms on the other side of the corridor, if we are lucky perhaps we find some floor to step on…”

Now, taking much more care, Crimson opened the first door at the other side of the corridor. The room was a small chamber made completely of granite. An old metal candelabrum and the rusty remains of a bed was all what the room had. The rest had slowly rotten during a millennium of oversight. Still, the room was all they needed. The ceiling was complete, no noticeable cracks were visible on the walls and the light that the small window provided was more than enough.

“I think I’m taking a long nap. You should do the same Frost, we’ve got some work to do tonight and I don’t think we need to stand guards while we are here.”

Crimson laid on his mat, displayed over the granite floor. It definitively wasn’t the best bed, but at least they were safe. Meanwhile, Frost looked absently through the only small window the room had.

“Aren’t you tired?” Crimson asked

“Yes, I am. But… I can’t stop thinking about something.”

“And that is?”

“When you get the proofs you need, if you get any, how will you convince everypony that what you are telling is true?”

“Don’t worry about that now, we’ll find that out when we return to Manehattan.”

Though Frost wasn’t too satisfied with the answer, she leaned on her mat a closed her eyes. Crimson turned around and bit his lip. He wished he knew the answer to that question…

Crimson opened his eyes. For first time since the manticore’s attack he hadn’t dreamed with that pony… He turned around to the window. A single moon ray got into the room through it, hardly lighting the granite walls of the room. He then saw Frost Cloud. The moon ray struck directly onto her face, illuminating her almost white coat and making her blue mane shine. She seemed so peaceful… It was a beautiful sight. He could have spent the whole night observing her...

“Frost… Time to wake up…” Crimson said as he shook her gently

Frost turned around groaning, taking her face out of the moonlight. She slowly opened her eyes and stood up, stretching her wings wide open. Crimson opened his backpack, floating out a couple of baked beans cans.

“Ughh, this again? Is that we’ll never be able to run out of these?”

Crimson opened both cans and after approached his horn to them and started to heat the beans. At least this way they could eat hot without drawing the attention of the guards…

“Look on the bright side, at least we’ve got some hot food to eat…”

They silently ate their baked beans. Though they hadn’t eaten any other thing during the past few days, they were starving. Both savoured them as they were delicacies. After finishing her can, Frost threw it away and turned to Crimson

“Well, what’s the plan?”

Crimson stared at her. Slowly he finished his canned food while Frost waited impatiently.

“First, we must discover where we are. I can’t do nothing if we don’t arrive to the library. After that, I shall use the herbs to get in.”

They got out of the room, Crimson’s horn shone as a lantern, illuminating the corridor. It was a dead end, and if they wanted to go to another section of the castle, they would have to go downstairs again. They followed the staircase, arriving to the same hall they got in through. The rubble blocked their way downstairs anyway, so they had to return to the Luna’s hall again. Under the moonlight the room was completely different. The white veins of the black marble now shone with a spectral glow, illuminating the whole room. Crimson turned off the glow of his horn, allowing them to see a wonderful display. The frescos on the vault now shone with their own light, perfectly emulating the wonderful sky of the night, which, combined with the glow of the floor and the walls, gave the feeling of being floating among the stars.

“This is… amazing!” Frost said, breaking the absolute silence that reigned in the room.

“It is like the marble and the vault fresco’s reacted to the moonlight…”

Both admired the now ruined hall, impressed by the magical display.

“What we do now? The way down is blocked and the only way to head to the north is going out of the palace…” Frost said, being able to slip away from the reverie of the fairytale hall. Crimson still observed the hall, meditative.

“Crimson, is there anypony in there?!”

Crimson nodded and looked Frost in the eyes.

“Perhaps there is no need to get out of the palace…” Crimson murmured.

Frost looked at him intrigued while he approached one of the windows. Breaking the few pieces of stained crystal that where left, Crimson leaned out. There, a floor below them, was an inner garden. A thousand years of uncontrolled growth had allowed the trees to break through the windows of the hall, granting a way down.

“Now I regret not bringing a rope…”

Crimson hanged himself from one of the biggest branches, slowly climbing until he was on it. He approached the tree’s trunk. It was so wide that Crimson couldn’t encircle it. Slowly, he started to let himself down, jumping from one branch to another. Meanwhile, Frost stared at him, flipping her wings, floating still in the air. She had smile on her face.

“You know… You could help or something…” Crimson hinted.

“See this as a little revenge for the soporific spell.”

“Fine…” Crimson grumbled as he kept descending.

When he arrived to the bottom, he found what he expected. The square garden was once some kind of patio, surrounded by a dark corridor, barely lighted by the moon rays that came in through the arches that separated it from the garden. The tiled floor was covered in dried up leafs, piled up during a millennium of carelessness. The roots of the gigantic trees broke the floor around them, making the blue and white tiles emerge from the layer of leafs. In the centre of the garden was a fountain, now silent. On top of it, a white marble statue with golden armour represented a Celestia’s guard. The armour covered the body of the stallion almost completely and, though it seemed different to the standard Canterlot’s guard armour, it was still recognizable. The stallion stood on his hinderlegs with his wings extended. On his right hoof he held a golden spear while the other hoof pointed forward. Though the statue was just life-size, its presence was imposing.

In the opposite corner of the patio Crimson saw a pile of rubble, tall enough to reach one of the first floor’s broken windows. It covered almost completely one of the trees. That was their way up.

He turned around as he heard Frost smoothly landing on the layer of leafs.

“Follow me; I think I know where we are. We haven’t distanced ourselves too much from my original route. Perhaps I can remember the path I followed…”

Slowly both climbed the enormous pile of rubble and dust. When they arrived to its top, they found another broken window. This time the crystals were not stained. If Crimson was right, the hall they would find would be the typical training hall for the palace’s guards. The hall was pitch dark.

“Let us see if can light this a bit”

Crimson’s horn started to glow intensely. The white light emanated by his revealed the hall. It was made fully of granite. From the old walls hanged rusty iron bars, holding yet the tore pieces of some old flags and tapestries. In the middle of the room, a barely deep pit was the place where the training took place. Gazing over it, stood the statue of a stallion standing on his hinderlegs, holding an enormous sword. If Crimson remembered right, at the other side of the room would be the path they had to follow to arrive the library’s location.

“This palace makes no sense… Who would anypony put a place like this in front of a dancehall? It simply makes no sense…” Frost remarked.

Crimson just started to walk to the central pit, finally lighting the other side of the room. There was the door he looked for. As he approached the door, a faint light appeared under it. Crimson quickly turned off the light of his horned and turned to Frost.

“Hey! What the…” Frost tried to say, as Crimson put his hand over her mouth and dragged her behind the statue.

Just at that moment the door opened. Crimson could hear the hoofsteps of a couple of ponies getting inside the room. Now the room was lighted by the lantern the intruders.

“Come on, just stop being paranoid dude. See? There is no light here! I don’t even know why we are doing patrols around here. This place is completely abandoned!”

Crimson stuck out his head a little, being able to see the two unknown ponies. They were both suited up with the Celestia’s guard armour. Crimson was unable to see the faces below the helmets, but he felt the look of one of the guards right in his direction.

“I swear I saw a light coming from this room…”

“You and your imagination… Let’s return to the camp. I thought I got rid with this kind of stupid patrols and expeditions when I got into the Celestia’s personal guard and…” His voice started to fade in the distance as the room suddenly darkened.

Crimson released Frost, who struggled a bit as she stood up.

“There was no need for that!” She protested.

“Don’t be that sensitive. I could avoid doing things like that if you just kept an eye on what’s around you…”

She opened her mouth, trying to reply Crimson, but he swiftly interrupted her.

“Let’s move on. We’re almost there, and I don’t want to waste time arguing about stupidities, overall when patrols are around.”

Frost seemed annoyed by the comment, but understood. She kept silent as Crimson opened the door slowly. Once sure the guards had left, they followed the corridor. At its end, they found a new hall. The ceiling had collapsed completely, creating a pit, surrounded by the halls that rose on the superior floors. Crimson slowly approached the middle of the hall and breathed slowly. They had arrived.

“This is the place Frost… Finally I’m back”

“Even being as ruined as it is, this palace is wonderful…” She said looking at the few visible parts of the walls where wonderful geometric patterns made of colourful tiles finally got lost under piles of rubble.

“Frost, now its time we separate…” Crimson said, his voice fading off as he looked the expression in her face.

“Wait, what you mean by separate?! You are leaving me here!”

“I can’t teleport us both into the library. The last time I came here, I was barely able to teleport myself that far, even though I was under the effect of the Zebra herbs. I’m sorry, but you must stay here.”

“Getting this far and not being able to see that place by myself… It’s horseshit…”

“I’m sorry Frost. But I still need your help.” Crimson said, as he put his hoof on her friends shoulder. “I need you to keep an eye on Copper’s camp. Just try to see if they do anything unusual. At the slightest sign of trouble come back here and wait hidden. I will come back in some hours.”

She was disappointed, but she knew there was nothing she could do about staying behind. She turned around, looking for a place to sit down.

“If I’m left behind, at least I want to be with you until you disappear.”

Crimson nodded and untied his backpack. He opened it and took out all the food cans left and the cloak. Crimson knew he would need as much space as possible inside his backpack, so he had to get rid of anything that wasn’t indispensable. He kept a couple of cans, the logbook, the Zebra’s explorer guide, the pipe, the herbs and tobacco bags and the knife.

Crimson floated the pipe and little bit of the herbs outside the backpack and started to smoke. With each drag, he felt his magic being enhanced. After a while he finished the herbs inside the pipe and dropped the ashes to the floor before he put the pipe away. He was ready. With a slight glow of his horn he started to use his prospecting spell. Being able to visualize the layers of different materials, he started to search deeper, until he found what he sought. Under some layers of rubble and dirt, there was the library.

“Got you… Frost, get inside your backpack as much canned food as you can. If there’s anything left, hide it. See you in a couple of hours.” Crimson said swiftly.

His horn started to glow intensely as he concentrated. The great amount of magic made his mane start to float unnaturally and his coat stand on end. After an intense flash of white light, no pony stood in the middle of the hall.

“Crimson, please be careful.”

“Ughhhh…” Crimson grumbled.

Crimson laid on the library’s floor, stunned. He opened his eyes slowly. He did not remember what happened. The last thing he remembered was a flash of light and nothing else…

He had a terrible headache. He tried to stand up, but he was too dizzy. Falling on his hinderlegs, he laid himself on the floor again. He looked around, trying to discover where he was. Everything he could distinguish in the darkness was a blood stain. He touched his head. He was bleeding…

Crimson stood up slowly, leaning on the wall. He felt the effect of the zebra herbs fading away. He must have been unconscious for a while. He started to remember now that he had miscalculated and appeared a couple of meters over the floor. His head hit a statue on his way down, knocking him out.

He concentrated as much as possible to get a weak glow from his horn, enough to light the shelves around him. It was time to start walking… Overcoming his dizziness, Crimson followed the endless lines of books looking for the center of the library. He vaguely remembered following the same path the last time he came here. Suddenly, the shelves stop appearing into Crimson’s sight, but instead turned into a plain wall. He focused, and made his horn glow a bit more. There was the fresco one of the frescos he first saw. It was a gigantic image of Nightmare Moon, gazing imperturbable upon all kinds of ponies. Under the image, with golden letters, a short slogan caught Crimson’s sight.

“For peace and knowledge…”

Crimson finally got to the center of the library. He made a final effort, getting all the light he could from his horn. The room was amazing. He hadn’t realised before, but the enormous bookcases were displayed radially around the center of the library. On the side of each bookcase, enormous tapestries represented scenes from Equestria’s early days. In the middle of the hall, surrounded by some tables, was the pedestal where the logbook floated last time. The floor around the pedestal was an enormous mosaic representing the day and night cycle, controlled by Celestia and Luna.

Suddenly, Crimson turned around. Did he just hear some hoofsteps? He kept looking around slowly, illuminating with his horn the hall. There was nopony there… He stood silent near the pedestal, trying to hear anything. He heard the sound of hoofsteps fading away in the distance, almost imperceptible. Someone was here…

Crimson slowly reduced the glow of his horn until it disappeared and hid behind one of the chairs of the surrounding tables. The glow of some crystals still illuminated the room slightly, charged by the exposure to Crimson’s magic.

“You think that will hide you from me?” Asked a mysterious voice that seemed to come from everywhere.

Crimson looked around, but saw nopony. He slowly floated the knife out from his backpack. Its polished steel blade reflected the light emanating from the gemstones all around. Its handle glowed in white, firmly gripped by Crimson’s magic.

“Reveal yourself, corward! Its easy to be threatening from the shadows…” Crimson shouted defiant. He wanted to see what he was facing before doing anything stupid, and provoking his invisible enemy was the only way to make him .

Crimson froze still, as he felt something at the back of his head.

“As you wish…” The mysterious voice said at his ear. How could have approached Crimson so silently? Crimson turned around, slashing the air with the knife. He didn’t hit his objective, but he saw the shadow of a pony fading in the darkness.

Crimson heard hoofsteps coming from every direction, but he saw no pony. His enemy was toying with him. Suddenly, he heard some hoofsteps approaching. His right hinderleg started to burn in pain. He saw a shadow and a sword levitating by its side, fading into the darkness again. He was bleeding.

“Fight, you coward!”

He appeared among the shadows, like emerging from a thick fog. He was black coated unicorn with a white mane, equipped with silver light armour. By his side floated a long dark steel sword, stained with blood. As he approached, Crimson prepared to strike. Now that he saw his enemy was his turn to hit back.

Crimson started to trot, accelerating toward the tall stallion. The mysterious pony stood still as he saw Crimson charging. When he was close enough, Crimson jumped, heading the knife towards him. With a graceful movement of his sword, he disarmed Crimson, and with a slight glow of his horn, imprisoned Crimson with invisible chains.

“Pathetic…”

Trapped, Crimson struggled uselessly against the magic of his enemy. The tall stallion approached him slowly, enjoying the terrorized expression on his face. Crimson could feel his end was close. He could perfectly picture that enormous sword stabbing through him.

The black unicorn took his helmet off revealing his face. His dark blue eyes stared at Crimson, who felt as if he was made of glass, unable to hide anything from his enemies gaze. He approached his head slowly to Crimsons ear.

“Don’t fear me. I’m not going to kill you… Not jet at least…”

His horn started to glow in white again.

“Now sleep, I’ve got some issues pending. Well chat later, I promise…”

The black unicorn touched slightly Crimson’s head and laughed. As Crimsons vision clouded, he could only wonder if he would see Frost again…

Crimson’s head buzzed. Slowly, he opened his eyes just to close them swiftly harmed by the brightness that surrounded him. After a few seconds he tried again, forcing himself to keep his eyes open. He was inside one of the tents the expedition had brought.

The brown fabric of the tent was covered with maps and notes. He tried to stand up, only to fall again on a smooth blue carpet. His legs were tied together, and his right hinderleg started to hurt again. Had Copper captured him? He had never seen any royal guard armoured like that, and less using those kind of swords or magic. It seemed like he fused with the shadows, moving stealthily among them. That wasn’t their stile.

Crimson struggled a bit, trying to loosen the ropes but it was useless, they were too tight. He looked around, searching for something he could use to cut the ropes. Suddenly, the piece of fabric that served as door for the tent opened and a hooded figure got inside the tent. As he took away his cloak, Crimson saw the black unicorn again. This time he didn’t wore the silver armour, allowing Crimson to see his cutiemark, a book pierced by a dragon claw. Beside him floated the logbook…

“Who are you?” Crimson asked. He wanted to know at least who was going to be his executioner. He knew that, after discovering the logbook inside his backpack, he would probably be sentenced to death or something worse.

“Don’t you think that I should be the one asking the questions here, boy?” The black unicorn said, staring Crimson with his piercing look. Crimson held his gaze looking at him defiantly. After a few seconds he nodded.

“Fine. Who are you boy, and how did you got this book? Be sincere in your answers, I don’t like liars.”

“My name is Crimson Zephyr. I’m native from Manehattan, though I have spent the last six years in Canterlot working for the Academy as an explorer and archaeologist. And I got that book in the library where you found me and almost cut off my right hinderleg!” Crimson answered aggressively.

The black unicorn laughed.

“So you came here with the expedition and wandered alone inside the palace, suddenly discovering a library buried by tons of rocks, all by yourself, without any previous information? Seems legit, boy…”

Crimson shook his head confused. He assumed that Crimson was part of the expedition. That could only mean one thing…

“You aren’t part of the expedition right?” Crimson asked.

“No, I’m not. And taking into account your question seems like you aren’t part of the expedition either…” The unicorn said. He looked at him puzzled. “But if you didn’t come with the expedition, what are you doing here? And how did you discover the library?”

Crimson bit his lip. Should he tell the mysterious unicorn how he got the book? Should he tell him why is he here trying to protect old books from being destroyed?

“I’m here because I want to protect the truth.”

“Don’t you think that the truth behind the book would be protected better if it was left where you found it?”

Crimson looked at him puzzled.

“Before you ask, I read it also.” The unicorn cleared.

“If you read it, then you must understand. Ponies deserve to know!”

“Yes they do, but you think they want to? And most important, do you think Celestia will allow you to do it?”

Crimson was caught with his guard lowered. This was something he had tried not to think about.

“Well, I thought that if I could gather some proofs before the expedition got to the library, I could convince…”

“You are such an idealist, boy. The only way to convince ponies that the things told here are true is that they stopped regarding Celestia as a goddess and started seeing her as the dictator she is. And for that to happen many things must happen first.”

Crimson looked at the logbook as it floated to the desk near the entrance of the tent. Then he started to feel the ropes how the ropes were untied. He was free.

“Answering to your question, boy… I’ve got many names, but you can call me Black Claw.”

Crimson stood up and looked at the black coated unicorn.

“I’m confused. Why do set me free? I tried to stab you before.”

“I suppose you though I was one of the royal guards coming with the expedition. I don’t blame you. Regarding your situation, I would have attacked also. You were lucky anyway, a royal guard would have stabbed you first and asked later.”

Suddenly, another cloaked figure got inside the tent carrying a white coated mare with him. It was Frost. She had her wings and legs tied and her mouth shut with tape.

“Hi Gren.” Black Claw said to the visitor. As soon as he uncovered his head, Crimson saw a griffon. His feathers were of a golden colour, except for the ones of his head, that where white. As the griffon put Frost on the floor, she started to struggle, looking around in all directions, until she found Crimson. Then her looked turned confused. Her eyes were red, as she probably had been crying.

“She didn’t stop shouting so I had to shut her up. Who is the newcomer?” The griffon asked.

Crimson couldn’t stop looking at him. He hadn’t seen personally a griffon. The majestic figure took the cloak off. From his right hinderleg hanged a strange device that Crimson had only seem in books. Its name was crossbow. It worked similarly to a bow, but it shoot far more precisely. From the other leg hanged a sword stained in blood.

“His name is Crimson Zephyr. Where did you found this one?”

“Well, she was near to where you disappeared saying that you had to do something important, hiding behind…”

Crimson cleared his throat, interrupting the griffon.

“Would you mind to set her free? She came with me.”

Gren turned to Black Claw, who nodded slightly, and started to untie the ropes that tied her legs together. He finally took the tape of her mouth.

“Crimson, run! They’ve killed them all!” Frost said hysterically

Crimson looked at her friend as she pushed the griffon aside and scaped to the outside, running as fast as she could. Confused, Crimson started to run with her outside the tent, but stopped immediately. The image was horrid. The camp had been completely destroyed. Some of the tents had been burned completely, the fires still active. On the floor, in the middle of the camp, laid, organised in rows, the bodies of several dead expeditionary ponies. In front of them, one hooded figure with a sword stabbed the bodies, assuring the where dead. Crimson retched.

Behind him, Black Claw and Gren stepped outside the tent. Gren looked at the black unicorn again, expecting an order. After a simple nod, the griffon started to fly as fast as lightning chasing Frost, who ran erratically between the destroyed tents. Crimson turned around, trying to assume the situation.

“Why?” Crimson asked Black Claw.

“Because, as you, I couldn’t allow them to sully this place. And also because I wanted to send a message to Celestia. You are a pony who probably has never seen the poverty and who has never been hungry. You probably have lived happily under the rule of Celestia, unaware that other ponies struggled for the freedom to express themselves , at least until now.”

Crimson stood thoughtful.

“The way Celestia acts makes useless any other way apart from violence. She will not hear the plea of the ponies that want her to make a fairer society. Diplomacy turns useless when the ruler of a country just ignores the will of his subjects.”

Crimson forced himself to see the corpses lying on the floor. In the distance he saw Gren dragging Frost from her mane, while she struggled.

“You brute! Stop it!” Frost yelled at the griffon that simply ignored her.

Crimson just stood in place, trying to think objectively about anything he could do. He could not run and leave Frost here. He couldn’t fight them both either. They had weapons and Crimson was still weak from the soporific spell. He had no choice but keeping his conversation with Black Claw up, hoping they were released.

“Were their deaths necessary?” Crimson asked, pointing the corpses.

“Every conflict has collateral damages, and this may prove to be a long one. They are victims of the stubbornness of Celestia…” Black Claw said as he turned to the approaching griffon. “By the way, you should try to calm your friend, Gren’s patience is little.”

The emotionless way in which the black unicorn described the atrocity he just committed made Crimson shiver. He had to leave this place, and he couldn’t think with Frost struggling against the griffon. With his horn glowing slightly, Crimson approached Frost, who still yelled at the griffon.

“I’m sorry Frost, trust me, I’ll take us out of this” Crimson whispered to her ear, and after touched her with his horn, anesthetizing her.

“Finally she shuts up!” Gren said while he laid her on the floor.

Crimson approached his friend, who laid stunned on the floor. He didn’t want her asleep, but he needed her relaxed.

“What will happen to us now?” Crimson asked.

Black Star got inside the tent, and after a minute got outside, floating Crimson’s and backpack, his knife and the logbook. After staring Crimson for a second, he threw them to the floor in front of him.

“You are free ponies. I respect the decision you made coming here. Is just a coincidence you were here at this moment… I will let you conserve the logbook, but you must know that the answers to some questions aren’t contained in the chronicles of old glorious days.”

Crimson started to load everything he could on his backpack and put it on. With care he made Frost stand up and put her foreleg around his neck.

“Gather the others, we are leaving.”

As soon as the unicorn said this to Gren, the griffon dashed off into the sky. After that, Black Claw turned around to Crimson with a mocking smile on his face.

“If someday you want to know the truth, just follow the stripes.” The unicorn said mysteriously as his horn started to get brighter. After a couple of seconds, a big flash blinded Crimson. The unicorn had left.

Slowly, Crimson left Frost on the floor and started to approach the corpses that laid in the middle of the camp. He gazed upon the faces of about twenty ponies looking for a well known face. With a smile on his face he turned around. Copper had always been smart enough to know when to disappear.

He approached Frost and laid her on his back. It was time to go home.

Shadows and Stripes

Crimson opened his eyes suddenly and sat up on the bed, soaked. He could feel the cold sweat running down his back. Since he returned to Manehattan he had been having these nightmares again. He felt his scar burning, as if the manticore’s paw slowly cut through his skin again. Smoothly he touched his skin, feeling the hot radiation that came of it. He couldn’t bare it anymore.

Crimson stepped out of the bed, heading directly to the bathroom. He needed a shower so badly… Before he got into the shower, he looked at himself in the bathrooms mirror. He had enormous rings under his eyes. He raised his hoof touching his scar and his pierced ear again. He felt so alien to himself. He pulled back the curtain and got into the shower. Leaning his hoof on the wall he opened the water valve, letting it flow smoothly over his face.

For a while, he stood there, lost in his thoughts. It had been a long week. After all what happened in the palace, he was amazed that they were able to return here unharmed. But he was even more amazed by the fact the news about the attack hadn’t spread already. Perhaps Copper was unable to escape after all… He felt betrayed by his attempt to destroy any proof of the true history of Equestria, but he would never wish the fate of those ponies to Copper or any other pony. They were killed brutally. But Crimson couldn’t avoid starting thinking about it just as another gore image to add to the only growing list of things he would like to forget.

Black Claw spoke without a sole glimpse of doubt in his voice when he spoke about this being the only method to be heard by Celestia. Crimson tried to convince himself that there should be another way, that those were the conclusions of a psycho. Nevertheless, more he thought about it, more truth he found in his words, even though he didn’t want to admit it.

Crimson closed the water valve and started to put shampoo on his hoof. Smoothly massaging his mane, he started to create foam. While his eyes were closed, he started to think about the Frost. She was so beautiful that night in the palace. He remembered her face and coat shining under the moonlight, filled with peace. He couldn’t avoid smiling.

He hadn’t spoken with Frost since they returned from the palace. She hadn’t forgiven him for knocking her out outside the tent. After a big argument about whether we should tell or not the police about what happened at the camp, they decided to remain silent. When they finally arrived to Ponyville, they found a completely different town. Now that the journalists left the town, it was the peaceful place it was meant to be.

After a couple of hours wandering around Ponyville, they took a train to Manehattan. The journey was silent. Both were exhausted by the walk through Everfree forest and were still resented. Frost had never seen death so closely before and her face had a dismayed expression all the trip back home.

After that, things turned around pretty well. The next day he managed to be forgiven by Opal. He knew that probably Frost had something to do with that. She was the one that fixed the problems between both of them when they were fillies and colts. Some things don’t change.

Crimson turned the water valve again, clearing the shampoo from his mane. He stayed under the stream for a while, relaxing. He had to go to Opal’s shop today to start working. He knew he would hate that work. Opal had some success selling her jewels to some stuck up ponies of Canterlot a couple of years ago, and since that moment her jewels had became objects of desire around Equestria. That meant he would have to deal with the thing he hated most every single day: Posh ponies. He shivered at that thought.

After drying his coat and mane thoroughly he stepped to the living room. It looked completely different, with all the books organized now in the shelves all around the living room. He also had to place books in many other places. Drawers, wardrobes, closets… They were all filled with books now. At that moment, it reminded Crimson of the Ponyville’s library, but at a much smaller size. He looked at the clock that hanged from the wall. He had a couple of hours left until having to head to Opal’s.

He laid on the sofa, staring at the only book that hadn’t been place in a shelf. On the coffee table laid the damned logbook. As he arrived to Manehattan, he thought of just burning it and forgetting forever what he read, going to the academy and begging the pardon of Copper, starting a new life in which he just accepted what came, and agreed with a fake smile on his face . He knew he wouldn’t be able to cope with that and, after a couple of hours thinking while he ordered his vast collection of books, he started to read the logbook again.

The author really took his time describing the battle at Philopolis. Since the first skirmish at the frontier, the inhabitants of the city had only a couple of weeks to prepare for the siege. Everypony that didn’t work in the defence plans worked in the fields, trying to get as much provisions as possible… The attack took place sooner than expected, a week later, but they were prepared. Though they made plans and did their best to set up a competent defence around the city, they couldn’t expect what came over them.

The city was distributed in three levels, each one surrounded by a wall. As Celestia brought too many pegasi to be dealt with in open aerial battle, three magical shields were set, each one around a different level of the city. Each of those shields would be controlled by a group of unicorns that would feed them with magic through the battle. It was decided that each level would have its own defence force, being the biggest one the one designated to defend the first level. There was also decided to set a strike force that would go where help was needed. They expected to be besieged from every direction, so they decided that as soon as a level fell, it would be abandoned. They wanted to spend the lesser lives in a guerrilla war among the streets. Crimson couldn’t help but wonder where all this logical approach to the defence of the city came from. As far as this book let him know, ponies had barely any experience neither in war tactics nor in warfare. Some of the surviving ponies from the first skirmish, the author among them, volunteered to defend the main gate of the city, where the hardest strike was expected.

Though the planning made seemed solid, Crimson was surprised by how the battle started. Once Celestia’s army was seen approaching, ponies were gathered inside the city and the magical barriers were set up.

The enemy army tried to penetrate through the main gate into the city, and the gross of the forces was sent there for defence. This was only a distraction though, as an infiltrate group got to the unicorns casting the magical defences over the first level and slew them. This made the battle for the first level a massacre. As the pegasi flew through the broken magical barrier, they cut any possible retreat to the second level, leaving the forces of the first level trapped into what they wanted to avoid, a bloody battle for each street of the city. When the main door fell, the few survivors had to retreat, not without a high amount of casualties in the process, to the second level. The slaughter made in the first level was described so graphically by the author that Crimson almost threw up.

After a couple of days of battle, the unicorns in the second level were unable to hold the magical shielding, besieged by the enemy magic. This time the fall was expected, and the Philopolis’ pegasi flew to battle the enemy. This was a desperate try to barely get time to organise a retreat to the third and last level, and it worked fairly well, but the casualties were too high. After the fall of the second level, the moral was low. The streets of the third level were full of refugees. The explosions lighted the streets every few seconds, showing the fearful faces of every pony as each magical strike made the last magical barrier tremble and made them lose their hope.

One passage of the book was written with specially rough writing, as if the author just needed to go fast over it, even though he didn’t want to.

Their faces were hopeless and their eyes were full of desperation. The main street of the third level was full of refugees and injured ponies. Some of them were slowly covered with white blankets as soon as they gave their last breath, dying because of the wounds caused either by swords, lances, horns or magic. There was no mercy, there was no hope. I just couldn’t stand it.

I was the commander of the left defences at that moment, but I couldn’t manage it. The massacre was so horrid. My rage clouded my reason, and I directed it against the only being I could blame for anything at all; Luna.

I headed to the palace, followed by several “soldiers” that claimed my attention. They spoke, but I didn’t hear them. I focused myself in my own rage. The parliament’s entry was guarded by a few Luna’s guards that tried to stop me, but my actual position granted me free access everywhere. I went through several staircases until I arrived to the last floor, where Luna had her chamber. I slammed the door with my hoofs, and entered the private chamber. It was almost empty, sober in any kind of decorations or luxury. When she said she wanted to be part of our rebellion, to be one of us, she meant it. A wooden library and a desk were the only furniture apart from the bed.

She was looking through the window, being her face occasionally enlightened by the magical explosions that crashed against the force shield. Her expression was emotionless, but her eyes couldn’t lie to me. She was suffering, and I understood it, but what I didn’t understand was her passivity.

This conversation was especially important, so I’ll let you, reader, judge my actions by yourself. As I said at the beginning of this story, I regret nothing.

“Luna! We need your help! The last ring of the city shall fall to the enemy if you don’t react!”

She just turned around slowly and kept staring at me.

“Say something! Just don’t stand still! Say something!” I said with all my rage.

I’ve gone through this memory so many times…

She stood there for what seemed to be an eternity, motionless. After that she sighed and started approaching me. When she finally was in front of me, she lowered her head until she faced me. Though I was tall for the standard unicorn, she still was huge in comparison.

“I’m sorry commander Star, but I gave up any kind of violence since…”

“Don’t! Don’t dare to try to excuse yourself! There are other ways you could help! We don’t need you to kill anypony. Just help and reinforce the shield! Or send your guards to protect our citizens! Just move from here!”

She flinched a bit as I approached yelling at her. I was so angry that I couldn’t reason clearly. I was just mentally exhausted. She took no time to recompose herself, and her expression changed back to something I didn’t see since long ago; Royal indignation.

“How can thou dare to speak us like that!? We have done for this country all that we could, but our intervention would mean a massacre beyond your imagination. That would give our sister a reason to intervene herself!”

Her tone changed to the traditional royal voice to refer to me. It was quite frightening, but I was far too angry to flinch. Instead I charged again with my last argument.

“Seems like the princess is back… Well your majesty, you must know that if you don’t contribute, all what you achieved with your sister will crack and fall! The peace, the freedom, the knowledge… Everything will turn to dust!”

Indignant by my answer, she wouldn’t tolerate my presence any more.

“We have made our final decision! Commander Star, thou should leave this room. We need to reflect on more important matters.”

She turned around arrogantly and at that moment I lost any control of myself. I had to convince her to do something, even if it had to be the hard way. I prepared my horn with a memory spell. I would channel all my memories of the battle for every ring of the city. They were three days of massacres, rapes and foals crying in front of their dead parents. For a moment I felt sorry for what she was going to see.

“Luna, you leave me no other choice…” I said as I ran toward her at full speed.

She turned around just to see me flying toward her with my horn glowing. She had no time to react, so I was able to tackle her to the floor and to start to cast the spell. After a couple of minutes of painful shrieks, the spell faded and Luna calmed down. She seemed so fragile at that moment, as a single tear ran down her cheek.

“You have seen all this… And still you are able to recompose yourself and direct the defence?” She asked. Her tone was normal now.

“I’m sorry Luna. You had to understand.”

“I… I have a lot to think about commander. Take my guards with you, I will tell them to follow your orders without hesitation.”

I left the room unsatisfied by her answer, but if that didn’t convince her of helping, nothing would do. A few moments later, the captain of the Luna’s guard approached, telling me that I would take absolute control of his men. They were exceptionally well trained ponies, but only a hundred. Better than nothing…

The next days could be described as a constant bombardment. Celestia’s army wanted to crash our shield as soon as possible to get inside the third ring of the city. Shifts were organised so every unicorn able to contribute in the maintenance of the shield did so. Even though this granted that we would be able to maintain the shield almost indefinitely, hunger started to spread through the streets.

We wouldn’t have been able to resist the siege much longer, so we started to plan the evacuation of the city. We would use the portal to teleport outside the walls to the northern region, were we would organise our resistance, but that would mean we would have to lower the shield. Nothing would be able to teleport inside or outside while it was up. The portal was within the walls of the parliament, so it would be relatively easy to defend for a while. I took the few unicorns that wouldn’t be needed to maintain the shield and headed to the parliament. I communicated the captain of the Luna’s guard to organise the retreat as efficiently as possible, and to lend me the men he could spare. We would make the last stand.

When everything was prepared I returned to Luna’s chambers and we spoke long. She would help us against her sister. She couldn’t tolerate this suffering, she would not. But she knew this battle was already lost, so she offered to help in the defence of the portal while everypony evacuated. Knowing this, I ordered that the shields were lowered and that the defence started. The fight lasted for another day. Due to the planning, the casualties were lower than expected, but abandoning Philopolis was hard for everyone. The city had been a beacon of hope for anypony who believed in freedom and now, it was being torn apart and fallen to our enemy. Luckily we lived to fight another day.

Crimson raised his eyes from the book and looked to the clock. It was time to leave.

He knew he was going to hate that job…

The day went through slowly. Though the jewellery was pretty famous, it wasn’t common that more than a dozen of clients stepped through the door each day, so Crimson had plenty of time to reflect about Black Claw’s words. Only one thing snapped him out of his state of absorption was a young couple that got inside the jewellery almost at closing time. This doesn’t mean he didn’t take care of other clients, just that he wasn’t interested about their concerns. They just spoke about how this exhibition was going to be, if the party they threw would succeed, etc. He heard enough of that back in Canterlot.

“Welcome to Opal’s jewellery, my name is Crimson, how may I help you?” Crimson said with a smile, not fake for once.

Opal leaned her head out from the back shop. When she saw the couple, she slowly walked outside.

“I’ll handle this Crimson. It’s late, you should go home.” Opal said smiling. She had been out for a couple of hours, so he was a bit startled when she sneaked out from the back store. He didn’t even notice her arrival. Anyway, he was far too tired to try to discover where she had been, so he just nodded and went to the back store. The back store was basically a little office. The room walls were barely lighted by a small crystal that hanged from a half peeled wire. Beneath it was an old desk, a bit eaten away by the unstoppable flow of time, and an old armchair. It was almost unbelievable that it was the office of the owner of one of the most successful jewelleries in Manehattan. The only thing that would make anyone think that valuable products were sold here was the huge strongbox that where Opal kept the most valuable jewels, almost invisible, hidden by the darkness in a corner. At the right side of the room there was a security door that leads to a nearby alley. Probably Opal sneaked in through here.

Crimson stepped out, smoothly closing the door behind him. His breath formed small clouds of steam in front of it. The temperature outside dropped quite a lot at dusk. It was fall anyway. It was curious how the Everfree forest didn’t reflect the stations anyhow, but in Manehattan the weather was starting to get colder. Crimson played creating more of these small clouds of steam while he was absorbed by his thoughts. After a while, he started to get cold. He put on his vest and took out his pipe. Some of the tobacco that Zecora gave him for the trip was just what he needed right now… With a gentle drag Crimson lighted the tobacco, enjoying its flavour.

Crimson was too concentrated on each breath he took while he smoked to notice that from the shadows of the alley a zebra approached him stealthily. Crimson noticed her when she came into the light that the single crystal over the door faintly emitted. Their eyes locked in a stare that lasted for an eternity. She wore an intense red vest and a lot of golden bracelets on each leg. She had a coat similar to Zecora’s, but her stripes were more spaced between them. She had her tail completely braided. As she approached Crimson he could see the bright yellow coloured eyes staring directly at him. How was she able to walk that silently while carrying all that jewellery on her?

“Uhh… Hello?”

No answer came from the zebra that instead kept staring at Crimson. As he started to feel pretty uncomfortable, she just turned around fading into the shadows, not without telling Crimson to follow her with a gesture of her hoof. Crimson didn’t react. His mind was filled with the words that Black Claw told him before disappearing inside a flash of magic.

“Follow the stripes…” Crimson murmured to himself.

He stood frozen under the faint light of Opal’s backdoor. Inside his mind, two ideas fought intensely. He knew what Black Claw was capable of to achieve his objectives, but Crimson was intrigued by his words. What could he possibly know that lead him not only to face Celestia’s reign, but to kill other ponies? For once in his life, doubts assaulted his mind. He had never been so doubtful when the time came to discover anything. His curiosity had always been his best virtue and his worst flaw, but it always won in this situations. This was definitely not like him…

After some seconds of doubt he overcame his fear and decided to follow the zebra. He started to trot blindly into the shadows. A moment later his eyes got accustomed to the darkness. He was barely able to see the zebra turning around the corner, heading into one of the main streets of Manehattan. Crimson started to trot faster, fearful of loosing the zebra among the crowd. Even though it was late, Manehattan’s main streets were always crowded. Fortunately the zebra walked with a calm pace and he was able to catch up.

For an hour the zebra walked through the streets of Manehattan, slowly moving away from the city center. The streets began to turn silent until the only noise heard was the slight hoofsteps sound Crimson made. When he realised that the zebra wasn’t making any noise at all, he couldn’t avoid thinking that perhaps she was just a hallucination, provoked by stress. Even though he was immersed in these thoughts, he just kept following her. It seemed so real, and everything made sense in his head. She was leading him to Black Claw. She had to…

Crimson started laughing hysterically. Perhaps he was mad all along…

The atmosphere started to get denser as they approached the outskirts. Crimson hadn’t realised where they were heading until the strong and rotten stench of the Manehattan’s docks struck his nose. The buildings have turned into gigantic warehouses and factories. Crimson stood still, absently looking to the floor, as he remembered the promise he made to Frost not that long ago…

As everything turned silent, the zebra turned her head, assuring that Crimson was there. With a loud stomp on the floor that echoed everywhere in the silent street, she woke Crimson from his reverie. Crimson smiled, he definitively wasn’t daydreaming.

“I’m sorry Frost, but I can’t hold my curiosity…” Crimson murmured.

The zebra approached one of the doors of the several warehouses that crowded the docks. It was guarded by a single dark blue coated pegasus that wore a black vest and sunglasses. As the zebra got close, like responding to an invisible sign, he just nodded and opened the door, allowing us to get inside the warehouse. When Crimsons eyes got accustomed to the low light, he found himself in a short corridor. On the other side of it, a large metallic door, with rivets all along its surface, blocked the way. The zebra approached and indicated Crimson to follow her again. Effortlessly the zebra pushed the door and opened it, letting the room be flooded with the thing could have less expected.

The beat of the bass resounded inside his chest and the laser lights blinded him as he stepped inside the warehouse. The place was enormous. To the right, an enormous scenario with a gigantic screen on its back, projecting somehow psychedelic images. On the scenario, two ponies dressed in black jumpsuits were behind a DJ soundboard, surrounded by high towers of amplifiers. Each of them wore a mask that projected somehow the same images that were projected on the screen.

On the other side, over a platform surrounded with several staircases, a bar was run by a couple of ponies that frenetically served drinks to the crowd surrounding them. Nearby, on the same platform, Crimson saw some cushions surrounding low tables that likely were reserved seats, far away and rising over the chaos that the middle of the dancefloor was. There, the crowd of ponies moved rhythmically over the cloud of smog that covered their hoofs, dancing with the music. Several smaller platforms were scattered on the dancefloor, each one used by go-go ponies that danced in a perfectly measured choreography, creating an amazing sight.

Suddenly, a light flashed from the scenario momentarily, making Crimson’s jaw hit the floor. He raised his sight, unable to see the ceiling of the warehouse as a crowd of pegasi, comparable to the crowd on the ground, floated over him, dancing while they flew. Over the bar Crimson saw a several balconies where pegasi could rest and some of them seemed also like reserved zones. It was impressive.

The zebra tapped Crimson on his shoulder, indicating him to follow her once more. She headed to the cushions zone near the bar, skilfully dodging the ponies that danced all around her. Though Crimson wasn’t as agile as she was, he took no time to him to arrive to the cushions where the zebra now sat beside a black unicorn. Hidden in the shadows was Gren, holding with his claw the tube of a smoking pipe.

“Look who Yerith has brought here! I didn’t know if you would come, but I trusted that your curiosity would win your common sense!” He said with a mocking smile. Crimson could hear him perfectly as the music was heard in a really low volume here. Probably a sound dampening spell was used to create a more private atmosphere.

“So that’s her name… She is a mare of few words I must say”

Crimson looked back at Gren, who now leaned forward allowing Crimson to see his face. His stare was lost in infinity and his pupils so dilated that Crimson was almost unable to see the white in his eyes. Realising what Crimson was looking at, Black Claw laughed loudly.

“Don’t ever mind him, boy! He is too far away to even notice your presence. Now sit down by my side. If you are here is because you must have some questions to ask.”

Crimson turned to Black Claw and approached the cushion by his side, sitting slowly. He thought for a few seconds, trying to word perfectly the question that crept inside his head since he met the unicorn.

“If you are facing Celestia’s regime, and you are doing things such as the ones I saw to achieve it, why nopony knows of your existence? Why aren’t you pursued by the royal guard?”

“Oh boy, you thought about this a lot, don’t you? Well, I must admit that that is the million bit question. But first, before answering that question, look around you and tell me what you see.”

Crimson looked around him slowly, and puzzled by the unicorn’s question ,he analysed every single pony he had in sight. He didn’t know what he was supposed to look for anyway, so he just answered the obvious.

“Well, I see ponies dancing and having fun. Does that have anything to do with Celestia anyway?”

“Oh, I thought you were smarter boy. Think a bit. Where are we?”

Crimson looked around him again. They were inside a warehouse with a gigantic sound dampening spell protecting the sound from going outside, with a guard outside in one of the recently built industrial zones, where the police has few control of what happens… Crimson’s eyes lit a bit as he got what Black Claw meant.

“This is illegal right?”

“Bingo!” Black Claw said with a smile. His horn glowed in a dark blue colour as he floated his drink to his lips and finished it with a long gulp. The drink had a fluorescent glow, produced by the black light emitted by several lamps inside the reserved area. Turning around he sought the waiter. When their eyes locked, he shook his hoof indicating the waiter to approach them. As soon as he approached Black Claw floated the empty glass toward him.

“Good night gentlecolt! Would you mind bringing me and my friend a couple of those fluorescent drinks! They are so delicious…”

The waiter nooded ,floated the empty glasses over the table and swiftly headed to the bar, disappearing among the crowd.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Patience. You will not worth the effort of telling you anything if you aren’t smart to find out a couple of simple things. Now tell me, what all these ponies may have in common?” Black Claw said in a steady tone that Crimson found even offensive.

Crimson laid back in the cushion thinking again. This challenge was something he would not fail. Could it be that they liked electronic music? Crimson shook his head, knowing that answer was simply stupid. There had to be something more…

“They all know this is illegal, but still come. They are defying Celestia’s will by coming here.” Crimson said, after thinking for a few seconds.

“I knew you wouldn’t let me down, boy.” Black Claw said with a mocking smile on his face. He turned his head, looking to the dancefloor. “Look at them…They are here because they want to feel the freedom of doing something different, something forbidden.”

The waiter arrived floating two of the fluorescent drinks by his side. With care, the unicorn placed both drinks over the table, and swiftly disappeared among the crowd again. Black Claw floated the drink to his lips and took a sip, clearly enjoying the flavour.

“That still doesn’t explain why you aren’t being chased by the police.”

“That it is not official it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I’ve been chased by her agents for longer than you could ever imagine. That also explains why she wants this to remain secret. If anypony discovered that someone is able to avoid her so called “justice”, her moral superiority could tremble.”

“I thought that everypony was happy with Celestia’s reign…Why would she care about one opponent?”

“ Because she is facing a real risk of revolution. There are some cities that are seeking their independence. Also, other ponies are starting to silently rise against the ban on technological development. She is trying to keep the existence of dissidents, our existence, as a secret.”

Black Claw stood up, floating the drink by his side, surrounded by a dark blue glow. Approaching the sound dampening barrier, he turned around to Crimson

“Look at this place. This isn’t just a forbidden disco. Advanced crystal technology is used almost in every loudspeaker, beatbox and light here. Even the masks of the dj’s use it. Everything was developed in secret, all done by ponies that wanted to take their knowledge further than what Celestia allows. It is a glorious symbol of rebelliousness.”

“And if ponies are rebelling this way on their own, why are you here? What is your labour here?” Crimson asked, trying to catch Black Claw’s attention again.

“I’m a guide. As I said to you back in the ruins, they need someone that makes their vision of Celestia as a goddess tremble and crash. Ponies are fearful, they are rebelling silently, on their own. To take this rebellion to a higher level they need a trigger, something that makes them gather and fight for what they believe, and that’s what I’ll give them.”

“And what will that trigger be?”

“Once the moment arrives, you will know. The question is… Will you join us?”

“You expect me to join you after what I saw in the ruins? After seeing the corpses of the ponies you slew mercilessly?”

“I never call upon a pony that I know will directly reject my offer. I’ve investigated you…”

Suddenly a folder appeared from beneath the cushion. It was a common brown folder, full of papers, with Crimson Zephyr written in a white etiquette.

“This is from the Academy archive. From what I have read you have always hated the bureaucracy and limited vision of the Canterlot ponies, but still you worked with them. You brought knowledge from countries that some of them bureaucrats wouldn’t even dare to approach. I’ve read some of your reports on those trips, and there you said you found places that would rival with their natural beauty the most wonderful buildings of Canterlot. You have travelled further than many ponies and seen many things. You could have stayed in those places, but you still return here. Why?”

“Well, my life is here…”

“That’s not the only reason, and you know it.”

Crimson bit his lip. When he was younger he always dreamt of being someone important, someone that discovered something that changed Equestria forever. With this in mind, he left Manehattan and headed to Canterlot. There he discovered how limited was the influence other cultures had over Equestria’s culture itself, and he decided to focus on that. He thought that ideas brought from other countries would help Equestria’s development for sure. As the years passed, he found that Equestria’s cultural isolation came from back in time, so he decided to become an archaeologist. In the end, everything that he did followed a single purpose…

“I returned because I thought my discoveries could make them change their mind. To open Equestria to exterior influence, to make it advance somehow…”

“And there it is… The only fact that stops the opening of this country to the outside is Celestia. You realised that not too long ago, when all you investigations from the zebra land were seized because they were ‘dangerous’ for the equestrian society. I’ve got them here too if you want them.” He said as he floated another folder. On this folder could be read in red capitol letters ‘SECRET’.

“How were you able to get all this? It almost impossible to infiltrate in the Academy archives… If you read what’s inside that folder you must know I already tried.” Said Crimson stunned. He couldn’t believe it! Black Claw had recovered all his studies about zebra’s land and culture. He thought they would have been burnt soon after their seizing, but they were in front of him.

“That’s not relevant right now… The only thing that matters right now is, will you fight for what you believe, or will you become numb in your new life, working in that jewellery until your life loses all its sense?”

Crimson pictured the image in his mind. He, growing older, while everything around him remained still, conserved by Celestia like it always was. He knew that Celestia’s recent permissiveness with the technological development was a result of years of pressure by the richest business ponies of Canterlot. But everything had a limit, and Celestia wouldn’t allow changes that weren’t beneficial to her intentions. Everything would remain the same in the end…

“I… I-I must think about it…”

“We aren’t that different boy. The only difference is that I am ready to do what it takes to free this country. When the moment comes, I hope you are ready too”

Black Claw crossed the magical sound dampening barrier, disappearing inside the crowd. Meanwhile Gren stood up from the cushion approaching Crimson slowly, stumbling, jet recovering from the strong zebra herbs he had smoked.

“Perhaps you want to follow him. You wouldn’t like to miss the show don’t you?” Gren said. His eyes were still red, but at least the white in his eyes was visible.

“What show?” Crimson asked, intrigued by the griffin’s words.

“Oh, you will see… I’m not on the mood of explaining it to you right now, just go to the dancefloor and you will see.”

Crimson got outside the magical barrier and was surprised by what he saw. The ponies on the dancefloor were opening a path for Black Claw to arrive to a circle opened in middle of the dancefloor.

Suddenly the music was lowered and a voice rose over all the murmurs of the ponies inside the disco.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlecolts! My name is Black Claw, and I’m your host tonight! Are you having fun?!” He said with an amplified voice, similar to the one Crimson heard Luna use once in Canterlot.

Everypony shouted in agreement and started to stomp the floor. Black Claw raised his hoof, trying to calm everypony. When everyone was silent again, he kept with his speech.

“I’m glad to hear that. We are here tonight, because we want things to change! Because the time for repression and restriction is over! We are the ponies that shall free this land from the chains of a dictatorial regime. No pony should be persecuted because he wants to increase our knowledge nor because he thinks in a different way! The time to change that has come!”

The crowd shouted again, this time raising their hoofs in the air. Crimson could feel the passion of Black Claw’s speech. This passion got to every other pony in the disco, that started to dance following the rhythm of the background music.

“Soon, we will able to change things, but tonight we shall dance! We will dance to celebrate what is to come and to remind ourselves that we are FREE!”

With that last phrase Black Claw stood up on his hinderlegs and started to wave his forelegs, cheering up the ponies that surrounded him. The roar started to grow as everypony started to shout and stomp. With a slight glow of his horn, Black Claw started to levitate, rising over the crowd.

“Let the music guide your body tonight!”

When he said this, the two djs on the scenario let the music be heard again as loud as before.

“I love this part…” An unknown voice said from behind Crimson. He turned around to find Yerith. The zebra’s voice was sweet and harmonious, but she wasn’t speaking to him, she was just thinking out loud. Her stare was locked on Black Claw, whose body was starting to glow with the same dark blue light his horn did. Suddenly the lights of the disco started to faint, as the coloured lights started to flow out of them like tentacles, surrounding Black Claw’s body. The dark blue glow over his body was substituted by the glow of the liquid substance that was starting to cover him. When he was completely covered all the lights turned off. Only his body glew in the darkness of the disco, covered with every colour at the same time, mixing over his body in psychedelic patterns. In front of the astonished ponies, he started to descend to the floor.

Yerith pushed Crimson aside as she rushed to the dancefloor, dodging everypony as skilfully as before on her way to the circle opened in the middle of the crowd. A minute later, she was in front of Black Claw, who had descended finally to the floor. Now standing on four hoofs, the colourful figure stomped the floor with strength. The glowing liquid that covered his coat started to spread slowly over the floor. With a hoof Yerith touched the liquid, that stuck on her coat. She raised her hoof, and slowly closed her eyes as the liquid slowly started to cover her coat too, making her glow in the same way Black Claw did.

The crowd stared at the scene, stunned, watching the zebra slowly being covered by the strange substance. Everypony was frozen. After a few seconds, one pony from the crowd approached the pool of glowing liquid that still exuded from Black Claws body, and touched it too, starting to get covered as well in the strange substance. After that, he started touching other ponies that got their coats covered too. Soon, almost everypony was covered by the glowing, stunned by the weird sensation that went all over their coats. With a nod of Black Claw, the dj ponies turned the lights on again. Soon everypony was dancing again, covered by the surrealistic substance.

Having done this, Black Claw left the crowd. The substance slowly turned into a colourful vapour as he got outside the crowd, now focused on dancing and enjoying the warmth of the glowing liquid.

Black Claw approached Crimson, who stood over the crowd amazed.

“This is freedom and hope, Crimson. This kind of magic is forbidden by Celestia, guess why…” He said as he headed to the reserved area. Turning his head before entering the sound dampening barrier he stared at Crimson “You should join the crowd. The spell only lasts for a some hours and I’m a bit tired to answer more questions. Enjoy yourself.”

Crimson looked at the crowd beneath and over him. Several pegasi started to spread the liquid among the pegasi flying over his head making the ceiling look like the sky of the night covered by northern lights. Suddenly he saw an imposing figure approaching. It was Gren.

“You have the same priceless face I had when I first saw it, boy…” He shouted over the music.

“What is that liquid?”

“He calls it flowing light. You should try it, the first time you feel a warm heat over your skin and a limitless joy. With time and use however, like with many other drugs, it looses its effect.” Gren said with a melancholic tone in his voice.

Crimson approached one of the ponies among the crowd and touched his coat, covered with the glowing liquid. It was sticky and warm. As soon his hoof separate from the body of the other pony, the liquid began spreading over his body. He felt joyful, more than he ever had before. His mind raced across his happiest memories as his body started to move with his own will at the rhythm of music. As he lost control of himself, one memory locked in his mind. He saw Frost under the moonlight inside the ruins. He smiled widely and allowed the last remains of his will to succumb to the uncontrollable desire of dancing.

Undesired Side Effects

Frost almost fell asleep, gently rocked by the jolting of the tram belonging to the Luna’s line of the Manehattan’s public transport net. The recent creation of the reduced size magical motors had improved the efficiency and speed of transports across all Equestria, but overall in Manehattan, now beacon of the technological development, where the changes had been drastic. Despite the effectiveness of these new motors, they lacked of autonomy as they needed a constant energy supply to operate. Frost smiled as she thought the possibilities that these new motors would have combined with the project she developed in collaboration with the M.C.A. Company. Leaving her thoughts aside, she focused on the city that surrounded her. It was early in the morning and the sun hadn’t rise up yet. Nevertheless, the light of dawn already allowed her to see the high skyscraper’s of Manehattan. She got off the tram and looked up to one of the imposing skyscrapers, where Ponytec headquarters were located and headed there for another long shift.

She got through the revolving door into the marble covered hall. Some ponies waited patiently sitting in several sofas displayed around several tables with some magazines on them. Some of them read the newspaper while many other just stared nowhere immerse inside his thoughts. In the middle of the hall a fountain with the motif of a mare holding a ceramic vessel with her forehoof from where water poured emitted a relaxing sound.

“Welcome back, Miss Cloud. Your schedule for today has been transferred to your office, as usually. Also, mister Steelskin wants to meet you in his office as soon as possible.” said the receptionist mare. Her coat was of a pale yellow colour and her dark blue mane was tied in a bun. Every morning she received every employee of Ponytec with that standard greeting, but today it was slightly different. A meeting with Steelskin… That was something she didn’t expect.

Steelskin was the director of the research and development branch of the company and, therefore, her immediate superior. Apart from that, he had only been a pen-pusher lucky enough to direct the development team that created and configured the first gemstone. He took all the merit for the research when he did nothing, and was rapidly promoted. He was just a lucky idiot.

“Crap… What does he want now?” Frost murmured to herself. She couldn’t hate that stallion more than she already did. He always displaced her from the most interesting projects and pushed her to tons of useless paperwork he should do by himself.

When she got the occasion, she got herself displaced as a consultant to M.C.A., trying to escape the nightmare that supposed working with that scatterbrain. And that did the trick for a time, but she still had to come to the headquarters weekly to deliver a report on the development of the project. That weekly visit doesn’t meant anything apart from writing a boring report and having to stand the mockery and nuisance of Steelskin’s presence. That usually didn’t involve anything further than him appearing in her office speaking of the star projects of Ponytec, and telling her she should be there to do this, or to see that... But a meeting… A meeting at his office was something completely different.

Frost didn’t even bother turning around to say goodbye to the receptionist as she got inside the elevator. Those receptionists changed weekly as a part of the firm’s policy.

‘Any kind of emotional attachment between employees is discouraged’ Frost recited inside her mind with the plain voice tone belonging to the welcoming record for new employees she was forced to see. It was an unbearable torture of two hours of duration that had as an objective to explain something you could easily have read in the company’s manual. What they didn’t say anyway was that, when this attachment was unavoidable, usually one of the two ponies involved was reallocated to one of the subsidiary companies outside Manehattan. Such stupidity… Frost never understood it, but, even though she disagreed, this was the only company where here talents could be used properly.

This was not the only policy that the company applied. The elevator was filled up with ponies wearing the standard complete body uniforms of Ponytec. Several ponies dressed in a blue uniform got down at the tenth floor that belonged to the marketing and distribution section. Each one of the sections of the company had a colour assigned. They said that the uniforms policy was supposed to ease interdepartmental communications, but it just pulled off any distinctive trait that anypony could have, transforming the employees of Ponytec into a mass of workers without any kind of personality. Frost tried to convince herself that this wasn’t as bad as it could seem, but it truly made difficult outstanding.

The elevator suddenly stopped at floor 32, where the research and development department was located. Only Frost stepped out of the elevator this time, getting into an almost empty floor with a couple of desks where a two mares dressed with black uniforms took care of the incoming calls, and some offices at the other side. Though R&D was one of the biggest departments, almost everything related to the administration was allocated at the BlackMane facility, near Canterlot, and all the laboratories were in the Manehattan’s outskirts. Therefore, this floor objective was to be a simple consultancy place and to ease the communications with other departments.

Frost rushed through the floor heading directly to Steelskin’s office. The door of his office was the typical opaque crystal door. At eye level could be read, written with golden letters, ‘Mister Ore Steelskin, R&D Director’. Frost sighed deeply and faked her best smile before pushing the door and going inside.

“Good morning, director Steelskin. Did you want to see me?”

The office was a big room with white walls. Hanging from them, a couple of cheap and horrid paintings decorated the office, filling the spaces in between the shelves, full of books about mechanics and electronics. Frost was pretty sure he hadn’t opened these books even once. In the middle of the room was a big oak desk, full of paperwork and on the other side of the desk, Steelskin sat on a huge leather armchair, staring directly at Frost. Behind him, an enormous glass that substituted the whole wall granted a wonderful sight over Manehattan. In front of the desk, a couple of old chairs completed the essential kit to receive employees in the most uncomfortable atmosphere possible.

“Welcome miss Cloud, I awaited your arrival. Please sit down.” seriously said the grey coated earth pony as he pointed one of the rusty chairs with his hoof.

Frost approached the chair and sat resigned. This wasn’t going to be a short talk as she hoped it to be, but instead it was going to be either bad news or a long talk. Both options were simply bad.

“Tell me, mister Steelskin. What’s the matter?” asked Frost

“I’ve spoken with your immediate superiors in Magic Crystal Automation about your work in the development of the prototypes of high energy portable crystals. They are pretty satisfied with the work you carried there.”

Frost had been happily working for the M.C.A. for the last few months. She was employed because a project to reduce the size of the high energy generator gemstones was stuck, obtaining only explosive results… Though she isn’t a unicorn and therefore she can’t program the gemstones, Frost was one of the most successful developers of crystals and systems the company had, and she was proud of it, and therefore she was sent to help in the project.

“Well, I just did my labour the best I could…”

“Despite of that fact, it has been decided to dispense your services as a consultant and developer…”

“WHAT!?”

Crimson slowly walked through his flat’s door, tossing his saddlebags to the side of the hall. He was exhausted. Though he had only to work for half of a shift today, Saturday mornings were definitively the worst moment he could have chosen to have it. Every single pony took their mares around town, and even though they bought nothing, Crimson had to show hundreds of jewels to every single pony.

He had to take this shift because he overslept the day after the party in the warehouse nearby the docks. The fact he overslept wasn’t nothing surprising. The surprise came when he woke up not the next morning, but the morning of the day after, realising he had slept for a whole day.

He remembered everything that happened that night until the moment he touched the ‘flowing light’. After that, the next thing he remembered was waking up inside his bed, wondering if everything had been a dream or if his conversation with Black Claw had been real. Any shade of doubt disappeared a moment later, when he saw a small wooden box with a note beside it on the living room’s table.

‘I thought that you may be upset of that old smoking pipe. I hope you like this.

B.C.’

Remembering this Crimson opened one of the drawers of his studio’s desk, floating the wooden box carefully out of it. Slowly he opened the lid, filling the air with the strong smell of rolled zebra cigars. Those were a delicatessen, difficult to get even within the zebra territory. Crimson only had one chance to try them once, and he was amazed by their flavour. If Black Claw wanted him to join his cause and help him with whatever he planned, he was just doing it in the bucking right way.

Crimson levitated one of the cigars approached it to its muzzle, gently sniffing the pleasant smell. With a smile, Crimson jumped on the sofa, landing softly on his back closely followed by the cigar that floated beside him as well as a small box of matches. This cigar was far too special to be lightened with magic. With several short but strong drags, he lightened it, floating it away from his mouth as he exhaled with pleasure a dense cloud of smoke.

For a time he just laid on the sofa, gazing aimlessly at the room, simply enjoying the flavour. Several questions came to his mind. Why would Black Claw want him to join his rebellion? It wasn’t that Crimson was especially talented for fighting in the streets or was an exceptional strategist. He was just an archaeologist and somehow an anthropologist who had the bad luck of having an uncontrollable urge of making questions, usually uncomfortable for some ponies that shouldn’t be bothered, and finding their answers.

When he was in the party, it seemed that anypony assisting there would be willing to help Black Claw anyway they could. Then, why did he bother so much to get Crimson in? Crimson didn’t trust him much, but he was intrigued about how he planned to make a revolution arise from the repression and the brainwashed minds of the Equestrian ponies. He started to think in the further consequences that a successful revolution would have for the country. Did Black Claw planned to establish a republic in Equestria, or was he an overambitious pony that wanted to be a monarch himself? Crimson shuddered in view of the idea. Perhaps he was just fooling everyone with his speeches about freedom, free thinking and development. Those were beautiful ideas that could easily ignite the rebelliousness inside any pony. They could be easily used a lure as well, turning them into an easy way to recruit ponies…

The cigar slowly consumed with each drag Crimson gave, finally becoming nothing more than a butt inside his mouth.

“Pity, only nine left…” Crimson said as he turned off and tossed the butt, aiming blindly from the sofa to the bin nearby his studio’s desk.

Boredom started to haunt Crimsons mind as he sought for an occupation. Going out wasn’t an option at all as , even though the day was wonderful, sunny and unusually hot for this season, he wasn’t in the mood of just having a walk alone. He couldn’t hang out with Opal as she still was busy in the jewellery, and she would be stuck there working until late-night, and Frost… wasn’t an option either. These mares were the only true friends Crimson had; anyone he had met in Canterlot would be defined as a colleague or a companion better than as a friend. The only friend he thought he had within the walls of Canterlot was Copper , and right now he didn’t even know if he was still alive, or even if he cared about that. Though he didn’t want him dead, Crimson would not shed a tear for him.

Crimson woke from the sofa and headed to the studio. Perhaps reading would make him snap out of his drowsiness. Opening the second drawer he floated out the logbook.

“Damn him, damn him, DAMN. HIM!” Frost shouted inside her office, releasing all the anger she had stored meanwhile Steelskin explained the reasons of her dismissal. Grabbing several of the books and folders in the shelves with her mouth, she started tossing them around the office, creating a blizzard of paper that slowly settled down as a white blanket over the floor. Finally, as coup de grace, she knocked down the filing cabinet that fell to the floor loudly. After stopping to see the chaos she had created, still panting from the outburst, she started settling down and trying to breath slowly. As she turned around, one of the mares that was sitting outside behind one of the desks stared at her, impressed by the huge mess the room was.

“Do you need any help with the…reorganization?” she asked with a little smirk on her face.

“Buck. Off. NOW!” Frost yelled furiously answering the mocking question the mare shot at her.

The mare flinched a bit and, after standing the full of hatred stare of Frost for a few moments, she turned around and smoothly closed the door.

She didn’t believe a word of what Steelskin told her. She couldn’t believe that the decision came from M.C.A. directives; without her work they would be stuck having clock bombs instead of reliable sources of energy. She had invented a way to dissipate the excess of magic so it didn’t accumulate inside the gemstone causing it to crack and explode, turning everything surrounding it into plasma. Whatsmore, she invented a way to rechannel that excess of magic and reload other gems and do parallel processes. For Celestia’s sake, that would make them rich in the span of a couple of years, when the production processes started! How could they fire her!

Frost collapsed on the office chair, staring aimlessly at one point lost in the infinity of her sight. Her mind was a chaotic mass of crossed ideas, concepts and feelings, until one idea arose from the mess of thoughts that assaulted her. Why? It was such a simple question, yet she didn’t have the answer. Perhaps the chief developer of the project wanted all the recognition for himself… No. She wouldn’t allow that. She deserved to be recognised, even if she had to steal all her work from the headquarters. Frost got her eyes wide open as she realised the idea wasn’t as crazy as she first thought…

Crimson was absorbed by the history the logbook revealed, anxiously turning each page once he finished reading it. Once the remains of the battered defence left Philopolis through the portal that Commander Star, who seemed to be the author, Luna and their guards fought to protect, the survivors were gathered in the northern city of Stolegrad. Though the climate was merciless in the northern city, where in middle of the winter temperatures went deeply under cero even during the day, they truly didn’t had any other option rather than hiding there. That same savage climate that menaced to kill them from starvation and exposure was the protection they needed against the seemingly unstoppable army that crushed their resistance in Philopolis.

Though the forces they were able to gather for the defence of Philopolis almost had been wiped, the republic still had enough willing ponies to stand their foe, and the massacre only made their determination to defend their now home rise.

The problem wasn’t the will to fight, but the lack of food. Philopolis was the main source of food of the republic. The well treated land and several farming techniques allowed being productive even during the winter, but without it, it was impossible to supply the entire republic. Commander Star knew this as well as Celestia did. Her strike was merciless, her strategy, intelligent and her objective, their surrender.

But not everything was lost. With the exile of the freethinkers, Celestia lost the only ones capable of controlling the portals that were created during the period before her recently established reign. The portals remained there as a reminder of what happened to the ones that faced Celestia. It was time to take advantage of them. Luna was the one that came out with the risky plan that would grant them the needed resources; a simultaneous attack across several cities of Equestria, attacking food supplies and several important monuments. The objective wasn’t to hurt civilians of course, but to show Celestia that they weren’t defenceless. They even stroke the Capitol city. Crimson felt impressed for the success of the almost suicidal plan as Celestia retreated a great amount of her forces from the republic’s territory. That was the reaction Luna expected, it was time to recover Philopolis…

A knock on the door made Crimson rise his sight of the logbook with an eyebrow risen up and a puzzled expression in his face. He did not expect anyone to visit him today. Crimson quickly stood up as he heard the door being knocked again. He rushed to the studios desk, quickly opening one of the drawers and hiding the logbook inside. He had no time to think for a better place anyway, as a voice yelled at him from the door.

“Manhattan police! Open the door!”

Crimson turned around in disbelief. The police? They couldn’t be here to arrest him, it was impossible that they could have related him to anything that happened in the palace…

He closed the drawer and swiftly trotted to the door; it was better not to get the police angry. He opened the door and found in front of him two stallions, one a dark blue coated huge pegasus with a blonde mane and a badge as cutiemark and the other a smaller brown coated earth pony with a black mane, his cutiemark hidden by a gabardine of a similar colour to his coats’. They both wore sunglasses.

“May I help you misters?” Crimson said with the most polite tone he was able to use. Years living in Canterlot proved at least useful in this sense for once.

The brown pony took a step forward, getting inside the hall swiftly. He was observed by the gigantic pegasus that stood at the doorframe. Wasn’t this illegal? Crimson didn’t even have the time to answer himself as he was soon interrupted by the brown pony.

“We must speak with you, mister Zephyr. We have been investigating the recent disappearance of the expedition sent to Everfree forest depths, and we have been informed that you had a close friendship with the expedition’s leader, mister Copper Compass.”

The brown stallion headed directly to the sofa, taking seat comfortably and placing his hinderlegs over the coffee table in front of him. The blue pegasus stood at the doorframe, blocking any possible escape route, trapping Crimson inside the walls of his own house. Realizing the discomfort that this provoked to Crimson, the brown stallion sat up and with a slight gesture of his hoof commanded the blue pegasus to close the door and to wait outside.

“Well mister Zephyr… Please sit down, I must talk with you.”

Crimson slowly approached the sofa immersed in his thoughts. Perhaps he wasn’t looking for his involvement in the events that occurred at the palace. Black Claw said that he was being chased secretly by Celestia’s agents themselves. Were they looking for him? Could they know he had met Black Claw? If they did, how could they have discovered it? Crimson sat on the armchair in front of the laying policepony, uncomfortably pierced by his stare.

“Oh, where are my manners… I haven’t introduced myself!” he said as he stood up again approaching his forehoof to Crimson over the coffee table. “My name is Crafty Tail”

Crimson stood up, and after shaking his hoof, he sat back on the armchair. This whole situation was uncomfortable. Crafty remained silent for the next minute, just staring Crimson from behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. Even though Crimson couldn’t see his eyes, he felt his stare analysing every single bit of his body, as if the stallion wanted to get on his nerves. Though he was doing it perfectly, Crimson knew the stallion was just trying to get over his patience and he could play that game too.

The room remained silent while an improvised staring contest took place, putting to the test the patience of both ponies. Finally, Crafty leaned forward and took the sunglasses off. His eyes had a dark green colour that reminded Crimson of the depths of the Everfree forest. Even though the memories of that damned place came back to his mind, he couldn’t stop a smile, he had won the game.

“Do you think this is a funny game, mister Zephyr?” asked the policepony aggressively.

Crimson immediately erased the smile from his face and leaned forward also.

“Even though it may sound foalish, you were the one who started mister Tail”

“Stop losing my time mister Zephyr. Now, its time that you answer some questions…” said the brown stallion opening a notebook and placing it over the coffee table.

Crimson leaned back into his armchair and stared at the brown stallion. Inside his mind several ideas struggled for having the privilege of being worded first. Crimson tried to control himself, discarding the most… impolite answers that came to his mind. The display of arrogance the stallion had made demonstration of made him angry at least, but Crafty Tail was a policepony after all, and getting him angry wouldn’t benefit Crimson in any way.

“It is?” Crimson finally answered. He was not going to tolerate this. He knew his rights; they were few after all…

“Beg your pardon?” the policepony asked, astonished by the question.

“I will not answer any questions unless you bring an order. You have invaded my house as, from what I recall, I didn’t invited you to come in anyway, and the lack of an order makes this… visit, quite illegal.” Crimson answered with determination.

“You are funny, mister Zephyr. Hehehehe… Now going back to my questions…”

“I didn’t intend to make a joke, mister Tail. I’d like you to abandon my house right now.” Crimson said standing up and pointing with his hoof the door. He knew he was going to deeply regret this…

The policepony stood up and approached Crimson, standing the challenge of Crimson’s stare. They locked their stares for a few moments until the brown stallion approached his hoof to the table and picked the notebook and his sunglasses, putting them on.

“Feel lucky, mister Zephyr; today I’ve got a tight schedule. The next time we meet, be sure that I will not be this friendly… You’ll answer my questions, one way or another…” said the stallion threateningly highlighting these last words as he approached the door. Opening the door difficultly with his mouth, the stallion steps outside and looks the blue coated pegasus.

“Head on, we’re leaving.”

Turning around for a last time, Crafty Tail looked at Crimson.

“Mister Zephyr, don’t leave the city. We shall meet soon.”

As soon as he closed the door behind him, Crimson collapsed on the floor with his heart beating fast. He had a truly bad feeling about this…

A Long Night

Frost stared at the white ceiling of her flat, slowly counting the small cracks and places where the paint had peeled. Forty-two, again the same result. She felt silly doing this, but it helped her to hold her frustration as the idea that came to her head yesterday started to seem unfeasible.

She had been awake all night, staring directly into the darkness of the room, only cracked by thin streams of light that sneaked through the blinds. She had gathered together all the information she had about the C.M.A. headquarters building. It’s plans, any password she could remember and the guard shifts... She tried to discover a flaw in the security that she could use to sneak inside. There was none.

From what she could remember, a month ago more or less, a security breach in the accounting archives made the company revise their security, and they did it thoroughly. All the ventilation systems entrances were secured with energy fields. Nothing aside air could go through them without the security system noticing and turning on the alarms. Those fields just detected the presence of anomalous bodies inside the ventilation system, so any intruder would not be harmed; not by the fields at least... Every other possible entrance was guarded by a guardspony and almost every door at the labs was closed with a password lock’s whose password changed every week. It seemed an enormous inversion in security and secrecy for a company that seemed to have nothing to hide, and even though Frost found this pretty suspicious, she didn’t dare to make any questions. Now perhaps she could also find some answers…

Frost shook her head. She had to focus on the task ahead if she wanted to succeed. Her objective was getting in, stealing the notes of the project and the three prototype crystals and vanishing into the night. Each extra second she spent in the facility would mean a higher risk of being discovered, so she would have to be swift.

Once she chose her objective, she spent the rest of the night trying to guess how she would get into the building, until dawn, when she started slowly counting.

And now, Frost still was staring to the ceiling of her flat, unable to find a way to break in the facility. After a few moments lost in her thoughts, she started counting the small cracks and places where the paint had peeled. Forty-two, again...

Crimson sat in front of his studio’s desk staring at the white blank page that was in front of him, slowly changing its colour and turning to a rusty orange as the lights of dusk got into the room. Besides him, enormous piles of discarded books, tossed away in the frantic seek of information about the mysterious Commander Star.

He hardly slept that night, haunted by the possible meanings the threat of the policepony could have. As the sun rose from the horizon, he decided that he had to distract himself somehow, so he chose to take a look into his history books in search of information on this pony, unable to spend one more second inside his bed. The search had been exasperating, and lacked of any positive result.

All the history books that had information on the period of the war between Celestia and Nightmare Moon spoke about the fact that some ponies followed the princess of the night in her ‘unjustifiable uprising’ against her sister, but none of them clearly stated how many nor their names.

Far away from getting relaxed, this search got him on his nerves. He had to make his mind busy with another thing. Trotting away from his studio’s desk, he headed to the kitchen, where he started to boil water to prepare a coffee. It was when the whistle of the coffee maker started when Crimson realised that everything was silent… Too silent for Manehattan, even on a Sunday morning.

Something was wrong.

Suddenly the door was tore apart as several uniformed ponies broke into the room.

“Manehattan Police! You are under arrest!” One pony among the group yelled loudly. Under his assault uniform, Crimson recognised Crafty Tail, who wielded a sinister grin. “Take him down!” he yelled to the unicorn by his side, pointing Crimson with his hoof. Crimson knew that pissing him off actually was a bad idea.

Reacting fast to Crafty Tail’s order, a uniformed unicorn prepared with his horn what Crimson recognised as a stunning spell. The glow around the unicorn’s horn took a spherical shape, changing from its originally pale blue colour to a bright red. Crimson had read about this spell before, it was used to disperse mobs a couple of centuries ago, but its use was prohibited because an inexpert use could result in the objective’s pony blown up into a red mist.

“Crap!” Crimson yelled as soon as he saw the spell prepared, jumping behind the sofa just in time to see one shot of the stunning spell striking the opposite wall, where several shelves full of books simply vaporized into thin air. Definitively that wasn’t an expert use of the spell.

Crimson gazed around searching for an escape route, but unless he jumped through the window, he was trapped. The sound of the hoofs approaching made Crimson shiver.

“Mister Zephyr! It’s a pleasure to see you again! It’s nice to see that you followed my advice and remained in the city… On the other side it’s a pity, I would have enjoyed chasing you.” said the policepony, pleasured by the situation. “Have you got any complaint about the legality of this assault? I’d like to show you this order, signed by Celestia herself… Hidden behind that sofa I doubt you’ll be able to see anything at all, why don’t you come out?!”

Crimson knew that the order was surely a bluff, but anyway he would have to obey. More than ten ponies wearing the standard police assault armours stood between him and the only exit that didn’t mean jumping several meters to the floor. At that moment he wished to be able to teleport away. Crimson sighed deeply, resigning himself to arrest.

“It’s not necessary!” said Crimson rising one hoof over the sofa “I surrender! Just tell that unicorn to dispel the stunning spell! I wouldn’t like to have my head blown up…”

After a few moments of silence, Crimson heard the buzz of the spell fading away and the red light that coloured the room vanished. He still waited behind the sofa, trying to gather the courage to jump through the window. If he wanted to run, that was the moment. He felt the steps of the policeponies getting into the now overcrowded living room.

“Damn, I just can’t…” Crimson lowly muttered.

“Ok, the spell is down, now come out slowly…” He felt his voice approaching step by step. “No unicorn tricks or I’ll be the one who blows your head up!” the policepony menacingly said as Crimson slowly rose from the floor and walked to the middle of the living room.

“Come here, mister Zephyr. You and I are going to have a long conversation in the police station” said the brown coated pony.

Suddenly a cloth bag covered Crimson’s face and immediately after he felt a painful blow on the side of his head. Stumbling a bit, he felt his equilibrium vanishing and the tentacles of unconsciousness grabbing his mind. As he fell to the floor, he felt the taste of blood inside his mouth and he was able to hear the laughter of the policepony.

“There must be a way! No system is perfect… The energy fields are the key… they trust too much on them, so ,if there was a way to unlock them just for enough time to get me in, it could be done…” Frost muttered to herself as she walked to the balcony of her flat.

The sun rose long ago, and it was approaching the horizon again. The whole day had passed and Frost she still was clueless of how she would do it. She had spent her time trying to guess how pass by the energy fields unnoticed and after finding herself unable to do it, she decided to take the risk and obtaining the original designs from Ponytec’s archives.

Abusing a bit of her position inside the company, she got one of her workmates to bring her the designs of the security energy fields, not without receiving a whole bunch of annoying questions first. Using as an excuse that she was trying to improve the energy field’s circuits to be more efficient, she got them from the untrusting pony.

She tried to find how disrupt the field in a way that her intrusion wouldn’t be noticed, but those energy fields were probably far too sensible to attempt that. She was running out of ideas and, what was more important, running out of time. The passwords would change tomorrow, so, even though she could get inside, she would be unable to move through the building. It was tonight or never.

Sitting on the balcony with a coffee cup steaming between her hooves, she gazed over the wonderful view over the city, coloured in orange and red by the light of dusk. Her flat was just in front of Central Park, a lucky strike that was part of her contract as a reward from the company for her achievements in C.M.A.

Even though the flat was small and abused of the minimalist conception in its decoration, it had all she could possibly need. A living room, a studio with a wide desk to do her design tasks, a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom, all lighted naturally by the sunlight that poured inside through the wide windows the house had. She didn’t need more, nor ever coveted it.

After watching the sun set and drinking in a long gulp the now cold coffee, she headed to the studio, turning on the reading lamp to reveal a pile of plans and designs. Inspecting the designs of the energy field emitter once more, she hit the wooden desk with her hoof, frustrated. They were impossible to trick, the design was fail-safe. But she hadn’t earned her cutie mark for nothing. Her special talent was creating machines. Creating them, designing them and making them work, that was her passion, and few ponies understood them as she did. For a moment she looked at her monkey wrench over a blue lightning cutiemark. She wasn’t going to surrender easily.

Inspecting the stack of papers again, she noticed a little folder hidden under several designs she hadn’t seen before. On it, it could be read ‘Maintenance’ written on red letters. Opening the folder she found some designs to the maintenance panel and other tools used for the maintenance processes. She smiled widely as she realized that she had found right what she needed.

After picking her saddlebags from the wardrobe nearby the entrance, she headed to the studio’s desk, and opening it she took out a flashlight, a small rod with a red crystal at his tip that served as a wielding torch and a small toolbox.

With a smile on her face, she headed to the door. She was ready to make the ponies of C.M.A. forever remember the day they decided to take her merit away from her.

Crimson gasped as he felt the frozen water hit his face. He tried to open his eyes but he had to close them quickly, blinded by the bright white light that surrounded him. His jaw felt sore and the headache he had was almost unbearable. After emitting a small grunt, he felt someone approaching.

“Finally our guest has awakened!” Said a voice that Crimson knew he should recognise. Slowly, memories from recent days started to rise from the blur of his mind, and opening his eyes he found Crafty Tail.

“Ughhh, where… Where am I?” Crimson (grunted?)muttered, raising his head to take a look (at)to the room. He found himself in the middle of a white room, excessively illuminated by fluorescent lamps, tied to a chair placed in the exact middle of the room. In front of him, a gigantic mirror substituted a piece of the white wall. In that mirror, Crimson saw his reflection. He could see his bruised jaw even under his red coat, already turning dark. After that, he followed his reflection up through his face. The scar of the manticore attack was burning again. He barely recognised his reflection.

“Welcome to the Manehattan’s city main police station’s.” said the brown stallion who now wore the same brown gabardine and sunglasses he used in their first meeting. “You are in interrogation room number three, mister Zephyr! Do you know the meaning of interrogation?”

The policepony slowly walked around Crimson, who slightly nodded answering Crafty. He laughed loudly as he turned his face to Crimson’s ear.

“I don’t think so, mister Zephyr.” He whispered.

He walked behind Crimson, who followed the movements of the policepony using the mirror in front of him. Crafty Tail grabbed the only other single piece of furniture in the whole room. Dragging it, he (Crafty Tail) placed the chair in front of Crimson and sat on it. Taking off his sunglasses, he put them away inside the pocket of the gabardine, and started to stare at Crimson with a malicious grin.

“Do you know what my especial talent is, mister Zephyr?” he said as he took a pack from his pocket and placed a cigar between his lips. Turning it on with a mach, he exhaled the smoke directly to Crimson’s muzzle, who sneezed slightly.

“My special talent is to find other ponies. Ponies such as you, mister Zephyr, who think they can change things. I have been commanded to find all kinds of criminals. Traitors, conspirators, rapists… An endless list of pony waste that should be killed or imprisoned forever!” These last words spat from the policepony’s mouth with infinite despise.

“I find that you, freethinkers, are the most amusing ones. If somepony gave me a bit for each time a pony such as you, traitors who think Celestia’s reign should end and ponies should rule themselves, tried to convince me that ponies are good by nature, I could have retired long ago. But then, I show them the truth. I love when I show them this world’s nature, and show them what Celestia’s reign is protecting them from. Their will turning into dust between my hooves…” he said, biting his lip and grinning in an almost psychotic way.

“There are ways to bend the will of a pony, until it shatters, turning them into a miserable blob of tears and moans. And, at that precise instant, is when they let me know everything, as you will, mister Zephyr.”

Crimson had his stare locked with Crafty Tail’s, trying to avoid his expression showing the fear that grew inside him.

“Mister Zephyr, do you know why you are here tonight?” He asked.

Crimson bit his lip, but still held his gaze.

“You shall be the one who tells me, mister Tail, because I have no idea” Crimson finally answered defiantly, after gathering all the valor he could.

“Good, good… Crushing the will of the arrogant ones is a pleasure that I don’t usually have the luck to taste! Now, let me tell you your purpose in this life, mister Zephyr. Since I got some recognition among the ranks of the police, Celestia has used me to find the trash of this society. I love that feeling, you know? Chasing criminals... They always think that they are smarter than you, that they can escape, trick me into their traps, or try to disappear just by going to other cities… But you know? They all were wrong. I’ve been chasing the enemies of Celestia for fifteen years. I’ve chased pegasi, earth ponies and unicorns, mister Zephyr. I’ve even got the pleasure of hunting a changeling spy. But there has been one pony who has escaped my grasp several times. You know who I mean right?”

“I have no idea who you…” Crimson tried to say as he received a punch directly to his jaw. A thin stream of blood started to flow from his broken skin soaking his red coat and the metallic taste of blood started to fill his mouth.

“Wrong answer, mister Zephyr. I’ll spare you the pain of trying to lie to me. I’m speaking of Black Claw.” He said while he grabbed Crimson’s jaw with his hooves, strongly pressing on the open wound. Crimson couldn’t avoid emitting a slight grunt that made Crafty Tail grin again. “That damned unicorn has been the only one that has ever been able to trick me, killing several policeponies during my raids to capture him, and always escaping unpunished.”

“This has become something personal. It started as another job, but that damned unicorn is playing with me. He teases me, usually appearing in public places, just to make me go to chase him. And when I arrive, he just stares at me. He knows I never go alone, and always avoids my traps. He decided to play with me, and I’m not going to lose. I’m going to find that traitor, and you are going to help me.” Crafty Tail said, approaching his face to Crimson’s, locking his stare. Then, Crimson spat at his face, dyed red as the mix of spit and blood flowed over his light brown coat.

“Screw you! I’ll tell you nothing!” Crimson answered defiant.

“Very well, mister Zephyr.” He said while he spat his soaked cigarette and cleaned his face with a piece of cloth he took from his gabardine’s pocket. “As I said before, crushing the will of the arrogant ones is a pleasure.”

After saying this, Crafty Tail stood up from the chair and started to drag it to one corner of the room. Once he finished, he started to roll up his gabardine’s sleeves, and stood in front of Crimson silently. It was going to be a long night…

The outskirts had always been a silent place during the night, and that night it wasn’t different. The few streetlamps scattered in between the several factories and warehouses barely discovered the track that the white coated pegasus followed among the sneaky streets. Covered by her black Ponytec uniform, her coat didn’t shine under the moonlight, allowing her to slip away from any undesired witness among the shadows. Her saddlebags, heavy with the equipment she carried inside, clinked with every hoofstep.

The C.M.A. lab building, lit from behind with the light of the moon, rose as a gigantic shadow near the Manehattans docks, which filled the air with the stench of the sewage and the burning coal from the old steam boats.

Frost approached one of the walls of the large building, taking care of not being seen by any of the guards that patrolled the surroundings. She had learned their paths and timings by heart while she worked here, usually staying until late night inside the labs with no other occupation rather than looking through the window while she waited for her experiments to give any results. Now this remedy against boredom proved to have another uses.

With care, she started flapping her wings, slowly rising from the floor only to fall again. The weight of the saddlebags, full of tools, was something she hadn’t taken into account. She only had a margin of thirty seconds to get to the emergency stairway before the guard arrived where she was. Biting her lip, she started flapping her wings again with all her strength, now careless of any noise she could make. Sweat soaked her mane and coat as she arrived to the metal balcony that served as a base for the emergency staircase, landing heavily.

Frost stuck to the wall and held her breath just in time to avoid the light from the guard’s lantern that pointed right where she had landed. After a moment staring at the place where Frost hid, the guard just shrugged his shoulders and kept his way.

The sneaky staircase led her directly to the buildings roof, where the entrances to the ventilation systems were. Stealthily approaching the box where the maintenance panel was, assuring that no guard saw her, she took out the screwdriver and the welding torch.

The lid was closed with a simple padlock that Frost just decided to melt with the wielding torch. After, she started to unscrew and open the lid. Inside she found all the circuits that controlled the signal emission between the main security system and the energy field. Taking out some wires and a bit of solder from her saddlebags, she started to make the bypass. Finally having

After half an hour of endless dragging across the ventilation system only accompanied by her flashlight, she arrived to her office in the C.M.A. Kicking a bit the grille just below her, she forced it open, and flew inside the room smoothly.

The office was sober and simple. A desk, a couple of chairs and a filing cabinet were all the furniture she had in there. All the drawers of both the cabinet and the desk were open, empty(emptied of every sign of her presence). Two brown cardboard boxes lay on the floor filled up with the few personal effects she brought to the C.M.A., but there was no trace of her investigations. Mister Steelskin didn’t lie after all; they had fired her indeed…

Frost approached the door of the office and, slowly opening it, stuck her head out. The corridor was dark, barely lit by the moonlight that got inside through the small window at its end. There was no sign of any guard around so, closing the door behind her, Frost started to stealthily trot toward the labs area, a floor beneath her. If her investigations weren’t at her office, they probably were inside the strongbox of the lab, together with the four gemstone prototypes.

The labs were basically a huge industrial premise, divided into different zones by temporary brick walls that were built and knocked down almost every week to adapt to the needs of the investigators. Several staircases rose from the labs leading to metallic footbridges, held up by concrete columns high over the labs, communicating the offices floor with them. Frost stepped toward the footbridge that joined her lab with the offices floor when she saw a light far inside the labs.

“No pony should be here this late…” Frost muttered as she headed toward the lighted zone, crouching and hiding inside any shadow she found.

It took a couple of minutes to arrive to the place where some floodlights illuminated a clear space. In the middle, a device similar to a rod with a long and thin red crystal at its tip was being manipulated by a pony. More precisely, by Frost’s research team leader. A lab coat covered his green coat and a couple of dark goggles protected his eyes from the sparks of the soldering process. As she approached, she could hear him murmur to himself, intensely focused on the machine. Frost smiled slightly as she realised he was struggling with one of her circuits. The other investigators often said that her way to do things usually was illogical, but they still worked perfectly, and that usually pissed them off. Ignorance frustrated them.

Finally the investigator raised his head from the control panel, doing a triumphant gesture with his hoof.

“Damn Frost Cloud and her incomprehensible circuits… At least I’m pretty sure this time it should work…” he said as he approached another panel, far away from the device.

Frost shook her head in disbelief as she saw that the strange device had one of the prototype gemstones attached. The gemstone started to glow in a light blue colour as the blue coated unicorn manipulated the panel in front of him. Finally, the red crystal started to glow. Each second it passed the red gemstone glowed with stronger light, until the light of the floodlights paled under the red light coming from the gemstone. Frost covered her eyes, and suddenly she heard a blast coming from the device. was and felt the air .

Frost opened her eyes when she felt the light fading. The tip the red crystal steamed as the last remains of magical charge left the crystal. From her hiding place, she could see the research team leader approaching the device with a grin on his face, but not actually looking to it. He stared a point further away. Following his gaze, Frost found a melt wall on the other side of the room.

“The Princess will be pleased…” said the investigator.

Frost knew she (would never be able to get)(have access to) the gemstone attached to the device, so she headed swiftly to the lab where she actually worked. At least there should be three left.

The lab was only lit by the moonlight that got through several scattered skylights, making the strongbox shine as it reflected it. Frost approached it and introduced the password. Luckily, they haven’t changed it yet. With a slight click, the strongbox opened, revealing several folders that contained the investigations Frost Cloud searched and two gemstones.

“Wait… Where’s the third one?”

She gazed over the lab, searching for the remaining gemstone. One slight glow coming from a newly designed blast furnace caught her attention. As she approached the machine, she felt the air turning hotter and hotter.

“This shouldn’t be turned on without anyone watching over it…”

Starting to sweat, she approached the panel that gave access to the internal circuits of the furnace. Sweat run over her forehead, and soaked her coat and mane. The heat increased with time, and this wasn’t a good signal. Picking her screwdriver, Frost opened the metallic panel and looked inside. The gemstone glowed intensely inside as it overloaded with magical energy the whole circuit that seemed to be melting under the uncontrolled flow. Frost stared with her mouth open and time seemed to stop as she realized the security circuit, the only thing that avoided those damn gemstones to explode while functioning, was not there.

“The security circuit isn’t… Damn!” Frost said as she slowly stepped back from the hot device. Her mind raced through a million ideas only to let one rise above them all.

Run, you idiot!

Recomposing herself, she started to desperately looking around, trying to find an escape route. Going back through the ventilation system wasn’t an option; she would spend too much time to do that.

Throwing away her tools, she emptied her saddlebags, picking both gemstones and her notes about the investigations and filling them again. The skylights weren’t and option either; their reinforced crystals would be too hard to break…

She started flying toward the closest footbridge, giving a final glance to the melted glowing piece of metal in which the furnace had turned, raising in the middle of it the sparking gemstone. Frost was able to see cracks on its surface, slowly growing bigger.

Frost ran to her office, remembering the window at the end of the corridor. When she finally arrived to the corridor, she heard a loud crack behind her. She knew what had happened… and she knew what came next. Her heart raced inside her chest, beating violently as the adrenaline filled her body and time around her seemed to slow.

As she started to run toward the window, everything around her shook violently, trembling before the explosion. She could feel the heat behind her, but she didn’t care. She only knew she had to run.

Covering her face with her hooves, she jumped through the window, propelled by the flaming blast that followed her. Spreading her wings, she tried to control her fall, only to shriek as the pain that she felt though them made her feel numb. Her right wing was burnt, she knew that, but she realized that what came was going to be worse.

Opening her soaked eyes, she saw the brick wall of the warehouse swiftly approaching and bit her lip. She tried to remember why she was here.

You know why you are here, at this moment. And you know that you don’t regret it.

She closed here eyes again, and with a grin in her face she waited for the inevitable impact to come.

Leaving Everything Back

Darkness. Everything Frost could see… or feel was that. Darkness surrounded her. She was conscious, yes… she could think after all, but still… she felt isolated.

Suddenly, a background noise appeared… It was barely audible, like wind whistling around her, constantly increasing and suddenly fading away. Still… she hanged to it, trying to drag herself from the blackness of her mind.

The low whistle slowly grew recognisable. The sirens around her and the racket of an anxious crowd filled her mind, though they were barely audible over the buzz inside her ears. She tried to open her eyes, but her strength faltered.

She felt being carried, her body shaken by the constant movement of walking. Why was she being carried? She felt that, but nothing more. Her body was numb, and she was trapped inside, unable to move. Was she dying? Frost would have shouted in anger, but her incapability to do so only made her feel even more helpless.

The darkness that surrounded her was more appealing with each passing moment. She wanted to let herself go. She needed so badly some rest… The noise started to turn deafening, as the darkness wrapped her mind again. The buzz grew stronger, making her wish being able to cover her ears. But she knew everything would end soon…

And suddenly, over all the noise, the darkness and the hopelessness a voice raised from everywhere.

Resist…

“Oh boy, you’re really taking the hard way…” Crafty Tail said as his hoof hit Crimson’s already bruised face.

Crimson’s head leaned inert to his side. Almost two days of torture had passed, but for him it had been an eternity. Deprived of any sleep or rest, time passed for him with another pace. A very slow one. No windows or clock were in the room to let him sense the flow of time. Even the atmosphere of the room remained immutable. The static whiteness of the room was only altered by the sporadic flickering of fluorescent lights. This immutableness clouded his mind, making him unable to think clearly, or to think at all.

“It’s not that difficult... Tell me what Black Claw is planning, or where he is hiding, and this will end…” Crafty Tail said in a smooth and relaxed tone.

All kinds of wounds covered Crimson’s body, bleeding and soaking his coat in a darker red. Burns, those were only the beginning. Small circular patterns covered his forelegs, produced by the cigarettes that Crafty Tail smoked. Since the beginning of the interrogation, each time he finished them, he just buried the butt into Crimson’s bare skin. As time passed, Crimson even got accustomed to the stinging pain.

Sixty-seven cigarettes; that was the last number he recalled before losing consciousness. After that, he didn’t even bother to keep counting. It was meaningless. Time became meaningless. Everything that existed for Crimson was the whiteness of the room, the voice of the earth pony, sometimes deep and smooth and others joyful and even sadistic, and the bruising and pain. (flavour of blood)

Crimson knew that if the policepony found that he had been in the palace during Black Claw’s assault that would be his end. He confessed meeting him in the disco in the Manehattan’s outskirts. He even told him bits of the conversation he had with Black Claw there. But far from satisfying the brown coated pony, he just pressed more and more in seek of an information that Crimson didn’t had.

The hours passed as he kept torturing Crimson in what proved to be an endless source of imaginative methods to cause pain, not only physical, but psychological. Crimson was shown the darkest side of ponies. Assassinations, rapes… Deeply disturbing images that crept his mind after some folders the policepony carried inside his saddlebags were open for his eyes only.

Slowly undermining his will to resist, the policepony patiently took Crimson to the edge of madness, and when he got there, he just tortured him with other methods, making him snap back to reality. This cycle was taking Crimson to his limit. But in the end, he resisted just because… because he owed it to her. He would not leave her again. Not again.

Frost woke up with a scream. Sitting up on the bed, she found herself soaked in sweat. She panted nervously as she started to look around her. Where was she? (The room that surrounded her was completely unfamiliar)She didn’t recognise the room. It wasn’t her flat of course, the walls of the room, painted in a cream colour, completely opposed to the neatness of the white walls that her flat had. Also, her flat had wide windows, not the little window that let a small stream of daylight get into the room. It didn’t seem the room of a hospital either…

“Nice to see you awake. How do you feel, sweetheart?” asked a gentle voice from one corner of the room. Frost followed the voice to find a unicorn sitting on a chair, floating some papers around her. Frost took her time before answering, staring at the unknown pony. She was a greyish dark blue coated mare, with a light blue mane, similar to Frost’s, but striped in white. She wore a black vest and a couple of grey bracelets on her forelegs.

“Fine, I think…” Frost answered. She felt dumb and dazed. How had she arrived here? Frost sent a questioning glare to the unicorn that smiled slightly as she left the papers that floated around her on a chest of drawers nearby. Waking up from the chair, the mare approached her gently.

“I know that you might have a lot of questions right now, but you should rest.” She said, placing a hoof over Frost’s shoulder, forcing her to lie down on the bed again.

“You really pushed to the limit my medical abilities healing your wounds, and you really don’t want some of those to open again, right?” She said, pointing to Frost’s side. Frost turned her head and gasped. Her right wing was completely bandaged, and blood soaked some places of the neat white surface. She also noticed other bandages over her left hoof and over her chest. Even though she seemed so beaten, she felt no pain at all.

“If I were you I would enjoy the effect of the painkillers while they last, because these burns will surely be painful.” The unknown mare said, as if she knew what Frost thought. Frost leant on the bed again, and sighed loudly. Slowly, the dark blue coated mare headed to the door. She knew the mare was right, but she had a storm of questions inside her head.

“At least you could tell me your name?” Frost asked with fading voice.

“Moonbeam… My name is Moonbeam.” The mare said before leaving the room.

Frost knew she would not get more answers from the mare yet, so she closed her eyes, waiting for falling asleep.

The physical torture started to become bearable with time. The numbness of his sore body shielded him from further pain, even though everything ached. Crafty Tail , feeling the uselessness of more physical damage, stood up from the chair in which he had been sitting during the whole interrogation. After leaving the room and commanding another policepony to assure that Crimson remained awake, he returned with a new pile of folders.

His voice became smooth and understanding, almost compassionate. He spoke Crimson words of peace and freedom, and he almost took the lye. When this failed, the policepony decided to take another direct path. With a sign to the ponies hidden behind the mirror, the door unlocked and a metallic table floated in between Crimson and Crafty Tail. Calmly, the brown coated pony placed the folders split over the shiny and polished surface. From all of them, the policepony chose a single folder.

“Here, mister Zephyr, I’ve got a folder. It’s not like any folder I’ve shown you yet… This folder specially contains data related to your life. To all of it…” he said while he rose the folder open in front of his eyes, reading. “It’s a common requirement that ponies are investigated when they enter the Academy in Canterlot, even as an student.”

For the next few minutes, he remained silent, just skimming page after page of the dusty pack of pages.

“A quite brilliant career, the one you have destroyed. You could have been a respectable pony, instead of this…” Crafty Tail said with a disdainful gesture.

Crimson just could hiss in disagreement, too weak to answer the policepony.

“I’ve had time to read it thoroughly, and I discovered several events that made your life as it is. They were all different, but in the end, they all have a common factor mister Zephyr. They all are coward actions made by a coward pony.”

Crimson raised his head, bruised and soaked in a mix of blood and sweat, and sent the policepony a defying glare.

“You have no… no idea of what you are speaking about…” Crimson finally muttered, locking his stare deep inside the dark green eyes of the policepony.

“I don’t? Well, let me see…” Crafty Tail said as he opened the folder. “Here says that you were born in Canterlot, but your parents moved to Manehattan when you were still a little foal. There you lived there a happy foalhood. Awww, that’s so touching” The policepony said with a mocking smile. “Let me guess, you had friends, you were happy and everything was bright, uh?”

Crimson didn’t answer, still staring the eyes of the policepony.

“Until that unfortunate accident…” He said. He put away the folder over the table and approached Crimson again. He still held his gaze, anger growing inside him as he realized where the pony was heading to.

“That was your first act of cowardice, mister Zephyr. The first of a long list. Your parents… would be ashamed of you…” Crafty Tail ended.

Crimson struggled, trying to free himself from the ties that kept him sat on the chair.

“Don’t. Ever. Mention. My parents. Again!”

“Finally! Finally we start to establish some communication! Finally a bit of feeling behind your words!” The brown coated pony yelled victorious, grabbing with his forehoofs Crimsons face. “Now, mister Zephyr, tell me… The report from the Manehattan police said that you were the only survivor of that fire. A terrible accident indeed, but you could have saved them… Their bodies were found in a last embrace, charred, blackened and unrecognisable, did you know?”

Crimson had long ago stopped listening to the policepony’s hurting words. He only saw fire, the same fire that surrounded him six years ago, when the flat where he lived with his parents caught fire. He remembered his parents in that last embrace, as his father yelled him to turn around and flee while he stayed holding her unconscious mother. He just flew away. The day after, he left Manehattan without telling no pony. Perhaps he was a coward after all… Crimsons head hung motionless, his eyes covered by his sweaty grey mane.

“And after abandoning your parents to their fatidic fate, you abandoned your friends, and flew to Canterlot, to become someone you were not. I don’t blame your friends for hating you as they do…”

Crimson raised his head again. His eyes were soaked in tears, but his glare only revealed hate. Hate toward the policepony, but overall toward himself. Crimson hissed as he started to struggle strongly against the ties that imprisoned him.

“Yes, mister Zephyr. They hate you. You left them back after all, abandoned them when they needed you most, and you needed them. They were hurt by you, and you alone. And you didn’t even realise…As you did with every other pony you have met. You left them and flew. The fact was that after the first time it became easier right? Yeah, when you joined the Academy you had very righteous excuses to abandon everypony. You were afraid, mister Zephyr. Afraid of this wonderful society I protect, afraid of yourself, but, overall, afraid of her…What was her name…? Frost Cloud… yeah…” The policepony grinned as he chose and opened another folder.

“She was more than willing to tell me everything about your adventures at the Royal Sister’s palace. Both of them. Quite a charming mare, you know?”

Crimsons struggles were substituted by a silent stare into infinity. He couldn’t believe he was betrayed by her… He just couldn’t.

“You are lying…” Crimson muttered, as a single tear tried to run over his wounded and swollen cheek, turning into a red mixture that finally defiled the white floor, as many other blood drops and fluids had before.

“And if I did, how could you know? You didn’t met with her nor spoke with her since you returned from Ponyville. She was resentful. You had abandoned her twice. She had realised what kind of a coward you were, and when I came to her, she opened like a book to me, allowing me to read all I needed.”

The dark green eyes of the policepony unlocked their stare as he stood up from the chair at the other side of the table.

“Anyway, don’t fret, my dear friend. She shall enjoy the same outstanding treatment you have received soon.” The pony said as a sadistic grin drew on his face. “When I finish with you, I will bring her here, and I will show her the empty shell in which I will have turned you. And when she does, she will tell me what I want. And if she doesn’t… She will be tortured until she does. And she will suffer because of your cowardice, as any other pony that you have ever touched”

Crimson started to shiver not in fear, but in anger. The policepony had crossed a line, and Crimson was more than ready to make him pay. He cared no more for what will happen to him, he just knew he wanted to make that pony suffer.

“You will not do that…”

“What was that?” The policepony asked with an incredulous glare and a smirk.

“I will not let you… I will kill you first.”

“Hehehehehe… I think you are not in position to... Ughhh!” He grunted as a white glow surrounded his neck and he started to float him toward the wall. Crimson’s horn glowed brightly as the body of the policepony lifted from the floor and hit the wall. He no longer feared his fate. He knew he was doomed, but he would take this psycho with him. Logic had guided his decisions all his life, but not now… Hours of sleep deprivation and psychological torture had taken their effect. He wasn’t rational any more. Anger blinded him and desire guided his actions. And his deepest desire was that Crafty Tail threats were his last words.

“You will die today, psychopath! Perhaps what you had shown me about Black Claw is true and many ponies died within his grasp, but what you have done in Her name as a personal crusade is just as deplorable… And it shall end!”

Crimson concentrated fully in choking the damned pony. Crafty Tail’s gasps turned weaker as his dark green eyes rolled to the back of his head. Crimson grinned in satisfaction as he felt the efforts the policepony did to live turned futile.

Crimson heard the door open behind him, but he didn’t care; he was so close… He pressed more in a final attempt to reap the policepony’s life. He almost felt his last heartbeats… Until a strong hit reached his head, which fell inertly over his chest. Raising it again, his horn still glowing, Crimson looked at the policepony, and felt his grasp fading… After another hit of the baton, his vision started to blur. He had failed again. Crimson could only think about his parents, about Frost Cloud, about the mare that within the walls of the ruins of the Royal Sisters palace had begged him to end her life. At that moment, he could only think about how he failed them all.

Crimson’s and Crafty Tail’s inert bodies made a simultaneous thump as they hit the floor. Quickly approaching Crafty Tail, the dark blue coated pegasus that accompanied him at his first visit at Crimson’s flat shook his companion.

“Sir! Sir!”

The brown coated pony started to cough loudly, and slowly waking up he pointed Crimson’s laying body with one hoof.

“Send a message to Canterlot... We are taking this piece of shit to the Extraction chambers! And prepare my departure to Canterlot for tomorrow! I want to see this one suffer in first hoof” He yelled angrily.

“But sir, you should go to see the doctor…” The blue coated pegasus worriedly said to the policepony, who returned him a killing glare.

“Send the message to Canterlot. Now!” He said pointing with one hoof the open door of the interrogation room. Outside, several policeponies peeked trying to discover what happened.

After the blue coated pegasus left the room, Crafty Tail slammed the door with all his hate, and turned to the unconscious body of Crimson.

“Damned unicorns and their telekinesis... I thought you would be way too weak by now to use it, but it seems that I was wrong.” He said as he opened his gabardine’s pocket, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. After, he sat on the polished aluminium chair.

“Don’t worry, mister Zephyr. You will never arrive to the extraction chambers. Even though you would deserve becoming an empty shell after all your memories where wiped out, tonight, you are going to be my new move in a chess game bigger than you could ever imagine… “

The door opened, and a unicorn wearing the Royal guard traditional golden amour came into the room, bowing in front of Crafty Tail, who answered with a sinister grin once more.

Frost opened her eyes. Nothing had changed, except for the orangish light that got through the window. Her bandaged winged had started to pain. It was only a bit, but Frost knew that soon it would hurt a lot. She grunted a bit as she sat up on the bed.

Taking away the blanket, she discovered that her hinderlegs where bandaged too. She had escaped from the blaze by few meters, and still she was burnt. Frost turned her head to the chair where Moonbeam sat before. Her blackened and burnt saddlebag hanged there, open, revealing the two gemstone prototypes. So much effort to get them and now… She would likely not conserve them anyway. Would the police blame her for blowing up the lab to steal the gems?

Frost sighed as she realised she had a big problem between her hooves. Even though she tried to demonstrate that she didn’t blow the lab, the police would not believe her. She had a motive, as she had been fired recently, and she had the knowledge required to make the furnace explode. Even if she could hide the gemstones and demonstrate that she hadn’t stole anything, her wounds would be proof enough to any policepony of her presence when the explosion took place.

Still, she was here, and not inside a cell, receiving medical treatments from an unknown mare called Moonbeam. She leaned to the edge of the bed and with care taunted the floor with her hinderleg. It didn’t hurt. Slowly she placed each hoof on the floor and stood up. She wasn’t going to stay in that bed anymore, she needed answers.

The door was ajar. Stealthly approaching it, she stuck out a bit giving a glance inside the room. It was a simply decorated small living room. In front of her there was a display with a sofa, two armchairs and a coffee table in front of which Moonbeam sat, floating a coffee cup by her side. She stared at a place somewhere outside Frost’s field of vision with a worried expression.

“We are not charity, M.B. We cannot take care of every pony we find in trouble.” A deep voice said, coming from where Moonbeam stared.

“I don’t care Gren. It is my fault she was harmed like that, and knowing what would happen to her if we left her alone… I just can’t ,Gren! Is it that difficult to understand!?” anxiously said Moonbeam.

“Look, I’ve sent Yerith to speak with Black Claw, and when she returns with our orders, we are going to follow them, even if you don’t like them… Understood?” said the other voice.

Moonbeam stood up and started wandering around the room anxiously, her face full of concern.

“But if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish the mission… I’d still be here revising tons of plans and designs uselessly. She discovered how to avoid the energy fields in one evening! I’ve spent almost a month trying, and I was unable to do it.”

“Yeah, and I deeply appreciate that she did that for us, but she’s a burden right now; we can’t stay here until she recovers and we can’t take her with us. You know that that damned policepony is already tightening his net around us. He might be a psycho, but he isn’t a fool. We mustn’t let him any chance.”

“But…”

“No more buts. Wait for orders. Follow them. Understood?”

Frost saw the mare nodding with a defeatist gesture. After that, Moonbeam turned around following the clicking sound of an opening door. A zebra dressed with a red vest and who wore a couple of golden hooflets wandered into her visual field. For a moment, she turned her eyes to where Frost stood hidden. Frost shivered as she felt the emotionless glance of the zebra right into her eyes. If the zebra knew she was there, her expression didn’t reveal it.

“Welcome, Yerith” said Moonbeam. “Have you spoken with Black Claw?”

The zebra nodded and opened her saddlebag, extracting an envelope. Moonbeam’s horn started to glow with a greyish light, floating the envelope toward her, opening it and floating out a paper. Her worried face turned into a smile as she kept reading.

“Gren, I think you should read this.” She said floating the paper up in the air. Frost started to hear footsteps approaching the mare.

Suddenly, a griffon got into the scene. Frost eyes narrowed as she recognised the golden feathered griffon that not so long ago had almost killed her in the ruins of the Royal sister’s palace. All the images of the massacre at the palace came back to her mind, overall the ones in which the fearsome griffon ripped apart the Celestia’s guards one by one with his sharp claws.

“I can’t believe this…” the griffon said slowly as he read the letter. Sharply turning around to the zebra, he crumpled the letter and threw it aggressively to her hooves. “I can’t believe it! What is Black Claw thinking of!?” The griffon yelled at the zebra with the whole strength of his voice, unable to disturb the stare of the zebra that didn’t flinch even a bit before the outburst of the griffon.

“Those are the orders… We waited for them, and now we must follow.” Moonbeam said with a grin on her face.

“Don’t provoke me, child!” The griffon threateningly yelled turning around and pointing her with one of his sharp claws.

Moonbeam’s grin disappeared swiftly as the griffon started to wander the room, filled with anger.

“Look, this is madness! We’ve got that policepony on our tails, and doing this will mean we will get caught for sure! I don’t know what Black Claw expects of us by commanding us to rescue this pony… I don’t know what he has seen on him so especial to risk us saving him!” He yelled to nowhere. The zebra stood in front of him, silent, staring at him with no sign of fear.

“Charity! That’s what we have turned into… Damned charity!” he outraged before leaving the flat with a slam.

Moonbeam remained silent as she sent a glance to the zebra, that simply left her saddlebags on the table and headed to the sofa. Once she sat down, she silently pointed to the door which Frost hid behind.

“There’s no need to hide, I knew you were eavesdropping, as well as Yerith did.” Moonbeam said calmly as she looked to where Frost was.

“How could you know?” Frost asked confused, opening the door and walking into the room.

“Well, I cast a spell on you to know your current state. It’s an old trick to take care of patients even if you are not inside the same room. How Yerith knew… That’s something I’ll never guess. Just don’t tell anything about this to Gren, I don’t think he would like it.” Moonbeam said.

“Sit down, I need to change those bandages, and we don’t have much time.” She commanded pointing a free seat in the sofa as she floated a jar and some bandages toward her.

Frost looked at the mare and noticed her cutiemark. It seemed like a four pointed star made of crystal, but it was cracked, shattered. That didn’t seem precisely a medical cutiemark. Unable to contain her curiosity, she couldn’t help but ask.

“Moonbeam… What does you cutiemark mean? It doesn’t seem like a medical cutiemark…” Frost asked, curiously gazing at the mare as she opened the jar revealing a strong smelling ointment.

“Does that mean you don’t trust my medical abilities?” she said seriously staring at Frost, raising an eyebrow.

“No! I didn’t mean that, it’s just that…” Frost swiftly muttered with an apologetic expression on her face. Suddenly the mare smiled widely and placed her hoof on Frost’s shoulder and Frost’s tense expression relaxed.

“Just teasing, darling. It’s a fair question… No, it isn’t a medical cutiemark. My parents expected me, as many ponies in my family did before me, to turn into a medical pony. Trying to uncover my special talent in medicine, they taught me since I was a filly to treat wounds and other kinds of injuries. It was kind of forced… I never truly liked medicine you know? But it still proves useful from time to time.” She answered while she spread the ointment over the bandages. The strong smell started to make Frost dizzy. She started to slowly remove the bandages around her wing, tossing them inside a bin. Meanwhile the zebra stared silently.

“Does she ever say anything?” Frost asked, pointing at the zebra with her nuzzle.

“No… At least to nopony apart from Black Claw and Gren. She is perfectly able to speak though, but she doesn’t do it unless it is extremely necessary. I’ve come to the theory that she only speaks to the ones she judges worth of the effort. I’ve tried asking, but the only answer I get is that glacial stare.” She said as both mares looked at the zebra.

Finally, she arrived to the last set of bandages that hid her skin from sight, and her telekinesis faded.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t look. Even though thanks to the ointment your wing should have improved a lot since the last time I saw it, it will not be a pleasant sight.”

Frost turned her head and started to feel the pain of the bandages being removed from her bare burnt skin. After a few moments of sharp pain, she felt the relieving touch of the new ointment covering her bare skin. But the smell… the smell was asphyxiating. She started to feel sick, so when the bin where Moonbeam had thrown the bandages just floated beside her, she took no time to grab it, vomiting inside.

Taking her head out of the bin, Frost looked at Moonbeam with an apologetic smile.

“A nasty secondary effect of these fast healing ointments indeed, but they deserve a bit of nausea in exchange of recovering your wing, right?” Moonbeam asked.

Frost nodded and left the bin beside her. Looking back to her wing, she found it covered in white bandages again. Finally, she turned to the door the griffon had few moments ago left through.

“What’s the issue that griffon has with me?” Frost asked.

Moonbeam sighed as she woke up and floated the bin beside Frost away.

“He has issues with almost everypony, darling. He is a tough guy, but he is a bit frustrated with how things are going, and many times he just can’t control himself. It has to do nothing with you.” She answered , returning to the sofa. “Do you know who we are?”

Frost shook her head answering the mare’s question.

“Well… Explained briefly, we are a group that opposes the reign of Celestia over Equestria. During the last ten years, since Black Claw appeared, he has coordinated us and taught us, sending us into several missions to make rebellions arise across the country. Even if we succeeded and the awareness of the dictatorial regime Celestia ponies suffer arose among the population, she swiped our work out sending his vassals. Some well placed detentions end the fighting will of ponies pretty fast.” She stated, taking a sip from the coffee cup on the table.

“Among them, Crafty Tail is the most fearsome one. He is mad… completely mad. Only Gren had survived an interrogation from that pony. He is talented in crushing the will of ponies. He takes you and tortures you, and meanwhile, he sneaks inside your mind, looking for a single breach. And when he finds it, he presses so hard that your whole mind crushes. That’s why he is afraid of him, and not without reason. And he is chasing us. He has captured your friend, Crimson Zephyr, in an attempt to obtain information about Black Claw. Right now he is interrogating him inside the police station. This night will be the second he’s suffered from torture probably…”

“How could Crimson know anything about Black Claw that could interest that pony?” Frost asked, worried.

“He can’t. But Crafty Tail doesn’t know that. He will torture him until he is sure he will not tell him anything, and then he will send him to Canterlot for an extraction.”

“Extraction?” Frost asked confused

“Yeah… Deep inside the dungeons of Canterlot, there are some things that shouldn’t exist. One of them is the extraction chambers. There, ponies are just wiped of their identity, their memories absorbed and analysed by the unicorns of the royal guard, and then tossed away like rubbish.”

“That’s horrible… What will happen to Crimson if he gets to one of those chambers?”

“You don’t want to know…” the mare replied in a gloomy tone. Swiftly changing her expression, the mare reacted to Frost dismayed look.” But don’t worry, we will rescue him!” Moonbeam tried to say in a cheerily tone.

“But there’s one thing I don’t understand… Neither Crimson nor I have anything to do with your organisation… Why does he keep prosecuting us like criminals?” Frost asked confused.

Moonbeam stretched her hoof, touching Frost’s shoulder amicably.

“Because for Crafty Tail anypony that has met Black Claw once is a rebel. And for him, rebels are the worst kind of criminal. So, even if you are not linked to us directly nor collaborate with us, he still will prosecute you, until he gets you.”

Frost touched her chin meditatively. This meant her old life was over… Ever since Crimson left Manehattan, she had fought to be recognised, and now everything she had worked for, dreamed for or fought for vanished as dust blown away from her hooves. This realisation struck her hard, and her eyes soaked as she started to sob. Hiding her face behind her hooves, she let a single tar run over her cheek before drying it fast.

“What I’m going to do now…?” She thought aloud. She felt a hoof touching her shoulder again and turned her head to look at the mare that tried to calm her.

“Come with us! I know this may not be your fight. Perhaps you think that Celestia is a fair ruler that cares for all her subjects… But , if that was so, why are you here right now, wondering what will you do next?” she asked.

“This was your entire fault, not hers! If you hadn’t blown up the labs perhaps I could have spoken with that pony and recovered my old life!” Frost outraged.

“Don’t fool yourself, darling. That psycho would have caught you and tortured you for days, as he is doing with your friend right now. I’m offering you this, but you don’t have many other options really. You are not going to find the medical treatment you need outside a hospital, and once you go to one, you are doomed.”

Frost remained silent while she processed what the mare had told her. She knew she was right but… she couldn’t accept that her old live had vanished.

“What will happen now?” Frost asked, looking with her soaked eyes.

“We will leave Manehattan for a while, until things settle a little bit. Our next mission is in Stalliongrad, so tonight we will get a train there. After blowing the lab , we can’t stay here any longer. But first we must rescue your friend.” Moonbeam said while she floated her saddlebags from the hook near the door.

“And how will you do that? If Crimson is inside the Manehattan’s police station I doubt you will be able to do it. It would be getting inside the lion’s den.”

“It is... That’s why we will wait until tonight, when your friend is going to be moved to the Canterlot dungeons. A dear friend of mine from the police will give Yerith the route once they have chosen it and Yerith and Gren will plan the attack then.” She answered confidently.

“And us?”

“Darling, you are not in condition to help in such a task, and even though I’m not defenceless, I’m not inside this operative group to do such things as assault missions. So we are going to go to your flat and get you some of your equipment. That talent you’ve got with circuits is something that shall be useful, believe me.” She said as she got into the room where Frost slept not long ago.

Few moments later, Moonbeam floated Frost’s burnt and blackened saddlebags beside her and tossed them to the sofa where she sat. Frost turned around, looking for the zebra, who had disappeared as silently she came into the flat. Moonbeam opened the door of the flat and headed outside, far from being surprised by the sudden disappearance of the zebra. Picking her saddlebags and carefully placing them over her burnt haunches and bandaged haunches, Frost also headed to the door, still doubtful and afraid. But then, she realised what she would do. She would keep her own ambition. She would get recognised, one way or another…

Crimson hummed slightly as he stretched his sore body. His mouth tasted metallic, and it was dried. He could feel every single cut, burn and bruise that covered his body, yet the pain didn’t come from them. It came from the words of that dammed pony that still resounded inside his head.

“Coward…”

Crimson opened his eyes. He was leaning on his back, staring straight up. What he saw wasn’t the immutable whiteness of the interrogation room, but a mighty display of stars, unveiled as the new moon rose with them into the sky.

“Princess Luna… I didn’t love your night more than I do now…”

Crimson lay down for a few moments, suddenly noticing the smooth jolting of the surface on which he leaned. Sitting up, he turned his head and gazed around. Everything was dark, but among the darkness he recognised the shape of something he quite expected; cell bars. He was inside a cage.

Suddenly a light blinded him and the jolting stopped. When he finally adapted to the beam of light being pointed straight to his face, he could distinguish a cloaked shape in front of him. Once he took the light away from his face, Crimson eyes took their time to readjust to the darkness of the night. Under the starlight, he could distinguish under the cloak the metallic shine of the golden helmet. He was a Canterlot guard, but why was he escorting him, and where? Looking around again, Crimson noticed up to six more cloaked figures surrounding the wagon.

“Squad! Stop! In defensive formation!” Suddenly ordered the cloaked figure as he turned around to the other cloaked ponies. All at the same time, took off their attaries and picked with their right hoof a golden spear that hung from harnesses that held them on their backs. They silently closed the formation, raising their spears toward the darkness. The tense expressions of the guardsponies were barely seen under the starlight, but Crimson could see them.

Suddenly, a loud hiss followed by the thump of the fall of one of the guards shattered the silence reigning in the dark street. One of the guards approached the motionless corpse, and after turning it around, he gasped. Crimson could see the silhouette of an arrow stuck in the guardspony’s chest. After a few moments of silence another thump made them all turn their heads. Another guard had fallen to the floor, this one still alive, gasping and holding his bleeding neck with his forehoofs. Crimson looked into the darkness surrounding them, just to see a cloaked figure fading into the darkness of the night.

The guardsponies started to glance nervously one another, until the guardspony that stood in front of Crimson raised his voice.

“Rebuild the formation! Now!”

Reacting to the angry voice of their commander, the pegasi closed the circle once again, leaving their companions corpses lying on the floor.

Dragging himself and leaning against the bars of the back of the cell, Crimson looked to the guards with a mix of pity and grief, as he knew what would happen next.

Another loud hiss broke the silence of the night and Crimson felt some hot liquid spattering over his coat. With a gurgle, the commander of the guardsponies fell to the floor. His blood soaked the interior of the cell, as the arrow had simply gone through his neck, ignoring any armour, spilling blood all around.

The remaining guardsponies looked each other with terrified expressions. They doubtfully looked at Crimson, who just returned their glance, and with a smirk on his swollen face stood up and approached them. Leaning on the side of the cage where the guards had formed the defensive circle, he just stared at the guards silently.

“If I were you… I would run.” Crimson said to the terrorized guards from the shadows of the cell.

Suddenly, a high pitched screech came from high in the air. Diving in middle of the four surprised guards, an imposing golden and silver figure landed. Under the starlight, Crimson recognised Gren, who wore a silver armour over his plumage.

With a quick gesture, Gren grabbed one of the frozen up guards and held him up from his neck. The spear that the guard carried fell to the floor with a metallic ringing as the sword the griffon held effortlessly went through his body. A slight sadistic smirk appeared on the griffon’s face as he drew the sword from the motionless corpse.

The remaining guards raised their spears and charged toward the griffon, who tossed the inert body away and just flew up in the cool air of the night, avoiding their charge. Swiftly, the guards spread their wings and with powerful flaps raised their bodies from the floor, following the griffon with revengeful looks.

Crimson observed mesmerized the shadows that battled over the starry sky. The griffon graciously dodged every hit of the guards’ spears with accurate feints and solid sword moves that sent the guards back to the ground. It was almost like a dance where the pegasi were clumsy dancing partners, who were tossed away with gracious and polite movements by the indifferent griffon. The illusion faded away with a new screech, as Gren’s sword drew a wide arch in the air, and with a pained scream, one of the guards fell to the ground.

Crimson didn’t react to the loud thump that produced the armoured body in its fall, nor to the silent hooded shadow that approached the cage. He had only eyes for the griffon fighting the two remaining pegasi, who fearsomely approached the griffon attempting to stab him with their spears.

The hooded figure just bent down and got her snout inside the pouch of the dead guardsponies’ commander, extracting the keys of the cage. Noticing its presence, Crimson stared at the shadow. Under the hood he distinguished the striped snout of Yerith, who carefully approached the keyring to the lock and started calmly looking for the correct key.

None of them seemed to notice the golden armoured pony who struggled to stand up. A bloody trail on his side revealed the point where Gren had mercilessly cut his white and spotless wing that rested motionless on the floor nearby. Gazing around, the wounded guard found his golden spear, and with a painful expression, he raised it up holding it with his right hoof. Stealthily he started to approach the oblivious zebra that kept struggling with the keyring inside her mouth.

Crimson saw the zebra’s ear twitch under her hood, but nothing more revealed the zebra noticing the stealthy approach of the guardspony. Crimson remained still as he saw the zebra elegantly dodging the charge of the guardspony jumping acrobatically and rolling over her side. Finally landing on her hindlegs, she stood up, becoming an imposing black figure surrounded by a slight halo of starlight, her hood retreated revealing her golden necklaces and her braided striped grey hair. From her hooflets protruded a couple of short blades, already covered in the blood of one of the guards. She defiantly stood, emotionlessly observing the wounded guardspony.

At first hesitant, the guard raised his spear and pointed it directly to Yerith, who kept the same standing position. Both stared silently, not daring to move and shatter the motionless picture. Finally another pained cry snapped the guardspony back to reality and, raising his spear, he charged toward the zebra.

Crimson eyes widened as he saw the Royal guard quickly approaching the reactionless zebra. With a victorious smirk, the guardspony pounced over the zebra with his spear leading the charge. In the last moment, flexing her hindlegs, the zebra propelled herself over the jumping pegasus. The guardspony barely had time to gasp as one of the blades got through his uncovered neck. With a deaf thump, the body of the guard finally fell to the floor, and with no sound at all, the zebra landed on her hindlegs again. Crimson stared back to zebra, only to find the same emotionless coldness. Not even her eyes showed any emotion. Crimson had expected regret, anger, even sadistic pleasure, but the zebra’s expression revealed nothing. If she felt one of those emotions, it was for her and her alone.

Crimson shivered as the zebra slowly approached the bleeding stallion and took the helmet of the dying guardspony off. Silently she sat over his back and started to gently touch his back with her left forehoof while she raised the right in the air, the blade shining under the starlight, yet stained in blood. After some agonizing moments, she sank the blade into the guardspony’s spine. With a couple of convulsions the guardspony finally exhaled his last breath and the night turned silent.

The sound of flapping wings brought forward the arrival of the armoured griffon, who heavily landed few moments later nearby the cage. Crimson stared at the imposing armoured figure as it approached and took his helmet off.

“Yerith, would you hurry up a bit? Those guards escaped, so we don’t have much time to lose.” He said looking to the zebra’s efforts to fir the remaining key into the keyhole. Finally, with a click, the cage’s door opened.

“Ughh… Finally! You, get out of there!”

Crimson slowly stood up inside the cage. Under the inpatient Gren’s glance, he slowly got out of the cage. His legs felt sore and he was tired, but still he stood up and held the glare of the griffon. Looking down at him, the griffon drew a disdainful gesture on his face.

“I still don’t understand why he commanded us to rescue you… I don’t see anything special in a wounded and broken pony.”

Crimson angrily stared at the griffon. He was an imposing figure. Raising like a tower on his hind paws , Gren’s armoured body resembled to several old pictures from past times, when the belligerence of the griffons had caused wars and chaos. Gathering the remaining forces he had, Crimson took a step forward and approached the griffon.

“Give me that sword and let us see who gets wounded and broken…” Crimson answered defyingly.

“Hehehe, perhaps he likes how stupid you are…anyway, you and I will have the opportunity to prove that, promise. But now we are leaving Manehattan before those guards come back with reinforcements.”

Yerith had already silently started to walk toward the darkness of a nearby alley, ignoring the exchange Gren and Crimson had. With a fast move, Gren grabbed Crimson, who slightly grunted in response, and placed it over his shoulders.

“I hope you bear cold well, we are going to have a nice holiday in Stalliongrad” said the griffon, flapping his wings and flying into the starry sky of the night.

Epilogue: The Game

The brown coated pony took a step forward and landed on the stone floor. Crafty Tail looked to his side, and saw the doors from the other cars open and other ponies also setting their hooves on the crowded platform from the Canterlot train station. An atmosphere of happiness generated as everypony met again with their acquaintances and beloved families.

This vision of happiness made him shiver. The nausea that he felt just revealed how he would never be able to live a life like that. He knew he wasn’t a pony destined to have a family or a stable work. His special talent had always been finding other ponies, and he had become proficient on it, but not only on it. As this talent was discovered by Celestia herself, he was trained as an agent, a slow but unstoppable searcher of the enemies of her highness. This was the life he had since so long ago… He wasn’t an elder, but he wasn’t a youngster either since long ago. This life he had, full of crime and loss, had upset him but also made him more committed with what he did. It was a vicious circle that made him more indifferent to the reality he had sworn to protect. But he wasn’t tired. Every new enemy, every new objective made him remember why he did it, and though the images he had just witnessed would never be part of his life, he didn’t care.

From the crowd emerged a couple of armoured pegasi Royal guards. Their armours shone under the bright sun of noon, making them outstand over the crowd. Crafty Tail had always thought of this as a handicap to do a policepony’s job, but Celestia had a different opinion about that. Nevertheless, the guards approached him at a steady pace as the crowd opened at their sight. Perhaps in that sense those heavy knickknacks they wore where somehow useful.

“Sir, welcome back to Canterlot. On behalf of Captain Shining Armour we have been sent to escort you to the Royal guard quarters to…” one of the guards emotionlessly said, slowly fading his voice as Crafty Tail raised his eyebrow in disbelief and indignation under his dark sunglasses. Did they think he was an idiot? He knew perfectly what escort meant. He knew what had happened to the guards he had sent to escort mister Zephyr’s cage. After all he had planned it to occur.

“So my dear friend Shining Armour wants to speak to me? Sorry sirs, but my schedule has no free slots for hearing him whine about his pathetic “elite” forces being beaten by
outlaws and renegades.” Crafty Tail mockingly said passing by the shocked guards toward the door of the train station.

The guards took their spears from the harnesses by their sides and trotted toward the door, blocking the way.

“Sir, we have been ordered to escort you to, and we will carry out our orders.” The other guard firmly said. His expression was immutable, but his eyes revealed his rage toward the brown coated pony.

Crafty Tail sighed deeply. Even in his position as Celestia’s personal agent he still had to respond to some ponies, and he found Shining Armour to be one of the most annoying. Slowly he nodded and started to walk, followed by the guards. It seemed like his meeting with Celestia would have to wait.

Finally free from the annoyance of the chatter of captain Shining Armour, Crafty Tail started his slow and steady walk to the Celestia’s private chambers. He felt tired, as tired as he usually felt when he was forced to talk about his activities with some ponies that didn’t understood the nature of his work.

He still could hear the hammering words of the captain towards his work, his way to achieve things, his lack of honour… He had listened to the endless list of insults and demands with his always nonchalant attitude a thousand times, and the fact that Crafty ignored them pissed the guard off. But in the end Crafty knew what he intended to do with that. Every time they met, he tried to get a bit more of information about what the princess had commanded him that allowed him to take his guards and send them in suicidal missions just because he ordered it. Among the Canterlotian aristocracy, information was power and Crafty knew that was what the captain truly wanted. Celestia had granted him great power, yes, and that had the aristocrats from Canterlot really disturbed.

The life inside Canterlot’s walls wasn’t as ordered and settled as many ponies usually assumed. The aristocratic games of influence and power were what moved everything inside the court, and that was a game that Celestia played joyfully and with unmatched finesse. Though her will was law, she enjoyed the struggle of the aristocrats to impose their will over the others, and that was a game in which Crafty Tail had unwillingly become involved into, and he hated it so far. Anyway, the accident in the facility, followed by the escape of the only possible source of information about the rebel group that dammed Black Claw ran, had infuriated the beehive, and now he was being stung.

After few more minutes walking through the gigantic halls and long corridors of Canterlot’s palace, Crafty finally reached the doors of Celestia’s office, guarded by two royal guards who didn’t even changed their expressions as they noticed his presence. Ignoring both guards, Crafty Tail approached it and opened it without knocking.

In front of Celestia’s studio’s table sat a light brown coated pony with a blonde mane and a compass as his cutiemark.

“Crafty Tail? I expected your meeting with Shining Armour to be quite longer…” She stated, but her expression barely revealing any sign of surprise.

“Your majesty, I hear enough nonsense during my daily activities to hear it also from the very respectable members of your court, so I left as soon as he allowed me to.”

“Well Crafty Tail, this is mister Copper Compass, the new headmaster of Canterlot’s Academy.” She said introduction the light brown coated pony.

Barely impressed by the recent change in the Academy’s leadership, he emitted a low grunt as he shook the hoof of the pony. As the pony retired his hoof, Crafty Tail noticed three parallel scars that surrounded his right hoof. As if a trigger was activated, a flow of memories from several reports about the expedition to The Royal sisters palace memebers. Sending a pressing glare to Celestia, he started to approach a couch nearby and sat on it, staring coldly to the new Canterlot’s Academy headmaster.

“I guess I should leave now …” he said, clearly feeling uncomfortable. The new headmaster looked at Celestia, who slightly nodded in agreement. “Your majesty.” Bowing toward the princess, he turned around and left the room.

Celestia still stared from the other side of her studio’s at the sitting figure of the brown coated pony.

“You know that you are growing even more insolent with time?” she commented.

“Nah, just when I’m in bad mood.” The pony nonchalantly said.

“You should behave a bit. I’m still your princess and ruler after all, even though I allow you this arrogant attitude from time to time.”

“I’m just what you made me be, your highness…” He said as he took off his sunglasses and placed them inside the pocket of his gabardine. “So you finally got rid of that old and rusty stallion from the Academy? I still wonder why it took you that long; I thought my reports on his secret activities would have ended in something quicker.

“Oh, Crafty… There would be no fun in that, would it? I needed the headmaster to reveal his plans before I did nothing, and that’s why I waited.

“But anyway, choosing this pony to succeed him… It even seems a hasty decision. Have you ever thought of consulting me in your choice? ”

“In what concerns to the new headmaster, you will eventually discover what piece he is in the game, but his role must remain secret, for the moment.”

“You know I completely disapprove those games, your majesty. Even though a thousand years of ruling over this country may have led you to deep boredom, the political intrigues and schemes this court is playing with are becoming dangerous, and the fate of Equestria is not a game.”

“Are you lecturing me, Crafty Tail? Must I remind you what you have used the Royal guard for this time?”

“No, your highness…” Crafty Tail said, deflating a bit and flinching under the pressure of Celestias inquisitive stare. From all the ponies in Equestria, he found Celestia the only one deserving his respect, and his fear. “Anyway, your majesty, I must ask… What shall be our next step? I’ve done what you planned, and yet I can’t see the purpose of freeing a prisoner before extraction.”

“Several reports have spoken of increasing activity in the city of Stalliongrad, and I’m afraid that Black Claw will make his next move there. You will be sent there to investigate with a small detachment of Royal guards.” Celestia said as she stood up from the armchair of her studio and walked toward the sitting pony. “This game is a long and slow one, Crafty. The effects of each action may take years or even centuries to reveal. Just trust me when I say that the outcome will be my victory, as it always has been…”

Prologue: The Ruler's Will

“Honeymane, send quickly a message to the palace, I must speak with the princess as soon as possible” Copper Compass said to his secretary. He spoke with a smooth tone that still was firm and authoritarian. “And don’t pass me any messages until the answer from the palace arrives”.

Honeymane nodded slowly as she wrote down a quick note on a notebook that floated beside her.

“Immediately sir…” She said as she gently closed the office’s door

Copper turned around and headed to his office desk, leaning himself against it. The previous conversation had left him mentally exhausted. To see Crimson Zephyr again was the thing he least expected after the reports from the expedition to the Royal Sisters’ palace suddenly stopped arriving, and the information that he brought was demolishing. Though he tried not to give any credit to the speculations and crazy theories Crimson exposed, something at the edge of his mind told him he may be right.

Copper realised long ago that the history of the early days of Equestria was incomplete and full of flaws, but he always blamed the lack of archives for this. But now, Crimson came with proof’s of a longer war between Celestia and Nightmare Moon, a full scale conflict that involved all ponies. If that story was proven true, it would refute all the official versions of that part of History. Though he constantly said to himself that it was impossible, he needed more than his own conviction to stop speculating. He needed princess Celestia to tell him.

A knock on the door woke Copper from his reverie. The door opened as Honeymane entered the room.

“Honeymane, I told you not to pass me any messages until my message to the palace was answered!” Copper said, giving her a withering look. He didn’t cope well with the incompetence of other ponies, and his harsh tone made it clear.

“I’m sorry for interrupting you sir…”she said as she lowered her head, intimidated by the violent tone used by Copper. He was quite a tall unicorn, what made his presence imposing. “But sending message shall not be necessary at all. The princess is here.”

Copper froze as he heard this. He thought that he would have a couple of hours to prepare himself, but suddenly the princess was there, at the other side of the door. A couple of Royal guards got in the room followed by the princess herself.

“Thank you sires. Your presence will not be necessary now on. I’d like to speak privately with the official cartographer.” She said. As she stepped inside the room, Copper quickly bowed down to her.

“As I always tell you Copper, there is no need for you to bow; you know that I’ve had enough of such formalisms.” She said cheerfully.

“I’m sorry, your majesty. To what do I owe the honour of your visit?” Copper said as he stood up.

“I was informed that the leader of the expedition to my old palace was the only survivor and that he returned and spoke with you not long ago. As his immediate superior, I wanted you to inform me about the results of the expedition, and what could have caused the death of five experienced explorer ponies under his command.”

Copper swallowed as he prepared himself

“Princess, I must ask you something.” The Celestia’s expression changed as she noticed the worried expression that Copper had.

“What worries you, Copper?”

“Princess… Is it true that the fight between you and Nightmare Moon was more than a fight? That it was a conflict that lasted for years? That she once ruled peacefully over ponies?”

As soon as he said this, Copper felt a great relief, but Celestia’s expression turned dark and thoughtful.

“I knew that I could get this outcome if I sent an expedition to the old palace, but I didn’t expect you to doubt of me, Copper.”

“Princess, you must understand, though Crimson was unable to bring to me any physical proof, his arguments made me doubt of…”

“My version of History?” She finished.

“Yes…” Copper voice faded as he said it.

Celestia stared at him. Copper felt like he was being deeply analysed, as Celestia scanned the stallion completely. After a couple of uncomfortable minutes of silence Celestia took a step forward.

“Are you loyal to me, Copper?”

“Of course, my princess!”

“Then your loyalty shall be rewarded, but I need something from you first… I need you to go to the palace yourself, this time as an officially announced expedition, and discover how much truth lies behind Crimson’s theories”

“And if Crimson’s theories are proven true?”

“That will be the moment in which you will prove me your loyalty.” She sentenced. Copper knew what she wanted perfectly. All the proofs that may lie within the old palace walls would have to be erased.

“It will be done so.” Copper said as he lowered his head respectfully. “But princess, I must ask, what will happen to Crimson Zephyr?”

“Don’t worry, he shall suffer no harm. But I must ensure he brought nothing that may compromise our plan.” As she finished saying this, Celestia’s expression changed again to her cheerful and peaceful usual face. “Now its time for me to leave Copper, my royal duties call”

As she headed to the studio’s door, she turned her head around and smiling she said “The actual leader of the Academy is a bit retrograde in his ideas. Perhaps we need to substitute him, don’t you think so, Copper?” She said, leaving the room. Copper smiled widely.