Twilight Sparkle flew down the brilliantly lit rainbow tunnel once more. Its strange luminescent walls cycled through the seven colors of the spectrum, one after another in an endless and changeless pattern. She soon gave up peering past the painfully bright walls, as they refused to reveal the secrets of whatever exotic pathway the Rift Apparatus used to move her back and forth in time.

Through the color pattern sequence remained consistent, the passageway banked in a dizzyingly chaotic sequence of sharp turns and gentle curves. Her incorporeal body was pulled along with the unseen current, holding her in place while she picked up a tremendous amount of speed. The colors whipped by with increasing frequency, but she had her attention focused in front of her where the oncoming walls finally blurred into bright light that took over everything.

The white emptiness vanished, only to be replaced with a wall of speckled grey that flew dizzyingly fast towards her. The next thing she knew, a jarring impact knocked the breath out of her, and Twilight felt herself tumbling against an unforgivable surface through a billowing cloud of black smoke. She curled up into a fetal position to protect herself but it did little in the end. In the span of a few seconds, she racked up a dozen harsh impacts all over her body before she finally skidded to a halt.

Stars danced across her vision. Twilight tasted copper and she coughed thickly, spitting something out of her mouth. As she blinked back her eyesight, her surroundings coalesced and a dark stone floor covered in slowly falling ash came into focus. Right in front of her, she noticed a blob of bloody saliva plastered on the ground and that made her aware of a sharp pain on the inside of her cheek.

“Twilight?” She heard a raspy feminine voice call out and she lifted her gaze to spot an armored cyan pegasus hovering in the air. Twilight Sparkle’s eyes widened in recognition a split second before a dark red blast of magic slammed against the rainbow-haired pony and launched her across the hallway with a painful cry.

“No!” Twilight screamed. “Rainbow Dash!”

Her best friend flipped over and over before crashing into the unyielding stone floor. Twilight made to race after the tumbling pegasus when she heard a growling snarl behind her. She spun around towards the source of the attack and her piercing glare locked onto a living magical abomination. The wulven hellhound barred its teeth while holding her stare with its soulless eyes. The two ram-like horns on the top of its head sparked to life with a deep reddish aura, and Twilight’s horn tingled with the repulsive sensation of dark magics coalescing in front of her.

Twilight did not give the hellhound a chance to strike first. A roiling mixture of anger with a twinge of fear flooded her body and set her blood aflame. Her horn lit up in a nimbus of magical power before she unleashed a torrent of pure arcane energy directly into the snarling face of the hellhound.

Shadows all along the corridor vanished, and a blinding violet blast ripped away the nearby tapestries on the walls. Twilight had to close her eyes and turn away as the wulven construct blew apart into a cloud of billowing smoke. She shouldered against the rebounding shockwave while her mane and tail whipped around in the shearing winds from her attack.

Once the penetrating glare had died down, Twilight opened her eyes. She frowned at the cloud of cinders as they slowly dissolved above a smoking stain on the stone floor. Satisfied the wulven would never harm another pony again, she spun around and galloped over to where Rainbow Dash had slid to a halt. Her spirits rose in elation when she saw the robust pegasus already trying to scramble to her hooves.

Twilight reached Rainbow just as she shakily stood up. The cyan pony managed to stumble a step or two before she collapsed once more. Luckily a quick flash of her horn saved the pegasus from a painful fall and Twilight ended up catching the falling pony in her forelegs. She used a hoof to examine the side of her armor where the wulven’s magic had struck her, but the charred equestrian metal had absorbed the attack, saving the pony inside.

She then looked up at her friend’s face, her eyes lingering only for a moment at the Elemental Necklace of Loyalty she wore. Rainbow Dash’s chest heaved in and out. Twilight cradled her gently, frowning down at her as her friend’s eyes stared at her. Rainbow’s pupils shrunk to pinpricks, and she slowly reached out with a forehoof to touch Twilight’s face.

“You’re… real…” Rainbow choked out. Her eyes wavered and grew burry as a wave of tears appeared and ran down the sides of her face. “You’re alive!”

“I’m here, Rainbow. I’m okay.” Twilight smiled at a pony she feared she would never see again. She brought Rainbow in close and wrapped her forelegs around her. The pegasus returned the gesture and Twilight chose to not mention the sobbing she heard from her friend.

Though the logical voice in her mind nagged at her about the time bleeding visions she had experienced, Twilight relished this hug. She had missed Rainbow so much and her heart soared at the idea that she would now be able to experience a similar reunion with the rest of her family and friends of her original home.

Another part of her felt a conflicting doubt as a flicker of guilt set in. The faces of James, Socket, Dmitri, Victoria, Isamu, and Deval mixed with the faces of Spike, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity. Twilight so looked forward to seeing her friends again, but a small pang of sorrow drew a few heaved sighs from her when she remembered that she would never again see her friends from the future.

Twilight shook her head to dispel this dangerous line of thinking and helped her friend up. After the pegasus scrambled to her hooves, Rainbow took a nervous step back and her eyes roamed her body. The shock and fear plastered on her face was easy to pick out. “Um, Twilight?” She hesitantly asked, swallowing once before gesturing a hoof at her. “Are you okay?”

Following the pegasus’ stare, Twilight cocked her head around and took note of the remains of the form fitting uniform she had been wearing. Now, what was left of it hung about her in a few burnt strips of tattered cloth. She ran a hoof across her back and brushed off the last few pieces, letting them fall to the floor. A warm feeling of embarrassment flushed her cheeks as Twilight remembered how long it had been since she hadn’t worn clothes in public.

“Ah, never mind these.” Twilight changed the subject before she wasted any more time dwelling over the various cultural habits she would need break if she made it through the next few hours unscathed. “We don’t have a lot of time. Where is Princess Celestia? I think she might be in danger.”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed and she rubbed her chin with a forehoof in thought. “She was acting really weird earlier this morning, but when the girls and I went to investigate, we were jumped by a bunch of wulven! I held them off long enough for our friends to get away, and then you showed up.”

“It looks like I got here just in time.” Twilight eyed the dark stain on the stone floor with a wary look.

“Pshh,” Rainbow shook her head and waved her hoof around, “I had everything under control. It was four against one and I took out three of them.”

Twilight rubbed a hoof against her nose to hide the faint smile that crept on her face. She didn’t realize how much she missed her friend’s bravado whenever the going got tough. Even so, she chose to let Rainbow’s pride go unchallenged. “Where are the others? We need to meet up with them and get to the South Tower right now.”

“This way, follow me!” Rainbow Dash flared her wings and took off. Twilight galloped after her, quickly falling behind the much faster pegasus. However, once she realized that her friend could not keep up, Rainbow circled back and flew at a much slower pace alongside her.

The two of them ran to the end of the corridor before taking a hard left down the adjacent flyway. As Twilight sprinted along the carpeted hall, the floor to ceiling glass windows that lined the walls let her see the other towering pillars of the mountain-side city around them. Her heart fluttered at the familiar sight. She had not seen her hometown in so long and Twilight had to blink away her blurry vision.

She sniffled and shook her head, but redoubled her efforts and faced forward with a determined stare. Rainbow Dash didn’t seem to notice her momentary lapse in focus and Twilight continued following right behind her prismatic friend. They crossed the passage connecting the two towers and Twilight’s nose crinkled up from the acrid smell of smoke as they burst out into a massive atrium.

The enormous tapestries that decorated every such royal foyer burned. Jets of fiery red magic flew across the spacious hall and several multi-colored ponies flew, ran, or dove in order to dodge the hellish beams. Half a dozen wolfish monsters stood at the opposite end of the room in front of two towering doors. Their curling horns crackled with their dark power and they fired beam after beam across the atrium at their elusive targets. They poured out a constant stream of magical firepower, yet their poor accuracy just meant that every shot they fired missed entirely before gouging deep troughs in the pristine white stone walls that had stood resolute for centuries.

Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash never slowed their pace. The faster pegasus shot upwards in a spiraling corkscrew, drawing the attention of every wulven hellhound. Their combined fusillade of the crimson beams cut into the arching ceiling and completely failed to even come close to the multi-colored blur they had been aiming at. Stone chunks rained down and Twilight watched a dark blue alicorn weave around a pair of falling masonry before firing a blindingly bright ball of blue light. The rapidly spinning orb slammed into the middle wulven and subsequently released several arcs of electricity, frying half of the magical abominations, while its creator banked around hard to avoid any reactionary attacks.

The tendrils of lightning may have lasted for only a millisecond but Twilight could still see their outline on the inside of her eyelids while she tried to blink back her vision. The lavender unicorn rubbed at her eyes with a forehoof before she took a widened stance and lowered her head. She spotted three hellhounds that had survived the attack through her still-recovering vision, and she carefully aimed with her horn. Twilight collected her will, concentrated for a heartbeat, and a precise violet-hued lance cut the rightmost wulven down. Before its dying roar finished echoing through the atrium, an identical beam reduced the hellhound next to it into a greasy stain on the ground.

Twilight sighted the final wulven and fired a third beam. However, it had enough time to leap sideways and avoid her attack. As she tracked the creature, she immediately took off running forward and to her left, making herself a harder target to hit. The wulven rolled to a low crouch, and its horns lit up with dark magic. A broiling lance of magic seared into the ground where she had been standing a moment before.

A retaliatory beam from her horn answered the wulven attack, but with its glaring eyes locked on her, it neatly ducked under this strike as well. I need to close the distance, thought Twilight and she ground her teeth hard as she realized that she had one opportunity to defeat this adversary. The two combatants ran towards each other, juking and ducking left and right as they launched a barrage of magical attacks at one another.

They closed the distance till it became a near impossibility to react fast enough to dodge when the hellhound managed to snap off a fireball that Twilight was forced to shield against. The wulven took advantage of its advantage and it stalked forward, launching spheres of hellfire against her barrier. Over and over, Twilight stood fast as flames roiled over her shield. The wulven carefully timed its attacks to give her no chance at dropping her shield to fight back. Each time she bore the brunt of the hellhound’s assault, she felt a sharp pain flare up in the back of her mind. She could bear the pain for now, but she wasn’t sure for how long.

Suddenly from behind her, Twilight heard a pony grunt along with the sharp crack of hooves impacting stone. Out of nowhere, a pony-sized chunk of masonry smashed into the ground right in front of the wulven before tumbling through the magical beast. The boulder bounced and flipped end over end, leaving a billowing cloud of evaporating wulven remains. It hit the edge of the stairs leading to the entrance to the southern tower, spiraled into the air with a loud crack, and finally slammed into the sturdy wooden doors. The massive rock proved to be too much for the heavy oaken slabs, and they splintered under the assault, ripping free of their hinges and falling to the ground with a deep reverberating boom.

Twilight Sparkle released the hold on her shield and it fizzled away, allowing her to get a good look through the ruined doorway. Standing in the middle of the next room, a wounded Lord Moonclaw held a battered Princess Celestia in the air with one of his clawed hands. Both alicorn and wulven stared at her, with shocked expressions on their faces. Moonclaw slowly released his adversary and as she dropped to the ground, he stepped towards Twilight. “Impossible….”

His coat had seen better days and Twilight noticed several ragged burn marks across his arms and chest. One ear had been singed clean of hair, half of the dark cloak draped over his shoulders looked like it had been sheared away by an impossibly sharp knife, and she noticed that he seemed to be favoring his left leg. The Lord of the wulven took another step, limping as he slowly trudged her way. “No, it cannot be. You cannot be here.”

Crumpled on the ground, Princess Celestia lifted her head and shouted at Twilight, weakly raising a foreleg towards her. “No, Twilight! Run!”

Lord Moonclaw’s head shot around to Celestia, then faster than Twilight thought he was capable of, given his current appearance, his brutally angry glare directed all of his fury towards her. “Traitor! I knew I couldn’t trust you, Princess!”

He spit out the last word, just about snarling as he lifted a clawed fist that immediately began glowing a deep shade of purple tinged with red. The towering wolf widened his stance. Lifting his arm high into the air as he prepared to deliver the final blow to his adversary, he let out a mighty roar before bringing the turbulent sphere of energy down at Celestia.

An instant before the attack made contact, a flash of azure light appeared before Princess Celestia as her younger sister teleported in to deflect the attack. Moonclaw’s destructive magic impacted Luna’s arcane shield, and the sound of a million breaking windows assailed everypony’s ears. Right on its heels, a hurricane-force gust knocked the legs out from under Twilight Sparkle and she clutched at her eyes and ears with her forehooves until the noise and wind died down.

A high-pitched ringing in her ears refused to go away while she staggered back on her hooves. Twilight shook her head side to side, and the double image in front of her coalesced into a scene of destruction. In the middle of the southern tower now sat an enormous crater in the floor. The contrasting magical spells left a harsh metallic smell in the air that curled up her nose as she ventured into the open space. She immediately spotted Lord Moonclaw’s prone form on one side of the crater, but her attention focused on the two alicorns on the other side.

“Princess Celestia! Princess Luna!” Twilight shouted out, galloping over to the Equestrian Princesses. Both were breathing, she could tell as she reached them, but they seemed to be out of it for the moment. She began a cursory check on their condition, remembering some of the medical tips she had learned from Victoria in a different place and time, when Twilight noticed that Luna had forgone her regular tiara for one more familiar to her. My Element?

Twilight’s hoof was just a bare millimeter from touching the sparkling six-pointed star in its crest when Princess Luna’s eyes shot open. Her mouth opened wide and she shouted out a warning. “Twilight! Look out!”

Acting on instinct, Twilight Sparkle closed her eyes and forced a surge of magic into her horn. With her violet aura blazing, she phased out of existence and reappeared exactly twenty paces behind where she had been standing. Reality came into focus and she watched as a wounded, but still very much dangerous, Moonclaw completed a backhand of his paw in an attempt to knock her away. The wulven lord took a step back, surprised by her immediate disappearance and his head went left and right as he tried to find out where she had gone.

A lance of searing light slammed into Moonclaw’s already wounded leg, and he let out something between a wounded scream and a furious roar as he fell to the ground. Twilight made to sidestep to her right, just barely avoiding the glowing arc of dark energy he tried to throw at her. Though the onrushing shockwave seemed to consume all light in the tower, the little unicorn could still feel heat radiating from the unique blends of magic the wulven preferred. That was close….

She stared at the wulven in front of her as he swung his other clawed fist around. Glowing with the same sort of visible light as his last attack, Twilight prepared to dodge this one as well, but before he could release the dark magic, a rainbow blur shot across her vision. The next thing she knew, there was a meaty thump of a hoof meeting a face. Moonclaw’s stored magic fizzled away to nothing and the wulven’s head was now cocked to the side.

“Take that!” The brash voice of Rainbow Dash accompanied her blitzing strike against Moonclaw. With an audible swooshing sound, the pegasus flipped over and swung around the princesses where she skidded to a halt into a defensive posture with wings raised in front of them.

Lord Moonclaw shook his head and focused on the pegasus pony who had dared to physically assault him. A deep rumble slipped between his snarling fangs when one of the large hanging tapestries bonked him on the back of his skull, making an audible crack. As he grabbed his head, the fabric proceeded to unfurl and wrap around his face over and over. His roar of pain choked into a muffled moan, and he clawed at the priceless Equestrian artifact as it tied itself in a knot around his head.

“Stay back, you ruffian!” Twilight looked over to see Rarity trot up to them with her horn aglow as she continued to thwart the leader of the wulven with a nothing more than a tattered strip of burnt cloth.

Lord Moonclaw ripped and tore the knotted mass encircling his head. It did resist him for a moment but once they found purchase, his clawed paws shredded through the antique fabric like tissue paper. His murderous gaze locked onto the white-coated unicorn who struck a defiant pose in complete disregard for him and his antics.

“I don’t think so, sugar cube.” A thick corded rope dropped from above and lassoed around Moonclaw’s shoulders. It went taunt and pulled tight around his chest, holding his arms against his body. The wulven twisted and turned, but the cowpony holding onto the rope kept a firm grip on the lasso, belying her much smaller size.

Moonclaw widened his stance and flexed his muscles against Applejack’s rope. Popping sounds of fibers snapping under stress could be heard. His arms bulged and strained, until with a final snap, the lasso flew apart and fell to the ground. Twilight watched as he raised his right paw up. On instinct, she made to charge her horn up and defend her friend, but it proved to be premature when Moonclaw suddenly staggered forward after something pink and fluffy slammed into his back. He fell to his knees when the brightly colored pony now clutching his shoulders squealed out an excited wail. She waved a wide-brimmed Stetson in one hoof and kicked her spur-wearing hind hooves into the wulven lord’s sides.

Moonclaw yelped. Jumping straight up in the air, he swiped behind his back at the pony who continued kicking her hooves into his sides. Twilight Sparkle felt a smile grow on her face while she watched the crazy scene happening in front of her. Pinkie Pie continued hooting and hollering as she thwarted every attempt to dislodge her. The party pony ducked and dodged each claw that came her way.

A thunderous snarl left Moonclaw’s mouth when he finally brought both of his arms down and slammed them into the ground. Pinkie Pie flew forward off of his back and sailed into the air. “Weeeeeeeeee!” She squealed out, hooves open wide when a yellow pegasus swooped in and gently caught the rambunctious earth pony. Pinkie giggled as Fluttershy carefully lowered her down to the floor minus her spurs and hat which had somehow completely vanished from sight.

Twilight Sparkle filed away the strange scene that had just unfolded in the back of her mind and she readied to strike at Lord Moonclaw again. If I can hit the same leg, I might be able to weaken him long enough for the Princesses to recover and end this. Twilight made the mistake of quickly glancing over where Celestia and Luna who were both awake, but still out of the fight for now. In the time she took to check on them, the little pony gave her adversary enough time to outthink her. A growl was the only warning she had before a mouthful of teeth and fangs leapt at Twilight.

The little pony panicked. Her eyes widened, and she grit her own teeth before unleashing the power she had been gathering in her horn. Twilight Sparkle yelled, the room flashed into a blindingly violet light, Lord Moonclaw yelped, and the lavender unicorn felt a pair of claws pass harmlessly through her mane as she ducked in the nick of time.

Twilight’s chest heaved in and out. The close call to what seemed to her like certain death had that effect, but it didn’t stop the unicorn. She came up from her nimble dodge in a wide stance, ready to defend herself, but for the moment, it seemed that Lord Moonclaw was incapacitated for the time being. No longer looking like the imposing leader of an unstoppable army of monsters, he curled up in the middle of the crater he had created during his battle with Celestia. The wulven clutched at one of his eyes and Twilight could see a faint trail of blood leaking between his paws. “You will die with them.”

She glared down at a wounded Moonclaw when she heard somepony shout out her name. “Twilight!” The lavender mare’s ears perked up at the familiar voice, and she looked up at Princess Luna who had managed to stagger to her hooves.

Next to her, Princess Celestia had her head lifted up. She looked from Twilight to Moonclaw and she stared intently at him through her blackened and bruised eyes. “Throw it, Luna!” The lunar alicorn glanced at her sister for a moment before she hefted the Elemental tiara on her head with her magic, and launched it across the room.

The Element flew through the air, and with a quick thought from her, Twilight caught it in a violet aura and brought it to sit on her head. The second it touched her fur, she closed her eyes and felt a shiver run across her coat as the Element merged with her very being. Like an old friend, it greeted her and she felt the other five Elements as well join in the connection.

Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash were there with her, and yet she could somehow still feel Dmitri Bearclaw, Victoria Schaefer, Socket Wrench, Isamu Zhang, and James Fletcher. The Elements of Harmony transcended the past and future, and Twilight now understood how to make things right again. She opened her eyes to see Lord Moonclaw still collapsed in the crater before her. The other bearers stood in a ring around the crater, their Elements glowing with harmonious light.

As one, the six ponies closed their eyes, and a beam of pure light connected the Elements. Glowing blindingly bright, a melodious chime filled the air and Twilight Sparkle felt herself rise into the air. The room filled with static electricity and Lord Moonclaw raised a feeble paw to block the light, while he still clutched at his ruined eye with the other. The wulven lord snarled and shouted out one last time, “No!”

Twilight Sparkle opened her glowing eyes and the magic swirling around each Element surged inward towards Moonclaw. A torrential spiral of energy filled the room, soaring into the air where it blew off the entire top of the Canterlotian tower. The thundering cyclone drowned out the wulven’s final cry with a roar that echoed across the entire valley. Up and up, it continued rising away from the city where finally, a titanic explosion of color spread across the entire sky. This Elemental surge of magic spread outward from Harmony in a neverending, expanding bubble that one day, would serve as a beacon to lead a lost species to a new home.

The Elements of Harmony wound down and Twilight felt herself slowly lower to the stone floor, still warm from the onslaught that had just happened. As her vison cleared, she sighted Lord Moonclaw, now unconscious but still breathing. The Elements had purged him of all his magic. No longer would he be able to maintain his arcane army which would now fade away without their power source to keep them going.

Silence fell upon the room. Twilight Sparkle released the breath she had been holding in and she stood upright and she surveyed the scene of destruction around her. Across the floor, she spotted several dozen piles of broken glass, along with various sized chunks of wall and ceiling. Not a single window remained whole in the entire atrium and over half of the roof was just gone, allowing her to see the clear blue sky above.

“Twilight?” She looked up at the orange coated earth pony standing next to her around the crater. Applejack stared at her and took a hesitant step forward. “Is that really you?”

“Yes, Applejack. It’s me.” Twilight Sparkle smiled when a pink blur slammed into her from the side.

“TWILIGHT!” The shrill, deafening scream from Pinkie Pie surprised Twilight so much that she yelped out loud. She felt herself being swung around in a circle. Her vision cycled through walls, ceiling, floor, Applejack pressing her hooves against her ears, then the walls again.

“Pinkie!” Twilight shouted to no avail as Pinkie Pie ceased her screams only to blurt out every single thought going through her head all at once.

“I just knew you were okay, Twilight, and that you were going to come back to us but I could tell that you were busy and had other ponies to save in a strange, strange world far, far away, and I understand even though it made me sad that you missed your birthday but we can always celebrate your birthday when we go home to Ponyville…”

“Pinkie Pie, stop!” She finally got the excited earth pony’s attention and Pinkie reluctantly set Twilight down. Placing a forehoof on the party pony’s shoulder, she smiled at her friend. “I missed you too.”

Twilight Sparkle stepped back when another pony hit her from the side. This time, though, she wasn’t knocked over and she turned to see a long pink mane, covering most of a yellow pegasus’ face nestled into her shoulder. Twilight reached over and pulled Fluttershy into a hug while her friend’s muffled voice professed how much she had missed the unicorn.

More hooves embraced her as Applejack and Rarity made their way over. A somewhat calmer Pinkie Pie jumped onto the group, and even Rainbow Dash landed next to them in order to join in. Twilight laughed as they all squeezed in to hold her. “I missed you girls so much!”

“We missed you too, darling!” Rarity’s voice wavered in pitch, and she sniffled through her nose. “I’m so sorry, Twilight!”

“It’s okay, Rarity.” Twilight wrapped one of her forelegs around the white unicorn as she began to sob into her shoulder. Her grip wavered, and only Twilight’s hoof around her friend’s back kept her from collapsing onto the ground. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Applejack stepped in to cover for the distraught Rarity before she fully lost her composure in front of everypony. “Gosh, it’s so good to see you again, Twi. I am so glad that you are okay.”

Fluttershy mumbled something as well, but Twilight could not pick out anything she said over the well wishes from the rest of her friends. She let herself enjoy the moment, and months of built-up stress seemed to wash away. Twilight wanted to stay right there. She wished she could go straight to find Spike and the rest of her family to let them know that she was safe, but she needed to check on the Princesses.

She need not have worried though because she felt another set of hooves hug her. Twilight opened her eyes and her blurry vision grew more indistinct when she saw the wounded but not beaten Princesses of Equestria also embracing her and her friends. “Princess! Are you okay?”

Celestia’s tired smile looked down at her and she nodded. “We will be fine, Twilight Sparkle. It is you, though, who we have been worried about for many moons now. We are so happy you came back to us.”

“Me too, Princess.” Twilight Sparkle smiled at the faces of her friends encircling her. “Me too."

From behind the far western smoky mountains, dying rays of the evening twilight stretched across the heavens. The sky gradually shifted into separate bands of light mirroring the colors of the rainbow. Heavily tinted to a deep, deep red, the sun grew bloated and seemed to struggle against the horizon while it slowly crept out of view. Weeks of accumulated smoke and other airborne pollutants, discharged in the air during the wulven’s march to Canterlot, inadvertently created an unusually stunning sunset.

Twilight Sparkle sat on her haunches overlooking the valley below from one of Canterlot’s western towers. Far below, the defenders of Equestria’s capitol worked hard to disassemble the hastily thrown together fortifications they had built to stop Lord Moonclaw’s forces. She wished she could be down there helping them, but after the traumatic events of today…

I just need a moment to collect myself. Twilight frowned and her vision grew unfocused as she once more began to mull over the last few hours. Movement against her side yanked her back into the present and she glanced over to check on the prone form of Spike leaning against her. After their tear-filled reunion, her number one assistant had refused to even leave her side and he eventually fell asleep with her serving as his pillow. Each time Twilight shifted her legs, he would reach out and wrap one of his tiny claws around her hoof, to make sure she was still there.

Twilight leaned over and gently kissed the top of his head. Deep in the dream world, the baby dragon mumbled a few unintelligible words before curling up closer to her side. She smiled down at her number one assistant and had to use a forehoof to wipe away the moisture from her cheeks. Her ears picked up on a snort and she glanced at Rainbow Dash who sat right next to her. Not encased in armor anymore, the prismatic mare struggled to hide her smirk behind one of her cyan wings.

“He really missed you, Twilight.” On her right, Fluttershy leaned forward to smile at the sleepy dragon’s prone form.

“I missed him so much.” Twilight Sparkle wrapped her foreleg around Spike and pulled him a little closer to her. She then looked around at the ponies surrounding her. “I missed all of you.”

Twilight heard hoofsteps coming up behind her and both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna joined the group on the balcony. “I’ve sent out several of my guard out to retrieve your family, Twilight. They will be here by nightfall.”

She smiled up at the princess. Both of the royal sisters looked much better after some much-needed healing magic treatments from the city’s unicorn doctors. They moved a little slower than usual, but all their bruises and burns were gone. Just the bandages still wrapped around Celestia’s wing gave any indication of the fight that had occurred only a few short hours before.

“Thank you, Princess. How are you and Princess Luna feeling? You both look much better now.”

“Restorative magics do wonders for the body.” Princess Celestia shot a wink over at her. “The doctors and nurses said we will feel much better after a good night’s rest. I can’t say the same for Moonclaw however.”

This made Twilight curious and she hesitantly asked a question she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to. “How is he?”

She noticed the sadness in Celestia’s eyes, but the alicorn princess blinked once and smiled down at Twilight. “He is stable. As soon as he heals, we will return him to his cell in Tartarus with some added protections to keep him from escaping again. However, that shouldn’t be too difficult since the Elements drained him of all of his magic. It will be many centuries before he will be able to even lift a grain of sand again.”

Twilight felt a mixture of relief and guilt as she looked once more at the destruction down in front of them. “He had so much hate bottled up inside. If he had just been willing to talk, I don’t think any of this would have ever happened. I hope he finds peace.”

“I do too, Twilight.” Princess Luna chimed in. “Moonclaw used to be our best friend a long time ago. I hope he can forgive us someday.”

“Me too, sister.” Princess Celestia placed a forehoof on her sister’s shoulder. She then focused her attention back on Twilight. “I am however, most grateful that you’ve returned to us in good health. I only had a small window of opportunity to aid in your travels and I was worried that my guidance would not be enough to keep you safe.”

“Twilight,” from the other side of Fluttershy, Rarity sat up and carefully requested of her, “if you don’t mind me asking, where did you go?”

Twilight Sparkle’s eyes went out of focus and she wavered for a moment. “I… I went far away… so far away, Rarity. I don’t think I could ever properly explain half the things I saw.”

She thought over what it took to get her here. Her journey had taken her further than anypony she had ever known or even read about. Twilight Sparkle traveled and explored an Equestria that wasn’t bound to a single world. The galaxy she voyaged across would not exist for thousands of years. She had set her eyes on planets that everypony other than the Princesses of the sun and moon would never know even existed.

The little unicorn pony from Ponyville narrowly escaped from a nameless frozen tomb world, took part in stellar combat around massive gas giants that dwarfed her own tiny home world, and she had experienced perpetual twilight in cities that never fell asleep nor stopped partying. Her travels brought her in contact with some of the most interesting creatures she had ever known. Of all the aliens Twilight had encountered on the various worlds she had explored, none held her fascination or respect like the humans did.

“Princess?” Twilight looked up at Celestia and she sat down between her and Rainbow Dash.

“What is it, Twilight?”

She hesitated as she struggled to think of a way to tell her teacher about something that would happen in the future without jeopardizing their timeline. In the end, she tried to be somewhat vague about it. “You will meet someone named James Fletcher a long, long time from now. He and his friends saved my life, and they taught me much about friendship.

“Life can be fleeting. It doesn’t have to last long no matter how much we want it to.” As Twilight spoke, she looked at the faces of her friends, mentors, and her sleepy number one assistant who still snoozed against her. “All we can really do in this life is love one another the best we can, because in the end, having good friends by your side is what truly matters.”

“Well said, Twilight Sparkle. This James Fletcher and his friends sound like wise ponies.”

Twilight used a forehoof to hide the grin on her face. “They were very wise indeed.”

Down in the valley, pegasi ponies came in from the south, hauling in rain clouds over the lower reaches of the battlefield. Methodically, they moved the storm line up to wash away the last signs of their desperate holdout around Canterlot. Soon, the rest of Equestria would follow, and they could forget the horrible memories caused by this war.

Twilight Sparkle, her friends, and the two princesses watched the pegasi work, content to sit there quietly and enjoy one another’s company. As the clouds bunched up, the rumbling of thunder grew louder. The wind suddenly picked up, and a cold breeze tossed around their manes and tails. No pony made to leave the balcony though and soon, a faraway roaring could be heard as the storms opened up with a deluge of rain.

Like the scarred landscape washing away in front of her, Twilight would let her painful memories of the two wars fade. The fields around Canterlot would grow back and their damaged cities would be rebuilt. Hopefully the Equestria of the future, of which she only obtained a glimpse, would also be able to recover. Twilight Sparkle looked forward to going back to her old life in Ponyville with the friends surrounding her, but she knew she would never forget the friends she made in a place and time so far, far away.

Author's Note

There it is! The final full-length chapter!

I've got the epilogue edited too. Give me a few days to format it and I'll get it posted! Thanks for all your patience.