Playing God

by Eris H Discordia

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Dark
Length: 31888

Effiela Claire was only eighteen when she was forced to make the hardest decision in her life. Now stuck with the consequence of her actions, and her response, all of Equestria has to suffer.

In the midst of an apocalyptic Equestria, Twilight Sparkle and Cadance must take charge of the entirety of Equestria and lead the survivors of newfound magic prowess against the army of Effiela Claire. With the help of unlikely candidates, and a dreamteam of wonders, the surviving army of ponies can only hope they have enough time and power to take down the biggest threat to the world in millennia. The one and only problem is, if both sides want peace, then who is truly wrong?

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-11-13 14:39:17 UTC

Act 1. CHAPTER 1: Aftermath of Events

Upon studying her heritage, (via Giselle's lab, as Effiela dragged it down from Cloudsdale to a cave in a stray forest, untouched by civilization) Effiela saw that pony hybrids were common in the Ponyville area, as Cloudsdale and Canterlot were dominant in either pegasi and unicorns respectively. Ponyville did have a mass number of earth ponies, though a huge quantity of pegasi and unicorns as well, 20% of which had mixed parents of either earth ponies, pegasi, and/or unicorns. Then studying her genetics, Effiela found that her father had a dominant pegasus trait (P) with a smaller, dilated unicorn trait (u). Her mother was surprisingly 40% pegasus and 60% unicorn, resulting in the Up, opposed to Equetus' Pu. This would explain how both Lacrima and Giselle could walk on clouds (though Giselle could do it perfectly, as Lacrima needed to use a spell on herself every couple of days to prevent herself from sinking through the clouds like it was quicksand). After figuring that out, Effiela found that she possessed a PPU gene, which she thought would be impossible, but going back over her parent's genes, she found out that her father was actually PPu, while her mother was Uep (e= earth pony). Through simple observation, Effiela discovered that she was double 50% pegasus, and singularly 50% unicorn. This meant that Effiela's entire body could conduct magic, but since she was only 50% unicorn, that would be downright impossible unless she had a horn, or a magical object such as the Alicorn Amulet or the Elements of Harmony. She did not know what those were, or had even heard about any of them.

Four years later, Effiela is now 26, having gotten used to living alone, and now very knowledgeable about magic and biology, and had even picked up a bad habit of psychic medium readings, which she did in her spare time and in visits to Ponyville and Manehatten, and even astrology. Effiela was very interested in the future and the mind and even demonology. She began to try to conduct magic using her hooves as mediums, but could never manage it, though she could sense magic, depending on how strong it was, so she could feel the magic flowing through her body, it was just not coming out. She knew for sure no amount of meditation could allow her to levitate objects, and soon, began to spend her days idly flying, soon staying at a hotel in Ponyville.

Effiela continued to do research, but she then witnessed the unleashing of Nightmare Moon, and the discovery of the Elements of Harmony. She had her proof of magical items there, but had no way of obtaining them due to Celestia guarding them herself. Next, Discord attacked and caused unrivaled chaos, but to this, Effiela was intrigued, not frightened. To think such a creature existed only piqued her interest in magic, now knowing it's full capabilities of causing chaos as Discord did. She was going to join Discord and ask to become his disciple, gaining enough power and experience to overthrow him and use his powers for her own purposes, but then saw the power of the Elements of Harmony first-hand. How easily they toppled over the power of a god of chaos himself, how beautiful and flashy it seemed, it was amazing. Effiela dreamed about it again and again, the defeat of Discord, oh how badly she craved for that power! As time went on and Effiela stayed knowledgeable about the spectacular events which occured in Ponyville, and witnessed many first-hand.

She then went back to her lab in the forest, and upon getting there, she found the dead, mangled body of Queen Chrysalis and hundreds of her changeling subjects. Instantly intrigued by the find, she quickly hauled the dead Queen's body back to her lab and set up her own test pods to put Chrysalis in. As for the other changelings, she found a way to destroy all but one, via burning, and kept it's skin samples in a tube constantly shocked by electrical currents. Gaining information of the events which unfolded during the duration of the Canterlot Wedding, she found out all about Chrysalis' powers and abilities, as well as her changelings' abilities.

"Able to gain power from love? From who will I receive love? Or shall I just absorb power?" Effiela speculated, testing Chrysalis' DNA and finding something very shocking. The changeling queen's body was composed of UUU. She was completely a unicorn, but was a changeling. Was this some stage of weird evolution? Or was it that the changelings were more related to ponies than she thought?

More speculation on Effiela's part, she came to yet another conclusion that if she were to splice Chrysalis' UUU DNA with her PPU, her 50% U gene would interact with the changeling queen's triple 50% U genes and possibly give her greater control over magic. Or it could kill her, which ever happened first.

She cooked up a brew of a sample of Chrysalis' skin and found that it tasted revolting. It was possibly the worst taste that anypony could ever taste. She eagerly awaited a change to happen, but realized that one dosage was not enough. But she did not want to kill herself, so she waited a week to try another cup of the brew. This time, after several hours of digesting the brew, she began to have wild headaches and terrible stomach-aches. Upon trying to sleep off the pain, she began to hallucinate the moment she closed her eyes. Terrible combinations of her father's abuse to her and then Discord doing terrible things to her and Giselle. That thought in of itself, Giselle.

She began to wonder what Giselle was doing with her life, as now Giselle would be either 18 or 19 now. She probably had a job, hopefully a good paying one to support herself. The thought brought happiness into her heart, as Giselle was the only pony that Effiela could say that she truly loved. Immediately, she felt her body feed from the love and make her magic stronger. Her love, she could finally feel her love. So, from that day forth, she fed herself with as many good memories as she could, ultimately raising the power of the magic within herself, giving her speeds up to Mach 9, which is nine times the speed of sound, though she did require extremely long amounts of time and speed increase to reach Mach 9. Nevertheless,  she still saw this as an amazing feat, and wondered what her father would think of it. Soon, feelings of hatred filled her heart, and it mixed with her inner magic, tainting it and giving it a dark, bluish-violet color over her eyes and body, turning her eyes into an amethyst color. And giving her mane slight streaks of platinum and amethyst colored stripes in her mane, blending in beautifully with the sparkling silver which it already was. She got a good look at herself in the mirror and suddenly felt great pride in herself, though this feeling was not translated into magic by Chrysalis' DNA.

Soon after the discovery of the effects of her affections reflected upon the DNA and magic of Queen Chrysalis inside of her own DNA, Effiela began taking more of the brew frequently as to see what would happen to her, but only felt her muscles becoming stronger, so she just began to travel around Ponyville more. She even witnessed the defeat of Trixie by the hands of Twilight Sparkle, taking great notice and obsessive observation of the Alicorn Amulet, until finding that it was recovered by Twilight and given to Zecora, who claimed to put the item "where it belonged". She was wary of visiting somepony like Zecora, but figured the Alicorn Amulet was currently her number one target. However, she felt as though she was not ready for something along the lines of the Alicorn Amulet yet, as to not become how Trixie did. Nevertheless, the power was her main goal, how she got it did not matter, just as long as she did.

After a while of adventuring (and ordering a couple of dresses from Rarity), Effiela went to a diner, where she noticed out of the window Discord walking with Fluttershy. Immediately wanting to investigate and be nosy, Effiela put off this desire and waited it out for a couple of days, until the weird weather patterns began to occur, causing great confusion in the Ponyville community. Was it the work of Discord?

After listening to the traveling gossip of the background ponies, Effiela was surprised to find out that the ponies of the Mane 6 had their cutie marks switched around and were trying to live out their lives, but simply could not. Soon, Effiela discovered that the problem was hastily solved with Twilight Sparkle becoming an Alicorn Princess, and Effiela herself went to her coronation. She was not noticed by anypony, and made a quick getaway. She watched as Twilight came back to Ponyville as an alicorn and was in wonder once again. She had altered her DNA through magic to grow wings, so could it be possible to grow a horn, for Effiela's case?

Twilight's situation only made more progress for Effiela's research, and gave her proof of the evolution and alteration of pony DNA via physics and a pinch of magical help. Her research's progress was halted at the thought of how exactly the princesses of Equestria became alicorns. Then the term "Alicorn Amulet" came to mind. What exactly did the Alicorn Amulet do, and more importantly, why was it named as such? She even questioned the power of the Elements of Harmony, wondering if that had anything to do with Twilight's transformation at all. But if the Princesses truly turned into Alicorns upon use of the Elements of Harmony, then should not all the Mane 6 be Alicorns? Not even all of them, but maybe Rarity, due to her being a unicorn? Even then, would it matter, as Effiela knew that Cadance turned into an alicorn from a pegasus using nothing, not even the Elements of Harmony. So it was more to the transformation than magical items, but maybe something on the inside. Maybe love and friendship was the answer, but surely many alternatives existed. Effiela hoped to find at least one, and she would continue to do so for the next few months...

Upon a clear night, Effiela went flying and noticed a dark figure lurking about within the night. She swooped down and stalked this figure, and saw that this being was Tirek, whom she did not know anything about. But she watched him drain the magic from a unicorn, and immediately she knew she had to prepare for the worst. Going back to her lab and home in the forest, she used her magic cloaking device and invisibility technology to hide it and herself until the action died down. For the next few days, she stayed put, with enough food to last her one more day, and soon, it passed. She took the risk to venture out to Ponyville and find some food, and then took witness to Twilight's battle with Tirek, nearly getting herself killed. She watched as the Elements of Harmony were used in conjunction against the magic of all the Alicorns and ponies in Equestria. And was simply marveled at how the Elements of Harmony could stand up against magic as powerful as all of the magic within Equestria, including the alicorn Princesses and Discord's. She was envious at how powerful Twilight and the the Mane 6 were, even when all of their magic was stolen by Tirek, with only the help of the Elements of Harmony.  Their power truly fascinated her.

After going back to her lab, Effiela rested from the hell she had witnessed and lived through, and resolved to first recover the Alicorn Amulet from Zecora. After analyzing what the Amulet did to Trixie, she figured the Alicorn Amulet would give a massive boost to using magic with her body.

She wrote in her diary:

I truly did not believe in such happiness.

These ponies from Ponyville truly have grown in interest within my heart. If I hadn't discovered them, I wouldn't have made such advances as I have now, and really, I don't think I could have survived as long as I did without their childish games and simple magic tricks. To think such things actually matter to me now. I could just laugh!

But in all seriousness, I can actually be 100% sure that feelings do effect magic, as I have seen this in action multiple times upon examining the Ponyville community of unicorns. Even when Rarity turned all of Ponyville gold, I could conclude it was dark magic, but that's pure logic. I need not to say more, because even a filly could tell you. I will go to retreive the Alicorn Amulet from Zecora, as now I have the courage to. It's quite sad actually!

Soon, to be written in, to write more.

-Effiela Claire

________

Upon locating Zecora's hut, Effiela entered immediately with no hesitation, finding Zecora gently mixing a brew. "AHEM," Effiela cleared her throat, getting Zecora's attention.

"How so it is you invade,

but yet you know no way," Zecora told her, "you pony who stalks, hiding in the shadows,

only seen by the one who knows how the story goes."

"I do not want to sit through a lecture of your own choosing, Zecora," Effiela said sternly, stomping up to Zecora, making the ground tremble violently. "'Cause it seems you don't know me, or what I am here for."

"I know not by names, but by habits,

as surely you stalk ponies as a carrot is by a rabbit," Zecora replied,

"How so am I intrigued, by the reason of your visit, and to that I will answer the questions of thee,

but if harmful intention be your purpose, then begone demon, away from me."

"I am Effiela Claire. And I want to share a secret with you."

"A secret to tell is a secret to keep,

as if not kept, then what is truth will steep."

"I have been keeping a close eye on the ponies of Ponyville, but it is because I am a Scientist/Witch-doctor. And I was trying to grant myself magical abilities via testing by DNA."

"How wrong your tests do sound,

upon your methods I must frown.

But, if magic you seek with yourself to adorn,

then I must tell you, you require a horn."

"But my genes are in a PPU form, and I have used the DNA of changelings to enhance that!"

"How boldly you dare to boast,

for it scares me like a ghost!

How rare it would seem to possess the changeling queen's gene!"

"It is the path which I have taken, and I will not turn back no matter what, so that brings me to my question for you... Would you please give me the Alicorn Amulet?"

Zecora laughed lightly, but then began laughing as if she had heard a ridiculous joke.

"This item of which you speak is not here with me,

but by what you desire, I must truly ignore,

if you truly want to know, the answer is from within,

and hidden by what can only be accessed by blood and gore."

"I am tired of your rhyming! Just tell me were it is Celestia dammit!" Effiela cornered Zecora, who stood up and grabbed onto her wall, pulling from it a thin covering which she threw onto Effiela. The covering began to give off then sensation that her skin was burning severely, causing her to scream in pain, and Zecora then tried to make a run for it, but Effiela flew after her, driving her out of the front door. Effiela pushed away the feeling and took off the covering, now enraged by Zecora's trick.

"I guess, if you won't tell me, then I'll just beat the truth out of you, I WILL obtain that Amulet!" Effiela screamed, charging at Zecora again.

"One truth, no truth, you shall see,

that it is truly foolish to buck with me," Zecora chanted as she got into a fighting stance.

Act 1. CHAPTER 2: A Second Magic Duel

Effiela had never been in a fight before, especially with somepony who looked so experienced. She figured she would try to avoid close combat for a certain amount of time, and fly around Zecora, trying to distract her attention, then she would attack. Zecora, however, looking completely calm, seemed like she had no thoughts in her mind whatsoever. This made Effiela uncomfortable, she zipped past Zecora and came back around with greater speed, trying to throw a punch at Zecora's muzzle. Zecora easily evaded and counter-attacked with great force.

As the pegasus pony was stunned, Zecora flipped upon her front hooves and kicked Effiela higher up with her back hooves. After that, Zecora jumped up to Effiela to where she was directly underneath her, and she grabbed her wings and flipped places with Effiela, driving her down face first into the ground below.

Even more in pain, Effiela tried to stand, but could not defend herself from Zecora's next attack; a hooveful of poison ivy to her eyes.

"A Witch you may be,

but you now itch where you must see," Zecora said, as Effiela hooved Zecora directly in the face, catching her by one of the eyes and yanking it out with great force. Zecora screamed in pain, cursing under both Celestia's and Luna's names very pitifully. She fell down to hold the empty space where her eye was, breathing heavily and trying to bring herself back to her hooves, but Effiela double-axed her face-first into the soil below.

"Well, that was no fun," Effiela said with a slight laugh, putting a hoove on Zecora's head as she lay helpless on the ground. "I was really hoping that my first real fight would be a challenge, but it seems your supposed experience was only to throw me off so you could throw plants in my eyes. Those did not effect me! What did you expect me to do? Scratch my own eyes out?" Effiela then laughed at Zecora again.

Zecora tried her best to turn and look at Effiela, who still stood over her. "Surely I hit my target, but how could it not work?

I can't stress enough that a loss is me what it urks..."

"Could you lay off the rhyming for two buckin' seconds? ! Celestia dammit, it's like you're a broken toy or something!" Effiela yelled as she kicked Zecora's flank, flipping her onto her back. "That look of pain on your face... you in utter submission to my absolute power... I feel kind of sorry for you! I ought to tell you how I'm so resilient? Or shall I tell you in heaven?"

"I know not this logic with which you talk,

but if a place as heaven exists, upon its plains, I must walk..."

"Just tell me where the Alicorn Amulet is... come on... I haven't got all day!"

"If you do use its power, as the pegasus you are,

the strain will leave a significant scar!"

"I can handle it, you stupid zebra! That's what I'm trying to tell you, my body can handle anything!"

"As I have said, I will say again,

This item of which you speak is not here with me,

but by what you desire, I must truly ignore,

if you truly want to know, the answer is from within,

and hidden by what can only be accessed by blood and gore." Zecora pushed herself from Effiela's hold and stood up on her hind legs. "This power is too much for a troubled heart like yours to handle,

if I allow you access, it'll surely be a scandal!"

Effiela looked at Zecora and smiled, "I can see it now!" She excitedly exclaimed, jerking her right hoof back and jamming her entire leg through Zecora's chest and actively absorbing the Alicorn Amulet from a seal in Zecora's heart. She jumped back with the sparkling Amulet in her mouth now, as Zecora fell flat on her face again, gasping for air as her heart was bursted. Blood was pooling within her lungs and in her mouth, and she could not breathe without choking half to death with each breath.

Effiela looked at the bloody hoof and was mesmerized in the fact that she had killed once again, however, Zecora was not dead yet. This feeling, this power, she had never felt it before. She felt so alive, now that she was in control. Now that she herself wielded this new power. She only wielded it now, and all she had to do was put on the Amulet, and then it would begin.

"I have a rhyme for you Zecora.... and it goes a bit something like this... the kids at my old school used to chant this at me.

Na na na boo boo, I am better than you, stick your head in doo doo, your family will too.

I always craved for this control... but I guess I have alot of getting used to to do." Effiela put on the Alicorn Amulet and was enveloped by its red magic, which reflected in her eyes, as they turned red until she gained control over the overwhelming power of the magic flowing through her body. They then returned to their regular amethyst color.

"You cannot handle the power...

I... can't stress.... that enough... but if you can,

then surely, call... my... bluff..." Zecora vomited her crushed organs by force, as Effiela used telekinetic magic to bend the guts within Zecora's body, forcing her to cough up her insides. Zecora tried to speak, but Effiela used a piece of the hard earth below to smash her head. Upon hearing the crushing sounds splashing carefree within her ears, Effiela winced and grunted heavily, but upon seeing the greivousness of her killed prey, she began cackling like a witch.

"Witch Pegasus Effiela Claire!" Effiela screamed to the heavens, boosting herself up into the sky and past the clouds once again to see the bright sun, nearly blinding her. "That has such a nice ring to it! Does it not, Equestria? ! I couldn't laugh harder!" She felt her mind flood with spells she could now perform with her newfound abilities, and one such spell was clairvoyance. She used this and immediately was able to see in all of the Crystal Kingdom. Her first target. Surely, forcing Cadance into submission would be easy, as she was not as magically talented as Celestia, Luna, and Twilight were. She thought of her new speed and magical power now, and thought about teleporting. She concentrated for only a second, and it happened. Now one question bothered her, how come she was able to perform such high-level magic with a mere though, when somepony like Twilight, even Twilight, took years to master and perform correctly? Even with the aid of an item as powerful as the Alicorn Amulet, a spell should be complicated for her, let alone the teleportation spell. Was it Queen Chrysalis' DNA along with her own PPU gene? It could have been, on top of the fact that she was already aware of and good at charging magic through her body and had beem doing so and researching it for nearly a decade now. Some of this knowledge was bound to help her out in some significant way. At least! And she was happy that it happened so immediately.

"Well, now I can get on with the plan, and if all goes accordingly, then this will be a breeze!" She thought as the wind blew through her mane, the cold currents did not bother her at all. "If my magic is THIS powerful, and I was already able to reach speeds faster than sound before... then maybe now, I can use an attack stronger than that of even the Sonic Rainboom. Judging by the name of the technique, I will need a rainbow themed mane, but I don't have that, so the effects of the blast will be silver. The Silver Nuke! Has such a nice ring to it!"

After laughing to herself for a awkwardly large amount of time, Effiela zipped down from the sky in the direction of the Crystal Kingdom, sensing the magical barrier which covered and protected it. She figured with enough force, she should be able to shatter through with no problem, and would now be able to see the full capacity of her theorized "Silver Nuke". Whipping over the top of the barrier and dashing up to get to a specific height, she looked down upon the Crystal Kingdom.  She got a good look at the happiness, and part of her conscience told her to stop. To give up this whole "become Pony God" idea. She saw the contempt of the crystal ponies and them with their families, living happily and in harmony. She almost felt her heart warm up enough to let them alone.

"Deliver to them true pain..." she told herself. "They are blinded by false happiness. This heaven of their's is not real..."

But where, oh where was her proof?

She delved deeper within the city and also found much pain. The deaths of loved ones, abuse, hatred, gossip, unholy lust, lies, stealing, bullying. Here was her proof, this was what she knew. It was all she knew. It was all she needed.

"It's all I know. It's all I need. It's the pain which I seek." She stood in the air with her front hooves stretched out, as if to let the sunlight hit against her body and warm her. "I must destroy them and build them back up, I must gain their trust by being the only thing they can possibly depend on. Once I do that, I will achieve the power of a god! All I have to do is let go of all my worries and let my body do the rest..."

After nearly an hour of meditation in mid-air, Effiela finally opened her eyes to look upon the Crystal Kingdom once again. She laughed at how puny it seemed now. It was only a speck of dust for her to destroy. Like the bugs, like Zecora, like father, under her hooves, it was all the same to her. To her power, all was a peasant which deserved nothing more than punishment and a force to lead it all to worship her like a god. All she had to do was start.

"Just start... All I have to do is just start... Start. Start. START!"

With her newfound courage, Effiela resolved to use her great power in magic and flight to destroy a country and force it into submission. She began her descent, falling as if she were diving into a pool of water. Thinking back with when she taught herself how to walk on water itself, she remembered to conduct her magic in a current through her veins. She reached top speed, but it was not fast enough, so she teleported between dimensions and gained a speed so great that the sound and light refracted from her body, resulting in a large halo rainbow which covered over the entirety of the barrier around the Crystal Kingdom. Mesmerized by the beautiful sight, the Crystal Ponies watched in awe as the halo spread outwards until finally disappearing. Effiela had been warped outside of the dimension to one where time was much slower due to her speed.

She kept descending at the same speed, not going any slower or faster than which she already was. And when seeing this dimension, she found nothing but cosmic colors and rainbows flying in all directions. The sight lured her interest in like a fish, and also made her feel sick. She could still sense the magic of the Crystal Kingdom and see, through clairvoyance, the effects of her first rainboom over the barrier. She could see the ponies cheering and hopping to the sight, as they thought it may have been a magic trick Cadance or Shining Armor had learned. After conversing about the blast, the ponies went about their days once again.

Effiela wondered where exactly she was and why she was there, but suddenly, she found she would never figure out, as she teleported under the ceiling of the barrier and used her Silver Nuke, using a hypercharged Sonic Rainboom along with the discharge of her own silver-colored magic. The explosive sound itself tore apart everything within a three mile radius before her, the light singed everything for six miles, while the magic itself left in the earth a massive crater destroying over 70% of the Kingdom itself with the exception of most of the outskirts and the Crystal Castle and Crystal Heart themselves. Then there was the force of the blast, which traveled all the way through, shattering the barrier and turning it into nothing more than crystal rain.

Effiela looked down at the terribly burned ground of the crater,  which she created, that she stood in. She felt slightly different, as if she were losing energy rapidly. She limited her use of the Silver Nuke to no more than twice a day. She felt the significance in the drain which it left on her body, even for somepony with as much stamina as herself. She thought, If I use that too much, I won't be able to stand up to anymore enemies... but if they're as bad at fighting as Zecora is, then I'm in for an easy victory.

She spoke too soon, as now an army of crystal pegasi (which guarded Cadance and Shining Armor) were flying towards her in perfect synchronous motion. The symmetry aroused her, but this was a fight, she had no time to sit and stare. She teleported out of the way of the pegasi and used a beam of magic from her hooves to blast them with. "Silver Cannon!" She shouted in zeal, as her new powers gave her lust for more. She thirsted for power now. It was like a breast for a young baby to suckle upon. She was that baby, the baby who could not live without milk. She could feel the thirst growing now, like a flower in the spring. Her desire welling up, her lust birning like a flame which had ignited a forest, this was only the beginning, and she got past starting pretty easily. All she had to do now was continue.

She followed after the surviving pegasi and knocked them all away with the force and turbulence of her flying. She was preparing to use Silver Cannon again, but felt a massive blade lodge into her back from behind. She jumped forward and turned around, finding a ground unit of unicorns collectively using a magic sword twice the size of Celestia to attack her. Effiela's wound regenerated, but the attack surprised her, greatly embarrassing her as well. She felt as though now they would look down on her for being open in that one moment. At that point in time, only for a moment, the unicorns thought they could win. Effiela covered her wings in blades as well, flying through the crowd of ponies, skewering them all on the blade of her magic sword and throwing them into a prison of magic which she made for the survivors.

"Did you really think, that even for a moment, you could really defeat me? Ha!" She mocked them as she prepared yet another Silver Cannon to burn her opponents to death with. Their begs for mercy further aroused her, it only made her want to hear their dying screams as they were burning alive. About to begin the torture, Effiela saw the Crystal Heart still standing tall in the distance, and knew that her true target was right before her. She simply buried the soldiers alive and zoomed her way to the Crystal Castle. Her desire only grew stronger as she felt her targets' presences getting closer and closer. Her desires were being fed by the power of the Alicorn Amulet, while her feelings and lust were eaten by the changeling queen's DNA within her. The Revolution had finally begun.

Act 1. CHAPTER 3: Revolution of Equestria

Effiela crashed through the window of the Crystal Castle and shot a Silver Cannon throughout the entirety of the room she had landed in, and saw that Cadance and Shining Armor had already left the room and were running down the hall to an escape route. She would not stand to be out run, so she teleported in front of the two, who had already made it to the second to last floor of the castle. "Oh, there are my targets, I thought I had lost you for a second... how are you doing this fine evening?" Effiela said fairly politely. She stepped up to Cadance, but Shining Armor quickly stepped in front of her, protecting her from Effiela. "Oh, and if it isn't the overprotective captain of the royal guard himself, Shining Armor?"

"First of all, who are you? !" Shining Armor demanded to know. "Step ANY closer and I will kill you!"

"Okay then, Mr. Angrypony. I am the Witch Pegasus, Effiela Claire, and I am here to take the magic of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," the pegasus pony introduced herself, bowing. "This is actually my first time directly meeting a princess. I'm quite nervous actually. I couldn't laugh harder!"

"You want my magic?" Cadance questioned the pony before her. "You do realize that a pegasus like you has no way of using magic like an alicorn can." She prepared a spell to use in conjunction with Shining Armor, but Effiela teleported closer to them and bucked Shining Armor out of the way, putting over him a barrier of magic.

"Cadance, NO!" Shining Armor cried, trying to break through the walls.

"That amulet you have, is it...?" Cadance began to ask, before Effiela finished for her.

"Yes, this is the Alicorn Amulet," Effiela said with a smile. She tilted her head just slightly. "But surely it wouldn't effect me much, due to me being a pegasus, but I have been born  with a 50% unicorn gene from my mother."

"Even then, it should be impossible for you to use magic as powerful as mine!"

Effiela screamed back, "Let me finish, you bitch!"

This silenced both Cadance and Shining Armor, they had never heard such vulgar language used against them before. They knew now that Effiela had been prepared for this moment, and that she eagerly awaited it. Effiela continued,

"The Queen of the Changelings, I found her dead body and used her DNA and blood to splice with mine, which enhanced my magical capabilities to an even higher level. This Amulet allows me to use my inner magic and amplifies it so I can use magic so powerful to do what I did to the outside of the castle! Isn't it great?" Effiela then laughed maniacally, as Cadance relived the entire situation between herself and Queen Chrysalis.

"You... killed my people, mock my power, and then you laugh at me," Cadance growled, walking up to Effiela.

"Don't do anything you'll regret," Effiela said, teleporting behind Cadance, who used her own magic to use the sharpened crystals from chandeliers to throw at Effiela, who effortlessly dodged and evaded them all, getting close to Cadance again.

Cadance flew back, but Effiela drove herself into Cadance's abdomen, pushing her into a wall. The alicorn pushed the pegasus off of her and kicked her down, where she landed on her hooves. While in the air, Cadance used a magic beam to shoot at Effiela, who dodged again. The pegasus then looked to Shining Armor and jumped to where he was as he was trapped within her barrier. "Nuh uh uh, I will torture this one if you don't hand over your magic," Effiela said laughing loudly.

"You wouldn't dare!" Cadance screamed at her, dropping down on her hooves with a great, shaking force.

"I've already done it to your entire empire, now who's to say that one more pony is out of my league?"

Cadance began breathing heavily in rage, but took deep breaths and calmed down. She lowered her head and began to slowly step forward to Effiela Claire, who accepted her supposed victory. "Deal..." she said melancholically.

"I knew you had some sense in you," Effiela replied, letting up the barrier from Shining Armor and looking back.

Cadance teleported herself to Shining Armor and prepared to do it again, but Effiela released a current of magic to halt them.

"Now that you're together again, I can trap both of you!" Effiela exclaimed.

Cadance did not stand to be outsmarted by the pegasus, so she made like lightning and teleported both herself and Shining Armor outside to the outskirts of the kingdom, where all of the surviving ponies were retreating, not looking back at the chaos. Seeing the pain and crying of the children as they ran, as some had lost their parents, and some were being trampled by the others who were careless and only thought of their own lives. The horrible sight drove her to tears, and she cried out to her people, and yet, they still did not look back. She had never seen such despair in her life at one point, and these victims were mostly innocent children. They had been forced to go into a mode of survival which no pony ever had to endure, not as long as somepony were there to protect them. Even though Cadance tried her best to give her ponies perfect and blameless lives, it had still come to this.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" Effiela said, walking up to them once again.

Cadance looked back to Effiela, staring at her intensely through her tears. Now filled with an uncontrollable rage, Cadance used her magic again to shoot a highly concentrated laser of magic, and given to her mood, the magic was dark magic, and was colored differently and darker. Effiela used her bare hooves to push the laser out of the way, absorbing it mostly, but the rest simply killed all of the ponies in the way. Now feeling even more helpless, Cadance could only cry, and Shining Armor was forced to watch this.

"Why?! Why would you do this?!" Cadance screamed in question and pure despair, as her eyes were drowning in tears. "What did we do to you to make you do this?!"

Effiela looked to the chaos and the pain, the blood, screams, and all of the fire and smoke. "I will not tell you, but I'm willing to show you," she said, looking Cadance directly into her eyes and casting a spell on her to relive every day of Effiela's life up until this point, and the pain caused Cadance to scream loudly, now crying for help, anypony to help her. Shining Armor immediately ran to her aid, asking Cadance repeatedly and rapidly what had happened and if she were alright. Cadance merely looked into Shining Armor's eyes to reflect the feelings which she now harbored.

"Now, you know my past pains, and only future pains remain," Effiela told the two as the final ponies had finally left the kingdom. "It only started with the Crystal Empire, but next will be Cloudsdale, then Ponyville, then finally, Canterlot. I have alot of pain to deliver to Equestria... and once the Queen falls, they all shall fall...I will be their fears, and I will become their god, and once they accept me as the being who delivers pain, they will pray and beg me for happiness, and I will give it to them. I will be better than Luna, I will be better than Celestia, I will be better than Twilight! I will be GOD!"

"YOU'RE CRAZY!" Shining Armor yelled, stomping his hooves down. "Ponies don't need a god like that, and that's why we have princesses. They show us the magic of power, of protection, of love, of friendship! That's why they are alicorns, because they understand that more than anypony! They are the ones who deliver happiness, NOT YOU!"

Effiela yelled back, "I COULD NOT LAUGH HARDER!"

She silenced Shining Armor once again.

"You two," she began, "you two know nothing. This world depends too much on happiness, and happiness alone. These ponies are so afraid of pain that they begin to lose sight of what happiness is. They lose sight of what pain is, and they even lose sight of its existence. How can one be truly happy if they know not what they are happy with?"

"You're right," Cadance said, "but our ponies are better than they were! We know what despair is, we don't need anymore of it! And plus, I don't care if my ponies don't know why they're happy, I only care that they are!"

"How empty are words running off of wind alone?" Effiela said sternly. "I only hear foolishness within your voice, and desperation and fear. I could just laugh!" She used another blast of magic to push Cadance and Shining Armor back, but upon rushing to them to counter-attack, she saw Cadance use light magic to temporarily blind Effiela to make a quick escape with Shining Armor.

"Cheap tricks won't save you now!" She shouted, but then a massive amount of pegasus drawn chariots of unicorns aiming bows and arrows of magic at her appeared. "Oh... well, I guess I have more bugs to squash..."

Effiela zoomed past them again, and she came back down, as to test her Silver Nuke once again, and surely enough, it worked. She did not put much force and power into it, as to not tire herself for when she would really need to use it again, but it did get the job done and killed the rest of the guards. "How Pitiful, I couldn't laugh harder at your epic failures," she scoffed as she now made her way to Cloudsdale. "The footstep of my revolution is complete... and fairly easily too. I actually expected that to be more difficult than it was! But I do hope Cloudsdale will be more of a challenge."

She made one mistake, she saw, she forgot to test the powers of the Crystal Heart, so she approached the Heart and placed her hooves onto it. It did not boast the power which she speculated it would have, but it should give her Crystal magic now, so she used the Alicorn Amulet and Queen Chrysalis' DNA to absorb it completely. She then felt a harder, sharper magic pierce through her veins, and getting used to it would take a while, but as for now, she really wanted to spare no time just sitting there. She had to continue.

The flight to Cloudsdale took no longer than she expected,  however, and she landed in the deep inner city of the main cloud of Cloudsdale. It brought back memories, painfully pleasant memories. But the past was the past, and now, she only wanted to look forward to the future. Suddenly, a great pride filled her heart, a fire to show off her power to Cloudsdale, which was really her only reason to return. To get revenge on the town that started it all, to show them clearly the power of Effiela Claire. The past did effect the future, so no matter what she did, it was due to her past. She put her front hooves down in front of her and made massive crystals of red color bloom up like flowers, and in the form of flowers. The ponies watched again in awe, wondering how such magic was possible, and instead of fear, the pegasi disposed a happy mood, throwing money at Effiela to do more tricks, even bringing their children to watch. They all cheered for her, again, letting pride grow in her heart.

"Do you guys want to see more?" Effiela asked them, as they happily replied that they did. "Hold back your bits, I do this not for money, but for pleasure! My name is Witch Pegasus Effiela Claire! And I am here to spread pleasure upon the ponies of Equestria! You're going to love me!" She used magic to make a cloud above them rain down birds of water and lightning, now earning even more highly exalted praise for herself.

A group of skeptics approached her, however. The leader looked up to Effiela and looked at her as if he were an eagle spotting its prey. "It's all fake!" He shouted loudly, standing up and pointing at her. "It's just simple crystal plant botany and pegasus tricks! I bet she's got somepony making it rain for her! We all know that pegasi can't use magic!"

Effiela smiled at the young colt and simply giggled. "It takes magic to believe in magic, doesn't it?" She asked him, but before he could answer, she used a very small Silver Cannon to shoot into the sky and make a storm of fireworks go off, granting the pegasi to clap and cheer for her again.

"I don't care what you say! Pegasus ponies can't use magic and I'm standing on that!" The little colt shouted.

"I used to know alot of ponies like you," she told him as she pat his head with her hoof, "they would look down on me and tell me I'm nothing, and I would believe them... but when I told everypony that I would become something great, they laughed at me and told me that it was impossible, just like you did. One of those ponies was my father..."

The colt looked sad now, he saw Effiela's sad face with her puppy-dog eye and wobbly lip. He looked away, blushing heavily. "D-don't look at me like that!" He shouted.

"But you're making little ol' me sad," she whined, lightening up and jumping into the air. "But I'm happy you don't believe me! The fact that you cause me pain is the reason why I'll get back up, because if I don't, then you win. And I don't really like losing!"

The pegasi cheered once again, now chanting Effiela's name in zeal and excitement. The pride grew larger and larger, but so did the bloodlust within her heart. The cheers motivated her to kill them all even worse than what she did to all of the Crystal ponies. These ponies felt more organic. More prone to bleeding. This gave birth to madness; first pride, second bloodlust, now for third was madness. She was so driven to destroy them now, the ponies that made her life how it is now. These ponies who mocked her, bullied her, told her she was nothing, now cheering for her and giving her praises. They had never thought to see today a pegasus using magic. Especially not magic THIS powerful. Something so absurd was a secret book of wonders to them. She would not make an announcement to them, she would just zoom down like she had done and used her magical sword to bisect the entire crowd, leaving none alive, not even one. A simple motion, moving as smooth as butter, cutting through them like a hot knife through butter. She wondered if it would be better for her to be the butter, or for the ponies of Cloudsdale to be the butter. Their blood rained on her and she gathered a hooveful of it and drank it like water just for the hell of it. The destruction of Equestria, to her, was imminent, but as for Cloudsdale...

Just for the hell of it.

Act 1. CHAPTER 4: Speech is Silver, Silence is Gold

She waited for the police force of Cloudsdale to attack her first, so she could let the cries and screams of the surrounding ponies soak into her being. She relished in the chaos she was causing, and wondered how Discord would react. How would the god of chaos see this? The police ponies used clouds as guns, shooting bullets of highly pressurized rain and freezing needles of hail as well as blades of lightning at Effiela all in an effort to hit her. Effiela used her magic to make a wall in front of herself to protect her, but a police stallion managed to kick and shatter the wall with his hooves. While jumping back, Effiela found that he was wearing anti-magic horse shoes, and that all the pegasi fighting her were wearing them.

"Maybe to counter-attack all of these magical beasts nowadays, maybe!" Effiela exclaimed, taking a look at the pegasi coming down fiercely upon her with attacks of their own. The Wonderbolts had come in, ready to blitz Effiela to defeat her and/or distract her long enough for the ponies there to escape to a safer land, just as the Crystal ponies had done. Cloudsdale did not know of the attack however, they did not see or hear anything due to their placement in the vast land of Equestria. Under direct order of Spitfire until somepony was able to get ahold of Princess Celestia, the Wonderbolts used their own trails of magic to push Effiela back and block her sight. Immediately, Soarin used his back hooves to kick Effiela in her face, knocking her back significantly, while Spitfire and Blaze grabbed her from both sides by her wings and drilled her into a building.

"C'mon, ya gallopin' ponies! Move it, don't let her recover!" Misty Fly shouted. "Five Elements Formation, GO!"

Effiela watched as Soarin used a metal chain, held in his mouth, to hold her down in the building, but he flew directly into her, pushing her farther into the building. Soarin hooked the chain onto a chair which was bolted into the ground, then he flew back out.

"Fool! I can easily break these chains!" Effiela yelled, trying to use a discharge of magic to break the chains, but the chains seemed to work as seals on her power, leaving her powerless for the time being. "Oh... damn!"

Fire Streak, Misty Fly, High Winds, Lightning Streak, and Silver Lining all surrounded the building which Effiela was trapped in and began to fly around it at massive speeds, soon creating a tornado which ripped the building up from its foundation, lifting it high into the air.

"Keep it up, Wonderbolts!" Spitfire shouted, flying high above the building and the tornado with Surprise and Blaze by her side. Soarin, Wave Chill, and Fleetfoot flew higher above them, also creating a tornado, but with black clouds charged by lightning. The five pegasi taking part in the Five Elements Formation flew from the spinning tornado and flew through the one made by Soarin, Wave Chill, and Fleetfoot, carrying behind them:

Fire Streak: Flames

Misty Fly: Hot Steam

High Winds: Wind

Lightning Streak: Lightning bolts

Silver Lining: Water, Wind, and Lightning (though, mostly water)

The Five Elements Formation pegasi crashed through the roof of the building and into Effiela Claire, letting loose their own trails of pegasus speed, allowing it to blast into Effiela's body, generating a great explosion which was contained by the tornadoes and compacted around Effiela's being. The top tornado made by Soarin, Wave Chill, and Fleetfoot fused with the bottom tornado and created a massive powerhouse of electricity and lightning. All of the Wonderbolts jumped onto the cloud tornado and kicked onto it again and again, shooting lightning bolts into Effiela at all directions.

"Don't stop, Wonderbolts! Not until we know she's done!" Spitfire ordered them, as they kept stomping and stomping away at the tornado.

For what seemed like forever, the Wonderbolts had made a charge of lightning so big, that the clouds had turned completely white and looked as if it were about to burst. The Wonderbolts were pushed away by its force, and it even rose up into the sky by its self, seemingly pushing itself away from the earth's magnetism.

"With an attack that powerful, it ought to be a one hit kill right?!" Surprise asked Spitfire, who chuckled and nodded.

"I have a bad feeling about this!" Fleetfoot cried, dropping down for cover from the blast.

The cloud began to discharge lightning from itself, aiming down at the Cloudsdale weather factory, where the workers were prepared for a case like this. They had built a machine that could fire the power of the rainbows they made, similar to the Elements of Harmony, but not as magical or friendship-oriented. The Rainbow Revolving Rifle, or TRIPLE RRR, was created after the battle against Tirek, as most of the settlements in Equestria took it upon themselves to create weapons of mass destruction to defend themselves individually just in case anything happened to the Mane 6 and/or the Elements of Harmony, or if they could not work fast enough to be the protectors of Equestria's big cities and Empires. The Rainbow Revolving Rifle was truly a testament to the extent of the power of Cloudsdale.

"They're using it now?!" Misty Fly cried, running around in circles like a Scootaloo with its head cut off. "Don't they know they'll destroy us all if that thing goes off?!"

Surprise smacked Misty Fly with her tail. She looked her directly in the eyes and told her, "We were selected individually by Princess Celestia herself to be masters of aerial acrobatics! Not protectors of Cloudsdale!"

"But I said nothing about that!" Misty Fly replied, before Surprise stuck her hoof in Misty Fly's mouth.

"We fly fast, we're the Wonderbolts," Surprise replied, "no matter how big and strong any explosion may be, we will outfly it!"

"Do you guys want to be left behind? !" Spitfire shouted back at Surprise and Misty Fly as she and the other Wonderbolts flew away. She looked ahead again and noticed a gigantic black blob of flesh rising up from the dead bodies of the ponies Effiela had killed. The pegasi stopped right in their tracks and looked scarily at the horrid mass before them.

Surprise and Misty caught up with them. "Why'd ya guys stop?" she asked, until looking at the black blob herself and jumping behind Fleetfoot, who had hopped behind Blaze, who had hopped behind Soarin, who had hopped behind Spitfire,  in fear. "Holy heavens of Equestria, my dear Alicorn Princess Celestia, let Luna be my witness and Cadance my shield, what the buck is that?!"

The blob devoured the dead bodies of the pegasi and made them morph into pony pegasus zombie with the skin and bodies of changelings, with the exception that now the changelings actually had pony wings now to use in conjunction with the unicorn horns Effiela modified them to have. These were not truly alicorns, since they weren't technically alive by their own magic, but by Effiela's. They were alicorn changelings.

"What are those?" Spitfire cried, standing back in fear and disgust.

"I don't know, what ever they are, they're gettin' pawnched!" Fire Streak shouted, as his hooves were now covered in fire from his body. He ran to one of the alicorn changelings and tried to punch it, but it used magic to blow a hole through his chest with its horn.

"Fire Streak, you idiot! Why?!" Blaze screamed as the first victim of the alicorn changelings was claimed. The changeling which killed him devoured his body and created another out of his corpse, much to the Wonderbolts' disgust. Blaze watched this and cried out for him, as she knew which body was his. She could hear him, as if the changeling subjects' skin only kept the locked souls of the ponies they devoured. "F-Fire Streak? Is... is that you?"

"Blaze! Snap out of it! He's not there anymore, he's dead! We have to leave now!" Spitfire ordered Blaze, who dropped down before the alicorn changeling which was Fire Streak. It even had his mane and its color, and under its changeling eyes were his eyes. Blaze began crying loudly and begging for Fire Streak to listen to her.

"Fire Streak, if you're still in there... then please! Please listen to me! I will never forget you!" Blaze cried out to him as he stood before her emotionless and twitchy. "I remember our dates... when we would race by the rivers and lay in the flowerbeds... when you told me you loved me... I remember when I finally told you I loved you too, and when you smiled and told me I was the mare of your dreams! You vowed to stay by my side, to never leave me, and you do this?"

Spitfire flew towards Blaze and punched her in the face, knocking off her aerial goggles. "What the hell is wrong with you? You can mourn all you want after this, we all can mourn after this! Now is not the time, now we have to fly away! Do you hear me? Do you understand what is being ordered to you?"

Blaze lay on the ground, covering her face while she sobbed quietly and shook violently. She coughed as she tried her very best to hold in her cries. "Fire Streak... please..." she whined, standing up and wiping her tears away. "I... I'm...I'm pregnant."

Spitfire's look of rage slowly turned into one of sorrow and regret. She closed her eyes and looked away, beginning to cry herself.

"I shouldn't have waited to tell you for so long, and now that you're dead... it doesn't even matter..." Blaze said softly, looking up to the changeling Fire Streak with a defiant expression painted on her face but smeared with tears. "I know now that you're not here anymore... and it's far too late to tell you, but it's the truth... and after all of this is said and done, I'll be sure to tell our little colt or filly or what ever sex the baby will be, that you would have been a great father. I... I love you, Fire Streak."

The Wonderbolts listened in pure sadness, powerless to do anything against the power of death. Spitfire looked back at the cloud which held Effiela, still about to explode, and then the Rainbow Revolving Rifle, still about to shoot the cloud down. She felt mixed feelings, but then regret for how she treated her teammates and peers, especially Fire Streak. She could never apologize to him, but she still had them at least. Apologizing was out of her league for now, she was the captain, and in times like this, she had to be strong, because if she was not, then who would be?

The Rainbow Revolving Rifle was finished charging its rainbow powered beam, and discharged at maximum power, also giving the rainbow laser aid with smaller cloud-powered lightning gatling guns. Once the rainbows pierced the skin of the cloud, the explosion shot downwards and upwards, then sideways, blowing back most of Cloudsdale without actually doing it serious damage. The lightning only gave fuel to the fire and made the explosion no bigger than it already was. After that, the weather factory began to descend to the ground, as this was actually a defense to prevent the enemy from counter attacking if they survived the raid. Surely the guns needed alot of energy, and for a case like this, the factory used up the entire energy source it had for the next three to seven months.

The smoke died down, and out of it fell a severly injured Effiela Claire, whose body was automatically using Queen Chrysalis' green dark magic to slowly regenerate her injuries. The pegasus pony opened her eyes and quickly caught herself, now trying to recuperate her senses and continue her vengeful ravage upon Cloudsdale life force. She was aware of her changeling subjects, as she called for them to help her once the Wonderbolts jumped her.

"Our enemy is still alive!" Spitfire announced. "We do not have to worry however... she seems slow and has grievous wounds. If we continuously attack her without ceasing, then she will surely fall and give up before our power! I know we just lost a valuable member, but if we let his death get to us and give up, then he will have died in vain! He will forever be our example of true courage, because he died fighting, not running! Now... how will you die? As cowards, or as WONDERBOLTS?!"

" I'LL DIE AS A WONDERBOLT!" Blaze cried at the top of her lungs as she flew at her top speed towards Effiela, whom she pulled by the mane and whipped her towards the inner city of Cloudsdale. The force of Effiela hitting the ground nearly led the Wonderbolts to begin flying. They were almost scared at Blaze's newfound strength.

Effiela got back up, about to shoot a Silver Cannon at Blaze, but Blaze used her speed to zigzag back and forth, seemingly making clones of herself and greatly confusing the tired, beat down Effiela Claire. As Effiela tried to use a shield, Blaze managed to shatter through and punch Effiela in the face over and over again.

"For Cloudsdale!" Blaze cried, jumping up and drop kicking her opponent face first down. "For Fire Streak!"

The other Wonderbolts arrived and surrounded Effiela together with Blaze, who was breathing heavily in fiery anger, still seething with rage to release her wrath upon the Witch Pegasus.

"Just give up and turn yourself in!" Surprise demanded.

"Yeah, you're surrounded, by the Wonderbolts at that!" Lightning Streak added. "Don't do anything you'll regret! Ya here me?!"

Effiela just began laughing, and licked the blood dripping from her head. She relished in the taste of her own blood. It was not somepony else's, it was her's! She had never tasted her own blood before, it tasted a little bit like Queen Chrysalis' DNA brew. But she did not care, she was fighting the Wonderbolts, and loosing. She had just taken down the entirety of the Crystal Kingdom and was barely just beginning to take over Cloudsdale. Though, she was only doing it for the hell of it. This fear flooded her heart, what if she lost?

"I've taken down the Crystal Empire and defeated their entire royal guard, along with the captain of the royal guard himself, and even Princess Mi Amore Cadenza!" Effiela exclaimed, laughing crazily to the heavens. Her dark magic began to leak from her body, a rainbow of the black magic of her fear and hatred, the green magic of Queen Chrysalis, the red magic of the Alicorn Amulet, the blue magic of the Crystal Heart, and then her own silver magic. "I've done all of that effortlessly, and you're telling me that I'm getting my ass handed to me by the bucking Wonderbolts? !" Her magical pressure became very dense, making it hard for the Wonderbolts to breathe and stand close to her, so they all took wary steps backwards. "The damned Wonderbolts! The acrobats who know nothing but how to fly fast, compared to the highly trained royal guards of an Empire, I don't care if it was only the Crystal Empire, but compared to the Wonderbolts, they should be powerful enough to put up a challenge! But NO I get my ass handed to me by a bunch of flying, cosplaying clowns! It's so embarrassing, I don't want to continue! What?! Will I fight a filly who'll rip my eyes out?! Am I really this weak?! I TRULY COULD NOT LAUGH HARDER!" Effiela shot many of her Silver Cannons at the Wonderbolts, who all dodged and counter-attacked with great power, continuously knocking Effiela down each time she tried to get back up. Blaze and Misty simultaneously kicked her in the face, but Effiela teleported behind them, leaving behind a burst of magic to blow them back, and once they fell past her, she used magic to grab them by the heels as slam them all over the ground.

Spitfire and Soarin made a tornado around Effiela to distract her long enough for the other pegasi caught by her to escape and gather their senses.

"You guys okay?" Wave Chill asked them, helping them to stand.

"Yeah... we're fine," they replied quickly.

"But we can't stop attacking now! We have to keep going!" Blaze pressed them, flying back to Spitfire's side.

Surprise and Lightning Streak blocked Effiela's view with their cloud trails, and as Effiela rushed through them, she was back hooved in the face again by Blaze. The kick launched her downwards into the cloud ground once again.

The portion of the cloud which Effiela landed on began to turn black and overcharge with electricity, which got into Effiela's body. She shot a spell at her alicorn changelings, forcefully animated them with the lightning from the clouds, quickly ordering them to attack the Wonderbolts. Effiela teleported beside one of them and chomped on its side, using Queen Chrysalis' blood running in her veins to force the body of the alicorn changeling into her own body like it was water. This fused the dead pony's soul within her own, healing her injuries and returning her stamina, but surely not 100%.

The Wonderbolts fought fiercely against the alicorn changelings, and Blaze came across Fire Streak once again, flying at him at full throttle. With tears in her eyes and sadness eating away at her heart, Blaze effortlessly tore through the dead pony's alicorn changeling body so fast, that not a single drop of blood was able to stay on her body long enough to stain her.

"I heard all of your pains!" Effiela yelled at them, flying back up into the air and looking down upon them as they battled the alicorn changeling army. "I can relate to you all when you say you want to mourn the death of your friend. But that is part of your still young pain cycle! I will bring you pain, and you will cry, but I will then show to you all the true meaning of happiness! You can only know happiness once you know pain, and once this is over, I will show you all how to live in harmony! Is harmony not what you want?"

"SHUT UP!" Blaze cried, catching the attention of her peers. "Will you accomplish that by killing all of the ponies in your way?! How can we be happy if we're all dead?! And why go about it this way? Do you really believe we don't have the sense to live in harmony? Or are you too lazy to see we already have what you're trying to accomplish? ! What love will you get by spreading chaos amd hate?!"

Effiela teleported in front of Blaze and looked at her with a look of authority, but Blaze was not afraid, she stared back just as intensely and tried to punch her, but Effiela teleported behind her, turning back around with still the angry look on her face. "Today, I declared myself God of Equestria," Effiela replied, "I know how extreme my methods seem, but I set down the laws now, now that I am God. You must bow to me!"

"How can you call yourself a God when you do this much evil?!" Blaze questioned her. "And how do you think you can just declare that you are the God of Equestria when we already have a Princess to bow down to?"

"Where is Celestia now?" Effiela growled. "Is she here, trying to stop me? Or is she in Canterlot, sipping tea? Does it bother you that an inexperienced princess handles the business of a 1000 year old mare who's seen enough to do for herself in her own understanding? How can you put your trust in any of the princesses? Cadance is weak, Twilight is much too young, Luna is not authorative or harsh enough, and as for Celestia... if the mare has to depend on a silly feeling like 'love' to handle a threat big enough to destroy Equestria, then how powerful is she really? But me, I will be what they aren't, and I will punish the ponies of Equestria for their insolence, building them from the ground up in my image! I am the God here, not Luna, not Celestia, ME!"

Blaze screamed as loud as she could, beginning to cry now. Spitfire looked at her in worry, pulling her back from Effiela.

"How dare you talk down on our greatest relics of Equestria! How heartless can you be?!" Spitfire shouted.

"God's have no need for mortal things such as hearts!" Effiela exclaimed, flying at Spitfire and clashing hooves with her, now in hoove-to-hoove combat with her. "Don't compare me to the likes of you, who knows not her own true power, you can't dream of comparing to me!"

"I'm Spitfire, buckhead!" Spitfire yelled, head butting Effiela away. "My Princess is Celestia! I will bow to no other and I will die on that!"

Effiela had to recover from the hit, she looked at Spitfire, who smiled deviously. Effiela smiled as well, then began cackling like a witch. "Why build such faith upon sand, my little pony?" She announced triumphantly. She spread her wings and charged magic through her body once again."If you truly all are foolish enough to believe in Celestia's power over my own, then I see you have been born a century too early! Let me end this despair for you now..."

The alicorn changelings suddenly disappeared, and not one was left, and using this as a distraction, Effiela boosted herself farther into the sky until she was right before the sunlight. Spitfire, Blaze, Soarin, and Surprise followed her up, but never made it to her as she used the first stage of her Silver Nuke to blow them back down to Cloudsdale. She teleported out of the dimension once again, but this time to charge more power.

The Wonderbolts got back up, taking notice that Spitfire had broken a wing. They ran to her aid, but Spitfire rejected them, telling them to run. "Go! Leave me be! There's nothing else we can do!" Spitfire ordered them.

"But Captain Spitfire! We can't, we've lost one too many friends already! Not you too!" Blaze screamed, hugging Spitfire as hard as she could and bawling loudly again. "And you're our captain, who will lead us while you're gone?! Who?!"

"A crybaby as always..." Spitfire groaned, pushing Blaze off of her. "Today, you ponies are relieved of your following under me... you will follow a new pony to take my place..." She looked to Soarin, pointing at him and smiling. "You better do good as the captain of the Wonderbolts, Soarin... I mean, you do have the most talent out of all of us, besides me, and you're always by my side, making sure you learn as much about being a captain as much as a member of the Wonderbolts. If anything, I'd say you were planning on doing this from the start! Ha!"

Soarin bowed to her in respect, now crying like the rest of them. "I'll do my very best, Captain Spitfire! I will never let you down! For Celestia's sake! I swear by oath to Celestia to carry out my duties as newly appointed captain of the Wonderbolts to the best of my ability and farther on to the end of time!"

"Hey... you're the captain now, just call me Spitfire, Captain Soarin," Spitfire said, coughing up blood. "Damn... looks like I was hurt more than I thought... that pegasus pony has alot of power, and we may have held her off enough to defeat her, but our main goal was to ensure the survival and escape of the residents of Cloudsdale, and we have accomplished that. All you have to do now is protect them from anymore threats. I doubt that pegasus pony will go after them, she's possibly gonna go to Canterlot to fight Celestia and Luna."

"But then we have to go protect the princesses!" Surprise cried out.

"We can't measure the value of two lives over several thousand," Soarin said to them.

Spitfire nodded. "Your Captain's right... and plus, I'm sure Celestia and Luna would want you all to protect any survivors rather than them."

"They can handle themselves, right? They're our regal sister alicorn Princesses! Princess Celestia and Princess Luna! They can mop the floor with that dumb ass Witch Pegasus!" Blaze exclaimed.

"Enough has been said," Spitfire said as she began to space out from the pain and internal bleeding. The ground began to tip over, as the alicorn changelings were under Cloudsdale, flipping it over so Effiela could teleport directly into it with her Silver Nuke. Spitfire began to slide until she caught onto a streetpole. "I'm nothing but dead meat now! Just go! I... I l-l-love you all!"

The Wonderbolts all said their goodbyes to their previous captain and followed their new captain off of the now doomed Cloudsdale. Soarin proudly led his newly reformed Wonderbolts down to the land, leaving Spitfire, who took her last look at the sky before it was completely covered by the clouds of Cloudsdale. She held onto the clouds with her teeth until she grabbed on with her two hooves. She dug through the clouds, getting to the other side, where she saw the alicorn changelings fleeing from what was coming from above.

"So that's how I die..." Spitfire said, looking at the descending explosion and silver-colored magic of Effiela's Silver Nuke. "I've never seen such beauty in a flight before... how lucky I die from this..." She did not wince, as she wanted to look into Effiela's eyes as she let go of life. The force pushed her through to the other side  of Cloudsdale,  where she met Effiela face to face before delivering to her a smile. "Thanks for giving me this flashy death sequence, I guess you do have a heart afterall..."

The explosion of the Silver Nuke completely obliterated every last bit of Cloudsdale, and the vast width and length of the blast stretched all the way to earth below, managing to scratch into her skin a deep scar that would never leave. Without a barrier to limit the power of her Silver Nuke, Effiela managed to show the world of Equestria her true power.

This was another victory tallied in Effiela's favor.

Act 1. CHAPTER 5: Attack on Canterlot

"Damn," Effiela said to herself as she fell out of her Silver Nuke's explosion, and looking back to see the destruction she had caused. The rainbow of the blast, with dark clouds spreading out before the silver, sparkling magical smoke and the red and green flames. Spitfire was right, it was truly a beautiful sight. "Ha! Shows them! I wasn't able to kill them, but I didn't need to anyways! I did this just for the hell of it! And it did give me a thrill... that's what matters!"

Effiela watched the clouds and smoke pass her, and noticed she was still falling. Frantically trying to catch herself, she teleported higher, back above the clouds, which were created from her Silver Nuke, where she was joined by her alicorn changelings, who all bowed before her. She was their queen. No, their God. "A small start, only a small start, I see," Effiela sighed, now beginning to fly off to Canterlot with her subjects following her. She did not look back again, and did not care if the ponies in Canterlot were warned already, she now was confident that she could stand up against Celestia and Luna. She did feel a bit of fear against Zecora, and was nervous to battle against Cadance and Shining Armor, and against the entire Wonderbolts, now regretting that she was only able to beat two of them, she surely felt her limits being pushed as they gave her the hardest fight she had so far. They actually looked down on her as if they were equals, as if they actually stood a chance against her. She hated that, she hated that they would rather die serving Celestia instead of worshipping her. "I'm the God now! Just look at all I've done... I can't stop now! I..." A sudden emptiness filled her heart as she was getting closer to Canterlot. She could sense Celestia's dense magical energy along with Luna's, but Celestia's stuck out more. Luna's energy was wavering under her sister's, Luna's was fierce, but had many obvious openings. Luna's power kind of scared Effiela, as she was now going to fight against an Alicorn that had experienced many grueling battles, including ones against god-tier enemies to match her own prowess. But Celestia's... Effiela felt Celestia's energy, still growing, unwavering, deeper than fierce, full of rage, strong willed, full of killing intent. She stopped flying and descended from the sky to the ground so she could vomit. She saw her vomit was full of blood, as her body still was not done healing. Looking to her minions, she ordered a quarter of the four thousand alicorn changelings of her army to check on and destroy Ponyville. The rest would follow her to Canterlot and wreck havoc with her. As she prepared herself to further fly to Canterlot for possibly the biggest battle of her day, she tried to be sure her mentality was as clear as a blue sky. Against the two regal sisters representatives of the Celestial beings in the sky themselves, Effiela needed to make sure she was calm, cool, and collected, ready to fight and win against the two sisters.

"Stay calm, Effiela," the pegasus pony said to herself calmly, taking deep breaths and wiping the remaining vomit from the corners of her mouth. "You've come this far, you can't give up now! You've survived this long, haven't you?" She began crying, and began to hallucinate violently, imagining Celestia approaching her within a black space, with nothing to defend herself, her wings were gone, and she could not scream or move, as she was completely bound by chains and gagged. She broke from the illusion and traced that it was coming directly from Canterlot. Celestia was trying to break her spirits and get her to give up.

She flew up into the air with the rest of her alicorn changelings and continued to fly at full speed in Canterlot's direction. She screamed in frustration, as the speed and wind dried the tears from her face. She felt herself about to vomit again as she entered the direct vicinity of Canterlot, now only a mere mile away, and Celestia's magical energy alone felt like an ocean, with pressure high enough to effortlessly squash and apple in its entirety and compress it to only a mere thousandth of its size. Now drowning in her own fears and worries of being destroyed by Celestia, Effiela thought over and over to give up and turn around, to turn away from her life and kill herself. She was not flying herself, but it was the madness of the Alicorn Amulet driving her, but slowly she succumbed to its juicy temptations. Her pride would not let her turn around, and it was fueled by her rage and her envy, all coming back down to her bloodlust. She was utterly pissed at Celestia and the Alicorn Princesses, envious of their powers, and truly did not want to give up and be remembered as somepony who gave up halfway through, after talking up a storm about what she would do and how she would do it. Though she truly wanted to save Equestria from its despair, it was her bloodlust and her bloodlust only that drove her to do this. She had gotten used to smashing heads in and slicing ponies up, hearing their cries and their begs for mercy. And she wanted to continue to do so, but Celestia's energy brung her down like it was bug repellent. She felt as though if she had not wasted so much time and energy in Cloudsdale and nearly died to the Wonderbolts, then she would not be so scared... However, she truly was thankful that she experienced that battle, and as a matter of fact, knowing that she could just regenerate the wounds and soothe the pain like ice on a burn really turned her on.

Pain gave her a sick pleasure, and she only could fantasize of what Celestia would do to her...

no, she could find out pretty easily what would happen, as surely she would be there shortly.

Effiela teleported both herself and her alicorn changelings through the barrier Luna was maintaining around Canterlot, and ordered them to fight the soldiers of Celestia and Luna's army and kill and absorb as many ponies as possible, while she went to fight the sisters herself. She still felt scared as hell, and that would never change, but if she had to do anything right now, that was successfully overthrow Equestria by taking out the two lead heads. She knew it shouldn't change, that it couldn't change, and it wouldn't change. She knew that for sure... but yet again, it did not matter what she knew, all that mattered was what she did and how she did it. That's all she truly cared about.

Act 1. CHAPTER 6: The Authority of the Sun

Effiela Claire effortlessly dodged the magical attacks of the unicorn guards which were attacking her, now able to anticipate movements and currents of magical energy. She killed the guard who was fighting her, teleporting closer now to Celestia's castle, only to run into a bombard of pegasi guards, all led by Flash Sentry, who had a look of fierceness and determination in his eyes.

"You can't win!" Flash Sentry shouted at Effiela, who used a magical shield to push the pegasi away. Flash managed to evade the barrier, and he kicked Effiela away. "I will not let you attack Princess Celestia and Princess Luna!"

"You're so blunt and straight forward, aren't you?" Effiela said to him, smiling. "Of all the guards I've fought, none have really talked to me directly like you have. Maybe you guards are more than background ponies afterall! I must know your name!"

Flash Sentry created around Effiela a tornado of wind, and his golden armor reflected the light of the sun onto the tornado, making it burst into golden flames. "Ha! I bet you didn't see that coming!" He exclaimed loudy, but Effiela teleported out of the tornado and double-axed Flash Sentry into a nearby building.

"I see that Celestia has made that armor of yours highly useful in the presence of the sun," Effiela sighed as she walked up to Flash, who jumped down from where he was to face her again.

"Useful, that's what it has to be to beat you!" Flash shouted, dashing towards Effiela once again. He clashed hooves with her, pushing her back so more unicorn guards could attack her. Effiela's guard stayed up, and now she had an opportunity to get away from these clowns, as they were not her targets, rather, Celestia and Luna were. But their energies remained in the castle, not moving at all. The princesses were not trying to escape!

"What the hell is going on?!" Effiela yelled, stomping her hooves down and sending down from the clouds many bolts of lightning to strike her assailants. All but Flash were hit, due to Flash's speed. None were killed, but many were severely injured. "Do they even see me as a threat? Do they not know what I did to get here?! I killed thousands of ponies on my way here, and they don't try to escape? What the buck..."

"Of course they're not trying to escape, because I'm here," Flash told her, getting her attention quickly. She looked at him as if she were confused with him, and his statement.

"Oh yeah? What's so special about you?" She questioned him, stepping up once, and cutting out the noise and cries in the background for once. "You're nothing but a guard... I've probably killed one of you about a hundred times, so what makes you so different? "

Flash whipped his mane back all cool like, trying to look tough in front of the powerful Witch Pegasus. "As all the other stallions working with Celestia have lost their personality, I have kept mine," he told her with dignity. "I am Flash Sentry! The best guard a queen could have! Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are so proud of me and my progress, that they made me the Captain of the Celestial Royal Guard, equipped with the golden armor of the highest quality--"

"You know that's just regular armor, right?" Effiela asked him comically.

Flash got angry with her, as she was mocking his relevance to the series. "It is so not! I'm specifically appointed to lead the Royal guard--"

"That's not true either, is it?" Effiela asked him.

"You shut up! I am relevant! And Princess Celestia herself told me that I was special, and that my armor was made to make me stronger!--

"She tells all of her servants that, doesn't she?" Effiela asked him. "I mean, you don't seriously think out of like a thousand guards clad in the same gold armor, that she was stupid enough to give special armor to one all because he was different? I mean... come on! I couldn't laugh harder at your epic fail! Wouldn't she have given this special armor to everypony, if it were truly special?"

Flash blushed and stamped on the ground. "Look, I don't care what you say! Princess Celestia meant something when she told me that--"

"Or are you lying about such events just to get my spirits down?" Effiela asked him. "It's not nice to lie, especially to a little ol' pony like me." She blew a couple of seductive kisses at him, and he made quite a comedic effort to dodge them. "Look, because I feel sorry for you, I won't go so hard on you... as a matter of fact, I won't even use my front hooves."

"You're kidding, right?"

"I was actually planning on asking you the same exact thing," Effiela said, crossing her front hooves.

Flash ran towards her, and she jumped over him and kicked him back to where he was; he struggled to stay on his hooves, but failed to balance, falling over. He jumped back up and tried to fly, but Effiela teleported in front of him and kicked him multiple times with her back hooves. As he was stunned, she unfolded her front hooves.

"You said you wouldn't use your fronts!" He cried. "That's like, totally unfair!"

Effiela grabbed his front hooves with her own, using his hooves to hit himself. "But I'm not!" She giggled, making Flash's nose bleed from the repetitive hits and her cute, irresistible seductiveness. She used a Silver Cannon with her back hooves to blow off all of Flash's armor, then kicking him back with the same hooves. He didn't have any more strength to get back up. "You're a funny pony, quite a color to my grey day!" Effiela exclaimed, preparing to teleport to Celestia's room, which was right before her, above all the rest of Canterlot. "But in all seriousness, I must get back on task. I've wasted too much time with you, Flash Sentry."

Making her way up to the castle's staircase, now feeling the full pressure of both Celestia's and Luna's energy, Effiela could now stand against it. She had her confidence again, but she knew she had used way too much energy and power for one day, and could feel herself burning low. She forced herself to produce, maintain, and control the energy which she had. The walk up the stairs was surely going to be one to savor, and she hoped the regal sisters felt the same way as she did.

Within Celestia's room, Luna was waiting for her older sister to say something in reply to what she had asked. "Why won't you just call Twilight Sparkle and her friends? Or Discord?"

Celestia was anticipating Effiela's imminent intrusion at any second, and figured she may as well tell her sister why she decided not to bring Twilight and her friends into the chaos of the situation at hoof. "You know as well as I do that even the Elements of Harmony do not possess infinite energy, and Twilight Sparkle and her friends do not as well... if they use the Elements too much, they may lose control of them, as the Elements can read intentions and decide when and when not to work. These Elements can actually reject the users completely if used at random excessively, and must rest for long periods of time before being used again," Celestia explained to Luna. She turned to her sister with a defiant expression on her face. "As Twilight Sparkle and her friends have been handling our problems for us, it is time for us to repay them. They've used their maximum power multiple times to save Equestria from beings like you, as Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Tirek. Each time the power of the Elements was used, it did strengthen the power of Friendship between the girls, but as the enemies grow ever so more powerful, so does the power needed to defeat them. If the Elements had not rested the thousand years which they had before they were used to stop you and Discord, they would not have worked at all."

"But sister! Surely the magic of the Elements corresponds with the personalities of the girls, so as long as they live, so does the power, right?" Luna asked her sister.

Celestia replied, "I honestly can't say for sure... but it may have something to do with the division and distribution of powers among the six of them rather than just the two of us how it was a thousand years ago. And they're so young and inexperienced, that the Elements must work ten times as hard to work with them than what they had to have done for us, since we were already Alicorns powerful enough to raise and set the sun and moon, so we had much more controlled magic to stabilize and empower, as Twilight and her friends have barely scratched the surface of their abilities, despite being good and experts at it, and knowing their cutie marks all at the same time."

"I see..." Luna said lowly. "So, that leaves us to defend Equestria until the ponies who survived find refuge in a safe place to live..."

"We live not to live for ourselves anymore, Luna," Celestia said, trying to cheer her sister up, "we are the two who give life to the world, we raise the sun and the moon, give warmth and sweet dreams, and our very prescence is enough to quell chaos itself. We have nothing to fear as long as the ponies we look after are safe. What's the price of our lives over the thousands which live within Equestria?"

The door suddenly blew to bits, and fire and smoke engulfed its remains. Celestia and Luna prepared their horns for anypony that set hoof onto the floor, and upon seeing a black cloak fly in, they let loose and set fire to their supposed assailant. Finally ceasing after their horns incinerated the target, they found that it was only a black cloak and nothing more. Effiela ran through, shooting Silver Cannons at both the sisters, who protected one another with barriers. They manipulated the barriers to shoot spikes of magic at Effiela, who dodged by teleporting, but was struck in her thigh by one of the spikes, which exploded on contact, severely burning the area which was in contact.

"Dammit!" Effiela cried, as Luna used her magic to make a bright light which blinded Effiela, and she then used chains of dark magic to try to ensnare her. The pegasus pony escaped the chains, but still had Celestia to deal with. She ducked and dodged the supreme alicorn's solar flares of magic blasts, until Luna made a barrier wall to stop her from moving. Effiela erected her own wall to block Celestia's magic, but Celestia's horn sliced through the wall and pierced Effiela's chest, nearly bursting her heart.

"Why have you attacked my land?" Celestia questioned the pony before her. "Is it not well enough that you have a balanced day and night, and protection from your worst fears? Are you that foolish to take our rule for granted?"

Effiela coughed up blood, surely at her limit now, but she still forced herself to move on. "I don't like the way you two run this government," she said flatly. She tried to use magic to push Celestia away, but the mare overpowered her and drove her into the wall, slowly crushing her. "Go ahead... try to kill me, you can't!"

Celestia stared into Effiela's eyes, using dark magic to read her mind to interpret her feelings, and Luna did the same. The three ponies ended up within a dark world upon a white platform, surrounded by multicolored lights rising upwards. Effiela quickly recalled the illusion that Celestia used on her to attack her psychologically earlier, but began to realize that this realm was the three mares' minds intertwined as one.

"You are full of doubt," Luna said to Effiela, managing to bring her down to her knees with magic. "Your magic is dangerously low, and at this point, you aren't fit to go against us at all. You're better off giving up."

"No, Luna..." Celestia growled, kicking Effiela back and stomping her chest with great force. "This pony is due for a hellish amount of punishment for her abuse to our ponies." Celestia cast Effiela into an illusion of black and blue flames, making her perception of time much slower to make the pain seem eternal.

Effiela began screaming and trying to get the flames off of herself, thinking they were real, as she imaging her fur and flesh being burned together, becoming maggots which ate away at her skin. "What the hell is this? !" Effiela cried out. "Wh-what... are... you doing to me?!"

"Feel the pain you caused my ponies, you never stopped for their pleas of mercy, did you?" Celestia questioned her. "Now, I will ask you once again... why are you trying to do something as stupid as what you're doing now? Do you not appreciate all that we've done for you?"

Effiela stopped screaming, looking down to the Alicorn Amulet around her neck, she sighed deeply and closed her eyes, still twitching from the intense pain and burning from her real and illusionary injuries. The Alicorn Amulet began to respond to her desperation, filling her body with its gigantic magic reserves, and the changeling DNA within her body responded to her hatred. "No," she finally said, breaking out of the illusion and pushing Celestia onto her back, watching her get back up. "I don't appreciate anything you've done ever. Not one thing."

"You imbecile! You will pay for your insolence!" Celestia shouted at Effiela, who used the red magic completely, as her silver magic reserves were too low to use, to grab Celestia by her neck using an appendage resembling a skeletal arm.

"No, it is you who is the imbecile, who will pay for your insolence..." Effiela said very softly and calmly, "no... you will pay for your sins. Your sins of sloth, wrath, and pride."

"What are you blabbering about?" Celestia choked.

"I know that nopony's perfect," Effiela said, "but I am not anypony... I am God!"

Luna used her magical energy to blast Effiela out of the castle's walls to the outside. She ran to her sister's side to help her stand. "Sister, are you alright?" She questioned her, checking her body for any wounds, but found none.

"I can't get through to her at all," Celestia told her sister, who did not seem surprised at all to hear this. "We have no choice, but we must use our full abilities to stop her, regardless of who's left in Canterlot. I know that many of the ponies have escaped to safety, though many others have perished..."

"Sister, are you sure you're okay?"

Celestia looked solemnly at her little sister. "I'm fine... it's just that we haven't run into anypony this demented since Discord, and even he changed his ways... but I guess our problems are truly becoming more serious..."

Luna ran and flew outside to where Effiela was and welcomed for her sister to follow her, which she did. "I can't sense much feelings from her now, as if she completely turned off her mind from us..." Luna said.

"That is why we can't fight like we were, we have to use offense!" Celestia urged Luna, who did not want to hurt and kill Effiela, but surely it may have to come to that.

"If you will not bow to me, then I'll be willing to show you true despair," Effiela sighed, using her green changeling magic to completely heal herself with the aid of the Alicorn Amulet. "Can you truly stand against it?"

"We do not wish to kill you," Luna tried to negotiate with her. "Please, turn away from your path of destruction! We hate to see such a young pony fall under false beliefs of evil!"

"Do you know my pain?" Effiela groaned, beginning to cry softly. She closed her eyes tightly as the Alicorn Amulet fed her despair with its red magic. "Completely rejected by others and myself, I was left with only my own bare hooves to defend myself... only my inner strength and my intellect... My emotions have been tugged back and forth today, and I came close to death... After all of this, I truly believed my cause so I can accomplish it to stop the pain inside. It's really all I can do, and it's all I want to do! And I will accomplish that by taking you two down, no matter what it takes... I will not die here!"

Celestia looked down, seemingly to think, then back up to Effiela. "I will not spare blows to show you how flawed your plans are... even if you are a millennium younger than I! I will not let you cause anymore destruction!"

Effiela began laughing uncontrollably and maniacally, looking up as she laughed to watch the storm clouds rolling in, and it began raining heavily. The thunder and lightning boomed and flashed, symbolizing the battle for Equestria. The pony who won this won Equestria. The one ruling Equestria was the one ruling the world. This was the thread which the world hung on for hope, or for despair.

"What have you done, Celestia?" Effiela asked with a slight attitude, now her entire personality had changed. It was for the better of the worse. The worse of the better. Celestia and Luna could only wonder about this pony, desperately wishing to help her, but not oblivious on what they had to do to protect Equestria. They had no choice but to fight Effiela now... it's just that all they had to do was start.

Act 1. CHAPTER 7: The Clear Sky

Effiela looked up to the sky, then to her regenerating wounds. She saw the blood on her hooves from the wound on her head, she licked the blood, greatly disgusting Celestia, who charged at Effiela to attack her with a magical beam of solar energy. The pegasus pony teleported out of the way and onto a cloud, using it to shoot lightning down at Celestia, who took the hits. The lightning's energy exploded, releasing the pent up energy inside, but Celestia was unharmed, still looking defiant. She flew towards Effiela, her body cloaked in energy similar in color to her mane, but much lighter.

"Luna! Back me up!" Celestia ordered her sister, who flew behind Effiela swiftly and destroyed the cloud she stood on by kicking it. Effiela dodged the hit she thought to be for her, but was still in the way of Celestia's incoming blow. She teleported above Celestia, who appeared on the ground below them, then back in front of Effiela to punch her in the face, launching her down to one of the tall towers. Luna created a dark space with white platforms for herself and Celestia to stand on.

Effiela attacked again, landing on the platform as the sisters jumped off. The platform zapped Effiela and exploded from overloading its energy. But, Effiela still flew out of the explosion, and managed to kick Luna away from Celestia.  Luna did not fall, but she did stumble, and using this as an advantage, Effiela used a vine of the changeling's skin to stretch under the ground and grab Luna by her neck. "There's no escape for you!" Effiela exclaimed, using the vine to collect a little of Luna's energy to stabilize her own.

Celestia moved at the speed of light to cut the vine, and grabbed her sister so they both could evade Effiela's next attack, which was a barrage of black vines from underground. "Simple tricks like that won't work! Do you think you're the only pony who can sense magic? !" Celestia shouted at Effiela.

"Of course not, but it's not magic you should be concerned about," Effiela said playfully.

Celestia and Luna looked behind themselves, watching as three tall buildings were hauled at them from afar. They dodged, but found that many changelings had multiplied by using the unicorns' and royal guards' bodies, and were using the buildings as a place to hide. The two sisters fought off the changelings, but were attacked from behind by a magic wall from Effiela, pushing them forward to be ambushed by the others attacking them.

"Are we being handled by such elementary tactics? " Celestia growled, shooting magic lasers in all directions, scattering the changelings for now.

"Sister, stay calm, she's trying to get you to doubt yourself," Luna urged her sister, who calmed herself.

"I do not understand your reasoning, little pony," Celestia said to Effiela.

"My name is Witch Pegasus Effiela Claire! And I will not stand to be considered a 'little pony', especially by you," Effiela replied. "You can take another shot at me, but I have prepared for anything you can do! And I heard what you were saying about the Elements of Harmony earlier... You depend on those feelings of friendship more than your own power, and that's why you can't trust youself to use the Elements anymore."

"I have the power to kill you, whether you like it or not," Celestia said. "The Elements of Harmony have no say in what they would do to enhance my power now because I don't need them! I know that becoming an Alicorn means you understand a meaning on the word 'magic', and I came to realize that magic was a form of power! My power in magic is unmatched and can only be overpowered by the efforts of the Elements of Harmony! You seem to underestimate your queen, Effiela Claire... you are much too young to understand, and I am far too impatient to explain such means to a thorn in my side like you!"

"Whoa! Who are you to decide what's patient! You locked up your sister in the bucking moon with no second thought!"

"Who are you to judge my methods of punishment? You've killed half of the population of Equestria! When I get my hooves on you, I'll do way worse than lock you on the moon! You'll be burning and suffering in the depths of Tartarus when I'm done with you!"

"Oh yeah, yeah... You did nothing more to stop me than what you're doing now. Surely somepony alerted you about the attack I had made on the Crystal Empire, but by the time I got to Cloudsdale, it was as if nopony knew a thing!"

"Surely the news had not spread fast enough for them to be alerted, so by the time you finished Cloudsdale, I was alerting the rest of Equestria! I had no time to prepare since you were acting so quickly."

"But you put so much faith in that filly, Twilight Sparkle. That bitch and her friends all rush to your aid once they know something is wrong, so why not test their trust and love for you, their leader, by asking them to locate and take me down?"

"Twilight's officially a princess now, and her reign is in Ponyville. Does it make sense for her and her friends to leave their kingdom to protect mine? I think not! And why do you speak as if I use them like rags? I'm sure I've only called them for situations much more dire than this."

"Are you saying that half of Equestria dying and becoming food for my Changelings is less dire than an attack from a minotaur that didn't kill a single pony? You must have your head on backwards!"

Celestia shouted in a booming voice. "Then don't judge me on my decisions if thou can't grasp my authority!"

Effiela stepped back a little, wincing from Celestia's uprise in energy. Taking this as a provocation, Celestia's body burst into white and blue flames, and Celestia moved at the speed of light once again to appear in front of Effiela so she could blast her with magic and flames. The magic and dark magic of Celestia's body had fused and synchronized at 100%.

"Don't judge my authority when you don't even have the power to stand under it! You little filly!"

"Sister, don't kill her!" Luna cried, putting a protective barrier over Effiela's body.

Celestia turned to Luna, with the flames of the sun burning in her eyes, and even Luna dared not to stare directly into them. "Why are you protecting her, Luna? ! Whose side are you even on?!"

"We don't have to kill her, look at how much you're hurting her already!" Luna cried, pointing to Effiela, who had dropped on her belly to brace herself for the worse. "If we just kill her, then what example would we be setting for the ponies?"

"Will turning her into stone do us any good?" Celestia questioned her sister with a growl. "Because even Discord can escape stone! Will locking her in Tartarus do us any good? Or did you learn nothing from Tirek? Oh, or, of course, jailing her for a millennium on the moon and not checking on her will allow us all to sleep at night, won't it? 'Oh, I think she existed, but that's just an old mare's tale, right?' Would it bring back all of the dead ponies? Will it really set a bad example to the other ponies to show them that if you turn my Empire into hell, then hell is where I shall send you!"

Luna's head hung low, she did not want to let up the barrier, but she also did not want to upset her sister further. Protection was her magic, she was the pacifier of Celestia's hunger of power and authority. That was what their cutie marks represented, and it was how they discovered that magic was the key to becoming Alicorns. Twilight had the magic of friendship, Cadance had the magic of love, Luna had the magic of protection, and Celestia had the magic of power. She could never pacify her sister's pride, but Celestia could never overpower her little sister's will. They were perfectly balanced like Yin and Yang. Luna tried to tell Celestia how she truly felt, but her sister shattered through her barrier and bisected Effiela Claire with her flaming horn.

There was silence for at least a minute, as Effiela coughed up blood and struggled just to breathe, but she gave up on life and soon died. The changeling queen's magic still glowed around her massive gash of a wound, but all of Effiela's voluntary and involuntary movements had completely stopped. Luna dropped to her knees before the dead pegasus and began to cry softly, mourning for another lost soul she could do nothing to save.

Celestia turned away from the carnage an upon the destruction of her city and empire. She sighed before finally saying to her younger sibling, "Since you tried to protect her, I will leave you to handle the body and retrieve the Alicorn Amulet. We must destroy it completely this time. It's the least I can do to cheer you up. You can hate me if you want, but if you dare try to overthrow me because you don't agree with me, you'll end up exactly like that pony over there. Nopony can deny the authority of the sun."

One of the changelings snatched Effiela's body and flew up into the air with it, where all of the other alicorn changelings were gathered around to seemingly mourn the death of their master, their queen, their god. Celestia, still clad in her flames, flashed before the alicorn changelings to attack them, but her feelings and magic were absorbed, turned into food by the alicorn changelings. She was pushed back by a barrier from the alicorn changelings, and landed beside Luna.

"What the hay is happening up there?" Celestia questioned herself. "I can't sense any real magic up there, and yet, they managed to use it against me? Is it the silent magic?"

"Sister, we have to do something--" Luna tried to say, but a sharp screeching pierced their eardrums as a bright light blinded them for a short while.

"I told you I couldn't die," Effiela's voice said in the minds of the alicorns. "As long as my Changelings live, so shall I!"

"How are you doing this?" Celestia shouted at Effiela. "How is magic like that even possible?!"

"My body holds the DNA of the queen of the Changelings," Effiela replied, "if changelings eat the body of a pony, a changeling made of the pony's DNA will be reborn. So if I die, my Changelings can devour my body to resurrect me as myself, due to my body and blood being intertwined with the Queen Changeling's. So, this is my body, my subjects... take and eat it, as through it, all shall be reborn. And this is my blood, take and drink it, as this is the life which will bring to you true happiness!" Effiela used her own illusion to make the sisters relive her entire day, so they could see for themselves her determination to keep on going no matter what. "As our time is running short, I only have this to say to you two... I really was about to give up against you, Celestia. You truly are a powerful mare, and I mean it! You've not got a single bruise on you, and even though I have done all of this and showed you the highlights of my day, you still stay unwavering in your power. But, I realized, if I am to be God of Equestria, I can't be less brave than you. And that, I had failed, just so I could let myself be killed so I could have a second chance. A god of war and a god of prosperity is what I am. I am both the light and the dark, the good and the evil, the sun and the moon! I am the clear sky which is space and chaos itself, determining the order of the cycle of life! I am bigger than the sun, I am the personification of all that is and all that will be... I was weak and powerless. I let them all crawl over me as if I were their punching bags, but that is no more... tell me I'm overreacting, but that last day I saw my little sister was the day I realized that no amount of happiness could fill the gap that she left in my heart. I never wanted anypony to feel that same pain, but at the same time, I wanted everypony to feel that same pain, and the madness drove me insane... but I reached perfection through my madness, and through that I became more than a pony, I became God! My father always wanted me to be a police-mare, but I became the next best thing..."

Celestia was sickened by Effiela, she tried again and again to break through the shield which protected Effiela's body and her changelings from the two sisters, but was unsuccessful. "Damn you! You know nothing of what you're getting yourself into! There's no way a mortal being like you can obtain that much power through such filthy means!"

Effiela appeared in front of the barrier, which was absorbed into her body, with a dark smile on her face. "But my little pony, I already have!"

Celestia turned to Luna and looked intensely into her eyes. "Luna... you must be the one to rule alongside Cadance and Twilight. I will stay here and fight Effiela Claire. You'd only get in the way...

"But sister!" Luna cried, stepping forward a little.

"You're too much of a pacifist to fight, and I wouldn't want to force you to do something you don't want to do," Celestia replied, flying up to fight against Effiela, but Luna followed her.

"I, I will fight with you, so we can use our Yin and Yang Magic together," Luna urged her sister, looking to Effiela as her sister was doing. "Our magic keeps one another balanced, and nopony with out the other can stand unbalanced."

Effiela rubbed where she was bisected with her right hoof. "You two really are as persistent as cockroaches... and the frustration boiling with you two is making it awfully hard for me to not kill you."

"Same to you," Celestia said.

"If I am forced to do it for the sake of Equestria, then so I shall kill you," Luna said, as she allowed her magic to flow out completely, showing it to be on an equal level with Celestia's.

Celestia stopped using her dark magic and released her white solar energy Yang magic, as Luna's dark bluish-black lunar energy Yin did the same and came together with one another, making a Yin-Yang circle behind the two sisters. Luna transformed into Nightmare Moon, as the form was her complete Yin taking over, while Celestia stayed as she was, since she never changed.

"Yin-Yang Magic? I've never heard of such a thing," Effiela said, tilting her head to the right.

"It's the ancient magic used by the unicorns in the olden days to rise and set the sun and the moon," Celestia explained, "Luna and I figured out all of its secrets and perfected it to our favor. Now we can use the Celestial beings as magical items in of themselves!"

Celestia and Luna both shot magical beams at Effiela, who only dodged them and began flying high into the air, prompting the two to follow her. "Don't run away now!" Luna yelled. "You're only making this worse on yourself! Just give up and turn in the Alicorn Amulet, or we will have to kill you!"

"Are you implying that you can kill me at anytime?" Effiela shouted at them as she teleported behind them to turn around and flee the other direction.

Celestia, using the speed of light again, appeared before Effiela once again. "Were you implying the same?" she asked, using her magic to blast Effiela down into the inner city of Canterlot, where all the inhabitants had left from. Luna brung darkness to make Effiela's sight useless, though she could still sense magic flowing around her.

Luna used illusions to infiltrate her mind and get her body to stop working from the inside out, but in reality, as Effiela was paying too much attention to getting Luna out of her head, Celestia had already blasted her with Yang Magic. Effiela continued to stay standing, and she teleported out of Luna's dark Yin energy cloak and back into the sunlight, where Celestia was gaining power from the sun itself to shoot at Effiela. She cleared the rain clouds from in front of the sun, making a rainbow arc over the land of Equestria, while Luna was under her sister and made the moon come in front of the sun, creating a solar eclipse. However, as the sun turned black, in Effiela's mind, the moon turned blood red. She saw upside down that she was in the realm of her imagination, and that Luna was controlling it. She tried to break from the illusion, but could not. The rainbow gathered around the sisters as their black and white energies collided and created a single ball of Yin and Yang, haloed by the sun, moon, and the rainbow.

Effiela remembered how Giselle had left her. How she cared not enough for her sister to stay with her and show her that she loved her. She saw how easy Celestia and Luna were getting along, and envied their sisterly chemistry. She only wanted that, but it was true that some ponies never get what they want.

She bit her front leg to wake herself from the illusion and get out of the way of the magic attack the sisters had collaborated to birth. Teleporting up farther into the sky, Effiela was still pushed by the blast and it's force, but she used her changeling DNA to partially absorb the Yin Yang Magic which the sisters used against her, and she quickly made a counter-attack that could not miss. She descended with a Silver Nuke, possibly the last one she could perform for a long time, since this one was only powered by the little magical power she had reserved to take on Canterlot. Though this one did destroy half of Canterlot, it was still full powered like the last ones were, and it was no joke.

The blast nearly incinerated the sisters, but their magic covers were protective enough to reduce lethal damage by 50%, though they were still blown away by this attack and injured to the point where they could not stand up.

"Sister! Sister! Wake up, please! Wake up!" Luna cried as she crawled to her sister's side, taking notice that the severe drain in magic left them in their younger states, such as when Luna was defeated by the Mane 6. Celestia's mane reverted back to its original pink color, and both of the sisters shrunk down to where they were just a bit under Effiela's size.

Celestia opened her eyes and coughed up blood, something which she never thought she would have ever done. "Wh-what? Were we really beat by her? Did she really trample over us and make us into this?"

Effiela walked up to them, with black energy on one side of her body and white energy on the other. She was sweating oceans and panting as if she had forgotten how to breathe, her legs were shaking as she walked, and once she made it to Celestia and Luna, she fell to her knees and began laughing, despite coughing violently afterwards. She tried to absorb the magic of the Yin Yang into herself, but could not, and the energy was scattered all throughout the air. A small portion of it seeped into the Alicorn Amulet. "I win, Celestia," she wheezed, using her magic to gather the remains of the Crystal Castle, the weather factory of Cloudsdale, and Celestia and Luna's castle to create from the earth a tower for herself. "I will not kill you two, well, at least not until I gain those other two Alicorns. Twilight and her sister, Cadance. I can't say for sure... that this battle hasn't taught me anything other than the full extent of Equestria's power, but I am the power and authority of Equestria now. And now that I have your knowledge of all the magic and history, I can get my army of changelings together in even denser numbers and study greater forms of magic. My title of God has already been achieved, but my power is not even on par with you two's... so you are going to be of great use to me for now..."

Effiela looked on to all the destruction she had caused, and saw that it was good. "I am God now... I am God now!" She giggled lightly, until the black vines of her changeling DNA came out of the ground leading to the basement of her new palace, dragging Celestia and Luna down, despite their screams and pleas for her to stop, for her to show them mercy. She could not use anymore magic for the time being, as her reserves were empty and she had to wait until her stamina came back, so until then, Ponyville would be safe from her wrath. As for the rest of Equestria, it was under her control. She truly had become God.

ACT 1. CHAPTER 8: Ponyville's Struggle

Twilight woke violently, falling out of the bed she was in onto the cold, rock floor below. She managed to not fall horn-first to cause herself an unimaginable amount of bloody pain and saving her vocal cords from what would have been a morning of blood curdling screaming. It had happened before, however. It happened just yesterday, when she saw the explosion that was given birth to in the sky a distance away. The cloudy sky over Ponyville was swept away by the violent, unrelenting turbulence from the north winds. It blew the many ponies walking outside away, and the  light that had distracted them long enough for the rest of the force to destroy the outer edge of Ponyville which pointed to the direction of Cloudsdale. Twilight could remember it so clearly, and the memories haunted her like a thorn in her side. She had received a letter from Princess Celestia telling her to protect the entirety of the survivors of Ponyville, The Crystal Empire, and Cloudsdale, and to watch out for any outsiders who seemed suspicious. She could not react fast enough to brace Ponyville from the impact of the Silver Nuke which Effiela landed upon Cloudsdale, and she could not quell the chaos which was ensued on the village. Everypony sprinting around in confused masses of uncertainty and sorrow, worrisome of what could come to them next if they did not act fast enough.

Twilight stood, seemingly alone in the chaotic unroar of the Ponyville crowd, and tried to muster up the courage to display her authority, but she could not bring herself to control them. They kept running, crying, falling to their knees in pain, and endlessly spouting nonsense of the end of the world. The apocalypse was brewing upon their unprepared tails, and they were drowning in nothing but fear and ail. Twilight soon was pushed back and trampled by her ponies. Her own subjects used her as a coat in a mud puddle to get themselves to a blind safety. They had proven to her that running was pretty much all they were good for. Twilight could not stand for their turmoil and complaining, surely the end of Equestria was neigh, but if they only listened to her, then they could find out a way to survive through it all. If only they listened...

She hit her head against the ground, horn first, and she unknowingly blasted a laser in her fit of discomfort and rage. She rose up from her fall and kicked a rock far until it hit a stray building in the distance. Taking her stance, Twilight screamed in  what Luna would call "The Royal Canterlot Voice",

"Stop it! All of you!"

Twilight was panting in tiredness and pain from her sprained horn. She glared at the ponies around her, now in control of their attention. "If you all run about mindlessly and aimlessly, then we'll end up like the cities our enemy has destroyed already! If you keep doing what you're doing now, then we all will die! Is that what you want?! Think about the children, these poor, innocent foals, do you want their minds to be plagued with your hopeless screaming? Do you want to destroy any hope they have for survival before they even have any? Or do you want to be saved?!"

The ponies of Ponyville made their sorrowful eyes feast upon the sight of the ground, they merely began to wail and cry out to Twilight, begging for her to help them in any way she could. Twilight had no plan whatsoever, but she needed not to think, as Applejack had run through the crowd to Twilight's side to speak on her behalf.

"We Apple Clan members have long had an escape route to an underground bunker to hold all of Equestria in a time like this, since our cities and landmarks are being destroyed," Applejack said to the crowd, looking to Twilight and winking with a smile, prompting Twilight to smile back. "Now, if we could all get there in a nice and orderly fashion, then we won't have to worry about anything."

Then Spike, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie all managed to join them in the center of the group, all smiling and happy. Twilight giggled in hope that this would be the step that led to peace. "Now, what are we all waiting for? Let's go!"

The ponies all stood together and began to make their way upon following Applejack and the rest of the Mane Six, now happy and full of hope, despite the obvious hopelessness all around them. Spike had managed to grab the box holding the Elements of Harmony before leaving the castle, just in case the Mane Six had to use them. However, nopony knew the secret behind their power and how often the Elements could be used. Surely, what Celestia had explained about them was correct, that the more Harmony had to be distributed then the more the Elements themselves had to harmonized. Their cores were now so concentrated with orderly magic, that the could not stand to be in the same place any longer. Even one more usage of them, and the worst possible thing could happen to the users.

The alicorn changelings flew down in a dense formation down from the sky. The buzz of their wings and their grunts and groans of starvation's song emanating from them put great distress within the ponies' hearts. Twilight was about to give an order to them, but the overwhelming force pushing out of the alicorn changelings and onto the village of Ponyville was ungodliness incarnate. Twilight could do nothing but stare at the incoming attack, frozen in her fear, clueless on what to do. Rainbow Dash dropped down beside them, her eyes still fixed upon the enemy, she gritted her teeth in anger, holding back a scream of despair. Fluttershy's eyes slowly began to close, as the yellow pegasus' legs could barely support her weight, and she flopped over, unconscious to the events.

The aura of the thousands of alicorn changelings was dark, and depressingly deep, just like the ocean of Celestia's magical energy which Effiela had felt. This was not magic however, this was the despair, hatred, and negative feelings of the trapped souls within that were from the ponies devoured by the changeling skins. Now feeding off of the ponies' love and magic, they had to get rid of the waste, which were the negative feelings, and this resulted in the air which the ponies of Ponyville stood under now. This was truly darker than anything they had dealt with before, and they were ill-equipped for this situation. Until Twilight remembered that Spike had the Elements of Harmony in the box.

"Spike! Quick! Give me the Elements!" Twilight demanded, as Spike acted quickly and threw to her the box, out of which she took the Elements of Harmony and distributed them among the rest of the Mane Six... "Fluttershy! Please! Get up! This is no time to blackout! I know you're scared out of your mind, but for once, we all feel that way!"

Pinkie Pie took it upon herself to wake up Fluttershy, as even Pinkie seemed to only be partially affected by the dark aura emitting from the alicorn changelings floating above them. She shook Fluttershy like a rag doll, even slapping her once. "Flutters! Remember, we will smile in the face of danger! We can't give up in a time like this, especially when we're like the newly appointed protectors of Equestria!"

Pinkie's shouting immediately awoke Fluttershy, who still had bags of fear under her eyes. She could not bear to look up at the resting danger before them. She could not help but remember the terror which the changelings had inflicted upon Canterlot, and the helpless screams of the ponies who were attacked. This all flooded within her mind, and her psyche rejected the Element of Kindness, even as the other Elements were completely harmonized with her friends. She dropped down to bury her sight onto the ground. "I....I can't do this! They'll just come back again! If we couldn't beat them completely once, then what makes you think that we can do it again? I know it's been so long since then, but if... if it even took this long for them to come back, it doesn't matter what we do! They'll keep coming back like a virus!"

Twilight clenched her eyes shut, not wanting to yell at Fluttershy as she was already broken by the constant violence erupting within her life. This was not the time for calm words however, the cause was loud, so the response had to be loud. "FLUTTERSHY! This is no time to cower in fear! Please, you must rise so we can defeat the enemy!"

Fluttershy looked up to Twilight, then began crying in fear, almost rejecting the upbringing statement which the Princess had made. She then glanced to the alicorn changelings, and felt their auras of hell and their tormented souls' cries. The screams of the trapped souls within were crying out to her, almost as if they knew her Element of Kindness.

"Help me! Please! Help me!"

"Nopony can save me now, there's no hope! All is lost!"

"I can't stop this pain... it hurts... please, make it end!"

"I see you all trying to kill us. You don't know how it feels to be like this! If you know what's good for you, you'd better spare us!"

Fluttershy began hyperventilating, she tried to run away, but Rainbow Dash stepped in front of her and kept her back. She did not even have to touch her to make her stop. Fluttershy tried to speak through her tears and her cracking voice, "Please, Rainbow Dash! Get out of my way, I've heard those voices in there! Those are actual ponies in there! We can't hurt them!" she pleaded, trying to push Rainbow Dash out of the way, but Rainbow would not budge.

"I can hear it too, Fluttershy, and I'm pretty sure everypony else does too," Rainbow Dash said calmly, "but that's no reason to run away! If we sit back and let them kill us, that's no better than fighting back! At least then, we'll be doing something to save ourselves! If we run away, they'll come back, but if we get rid of them here and now, they will never come back! But we need you, if we're gonna fight, we need all of the Elements here to have all of them work, and if one is out of whack, they're all out of whack!"

Twilight added, "Rainbow Dash is right, Fluttershy, if we aren't doing this together, then we can't do it at all!"

"Yeah Fluttershy," Rarity said, "Isn't it so much better for us to do this together than to do it alone?"

Fluttershy looked to her friends, at how they wanted to encourage her to battle against the enemies alongside with them, she specifically noticed Rainbow Dash, who she remembered fought for her in Cloudsdale when they were foals. Though she never got to notice the full race, and nearly died because of it, she still appreciated what it did for her. She got to see in that moment that Rainbow Dash really cared for her enough to risk her reputation to protect Fluttershy's, but now, it wasn't just Rainbow anymore. It was Pinkie, it was Twilight, it was Rarity, it was Applejack, and soon she saw it was even Spike and everypony else in Ponyville, all looking and depending on her to use her Element. She smiled through her troubles and joined her friends once again. Rainbow Dash sighed in relief.

The Mane Six came together with their Elements of Harmony, all in formation to attack and seal away the alicorn changelings, and the power of the Elements of Harmony circled around them in their rainbow colors, about to give them their rainbowfied transformations. The ground began to shake under them and the wind began to blow, and the ponies of Ponyville stared at the radiance of the power of the Elements of Harmony. Finally seeing it up so close and about to spring into action, they could do nothing but stare, now humbled from their powerlessness in the presence of such strength. The resonance and aura given off by the Mane Six in these forms was as graceful as a ballroom dancer, spinning like a pinwheel pushed by a soft breeze of wind. The aura made it easier to breathe, and it gave off a sense of happiness and safety among the ponies around it.

"Now, let's show these things what we're made of! Let's show them the might of Ponyville!" Twilight shouted, springing towards the alicorn changelings with the rest of the Mane Six, using the power of the Elements of Harmony. Twilight's mind was clear, without worries or concerns about anything else happening outside of what she and her friends were dealing with now. She could feel the peaceful mindsets of them, and could tell they could feel her's as well. It was a warm, fuzzy feeling that brought them together as one, and it grew stronger by the second.

But, the Elements of Harmony gave one last wide burst of energy and scattered faster than light itself. Each one flying off in a different direction, so fast they disappeared from sight faster than anypony could notice they were gone. Some even questioned if they were there to begin with. The Mane Six were only inches away from their target, and the sudden loss of magical empowerment from the magical items stopped them in the space where they were, allowing for the alicorn changelings to swarm over them, driving them all into the ground and dragging them across it with their momentum. The Mane Six were trampled under the feet of the enemy as the enemy targeted the background ponies, scattering them. The other ponies tried frantically to escape, and some were killed and eaten, while others made a gallop for ot straight toward the Apple Farm where the hideout was located. Twilight saw this and immediately stood back up, flying high into the air and darting down to ram a group of alicorn changelings, saving many foals from their jaws.

"I thought changelings only fed on love, not flesh!" Twilight cried, putting a protective barrier around the ponies under attack, but the alicorn changelings used their green magic in synchrony, easily breaking Twilight's shield. "Oh no!--"

"Don't worry!" Rainbow Dash yelled, as she carried Applejack to the scene and proceeded to kick all of the alicorn changelings away from the civilians. The civilians ran away, following the others who were headed towards the Apple Farm.

"Fluttershy! Please, lead the way for the ponies of Ponyville! We can't lose anymore ponies!" Twilight ordered the yellow pegasus.

"What about all of the animals? We can't forget about them!" Fluttershy cried, pointing towards her house.

"We can't deal with that problem now, just focus on the task at hoof now! NOW!"

Fluttershy wiped her tears away and flew with confidence, she ordered for any pony who was not being attacked, or who had escaped with the help of the other Mane Six to follow after her, the others who were saved would follow rest of the Mane Six once the alicorn changelings were defeated. Fluttershy looked back at her friends, who all fought fiercely to protect the ponies of Ponyville, even without the aid of the Elements of Harmony. Twilight could easily use magic powerful enough to pierce the skin of the alicorn changelings, Pinkie was not actually fighting, but on the defensive, mainly to keep the other ponies around her safe as that what she was worrying about, Applejack and Rainbow Dash were using brute force, and Rarity, taking up after Twilight, was using simple magic spells in her novice experience, but still could push away the enemy long enough for the civilian ponies to escape and for her friends to obliterate their enemies. Twilight caught notice of a large sphere of green magical energy flying at them from the left, mainly Pinkie and Rarity, along with ten background ponies, were in that immediate area and would be severely injured if they did not move quickly enough. With only a moment to act, Twilight focused upon that space in her vision and covered it with her magic, using the teleportation spell to move them close to where she was. The spell did not take much energy out of her, but it took a massive amount of concentration. She then used her same spell to teleport a great amount of the alicorn changelings to the sky, where Rainbow Dash used a cloud to shoot them with many bolts of lightning. Upon the clearing of the smoke, she found all of her targets to be dead.

"Well, that's not surprising," Rainbow Dash murmured, taking notice that Rarity and Pinkie were cornered by a group of the changelings. She bulleted down to save them, right at the same time Applejack and Twilight did. Showing the might of the pegasi, alicorn magic, and earth pony strength, the three ponies successfully rescued their friends and defended them as more of the changelings attacked.

"Looks like we can manage without the Elements of Harmony!" Applejack exclaimed, getting into a fighting stance. She saw that the ponies of Ponyville had successfully escaped from the chaos, and immediately hoped for the well being of her family and farm. "We gotta make this quick girls, I mean, who's to say them things ain't out there too?"

Rainbow Dash laughed in triumph, kicking the air. "Then we'll just send 'em all to the oblivion they came from, right?"

"They certainly have no fashion taste, I mean, ugh, wearing skin? Sooooo not my style!" Rarity scoffed.

"Well then, with everypony together in one place, we can throw a party! Can't we?" Pinkie asked them all, hopping in place.

"C'mon girls, we need to get this done so we can accompany our friends, who's to say we won't have anymore refugees to look after?" Twilight told them, stepping forward, looking on to the rest of the changelings before them. "Also, we'll need to preserve a live sample from them, I must find out what caused this outbreak to happen again! Of course, with all of Equestria on our side, we'll find an answer! But as for now, we focus on reducing their numbers to one! And quickly!"

The rest of the Mane Six all accepted the task, and without further ado, they charged at the rest of the changelings.

Fluttershy sighed, and heard the commotion in the village behind her and the others as they entered the hideout under the Apple Farm. Between two trees marked by carvings, set aside from the others around them, there was a large boulder, and under it was a steel door that led to an underground shelter with many halls and rooms stored with loads of food like bread, hay, fruit, and vegetables, all stored in a room invented to keep food edible for quite some time. The food was replaced every three months, if it was not used, as the room could only keep it fresh for that long. If the food was accessed from time to time, it would reset its lifespan, allowing it use for many more months. Nopony from the newest generation knew of it, but many older ponies (mainly pegasi) knew of it. The Apple Family had to explain how such a thing existed, and it was simply put that Celestia had made counter measures to protect the ponies of Ponyville long before the creation of the weapons of mass destruction in the other cities. This was mainly because Canterlot was on a mountain and Cloudsdale was floating in the air. The other cities and villages were either very far or very small, and Celestia knew something good would come out of Ponyville, so she tried as hard as she could to preserve it, and she knew the Apple Farm was just the right family to be in charge of it.

Fluttershy could see the dedication of the family and smiled at the kindness which flowed so easily. The remainder of the village of Ponyville was together and in harmony. The magic of friendship not only flowed within the Mane Six, but in the entire population. But she knew all along that this was how it always was. She sat down on a bench built down in the bunker and lay down, blowing the dust from it before her. She could tell that many renovations were made on the hideout, as she saw that the walls were polished and neatly patched over any cracks, sealing all imperfections from immediate sight. The lights were bright, but not blinding, and the floor was white and black tiles, while the walls were a plain ivory white with murals depicting the history of the heroes of Equestria, Celestia and Luna, the Wonderbolts, the Royal guards, and most recently, the Mane Six and even Discord. The picture of Discord was not finished yet. "Discord...what are you doing right now? Do you know of what we're going through, or are you enjoying chaos again?" Fluttershy murmured to herself, growing ever so more tired as time began to pass. She yawned and just rested her eyes, hoping to slowly drift into sleep.

The others began to settle in after receiving their portions of food and being appointed rooms to stay in. And soon, the rest of the Mane Six had made it to the hideout, with refugees from the Crystal Empire and Cloudsdale. Twilight was the one who woke up Fluttershy, nudging her head with her own.

"Fluttershy, you can wake up now," Twilight whispered, watching as Fluttershy woke up slowly, stretching and yawning. She looked over to her friends and all of the refugees from the attacked cities. "Are you feeling okay? Do you need anything to eat?"

Fluttershy shook her head with a smile. "No, you guys were out fighting off the enemy for our good, and I've just been sitting here, resting... I just can't eat before you guys do... You deserve it more than I do."

"That's ridiculous, Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash laughed, picking her up and spinning around in the air with her. "We'll all eat together!"

"Yeah, we're all friends, aren't we?" Applejack added.

The six ponies all huddled up together, thanks to Twilight's levitation spell, for a hug, laughing loudly. Fluttershy blushed, and looked down to Cadance and Shining Armor, who smiled at them. She smiled back and giggled lightly, until they all came back down from the hug.

"Well, I suppose we all have a place to sleep? And hopefully, there's enough food for all of us, right?" Cadance asked, on the behalf of the refugees.

Of course there was, and soon, the dinner to celebrate the survivors' new home had taken place in the kitchen of the hideout, and the host was Applejack, who thanked the efforts of the Mane Six, Cadance and Shining Armor, and the Wonderbolts, who all fought to protect their ponies and be sure of their survival. They made toasts especially to Celestia and Luna, who were still fighting to defend Canterlot from Effiela Claire, who was identified by Cadance, Shining Armor, and the Wonderbolts, who all had fought her personally. This was after the pony refugees had all gone to sleep, and the hideout was shut up from the outside world completely. The doors and external shields were closed and deployed to protect the underground bunker from magic, pressure, nature, and even sound. It was completely hidden from the outside world.

But that night, Twilight joined together the efforts of Cadance and Shining Armor and the Wonderbolts, as well as her close friends, to form a group of officials to moniter the ponies until further notice, or from orders of Celestia and Luna. She wanted to call the group "The Sparklers", but immediately admitted that the name did not sound well. But their title did not matter, they only thanked the heavens that now the struggle was over, at least for now. Now they had a night to sleep peacefully, the first night of the battle for Equestria was over.

And that was when Twilight fell out of bed.

ACT 1. CHAPTER 9: Twilight and Herself

No, it couldn't be true.

"You're kidding! That's impossible!" Twilight cried, falling to her knees in doubt and holding back an outbreak of tears kept prisoner by her tearducts.

The news hit her too fast for her to react or accept it, and it seemed as though a spy was acting to be a river flowing source of valuable information.

"These have to be lies! Are you lying to me?!" Twilight shot up back on her hooves and poked the Canterlot pony on his chest with enough force to push him back some. The pony bowed in somewhat shame for what he had said, though it was true.

"Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have been taken captive by Effiela Claire, I was there, I saw the entire thing," the pony said, looking back up to Twilight. "Under direct order of the Book of Secret United Unicorns, I am to serve the oldest princess available if Princess Celestia and/or Princess Luna are killed or captured. I take it that Princess Mi Amore Cadenza is here as well?"

"Book of Secret United Unicorns?" Twilight questioned the unicorn stallion before her. "I've never heard of such a thing..."

"Then don't mind it, you will not know of it unless directed of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," the stallion said, "but I will tell you my name... I am Dr. Denarius. Julius J. Denarius. The Director of the United Unicorn Service. "

"Well, nice to... meet you?" Twilight sighed, looking to the distance where she could spot Effiela's new kingdom, made from parts of the others around her. "I can't believe it... she actually beat Celestia and Luna?"

Spike and Cadance were the first others to come outside of the hideout. "Twilight! Are you okay out here?" Cadance asked her, coming immediately by her side and noticing she was nearly in tears. "Whoa... what happened?"

Denarius stepped before the two princesses, and Spike, and bowed. "Hello, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, I am Dr. Julius J. Denarius, the Director of the United Unicorn Service. I am obligated, by the Book of the Secret United Unicorns, to now serve you as Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are incapacitated."

Cadance and Spike both were surprised to hear that, just as much as Twilight had been. "What?" they replied quickly, as Denarius sighed in annoyance.

"Is there water in your ears? Should I make an effort to dry your ears?" Denarius said in a slightly more serious tone. "If I must, then I shall. The enemy, the Witch Pegasus Effiela Claire, has defeated and imprisoned our Regal Princesses, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. I, and any other surviving United Unicorn Service ponies, are required to serve under the most experienced and oldest Princess available. This Princess is you, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza."

"So, where are these others?" Cadance asked, trying to see if any other unicorns were with Denarius, but none were present.

"Most of them are already here," Denarius answered. "I suppose I was the only one in Canterlot who was still spying upon the battle. But that's what I do, I can't get into the trouble, I just watch it."

"Already here? But we didn't let anymore ponies in after we closed up yesterday," Twilight replied. "How could they be here?"

Denarius chuckled, "They must have blended in with the refugees you let in, I suppose. They were mostly in the Crystal Empire and some even used the Cloud walking spell to hide in Cloudsdale. How they got down without being incinerated is out of question, because I don't really know." He used his horn to scry the area for any changelings that might have been lurking about. "We have to go into this hideout of yours, I sense a great multitude of the enemies coming from the south." The ponies went into hiding once again, taking heed of Denarius' words.

Twilight had gone to her special room where she had kept a living sample of the alicorn changelings which she and the Mane Six had fought, defeated, and captured. Cadance had followed, and due to Cadance being there, Denarius was also there. Three more unicorns had joined upon catching sight of Denarius, and these ponies were

Ember Serenity; a mare who had golden brown fur and a straight scarlet mane with sky blue eyes. She wore excessive jewelry of gold and emeralds around her neck. Her cutie mark was a white feather pen.

Berrytarte; a mare who had hot pink fur with dark freckles around her nose area and cheeks, and a dark, strawberry red mane in blunt bangs. Her tail was slightly unkempt and curly. She wore white bows with red polkadot patterns behind her head and at the base of her tail. Her cutie mark was five strawberries in a pentagram formation.

Pumpkin Vine; a mare who had light orange fur and a dark black mane worn to the left, covering that side of her face, with streaks of orange in her mane and tail. She had dark orange eyes that reflected a playful attitude in her being. Her cutie mark was three jack-o-lanterns.

Upon introducing themselves to Twilight and Cadence, they observed closely the experimental procedures which Twilight performed on the alicorn changeling she had captured. She noticed that her feelings of love were being absorbed through her skin by just being too close, and prolonged exposure proved to make her slightly lightheaded. She measured the distance needed to avoid the effect, which was five meters exactly or more. Making a magical barrier around the changeling, she tried to see if she could deprive its ability using her own magic, and it worked beautifully. The unicorns and Cadance watched intensely at Twilight's monstrously focused experimenting, in utter amazement at how much effort she put in to this. Twilight was humming a tune which none of them had ever heard, and then they noticed she had her eyes closed. The tune was a soothing one, with a not to gloomy tone, but not uplifting other than the fact it soothed the nerves. Twilight got close to the changeling again, using a scalpel to make a small incision on its chest, noticing pony skin under it. She took a small sample of the changeling skin and put it in a sealed container, using magic to magnify the power of the seal. Putting the container in an analyzer upon a table, she further experimented on the alicorn changeling by now making an incision in the skin of the pony, taking notice that the cut in the changeling skin was glowing with green magic, and made a flap of skin pushed to the side as she took a look in the cut of her subject. Green crystalline veins replaced the veins of the pony, and all of its organs were entwined with red strings, especially around its major organs, as Twilight noticed after making a bigger incision to spectate the rest of the body. Twilight began to write in a journal, documenting everything which she had seen and experimented on during the duration of this session. Taking extensive notes on how the subject was breathing and obviously still alive, but yet it did not respond to pain, if it felt pain at all. The subject did not try to escape, and its wings and horn were perfectly rested, it breathed as if it were calm, and it made no sound or sudden movements. Escape was obviously not on its top priorities.

Twilight opened her eyes after thinking in silence for a while, and said nothing to the others who were there with her. She guided them out of the room, not telling them why, and closed the door behind them, staying behind. She locked the door, and they noticed that she even turned off the lights. They decided to leave and go check up on the other ponies there. Twilight remained in the room for hours, using dark magic to amplify the DNA which she had harvested from the alicorn changeling, but after another hour, the body of the alicorn changeling began to decompose quickly. Its under body host turned to dust, and the outer skin untwined as if it were vines and burned away like wood to a flame. Only black, charred pieces remained of the subject, and Twilight noted this all down. She was calm and collected, expecting herself to do yet another experiment in the future. The DNA she took to analyze still was alive and well, and Twilight knew that the skin was just as much of a changeling to do harm as the entire body was. The body was only a body, but this skin was a parasite. It fed off of flesh to sustain its form, but love was used to give it life and vitality. Once deprived of life from the body it drank dry of resources, the skin would begin to die unless fed love. At least, this was what Twilight wrote down in her journal. She also wrote that maybe when they (the changelings) were together, they could survive for a longer time, as they could give love to one another and feed off of one another's sources, and that would explain why they did not attack them immediately yesterday. After traveling for so long to reach them, they had to have used a great amount of energy, so they needed to recharge for the battle which awaited them in Ponyville. For this same reason, they also lost, and the one which was captured only survived as it did by feeding off of the love and feelings of those around it who had defeated it. She concluded this session by putting the DNA sample in a capsule hidden away in a ruby heart necklace. She used dark magic to cut the edges and melt them in a smooth covering, sealing the capsule completely within the gem. The kept the gem frozen in a freezer of liquid nitrogen, and would comeback to it later. The experimental procedures were over now, but they left her intrigued and literally starving for more. This scientific research was like reading books, which obviously the purple smart loved to do... or maybe the alicorn changelings were like books, and she was reading them? She could not be so sure the first day, and felt this overwhelming urge to study more. Now the changelings were as fascinating to her as dire this situation was.

"Rainbow! May I have a word with you?" Twilight asked the blue pegasus as she played catch with Scootaloo, in the hopes that Scootaloo would discover some awesome talent related to the matter, but it was a bust.

Rainbow turned to Twilight and approached her. "What is it, Twi?" Rainbow really hoped it would be a request to do something amazing like create a storm to kill the changelings off in the area. And this thought immediately scared her... sure, fighting and killing the enemy was a must, and surely this was the only way to defeat them for now... but the thought of herself killing them, as they still held the souls and bodies of the dead ponies under their skin (on top of the fact that their voices were sounding prominently in anypony who opposed them's heads), kind of bothered her. She knew she should not be so eager to destroy them, relishing in their deaths in war, but she found that as this task was completely necessary, she could not resist the urge. She began to sweat and gulped once, flapping her wings to fan her face, as she suddenly felt rushes of heat running through her body.

"You okay, Rainbow?" Twilight questioned her, and the pegasus nodded yes, to steer her away from the thought of not including her in whatever she had planned for them to do. "Well, if you want, I think we should go out and find more samples of the changelings, see how they act in groups, and see how much of use they truly are."

Rainbow smiled, she hugged Twilight and spun in the air with her. "Yes! Yes! I thought you'd never ask!" she exclaimed in joy. She let Twilight go, and Twilight managed to catch herself from falling in the air by flying. "It was getting boring here, under all these walls... When I woke up, I nearly flew into the ceiling thinking I'd go to the sky, but now I actually get to fly around in the sky again!" Then the question struck her. "Are we bringing anypony else?"

This question also strangely struck Twilight, who quickly shook her head and smiled rather nervously. "But we have to go without anypony else noticing, I'll tell Cadance, Shining Armor,  and that stallion and his subordinates, since they saw me experimenting... I feel kinda ashamed not telling the others, but I'm sure they'll understand when we get back."

"Well, I mean," Rainbow began, "with your magic and my strength and speed, all we need is just us two, everypony else will just get in the way, really." It felt awfully wrong to think of her other friends that way. But it was kind of true, and besides, Pinkie was hosting parties to cheer up the emotionally shattered refugees and depressed foals who lost their friends and family, while Applejack and Rarity were handling food, drinks, and clothing and medical attention. Rarity had been taking classes in medical school, because she feared if anything like Tirek happened again, she could be a nurse in that situation. It was mostly her generosity acting.

"You're right, Rainbow," Twilight replied with a long sigh, thinking of her other friends, and also concluding that she and Rainbow were having the same thoughts as the other. With that in mind, the two ponies had gone to the main entrance of the hideout, where they met up with Cadance, Shining Armor, and Denarius, who was with Pumpkin Vine.

"Where do you think you're going?" Cadance questioned Twilight, who kind of reeled back in surprise with Rainbow, who was flying above them. "You weren't planning on going out there, were you?" Cadance's tone frightened Twilight, who immediately began to sweat as she stood ststraight to face Cadance. The pink princess looked into Twilight's eyes and the purple princess immediately felt her sister-in-law's diamond-hard will crush her own. The glare was nothing short in likeness with the Stare. "What is your response, Twilight?!"

Twilight closed her eyes and spoke in a scared tone, "Yes, Cadance... but I was--"

Cadance interrupted her, "You what?!"

"Yeah, Twiliy, it's not safe out there," Shining Armor said, walking up to Twilight and rubbing his head against her's to comfort her. "We should just stay in here until things get better... and what do you plan on doing out there?"

Rainbow, seeing Twilight overcome by her brother's and sister-in-law's authority, butted in, pushing Shining Armor away from Twilight and standing in front of her. "Twilight doesn't have to listen to you if she doesn't want to! She's a Princess just like Princess Cadance is! She can make her own decisions."

"But she isn't as experienced with this as I am, so in a logical thought, I am the leading Princess here," Cadance argued with Rainbow. "And you have no place to decide, you're not a Princess like Twilight and I. You listen to me, not the other way around." Cadance pushed Rainbow on her chest, making her take a couple paces back. "In a time like this, it is important that we stay together to make a plan and strategies to work our way around the enemy so we can overcome them. If you go out with no plan at all, you will be destroyed by them! Do you want that to happen?!"

Twilight was now ready to submit to Cadance's authority, but she felt weak. The only thing she was in this moment was the same thing she was before she was a princess. Just a mere subject to the queen. She stayed loyal to Celestia, but now she was an authorative figure just like the other alicorns! She felt the power they did, and she held the Element of Magic as well. She did not want to give that up, but she could not bring herself to oppose Cadance's decision. It made sense anyways, and she knew she was smart enough to understand and agree. But her pride as a princess still stood firm as stone, it was new and hotly burning like a star. She had to show some backbone as a princess, or else her ponies would lose respect in her, and if this conflict ever did happen to end, she would not be able to control the public if it decided to turn on her. She feared her authority was nothing and would be nothing if she did nothing to protect it. To her pride, it did not matter who or what was right, all that mattered was making herself seem big. Bigger than Cadance. She spent all these years working humbly under the Mare's hooves, and now it was time to have somepony under her hoove, and she made good progress having it start out as Rainbow Dash.

"Twilight is a better candidate to lead us as Equestrians than you, Princess Cadance!" Rainbow shouted at the princess, who nearly shouted back, but kept her composure. "She has saved us time and time again from the baddest of the bad! She is the one who should be leading us! And she has just officially become a Princess with her own Kingdom, and I am her knight. That day we stepped hoof in her new castle, I was pledged to serve another Princess, and this Princess is Twilight! I won't stand for anypony else, and we work as one... We want to go out, so that's exactly what we're going to do!"

"You can't be serious, Twiliy?" Shining Armor questioned his sister. "Were you seriously still planning to go out, without a plan, with those things roaming around out there?!"

Twilight looked up, with a defiant expression painted on her face. "Yes, yes I was," she replied, walking through Shining Armor and Cadance to the stairs up leading to the door of the entrance of the hideout. Rainbow followed her loyally. "And I agree with your choice 100%, if I were to follow it. It seems like a good plan, but Rainbow Dash and I have enough horsepower alone without a strategy to help ourselves. Thanks, but no thanks. We're fine."

Cadance immediately ran to Twilight and grabbed her from behind, forcing her to stop. "You are not! I forbid you to go out there!"

Twilight pushed Cadance off of her and stared blankly at her. She smirked and looked away to Rainbow,  who did the same. "You can't tell me what to do anymore. I am a grown mare, a princess of a Kingdom! I stand alone now... I don't need any authority figures watching over my shoulder anymore!" Twilight yelled loudly. "I am sick and tired of taking orders, I make the orders now! Me!"

The entirety of the lobby was silent. And when Twilight saw she had broken her competition, she left with Rainbow, who did look back to see what the ponies would do. They did and said nothing, just like she had expected. They left and closed the door behind them.

The two ponies flew high in the sky over the forest and orchards, trying to spot any of the alicorn changelings on the ground, when they noticed a massive cloud over the remains of Canterlot and the radiance of Effiela's castle shining right through it. The cloud was dark, and charged with lightning, which discharged upon the mountain.

"That must be where Witch Pegasus Effiela Claire lives," Rainbow said to Twilight, gritting her teeth. "She puts a bad name on us pegasi..."

"She's caused all of this... and now she owns basically the world," Twilight replied, looking to the remains of Cloudsdale in the distance, as the clouds and rainbows had become clumps of colors separated in the sky, scattering all throughout sight. "She's destroyed the Crystal Empire, Cloudsdale, Canterlot, and now even Ponyville! Surely after using that much energy, she has to rest... And she even fought Celestia and Luna! She surely has to be resting now!"

"Hey, Twi," Rainbow said to Twilight, who looked back as they flew. "About, y'know, back there at the hideout... I'm sorry if I made you come to my defense like that... if you didn't want to go, we didn't have to."

"It's okay, Rainbow," Twilight replied with a reassuring smile, "I was thinking the same exact thing in my mind as you said it to them... if anything, I should be apologizing to you. I should have stood my ground before you said anything, and now Cadance will think you influenced me. I'm sorry if I seemed weak..."

"Well, I actually can say I thought it before you as well, maybe we just had to say it at the same time." Rainbow giggled at the thought.

Twilight laughed as well. "Well, it's better either way... as long as the point gets across. We have our own Kingdom now, and we can make our own decisions. We don't need any other figures of authority over our shoulders."

It stayed silent for the next couple of minutes, and the two still did not see any alicorn changelings below. Rainbow broke the silence, "So, about the other cities... like Manehatten and Las Pegasus... are they under Effiela's control?" she asked.

"I suppose so," Twilight replied, "so maybe she sent all of her minions to those places to watch over them while she's in Canterlot. I heard from some ponies that she uses these Sonic Rainboom-like attacks that can decimate cities like it's nothing. If she used one on Cloudsdale, the Crystal Empire, and Canterlot, then fought Celestia and Luna, then she must be resting in Canterlot! With that in mind, she won't be able to fight for herself for a while. She only has those changelings to fight for her, for now at least. We should be fine on our own. The changelings are probably nowhere near here anyways."

"You're right. So, should we just scout for any threats and take 'em out? Setting up traps along the way?"

"No, if we set up traps around the hideout, that would give off the idea that there is a hideout around the area. If the land remains untouched, they'll just suggest we escaped to a different city or settlement. If we run into any, then we just kill them all, but maybe keep two this time, and escape while we can until more come. I'm pretty sure those things can communicate by telepathy or something, using the info I have already, and the fact they use the inner ponies' minds to attack ours."

It was silent for another time, and the two found a mountain to rest in. The mountain was similar to the one that the red dragon from the time it made smoke over Ponyville. It brought back memories, how everypony had tried to get the dragon to leave, and all had failed. But then Fluttershy finally got the courage to stare the dragon down and get him to leave. They talked for a time about it, how Rainbow did not approve of Fluttershy's cowardice, how Rarity tried to steal the dragon's riches, how they all were so scared to face him. They had eachother, and that mostly got them through that time.

While they laughed from the memories, they took a stroll through the mountain. They found an awesome passageway within it, but it looked fairly new. As if it were done yesterday. Many of the jewels had been extracted, but few remained in the walls, and the only things there were rocks covered in some black moss. There was nothing really special about it. The silence and emptiness bothered them, and they were just about to turn and leave out, but were greeted by a group of over thirty alicorn changelings.

"What the?" Twilight cried, as Rainbow jumped in front of her and dashed forwards, holding Twilight's head with her back hooves. They sliced through the changelings, but they followed them, blasting lasers of magic at them as well. Twilight got out of Rainbow's hold and created a barrier around them, making it burst with spikes in all directions. The alicorn changelings did the same, and their magic overpowered Twilight's. Twilight was still tired, and had that to blame. "Rainbow!" she cried, as Rainbow Dash grabbed Twilight and flew high into the sky.

"Are you ready for this?" Rainbow asked her, and she nodded, and Rainbow bulleted down to the group of changelings chasing after them. She hit the frontlines and continued to gain speed to complete a Sonic Rainboom. But upon getting to the ground, she found that even more Changelings were waiting for her there. "There's more?!"

Twilight stood on her own and concentrated as clear as she could; her horn began to glow with magic, and her eyes glowed white as well. "Alright, Rainbow! Are you ready?!" she exclaimed in zeal.

Rainbow laughed loudly, "Am I? I have been waiting for this all day!" She stood by Twilight, ready to fight the enemy alongside her. They did not cower, even as a group of nearly one hundred alicorn changelings surrounded them. Prepared to take them all out, the two friends shot forward and began to slaughter them all effortlessly at first, though some proved to be a challenge.

Rainbow Dash came in through the front door of the hideout alone, and was immediately greeted by Fluttershy, who booped her nose with her hoof lightly and giggled.

"Hey, Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy began, looking around. "What were you doing out there? Princess Cadance told everypony to stay in..."

"Oh, well I wasn't here for that," Rainbow said, trying to walk past Fluttershy, who stepped in front of her and kept her back. The yellow pegasus smiled and made her regular squee sound.

"Were you out flying? Scouting for us?" Fluttershy asked happily.

"Yeah, making sure we weren't being watched by anypony outside of the hideout is all," Rainbow replied. "But, I'm gonna go rest, I've had a long day out there and stuff."

"Would you mind if I come with? Everypony else is so busy, but I have nothing to do," Fluttershy asked her, and Rainbow smiled and assented.

Later that night, Rainbow had left out again, and this time, nopony managed to notice her. Well, the ones who noticed did not notice it was her, and those who had noticed were Cadance and Shining Armor. The two followed the pegasus, with Denarius, Pumpkin, Berrytarte, and Ember Serenity by their side. They saw her fly at a great speed in the south, and they followed her south.

"How can we follow her? She's way too fast!" Berrytarte cried, trying to keep up with the others, as she wasn't a very fast runner.

"Keep up with her? YOU can barely keep up with us!" Pumpkin laughed, blowing raspberries at Berrytarte, who growled in anger.

"Stop it with your bickering, you two!" Denarius shouted at the two subordinates of his. "You are always unfocused! Just focus on the task at hand!"

"Me and Shining Armor will continue ahead," Cadance told Denarius and his subordinates, "the ponies back at homebase will need somepony to lead them, and you are the ones who should do it."

"Are you sure about this choice, milady?" Denarius asked as he and his subordinates prepared to turn back. "Without you, we won't have a princess to lead us."

"But you and your team are the closest thing, and surely only me and Shining Armor can handle to be in the company of somepony like Rainbow Dash," Cadance said, as she and Shining Armor continued to run ahead, leaving Denarius and the others to turn back. She did not want Denarius and the others to come along for one simple reason: with nopony of any significant power to watch over the ponies at the hideout, then there will be chaos even among the people. The Mane Six were barely enough alone, and Denarius had spent enough time with princesses to know how to lead a great number of ponies with help, which the Mane Six would provide for him. Cadance did not really think she could handle leading the ponies knowing that her sister-in-law and one of her best friends were out in the open, for Effiela Claire to pick off like candies to devour. She could not let any more ponies die under her watch, she would not be able to live with herself, especially if any of those ponies happened to be part of the Mane Six.

PROLOGUE_Act 1. Slave to Time: Childhood of Effiela Claire

PROLOGUE_Act 1. Slave to Time: Childhood of Effiela Claire

    A small baby is born in the hospital of Cloudsdale. The day is nearly over, as the sunset has already begun, so Cloudsdale is nearly completely darkened by the flow of time. It would be raining, but surely they were far too high in the sky to be touched by the wetness of the rain. And Cloudsdale had no need for rain to begin with. A unicorn mother, only able to stand on the clouds with a spell and slightly altered genetics, cradled her little baby pony in her hospital bed as the pains of unbearable childbirth was now over. The soft cries of the baby were soon quieted by the gentle words of her mother. The father stood over his newborn daughter,  he was a brown furred pegasus with a silver mane and large, powerful wings. His eyes were a piercing gold, and usually very cold and unloving. But today, this stallion managed to smile, even brighter than his wife. After years of unsuccessful miscarriages, the Claires had finally managed to give birth to a baby, a girl. She inherited the bluish-silver fur from her mother and silver mane from her father, and had bicolored eyes, one gold and one light blue. She inherited her father's wings, but a slight silver aura covered over her wings.

"Honey... what shall we name her?" the mother, Lacrima Claire, inquired as the father, Equetus Claire, was already considering a name for his daughter. "I know it was my job, but I was so excited that I simply couldn't bring myself to think of one..."

"Effiela," Equetus finally replied, as he stroked the mane of his wife. "Effiela Claire. Our beloved Muse of delight."

"What does the name mean?" Lacrima was fairly confused by this name, as she had never heard it before.

"From the name of Euterpe, which means 'deliverer of pleasure' and Elle, which means 'she'."

"So... 'She Who Delivers Pleasure'. Equetus! You're such a charmer! Even I couldn't have thought up a name so beautiful. How do you do it?"

The doctor and nurses watched as the lovebirds talked and acted all family-like in the presence of their child. The doctor, Dr. Cylana Mika, documented the time and date as well as the names of the parents and baby name of Effiela Claire.  She then performed tests on the baby since its parents and it itself were hybrids of pegasi and unicorns. The muscles in the wing area were very tight and restricted, which would stunt flight unless the muscles were relaxed and exercised. Also a small portion of magic ran through the baby's veins, though Dr. Cylana Mika speculated it would possibly disappear during Effiela's early childhood.

As Effiela grew up, she was pushed by her parents to become a great flier so she could become a police-mare and protect the city. Effiela was a very weak flier, and could not get herself even a mere foot off of the ground. To top it all off, she could only keep herself up for no more than several seconds, then she would have to rest. For the first couple of days her father was not pleased nor disappointed, as this was expected of a young pegasus, especially when Effiela had this stunted flight condition. For a couple of weeks, Effiela began to get lazy and groggy, and somewhat rebellious. She would begin the session, but then give up, as she knew what would happen. This behavior really upset her father, as it seemed as though she were already giving up the goal they had set for her. Effiela even said herself she would work hard at it, but now she seemed bitter and disrespectful of her father and mother. She really did not care, but surely her father would not tolerate this behavior for much longer.

"Why are you stopping? Are you really tired already, Effiela?" her father would pressure her over and over. "I will not stand to have a weak daughter! Will you become of your fallen brethren and sisters and give up on life before it even begins? Or will you mare-up and get your lazy-ass off of the damn ground?!"

Now broken by her father's harsh words, the filly could not understand why her father pressured her and tried to control her life this much, but her supportive mother would tell her that he only wanted the best for her and that she should give it her all. She didn't even go to school much. Whenever she did go to school, she would not say much, and the teachers often tried to get her to talk, but she never seemed motivated. The other fillies and colts would bully her and take her belongings away from her, since she seemed like such an easy target, but her lack of retaliation bored them, and they soon just left her alone. And then came the time when her mother began to home school her as her father taught her to fly day after day. Wing push-ups to wing curls, Effiela barely survived her father's strict regulations, and even then, whenever she would try to fly, she would give up once she started and fall to her knees, scared for her life, as if she has seen a ghost. Growing tired of this, Equetus started to whip his daughter, punishing her for her laziness and cowardly actions. This happened frequently during the sessions, and Effiela felt at least one beating per day, which made her even more terrified of flying, because she never knew how her father would react. She would run to her mother for support, as now her mother was pregnant with another baby, whose name would be decided early; Giselle Claire. Her mother tried and tried to help her daughter emotionally, but this put uncomfortable and unnecessary pressure on her during her long pregnancy, as it lasted 10 months. Soon, Lacrima just began to neglect her daughter, who now had nopony to run to besides her father.

"Nopony will listen to me... the only pony I can go to is father... I must beat this into my dumb brain! I hate myself for being so weak, for being such a bad flier..." Effiela told herself day after day, striving only to show her parents that she was not weak. That she was not a weak flier. That she could be truly independent. She pushed herself harder than ever, trying to make sure that she could exceed her father's expectations.

Finally, Effiela managed to fly four feet from the ground, and she stayed up for forty seconds. After dropping from exhaustion, she looked to her father, who looked still fairly disappointed. He only shook his head and turned away, the session was over for that day, but enraged, Effiela stayed and she pressed herself further and further that day, and did not come back in until 11 at night, far past her regular bedtime. She took the beating her father gave her.

Then came time for Giselle to be born, and Effiela was as happy as ever, though, she could not see the same zeal in her parents' eyes. She only saw a heavy burden in them, and regret. She was humbled by her parents' ungodly solemnity. Giselle was born, with a darker coat than her mother and Effiela, light blue eyes, and a whitish silver mane. She was born a unicorn.

"Hopefully this one won't complain as much," Equetus told Lacrima, who just began crying and holding Giselle as tight as she could.  Effiela still could not understand her father, as she felt as though he hated her. He never supported her abilities and pushed her far over what her limits were, she did not understand or appreciate it, but she still forced herself to love her parents, and look away from their faults. She did not want to be like them.  And she would not let them treat her little sister like that either. Sure enough, they did not. As soon as Giselle was three, Lacrima took on teaching her powerful magic. Giselle proved to be a slow starter, as she could not levitate objects, but when her mother bought her a personal laboratory when Giselle was six, it kick-started her magic capabilities through the roof, and she even got her cutie mark, something the 13 year old Effiela Claire had not even accomplished yet. Giselle's cutie mark was a microscope, due to her love for science and magic.

When Effiela was seventeen, she finally mastered flying enough to reach speeds of 200MPH and could fly for an hour now. She could see her father's pleasure with her new success, but Effiela strived for more. She entered races in Cloudsdale and in Ponyville, and soon she became a racer, not professional, but just small town racing, nothing big or loud or well known. She won first place frequently, but began to come in second place, and for her last race, she came in fifth. Her father seemed to lose hope in her, and she lost hope in herself as well. The first taste of success she ever had had been stripped from her, and now she was back to square one. Giselle, however, was truly a child prodigy. She never seemed to miscalculate anything and was always perfect, heck, she never even gave much thought to anything else than magic. She spent less time reading about magic, and more time experimenting. This gave her unrivaled prowess in magic, and Equetus was going to send her to Princess Celestia's Magic Academy, but Lacrima declined. For a month, nopony knew why, as Lacrima was a very secretive mare. She began to not be able to stand up straight, and coughed up blood frequently. As soon as Equetus saw how his wife's condition was, he immediately rushed her to the hospital and found that she had been diagnosed with a deadly combination of lung cancer and even the rare Mare-Magic Virus, which the doctors knew too little about to treat. Soon, this lead her to show stages of early dementia. The doctors speculated she only had a couple of weeks to live.

Even in death, Lacrima paid little attention to Effiela, and more attention to Giselle, who she gave her blessing to. Effiela left before her mother died, and took the beating later. She soon felt herself about to lose her mind. She could not even feel pain of her mother's death, just how her mother neglected her and paid more attention to Giselle than her. It wasn't fair, and Effiela could stand for it no more. Effiela's mood upset Giselle even more, as Giselle truly felt sorry for her older sister, but she felt as though it was out of her league to help others with their feelings.

Effiela prepared to pack her bags to leave, until the distraught Giselle went missing. Searching all over Cloudsdale, Effiela could not find her, until she came back to Giselle's room and spotted a note saying she would go live with the dragons down on the land of the hellish fires. Wondering why her sister would do something so stupid, Effiela spared no time and quickly went after her, catching her before she entered the land of the dragons. Soon, Equetus came as well, and Giselle ran to her father, who held her in his hooves lovingly. Still Effiela was ignored. She now could not hold back anymore, and she struck her father right in his muzzle.

"Nothing I do matters to you, does it?! I spend all of my time trying to impress you! And you push me aside like I'm some worthless bug! I can't take it anymore, and I can't believe that you would actually believe that this is the way to treat your own daughter!" Effiela barked at him, pushing him down and striking him again and again. "All those years, I have been giving my best, and all you did was give me your worst! Do you even love me? Did mother even love me?!"

Equetus spit blood in Effiela's face. "How low of it to strike your own father and mock him when he's only trying to help," he muttered, looking to Giselle, who was watching in terror. "I am only showing you the struggle of being a police-mare. You will perform wonderful feats to ponies who do not even care enough about you do remember your name. To them, you are nothing more than a mare in blue. I was only--"

Nothing could hold Effiela back now, she wailed at her father again and again, finally driving him up into the air and crashing back down with the force of a speeding train, killing him. "I hate you father," she told his crushed body as she wiped his blood from her face. She turned to Giselle and slowly approached her, and the filly tried to step back, but she tumbled over her own hooves and fell down, now under the mercy of Effiela. She braced herself from what she thought was certain death, shaking uncontrollably, and crying loudly, pleading for her life, begging for forgiveness from something which was not even her fault. As she felt as Effiela's hooves touched her, she screamed for help, but Effiela only cradled her little sister in her legs.

"We can start again, and forget everything about Cloudsdale! We can get on the train and leave Equestria if you want," Effiela choked as her tears nearly drowned Giselle,  who was sobbing just as hard. "Just please, if you had a choice, Giselle, please come with me. We can do much better than this! We can make it out here, sister and sister! I could take you flying with me, and we could fly forever! We can laugh and play as much as you want, I'll even let you draw on me with markers if you want! Just please, don't leave me like mother and father did. You're all I have left, and I will never let you go... as long as you let me...."

"No." An answer so sudden, and blunt as it was, coming from a little filly like Giselle. She said nothing else, she just broke out of Effiela's hold and walked away slowly, leaving the pony in shock. Giselle never even thought to hesitate, but Effiela wanted an answer, and she gave her one. As simple as that. However, an answer was all she wanted.

Quickly cleaning herself up and hiding the dead body of her father nearby the dragons' land, as not to raise suspicion on herself, Effiela went back to Cloudsdale and slept in her house one last time. (At this time, Luna was still trapped within the moon, so her conscience was not invaded) She left early in the morning and went flying, this time, higher than she ever flew before. She watched the sun peak above the ocean and through the clouds, showing her how the golden sky turned crystal clear and blue as the sea. It was the first time she ever fealt significant, the first time in forever that she felt free. She began to wonder if there was a heaven after death, but if she were to go to heaven, how could she really? She did not trust in herself enough to depend on faith of the existence of a place like heaven. She wanted solid evidence of a place like that.

Going over her life, she found none, as she fealt as though maybe ponies were already born in heaven and hell. She believed she was in hell, but she contradicted her own belief, as now she felt free. So maybe, ponies can escape hell? Then ponies can escape heaven? She did not understand it now, but maybe, she felt, she could learn. Giselle knew alot, and she was only seven. At this moment, Effiela was eighteen, and she still did not know what to believe in. Pitiful, she thought, I guess mother and father were right to be disappointed in me. I am nothing but a failure, who knows nothing...

but she got a look at the sun again. At the ocean below. At the clouds beside her. She knew this, at least. And that gave her hope. The pony came to the conclusion that heavenly beauty belonged to everypony, but there was no true god to govern over the world to guide them, and Effiela hated Celestia more than she did her parents. There was no god,  but Effiela now wanted to be that god. That God to rule over all, to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and eternal. This thought gave her joy, so much joy that it gave birth to her cutie mark; a star with wings of a dove.

Finally free, she thought, but still a slave to time.

"I couldn't laugh harder."