The Equestrian Dark Age

Chapter I:

Nightmare returns to the world unopposed, and in the spirit of irony, banishes Celestia to the sun. Then she turns on Twilight.

***

Discord awakens from his eternal slumber, breaks free from his marble prison, and wanders, bemused, among the burning streets and burning ponies of Canterlot. The perpetrator is gone, but an eerie light pierces the sky over the Castle of the Two Sisters in the Everfree Forest.

***

Chrysalis, sensing the wrongness, emerges from her hive to investigate. The unnatural night and the return of the snow―which she hadn't seen since the time of the windigos―so horrifies her that she rallies her swarm ahead of schedule.

Chapter II:

Twilight flees the ruins of Canterlot with Spike on her back. She learns from the other refugees that the ponies of Manehattan are establishing a bulwark, a last bastion of sanity in a world that's been turned on its head in a single, endless night. Despite it being the height of summer, snow comes to Equestria.

***

Cadence has enlisted Shining as her escort to the Crystal Kingdom. The support of the crystal ponies and the crystal heart is their only chance. It's a sort of fail safe.

***

Discord meets Nightmare in the ruins of the Castle of the Two Sisters, sees the fragments of the Elements of Harmony, his soul jars, and offers her an alliance. She refuses, for she has no intention of keeping her victims alive to torment.

Chapter III:

Sombra asserts his dominance over the crystal ponies, having taken the crystal heart unopposed and consumed it. He corrupts their bodies into dark crystal and binds their souls to his will. Flesh ponies will serve him willingly, for their misery will make them prime acolytes in the dark arts, which will further twist their hearts as they did his.

***

Twilight sends Spike away to join the dragon migration, to flee the doomed nation of Equestria, and perchance, to get help. He doesn't want to go.

***

Celestia feels her mind, her entire consciousness, dissolve into the sun. While its sheer magnitude and reach eradicates her individuality, it allows her to see across time and space and into the hearts of every living thing, pony or otherwise.

Chapter IV:

Discord offers to protect the ponies of Manehattan, but his assistance comes at a terrible price. Twilight usurps the obstinate mayor and steps forth to negotiate the alliance. Discord can't move the sun or moon while Nightmare lives, but he's already begun to twist the environment to his liking. He twists the ponies accordingly, that they might continue to live and amuse him. Survival.

***

Cadence and Shining, battered and traumatized, arrive in Manehattan, where they meet Twilight. Twilight tells them what she saw in Canterlot. They tell her what they saw in the Crystal Kingdom. Hitherto, Sombra was another figure of legend.

***

Nightmare sways the bat ponies of Hollow Shades to join her; those who've remained loyal to her, who've kept the traditions alive these past thousand years, she sees fit to spare. But there are those who defy her, some of whom escape.

Chapter V:

Chrysalis appears before Twilight and seduces her with promises of military strength, magical knowledge, and above all, undying loyalty in the darkest chapter of her life. Her disguised changelings are making similar offers to the other ponies of Manehattan, and most have already accepted. These ponies will have the strength to fight, but there are those who never made it to Manehattan.

***

Discord meets Nightmare in the ruins of Ponyville. His victory seems decisive until Sombra comes to the latter's aid. Discord realizes that something foul is afoot and leaves his lieutenants, Cadence and Shining, to aid in his army's retreat.

***

Spike is greeted by the dragons with distrust and taken to see the Ouroboros, who foretold his coming and has plans for him. The Ouroboros tells him the ponies are to blame for the snow. Spike fights its attempts to turn him against his old friends, but when he sees the tributes, fit for a king, his nature wins out.

Chapter VI:

Twilight has been doing a basic "cloak and dagger" exercise with Chrysalis, wherein she tries to wrap a dagger in a cloak of invisibility. When Discord arrives and brushes off how he left Cadence and Shining behind, she unveils the dagger and lunges. Discord doesn't have time for it. He snaps his fingers, turning the dagger into a firecracker, and takes her to see if she can't talk some sense into Celestia.

***

Chrysalis ventures to the sea that she might plead for the aid of the ponies she knows dwell there, but realization soon dawns: the deep horrors they kept have gotten loose. The wind threatens to break her wings, so she flees as fast as her legs can carry her.

***

Nightmare and Sombra are reunited, and from their terrible union, the shades of the fallen, including Cadence and Shining, are raised. Together, they resolve to push Discord out of the world, for he poses the only real obstacle between them and glorious oblivion.

Chapter VII:

On the surface of the sun, Twilight attempts to commune with Celestia while Discord keeps the extreme conditions from annihilating her. Celestia will not hear their pleas, but she does reveal the circumstances that spawned their situation. Determined not to leave empty-handed, Discord condenses a solar flare into a ball of plasma. Half his reason for coming had been to gloat, and Celestia's indifference had deprived him of that.

***

When Twilight returns, Chrysalis informs her of the developments her scouts have reported. Another battle awaits. This may well be their last moment. Twilight decides they should make the most of it. Afterward, Chrysalis forms a telepathic link to impart unto her all her knowledge of illusion magic. It's not a process she takes lightly.

***

Gryphon zealots, the victors of a recent schism, lay siege to Manehattan, believing, in accordance with their version of the legend, that the ponies are responsible for the darkness. Twilight steps out to greet them, and their great war machines.

Chapter VIII:

Cadence and Shining march toward Manehattan alongside Sombra and Nightmare. Unbeknownst to their masters, and each other, they've retained their self-awareness.

***

The opposing forces meet in Fillydelphia and the surrounding plains. The city has been reduced to rubble by the relentless tides. Midway through Sombra's speech, Discord lobs his condensed solar flare into the enemy forces. In that pivotal moment, Shining assassinates Nightmare, who is, after all, a physical god. Seeing this, Sombra seeds his body with a dark crystal and morphs him into a colossus. The battle begins.

Changeling infiltrators, dark magicians, crystal ponies, embittered survivors on both sides, and the shades of their brothers, who fell in the last battle, war for nothing less than the total annihilation of their opposition. Chrysalis commands her foot soldiers through telepathy and keeps a third eye on Twilight, who takes on the colossus that was Shining. Cadence breaks free from Sombra's iron will long enough to help, and to say goodbye to Shining, but not long enough not to turn on Twilight.

Twilight stands ragged over Cadence's broken body, hot, sticky blood in her fur. She's in a daze, but the voice of Nightmare snaps her out of it. The battle wears on.

Gryphon gunships align on the edge of the battlefield. Twilight sees them preparing to shell her position, to end the Nightmare and her with it. Twilight teleports aboard. Nightmare doesn't turn around until it's too late, but the blast doesn't kill her. She rises to assault the gryphon fleet. The captain argues with Twilight, and Twilight can't believe the things she says; she's become a warrior, and the captain notices.

They don't have time to rest on their laurels, as the Nightmare descends upon them. At length, in a ship-hopping battle, Twilight finishes her with the gryphons' machinery, because magic will always pale before the dauntless advance of steam and steel.

On the ground, many lie wounded; many more lie dead. Chrysalis and Discord try to finish Sombra in their way, but their battle goes nowhere. Discord's slapstick style of self-defense can’t harm Sombra’s incorporeal form, but Sombra can’t throw anything back that can’t be turned into a harmless banana cream pie, explosion of flower petals, or some such thing before impact. The stalemate doesn’t last long, though, for Spike and his dragons descend over the horizon, silhouetted against the full moon. One by one, they open their maws, which roil with flames.

Seeing this, Chrysalis teleports herself and Twilight to safety.

***

Twilight and Chrysalis appear in a mountain cave, where they see the forms of the fallen and the broken bodies of the still-living engulfed in a wave of dragon fire that leaves nothing but bone and ash in its wake. Chrysalis sees her children reduced to smoking husks, hears their pleas for salvation, and feels all the love they earned flowing back to her. The excess magic threatens to destroy her, but she channels it into Twilight, whom she knows can take it, forcing the wings of a princess to sprout from her back. Chrysalis vows not to lose her too. Without Nightmare forcing the sun out of the sky, she hopes they’ll be able to return some semblance of order.

With her new power, Twilight tries to lower the moon. She fails.

Chrysalis uses her remaining magic to start the sun creeping into the sky, leaving her weakened but conscious.

Most of the dragons take to circling overhead, their thunderous wing beats fanning the flames. Their leader descends on Sombra, who stands, defiantly, after all others have fallen. He bargains with the dragon, but it doesn't hear him. The world is not his to destroy, only the pony world, and in that, he's succeeded. It uses its magical green fire to banish him to the oblivion he so desires, from which he may never escape.

Chrysalis sees this and explains that as long as Twilight, the last pony, harbors hatred in her heart, Sombra will forever be imprisoned in the space between spaces.

Twilight doesn’t feel hate. She doesn't feel anything at all.

Chrysalis holds her and assures her that it will pass, but even the capacity for hate is enough to sustain him. She could purge it, but not without removing all Twilight’s emotions. Otherwise, if Twilight really is the last pony, Sombra’s existence will only end when Twilight’s does, which will only be when Twilight chooses.

Chrysalis has nothing and no one else left to live for, so Twilight doesn’t have to worry about leaving her behind; she’ll gladly descend into Hades by Twilight’s side.

Twilight asks if Chrysalis believes in Hades.

Chrysalis isn’t sure. If she was, she wouldn’t have to think twice about leaving the world behind to be with their loved ones.

Twilight wonders if Cadence chose to die.

She probably accepted the possibility, Chrysalis explains, for even princesses can be killed before their chosen time, and the Ouroboros has evidently decided that they’ve overstayed their welcome―otherwise, Celestia and Luna would both be revived when the ages shifted and they were needed again. That doesn’t matter, though, because the Ouroboros never interferes with the world directly, and Chrysalis will protect her from any danger he sends their way.

For the first time in months―perhaps weeks, though it feels like years―the light of Celestia, the sun, shines over the ruins of Equestria.

The dragon, satisfied that Sombra and his armies are no more, turns to look directly at Twilight and Chrysalis, launches into the air, and alights on the mouth of the cave.

Though she’s still weak, Chrysalis pulls herself to her hooves and prepares to make good on her promise.

The dragon has grown immensely from the tributes of its subjects, but even as the new dragon king, it's still recognizable. It's Spike, the last of the royal brood. Dragons and changelings are old allies―one of their ancient kings taught the changelings teleportation magic―and though the Ouroboros would have Spike make an example of all ponykind, Twilight included, the king is his own dragon. He's kept his name.

Spike was the last remnant of the royal brood, stolen as an egg both to protect him from would-be assassins―because immortals look out for their own―and to destabilize the dragon kingdom. His return ushered in a new age for the dragons, as it will for what remains of pony kind. There are remaining ponies―bat ponies, mostly―but they’re few and scattered far. The fate of the sea ponies remains unclear, but it doesn't look good.

Spike allows Twilight and Chrysalis to live, even granting them asylum in his kingdom until they decide where they’ll go, provided they understand one thing: the age of ponies has ended, and the age of dragons has begun. He takes flight, and his dragons follow. They would do battle with the windigos, and they would win. Equestria would thaw, and scaly feet would leave their marks in the muddy earth.

Chrysalis tries to console Twilight by reasoning that Spike’s pony upbringing will make him a compassionate ruler, as much so as a descendant of the Ouroboros can be.

That's not what worries her. With absence from time comes knowledge of time, and in her mind's eye, she glimpses the terrible form of a centaur-like creature with an ape's upper body rearing against the chains that bind it to the deepest pit of Tartarus. No amount of magic will be enough to defeat him.

The dragons would care little for such considerations. As the sun reaches its apex and freezes the sky in an eternal eclipse, the dragons soar over the charred landscape toward the Crystal Mountains in the Frozen North.