Sparkle Day

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Chapter 1

Princess Celestia stared with carefully concealed disgust at Twilight Sparkle as she made her way slowly along the avenue below. From her balcony, high above the festivities, Celestia could allow herself a moment of less-than-perfect control. A sneer appeared briefly as she audited the deficiencies of the approaching figure.

If the coat was gaudy, the mane and tail were even more so. The enormous tiara, fitted with a seemingly random array of gems, was certainly not something a true princess would ever wear. The garments — impractical even as ceremonial garb went — looked to be based on contemporary ideas of long-past fashion trends that had, in fact, never occurred. Worst of all were the unblinking, soulless eyes and the empty smile to match.

Even Twilight herself would have been offended by the float, but it had arrived about four centuries late for that.

Cheers from the ponies lining the street on either side of the procession blended into a dull roar in Celestia’s ears. She wanted nothing more than to retreat from the balcony, to hide in her chambers and refuse to acknowledge the day, just as her sister always did.

For a moment, she let herself wallow in her envy. Year after year, it was Celestia who indulged their ponies in this nonsense. Why couldn’t Luna stand in, even once? Because when it came to matters of image — of giving everypony the impression that everything would be alright — the responsibility always fell to her. If Luna bore a burden even half as heavy as that, Celestia couldn’t name it.

Acknowledging and then dismissing this resentment had become something of an annual ritual for her. With a wave to the crowds below and the return of her customary smile, Celestia let it fade away — until next year, at least.

None of the celebrating ponies lining the streets of the capital knew much about Twilight Sparkle, but they were still all too happy to scream their lungs raw and eat far too much when their calendars told them it was appropriate. Watching a funeral gradually become a carnival had been one of the more interesting experiences of Celestia’s life, from a sociological point of view.

Sparkle Day hadn’t yet become quite as blatantly ahistorical as Hearth’s Warming Eve, if only because there was not yet a Sparkle Day play that could be crafted into a sermon on some missing social virtue. Of course, the meaning that had at some point been tacked onto Hearth’s Warming Eve had led to its eventual decline in prominence, as racial harmony had become less an aspiration and more a reality. It seemed doubtful that Sparkle Day would follow that course, as long as it was only a day of general merrymaking.

Perhaps Celestia could engineer something to that end. Typically, she was loathe to interfere with such things; telling her ponies what, when, or how to celebrate was not a role she wanted. Still, when a single day caused such a surge of resentment, both towards her sister and her subjects, change was in order.

A door opened behind her, interrupting her musings and forcing her to collect herself lest anypony see anything but serene benevolence in her manner.

“Princess?” the newcomer called. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“It’s alright, Ash,” Celestia said, recognizing the voice of her seneschal without turning to look. “What is it?”

“There’s a pony seeking an audience.”

Celestia waited silently for further explanation. There were, at any given time, hundreds of ponies seeking an audience. Filtering them appropriately was a large part of Ash Scribe’s duties.

“A friend of hers has gone missing,” Ash continued. “The circumstances of the disappearance are… well, you should meet her.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow as she finally turned. “Has she spoken to the guard?”

“Oh, she’s not from here, Princess,” Ash said quickly. “She came here from Stonehoof.”

Ash certainly seemed convinced, and he might be the foremost living authority on stories concocted to bend royal ears. It was a good enough excuse to miss an hour or two of the parade, in any case. Celestia stood and made for the door, Ash Scribe falling into step beside her.

“You can explain further on the way,” Celestia said.

“Well, I’ll try,” Ash said with uncharacteristic uncertainty. “You know that Stonehoof is rather remote—”

Celestia snorted at the understatement. Stonehoof had been founded with the intent of denying the very existence of the outside world. It was two days’ walk from its nearest neighbor, and for any pony without wings, walking was the only option. Last Celestia knew, it was populated entirely by earth ponies, which meant that today’s petitioner had made quite an effort to see her.

“—so we don’t have as much information as we might like to corroborate the story. But about one week ago, one of the townsponies was attacked by a creature he wasn’t able to properly identify. I don’t quite grasp all the details, but a day later, one of the town elders was missing.”

“So they sent a messenger to Canterlot, which they despise, instead of forming search parties?” Celestia asked quizzically.

“This is all better explained by our visitor,” Ash said, brown ears flattening against his head in an uncommon display of timidity.

Celestia gave him a measuring look. The unicorn was typically more than happy to give his views on the motivations and potential exaggerations of any petitioner, something Celestia had always valued. They walked on in silence for a moment longer before arriving at the door of one of the palace’s reception chambers.

“Shall I accompany you?” Ash asked.

“No,” Celestia said after a moment’s consideration. Ash clearly believed that this visitor was in some way out of the ordinary. Either he was correct, in which case the meeting might be sensitive enough to warrant his exclusion, or he wasn’t, in which case his judgement wouldn’t be of any use to her.

She opened the door and stepped through. Inside, she was surprised to find a unicorn waiting for her on a provided cushion. She looked young — between twenty and thirty years old — but carried herself with admirable confidence, especially given that this was her first time meeting royalty. Unlike many who came seeking an audience, she hadn’t dressed up for the occasion. In fact, her mottled gray coat showed clear signs of her long journey; bits of dirt clumped into her fur, especially visible around the silver-white fringes of her mane and tail. Apparently, she hadn’t even stopped to groom herself before coming to the palace.

Beside her on the floor were a pair of bulging saddlebags, no doubt loaded with all the supplies needed for the trek to and from Canterlot. She stood as Celestia entered, then dipped into an ill-practiced bow.

“Princess,” she greeted. “Thank you for seeing me.”

Another surprise was that this pony’s speech was not particularly difficult to decipher. She would have expected Stonehoof’s dialect to hardly be classifiable as such by now, but aside from a casual approach to vowel sounds, it was nearly passable as modern Equestrian.

“It’s a pleasure,” Celestia said automatically. “How may I address you?”

“My name is Lumen, Princess,” the unicorn said, rising from her bow and standing awkwardly, as if unsure whether protocol allowed for her to return to her seat. Her slightly nervous green eyes were locked on Celestia, waiting for a cue.

Celestia took a seat across from Lumen and smiled, beckoning for her visitor to do the same. “Why don’t you explain why you’re here?” she prompted.

“My friend, Autumn Wind, is missing.” The words were plain enough, as was their delivery, but there was an palpable urgency to them all the same.

“And I’m sure there’s some reason you came directly to me for help,” Celestia said, managing somehow not to sound sarcastic.

“Because that’s what she told me to do.”

Celestia took a moment to digest the information. “She told you this before she disappeared?”

Lumen nodded, prompting a deep sigh from the princess.

“If somepony plans to leave, and then does, they aren’t really missing,” Celestia said, allowing herself a rare display of exhausted patience.

“It’s not like that,” Lumen protested. “After the wyvern attacked Old Sawdust, she said she needed to investigate, and that if she didn’t come back, you and Princess Luna needed to know.”

“Wyvern?” Celestia repeated, suppressing a laugh. “Wyverns haven’t been sighted in Equestria in centuries. Aside from my sister and myself, there isn’t a pony alive who could even recognize one.”

“Autumn can. She knew exactly what it was when she saw it, and how to fight it. Don’t think we would have been able to drive it off, otherwise.”

Celestia forced her expression back to the neutral calm she’d spent so many years perfecting. “I’m sorry. I’m sure your trust in your friend is well founded, but if your town had actually been attacked by a wyvern, Stonehoof would be gone now. There might be four living ponies who could even give one pause, and I know where all of them are.”

Lumen was clearly unmoved by the argument. “She’s never been wrong about this kind of thing before.”

The pony’s stubbornness was not surprising. Celestia shook her head apologetically. “I can have a guard unit fly you home and search the area for any threats,” she offered. “They might even find your friend.”

“Will it include one of those four ponies who can challenge a wyvern?” Lumen asked.

“No, but that won’t be an issue,” Celestia said with uncharacteristic harshness. She wasn’t sure why Ash Scribe had bothered her with this; ponies with impossible stories were not uncommon in his work, and he’d had no trouble dealing with them in the past. She stood, and turned toward the door.

“Autumn said you might not believe me,” Lumen said from behind her. “So she had me take this, as a last resort.”

Against her better instincts, Celestia turned back to look as one of Lumen’s saddlebags opened and a single item, packed carefully atop everything else, floated out.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded, her suddenly venomous tone one that hadn’t been heard from her in generations.

“I told you,” Lumen said meekly.

“Where did she get it?”

“I don’t know,” Lumen answered in a pleading tone. Unsurprisingly, her composure had fled in the face of Celestia’s anger.

The object in question was an iridescent lavender feather about the length of Celestia’s foreleg. It shimmered in the light, giving it an otherworldly appearance that was impossible to fake. The very idea that any being — pony, wyvern, or whatever else — had been carrying it around as some kind of token for all these years infuriated Celestia to her core.

“Don’t move,” she ordered, and stormed out of the room, the feather floating behind her in her golden aura.

“Ash,” she called as she emerged into the corridor.

Her seneschal was standing about a dozen paces away — far enough that he was clearly not eavesdropping, but near enough to be convenient if he was needed. “Yes, Princess?”

“Arrange a carriage immediately. Fast flyers. No guards.”

“But Princess…” Ash’s complaints died on his lips as he caught a glimpse of the fire in Celestia’s eyes. “Right away.” He turned to carry out his orders.

“Wait,” Celestia said, then floated the feather over to him. “When Luna emerges, give this to her.”

Ash took it carefully in his own telekinetic grip. He clearly didn’t know what it was, but just as clearly understood that it was extremely important to Celestia. “Understood.”

Celestia wasn’t sure it was a good idea. There was no telling how her sister might react. All she could say for certain was that if she didn’t share this with her, and Luna found out, there wouldn’t be peace between them for decades to come.

Interrogation en route yielded frustratingly little information. For a pony who had, by her own account, practically been raised by this Autumn Wind, Lumen knew next to nothing of her past. At the end of four maddening hours, Celestia knew that Autumn was a unicorn, that she’d arrived in Stonehoof well before Lumen was born, that she served as a teacher and town elder when appropriate, and that Lumen was given to hero worship of alarming intensity.

It was also clear that, whatever forces may have been manipulating her, Lumen was acting in good faith. This didn’t improve Celestia’s disposition towards the young mare as much as it probably should have, but it did lessen her anxiety somewhat.

When she was finally convinced that she wouldn’t get anything more of use out of the unicorn, Celestia let the carriage fall silent. It would still be another hour or so to Stonehoof. She would need the time to calm herself for whatever was to come.

“Princess?” Lumen spoke up after some time. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You may,” Celestia replied stonily.

“Autumn told me not to use the feather if I could avoid it, but she didn’t tell me it would make you so angry.”

“You probably wouldn’t have, if you’d known,” Celestia reasoned.

“No pony would,” Lumen said with a shudder. “But still — it’s just a feather. I mean, it’s pretty, sure, but why is it so important?”

Earlier, Celestia might have been surprised by Lumen’s ignorance. Although she wouldn’t expect any random pony to know Twilight Sparkle’s plumage when they saw it, one who had come into possession of such a thing and carried it directly to the capital before presenting it to Celestia herself was hardly any random pony. Now, though, Celestia understood that Lumen had been kept thoroughly in the dark on many if not all aspects of her journey.

“You might need a new name after this,” Celestia mused.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Celestia paused as she considered how much to share. Lumen didn’t seem like the type of pony who wanted anything at all to do with the press or nobility. Once her adventure was over, she imagined the unicorn would return to the self-imposed invisibility of Stonehoof. Even if she did talk, Celestia wasn’t sure anypony would care. “That feather belonged to Twilight Sparkle. No trace of her was ever found — or so we believed. For it to turn up now, preserved as it was, is troubling for a number of reasons.”

“Oh. Twilight Sparkle.” Lumen’s expression shifted from curiosity to distaste.

Celestia raised an eyebrow, intrigued. To nearly all modern ponies, Twilight Sparkle was nothing more than the brightly colored icon for their favorite day-long party. Outside the reach of mainstream Equestrian culture, Lumen had apparently come across some different ideas.

“You don’t care for Princess Twilight?” Celestia asked, trying to keep the question as light and unintimidating as possible. It was difficult, given the nature of their short history together.

“Autumn had some, um, thoughts on her,” Lumen said uneasily. “I don’t remember a lot of the specifics — it was fifteen years ago that she taught me about Equestrian government. She said that each of you had a role, and that Twilight Sparkle failed in hers. That that was why she died.”

“An interesting interpretation,” Celestia said, careful to keep her tone and expression neutral. “What did she believe Twilight’s role to be?”

“She was the mediator — or, she was supposed to be. Like I said, I don’t remember it all, and I’m not sure I ever understood it, so I guess I shouldn’t have feelings about her one way or the other. But those things kind of rub off on you, you know?”

“There was no mediating the dispute that killed her,” Celestia said sadly. “Those events were set in motion long before she was born.”

“Not that,” Lumen said with a shake of her head. “Princess Twilight was supposed to mediate between you and Princess Luna.”

Celestia’s stare might have eventually burned a hole through her companion, but she caught herself after a moment and, with some effort, regained her composure. It was time for sunset, and they would be landing near Stonehoof not long after that. Until then, she resolved, they would ride in silence.

Celestia had never visited Stonehoof before, but it was largely the same as she’d imagined. A loose cluster of rustic dwellings centered around a single-room town hall that also served as the library, lost-and-found, and any other public function that the locals could acknowledge without damaging their individualist self-images. The town’s namesake, an impressive butte, towered above, interrupting a landscape of rolling, forested hills.

Their first stop was Autumn Wind’s house. It was far enough from any other buildings that, with Lumen’s guidance, the pair was able to reach and enter without being noticed by the townsponies. Though Celestia did intend to find Autumn — or whatever was left of her — soon enough, at the moment she was much more concerned with the who than the where. Lumen watched with a mixture of impatience and discomfort as Celestia efficiently tore the house apart.

Unfortunately, if there had ever been anything of interest here, it was gone now. All the house contained were the barest supplies of basic living. That didn’t seem right — Autumn had been a teacher, and according to Lumen, a powerful unicorn as well.

“Where are the magic supplies?” Celestia asked.

“What?”

“She practiced, didn’t she? And taught you? Where are the weights? The light crystals? The spellbooks?”

“I don’t know what any of those things are,” Lumen said. “When she taught me to use magic, we just used whatever was around.”

“She was keeping that feather somewhere,” Celestia almost growled. “You don’t have any idea where she might have stashed something like that?”

Lumen shook her head. “If we found her, we could ask her.”

Celestia felt a sudden stab of sympathy as she glanced at the unicorn. For Celestia, this was about investigating a possible threat to her kingdom — important certainly, but impersonal and almost depressingly routine. For Lumen, somepony she cared about was missing. Possibly in danger. Possibly already dead.

“We’d better find her then,” Celestia said, hoping her smile was not so reassuring as to be dishonest.

The forest around Stonehoof was inappropriately quiet. Moreover, it had clearly been that way for some time; not only were there no creatures, there was no evidence of their presence any time in the recent past. Birds’ nests sat empty, game trails were grown over, and burrows collapsed. It had been weeks — maybe months — since anything other than the townsponies had walked these woods.

“How long has it been like this?” Celestia asked.

“Two weeks. Maybe three,” Lumen replied. “We got the feeling that something was scaring everything else off. Thought it was timberwolves at first — that happens every few years.”

“But now you think otherwise?” Celestia prodded.

Lumen scowled. “You know what I think it is.”

Celestia sighed and continued walking. The theory fit — aside from the fact that the wyverns had been all but eradicated and their remnants contained centuries ago. However Autumn Wind had come by her unique understanding of history, she had apparently missed that detail. Or she knew quite well that it was impossible, but found them a convenient means of manipulation.

Why wyverns, though? She could scare her neighbors with any number of much more plausible stories, and if she wanted the attention of the royalty, she need only use that inexplicable feather, just as she’d done.

“Do you want some light?” Lumen asked, clearly hoping to be useful.

The shafts of moonlight piercing the forest canopy had been good enough for Celestia, but she hadn’t really been searching with her eyes to begin with. “Please,” she said, more to indulge the unicorn than out of any real need. Lumen’s horn glowed with steadily increasing intensity as Celestia returned to her thoughts.

The puzzle of Autumn Wind weighed on her more with each passing moment. Her possession of the feather — whether she’d had it for some time, or taken it from whatever she’d encountered in the woods and called a wyvern — was impossible. There was no real starting point for that problem, so as much as it alarmed her, she wasted little thought on it.

Her bare house was suspicious; even the most spartan ponies had more to show for their lives than that. It was as if she’d expected it to be searched and stripped it in anticipation. If she was looking to disappear and leave no clues by which to be tracked, it might have made sense, but in that case she would not have deliberately engineered the situation in which the highest possible authority personally ransacked her home.

She had engineered it, though — Celestia hadn’t thought of it in those terms until now. Autumn Wind, a pony she’d never met or heard of, had decided that she wanted the Goddess of the Sun to leave Canterlot for Stonehoof, and simple as that, it was done. Embarrassing.

Assuming ill intent, the question was whether the goal was to place her in Stonehoof, or out of Canterlot. If there was a good place to ambush Celestia, this wasn’t it. The concerns about collateral damage that would limit her options near any kind of population center were not an issue here. A trap seemed unlikely.

A diversion, though, made sense, especially if it was assumed that Luna would also leave the capital. She probably would have, if Lumen had arrived any other day. Was that an error of planning, or execution?

“Princess!” Lumen called, interrupting Celestia’s increasingly dark thoughts.

Lumen was pointing with a hoof at a dark shape almost directly in front of Celestia. She’d been so lost in her theories that she’d nearly walked into it. As the light from Lumen’s horn focused on it, Celestia was forced to discard those theories and begin working on new ones.

It was a jumble of black-scaled skin and talons, about three times the size of a pony. Most of that bulk was in the tail and wings. Standing, it would have been only slightly taller than Lumen, but to say that it lacked that capability now understated the situation. This was more a collection of spare parts than a creature.

“What is it?” Lumen asked, revulsion clear in her voice.

Celestia swallowed a sizable dose of pride. “It was a wyvern,” she said slowly. “Until something much more dangerous found it.”

She mentally catalogued the beings that could be responsible. An adult dragon was capable. A water serpent might be, if the fight took place in the water — unlikely given their distance from the nearest stream. A changeling queen, possibly aided by her brood, was also theoretically possible. She briefly played with the idea that Autumn Wind could be a changeling.

Her murky past, her odd perspective on Equestrian history, and the power described by Lumen all matched a changeling queen better than a rural unicorn. She’d been in Stonehoof for at least a few decades though — long enough to teach Lumen from a young age. Longer, by the accounts of the townsponies, though Lumen couldn’t attest to that directly.

In Celestia’s encounters with the various changeling broods, she’d never found them capable of planning more than a few months into the future. Though the queens lived indefinitely, the hive’s attention span seemed to be about the same as a drone’s lifetime. Still, it was possible that undiscovered broods were different — in fact, it might be that undiscovered broods were undiscovered precisely because of their relatively farsighted thinking. The theory fit well enough with what she knew of Autumn Wind, but there was still a question of motivation.

“Um, Princess,” Lumen spoke up hesitantly. “Are those wyverns too?”

The unicorn was looking to the sky, where numerous winged figures happened to be gliding past.

“Yes,” Celestia said calmly. This, at least, was straightforward. There would be questions later about how it all happened, but right now Celestia had exactly one course of action open to her. The simplicity was almost pleasant, despite the circumstances. “I’m going to need you to do something for me, Lumen.”

Lumen tore her eyes away from the sky looked at Celestia expectantly.

“Tell my drivers to go. They can leave the carriage, I just need them to get word to Canterlot, as quickly as they possibly can. Now, this will be a little disorienting.” Celestia’s horn lit, and Lumen disappeared.

The princess took a deep breath and spread her wings, then took flight.

Even among her enemies Celestia, did not have the reputation of a killer. She certainly didn’t think of herself as one. Still, she’d killed more than any other pony in history. Violence, she believed, was a symptom of poor preparation.

Complacency was a better description in this case. Her vigilance had faltered, and now these wyverns would pay for her failure.

The first blast of golden energy vaporized three beasts flying in tight formation, then continued undiminished into the sky. Before any could react, a second effort picked off another pair. The wyverns finally scattered, the air filling with terrible screeches of alarm.

Celestia grimaced at the noise and pushed higher, seeking another target while trying to get some idea of the scope of the invasion. She could count a dozen now and had already destroyed five. Alerted by the sound of a wingbeat behind her, she rolled quickly, startling her would-be attacker, and slipped laterally away from its outstretched talons as it tried and failed to correct the angle of its dive.

As it dove past her she landed a kick to the side of its head with a rear hoof, then applied a telekinetic boost to speed its already rapid descent. Not waiting to see the result of the maneuver, she inverted again and climbed. Far enough above the forest canopy now, Celestia could see the full extent of the swarm.

There were at least forty, with a few stragglers still behind her. Her sudden attack had only dispersed them for a few seconds. Now they were reconverging on what appeared to be their target: Stonehoof’s town hall. That raised a number of questions Celestia had no time to ponder.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the swarm was now between Celestia and Stonehoof, meaning purely magical attacks such as she’d used a moment ago would be a danger to the town. With a beat of her wings, she powered forward. If she could scatter them again, she might be able to position herself to better protect the town before they could reform. With speed only one other pony could match, she plunged into the group, striking several with outstretched hooves as she passed through.

Before they could react, she was through them and circling back. The attack had had its intended effect; the wyverns were once again scattered, allowing Celestia to take up a defensive position above the town hall. She hovered there, her glare daring the creatures to come. Instead, they seemed content to circle at a distance.

That was troubling. Wyverns were not known for self-control or teamwork — at least not when left to their own devices. They didn’t exactly seem unconcerned, but neither were they panicking and fleeing — or panicking and attacking, which was equally likely in their case. Some as-yet-unseen actor had arranged this; that much seemed certain. Whether said actor had planned on Celestia’s presence was less so. There still wasn’t enough here to threaten her in any real way. If this were a scheme to kill or capture her, its authors had underestimated her severely. Or perhaps she hadn’t seen the full extent of the scheme yet.

The dragon came at her from the side; she didn’t see it until it was almost on top of her. Normally dragons were hard to miss, but trying to keep eyes on wyverns in every direction while also puzzling over the tangled mess of events that had brought her here made for a blind spot roughly the size of Equestria.

With a grunt of frustration, she flared her wings and pushed herself clear of the dragon’s charge. To do so was to cede her position above the town hall, giving the invaders an unblocked path to it and making it harder for her to fight them without risking the town, but she wasn’t entirely confident that she could have erected a shield of sufficient power to repel the dragon in the time available.

She didn’t recognize this dragon, though judging by its size it was at least a few centuries old. Like its pet wyverns, its scaling was predominantly black, with a dark purple underbelly. It stopped in the space Celestia had just vacated and smiled smugly at her, before folding its wings and letting itself drop onto the town hall, crushing it. Hopefully, everypony in Stonehoof was safe in their own homes, asleep.

Noises of excitement arose from the remaining wyverns, who were still circling at a distance. With a sweep of its tail, the dragon swept away the wreckage, then dug into the ground with a claw, growling triumphantly. With nothing left to protect in the dragon’s immediate vicinity, Celestia prepared to attack, then paused as something caught her eye.

Several semi-translucent glowing tendrils were snaking their way out of the ground, growing both in length and brilliance as the dragon, oblivious, continued digging. It didn’t notice its predicament until it was almost completely entangled. Alarmed, Celestia beat her wings, climbing to put distance between herself and the dragon. An unknown but powerful magic was at work; she had no reason to assume it would only target her foes.

All at once, the mystical tethers tightened, drawing a startled growl from their catch. It strained uselessly against the tendrils, which continued to tighten as more joined the web.

Celestia squinted, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her; it appeared as if the whole jumble, dragon and all, was shrinking. Another few seconds left no doubt. The dragon was now the size of the building it had destroyed. In another moment, it was halved again. Fascinated, Celestia didn’t pay any mind to the panicked retreat of the wyverns.

Prudence dictated that she return to Canterlot and share this development with her sister. They could research, prepare, and then face whatever being was responsible together. This was beyond dragons and wyverns; risking a confrontation alone would be reckless.

Celestia, as she’d been told countless times before, was a bit reckless. She let herself float to the ground, where she looked curiously at the now foal-sized dragon. It had stopped shrinking, and was contained in a neatly spherical cage of swirling magical energy.

“Cute,” she said, affecting nonchalance.

“You were supposed to bring Luna,” a voice whispered from no particular direction. “You should have been here sooner.”

“So that you could capture both of us the same way?” Celestia asked with a raised eyebrow. Her facade of calm was somewhat diminished by the constant movement of her eyes, scanning for any newly arrived tendrils around her hooves.

No answer was forthcoming.

“Who and what are you?” Celestia asked, infusing her voice with all the authority she’d learned in her millenia on the throne. “Autumn Wind?”

“Autumn Wind is gone,” came the reply. The voice was no longer a whisper, and its origin no longer a mystery. It quite clearly belonged to the purple alicorn emerging from the woods on the other side of the wreckage.

Celestia had never been one to let surprise overwhelm her; she didn’t cry out or freeze in place, only gazed coolly at the newcomer as she took a mental inventory of all that this changed. It answered a great many questions. It raised even more. Almost all of them carried mountains of emotional baggage. There was no time for those under the circumstances.

“Why did they come here?” Celestia asked instead.

Twilight looked sadly at the ruin of the town hall, then contemptuously at the miniaturized dragon. “This is where I buried him.”

Chapter 2

Lumen wasn’t sure why she’d returned to Autumn Wind’s house, exactly. After giving Celestia’s servants their orders, there had been no thought of returning to her own home. Maybe she’d been hoping that her friend had miraculously returned. Maybe she felt safer here.

She’d barely stepped inside when the noises started. Screeches and blasts, then eventually a loud crash that suggested the battle was no longer completely aerial. She huddled behind Autumn’s overturned bed long after the noises stopped, unsure when it might be safe to venture out again.

She nearly jumped when the door flew open, but managed to contain herself. Fear overrode the temptation to stand and look. Even though she doubted that wyverns would bother with doors, she felt the need for some sign that the newcomer was friendly. Two sets of hooves clacked across the house’s wooden floor. Still Lumen waited.

“What else do you know?”

Lumen recognized Celestia’s voice and was about to greet her when the other pony answered.

“Not very much,” said the voice she recognized as Autumn Wind’s. “It seems they’ve let them go almost completely feral, and you can see that they aren’t controlling the population either.”

Lumen was overcome first by relief to know that Autumn was back and unharmed, then by curiosity about their conversation. Rather than reveal herself, she continued to listen.

“That wasn’t the agreement,” Celestia fumed.

“I’m sure the Elder has a completely unrecognizable interpretation of that deal by now,” Autumn said dryly. “You know how dragons are with that sort of thing; you taught me yourself.”

Lumen frowned. The two were talking as if they’d known each other for some time, but Celestia’s earlier behavior had led her to believe that she’d never even heard of Autumn Wind before today. When would they have been able to meet, let alone develop a relationship? Autumn had been in Stonehoof since before Lumen was born, and if there had been any royal visits in that period, the townsponies would be finding reasons to complain about it to this day.

“We were unmistakably clear on the terms,” Celestia insisted.

“And I’m sure they took that as some sort of challenge.”

There was a long pause, then Autumn spoke again.

“You really tore this place apart.”

“What did you expect me to do?” Celestia asked. “I had to find out as much about you — rather, your little costume — as I could, as quickly as possible.”

“I expected you to respond to a credible threat appropriately, when presented with one.”

“You were the credible threat,” Celestia said, anger rising in her voice. “I had no reason to believe the wyverns were anything but a story.”

“Fine, but you did recognize a threat,” Autumn countered. “Still, you came alone, and certainly took your time. If you had treated this with some seriousness, I wouldn’t have had to involve myself the way I did.”

A hoof stomped angrily against the floor. “So that’s what you’re upset about! You wanted to keep hiding.”

A tense silence took the house for a moment. “Yes, that’s what I wanted,” Autumn said finally, her voice so low Lumen could barely hear. “It was working. There was peace.”

Another long silence was punctuated by rustling and scraping of hooves against the floor as both ponies seemed to fidget outside of Lumen’s view.

“We need to talk about this. All of this,” Celestia said at length. “But not right now, and not just with the two of us.”

“Agreed,” Autumn said, sounding almost hesitant.

Lumen could hear Celestia’s hoofsteps as she made for the door, then a pause.

“Twilight,” she said. “Luna will be here before dawn, probably with half of Equestria’s forces.”

“I see,” Autumn replied, sounding distant.

“It would be better if you weren’t here when she arrived. I need time to prepare her.”

“Understood. I’ll… find somewhere else to be.”

Lumen heard the door close, and then nothing but a slight rustling noise. Finally, she rose from her hiding place. What lamps were left in the house had been scattered across the floor by Celestia’s earlier effort, and nopony had bothered to light them in any case. The moonlight streaming through the house’s lone window was all the light she needed to see that she was now alone.

She stood motionless, staring across the empty room at nothing in particular, for what was probably a very long time. The short conversation had been densely packed with world-breaking implications she wasn’t prepared to unravel. She didn’t remember laying down; it was possible that at some point her legs had just given out. The cognitive deadlock followed her into a fitful sleep.

“Rise,” an unfamiliar voice commanded.

Lumen found it very compelling, and did as ordered. Opening her eyes, she found a featureless gloom inhabited by a single irate-looking alicorn. Her dark blue coat matched paintings of Princess Luna that Lumen had seen in the capital, although even that familiarity wouldn’t be necessary to identify her; she wasn’t Princess Celestia, and that left only one option.

“You are Lumen?” Luna demanded.

“Um, yes,” Lumen confirmed uncertainly. “What is—”

“You are an associate of the pony responsible for this event, and you are going to help me find her,” Luna said, speaking over Lumen’s question.

“But Princess Celestia—”

“My sister’s judgement on such matters is dubious at best,” Luna interrupted again. “I will find this instigator and reach my own conclusions, regardless of Celestia’s desire to keep her from me.”

“I don’t know—”

“You don’t need to know,” Luna said, her strained patience clear in her tone. “You only need to form a link for me to follow.”

“A link?” Lumen asked, almost surprised that she had been allowed to finish the question.

“I don’t have time to explain the theory of dream magic to you. Think of this Autumn Wind of yours. Build an image in your mind.”

Lumen thought of a dozen questions, all of which were banished by the look on Luna’s face. She had realized somewhat belatedly that she couldn’t possibly be awake. There was no world here, only a demanding princess who made no sense. With a mental shrug, she did as instructed.

It didn’t take much, apparently; just imagining her longtime friend and mentor had an immediate effect. A scattering of memories flashed through her mind, all of various interactions with Autumn Wind. There was no pattern to them that she could discern; some were important, others trivial. Whether this was the normal behavior of her unconscious mind, or some effect of Luna’s presence, Lumen couldn’t say.

Soon, the indistinct background of the dream had melted into an intricately detailed world of which she had no memory. Luna was still standing before her, scowling slightly.

“Not what I had in mind.” The princess sounded slightly confused. “But it will serve.” She fixed Lumen with a sharp look. “Stay close to me. Getting lost in a stranger’s dream world would be… damaging.”

Lumen didn’t answer. Though this newly created world felt unsettlingly foreign to her, she had a hard time believing it was anything other than the invention of her own exhausted mind.

It was a moonless night in a seaside city that Lumen, unsurprisingly, did not recognize. The city also happened to be on fire. She and Luna stood in a cobblestone plaza littered with debris. Ruined street carts, broken windows and piles of assorted flaming detritus framed another alicorn standing in the plaza’s center, her forehoof planted solidly upon something Lumen couldn’t quite make out.

The alicorn gazed dispassionately down at it for an undefinable period of time, then looked up at Luna and Lumen, as if suddenly sensing them.

“One of those nights, I see,” she said, resignation coloring an otherwise flat voice. “You might want to skip ahead — this goes on for quite a while.” She squinted briefly at Lumen. “This is new,” she remarked, eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. “My subconscious is getting inventive, it seems.”

As Twilight looked at them, the object under her hoof swam into focus in a suitably dreamlike fashion. It was an juvenile dragon, a slightly lighter shade of purple than Twilight herself, with green backplates and underbelly.

The air seemed to shimmer around it, warping it continuously while its surroundings were untouched. One moment it was an infant, its head hardly visible under Twilight’s hoof, the next it was gargantuan, larger than any of the buildings that formed the flaming backdrop of the scene. It shifted disconcertingly through various intermediate stages, never holding a single form for longer than a heartbeat. The constant was Twilight’s hoof, pressed firmly against the dragons face, covering its mouth and nostrils. All the while, the dragon convulsed sporadically, as if struggling for air.

It was impossible, of course; reality would never tolerate such transformations, or the bizarre spatial dissonance that let Twilight, still motionless, continue to smother the dragon even as its head grew to several times her height. The dream accommodated it readily enough, though. As Twilight looked back to her captive, he reverted immediately to his infant form. Her lips pressed together into a thin line as she watched his continued struggles.

Just as Twilight had promised, it went on for quite a while. Time being an almost useless concept in dreams, it was also over almost immediately. As the convulsions slowed, Twilight watched, her expression passive, an unlikely blend of boredom and despair filling her eyes. Lumen got the impression that she had lived this scene many times before. Finally, the dragon was still. Twilight removed her hoof from the lifeless body, straightened, and, after a brief glance at Luna and Lumen, erupted into a terrifying rage.

Her horn glowed with an intensity that hurt Lumen’s eyes, even though she wasn’t actually using them. What started as a low growl became an anguished scream, and she kicked furiously at the ground with a rear hoof. With a loud crack the entire plaza splintered apart, pieces separating and floating in different directions as if suspended in a sea of viscous syrup.

“This wouldn’t actually float,” Twilight said from beside her, her voice oddly calm. Lumen was, for some reason, not surprised to find Twilight standing immediately to her left, even as another Twilight rampaged through what was left of the city; perhaps her mind had finally given up on the rules of the waking world.

An increasingly distant purple blur seemed to burn through everything it touched. The little cobblestone island upon which Luna, Lumen and the less apocalyptic Twilight stood bobbed slowly away from the scene of destruction, like a dinghy adrift on invisible waves.

“That pony,” Twilight said, nodding toward herself, “is a danger to herself and others.” She tsked and shook her head judgmentally.

It occurred to Lumen that Luna had been silent since their arrival. She looked up at the darker alicorn curiously, expecting an expression of disdain or annoyance — the only ones she’d seen on her thus far. Instead, she was greeted by slack features and empty eyes. A slight twitch at the corner of Luna’s mouth was the only sign that she was still capable of any sort of movement.

“This is called dissociation, Lumen,” Twilight noted. Her voice had fallen into a familiar lecturing cadence. It wasn’t clear whether she was referring to Luna or herself.

Lumen looked back to Twilight to find that she was now Autumn Wind. She still gazed in the direction of the glowing purple destruction.

“A very sick pony. Best not to have anything to do with her.” Autumn shook her head one last time, then faded out of existence, along with the purple glow in the distance.

Soon, the other pieces of shattered plaza that had floated nearby started to vanish as well. With an inexplicable dread, Lumen knew that this world was collapsing.

“Princess,” she nearly shouted, turning back to Luna.

Luna looked down at her with disinterested, glassy eyes.

“We have to leave!”

Luna seemed to consider that for a moment, then with an almost imperceptible sigh, sat down and looked at what remained of the ground.

“Princess!” Lumen tried again. Luna did not respond.

As the last of the dream world crumbled, Luna was still staring downward, wearing an expression Lumen could only describe as ‘complex.’

Then, the dream was gone, replaced by something equally alien but far less surreal.

She was gliding between pillars of smoke, looking down at a ruined cityscape, her stomach churning with a terrible dread.

She was scanning crater-pocked streets, desperate for some sign that she wasn’t too late. She knew she wouldn’t find one.

She was dispatching renegades by the dozen. There wasn’t time for a more forgiving response. Many species were represented — even some equines. How he had rallied them to his cause was still a mystery.

She was hovering in front of him, looking him in the eyes while his deranged rant confirmed her greatest fear. Her wings were still; it was her magic that held her aloft, higher than any of Mareis’ remaining structures. She knew what she had to do. There were no other options.

She was standing on his chest as it heaved erratically under her. His laughs turned to pained coughs while he regarded her with his remaining eye. These would be his last breaths, but still he was smiling. He tried to speak, but managed only incoherent mumbles. She said nothing.

All of these moments passed instantly over Lumen, each a self-contained kernel of perception, thought, and feeling.

It was suffocating. She awoke gasping for air.

“Lumen?” Celestia’s worried voice greeted. “Are you alright?”

It was a complicated question. As she forced her eyes open, Lumen evaluated it. She seemed to be intact physically. She didn’t know why she wouldn’t be, but given her now-fading panic, it felt reasonable to check. Mentally, she felt disjointed, to say the least.

Something she couldn’t remember was extremely important, for reasons she couldn’t remember. That would have been frustrating, were it not for the overriding sorrow that crowded out any other emotion. That too was fading, though. It wasn’t unlike past experiences with powerful dreams which faded away in the daylight, leaving only inexplicable feelings behind. The sheer intensity was unprecedented, however — at least, for Lumen it was.

“Lumen?”

“I’m fine,” Lumen answered unconvincingly. “Just had a strange dream, I think.”

She blinked the sleep from her eyes and assessed her surroundings. She was still in Autumn Wind’s house, but it had been cleaned up and reorganized since the previous night. She was lying on Autumn’s bed, which last she’d known had been overturned and left in the middle of the room. Autumn’s few personal effects, yesterday scattered across the floor by Celestia, were nowhere to be seen. A pair of boxes stacked in the corner of the room farthest from the door seemed their most likely location now.

Princess Celestia sat near the only window, a variety of scrolls and maps laid out before her on a low table that Lumen didn’t recognize as belonging to Autumn. At the door, a pair of guards stood, eyes forward and bodies stiff. Four ponies might be as many as had ever occupied the tiny dwelling, but somehow it didn’t feel crowded.

“A dream?” Celestia asked with a flick of her ear. “How was it strange?”

Lumen rolled out of bed and glanced at the princess. Celestia’s curious gaze was locked upon her, her work forgotten. It was a uniquely uncomfortable feeling to awaken under the watch of the princess herself; it would have been even if it weren’t followed by questions about dreams that she couldn’t answer.

“I can’t remember,” Lumen said, shaking her head.

Celestia shrugged and turned back to her work. Scrolls shuffled and maps folded while a quill hung uselessly in the air. The princess seemed distracted.

“Why did you come back here?” She asked after a moment. “I looked for you at the carriage, among other places.”

“It was the closest building when the fighting started,” Lumen replied. “I assume that was fighting anyway.”

“Yes,” Celestia confirmed with a sad nod.

“And?” Lumen prompted.

“Nopony was hurt. The wyverns weren’t so lucky. Your town hall will have to be rebuilt.”

Lumen digested the information in silence for a moment. “You cleaned Autumn’s house,” she noted at length.

“Yes, well… it would have been rude to leave it the way it was,” Celestia explained weakly. “And I needed a place to work, away from Lu—” she caught herself. “Away from the commotion.”

“Commotion?”

“My sister arrived a few hours ago. As requested, she brought considerable forces with her.” She glanced pointedly at the door guards. “Large military deployments bring with them a certain amount of chaos.”

“Were you expecting Autumn back, then?” Lumen asked pointedly. “Or why the worry about being impolite?” Based on what she’d overheard before falling asleep, Lumen was fairly certain she knew the answer to that question. Still, she wanted her suspicions confirmed, and, more importantly, wanted to know whether Celestia would answer her honestly.

The princess clearly struggled with the question. Autumn had once described her as the world’s most accomplished not-quite-liar — she must have been feeling truly out of sorts if a relatively simple query like Lumen’s gave her pause.

“About Autumn…” she started, then shook her head, apparently deciding against whatever she’d planned to say. “You were right, for what it’s worth. About all of it.”

It wasn’t worth much. Lumen hadn’t set out for Canterlot to be right — her objective was to save her town and, if possible, her friend. “Great. So, about Autumn…”

Before Celestia could answer or deflect, the door glowed with blinding light and burned almost instantly into a neat pile of ash on the threshold. It was too fast to be frightening. Lumen watched in confusion as a dark blue alicorn stormed into the house, plucking the door guards from the ground and holding them helplessly aloft in her magic until they realized what was happening and stopped struggling.

She recognized Luna immediately from her dreams. The sight of her summoned in Lumen’s mind a series of half-familiar images. Nothing so sensical as to help her remember, but enough to trigger a resurgence of the residual emotions that had only just faded. She stared blankly through the princess as she struggled to understand both her own inexplicable feelings and the situation unfolding before her.

“You thought to hide this — to hide her — from me?” Luna demanded, her glowing eyes beaming menacingly at her sister.

“Luna, I need you to calm down,” Celestia urged, her voice carrying a practiced tranquility that seemed to have no effect on the raging alicorn.

“How long have you known? How long have you conspired—”

“I found her last night,” Celestia interrupted. “I only wanted to prepare you before you met her.”

“I am not a foal to be coddled!” Luna stomped at the floor, drawing a flinch from Lumen. “Your manipulation will not be tolerated!”

Wings spread wide, Luna took a long stride towards her sister and kicked away her work table, scattering her papers across the floor. Celestia remained passive, meeting the aggression with only a disappointed stare.

Lumen wasn’t sure if this was the beginning of the battle that would end Equestria as she knew it, or a standard Tuesday morning. She’d learned enough history to know that arguments between these particular sisters didn’t always end peaceably.

Increasing pressure in her horn told her of a surge of energy nearby. She could almost hear it crackling and hissing as the effect intensified. At first, she thought it was coming from the princesses, but then they too seemed to forget about their conflict and glance around the room questioningly. With an anticlimactic pop, a third alicorn appeared within hoof’s reach of Lumen. She recognized this one from her dream as well.

Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes and scanned the room, taking a quick step back from Lumen when she realized how close she stood. She held her silence for a long moment as her gaze passed over everypony a second time.

“So,” she said finally, with clear reluctance. “You’re all here. Unexpected. In fact, this is exactly what I’d hoped to avoid.” She laughed nervously, then the room fell back into a dead silence.

Based on what she’d heard the previous night and the dream she didn’t really remember, Lumen already knew, but her mind hadn’t yet formally assembled the idea from its component parts. Now it was unavoidable. The revelation came in two waves. One, Twilight Sparkle was not dead. Shocking, but not of great emotional impact to a pony who, like Lumen, was fewer than four hundred years old. Two, Autumn Wind was dead. Rather, she had never lived.

Under the weight of three intense stares and two curious ones, Twilight shuffled involuntarily backwards into the rear corner of her very small home. It was a single room, meant for one average-sized mare. Now it held three grown alicorns and two armored guards, in addition to Lumen. There wasn’t much space to escape scrutiny.

“So,” Twilight said eventually, her expression speaking to her resignation. “Who wants to go first?”

Luna wanted to go first. She pointed an accusatory hoof, opened her mouth, closed it, returned the hoof to the floor, looked at it briefly, then looked back to Twilight. “You just let me find you.” Her voice was low, each syllable carefully enunciated. “Like that. After all this time.”

“Find her?” Celestia asked. Her gaze had shifted from Twilight to Luna. “Like what?”

“That was you?” Twilight demanded, her expression darkening. “I mean, actual you? And you brought her?” She gestured towards Lumen.

Lumen wasn’t comforted, either by Twilight’s furious incredulity or Celestia’s sharp inhalation. What about that was so significant that it would draw such a reaction? The guilty expression that crossed Luna’s face for the slightest of moments wasn’t reassuring either.

“Do not change the subject!” Luna exclaimed. “This is not about me — this is about your abandonment. Your dereliction.”

“I told you to wait until the morning,” Celestia said, focusing cold eyes on her sister as she rose to a standing position. “Why couldn’t you just once listen? Now you’ve hurt yourself, and endangered an innocent in the process.”

Luna whirled to face her sister. “I did what I deemed necessary after centuries — nay, millennia — of watching you incur disaster by delaying necessary action. I didn’t intend to enter her dream, only to find her. If somepony had told me my target was so familiar—”

“You had the feather,” Celestia interrupted. “You knew this would be out of the ordinary, at the very least.”

Luna’s anger gave way to confusion. “Feather?”

“Twilight’s feather. I told Ash Scribe to deliver it to you as soon as you woke. Are you saying you never received it?”

Luna shook her head. “I mobilized our forces as soon as I was awakened. He would have had no opportunity to deliver it. You should have brought it to me immediately.”

Celestia let out a single mirthless laugh. “After last time, I wouldn’t speak to you on Sparkle Day if the moon itself fell out of the sky.”

“That was—”

“Please go.” Twilight said firmly, interrupting Luna’s retort. “This isn’t solving anything.”

Both sisters looked back to Twilight, arguments already forming on their lips.

“Please go.” Twilight repeated. There was no mistaking the steel in her voice. The posture of sheepish retreat she’d adopted as she’d backed into the corner was gone, replaced by a commanding stance to match her tone.

Luna’s forced scowl did nothing to hide the tears forming in her eyes. She turned stiffly and marched through the open doorway, beginning to spread her wings as she left Lumen’s sight.

“You too,” Twilight ordered, looking at Celestia.

“Twilight—” Celestia started, a cautioning hoof raised towards the younger alicorn.

“Go.”

The eldest princess seemed to consider defying the order for a moment, before letting out a disappointed sigh and making for the doorway. She stopped at the threshold and turned back. “I trust you haven’t forgotten about the invasion. Or are Equestria’s concerns no longer of interest to you?”

Without waiting for an answer, Celestia disappeared. Her guards stared awkwardly at the place where she’d stood when she vanished, clearly unsure of what to do, but just as clearly aware that they shouldn’t stay here. With a passable attempt at the quiet dignity for which their order was known, they marched through the door.

Once they were gone, Twilight collapsed. “It’s happening again,” she moaned, face buried under her forehooves. “It’s only been ten hours, and it’s happening again.”

“What’s happening again?” Lumen asked apprehensively.

Twilight’s hooves slid off her face, and she looked at Lumen as if just now realizing the unicorn was there. “They’re fighting. You saw! They can’t get along at all.”

Looking at the alicorn splayed across the floor, Lumen wondered if this could really be the same wise, unshakeable, utterly dependable pony she’d known since her childhood. The rational part of her mind noted that she didn’t and couldn’t grasp the full context of what she’d just witnessed. What she did know still pointed to an emotional weight unequaled by any experienced by Lumen thus far in her comparatively short life.

The impulsive part of her mind didn’t care. Twilight Sparkle was nothing more than a squabbling foal, just like the others.

“I liked you better as Autumn Wind,” Lumen said bluntly, and left.

“Me too,” Twilight mumbled to the empty house.

Outside, Lumen was immediately reminded of the broader situation. Stonehoof was crowded in a way it had never been before. The path towards the town hall, usually empty, was littered with guardsponies. A few seemed to be patrolling, eyes scanning the surrounding forest carefully for any sign of threat, while the majority stood in small groups, talking amongst themselves.

Immense shadows drifting across the ground led Lumen’s gaze upward. Overhead, three gargantuan airships floated lazily, while hundreds of indistinguishable specks circled around and between them.

Lumen had been impressed by Canterlot. The city was dense in every way a city could be. It was overflowing with buildings that were in turn overflowing with ponies. Every structure and street had history beyond anything Stonehoof could offer. Still, she’d been prepared for it. She’d read about it, seen pictures, and heard of it from ponies who had known ponies who had hated it because everypony in Stonehoof knew that Canterlot was awful.

In contrast, nothing had prepared her for this. She’d never read about or seen pictures of the airships used by the Equestrian military, and she’d never been told about the constant buzz of activity that surrounded them.

Beyond the glimpse of them she’d caught the previous night, Lumen hadn’t seen anything of the wyvern threat. She had thought of them as a particularly dangerous wild menace; like timberwolves, but worse. The princesses clearly felt otherwise. Celestia had used the word ‘invasion.’ She had ordered these forces and, even after defeating the swarm that had attacked the previous night, had not sent them home.

Did that mean there were more? So many that a force of this magnitude was justified? The alicorns’ spat seemed even more ridiculous in that case. Lumen shook her head and made her way down the path, instinctively avoiding eye contact with the many guardsponies who glanced at her curiously as she passed.

As she emerged into the town’s central clearing, she remembered what Celestia had said: the town hall would have to be rebuilt. She hadn’t thought much about it at the time. In fact, she hadn’t thought deeply about anything that had been said in Autumn’s house this morning. She’d been distracted, and it had all happened so quickly.

Now the reality was staring her in the face. The town hall was rubble. About half of Stonehoof’s residents were milling around the ruin, casting angry glances at the nearest guardsponies and the airships above. Of course they would find a way to make it Canterlot’s fault. By now, even the initial attack on Old Sawdust had probably been Canterlot’s doing as far as her neighbors were concerned.

As she drew closer and ponies noticed her, the glares centered on her instead. Of course — she’d made the grueling, possibly dangerous, trek to Canterlot. She’d done all that was necessary to get the attention of Princess Celestia herself, bringing her back just in time to rescue the town from certain destruction. Why wouldn’t they be angry with her?

She stopped and looked back at them with an equally disdainful expression. The townsponies didn’t know the whole story, and they likely never would. They’d gone to sleep last night, their town quiet, their town hall standing undisturbed, and woken up surrounded by the Equestrian Guard, a pile of rubble the town’s new centerpiece.

Looking at the wall of angry faces before her, Lumen surmised that it would be some time before she was welcome here. Autumn wouldn’t be around to defend her; Autumn was dead as far as everypony — herself included — was concerned.

She mulled her options for several moments. Home wasn’t home anymore, despite her efforts to save it. The ponies she was supposed to trust to keep her and the rest of Equestria safe were acting like foals. Nothing seemed to make very much sense.

She found herself wondering instinctively what Autumn Wind would do. It was a common enough line of thought for her when presented with intractable situations, but this time she recoiled from it. Autumn Wind wasn’t even real. She was one of the very ponies that had shaped this mess.

Still, Autumn’s wisdom had served her well enough throughout her life. Perhaps the pony Twilight Sparkle had pretended to be was a better role model than Twilight herself. Unlike Twilight, who was probably still laying in a heap on her floor, Autumn would have found a way to fix this. She would have figured out how to make the princesses act like the ponies they were supposed to be. She’d certainly always known a lot about them — now Lumen knew how she’d come by that knowledge.

Knowing Autumn’s true identity also gave her new perspective on everything she’d ever been told about the royalty, Lumen realized. She thought back through all she could remember her sharing on the subject. One lesson in particular stuck out immediately.

“Celestia and Luna are opposite in so many ways,” Autumn had said. “Given enough time, their relationship will always become adversarial. They care for each other, certainly, but over centuries, everything starts to add up. They need help to find common ground. That was what Twilight Sparkle was meant to do, but she never filled the role very well. Only in death did she succeed in uniting them.”

Lumen wondered what Celestia or Luna would make of that perspective. It might resolve some things, if they knew — or might make them much, much worse. Either way, it was a step.

“Excuse me,” Lumen called, singling out a nearby guard stallion who seemed more decorated than his closest peers. “I need to talk to Princess Celestia.”

The stallion snorted in disbelief, and Lumen steeled herself for a repeat of the ordeal she’d endured to meet with Celestia back in Canterlot.

Chapter 3

If she could have stayed angry, Luna would have had a much easier time keeping despondency at bay. Her temporary solution was to place herself where she couldn’t afford to be seen as anything but resolute. The command deck was not an option; it was far too likely that she’d meet Celestia there. Instead, she watched over the bustle of Cirrus’ landing bay.

The bay was an immense space, about three stories from floor to ceiling. From the interior bulkhead to the currently-raised bay door, hundreds of ponies could fit comfortably if the deck were completely clear. Rows of unused carriages sat ready towards the back of the bay, while areas closer to the door were used for staging, departures, and arrivals, as designated by the deck crew.

From her position on an observation balcony that jutted out from the interior bulkhead, Luna could see all of it, if she were so inclined. Instead, she opted to stare through the open bay door, into the cloudless blue sky beyond.

Even though Cirrus and her sister ships were only holding position at the moment, the sheer scale of the deployment allowed for no lull in activity — which wasn’t to say there was anything interesting going on. Patrols, scouts, and messengers departed and returned, while the deck crew directed traffic and the duty officer paced about, trying to make sense of the whole mess. Chaotic and exciting to the uninitiated, perhaps, but utterly routine for anypony who had seen as much of it as Luna had.

Nothing here required royal oversight, and Luna’s presence was clearly making ponies uneasy. That was her primary talent anyway, she reflected bitterly. With the exception of a few brief centuries, that was how it had always been; Celestia was all smiles and patience, while Luna was the critical voice and the short temper. Celestia the carrot, Luna the stick.

It was enough to make a pony want to plunge all creation into eternal darkness.

Luna took a deep breath and carefully pushed that thought back into its box, then spent a few seconds convincing herself it had not escaped again.

Twilight was back. Twilight would fix everything. She had fixed everything before, after all. This was an upswing in Luna’s thinking on the matter of Twilight’s return. Since this morning, she had oscillated wildly between delirious joy, burning fury, and listless depression.

All the while, uninterrupted by her emotional peaks and valleys, the process of extracting meaning from what she’d seen in Twilight’s dream continued. It was neither simple nor exact. Dreams were several steps removed from memories, which were themselves unreliable — even for a pony like Twilight Sparkle.

Still, for Luna, who had for centuries been desperate to know what had happened in Mareis, the temptation to read into what she’d seen was irresistible. The images played through her mind again and again.

The trick with dream interpretation of any sort was to understand the dreamer’s biases. Some were obvious — the way Twilight saw Spike as a helpless infant, for example. Others could only become clear in comparison to reality, or, failing that, the perceptions of other ponies. Neither was possible in this case. There was no record of what had happened in Mareis, because no being had survived to give their account.

Had Twilight herself killed Spike? All Luna could know for certain was that she felt responsible for his death; to the subconscious, there was no distinction. Luna should have — no. There was nothing useful to be found on these well-worn mental pathways of self-recrimination. She’d spent most of the previous day establishing that fact, as was her annual ritual, and she could not afford to lose herself to such thinking again so soon.

“She’s extremely insistent, sir.”

Luna’s ears pricked up as she overheard the complaint. She found the speaker with her eyes: a messenger about twenty paces away, speaking to the tired-looking duty officer.

“If it’s so important, she can go to Canterlot and wait in line like everypony else,” the officer replied, scowling. “Her Majesty isn’t here to socialize.” He turned and began to walk down the deck towards another recent arrival.

“I told her that,” the messenger protested, following behind. “So did Sergeant Courser, before me. She says she already did that, and that she actually came here with Princess Celestia.”

Luna felt a stab of guilt as she realized they must be speaking of Lumen. She hadn’t intended to harm the unicorn, not that her intentions mattered much now. She certainly hadn’t done anything to mitigate the damage once she’d understood the situation. She hadn’t done anything once she’d understood the situation, and now this Lumen would likely be broken for whatever remained of her life.

“So you think any pony with a ridiculous story should see the princess?” The duty officer scoffed, not slowing. “Tell her it’s not happening. Better yet, don’t tell her anything. We have more important things to do.”

“Belay that,” Luna’s voice thundered through the bay, significantly louder than she had intended. All eyes were instantly on her observation balcony. She fixed her gaze on the duty officer, making clear the target of her order. “Have the unicorn brought to me.”

Luna turned from her desk at the sharp knock on her stateroom door. That would be the unicorn, delivered as ordered. She closed the journal in which she’d been failing to organize her thoughts on the morning and slid it into its place on the bookshelf immediately to the right of the desk, among a dozen dusty tomes that hadn’t been touched since last she’d spent any time aboard Cirrus.

Rather than straighten the unmade bed to her left, she simply folded it up into its wall alcove, doubling the room’s available space. Finally, she pulled a cushion from the tiny overhead storage compartment that served as a closet and set it against the wall near the door.

“Enter,” she called, her preparations complete.

She rose from her seat and tried to appear welcoming as Lumen was escorted into her stateroom; it went about as well as usual. The unicorn’s eyes took several seconds to adjust to the dimly lit chamber, during which time the guards who had brought her exited, leaving the princess alone with her visitor. She should have arranged to meet her somewhere else, Luna realized. It was too late now.

“You had something you wanted to tell us?” Luna prompted. She gestured to a cushion she’d set out, which Lumen ignored. She should have opened with a greeting. Ponies liked that. They liked greetings, and they liked meeting their rulers in bright, public places — not gloomy staterooms aboard warships, with no witnesses. Luna shook her head, berating herself for her failure.

This had never been a strength of hers, and she was sorely out of practice, having left almost all public contact to her sister in recent centuries. She should have just sent Lumen to meet Celestia — that was clearly what the young mare had wanted in the first place.

Lumen had the look of a pony who had known exactly what she’d wanted to say, right up to the moment she was called upon to say it. Her eyes briefly scanned the minimally appointed stateroom, then settled back on Luna.

“Twilight Sparkle is crazy,” she blurted finally.

Luna’s first reaction was one of indignant offense. Who was this backwoods unicorn to judge the sanity of the goddess of magic? Her second was also one of indignant offense, albeit directed slightly differently. The statement was almost painfully self-evident, and she certainly didn’t need the help of said backwoods unicorn to see the obvious. Sane ponies did not disappear for centuries at a time while they let the ponies that cared most about them believe them dead, after all.

She concealed both reactions as best she could, and instead raised an eyebrow in the way she imagined Celestia would. “Explain.”

“Um…” Lumen stuttered.

Luna gestured again to the cushion. “Please, sit.” Without waiting for an answer, she pulled her own seat over from her desk and settled into it.

Lumen reluctantly lowered herself onto the indicated cushion, avoiding Luna’s expectant gaze as she searched for words. “You’re all crazy, actually,” she said when she found them. “We’ve been invaded and that’s pretty much the only thing you aren’t upset about.”

Luna frowned as Lumen fell silent again. She wasn’t interested in debating the point, not least because it almost certainly wasn’t actually what Lumen had come here to say. “You were going to tell me something about Twilight specifically,” she prodded.

“Twilight thinks that she fixed your relationship with Celestia by pretending to be dead,” Lumen mumbled, still avoiding Luna’s eyes. “And that she broke it again by coming back.”

“Preposterous,” Luna replied, a bit too forcefully. She took a second to calm herself, then spoke again in a more controlled voice. “Whatever troubles her, Twilight is logical to a fault, and there is no logic in that conclusion.”

“I don’t know about any of that. All I know is the history she taught me as Autumn Wind. ‘Luna and Celestia couldn’t stand each other until Twilight was out of the picture,’ was the gist of it.” Lumen finished with a shrug and shifted uncomfortably on her cushion.

Luna had to believe that Lumen had misunderstood whatever lessons she'd received from Twilight as a filly. It probably wasn't beyond Twilight to assume responsibility for a relationship that predated her by millennia, but to believe that anything had improved after her supposed death would require a stunning amount of wishful thinking, coupled with complete ignorance of day-to-day happenings in the palace.

Twilight had certainly isolated herself well enough to avoid any news that would contradict such a fantasy — at least for the few decades of her absence that were now accounted for. Still, there was no evidence to support the idea in the first place. Even united in grief as she and Celestia had been for those first decades, the actual process of ruling was as contentious as ever.

"Princess," Lumen spoke up, interrupting Luna's musings. "I have a question."

"Ask, then," Luna ordered, preoccupied.

"Why is it that when I look at you I can't keep my thoughts straight, and it feels like somepony bucked me on the horn?"

Luna's heart sank. She had hoped the symptoms wouldn't be appearing yet. The damage might be even more severe than she had guessed. Explaining to Lumen would be easy: “Oh, I just ruined your mind, and what little remains of your life will be spent descending into madness,” she could say. The unicorn would hate her, but that was bound to happen eventually regardless.

Explaining to Twilight would be much more difficult. Twilight already knew that Luna had brought Lumen into her dream, but likely didn’t know that she hadn’t pulled her out as it ended. What was Lumen to Twilight, anyway? A trusted friend? A surrogate daughter? An accessory to go with a well-constructed disguise? Luna had a hard time imagining Twilight being so utilitarian in regard to any pony, but yesterday she would have wagered Canterlot itself that Twilight could never have willingly abandoned her sisters.

In truth, Luna had only seen Lumen’s ailment once before, a very long time ago when she had not understood her own powers very well. As Twilight might tell her, it was an inadequate sample on which to base any kind of prediction. Still, as she was wont to do, Luna assumed the worst, especially given that it was an alicorn’s mind that Lumen had been exposed to.

“Princess,” Lumen repeated impatiently.

Luna opened her mouth to answer, but was saved by Cirrus’ alert horn. One long blast, two short. Seconds later, the reports of the other two airships’ horns followed. “That’s the contact signal,” Luna said, more curious than alarmed. She stood, looking instinctively to the porthole on the exterior bulkhead, only to remember that she had secured its cover a short time ago to avoid glaring sunlight she’d found abrasive. “Stay here. You don’t want to be in the corridors if the ship begins maneuvers.”

With that, she stepped out of the stateroom, shut the door behind her, and hurried to the command deck.

“New contacts at six o’clock, presumed hostile. Contacts at four o’clock holding steady at approximately two klicks.” The disciplined monotone of the spotter was impressive for a pony who had never seen combat. If nothing else, Luna reflected, this exercise was a valuable test of readiness for a military that hadn’t been used as anything but a deterrent in generations.

Celestia glanced briefly at Luna as she stepped onto the deck, then her eyes returned to the captain.

“The recall is nearly complete, Princess,” Captain Sails was saying. “Scouting crews await your order.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Celestia said softly. “Please let me know when a count is available.”

The captain turned and bellowed across the deck. “Count!”

“Uh, about ten at six, sir,” shouted the aft spotter.

“Same at four, give or take,” came the report from starboard. “Still can’t say what they are exactly.”

Captain Sails turned back to Celestia. “Princess, with the escort flyers recalled, we’re blind topside. Recommend we either loosen formation, or redeploy flyers.”

“No,” Celestia answered mildly, gazing over the deck’s forward railing.

The captain had a point; the massive gas balloon that held the ship aloft also created an enormous blind spot. Standard procedure called for escort flyers at all times that could signal to the deck in case of danger above, but Celestia had apparently ordered all flyers out of the air as soon as the contact alarm had sounded. She’d also clustered Cirrus and the other two airships in a tight defensive formation above Stonehoof, making it impossible for the ships to cover each other’s blind spots.

With a deep breath, Captain Sails contained his clear displeasure at the refusal. Luna sympathized with him, but knew her sister had the right of it. If there were wyverns out there, putting their ponies into the air with them was a pointless sacrifice. None of them had any experience or training fighting these creatures, and they were hopelessly outmatched in the air, especially. Best not to deploy them until there was no other option.

These airships were designed for two modes of combat. Firstly, they were meant to present a credible threat to an adult dragon. That meant a great deal of firepower, with durability to match, but not necessarily any real precision or agility. Secondly, they were capable of carrying enough pegasus troops and support staff to engage a gryphon horde, delivering them to the battle fresh and combat ready, rather than making them waste energy by flying themselves to the engagement.

Neither was ideal for wyverns — in fact, nothing in Equestria’s aerial arsenal quite fit the job, as wyverns had not been on the minds of Equestria’s military planners in centuries. Still, the fact remained that the ships could take some abuse. Better to sustain damage while they assessed the situation than to let their ponies die fighting a battle they couldn’t win.

“Contact!” It was the port spotter shouting this time. “Nine o’clock. About fifteen of them. They’re spreading and…” he paused, lowering the glass from his face. “Lost visibility. There’s a cloud in the way.”

“I thought we’d cleared this area, Captain,” Celestia said, only the mildest rebuke evident in her tone.

“We did,” the captain replied gruffly. “Anything out there, they brought themselves.”

Celestia found Luna with a significant glance. Wyverns weren’t capable of any sort of weather magic, something nopony else present could be expected to know. This would have to be investigated, immediately. There was a question in Celestia’s eyes: you, or me?

Luna nodded and spread her wings meaningfully, receiving an appreciative smile in return. She turned and, with casual grace, leapt over the starboard railing. As she pushed herself clear of Cirrus’s shadow, she dipped into a roll, getting as complete a view of the air above and below her as possible. Finding nothing notable in her immediate vicinity, she adjusted course for the offending cloud.

It was a fluffy white thing, nothing like what she imagined the wyverns might bring with them or conjure, were they capable of either. Drawing closer to the cloud also drew her closer to the wyverns, of course — soon she could see them well enough to identify them herself. Even though she’d believed Celestia when she had told her they’d reappeared, it was still a shock to see them after so long. They were converging on the cloud, now — all those that had been spotted from Cirrus, and even more distant specks that were still outside the airships’ visual range.

That was interesting — wyverns were not capable of that sort of coordination normally. Were they all responding to individual urges or instincts? Why would they be attracted to what appeared to be, suspicious placement aside, a fairly ordinary cloud? It was important that she reach it before any of them, Luna decided. Augmenting her already impressive speed with a magical boost, she rocketed forward.

She noted with some curiosity that none of the wyverns reacted to her burst of speed, even though those closest to her could certainly see her by now. They were completely focused on the cloud; something about it seemed to be so powerfully attractive to them that it robbed them of any semblance of situational awareness. Luna could destroy any of the half dozen nearest her with very little effort right now, despite her being in full view of all of them. From what Celestia had described of her skirmish the previous evening, they had at least tried to evade her then. What was different now?

Luna flared her wings to slow herself as she approached the cloud, then dropped almost daintily onto its surface. It seemed in every way normal, aside from the scores of reptilian beasts hurtling towards it.

“You probably want to get down,” a familiar voice suggested from surprisingly close by.

It took her a moment to spot Twilight, nestled in a trench a few meters away. Above her, a glowing orb floated in her magical grip. From the way Twilight bobbed and jiggled it, Luna was able to recognize it for what it was immediately: a lure.

It still felt surreal just to look at Twilight and realize she was alive. She had a million things she wanted urgently to say, driven by the probably irrational fear that if she turned her back for just a moment, Twilight might disappear again. She couldn’t give in to those desires right now, she knew — there was work to be done. Twilight, intently focused on her lure, seemed equally determined to avoid distraction.

Luna followed her gaze, taking another look at Twilight’s lure. At second glance, it was much more than just a shiny bauble. “Bonsai dragon?” She asked curiously.

“Something like that,” Twilight replied tersely, as her eyes darted away from the orb and began tracking the oncoming wyverns. “Seriously, though: down.”

Luna scooped out a trench next to Twilight’s and settled into it, wondering exactly what the other alicorn had planned. Had she called them here with that lure of hers, or was she using it in an attempt to salvage the situation once they’d appeared? Was she just gathering them to make them easier to destroy, or did she have some other goal in mind?

As the first of the wyverns reached them, Twilight sent the orb shooting higher into the sky. They followed without hesitation, completely ignoring the pair of alicorns that were now within striking distance. When the orb was high enough that Luna could only just make it out as a white speck against the blue sky, it stopped and hung in the air. It seemed clear that the wyverns weren’t tracking it visually; Luna wouldn’t have been able to find it at all with her eyes, if she hadn’t watched its ascent.

She gaped in amazement as the wyverns reached and clustered frantically around it, looking like nothing so much as moths at a lamp. They were certainly far from the most cerebral creatures known, but the mindlessness on display now was beyond anything previously witnessed.

For the better part of minute, Twilight waited, watching patiently as more and more wyverns flocked to the bait. By Luna’s estimation, there were nearly a hundred when the light glow of Twilight’s horn intensified sharply.

“I don’t think I’ll lose him,” Twilight said, her voice strained, “but be ready just in case.”

“What?” Luna looked to Twilight, then back to the sky, her ears folded back in alarm. “Lose who?”

Luna was answered by what sounded like the simultaneous shattering of every window in Canterlot. From the orb, brilliant white flares shot in every direction, pelting the wyverns. At the center of the explosion, the dragon that had been held within the orb seemed to burst into being, growing swiftly to its proper size and roaring in what Luna interpreted as a blend of relief and fury.

Luna stood and spread her wings, her horn beginning to glow as she readied herself to fight.

“Wait,” Twilight ordered calmly. “It’s still under control.”

Luna had some difficulty believing that, but did as asked. The flares, which Luna assumed to be a sort of magical shrapnel resulting from the orb’s explosion, had passed through the cluster of wyverns. Several now hurtled toward Luna and Twilight, but as Luna prepared to launch herself out of their path, they began to curve. All them were turning, actually, each settling into a different orbit of their point of origin.

There were hundreds of them — maybe thousands. Was Twilight controlling every one of them individually, or did she have some technique by which to order their behavior en masse? Either way, it was a magic show the likes of which Equestria hadn’t seen in centuries. As the flares began to pick up speed, the spherical area their orbits defined began to appear as a solid, if somewhat translucent object.

It was all the more impressive, Luna realized, when she saw hints of purple aura holding aloft injured wyverns inside the contained area. They would have been hurt in the initial explosion, of course, but apparently Twilight was not content to simply let them fall from the sky. With an effort, Luna pulled her gaze from the spectacle above and looked at her companion. She opened her mouth to comment, but stopped herself as the white glow of Twilight’s eyes told her that the alicorn was likely not receptive to conversation at the moment.

Looking upwards again, Luna noticed that the sphere was getting steadily smaller, along with everything inside it. This must be how she’d captured the dragon originally — Celestia hadn’t told her about that.

Luna’s ears pricked up as she heard the faint sound of distant cannonfire. She couldn’t imagine that Celestia would have ordered the action — more likely, one of the captains not under the princess’ immediate supervision had been unable to resist the target presented by the dragon and the clustered wyverns. It would have been a waste in any case — the shots certainly wouldn’t be accurate at this distance. Seconds later, three cannonballs whizzed past, two succumbing to gravity short of their target and passing beneath Twilight’s cloud, a third drifting wide before its forward momentum slowed and it too began to fall.

Luna considered for a moment catching the cannonball in her magic and taking it back to present to the pony responsible. It might make for a valuable object lesson — more likely, though, the pony in question, whoever they might be, feared Celestia and her quiet disappointment more than they ever would Luna’s far less subtle styles of reprimand. If the cannons fired again, however, even Celestia would not stop her from personally expelling the pony in question from the service.

“Done,” Twilight announced almost cheerfully, pulling Luna from her thoughts. The glow was gone from her eyes, and she was surveying the sky carefully for any leftover threats. Seconds later, her orb, only slightly larger than it had been when she’d sent it upwards, fell to her feet.

It landed without a sound, displacing the only slightest clump of cloud fluff in its impact, as if it had almost no weight at all. Twilight looked at her prize with a satisfaction that turned to apprehension as her gaze shifted to Luna. “What now?”

Luna was shocked for a moment that Twilight was so deliberately leaving the decision to her, after how forceful she’d been earlier this morning. Was it meant as some sort of olive branch? She considered her answer carefully.

“Now, we will return to Cirrus. There, we will spend what remains of this day with Celestia. You will explain all that you know of these events and their causes. Together, we will decide upon a course of action.” Her expression softened as she continued. “Then, if our plan allows us the time, we will have dinner. No talk of dragons, or wyverns, or any of the rest of it. Just the three of us, appreciating each other’s company.”

A dubious expression had grown on Twilight’s face in response to the latter part of the plan. Her doubts likely mirrored Luna’s: it wouldn’t be as easy as that. Still, she nodded with only slight hesitation. “Alright. Let’s go.”

The command deck was abnormally quiet as the two alicorns landed. For a moment, the crew made an attempt at looking as if they were still seeing to their duties, but it was soon abandoned as all eyes found their way to the purple princess none had seen before. Celestia’s measuring gaze swept across the deck as she made her way to the new arrivals from where she’d been standing near the bow.

She stopped a few paces short of them and studied them carefully for a moment — a stalling tactic, Luna knew, as she decided what to say. Though Twilight had already been seen by a pair of guards earlier today, the vows of secrecy undertaken by a princess’ personal guardsponies were much stricter than those of rank-and-file service members. How Celestia received Twilight in this moment would soon be widely known, and would set the tone for all public perceptions of the princess’ return.

“Princess Twilight,” Celestia said finally with a curt nod. “Princess Luna. Welcome back.”

Luna had to suppress a snort. Both by her tone and by including Luna in the greeting, Celestia seemed to imply that Twilight’s absence was an almost casual occurrence — as if she’d merely stepped out not so long ago, and taken a bit longer than expected getting back.

“Is the situation stable?” Celestia asked. The question was ostensibly directed at both of them, but Luna knew it was designed to allow Twilight to give a triumphant answer — to let her deliver good news in her first somewhat-public appearance.

In response, Twilight floated her orb over to Celestia, who scrutinized it curiously. “They’re all contained,” Twilight said. “I don’t believe there are any others within our borders yet.” Her formal tone and carefully limited statements made clear her understanding that this was all for show.

“Excellent,” Celestia said as she sent the orb floating back to Twilight, who took it again. “Shall we let the crew return to their duties?”

“Lead the way,” Twilight replied. Her eyes never left Celestia’s, which indicated to Luna that she wasn’t yet comfortable making eye contact with — or possibly even looking at — the many ponies on the deck who now openly gawked at her.

“Captain, you have the deck,” Celestia called as she turned and made for the nearest stairway.

“Yes, Princess,” the captain stuttered belatedly, forcing his eyes back to his station once he realized he’d been spoken to.

As the alicorns disappeared down the stairs, Luna couldn’t help but smirk at the sudden buzz of half-whispered conversation among the crew above. Their excitement was contagious; she felt a wave of optimism rushing over her. Matters were still complicated, certainly, but Twilight had willingly returned to Cirrus and let herself be seen by her ponies. That was more progress than she could have hoped for after this morning.

Her good spirits lasted a few seconds longer, until they were vanquished by the tortured screams coming from the direction of her stateroom.

Chapter 4

Lumen’s eyes were squeezed shut, her head thrashing wildly back and forth. Her face was contorted into an expression Twilight doubted she could duplicate while awake. The screams had faded into moans, which rose and fell in time with the throbbing glow of her horn. Luna had lifted her from the floor to the bed, a move which seemed to comfort the alicorns crowded into Luna’s stateroom much more than it did the object of their worry.

“What’s wrong with her?” Twilight asked, looking to Celestia.

Celestia seemed as confused as Twilight, and looked past Twilight to Luna, who stood on her other side. “She came to see you. Did she seem alright then?”

“She saw your dream, Twilight,” Luna said glumly. “That might be enough on its own, but she was also not safely retrieved from it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Twilight demanded as she fixed Luna with a look of disbelief. “I saw my dream — I’ve seen it thousands of times. You saw it too. We aren’t comatose and crawling out of our skins.”

“Very few ponies are suited to that sort of contact with the mind of another. Even if you were a normal pony, and if she hadn’t been exposed—” Luna stopped herself with a guilty shake of her head. “Even if I hadn’t exposed her to your conscious mind, the encounter might have been disastrous.”

Twilight scowled. "So you knew this, but you still—" She paused and looked back to Lumen. "Nevermind. It's done. How do we fix it?"

"I don't believe we can."

Twilight’s expression darkened further, but she said nothing. There was another flare of magic from Lumen’s horn, and an inkwell tumbled from Luna’s desk, spilling onto the floor. Before anypony reacted, it was followed by a set of quills. Then, an unused cushion slid part of the way up the wall before falling back to the floor.

“Random telekinesis,” Celestia observed with a frown. “That will make things a bit more difficult.”

“When I saw this before, it was an earth pony that was afflicted,” Luna remembered. “He had to be restrained, but… it didn’t last long.”

Twilight looked at the mess on the floor for a long moment, then turned back to Lumen. Wordlessly, she reached out with a hoof and touched it lightly against the unicorn’s horn. Immediately, the glow was extinguished. After another few seconds, the moaning and thrashing had largely subsided as well.

Even as Luna and Celestia gaped at the pacified mare, Twilight was not particularly impressed with her work. It was a gamble; until some time had passed, she wouldn’t know whether she’d done more harm than good.

“I cut her off,” Twilight said, in answer to her companions’ unspoken question. “Her magic, I mean.”

“You can do that?” Celestia asked, eyes widening in surprise.

Twilight shot her a quizzical look. “You did it to me once.”

Celestia shook her head. “I was able to redirect some of your energy, but you were never cut off from it.”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, yes, I can do it. It may not be a good idea, but I can do it.”

“It seems to have calmed her, at the very least,” Luna said, a note of hope in her voice. “Perhaps this is—”

“Let's wait until she wakes up — if she wakes up — to get optimistic,” Twilight interrupted sharply. “We have other matters to discuss in the meantime.”

The captain’s office was such in name only; as the largest private workspace on the ship, it was made available for royal use when appropriate, and Cirrus almost never left Canterlot’s airspace without a tiara or two aboard. Even on those occasions, none of the ship’s various captains throughout the years had ever found the gumption to actually make use of it.

It wasn’t an office where the typical naval officer would feel comfortable anyhow; in front of a double row of paneled windows that looked out the rear of the airship, an oversized semicircular desk sat, adorned on one end with a meticulously detailed globe that was almost as old as Cirrus itself, and on the other with a scale model of the ship chiseled in gleaming metal.

Beyond that, there was an ostentatious amount of empty space, the shameless waste of which would be offensive to anypony trying to cram into the crew mess after a shift change. It was antithetical to the military sensibilities that dominated the rest of the ship’s design, made more for tour groups and picture spreads than anything else.

“I was able to trace his wyverns back across the southern border, but I don’t think I got very close to their actual origin. It’s plausible that they came directly from the dragon lands, but I have no evidence of that.” Twilight pointed at the globe as she spoke, then glared briefly into the orb she’d set next to it. Inside, the captive dragon floated listlessly as his wyverns flapped around him, looking for all the world like a cloud of gnats in their miniaturized state.

“Surely we would have heard something from the watch stations if so many wyverns crossed directly,” Luna said, looking to Celestia for confirmation. “If, as Twilight says, there were wyverns in Equestria as early as a week ago, there would have been ample time for word to reach us in Canterlot.”

“One would hope,” Celestia agreed, “but with the sort of discipline this dragon was able to enforce on them, they may have been capable of a stealthier crossing than we would expect.”

Twilight nodded. “He’s done something more than the standard taming with them — there’s some draconic magic I don’t recognize at play, which is probably why he wanted Spike’s remains. He has some way to call to them across great distance, and when he does it seems to override what mental capacity they have. That’s why the swarm reappeared this morning.”

“There shouldn’t even be a swarm,” Luna said bitterly. “Why are the wyverns being allowed to breed in such numbers?”

“One of the many questions he refused to answer,” Twilight answered sourly. “More time in the orb may change his disposition, but he seemed like the stubborn sort to me. All we can assume right now is that the dragons have lost interest in our previous agreements.”

Celestia frowned. “That is how it looks at first glance, but I don’t think we can draw such a broad conclusion based on the schemes of one rogue actor.”

Clearly Celestia had found her way to a more diplomatic frame of mind today — the previous evening she had seemed just as upset by the presence of the wyverns as Twilight or Luna.

“If he is a rogue actor,” Twilight said, turning away from the globe to give Celestia a skeptical look. “Even if whatever passes for their government doesn’t endorse his actions, they’ve certainly not stopped him. And he got those wyverns somewhere which, as we’ve established, shouldn’t be possible.”

“So we must determine whether the dragons’ leaders are malevolent, or merely negligent,” Luna summarized, stepping towards the globe and turning it with her magic so that the slight bump which represented Elder Peak pointed at her.

Twilight shook her head. “I’m not sure there’s a meaningful difference between the two, at least in regard to us. If they are letting their fringe run amok, any attempt by us to enforce order — or even the suggestion that they do it — will end that relative passivity.”

“Let’s at least speak to the elder before we assume the worst,” Celestia insisted.

Twilight scowled. She’d only met the elder dragon once, and they hadn’t exactly taken a liking to one another. Celestia was probably right that they had to at least try talking to him, but doing so came with its own set of risks.

“So that he can lie to us yet again?” Luna demanded. “There’s no dealing with him, as this ordeal proves once more.”

“There’s no one else with whom to negotiate,” Celestia replied calmly. “And, degrading as they are, his games buy us peace, albeit only a few centuries at a time. We may simply be due for another payment.”

“So what do you suggest?” Twilight asked. “The three of us fly to Elder Peak, ask him if he maybe lost a dragon and a brood of wyverns, and request that he please keep a closer eye on them in the future?”

“More or less — though we ought to at least take Cirrus. The dragons will take it as a sign of weakness if we don’t bring something worth protecting.”

“They can take it however they like,” Luna said sharply, her alarm at the idea showing clearly on her face. “There is no good reason to endanger so many of our ponies.”

“Perceptions matter, Luna,” Celestia replied softly.

Twilight cringed at the repetition of the oft-delivered reminder. Those words, along with Luna’s incredulous reaction, were the distillation of lifetimes of argument between the two sisters.

“Going alone will tell them that we’re shaken and scared,” Celestia continued.

“It will tell them that we need nothing but ourselves to destroy them, if need be!” Luna exclaimed.

“That’s not how they’ll see it,” Celestia said, almost chidingly. “And we can protect Cirrus.”

“What are we gaining from this?” Twilight asked before Luna could react to Celestia’s tone. “In the best case, he blames it on the unruly youth and promises to keep a better eye out — and we know exactly how much that promise is worth. More likely, he blames the whole thing on us and demands that we stop provoking his children.”

“We’ll learn where he stands, and that will tell us whether progress can be made.”

Twilight and Luna shared a dubious look at that. Though she couldn’t really argue with the conclusion, Twilight was still uncomfortable with the proposed course of action. The last time she’d flown off to talk some sense into a dragon, it hadn’t ended well.

When, after a few moments, no pony spoke up to continue the argument, it was clear that a decision had been reached.

Dinner was every bit as awkward as expected. None had thought that they could simply sit down to a meal and pretend the last few centuries hadn’t happened, of course, but it was still jarring for Twilight to see just how uncomfortable the three of them were together. Conversation topics that didn’t carry with them reminders of all that was wrong were few and far between.

Eventually Luna had settled on art, informing her companions on the latest developments in cloud sculpture while they feigned interest and poked at salads that none of them had any particular hunger for. It wasn’t long before the conversation tapered off, replaced by awkward glances and shallow smiles. Luna was the first to excuse herself, a declaration of defeat that relieved both Twilight and Celestia greatly.

After that, Twilight had retreated to her stateroom, confined there by her unwillingness to endure the stares and whispers that would follow her in any public area of the ship. Not for the first time, she pondered the wisdom of coming to Cirrus. Surely she could help the sisters without publically returning to the throne. They knew she was alive now, for better or worse; would it be so terrible if she disappeared again, if they had a way to call upon her when needed?

Restlessness eventually forced her out of her room, though she didn’t go far. Midnight found her staring intently at Lumen’s sleeping form. The unicorn been moved into her own stateroom, between Luna’s and the one that had been vacated for Twilight several hours before. She rested peacefully for the most part, only the occasional jerking motion or muted groan hinting at anything other than a light nap.

Her state was, as far as Twilight could tell, unchanged from when Twilight had first suppressed her magical abilities. Luna still had frustratingly little insight to offer. According to her, in the only other known instance of this sort of psychic injury, the victim had passed within only a few extremely unpleasant hours of the first apparent ill effects. A more optimistic pony might take Lumen’s relative health as a positive sign. Instead, Twilight worried that she had prolonged an already excruciating death.

“No change?” Celestia asked from her side.

Twilight jumped slightly and looked at the other alicorn in surprise. She hadn’t even heard the door open; she must have been even more tired than she realized.

“None. Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“Perhaps,” Celestia acknowledged. “And yourself?”

“Yeah,” Twilight said gruffly. “That’d be nice.”

“What’s stopping you?”

Twilight snorted as she considered her answer. It was a long list. “I’ve got a lot going on,” she said almost flippantly.

“If that were sufficient, none of us would ever sleep,” Celestia replied archly.

“Well, you’re not asleep. I’m not asleep. I doubt Luna is asleep. Consensus seems to be that, tonight at least, it is sufficient.”

Celestia seemed to concede the point as she lapsed into silence. Her gaze shifted from Twilight to Lumen by way of the open porthole above the bed. “What is she to you?” she asked after a moment.

Twilight’s lips twisted into a humorless smirk. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What was I, to you?”

Celestia’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Are you saying it’s similar?”

“No. Answer the question.”

Celestia tossed her mane uncertainly. “Many things, I suppose. A daughter, or how I imagine a daughter might be. A protégé, a project, a tool. Hope for the future, worry for the same.”

Twilight let out a low grunt in response, and the room fell into silence again, time marked only by the noise of Lumen’s shallow breaths and occasional hoofsteps across the deck above. When she spoke again, it was in a low voice, each word a bit hesitant.

“I look at Lumen, laying on what might very well be her deathbed, and a part of me only sees the plans her death would ruin. I don’t like that part of me — or, I don’t want to, but it gets stronger all the time. The older I get, the more I play the long game; looking at the world in terms of roles to be filled, instead of ponies with their own lives and aspirations. How long until I care more about the hat than the head?”

Celestia didn’t answer, which was just as well. The question wasn’t exactly rhetorical, but Twilight was certain as she asked it that there was no satisfactory answer.

“I promised your parents I’d keep you safe, not long after we met,” Celestia said after a moment. “They believed me because I was the princess, but I was already planning to use you against Nightmare Moon. At the time, I didn’t believe you’d survive the conflict. Still, every time they came to see you, I’d put on my princess smile and tell them all about your progress and your bright future.”

She shook her head and looked down at her hooves. “We can’t always be both good leaders and good ponies — which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

“I killed Spike,” Twilight said conversationally. “You probably guessed as much. I’m not sure when — whether it was four-hundred years ago when I broke his body, or whether I did something earlier that set him down that path.”

Celestia regarded Twilight with an unreadable expression for a moment, as Twilight braced for the inevitable: she would be told that she’d had no choice, that she’d made the right decision, that it wasn’t her fault.

“So what?” Celestia asked instead.

Twilight didn’t bother to conceal her shock. Even though she’d dreaded the vague reassurance she’d been sure was coming, she found herself offended when it didn’t. “So I killed my oldest friend,” she replied sharply. “Good pony is pretty much off the table for me.”

“And I let my sister fall to madness and become a monster,” Celestia countered, her tone almost flippant. “Should I have given up then? Maybe I should have hidden for a few centuries instead of working to correct my mistakes. Maybe when you freed Luna, she should have headed right back into exile to satisfy her sense of justice. Would that have helped Equestria?”

Twilight only glared. She had expected Celestia to avoid the topic of her absence for a while longer — she wasn’t typically one to rock the boat when there was work to be done.

“It’s entirely possible that you are responsible for Spike’s death,” Celestia said after a moment’s tense silence. “Along with all those he caused. Our positions do not allow us the luxury of wallowing in our guilt. We cannot simply quit when we feel we’ve done poorly. Flawed as we are, we’re still needed.”

“It’s not that simple,” Twilight growled through gritted teeth.

“No?”

“I was dangerous.” Twilight looked pointedly at Lumen. “I still am.”

Celestia raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you think you’re less dangerous when you hide yourself from the only ponies who can help you?”

“You mean the ponies it would be worst to hurt?” Twilight countered, knowing as she did that the defense was nonsense.

Celestia shook her head in disappointment. “You can rationalize forever, if that’s what you’re determined to do. Will you be repeating these arguments when you leave us again?”

Twilight snorted at the prediction. “Is that what you want?”

That Celestia seemed to consider the question gave Twilight pause. Though a day ago she had been firmly convinced that she best served Equestria by staying dead, she found that she didn’t want Celestia — or anypony else, for that matter — to actually agree with her.

“No,” Celestia answered at last, her faraway tone matching her unfocused stare. “But if you feel you must, at least tell us. Don’t let us mourn you again.”

Twilight didn’t know what to say to that. A number of possibilities came to mind, varying in character from defensive, to apologetic, to conciliatory, but none seemed appropriate. More importantly, none sufficiently expressed the complex tangle of emotion at the heart of the issue.

“I didn’t believe it for a long time,” Celestia said when Twilight didn’t respond. “I didn’t think it was possible. Eventually I had to believe; for you to be gone for so long and not so much as give us a sign…”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight blurted. “About that specifically, I mean. I wanted to let you know. I must have thought a thousand times about how I would do it. I always convinced myself that it would only reopen old wounds. I even went to Canterlot a few times. Whenever I came close it just seemed like you had both moved on. Equestria was at peace, and you were at peace with each other. I didn’t want to ruin that.”

“We had not moved on. We were not at peace.”

Twilight took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she repeated solemnly.

Celestia seemed unmoved by the words. “There is one other pony to whom you owe that apology.”

“I know,” Twilight acknowledged guiltily.

With another unreadable glance, Celestia turned to leave.

“Do you accept it though?” Twilight asked before she could escape. “The apology?”

Celestia stopped, but did not look back. “You know it’s not that easy. I’d like to.” She sighed heavily and shook her head. “We have time. Quite a lot of it, if we do our jobs well.”

The migration aside, dragons did not generally congregate. It was surprising, then, to find several adults gliding aimlessly around Elder Peak as Cirrus approached. The crew was not handling it well. Twilight happened to be the princess on deck for the approach — Luna’s idea, ostensibly to help build confidence in her among the crew. Twilight suspected the true motive centered on making her return ever more public, and thus making it more difficult to return to isolation once this was over.

She’d agreed easily enough though, and not only because she wanted to avoid another argument. Regardless of her future plans, she had a clear duty right now — one she couldn’t perform by hiding from everypony other than Celestia and Luna.

“Contact!” a nervous spotter called. “Five-thirty. Green. Big.”

Twilight had noticed the dragon several seconds earlier. The crew was letting their nerves affect their performance. There was nothing to be done about it now. She couldn’t reprimand them without further damaging morale — along with her own image — and a more active approach to reassuring them would only be distracting. Instead, she did her best to project calm across the deck.

“Thank you,” she replied sedately to the spotter. A brief, unworried glance in the indicated direction signalled as clearly as she was able that they were in no real danger. Doubtless things would be different were Celestia or Luna standing in her place. They weren’t though, and in truth if the princesses did their jobs, the outcome of this particular adventure wouldn’t hinge on the crew’s current sloppiness.

Stepping to the fore and peering over the railing, Twilight could almost see into the volcanic crater that crowned the peak now. A faint plume of smoke wafted up from it today, though it was unclear whether it was from the mountain itself or draconic activity around what the elder liked to call his throne.

“Hold here, please,” Twilight said as she turned to the captain.

“Half reverse,” Captain Sails ordered in turn.

A moment later, Twilight felt the changing vibration in the deck as the immense propeller that drove the ship slowed and then began to turn in the opposite direction, slowing Cirrus’ forward momentum.

“Please have Princesses Luna and Celestia informed that we’ve arrived,” Twilight requested as the ship came to a halt and its main rotor fell silent. They would have felt it themselves, of course, but since both seemed enthusiastic about building Twilight’s image, neither was likely to appear on the deck before being summoned; it wouldn’t do to distract the crew when they were meant to be witnessing Twilight’s supposedly regal presence.

The deck went silent for most of a minute while Twilight awaited the other princesses. The crew, freed from the immediate tasks of maneuvering the ship, stole quick glances at her when they thought they could do so unnoticed and otherwise fidgeted awkwardly while Twilight stared into the distance over the forward railing, more to avoid eye contact with anypony than because of anything worth seeing in that direction.

Finally, she heard the hoofsteps of her fellow princesses ascending the bow staircase, and she turned to nod to them as they emerged onto the deck.

“All is well?” Celestia asked as she returned the nod.

“It’s a little bit more crowded than we were expecting. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

Neither Luna nor Celestia asked for clarification. Their eyes were already flitting between the three most easily spotted dragons. With a subtle flick of her left ear, Twilight pointed out another — one the spotters had not yet found. Celestia’s slightly tilted head asked if those were all of them. Twilight’s cocked eyebrow affirmed that they were, to the best of her knowledge. Luna’s narrowed eyes declared the best of her knowledge to be insufficient. A twitch of Twilight’s wings suggested that there was one way to augment that knowledge.

“Shall we?” Celestia asked, spreading her own wings.

Twilight and Luna followed suit, and soon the trio was circling slowly down into the crater. They didn’t see any additional dragons on the way down until they came into view of the elder himself. He was perched on a stone spire that jutted up from the crater floor — probably one he had carved out himself, as it couldn’t have resulted from any geological process Twilight knew of. The thick white smoke Twilight had noticed earlier billowed out from around the base of the spire, intermittently obscuring the dragon in what he undoubtedly thought was a very dramatic fashion.

The alicorns landed a few meters from the foot of the spire and waited expectantly. Between the dragons circling above and his little display here, it was clear that the elder had been expecting them. Though Twilight had momentarily considered clearing his smoke and demanding his attention, she knew that there was no point in trying to intimidate him. Eventually, he would tire of his games; until then, they would wait.

“Ah, the pony princesses,” he rumbled at last, blowing the smoke away with a single flap of his massive wings. “It’s been too long.”

With the smoke cleared, the elder was exactly as she remembered him. Though Twilight couldn’t be certain, it seemed likely that he was the largest living dragon — perhaps the largest dragon to ever live. Wings spread as they were, it was clear that their span was half again the length of Cirrus. His head, stout when compared to the narrow, angular heads of most adult dragons, was about twice the size of Twilight’s first real home, the library tree back in Ponyville. Iridescent silver backplates contrasted with the jet black scales that covered all of his body save his pearl-white underbelly. It was the unsettling green glow in his eyes that Twilight remembered best.

Looking at him now, it almost seemed plausible that he hadn’t moved from that perch since the last time they’d met, almost six-hundred years ago now. Of course, it would be hard to believe that he could maintain any dominance among his kind were he truly so immobile.

He looked with keen interest at Twilight as her mane blew wildly in the wind he’d created. “I was told you were dead.”

“I heard that too,” Twilight replied flatly.

The elder’s deep chuckle echoed across the crater, easily mistakable for some sort of seismic event if one did not know better. “The little ones and their stories, hmm?”

Luna took a step forward and spoke up. “We must speak with you about the behavior of your—”

“The blue one is always straight to business,” The elder interrupted. “You really should try to get her to relax.”

“I’m afraid we must be direct today,” Celestia replied. “A dragon accompanied by a brood of wyverns recently attacked one of our settlements.”

The elder adopted an expression of boredom and inspected a talon that he held before his face.

“We need to know whether you know of this dragon, what has become of the wyverns, and how you intend to prevent any further such events,” Celestia pressed, undeterred by the dragon’s show of disinterest.

“So demanding today,” the elder said with a put upon sigh that briefly heated the air around him to a temperature only suitable for dragons and their ilk. “Do you know this dragon’s name?”

With a moment’s magical effort, Twilight’s orb popped into the air before her. She let it hang there long enough for the elder to notice it, then tossed it to him. “Do you?” she asked in a challenging tone.

The dragon caught the orb almost clumsily in his claw and held it up to his eye. “This is a marvelous little bauble,” he remarked amusedly. “I had heard you were crafty. How do you — nevermind, that would ruin the mystery, wouldn’t it? No, I don’t recognize this dragon or his friends.”

The alicorns exchanged surprised glances. They hadn’t expected him to be forthcoming immediately, but an outright denial of knowledge was out of character. The elder had never previously admitted to ignorance of any dragon or their activities.

“Are you saying that you no longer rule the dragons?” Luna asked. It was an intentionally provocative question, Twilight knew — she hoped to fluster the dragon in hopes he would reveal more than he intended.

It didn’t seem to work. The elder fixed her with a condescending look. “Not at all. I can’t fathom how you could come to that conclusion.”

“Are you saying that you do not rule this dragon?” Twilight prodded.

At last some irritation began to show on the elder’s face. “Trying to hold a conversation with your kind can be so frustrating. He is a dragon; therefore, I rule him.”

Twilight frowned, exaggerating the expression so that the elder could better see it. “And yet you don’t recognize him, and he was allowed to violate the agreements you made.”

“Agreements?” he repeated questioningly.

“You are obligated to prevent your subjects from making any hostile incursions into Equestria,” Luna growled. “You are also obligated to control the populations of the lesser draconic races, namely the wyverns.”

The elder seemed to consider that for a moment, resting a talon contemplatively on the end of his snout. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Be reasonable,” Celestia said in her standard calm-but-firm diplomatic tone. “The last time we spoke, you agreed to those terms.”

“Oh, certainly,” the elder agreed. “But since then, the terms you agreed to have been violated. There is no longer any accord between us.”

There was a moment’s quiet as the alicorns again looked at each other questioningly. None seemed to have any idea what the dragon was talking about.

“And what was this violation?” Celestia asked finally.

The elder glowered at Twilight. “That one killed a dragon.”

“Spike was ours,” Twilight shouted, her ears folded against her head in offense. “You never had any involvement with him.”

“He was a dragon,” the elder said with an exasperated shake of his head. “Therefore, I ruled him.”

“Then the violation was yours,” Twilight responded, bringing her tone under control. “He was allowed to commit atrocities against Equestria and other protected nations.”

“If he was yours, you should have stopped him,” the elder mused, his grin telling Twilight all she needed to know about his interest in this debate. He was arguing like a foal and he knew it; claiming Spike’s victimhood while disclaiming his behavior. He had no intent of resolving anything, or even coming to a shared understanding of where they stood.

“I did stop him,” Twilight said, glaring at the dragon and flaring her wings.

“You admit it!” the dragon exclaimed gleefully.

“Very well,” Celestia cut in before Twilight could respond. “The old agreement is void. Would you like to make a new one?

“I don’t know why I would do that,” the elder said with a chuckle and a roll of his eyes. “You’ve already shown that you can’t be trusted.”

Celestia took a moment to collect herself, then spoke in a low, almost threatening tone that few ever heard from her. “With no treaty between us, we will be forced to drive all dragons and their allies from Equestria and the nations we protect.”

The elder laughed, filling the air with the rotten stench of his breath. “Did you know that all the frustrations your Spike exploited so spectacularly are still simmering? Of course you did — you spend all your time with the little ones, you wouldn’t miss something like that. So many beings, tired of equine dominion, hoping to try their own hooves — or other convenient appendages — at ruling the land. Even I hear of them occasionally, though I do take such pains to avoid the whining of the lesser races.”

“That has no bearing on our relationship with you,” Celestia said.

The elder’s predatory smile grew as Celestia spoke. “I’ve been gracious in accommodating you in the past, but the truth is that I have no reason other than my own good nature to do so. You make your little threats about expelling dragons from your lands, but dragons go where they wish, and always will. Even if you were capable of what you threaten, I do wonder if your land will be your land much longer.”

“Nonsense,” Luna exclaimed with an emphatic stomp. “You’ve grown even more delusional since last we met.”

The elder waved a chiding talon at her. “Do be civil, little pony. You wouldn’t want to risk offending your host.”

Twilight shook her head. Nothing resembling diplomacy was going to be accomplished here. Whether the elder was behind the attack or not, it was clear he was pleased with the state of affairs. “I think you’ve misunderstood why we’re here.”

With her magic, she snatched the orb from where it still rested in the elder’s palm and floated it back to herself. “We aren’t here to ask favors or negotiate. We are presenting you with a choice: fix this, or we will. Make your decision, right now,” she said, as she set the orb under her right forehoof. “Or our solution begins immediately.”

Finally, the air of amusement disappeared from the elder’s manner. “You are poised to make a very serious mistake,” he warned, his voice even lower than usual.

Without looking away from the elder’s eyes, Twilight pressed slowly down with her hoof. No move was made to stop her; after another second, her hoof met the ground. Wordlessly, she lifted it again, to show all present the glittering dust that was all that remained of the orb and its contents.

The elder blinked several times, dumbfounded, then raised his head to point his snout at Cirrus, where it hovered above. A river of white-hot fire erupted from his mouth, but Celestia was already there, having teleported between the dragon and the ship the moment she’d seen what Twilight had done. Her hastily erected shield repelled the attack, which was the last thing Twilight saw before her own flying charge drove her into the elder’s neck.

The dragon was lifted bodily from the ground by the impact, then Twilight, still pressed against his neck, adjusted the direction of her flight and drove him back into the ground. The impact didn’t slow him for long; before Twilight could gather herself for another attack, a claw found her and knocked her tumbling into the air.

By the time she regained control of her flight, the elder had lumbered back to his feet, just in time to catch a boulder in the face. He let out a pained roar and covered his head with his claws and wings as another half-dozen hurtled toward him, each surrounded by Luna’s blue aura.

Celestia had vanished. She was probably back aboard Cirrus, Twilight surmised, as she caught sight of the ship turning, its main propeller spinning up. In another minute or so it would reach full speed and be out of the elder’s range; the dragon had long ago sacrificed speed for size, and would not be able to pursue. The other dragons in attendance, however, were already converging on the escaping airship.

Hoping Luna would be able to handle the elder alone, Twilight shot off to meet them. Three were approaching from Cirrus’ starboard side, another from port, which at least made prioritizing them simple enough. She needed some kind of weapon; attacking dragons with magic directly was extremely inefficient given their natural resistance. Using herself as a projectile had been effective enough when her target was distracted, but against three targets that were already airborne and alert it would not suffice.

Scooping rocks out of the crater wasn’t an option — she didn’t want to take anything out of Luna’s arsenal. Somewhere aboard Cirrus would be a stash of long pikes that she could use as projectiles, but she didn’t know where and thus would not be able to teleport aboard to retrieve them quickly enough. Inefficiency would have to be acceptable today.

Most of the energy of her attacks would bounce off the dragons’ scales — she needed to angle them such that Cirrus would not catch any splashback. Guessing at their approach paths, visually estimating their velocities, and mentally calculating the distance from which she could most effectively target all three of them, Twilight chose the ideal piece of sky and willed herself there. Glancing downward, she saw the dragons several hundred meters below.

Their paths would converge just before they were within attack range of the airship. Timing her attack for that moment, Twilight focused as much energy as she dared and loosed it toward her targets. It spread as it travelled, bathing everything below it in a violet light. Her view of the dragons was soon blocked by the beam, so she was unable to see the impact itself, but she didn’t spot anything escaping the target zone before the beam arrived. Splashes of energy spilled out around the sides of the main beam, confirming that at least one of the dragons was hit. Beyond where she believed the dragons to be, the beam slammed into the side of the mountain, cleansing it of what little vegetation and soil had clung to it and burrowing into the rock below.

Gritting her teeth, she poured more power into the attack, and watched as the splashes of reflected energy were pushed down the column. She couldn’t spend all of her reserves on this attack — she was only hoping to move the dragons far enough away from Cirrus to buy some time, and hopefully give them serious second thoughts about pursuing the ship at all.

After another few seconds, she judged she could not spare any more energy and let the beam die down. As the last of the purple light faded, she scanned below for any sign of her targets. She found them quickly enough; her attack had pushed them almost all the way down to the ground, and they had fallen the rest of the way. One of them clung to the rim of the newly made depression in the mountainside, while the two others had fallen inside.

All of them looked considerably shaken, but the two inside were in particularly poor shape. Twilight’s attack had drilled deep enough to expose the magma chamber, and the pressure within had apparently been sufficient to drench the falling dragons once there was no counteracting pressure from Twilight’s beam. They would probably survive — dragons were no strangers to lava, after all — but as the lava that clung to their bodies cooled into rock, they would find it difficult to fly at best. They would not be returning to the fight.

The one spared the molten spray didn’t seem inclined to move either. The sound of cannonfire reminded Twilight that there was still a dragon loose on Cirrus’ opposite side. As she was still significantly higher than the airship, she was able to see from her current vantage point that the cannons were doing a respectable job of keeping the dragon at a distance. With a beat of her wings she started in that direction, only to stop herself as she noticed the dragon turning away from Cirrus and descending. Had it been scared off by Twilight’s attack on its fellows, perhaps? No — squinting, Twilight saw what had changed the dragon’s thinking. With only one nearby target remaining, Celestia had apparently decided it was appropriate to leave the command deck and take the fight to the dragon herself.

She was now hovering a few hundred meters off Cirrus’ port side, looking satisfied as a pair of pikes twirled in her golden glow to either side of her. The airship was now completely clear of the crater, which meant that it was also out of the elder’s attack range. Looking over the lip of the crater, Twilight couldn’t immediately spot either Luna or the elder dragon. Concerned, she almost started back before a flash of blue in her peripheral vision alerted her to Luna’s sudden appearance.

A gash along her right flank prompted a concerned look from Twilight, which was met with a weak smile from Luna.

“Well?” Twilight asked apprehensively.

“He lives. As do I, you can see. Perhaps I flatter myself to think that he will remember this day longer than I.” Luna said, then oriented herself towards Cirrus and began a slow glide toward the ship.

Twilight didn’t think he would, but decided against saying so. It was a question for another day.

Chapter 5

Lumen was, at the moment, Twilight Sparkle, which was confusing but not particularly surprising; intermittent Twilight-hood had been a fact of life -- if life was, in fact, the thing she was doing -- for quite some time now. As Twilight Sparkle, Lumen was troubled by a great many things. Starting from the most basic, her ongoing responsibility to not explode into countless globs of destructive energy was unreasonably difficult right now.

She wasn’t sure why that was, but because she was, for the time being, Twilight Sparkle, she did have a theory. She had, after all, channelled a great deal of magical power fairly recently. Maybe not recently. It was more recent at least than some other things that she remembered -- or things that she remembered remembering. She’d opened the spigot wide, and now it was extremely difficult to close. That seemed reasonable enough in the microseconds when she thought she understood the memories she didn’t have of how Twilight Sparkle’s magic might have worked.

While she mulled that conclusion, she went ahead and exploded. Right -- she’d wanted to avoid that. Lots of times, actually, and she never seemed to get it right. There had been a really good reason not to explode, she was certain, and not the one most ponies had. The city! The city was gone again. Granted it was already basically a ruin, mostly empty aside from a few troublemakers. Still, it had been a nice city. Historical significance, beautiful architecture, homes to which ponies had hoped to return.

What was it called? Mare something. Not Maretopia, Mareopolis, or Maresville. Well, it was gone now. Maybe they’d build a new Mare Something -- or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe demolition by exploding Twilight Sparkle was a definitive enough end to the place that nopony would want to give it another go. Maybe just the siege, evacuation, and sacking before that had been enough.

Who could even know with mortals? Lumen, maybe; she was mortal, after all.

Lumen, Lumen wondered to herself, what is the deal with mortals?

I don’t know -- I’ve never consciously defined myself by my mortality, as it is a universal attribute of my social group and thus not notable, came the answer.

That didn’t really sound like a Lumen answer, Twilight Sparkle thought suspiciously.

Identity has become an issue, Twilight agreed.

Mareis was back, she noticed. Mareis -- that was it. If Mareis was back, that meant she was going to destroy it again. Before that, she might also kill Spike, if he showed up. He usually did, sometimes with an army of malcontents, sometimes alone, and sometimes there were several of him. She wasn’t sure why she was killing Spike -- there were century-shaped gaps in her sometimes-available memory whose content might have explained it, but lacking that information all she could do was follow the script.

“Spike, stop epitomizing my failures as a princess and alicorn this instant,” she bellowed across Mare Something’s central square.

“That’s a pretty self-centered way of looking at it,” Spike complained from her left. He was a juvenile Spike this time, complete with high pitched voice and stubby, wingless body. “Can’t I just be deranged and incompatible with society of my own volition?”

“No,” Lumen replied solemnly. “I can only understand significant events in the context of my influence upon them.”

“Sounds like some kind of god complex.”

“Well, yeah,” Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. “Try to keep up.”

Spike shrugged. “So why are we doing this again?”

Twilight thought on that for a moment. Spike was a problem, she was sure of that. She’d been through lots of problems though, centuries worth of existential threats to all of Equestria, and almost none of them had necessitated killing Spike -- at least, as far as she remembered, which was a notable caveat in that she did not remember much.

“I think because Celestia was going to kill you.” She decided at last.

“So it’s better if you do it?” Spike asked skeptically.

“Maybe,” Lumen answered uncertainly. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m not busy,” Spike prompted, plopping down into a sitting position.

“Of course you are,” Twilight admonished. “You’ve got a city to raze and everything.”

“You’re just going to blow it up in a minute anyway,” Spike complained.

“That’s not the point -- we have to do it the way it happened.”

“Ugh,” Spike grunted, and burped out a ball of flame that arced lazily to the nearest structure. “There. Happy?”

“Happy isn’t the word,” Lumen said stonily. “But it checks the box.”

“So explain already,” Spike demanded.

Without a word, Twilight stomped Spike into dust. That also checked a box. He didn’t seem to mind this time; he just watched with a slightly miffed expression as Twilight’s hooves punched repeatedly through his body. All in all, this was a fairly tame cycle. One routinely catastrophic failure of control later, she was ready to start again.

She didn’t really want to, though. There had to be a better way to pass the time. Unfortunately, Marevania -- or whatever it was called -- seemed to constitute the entirety of her mental landscape at the moment. She would love to escape to a dream land of things Twilight Sparkle might enjoy, but had no idea what those were -- odd, given that she was Twilight Sparkle even now.

Mareis was taking its time reappearing, which bothered Lumen more than she would have imagined. It wasn’t as if she was on a schedule; after destroying Mareis, she would destroy Mareis, then she would destroy Mareis again.

Instead of the ancient Prench city, Twilight Sparkle eventually appeared. With the alicorn’s arrival came an extremely gratifying sort of cognitive grounding. It was as if all of Lumen that was Twilight Sparkle had suddenly realized it was in the wrong vessel and jumped ship. She looked up at the face that was no longer hers and studied its stormy expression.

“What are you doing here?” Twilight demanded bitterly. “This is my place.”

“You put me here,” Lumen said defensively. It sounded right, at least.

“I did no such thing.” Twilight’s frown deepened, as if a troubling thought had just occurred to her. “Have you been here this whole time?”

Lumen hesitated. “What whole time is that?” The idea of time being in any way measurable or otherwise definable had great novelty.

Twilight shook her head. “Nevermind.”

“Are you going to make it stop?” Lumen asked hopefully after a minute.

“It doesn’t stop,” Twilight answered flatly.

“I’d really like for it to stop.”

“Yeah.” Twilight tossed her mane, avoiding Lumen’s eyes. “Well the only way to stop it is to wake up. Last I saw of you, that didn’t seem likely. And even if you manage that, if you’re anything like me, it’ll be here waiting every time you close your eyes.”

With her mind at least temporarily cleared of confusion, it was easy for Lumen to see how absurd it all was. Getting stuck in somepony else’s nightmare was almost as ridiculous as being unknowingly raised by the long-dead Princess of Magic, while said princess lived under an assumed identity.

“How can something like this even happen?” Lumen asked angrily.

Twilight sighed. “Luna being Luna.”

“Well, tell her to let me out, then,” Lumen demanded.

“I don’t know if she can. Besides, she won’t risk coming back here. Not now that she knows what it is.”

Twilight turned and looked disinterestedly as a mountainous Spike kicked over comparatively tiny towers in a distant Mareis. Apparently the cycle had restarted while they talked. Twilight’s horn shimmered briefly and the dragon shattered like a dropped bottle. Purple shrapnel flew in every direction, leaving several deep cuts across Twilight’s face and neck. She seemed either not to notice, or not to care.

“Ooh, symbolism,” Twilight remarked unenthusiastically, rolling one eye while blinking blood out of the other. “I get it, subconscious. You don’t have to keep banging that drum.”

“You have to let me out,” Lumen said, an edge of desperation in her voice.

“Hold on,” Twilight said, distracted, as a beam of energy issued from her horn and erased the latest Mareis from her otherwise blank dreamscape. She then turned back to Lumen with a somber expression that Lumen found unencouraging. “I don’t think I have the power to let you out. Dream magic brought you here, and that’s one type of magic I have no access to.”

“End the dream, then,” Lumen snapped in sudden anger. “You built this prison; even I can see that. Take it down and let me out. Then you can rebuild it, if that’s how you want to pass the centuries.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I don’t care if it’s simple,” Lumen snarled.

Twilight was silent for a long moment. “I can end it for you,” she said finally. “If that’s what you want.”

Lumen brightened momentarily, then shook her head angrily as she realized what Twilight was offering. “That’s your solution? So I can choose between a quick murder or drawn out psychic torture? Thanks, Princess.”

“Well, that’s what I can offer you.”

They watched quietly for a moment as a horde of Spikes stampeded through the newly grown streets of another iteration of Mareis.

“I think I’m done here for tonight,” Twilight said at length.

“What? You can’t do that!” Lumen protested.

“I think I can.”

Panic began to overtake Lumen as she imagined what would become of her when she was once again the only host present for all of Twilight’s spare regret and self-loathing. “You have to at least finish the cycle,” she bargained.

“There will always be another one waiting. Finishing it solves nothing,” Twilight said, her voice growing fainter as her form began to fade.

“If you leave me here, you’re murdering me,” Lumen bellowed at the last shadow of the alicorn. “Whether or not you go to wherever you stashed me and smother me in my sleep, you’re killing me right now!”

It was no use. Twilight was gone. The real one, anyway.

“Maybe next time you come, you can put me next to Spike and find a million and one ways to kill me, too,” Lumen mumbled. “Or maybe I don’t rate that high.”

The thoughts were coming now. The thoughts, and half-memories, and feelings that weren’t hers but which insisted on inhabiting her because she was convenient. Then, suddenly, they weren’t.

Lumen looked up in surprise to find Twilight standing before her again.

“The last time I tried to fight my way out of this, it nearly destroyed me,” Twilight said in a low voice. “It could destroy both of us, if I try again. Is that acceptable to you?”

Lumen opened her mouth to answer, but Twilight spoke up again before she could.

“When I say ‘destroy’, I don’t mean ‘kill’. I mean something potentially far worse.”

Lumen wondered briefly why Twilight was leaving the decision to her. Deciding the fate of a goddess might be the same as deciding the fate of Equestria. What would failure mean for Twilight? Would it unleash another Nightmare?

Was it worth the risk? Lumen didn’t have enough information to say. She nodded anyway.

“Alright.” Twilight nodded in return.

Lumen didn’t know what she expected next. Perhaps Twilight would complete the cycle, and obliterate the small army of Spikes still running amok through a now significantly damaged Mareis. Perhaps she would try to change the cycle, and save the Spikes -- or at least one of them. Maybe she would try to save Mareis without injuring any of them.

What Lumen definitely did not expect was for Twilight to, with a stomp of her hoof, obliterate the world itself. She did not expect that world to be replaced by a lavishly decorated candlelit chamber that reminded her of her very short time in the capital.

“We’ve known this time was coming,” Celestia said grimly. “There aren’t many options left.” She was sitting across an ornately carved wooden table from Princess Luna while Twilight Sparkle paced in front of a large window across the room.

“We can still do something,” Twilight insisted, shaking her head without looking at either of the other alicorns. “We can give him a job. Sentinel of the North, or something. Unless the Crystal Empire decides to reappear again, he won’t be bothering anyone up there.”

“He’s not stupid, Twilight,” Celestia argued. “Even if he accepted such an assignment, how much time would that buy us? Ten years? A hundred? You have to start thinking about these things in the long term.”

“You’re one to talk,” Luna muttered. “This should have been addressed centuries ago, when it would have pained us all much less.”

“I’m not sure rehashing that argument gains us anything now, Luna,” Celestia said, her tone one that Lumen somehow knew mortals never heard. “But if you insist, perhaps we can also revisit some other suggestions you made around that time?”

There was a sudden fire in Luna’s eyes as she stood and placed a hoof threateningly on the table. “Don’t change the subject,” she ordered.

“Please sit down, Luna,” Twilight requested softly, her pacing paused for the moment.

Luna glared at Celestia a few seconds longer before complying, never taking her eyes off her elder sister. The room was quiet again for a time, then Twilight’s rhythmic hoofsteps began again.

Twilight passed back and forth before the window, pausing only occasionally to cast almost bashful glances towards the other alicorns. Celestia and Luna alternated between glaring at one another and avoiding eye contact. It seemed to go on for a very long time.

“Everything you’d ever need to know about the period of triumvirate rule,” Twilight said from beside Lumen. Not the same Twilight as the one pacing before the window, but Lumen had spent enough time in this sort of place that such impossibilities no longer bothered her. “Well, not quite.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the other Twilight said at last.

“There it is,” said the Twilight whom Lumen had decided to label as the ‘real’ one. “That’s all you need to know. But they didn’t let her off so easy this time.”

“And how will you do that?” Celestia questioned, gaze shifting from anything-but-Luna to Twilight’s face.

Twilight looked down at her hooves in an unsuccessful attempt to hide her uncertainty. “We’ll go out into the unknown lands. Find him a new home where he can be happy.”

“That could take months. Years, even,” Luna protested. “And it’s not as if those lands are empty. I doubt the current residents will accept him without question.”

“I don’t see any other options,” Twilight said glumly. “He can’t go back to the dragons. They won’t have him.”

“It’s not good enough,” Celestia said with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Twilight.” She stood and looked briefly at Luna, who did not look back at her. “He’ll have to be banished outright.”

“Banished?” Luna repeated incredulously, finally meeting her sister’s eyes. “As if he’d respect such a decree. Already, he’s given up observance of our laws. None of your half measures this time, Celestia.”

“Luna--” Twilight started in alarm, before Celestia interrupted her.

“No half measures -- what does this remind me of?” Celestia said, just loudly enough to be heard. “Oh, yes, a time about two--”

“Stop it!” Luna barked, rising from her own seat as her horn started to glow. “You made a promise.”

“I’m not the one who keeps bringing it up,” Celestia said.

Celestia was flung towards the far wall before she could finish, though she never made it there; outstretched wings and a touch of her own magic arrested her neatly in plenty of time.

“The funny thing is,” the real Twilight said in a tone that suggested anything but humor, “they are in complete agreement about Spike right now. They just wanted a reason to fight -- as if there’s any shortage.”

“Stop!” the younger Twilight cried. “Luna, what are you--”

Luna turned to Twilight, body aglow with a sheen of cerulean energy, and everything stopped.

“Is this a memory?” Lumen asked, looking to the real Twilight to confirm that she hadn’t frozen like the others.

“Not exactly. It’s more of a…” Twilight seemed to search for words for a moment. “Like the aggregate of many memories. We had this argument time and again -- not always the same subject, but the same argument.”

“So you have to fix it to move on, or what’s the point?”

“There’s no fixing it. Everything has already happened.” Twilight stepped over to the other version of herself and inspected her with an expression of contempt.

“What are we trying to do, then?” Lumen asked.

“I don’t know.” Twilight looked back to Lumen with a sad smile. “You seemed adamant that we do something, though. I can keep peeling back layers, trace the failure cascade backwards and forwards and backwards again. I’ve spent decades doing just that, with nothing but pain to show for it.”

It wasn’t the answer Lumen wanted to hear. She had hoped Twilight had some plan to escape the nightmare. Still, this was considerably more pleasant than an eternity of dragon murder. For her, at least. Twilight, in contrast, seemed more agitated by the second.

“Did they always fight like this? Getting violent, I mean?”

Twilight shook her head. “That was just once. A very special occasion.”

The scene burst into motion again, Celestia settling her hooves gracefully back onto the floor and glaring at Luna, who looked in turn at Twilight -- the only Twilight in attendance now, Lumen realized with a start.

“It’s nothing,” Luna growled. “I grow tired of her antagonization. That is all.”

“What did she promise you, Luna?” Twilight asked, her voice firm but her expression apprehensive.

“No concern of yours.”

“You can’t hide it forever,” Celestia said, drawing Luna’s eyes back to her.

“I could, if you would stop trying to force it.” Luna’s horn began to glow again.

“Luna,” Twilight called sharply. “Think about what you’re doing. Fighting now can only make things worse.”

“I think it might be quite satisfying,” Luna replied without looking away from Celestia.

“Satisfying in that you endanger all the ponies in the capital?” Twilight asked. “What is this about? If you would just tell me, she wouldn’t have it to hang over your head anymore.”

A brief expression of uncertainty was chased from Luna’s face by one of renewed anger. “You’re letting her meddle in our affairs,” she said, taking a step toward where Twilight stood by the window.

“What affairs? You aren’t making any sense.”

Luna didn’t answer, instead taking another aggressive step toward Twilight.

“Luna, this isn’t what you want,” Celestia called from behind her.

Luna paused and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them the fury remained, but instead of continuing on her course, she disappeared in a flash of blue. Twilight stared silently at the spot where she’d stood, while Celestia gazed contemplatively at Twilight.

“We’ll finish later, I suppose,” Celestia said finally, almost as if the source of the interruption had been something mundane like a scheduling conflict or an unexpected visitor. Without waiting for a response from the still-silent Twilight, she turned and exited the room, her magic closing the door behind her.

Lumen waited. Twilight didn’t move. Ripples of anxiety coursed through her coat along the length of her body, and her eyes, still focused on the empty space before her, seemed to have glazed over.

“Twilight?”

Twilight grunted, then rolled her head slowly to look at Lumen. “Shall we do it again, then?” she asked, her voice ragged, dread clear on her face. It was a surprising contrast to the memories of Spike, which she confronted with glum defeat, but comparatively little distress. Was this argument really more upsetting than reliving the killing of her friend?

“Why? Does that accomplish anything?”

“It hurts me,” Twilight answered with a shrug. “I wouldn’t blame you if that’s what you wanted.”

“No!” Lumen snapped. “All I want is to get out of here! You know that.”

“It’s easy to forget, with all this…” Twilight paused, looking again to where Luna had stood before she’d vanished. “With everything.”

Before Lumen could respond, the door flew open and Celestia stormed in, Luna just behind her.

“I told you, it’s not politically viable,” Celestia said, glaring over her shoulder at her sister.

“Politically viable.” Luna said with a mocking sneer. “We needn’t worry what the politicians will make of this -- or of anything else. Why you play their games is beyond me.”

“Yes, that much is clear,” Celestia said with a shake of her head. She took her seat at the table and poured herself a cup of tea from the kettle that had appeared along with the rest of the tea set some time in the past few seconds.

“Ah, back to belittling me instead of explaining yourself, I see.” As Luna bit out the rejoinder, Twilight mouthed the words along with her. Luna did not sit opposite Celestia, opting instead to turn away from the table and seethe from a position where Celestia could not see her face.

“I can only explain it so many times before--”

At some point, the argument had faded into nothing more than noise. The sisters exchanged endless verbal attacks, each indistinguishable from the last, while Twilight watched with a glum passivity. Occasionally they left the room, only to return moments later and start anew. Unlike the dream of Spike, which was the same memory twisted thousands of different ways, this was clearly a sample of countless memories, all of which played out identically.

Lumen pondered Twilight’s apparent timidity; was this how her younger self had always behaved? Autumn Wind never would have tolerated such bickering, though of course Autumn had never had to contend with angry goddesses. Autumn was also a false identity; perhaps a fantasy of the pony Twilight wished she was. Still, even in her true form, Twilight had put a stop to the sisters’ argument when it had begun in Autumn’s cottage the morning after the wyvern attack.

“Are you going to do something?” Lumen asked at last.

Twilight looked away from Celestia and Luna for a moment to glance quizzically at her. “What’s to do? I told you, this already happened. It can’t be changed.”

“Maybe it’s not about fixing the past,” Lumen suggested. “Maybe it’s about fixing you.”

Twilight shook her head and looked back to the sisters, whose almost rhythmic volley of invective continued unabated.

Lumen was startled when, hours or minutes later, Twilight spoke up.

“Luna, I have to agree with Celestia. We need to be more tactful with regard to the Corvids.”

Silence.

“Celestia, no amount of back room manipulation or verbal games will soften the blow for the parliament. You must see that.”

The sisters stared at her with identical expressions of betrayal, shook their heads in identical gestures of disgust, and turned to leave.

“You see?” Twilight asked. “Useless.”

“You stopped the argument.”

“For now,” Twilight acknowledged with a snort. “There will always be another.”

“You can stop that one too. How do you feel?”

“Feel?” Twilight asked, her eyes widening as if she was surprised by the question. “The same, I suppose.”

“Even though that was what you were afraid of,” Lumen said. “And you did it. Even if you didn’t solve anything, you’re no worse for it.”

“They aren’t happy about it.”

“They aren’t real,” Lumen said, frustration making its way into her voice. “Not here. And your job isn’t to make them happy. You are their peer -- the only one they have. No one else can do what you have to.”

Twilight was silent for what seemed like a long time. Neither Celestia nor Luna reappeared, which Lumen took as a positive, if only because she wanted to.

When she was as certain as she could be that the sisters wouldn’t be back, Lumen spoke again. “That first fight -- the one where they actually fought. That was different from the rest of them.”

Twilight exhaled noisily through her nostrils. “Yes. That one was about me.”

“It was?” Lumen tilted her head in confusion. “They never even mentioned you.”

“No, it was all references to references. They never explained it to me, either, for obvious reasons.”

“So how do you know it was about you?”

Twilight gave Lumen a measuring look, then shook her head. “We can leave now. We’d better get going.”

“Huh?”

The room melted away, replaced by a star-filled sky over a lonely desert. A few miles distant, a dozen or so dim lights suggested the presence of a small town. Otherwise, there was no evidence of civilization; flat, red ground peppered with sandstone spires extended indefinitely in every direction.

Spike was also there, a few steps away, his back turned to Lumen and Twilight. It took Lumen a few seconds to recognize him -- he hadn’t appeared this way in any of the multitude of versions Lumen had seen of his death. Standing upright on his rear legs, he was about twice as tall as Twilight. Wings too small to be useful extended from his back, and his head hadn’t yet taken on the more angular shape she’d seen on his adult form.

“Hey, Twilight,” Spike muttered without turning. “Word travels fast, huh? Or are you just watching me now?”

Twilight didn’t respond. Finally, Spike turned to look at her.

“I was just trying to help, you know.”

“Just trying to help,” Twilight repeated icily. “I’m not even sure I want to hear this rationalization.”

“They were having trouble--”

“Spike!” Twilight interrupted sharply. “It doesn’t matter what you tell yourself you were trying to do. We have had this conversation too many times. Ruined houses, raided gem caches, burning crops -- everywhere you go, I have to follow, consoling ponies and issuing reimbursement. Where reimbursement is even possible, that is.”

“I get it.” Spike said, holding up his claws in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll be more careful. I’ll learn to control my urges.”

“No.” Twilight shook her head. “We’ve been down that road.”

“You have a better idea?” Spike asked suspiciously.

Twilight took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for what she had to say. “You need to go somewhere where you can be a dragon.”

Spike seemed to puzzle over that for a moment. “You’re starting to sound like Celestia. I’m fine here. I’ll adjust.”

“It’s not up to you.” Twilight said, her voice nearly cracking. “You can’t stay in Equestria.”

Spike raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Okay, I get it, you’re mad. I’ll work on it, I promise.”

“It’s time, Spike. Let’s make this as easy as we can.” As she spoke, Twilight took a step toward the dragon.

“Hold on,” Spike said, as he took a corresponding step back. Panic colored his eyes and voice as he came to grasp Twilight’s seriousness. “You can’t banish me. This is my home! You have to at least give me a chance.”

Twilight opened her mouth as if to argue, shook her head, and closed it again. Spike was lifted from the ground in her purple aura as she spread her wings and took to the air.

“Put me down,” Spike yelled, struggling uselessly against Twilight’s magic. “You can’t do this!”

Twilight didn’t reply. Soon, they were soaring above the clouds, Spike still complaining and Twilight still ignoring him. Lumen was flying alongside them, despite her lack of wings, which was a new sort of oddity, but not one she spared much thought for.

They landed some time later in a rocky valley between two rugged peaks. Vegetation was sparse, comprised mostly of stout, wiry shrubs that added patches of dark green to an otherwise gray landscape. An orange glow shone from behind the eastern of the two mountains as the sun began to rise behind it.

“Where are we?” Spike asked as he looked around with a sour expression.

“Equestria has no name for this place,” Twilight said. “You can make your home here, or keep looking, if you prefer. What you can’t do is return to Equestria. If I find you inside our borders… I won’t have many options.”

“Come on, Twilight,” Spike pleaded. “You’ve made your point. Let’s go home and talk about this.”

Twilight scanned the valley with her eyes, as if memorizing its features for future reference.

“I hope, one day, to visit you here -- or wherever you end up -- and hear from you about the life that you’ve made for yourself. I hope that will be a joyful reunion for both of us.” Twilight paused, then continued with apparent difficulty. “Until that day, though, I don’t want to see you at all -- for your sake.”

Spike’s parting words were drowned out by the rushing wind of Twilight’s sudden ascent. Lumen found that she rode on the alicorn’s back now, which was more believable, but also considerably more awkward. When the valley in which she’d left her friend was hardly visible behind them, Twilight’s flight lost urgency and she let herself glide sedately wherever the winds pushed her.

“I thought for a long time that that was the moment when I really killed Spike. That if I’d done it sooner, or later, more gently, or more harshly, or any number of other ways, things would have turned out differently.” It wasn’t clear whether Twilight was talking to Lumen, or herself.

“You don’t think so anymore?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Twilight said with either resignation or acceptance. “It’s done.”

“So why even bother coming back to it?”

“It was the way back to here.”

Lumen looked around in surprise. She hadn’t noticed Twilight’s rapid descent, but now she saw that they were again below the clouds, approaching a jagged coastline, and, just beyond it, a very familiar smoldering city. She didn’t want to go back there, but something kept her from voicing her discomfort.

As they landed in the cobblestone square she’d come to know so well, Lumen almost wondered if she’d finally awoken. There was a detail and consistency to the scene that had been lacking in all that she experienced since she’d first found herself trapped here. That extended to Spike, as well.

Moments ago in the desert, he’d been about twice Twilight’s height. Now he towered over her such that comparison wasn’t possible from a pony’s perspective. He seemed to know the moment she arrived, turning away from a clock tower he’d been methodically tearing apart to lock eyes with her.

“Twilight,’ he acknowledged.

“Spike.”

Spike watched her closely for another moment, as if waiting for something. “No speech?” he asked at last.

Twilight seemed to consider her words carefully, which made her very simple statement all the more startling. “I’m going to kill you.”

It wasn’t a threat, nor was it spoken with anger or malice.

Spike nodded calmly. “That’s why I’m here.”

A pained look crossed Twilight’s face, and for a moment, it seemed like she wasn’t willing to leave it at that. She regained control, though, and returned his nod. “I wish it could have been better.”

“Me too.”

The fight itself was short. The same level of detail that made the rest of the scene seem so real had the opposite effect on this confrontation. Whether Spike might have had a chance had he come here for any other reason than to die was something Lumen didn’t have the experience to judge. If this vision was anything like the actual event, though, she had a hard time imagining it. It was as if the world itself had collapsed inward on the dragon, crushing him before he could so much as swipe a claw at Twilight.

Then, he lay on the cobblestone, broken, coughing out his last attempts at speech. After one last erratic heave of his chest, he was still. Twilight looked at him in silence some time longer, her expression unreadable.

Even though she knew somehow that this time was different than all the others, Lumen still found herself bracing for the cycle to begin again. It did not.

“Are you alright?” Lumen asked after what seemed like a very long time.

Twilight looked up with tired eyes that, for the first time, seemed to show her years. “No. But I think I’m ready to work on it.”

She spread her wings and gave each an appraising look, as if it was the first time she had considered using them. Then, with a series of powerful flaps, she pushed herself into the sky.

It didn’t occur to Lumen to object until Twilight was just a purple speck above Mareis’ ruined skyline. Then, the speck was gone, and Lumen was alone again. With resigned dread, she awaited the next repetition of the nightmare. Again, she would lose herself in Twilight’s regrets. Soon, there would be nothing left to call Lumen.

It didn’t happen, though; instead, the dream world faded away, and did not return.

Chapter 6

There wasn’t much to see from Cirrus’ bow; sheets of heavy rain and the dark clouds from which they issued cut visibility to a minimum. To starboard, a vague shadow suggested the presence of Nimbus. The rest of the fleet, including the naval contingent braving the rough waves of Baltimare Bay far below, was fully obscured, though Celestia knew they were out there.

All this was her design. If Celestia had to be blind, so too did her adversaries, if not in all the same ways. Those adversaries, last spotted about four hours previous, were well aware of her weakness. How they’d found out she didn’t care to guess. Perhaps they had a spy in the capitol, or perhaps they’d tried another of their not-uncommon feints and found the response time to their liking.

Regardless, the dragons and their allies, who for weeks had poked cautiously at Equestria’s borders, now moved aggressively and with great force. This wasn’t draconic whimsy at play; there was no such thing when it came to war. They knew that Equestria’s defenses were logistically crippled. They had to know that Twilight Sparkle was asleep, and had been for days.

Against most foes it wouldn’t matter much. Instant or near-instant communication was a rare ability. Dragonfire spells and teleportation were the only methods Celestia knew of. Unfortunately, dragonfire required at least one cooperative dragon — pending ongoing research by a currently comatose princess, anyway. Teleportation had its own issues; aside from the fact that three alicorns and zero living unicorns were the only known practitioners, it became exponentially more draining the farther one travelled.

If either Celestia or Luna attempted to coordinate their forces using teleportation, they’d be exhausted within hours, leaving nopony to actually lead said forces, or, in the worst case, engage their foes directly. Only Twilight Sparkle, with her particular array of magically oriented talents, could use such demanding spells for any length of time and still retain some usefulness in the event of an actual conflict.

She had been doing just that, flitting between far-flung watch posts, organizing responses when threats were spotted, and generally serving as the informational hub of the entire nation, right up until the evening when Celestia had convinced her to get some sleep.

Dark circles, on a dark face, under dark eyes had to be particularly pronounced to be noticeable at all, and Twilight’s had been quite noticeable.

“How long has it been since you slept?” Celestia had asked innocently enough, most of a week ago. It was a routine check-in of the sort they’d had nearly every night since returning to Canterlot. Aside from those dark circles, there was no indication that Twilight was feeling in any way out of sorts. Celestia had expected the sort of deflection her aides always offered. “Just been a long day,” or, “just a trick of the light,” or, “a cup of tea and some fresh air and I’ll be just fine.”

Instead, Twilight had straightened and brought a hoof to her chin in contemplation. She thought about it for what seemed like an unreasonably long time. “Not since the night we met in Stonehoof,” she’d said at last.

Seven weeks ago, at the time of that conversation. After a moment’s stunned silence, Celestia had insisted she immediately rest. Much as she regretted it now, she still couldn’t fault her thinking. Neither could Luna, which put the decision in very select company.

Luna, being more attuned to all things sleep, had been worried about Twilight from the beginning, as she’d later confided to Celestia. She’d been uncharacteristically afraid to raise the issue, though, which was another tangle of something that Celestia preferred not to contemplate. Aggravating as her sister’s confrontational manner could be, this was no time for her to play the part of the shy school filly.

A flash of orange light drew Celestia’s eyes to starboard in time to catch the arcing descent of a flare. It was answered seconds later by an identical one shot from a lookout station on Cirrus’ deck. A messenger trying to locate the airship; soon they’d be aboard, with painfully outdated information to share.

The captain knew better than to bother her for routine status updates, so when he appeared at her side minutes later, it was clear that this messenger had brought something more substantial. Wordlessly, he held out a folded, sealed paper for her. Her seneschal’s seal elicited a scowl from her; the only news she wanted from the palace wasn’t likely to arrive by courier.

A flicker of magic tore through the seal, and once unfolded, the message spent most of a second hovering in front of her eyes before her magic tore through it as well.

“You have the deck,” Celestia said, quietly enough that only Captain Sails could hear her.

He nodded subtly, correctly reading that she didn’t want to draw attention to her departure.

“Send word to Nimbus. Princess Luna and I need to talk.”

“Mammoths,” Celestia said in place of a greeting as Luna entered the captain’s office. “Marching north near Serpent’s Gorge.”

Luna’s face scrunched into an expression that conveyed equal parts distaste and surprise. As her horn lit, the desk globe rotated to present the area in question, near the southeasternmost tip of Equestria’s borders.

“Six-hundred miles. That makes our information… seven hours old at the least?”

“More like ten,” Celestia said. “The message had to pass through Canterlot to be directed to us here.”

“They are likely inside our borders, then,” Luna concluded. “What else do we know?”

“Nothing.”

The sisters stared silently at the globe for a moment. It wasn’t marked with the locations of the settlements near the border, but both alicorns saw them anyway. Small towns and farming villages with no military presence to speak of. There was a garrison in the area whose forces would be mobilizing, but they had nowhere near the resources to even delay the reported invasion. Hopefully the commander — Celestia struggled to remember a name or face, but failed — was sensible enough to organize a mass evacuation instead. Any order the princesses sent to that effect would arrive hours too late.

Unless…

“You aren’t thinking of going?” Luna asked, as Celestia was doing exactly that. “You’d arrive too exhausted to accomplish anything, and far more stands to be lost here.”

“You’re here,” Celestia said quietly. “And so is the fleet.”

“We don’t know if that’s enough. We don’t know if it would be enough even if you stayed.” Luna turned to stare out the rear window, through which nothing but rain could be seen. “Letting Baltimare fall — or even suffer damage — would be a crushing blow to the morale of our entire nation.”

“And the southeastern settlements mean nothing?”

“Do you not see that this is what the elder wants?” Luna snapped, turning back to her sister.

“I do. But he underestimates us. You can hold the bay without me.”

Luna snorted and shook her head. “Let’s suppose that’s true. What can you do? Watch helplessly as our towns are destroyed, because you spent all your energy getting yourself there?”

“My presence alone could be a powerful deterrent.” Celestia paused, thinking back. “The mammoths are easily startled. It might not take much to turn them back.”

“They wouldn’t even be outside their lands if the elder didn’t have some hold over them,” Luna argued. “They could be mindless puppets of the dragons now, just as the wyverns are.”

“That would be useful to know.”

Luna scowled. “You’ve already decided to go.”

“We can’t let him make us choose,” Celestia said, her almost pleading tone one she rarely took with her sister. “That alone would be a victory for him.”

“One victory. Now we are poised to present him with two.”

“You can hold,” Celestia said. “I know you can.”

“You gamble just as you always have,” Luna replied with a sigh. “What if Baltimare is another feint? We haven’t seen the bulk of his force since the scouts spotted them hours ago. They may simply be trying to separate us before striking at their true objective.”

Celestia considered that point for a moment, then shook her head. “Even with dragonfire messages, coordinating a force that large and diverse won’t be simple. They won’t be able to redirect without at least giving you some time to react.”

“More assumptions,” Luna said, waving a hoof dismissively. “Go. You’ve made your choice.”

Celestia opened her mouth to argue further, then closed it as her thoughts caught up with her. There was nothing more she could say to convince Luna; trying would just antagonize her. She gave her sister what she hoped was an encouraging nod, then disappeared.

Serpent’s Gorge was perhaps the most impressive of several steep canyons that descended from the southeast of Equestria into the bleak lowlands beyond. The river that had carved it, once among the mightiest known, had ceased to flow when Equestria took control of its weather. Left behind was the only walking route a creature the size of a mammoth could take from the lowlands into Equestria.

It would have been simple enough to barricade it, had anypony imagined the necessity. The mammoths and others who shared the lowlands had never shown any interest in Equestria, though. Celestia had spoken to them on two occasions in her lifetime: first, they had complained about the drying of the river. Second, one thousand years later, they had wondered if she was going to do anything about Discord.

She’d addressed both concerns, one by routing the San Palomino river down a different canyon into their lands, the other with a garden ornament. She’d interpreted their silence as satisfaction in the centuries since.

From high above the ground, Celestia spotted their trail before she spotted the mammoths themselves. From the mouth of the canyon in the far distance, a line of ruined grassland snaked into her kingdom, terminating at a cloud of dust through which she could make out the invaders’ gargantuan forms.

Careful to let wind and gravity do most of the work lest she expend more than the absolute minimum of energy, she adjusted her course and began to descend, aiming for a spot she estimated the mammoths would be reaching just as she set down. Surprise was the objective — not so much that it might frighten them beyond reason, but hopefully enough that they would reconsider their actions.

The landing was blatantly theatrical, as she approached at an impractically high speed, then arrested her dive with a few powerful beats of her fully extended wings. Gravel and other loose debris flew outward from her landing site in all directions, an effect she enhanced with a touch of magic to make it look almost as if she loosed a minor shock wave when her hooves touched the ground. The mammoths didn’t seem particularly impressed, though she wasn’t familiar enough with their facial expressions or body language to say for sure.

“Stop,” she ordered. It was the only mammoth word she remembered. It also happened to be one of the few that ponies could reproduce without the aid of magic. To truly speak and understand mammoth, one needed a mammoth’s trunk, a mammoth’s oversized ears with their infrasonic hearing, and of course the enormous feet they used for thunderous punctuation. Her already slight hopes that her one word vocabulary would suffice dwindled further as the mammoths continued to trundle indifferently toward her.

Finally, the foremost of the herd shuffled to a halt. He looked down at her for a moment, turning his head to inspect her first with one eye, then the other. He seemed to fidget, his massive feet lifting slightly and resettling, sending an audible rumble through the ground as he did so.

"Turn back," she said, amplifying her voice for effect. She spoke Equestrian now, which she doubted any in her audience would understand, but hopefully her commanding tone and unwelcoming posture would convey some part of her meaning. "Your invasion will not be tolerated."

"We don't invade," replied the mammoth standing slightly behind and to the left of the leader. "We escape."

Celestia looked at her in surprise. Female, judging by her voice and smaller tusks, she had a mottled gray coat that contrasted with the shaggy brown fur of the lead mammoth. Her speech was halting, probably owing to a limited and rarely used vocabulary, but was otherwise comprehensible.

"Explain.”

The mammoth seemed to search for words for a long moment before finally speaking again.

"Snake birds came. Said: fight ponies. We said: no fight. Snake birds brought fire."

Celestia’s first reaction was one of relief, followed closely by a twinge of guilt. The mammoths had been chased from their home; that hardly warranted celebration, even if it did mean they weren’t enemies.

She mulled the question of what to do with this information. She might not be needed here after all, at least not as much as she was needed elsewhere. She wouldn’t be able to get back to Baltimare without resting first, though. By the time she was ready, the battle would likely be over. How had the elder managed to drive them into Equestria with such precise timing, anyway? It made sense if they were his minions, marching on schedule. If they were refugees, fleeing from a disaster to wherever they could, their movement became much more difficult to predict.

One answer — possibly the simplest — was that he hadn’t, and the timing had been coincidental. Even with her preference for simple answers, that was hard to believe. A less savory option was that their story was a lie; they were in fact agents of the dragons, and were spinning a tale for her to waste more time. Or, perhaps they’d been herded into Equestria. The dragons would need to strategically burn the countryside, pushing them in the right direction at the right time. Difficult — how many would it take? Three, at least. Probably more, if they were aiming not to be seen.

“Did they follow you here?” Celestia asked.

The gray mammoth shook her head. “Did not see.”

That probably meant four or five, then. Given the dragons’ push for Baltimare, could that many be spared? Each one was a potential communications hub for any number of supporting allies — it seemed wasteful to deploy them all so far away from the main conflict, especially all together. Still, if the ploy was to lure one of the alicorns away from the real battle, it had worked well enough, wasteful or not.

There was one way to resolve at least some of these questions: she could go look. If the lowlands were indeed burning, she’d know soon enough, and she might even still be able to see how deliberate the burn patterns were. Leaving the mammoths unattended troubled her slightly, but that could be a useful test as well. They were at least twenty miles from the nearest settlement; it was unlikely the herd could reach it in the time it would take her to investigate their claims. If she asked them to stay here, and returned to find them gone, she’d have a pretty good clue as to their true intentions.

“You may seek refuge in our lands,” Celestia said slowly in hopes the mammoths’ speaker would understand. “But you must stay here — right here — while I make arrangements.”

The speaker gave her a confused stare, clearly having trouble parsing the offer.

“Stay here,” Celestia repeated, poking at the ground with a hoof for emphasis. “I will come back soon.”

The mammoth seemed to understand now, and grunted out a translation to the herd. The lead mammoth, still standing directly in front of Celestia, shuffled anxiously and squinted towards the sun.

It was late afternoon, and a pleasant enough one to anypony completely unaware of almost anything but that specific fact. What was a comfortable temperature for Celestia and her ponies, however, was a very different experience for creatures equipped against the frigid winds that blew off the eastern seas and swept the lowland plains for all but a few short months per year. Though the mammoths had only recently emerged from the canyon into this warmer climate, they were clearly already worried about their abilities to withstand it.

“One hour,” Celestia promised.

The mammoths seemed to accept this, albeit reluctantly. As Celestia took to the sky again, the herd’s smallest members were huddling into the shadows cast by its largest. Of course, they would have had the same problem had Celestia not stopped them — in fact, if the heat was so intolerable, they’d exhaust themselves soon, marching farther and farther into Equestria’s warmer climate with neither rest nor water. Their lack of preparation, at least, spoke to the authenticity of their story.

The mammoths would keep, Celestia was sure. She forced her mind back to the subject at hoof. In minutes, she was near the drop-off that marked Equestria’s edge. The descent was steep all along the border, impassable to any walking creature save goats except through the canyons. Here, in particular, though, it was not merely steep; it was almost perfectly vertical. Not quite a mile from top to bottom, the cliff might be the most spectacular Celestia knew of — and it made for an equally spectacular example of ridge lift.

Wings spread wide in anticipation, Celestia let the sudden updraft carry her rapidly skyward, as the winds of the lowlands were deflected upward by the cliff below. It was a minor thing, perhaps, but not having to expend any effort on the climb was valuable at a time like this.

From her new altitude, Celestia could see far enough that she was overtaken by fury instead. Nearer to the cliff, the inferno still raged, feasting on the tall grasses and thin, wavy trees that blanketed much of the lowlands. Beyond, there was only a smoking black expanse. None of the vegetation here was very substantial, meaning the fires moved quickly and left almost nothing recognizable behind. Seeing it now, it was surprising that the mammoths had made it out at all.

Maybe the dragons hadn’t intended that they escape at all. Surely if they’d wanted the mammoths dead, they would have taken a more direct approach, though. What motives were served by setting this fire, instead? One was obvious, given that it had already happened: if, as they had, the mammoths did escape into Equestria, it would serve as a distraction at a potentially critical time. It could serve as an example to others: side with the dragons, or you could be next. Of course, the mammoths weren’t the only inhabitants of the lowlands. Did the dragons mean the others ill?

Celestia went through a mental inventory of the lowlands ecosystem: mammoths, vultures, terrapins along the coast and their cousins the giant tortoises further inland. Those were the only sentient or semi-sentient species Celestia knew of in the area, though it was possible her knowledge was incomplete.

She couldn’t see a reason to target any of the others. Punishment for the mammoths, a clear message to anyone watching, and the potential for distraction among their enemies seemed the most likely explanation. The others were just collateral damage, about which the dragons cared little to none. It was, Celestia noted with a perverse sort of admiration, a very economical use of effort. So many objectives achieved, and all they had to do was set a little fire and watch it grow.

She’d wondered about the care and coordination involved in driving the mammoths north, theorizing that it had taken several dragons to manage, but now it appeared as if a single fire was set and no attempts were made to control it; the winds were favorable, and they’d gotten all they had wanted from it. Very economical indeed.

At her age, Celestia was far too wise to feel responsible for the violence of her enemies. The guilt she felt, as she gazed upon the ruined landscape below, had to go with something else. Probably leaving Luna to defend Baltimare alone — surely that was it.

She circled for another few minutes, eyes searching for any more important details, then her time was up. The question now was what to do with the mammoths. They had no place to go, but Celestia couldn’t spare the resources or attention to properly accommodate them. Another nice benefit for the elder; he’d successfully forced the decision between a strategically unwise option, and a morally untenable one.

As she turned back towards Equestria, she spotted a vulture gliding on thermals far above her. What would he have to say about these events? He couldn’t be any happier than the mammoths. Celestia didn’t have time to go to him right now if she was to keep her promise, and his current altitude would be quite uncomfortable for her in any case. She made a mental note to seek out a vulture later if the opportunity presented itself. So high above everything else, they were likely beyond the notice of the dragons. They might have seen something useful from up there, and they might even be inclined to share it, if it meant some measure of revenge against those who had destroyed their scavenging grounds.

She wasn’t surprised to find the herd right where she’d left it. The small group of pegasi — scouts from the nearest garrison, by the look of them — were a bit of a shock, though. They’d clearly been arguing with the mammoths, or at least attempting to. Both groups were visibly relieved by her arrival.

The pegasi bowed reflexively, then their leader stepped forward to address her. “Princess—”

“Lieutenant,” Celestia interrupted, squinting at the pony’s rank insignia. “Is it now standard procedure for scouting detachments to risk their mission by landing to confront targets?”

The lieutenant bowed his head in acknowledgement of the rebuke, but spoke again anyway. “I sent two flyers back to base when we spotted them, your highness. The commander ordered us to delay them any way we could.”

Not a terrible plan, she supposed, given that the garrison commander couldn’t yet know that the mammoths weren’t hostile and that their march had been halted. The pegasi, with more information, had still chosen this confrontation, though.

“They weren’t moving,” Celestia said. “Exactly how much more did you hope to slow them?”

“They could have started again, Princess.”

Celestia raised a skeptical eyebrow as she let her gaze sweep across the clearly exhausted herd, but let the matter drop. He was just another inexperienced soldier doing the best he knew to do. She had spent a great deal of effort making this world one that could preserve that lack of experience; there was no point getting upset about it now.

“Return to your garrison. Inform the commander that we need rain clouds and rations. Once he’s arranged that, he’s to come speak to me here.”

To his credit, the lieutenant didn’t ask questions. He saluted, nodded to his subordinates, and was soon disappearing with them into the western sky.

It would probably be at least two hours before any of what she’d ordered would arrive. She cast an appraising glance at the herd. They were not faring well in the heat. Hopefully it would be quick enough. In the meantime, what could she most productively do? She needed to talk to the mammoths about their long term plans, but there were linguistic difficulties there, and for the time being they could be sheltered here. It was a drain on Equestria’s resources, to be sure; a weather crew would be required to keep them comfortable, and the sparse vegetation in the immediate vicinity would not sustain them for any significant length of time.

Still, moral obligations aside, it seemed like a good time to make friends rather than enemies. She didn’t know right now how mammoths could help fight the dragons, or even if they’d be willing, but neither of those would even be a question if she sent them back to the lowlands to die.

With a moment’s search, she found the mammoth who’d spoken for them before. She was crouched in the shadow of one of her larger herd mates, breathing heavily.

“Are you alright?” Celestia asked.

“Hot,” the mammoth replied without looking at her.

“It will be cooler soon. What is your name?”

“Mora,” she said, after taking a moment to parse the question.

“I’m honored to meet you, Mora. I am Princess Celestia.”

“Know,” Mora grunted. “All know Celestia.”

“Do you lead your people, Mora?” Celestia asked.

“No.” She pointed weakly with her trunk, indicating the larger brown mammoth who had walked at the front of their procession when Celestia had found them. “Arko is leader.”

“Can you tell him something for me?”

“Can try.”

Celestia considered her next words carefully. There was no way to convey the entirety of her plans through Mora’s imperfect translation; best to keep it simple.

“Your herd can stay as long as you need. We will provide food and supplies. We hope that you will help us when we are in need.”

“Can try,” Mora repeated, her uncertainty clear in her expression..

It would have to do for now, but eventually they would require more effective communication. There were probably not any convenient mammoth language speakers in Equestria she could enlist for translation duty. Though there had once been a program at Canterlot University covering the languages of the southern lands, it had ended centuries ago for lack of interest. It had also, Celestia was sure, suffered from the problems inherent to any language course in which none of the teachers were native speakers of the languages they taught.

The best course was probably to improve Mora’s Equestrian language skills instead. Plenty of capable teachers could be found for that; she’d have the garrison commander arrange for one when he arrived.

How had Mora first learned Equestrian, anyway? It was used as a trade language in some parts of the world, but she’d never heard of mammoths partaking in trade. She could ask, she supposed, but a glance at the mammoth seemed to show her in deep thought, possibly working out how to express Celestia’s meaning to Arko and the others. Better not to disturb her, then.

She watched the herd curiously for another few minutes, then began to wonder if she could manage a nap before sundown. As it turned out, she could.

Night fell before the commander arrived. Celestia awoke to lower the sun, then watched with interest as the moon rose. Though it wasn’t a perfect indicator, Celestia chose to interpret its steady ascent and bright fullness to mean that, however the battle in Baltimare Bay was going, Luna herself was in no serious distress.

When, a few minutes after appearing, the moon flared with a light briefly equal to that of the sun, she did not have as comforting a feeling about it. Blinking her eyes clear, Celestia kept her manner as relaxed as she could, aware that the nervous eyes of the mammoths were upon her.

Whatever it meant, it probably wasn’t good.

Chapter 7

Luna counted the seconds in her head in time to the ticking of the watch sitting on the work stand next to her. Through her telescope, she saw a flurry of shapes gliding through a thin layer of distant clouds before they disappeared into a dark blue thunderhead. The signal came as expected from the southern flank: two long bursts of the frigate’s horn. From a mile away, the sound would have taken about five seconds to reach her. She lifted the her eye from the scope momentarily to glance at the watch and confirm her count. Three minutes, thirty seconds. So far, everything was on schedule.

The flank detachments, if they were doing were their jobs as directed, would appear as lost clusters of airships cut off from the main group by the clouds, panicked by the sudden thrust of the dragon assault. The horn sounded again — the same pattern, so this time it was just for effect. The hope was that the dragons would interpret it as a distress signal. Anything they could do to convince their foes that the entire Equestrian fleet was falling apart in the face of their advance.

The dragons had based their entire attack around the idea that the Equestrians were incapable of sufficient coordination without Twilight to facilitate. Luna hoped to prove them wrong in decisive fashion, but only after convincing them so thoroughly of their superiority that the sudden reversal in their fortunes would be just as crushing the rain of cannonballs that would greet them when they found the bulk of the fleet.

In about fifteen seconds, the reconnaissance wing — Wonderbolts, acting in their original capacity for the first time in generations — should be passing by overhead from due East. She positioned her scope to watch for their appearance and allowed herself the briefest flicker of satisfaction as they broke through the cloud cover precisely on schedule.

Next to her watch, a dozen pins glowed blue and rearranged themselves on a rough map of the engagement area. She looked up and found the captain with her eyes.

“Captain. Quarter turn to starboard. All cannons ready,” she said.

“Aye, Princess.”

He bellowed out the orders and the ship began to turn. A quarter mile to the north, Nimbus mirrored the maneuver, creating an overlapping fire zone to the east of both ships. Halfway to Nimbus but several hundred meters above, Cumulus would be positioning to drive the attackers into that fire zone moments before they emerged from the strategically placed cloud cover.

The scope at her eye once again, Luna tracked the airship to confirm that it, too was on schedule and immediately suppressed a sigh. It was as she feared; her forces were neither disciplined nor skilled enough for this level of choreography. Cumulus was in position. Its escort ships, however, were nearly twenty seconds behind. They would be drifting right across the larger ship’s field of fire at exactly the wrong moment.

Cumulus’ cannoneers would not fire, Luna knew. The containment would fail before it began. And for nothing — those gunships were lost whether Cumulus shot them down or the dragons tore them apart.

“Captain, direct messenger to Cumulus.” Even as she gave the order, Luna knew it was useless. Even if she could get them word in time, they’d hesitate. Enough would refuse that it would make the entire maneuver worthless. Captain Sails was watching her expectantly, quill at the ready. “Fire on contact, obstruction notwithstanding.”

Keeping his expression stoic, the captain took down the message, rolled it into a messenger tube, and passed it off to one of the pegasi standing at the ready on the deck. He hadn’t seen the gunships himself, but he would certainly know what an order like that meant. Luna turned back to her scope.

Three minutes even. What could she do in that time to salvage the situation?

She could leave the deck and take position above the fire zone herself, using magical attacks to take on the role Cumulus was meant to play. That would give away both her presence and position, probably the most tactically valuable information the enemy could hope for in this engagement. Unacceptable. She could teleport to the gunships and try to spur them to move. Too late for that — they were at full speed now, committed to their course. Also, teleporting now would limit her options later. She might not finish this battle from the deck of an airship. With that in mind she’d need to preserve as much energy as she reasonably could.

Two minutes and forty-five seconds. Another set of horn blasts, this time from the north. As expected.

“Final push on the cloud cover, Captain,” Luna said, not letting her dread over the coming disaster affect her tone.

Her orders were again repeated, and a flight of pegasi left the deck to give the westernmost storm clouds their last nudge eastward.

She could fire the cannons herself. By the end of the first volley, Cumulus’ cannons would have clear shots to the east, there’d be no concern of anypony failing to fire at the critical moment, and none of the cannoneers would spend the rest of their lives haunted by the compatriots they’d shot down.

That would be Luna’s burden, instead. She could accept that.

She could make it to Cumulus in fifty seconds. She’d need another ten to get below decks and take control of the cannons. She’d give herself five more just to be safe. Another minute to fire the volley and return to Cirrus. That would leave her out of contact for at least two minutes. A long time, particularly at the very start of the battle, but she didn’t see any alternatives. She would have to hope that her planning and maneuvering to this point had been good enough that her forces could get by without her for that long.

Two minutes even. In fifty-five seconds, she had to leave. There was time for one last survey with the scope.

Luna’s telescope wasn’t made for warfare. Much larger than a standard military scope, it required a stand, typically not a luxury for which any naval vessel had space. Even then, it was unwieldy for anypony without strong telekinesis skills. Luna only used it today because it happened to be the finest telescope ever constructed. Crafted by a pony with exhaustive understanding of the science of optics, the magical technique to shape perfect lenses, and the passion for the tool itself to labor until the assembly was nothing short of flawless. Focus at any distance was effortless. Clarity was unmatched.

Luna’s mark had been etched onto the metallic blue surface of the assembly just above the eyepiece. If she rotated the assembly half a turn on its mount, a magenta star would face up instead. What would Twilight think of her using her gift this way? Luna scowled as she pondered the question. Which Twilight? The Twilight who had given it to her five-hundred-and-some years ago might have been appalled. The Twilight who had summarily executed a dragon and dozens of wyverns to make a point weeks ago likely wouldn’t care at all.

In the weeks since Elder Peak, that Twilight had hardly spared a word for her outside status reports and planning, and Luna wasn’t sure whether she prefered it that way. Which Twilight, she wondered, would wake next in Canterlot — if any?

Luna shook her head. She couldn’t let herself get lost in those thoughts right now. Twenty seconds remained before she had to fly. She counted through each of them with a calm dread, knowing that very soon she’d be taking lives and watching lives taken. The deck crew watched her with a mix of apprehension and awe. They didn’t know she was leaving. Until the moment she did, the legends were alive for them. Everything they’d heard in the academies or from aging officers — who claimed, but certainly didn’t have, personal experience — regarding Luna the Tactician or Luna the Commander. As her strategy began to fall into place, they came to believe.

Most generations never saw her in action. Those that did breathed new life into the stories, each time making her better, faster, more clever. All that, despite the fact that she failed them each and every time. Ponies were a strange lot.

It was time. She flew.

The first salvo was away. It was more successful than Luna had dared to hope. The vanguard, all gryphons and wyverns, had burst out of the clouds in a formation so tight Luna had to wonder what they’d expected to find. Even against a fleeing, disorganized, and lesser force, it would have been inadvisable. Had they forgotten entirely about the range of Equestrian cannons, or had Luna done such a good job convincing them that they’d already won that they had abandoned any semblance of caution?

As the remainder of the oncoming forces were pushed downward into an even worse position, Cirrus horn blew the expected signal, right on schedule. Smaller ships around the periphery of the engagement moved in to close the net. Far above, the Wonderbolt teams turned as only they could and sped toward the thunderhead where the bulk of the enemy forces presumably still waited. They would soon find themselves faced with a very unpleasant choice: cannonfire, or lightning. Luna allowed herself a slight smile. She’d known, of course, that Captain Sails would continue to execute the plan in her absence, but it was always good to get confirmation.

Even on the fire deck of Cumulus, spirits were higher than expected. One of the errant gunships had been shattered outright by the salvo. The other had lost two of its balloon chambers and was going down, but there would be time for the crew to escape. Only pegasi served on airships that small.

The cannoneers appeared to have blamed both losses on enemy action, though that was obviously impossible. The only ranged weapons their enemy had shown thus far were the spears gryphons sometimes liked to throw, and they were well out of range for that still. Most of the crew was too inexperienced to be thinking such things through at a time like this, though. Luna wasn’t even sure the cannoneers had noticed her presence on the deck, or that she’d taken control of nearly half the cannons on the ship to ensure that the first blow was delivered as planned.

The important thing was that they were still focused on the battle. That the very first casualties of this war were not only Equestrian, but brought about by Equestrian fire, was something that could be mourned later.

Without a word, Luna ascended the stairs from the fire deck to the command deck, then glided over the aft railing into the sky beyond.

Her instinct was to charge back to Cirrus at full speed so that she could reassume command of the fleet, but going too quickly might attract attention. Restricting herself to the comparatively moderate pace of an average pegasus’ sprint, she kept her wings tucked in as tightly as she could without losing too much lift, to keep her profile slight.

It grated on her to be out of contact for the full minute it would take to return to Cirrus at this pace, but the open air did offer greater visibility than the deck of an airship, so the time was not completely wasted. As the first spears of lightning flashed in the distant thunderhead and the consequent thunder rolled out to meet her ears, more gryphons and wyverns streamed out into the open. There were far too many of them already. Luna frowned as she revisited her assumptions about the enemy forces.

Spike’s ill-fated conquest centuries ago had drawn recruits from the margins of many cultures. The disaffected fringe had found a focal point in him and done what disaffected fringes do when suddenly empowered — specifically, rampaging until put down. The princesses had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that this new effort boasted similar support. Based on the number of gryphons in the air before her, though, Luna wondered if this wasn't the actual Imperial army, or a large part of it. If the elder dragon had convinced the Gryphon emperor to join his effort, he was playing a very different game than the princesses had thought.

The wyverns were also a problem, not just in their existence but what it said about the current draconic mindset. Just before Elder Peak, they had seen something on the order of a hundred wyverns. Luna had assumed there were probably a few hundred more where those came from. There were at least a thousand here, that Luna could see. How long had they been breeding these beasts, and how could they control them? Wyverns grew progressively more willful the larger the group. Luna couldn’t imagine anyone, dragon or no, deploying them in such numbers, unless their objective was outright destruction. This wasn’t a war of conquest; whatever the dragons took would be razed, not occupied.

There was no end of forces spilling out of the clouds towards them, but she had yet to see an actual dragon. That wasn’t especially surprising; just as she wanted to keep her presence and position unnoticed as long as possible, they would remain hidden until they judged their appearance would have the greatest impact.

Luna landed on Cirrus’ command deck and strode back to her previous station with a forced casual air, broadcasting to any with the time to notice that her brief absence and subsequent return were routine and wholly unremarkable.

“Report,” she ordered in the general direction of the captain as she rearranged the pins on her map again.

Captain Sails was carrying on a shouted conversation with the fire crew lieutenant on the deck below, while also finding time to complain to the helmspony about a few degrees of heading correction he felt should have been made by now. At her command, he quickly finished both interactions and made his way to her side.

“All according to plan so far, Princess,” he said, a bit too excitedly.

Luna studied him as he spoke. Bright eyes bounced between Luna, his crew members, and a sky full of enemies. The cheer in his voice spoke to a premature optimism brought on by the success of their first maneuver. The captain of Equestria’s flagship was seeing his first combat, and while he undoubtedly knew intellectually how quickly fortunes could turn in battle, the excitement of the moment didn’t leave room for second hoof knowledge.

“Deep breaths, Captain,” Luna said sternly. “What say you of the enemy’s numbers?”

He straightened at the reprimand, then looked across the sky with more sober eyes. “Substantial. More than our estimates. Falling quickly, though.”

“What don’t we know that we should?”

He considered for a moment. “How many we haven’t yet seen. Whether what we see is the composition of the whole force, or just the vanguard. Specifically, whether there are any dragons in attendance.”

Luna nodded. The answers were satisfactory, though she could think of a few more besides. “And how will we answer those questions?”

“Scouting, Princess. Scouting and careful positioning.”

Any cadet could answer that question, of course, and hearing it ought to make the captain feel like a cadet. It was better that way — in his long service, he’d cultivated a confidence that shouldn’t yet extend to true battle. He needed to carefully consider every action, not let instinct guide him when he had no serviceable combat instinct just yet.

“See to it,” Luna said, turning back to her scope.

“Yes, Princess,” Captain Sails replied.

Now came the difficult part. She’d laid her plans and taken what action she could. If all went well from here, she would spend the rest of the battle standing on the deck of this airship, supervising the deaths of her ponies. Nearly half the fleet’s ammunition would be spent by now, and she had ordered that a quarter be kept in reserve for later surprises. Once the cannons slowed, the enemy would close the distance to her ships and the pegasi would fly to engage them in the air with spears and wingtip blades.

They’d acquit themselves well enough against the gryphons, Luna was sure. Against the wyverns, it was harder to be optimistic. The guard had dusted off the engagement guides on the subject and drilled most combat flyers in their approved techniques, but realistically it was too much to ask. It would take at least three pegasi cooperating to bring down a wyvern. On their very first sortie, her troops would do well just to swing their spears the right direction, let alone coordinate with their comrades in any real way.

If Celestia had stayed, one or the other of them could have gone out to help. How many would that have saved? Luna hoped that whatever Celestia found was worth the diversion.

“Princess Luna, report from below,” Captain Sails called out. “The only waterborne forces they’ve spotted so far are old Zebrikan trading vessels. They appear to be crewed by canids.”

Luna turned to look at the captain, one eyebrow raised skeptically. “No sign of weapons, then?”

“No, Your Highness.”

It seemed like a move borne more of enthusiasm than any tactical consideration, which she supposed fit with what she knew of the Canidan psyche. They had always been keen to jump into any war that would let them strike at whoever they currently considered their great oppressor to be. They weren’t much known for their contributions to said wars, though. Even for them, sailing hopelessly towards an Equestrian armada seemed extreme. She couldn’t safely assume they were merely suicidal.

“They’re to be destroyed if they enter cannon range,” Luna ordered, then reconsidered. If, as it appeared, the bulk of the attacking force had come by air, there was less need to hold the surface of the bay. She could afford to give the canids a chance to save themselves. “Actually, have our sea forces fall back to the coastline. Only if the canids follow will they need to be sunk.”

Captain Sails assigned a messenger to carry the orders below, then Luna stopped listening for his voice and let it fade into the din of the battle. It seemed that most of the enemy forces had finally come into the open. Whatever remained in the clouds didn’t mind the lightning, which left one obvious possibility and a few less likely ones. She was content to let them keep their cover for the time being, if it meant less for her ponies to contend with in defense of the airships.

The fastest surviving gryphons were nearly on them now, wyverns and slower gryphons coming in behind. The regular percussion of cannonfire had faded into the occasional pop; clearly no longer enough to dissuade the oncoming swarm.

“Prepare sorties,” she ordered, amplifying her voice across the deck.

A moment later, the signal blasted from Cirrus horn, its deep tone rumbling through the planks beneath her hooves. The deck guards took their positions and hoisted their spears, trying not to look nervous. They would be tasked with making sure operations on the command deck were not disturbed. Below, in the landing bay, many more would be lined up, arming themselves at pike racks and preparing to fly out and meet the enemy in the air.

Most of them had joined the service knowing they were unlikely to ever see action — the rest had fantasized about a glamorous sort of warfare that didn’t actually exist. Very few of either group would hesitate even as they began to see what they’d actually committed themselves to. Luna wasn’t sure whether she found that heartening or tragic. There was room for both, she supposed.

The first flyers streamed out from Cirrus and the other ships, rushing to meet the enemy before they drew near enough to damage them. There were still far too many enemies in the air. Luna set her jaw and fought off the feeling of helplessness that threatened to overwhelm her as her ponies first met their foes. Her job wasn’t done. She still had to watch, plan, and coordinate. That was why she couldn’t be out there herself; she had to ensure it was a trade worth making.

At some point in the last two hours, the gryphons had managed to rip the port forward compartment of Cirrus’ balloon. She knew it had been the gryphons, because the wyverns had long since lost capacity for any action so deliberate. They seemed to just be tracking motion at this point, as likely to lash out at sudden movement from a gryphon or even another wyvern as they were to attack the ponies or airships. It was nice to see that the dragons’ new control methods had their limits, at least. In this exhausted state, the wyverns were much less capable than they would be independent of whatever magic was being used upon them — useful to know for future engagements.

The compartment had probably been leaking for some time, but the ship was only now beginning to list noticeably to port. As of her last survey, neither Cumulus nor Nimbus had sustained similar damage — at least not visibly. Several smaller ships had either been downed or forced to retreat, however. Her flyers — those not yet injured or killed — were beginning to tire. They’d done well, aided by the fact that the wyverns were now as much a danger to gryphons as ponies, but were at the limits of their abilities.

Still no sign of dragons or any other creatures they might have enlisted. Luna knew they were out there, waiting for her to appear just as she waited for them. She had hoped to outlast them, but her options were running out. She’d started planning for this eventuality as soon as she’d seen the enemy’s numbers. None of her ideas truly pleased her, but it was time to pick one. The best, as she judged them, was costly — particularly in terms of image and morale. Celestia probably wouldn’t like it, but she’d forfeited her vote when she’d decided to skip this battle.

She drew herself up to her full height and took a deep breath. “Captain,” she called, and felt the attention of the entire deck crew snap to her. They were waiting for a brilliant order or some rousing snippet of motivational nonsense. “Sound the retreat. Prepare to abandon ship.”

There was argument in the captain’s eyes, but none of it made it as far as his lips. Luna felt a twinge of sympathy as she watched his sense of duty gradually override his immediate emotional response. This ship was likely as much a home to him as anyplace. He might not even have a house of his own anymore, having lived so long aboard Cirrus. There wouldn’t be time to recover his personal effects from his cabin. Maybe he shouldn’t have stored them on a warship, but it hadn’t ever been a problem for the last dozen or so of his predecessors.

The horn sounded, and the other ships of the fleet began their slow turns back toward Baltimare. Cirrus’ helmspony began to follow suit, but Luna’s magic held the wheel in place. She caught his eye and shook her head. “I’ll take the helm. Evacuate.”

Ponies were rushing off the deck now, non-pegasi first to allow them to reach the landing bay in time to board the evacuation carriages. In moments, only Luna and Captain Sails remained.

“Princess,” he said, still visibly shaken. “You’re not—”

“No,” Luna interrupted. “I’ll rejoin the fleet in Baltimare. Other matters need my attention first, though.”

“Of course,” the captain said, doing a poor job of feigning understanding. “Is there anything else, then?”

Luna’s eyes fell upon her telescope. It would be an insult to ask him to take it, as he left so much of his own life behind. He’d eventually convince himself it was an honor, but that didn’t change the reality of the matter. With an effort, she dismissed the idea. “No. Get to Nimbus and coordinate the retreat. They won’t follow, but if they do, you’re authorized to use all available resources in defense of the city.”

“Yes, Princess,” he said. He seemed at a loss for a moment, staring blankly across the deck. Luna allowed him a few seconds of reflection, then felt compelled to order him away — he had limited time to spare for sentimentality. Before she could say anything, he straightened, saluted, and disappeared down the stairs.

Then it was just Luna, alone with her watch and telescope. Three minutes should be enough time for everypony to get clear — two was the limit they drilled for, but allowances had to be made for inexperienced crew. When time was up, she spun the helm to rudder Cirrus directly into what remained of the storm, then descended to the fire deck.

Very few ponies were aware of the fact that the armor around the fire deck of a Cirrus class airship was designed such that closing a few reinforced doors could make a sizable segment of the ship almost completely airtight. Standard stocking orders for the ships also specified many times more gunpowder than was necessary to fire a full complement of cannonballs.

It only took a few minutes for Luna to make her preparations. When she returned to the command deck, it was covered with gryphons. This was neither surprising nor problematic. The glory hunting that defined their warrior culture would make boarding the flagship an irresistible opportunity. They likely even entertained fantasies of capturing it intact. Those nearest the helm and her watch station she tossed over the side as she strolled back to the bow. About half of the remainder either didn’t know an alicorn when they saw one or had contracted terminal cases of Gryphish optimism; they had to go as well.

Luna leaned over the bow railing when she reached it, craning her neck to look down the front of the airship’s hull. Swarming with enemies, as expected. Cirrus was too great a prize for them to pass up. She swivelled her telescope to look back in the direction of her fleet, reassured herself that it was escaping unharmed, then frowned.

By now, the dragons ought have emerged to redirect their minions. Surely the fleet was a more important objective than this abandoned ship. Either they’d left their forces to fend for themselves, or they were approaching this even more cautiously than Luna would have guessed. It would have to do — if they wanted to sacrifice their entire aerial army just to avoid revealing their positions, that suited her almost as well.

The ship was plowing into the thick of the storm now, the main rotor still turning reliably even as the rest of the ship was being torn apart. At least one more balloon compartment had been punctured; there was now a distinct downward slant from stern to bow. It wouldn’t matter; nothing short of the balloon’s complete and immediate destruction would have much effect at this point.

Luna took one last reflective look around the deck. Unlike many in the service, she wasn’t one to attribute consciousness or feeling to a ship, but she could still appreciate a well made tool. Cirrus had served its purpose for almost five centuries, which was almost five centuries longer than most guard projects of similar scale. This was at least a suitably dramatic way to end that service.

Taking a pair of discarded spears in her magical grip, she spread her wings and shot from the deck, dissolving the cloud around her as she went. Time to take away the hiding places. Wyverns, who had been swarming around Cirrus for lack of a more obvious target, began to track her, though they’d never catch her if she didn’t wish to be caught. She took a wide circular route around what remained of the storm.

The dragon was almost as surprised as she was when she nearly collided with it. It was young, its wings barely developed enough for it to fly at these heights for any length of time. Its midnight blue scales almost matched Luna’s coat, and explained why it had been so hard to find hidden among the storm clouds. Luna reflexively dodged a tail swipe before she’d consciously realized they were fighting, then sent one of her spears spinning at its neck.

It didn’t do any visible damage, but did startle the dragon such that the follow up from her other spear nearly scored a direct hit on its left eye. Recalling the spears, Luna flew closer, daring the dragon to lash out again with claws or tail. Instead, though, it inverted and presented its back to Luna, beating its wings wildly to put more space between them. She saw a flash of green fire from its head — probably calling for help — before she teleported forward and landed a powerful kick to its snout.

It reared back its head in pain, loosed a blast of flame at a place where Luna wasn’t anymore, then roared with renewed rage as Luna’s spears caught up with it from behind, the tip of one lodging underneath a scale on its neck. Luna folded her wings in and let herself drop rapidly, hoping to disappear against the mottled blue of the sea far below before the dragon could spot her again.

Something was wrong. She was willing to believe that the dragons had not interfered in the battle until now because they wanted to draw her out before showing themselves. She was willing to believe that, without the dragons’ guidance, their forces were so tactically inept as to focus on Cirrus long past the point when the ploy should have been obvious. They had seen the same thing in the wyverns at Stonehoof, after all — increased capacity for cooperation, diminished individual reasoning. But to take such a dependent force and place it under the command of an inexperienced drake made no sense.

If there were any other dragons present, they should have come to their companion’s aid by now. It was starting to seem like this wasn’t a battle the dragons cared about winning. If that was the case, why commit such a large force to it? It was true that the elder dragon considered the mortal races disposable, but surely he’d at least want some return on his investment. Perhaps this wasn’t actually as large a force in his reckoning as it was in Luna’s.

At every turn, they’d been surprised by the numbers of the wyverns. If he had another swarm like the one he’d sent today, or more even, he might think the forces he’d sent were a fine price for the destruction of Equestria’s flagship. And if he had other forces elsewhere, this might not even be his primary attack. Luna’s mind went immediately to the mammoth attack in the south. If that was the true threat, Celestia, having gone to face it alone, might already be defeated. Or perhaps both fronts were a distraction — Canterlot was virtually defenseless at the moment, provided attackers approached by the north or west.

Luna’s train of thought was derailed by the sudden, immediate need to raise the moon. That was surprising. She hadn’t lost her sense of time; she knew that it was two hours, thirty six minutes, and about forty seconds since the first cannon volley, she’d just forgotten about the part where all those elapsed seconds pushed afternoon into evening. She could delay, but it would only get more distracting the longer she waited.

A moment after her horn began to glow, the dragon’s talons took her. What it hoped to accomplish with the maneuver was not immediately clear. Luna calmly finished raising the moon as she mentally plotted her teleport. Then the sound of the explosion reached her, followed by the shockwave. Had she been flying back in the direction of Cirrus? She supposed she must have been. When the actual force of the explosion hit, she was ripped violently from the dragon’s talons as both were tossed backward into the night sky.

The world spun. Luna didn’t fight it at first, waiting a moment to gauge the direction and force of her tumble before she spread her wings slightly to correct it. Her triumphant laugh as she began to stabilize became a startled cough as what must have been half Cirrus’ hull hit the back of her head. The world spun again, though this time she only felt it, as her vision had gone dark.

She fell for what seemed like a long time, during which she wondered groggily about a number of things: how cold the water would be when she hit, whether her vision would return unaided, whether the dragon had survived the explosion, whether the fleet would have seen the explosion from their position and what they would make of it, whether Celestia was faring any better than she was. At some point, she realized she was no longer falling. The wind still tugged at the fur of her coat, but the dropping sensation in her stomach was gone. She tried to open her eyes, then remembered that they were already open.

“Hey,” a purple voice said. Could a voice be purple? She decided that it could, at least for as long as her senses remained so completely muddled. “I was thinking we should talk.”

Chapter 8

“Are you sure they can’t get in here?”

“No.”

The hushed voices carried from the tower’s doorway. The first, female, Twilight didn’t recognize. The second she tentatively identified as Ash Scribe, Celestia’s seneschal.

“Then why—”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Twilight reluctantly let her eyelids slide open. Her old tower in Canterlot was instantly recognizable even looking straight up at the ceiling. It was not where she’d gone to sleep, however, if she remembered correctly. In fact, she hadn’t been in here at all since her return. The place looked like it hadn’t been touched aside from dusting since she’d last used it, centuries ago. Why hadn’t they found some other purpose for it in the intervening years? It wasn’t as if there was abundant free space in Canterlot. She put that question out of her mind almost as quickly as it had occurred to her, suspecting that the answer came with more guilt than she was prepared for at the moment.

How long had she been asleep? There were no convenient indicators in view. The angle of light streaming in the single giant window suggested it was late afternoon, which should have told her something, but she realized she didn’t recall what time of day she’d fallen asleep.

“Just stay away from the window,” Ash Scribe cautioned.

That was an interesting tip. What were these ponies hiding from? Twilight remained still, waiting for more information before she announced her presence. For a few moments, she heard only the sounds of two nervous ponies fidgeting near the doorway.

“What are you doing?” asked the mare whose voice Twilight didn’t recognize.

“Writing a message for Princess Celestia.”

“And how exactly are you going to get it to her?”

Ash Scribe didn’t respond for a moment. Twilight assumed he was busy writing.

“I want to have it ready if the opportunity presents itself.”

“Whatever,” the other said, her sullen, defeatist tone grating against Twilight’s ears.

“Maybe we can wake Princess Twilight,” Ash said, sounding preoccupied.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea? I’ve been hearing things about her from my friends in the fleet.”

“You’re right. We’d better just wait here for the changelings to find us, instead,” Ash replied sarcastically.

Changelings? That was new. She probably ought to get up and find out what she’d missed. She climbed out of bed, unnoticed by either of her visitors. They both stood a few paces from the door, as if afraid to venture further into the tower’s main chamber. Ash was concentrating on a paper and quill that floated before him, while his companion, an earth pony mare in city guard armor, glared at him as if their entire situation was his fault.

“I’m just saying. We were fine with two princesses, now we have another one out of nowhere, and all this stuff is happening. Big coincidence, huh?”

“You might have your cause and effect backwards.”

“Yeah, okay. I know you palace ponies are trained from birth to worship the ground any of them walks on, but just for a moment—”

“I’ll take the message,” Twilight interrupted.

Both ponies jumped, then looked in alarm to where she stood next to the foot of her bed.

“It kind of sounds like time might be factor here,” Twilight said after another moment’s stunned silence.

“Yes, Princess,” Ash said, hurriedly walking across the room to deliver the note.

Twilight unfolded it, read it, then casually walked to the window. The note didn’t add significant detail to what Twilight had already gathered; a sudden invasion, guard forces overwhelmed, et cetera. “I assume that Celestia is not in Canterlot, then?”

“No, Your Highness. She’s in Baltimare Bay with the fleet — or she was last I knew. We also received word of a mammoth invasion to the south, so she might have gone there.”

“What’s going on in Baltimare Bay?”

“A large attack force — they think the dragons sent it.”

“Busy day,” Twilight grumbled as she looked out at the city. She lifted a hoof to point at a group of changelings harrying fleeing ponies on the streets far below. “See the yellow bands on the legs and the oversized mandibles? That’s how you can tell this is Queen Vespida’s brood. You know, we use the term ‘changeling’ because the first ones we met were Chrysalis’ brood, but most broods have only rudimentary mimicry capabilities, if that. In this brood’s case, the emotional energy they feed on…”

Twilight trailed off as she realized both ponies were staring at her with an improbable blend of boredom and anxiety. “Right, you don’t care. And neither of you are pegasi, so you can’t even see them from here anyway. Wasted lecture. Got it. How long was I out?”

Ash Scribe seemed to count back the days in his head for a moment, then answered. “Five and a half days, Your Highness.”

Twilight concealed her alarm as best she could. Granted, those tortuous dreams had seemed eternal, but they always did and had never before cost her more than a night of real time. “And have all of those days been this eventful?”

“No, Princess.”

“Well, that’s something.” Twilight looked out the window again, trying to get a sense of exactly how badly things were going. “I assume that if you’re here, they’ve taken the palace?”

“Probably,” Ash said. “It didn’t look good when I got out. We have hardly any defense in the city with the fleet and princesses gone.”

“See any invaders other than changelings?”

“I didn’t see any,” Ash said uncertainly. “I was mostly concentrating on getting out of their way though.”

“And you?” Twilight asked, addressing the guardsmare.

“Nothing but bugs,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

The mare’s discomfort with Twilight was nothing new. Many, especially in the military, hadn’t taken well to her return. When she’d been hardly more than a filly, she’d seen similar prejudice towards Luna. There was a sort, particularly common in certain circles, that revered the status quo more highly than the princesses themselves; if they grew up with only two princesses, there should always be only two princesses. Twilight suspected that she had only escaped similar treatment after her ascension by virtue of the fact that the ponies who would have resented her were the same ones that never took her seriously in the first place.

“Alright,” Twilight said. “I suppose I’d better get to work then. You two should be fine in here.”

“Aren’t you going to inform Princess Celestia?” Ash asked.

Twilight took a deep breath as she contained her irritation. Celestia was Ash’s security blanket and he didn’t know Twilight beyond an introduction and a few cursory greetings in the course of his duties over the past few weeks. Of course he’d prefer if Celestia was involved.

“Celestia is busy,” Twilight said.

“You don’t know—”

“Celestia is busy.” Twilight stepped past him and toward the door. “Just stay calm and they won’t bother you. This won’t take long.”

The part of Twilight’s lecture she hadn’t completed included details on how Vespida’s brood was actually the easiest of all known broods to fight. They fed on fear, which had two important consequences. One, they relied heavily on seeming dangerous, but rarely actually harmed anypony — that risked tainting the fear with anger, pain, or worst of all, determination. Two, once their false threat was exposed, they tended as a group to fall apart.

Twilight hadn’t expected to see this particular brood inside Equestria’s borders after the last time. Clearly someone had convinced their queen it would be a good idea, a thought which was much more disturbing than the soon-to-be-ended occupation of Canterlot. An attack in Baltimare, timed to match a so-called mammoth invasion — Twilight had her doubts about that — and leave Canterlot helpless before a brood of changelings, which had suddenly overcome its centuries-old avoidance of all things pony.

Someone was pulling far too many strings, and she needed a way to follow those strings back to their origin. She knew she’d find the elder dragon behind it all — that wasn’t the issue. The question was how the dragons were projecting such influence. Changelings, mammoths, the previously undetected resurgence of the wyverns. Even the gryphons, who days ago had begun poking at Equestria’s borders along with the dragons, should have known better.

Twilight had nearly finished descending the spiral stairs from her tower’s doorway before she was spotted. That she was unhurried and showed no sign of distress seemed to confuse the first group that approached her. The deep thrumming of their translucent wings and the clacking of their mandibles were meant to intimidate, but Twilight continued casually on her way, her eyes not even pausing as they passed over the group to survey the city beyond.

The streets were bare of ponies here. Those who hadn’t been rounded up by the invaders were doubtless hiding inside their homes. A pity; if more of her ponies could see this, she’d have an easier time depriving the changelings of their food source. If she couldn’t at least lessen the fear in the city, Vespida would be at near full strength when they met. That kind of confrontation was too dangerous — she couldn’t spend all afternoon fighting here, and the risk of collateral damage was too high besides. She needed to weaken the queen before she could act.

The most likely place to find a good concentration ponies that hadn’t yet been captured was the row of estates that backed up against the slope of Canterlot Peak itself. Its occupants, all established nobility, called that area ‘Old Canterlot’, though of course the entire city was approximately the same age. High walls and garden mazes surrounded ostentatious mansions that were hopefully packed with large families and live-in staff.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs and turned in that direction, the drones moved on her. She wondered if they recognized her, or at least recognized that she was an alicorn. It had been long enough since their brood had met equines of any kind that a pony was probably a pony in their eyes. She didn’t react visibly to their approach until they landed directly in front of her. It might have been interesting to see what they would have done if she’d just kept walking, but she didn’t really have time for that experiment.

Without even a glance of acknowledgement, Twilight plucked the changelings from the ground and held them tightly in a purple glob of energy that followed behind her as she continued on her way. From far enough away, she might look like a prancing filly with a set of novelty balloons on a string. She met another few stragglers on her way to the first residence she called upon, and they promptly joined the collection.

The gate of that first residence was, of course, unmanned; the guard had either retreated inside the house or been rounded up with most of the other ponies in the city when the changelings had first arrived. Twilight reached out with her magic to pull the lever at the empty guard station and the gate slid back into a hollowed portion of the stone wall that ran the perimeter of the estate.

In contrast to the quaint cobblestone of Canterlot’s streets, the path from the gate to the estate’s front door was composed of brick in two slightly different shades of deep red, laid in a checkerboard pattern. Meticulously groomed shrubs of exactly equal height were planted along it to either side at regular intervals. It spoke to a love of control and predictability; not a psychological makeup that would serve very well today, but about what she would expect from Canterlot’s old money.

She gave the door three sharp knocks upon reaching it, then gazed idly at her collected changelings as she waited. They buzzed in frustration from within her grip, but had long since stopped struggling. After a moment, she gave the door another knock. She didn’t actually expect the occupants to answer it, she was only giving them a bit of warning before she came in. After a third knock, she carefully unhinged the door, set it against the side of the house, and caught the pitchfork and rake that came flying out toward her. She set these against the door with neither alarm nor offense and beamed a smile at her would-be attackers.

“Hi. I’m Princess Twilight Sparkle and I’m collecting changelings. Do you have any to spare today?”

The two stallions in the doorway — servants, judging by their attire — gaped and said nothing. Confusion replaced terror in their eyes as they saw her floating collection of prisoners bobbing lazily in the air behind her. That was a start, at least.

“Is the lord or lady of the house in, by chance?” she asked.

“Uh…” answered the older looking of the two.

“I’m Lord Paddock,” said a voice from behind them. The servants stepped aside to make way for the brown-on-white spotted stallion, who hesitantly emerged into the sunlight. He offered the standard not-quite-bow of the nobility — interesting to see that it hadn’t changed over the years — then his eyes locked on the changelings behind Twilight just as the others’ had. “Collecting changelings, you say,” he murmured.

“As you can see.”

“Yes, as I can see,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it and refocusing on Twilight. “I’m afraid we don’t have any at the moment. It’s an honor to meet you, though, Your Highness.”

He frowned then, as if suddenly realizing the absurdity of apologizing to a princess for not keeping any hated enemies under his roof.

“Well, that’s actually what I was hoping for,” Twilight said, her still-wide smile hopefully more reassuring than terrifying. “Do you think you can call your household out to go on a little walk with me?”

Paddock blinked at her, uncomprehending.

“See, there are a lot of scared ponies in the city right now, and I need that to stop. So I’m rounding up changelings — but I also need as many ponies as I can find to come with me, both so that I can protect them, and so that we can show the other ponies that there’s nothing to fear. It would really mean a lot to me, and Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna. I know nobles like yourself are always looking for ways to be helpful.”

Visions of royal commendation rose in Lord Paddock’s eyes and chased away his reservations. She probably should have just opened with that, but she was a bit rusty in dealing with this sort. Soon the family and its employees streamed out of the house, gawking alternately at Twilight and the changelings she still held with her magic.

The rest of the neighborhood went similarly, though the initial reactions became less violent as her following grew. Twilight had helped to save Canterlot many times, but this was the first time she’d felt like a door-to-door salesmare doing so. By the time she reached the last few houses, the ponies were coming out to meet her rather than waiting for her to knock on their doors. Doubtless they’d been watching her growing procession from the upper floors of their homes, and eventually decided she was a safer bet than any available alternative.

She’d also picked up a few more changelings along the way. Only small patrols and stragglers, but with the size of her collection now, there was no way they wouldn’t be missed. Vespida would also feel the lessening fear in the city by now. The hundred-and-fifty or so ponies that Twilight had coaxed into the streets weren’t a very significant portion of the city’s population, but it would be enough to be alarming.

Once the rest of Canterlot’s citizenry saw her following and her prisoners, it would be a major blow to the entire brood. She needed to make that happen before she was confronted by the queen, though, or she would still be too powerful to safely engage. It helped that the city was nearly empty save the palace complex at this point, but she still didn’t want to put more holes in it than necessary.

She plucked another few patrols out of the air as she led her bizarre parade toward the palace. They were becoming more frequent, and the drones more alert. Twilight wanted to hurry, but maintaining an image of unconcern was important to keep the ponies already following her calm. She’d just have to hope Vespida was feeling arrogant enough, after gorging on the city’s fear all afternoon, that she would ignore the warning signs until it was too late.

She was still several intersections away from the palace complex when the first coordinated response met her. Three dozen drones — roughly the same number she already held — swooped down at her from the roofs of the buildings lining the street, not hesitating when they saw either her following or her captives.

To take them as she had the others would be a stretch in the time available. Three dozen individual points of concentration, to go with the three dozen she was already maintaining. What alternative was there? She could teleport away slightly to give herself more time to prepare, but that would leave her ponies exposed, which wouldn’t do much for the problem of excess fear in the city. She could throw the drones she had at the drones she didn’t. It was almost an amusing idea, but probably not very practical. It would cause a lot of confusion, certainly, but then there would be seventy angry drones bearing down on her instead of just half that.

She could destroy them all. She didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t who she wanted to be. Escalation of violence on her part wouldn’t inspire mercy towards her ponies from other changelings in the city, either. The population would be at greater risk until such time as Twilight could rid Canterlot of every last changeling.

Time was running out. Frustrated that she couldn’t come up with anything better, Twilight projected an arcing shield before her in the path of the charging drones. They buzzed to a hovering stop before colliding with the shimmering barrier, and Twilight’s mind raced to find a palatable next move. She needed to buy time — more than just a few seconds.

She heard the gasps from behind her before she felt the crushing impact against her spine. This was exactly how she’d hoped it wouldn’t go. She blearily noted the crater of shattered cobblestone that had appeared around her, deduced that this new foe was much more than a drone or group of drones, and promptly teleported into the sky.

That was when everything fell apart. At the moment of impact, Twilight had lost her hold on the drones she’d collected, which they seemed to realize all at once. At about the same time the ponies in the street noticed that Twilight was gone, replaced by the changeling queen, and fell into panic. Vespida wore the euphoric grin that came from a full helping of true terror and the power it granted her. Twilight couldn’t fight her like this, and Vespida knew it.

It wasn’t ideal, but there might be a solution here. How reckless could the queen be at her peak power? Prior experience, starting with the famously uncautious Chrysalis, suggested that the sky was the limit.

“Vespida!” Twilight shouted, and the queen’s eyes snapped instantly to her.

The grin widened to an unsettling degree, one ponies were anatomically incapable of matching. Without a word, she shot toward Twilight, leading with her needle-like forelegs. Twilight took the hit on her own forelegs, the queen’s sharp appendages digging into her flesh until they met bone. Ignoring the pain, Twilight pulled Vespida into her grasp. Then, Canterlot was gone, replaced by snow covered mountains bathed in the dim blue light of the northern dusk.

Twilight extricated her legs from Vespida’s with a rough telekinetic push that sent the startled changeling tumbling onto the mountainside below. The changeling queen wilted almost instantly in the suddenly frigid air, robbed of both the emotional energy that fed her and the reassuring presence of her brood. The force of her fall pushed her through the thick layer of frozen snow that coated the mountain, then Twilight’s pursuing hooves drove her through several more feet of softer snow until she met rock-hard soil that hadn’t seen sunlight in generations.

Vespida laid prone for a few moments even after Twilight removed her hooves from the queen’s back and hovered above her expectantly in the newly made snow crater. Finally, Vespida rolled over with a grunt and glared balefully at Twilight.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

Twilight wasn’t interested in arguing that point. “Whoever gave you the idea that it was a good time to hit Canterlot is not your friend.”

Vespida didn’t have any trouble understanding Twilight’s meaning. “You want to know who. It’ll cost you.”

“You and your brood will be allowed to leave Equestria.”

For a moment it seemed as if Vespida would argue for more, then she nodded her assent.

The cave was dark, so Twilight lit it. The sudden burst of lavender light may have been just a bit theatrical, but her host was not impressed.

“There you are,” he said, not looking up from his red scaled tail, which he appeared to be grooming. “I was beginning to wonder if you were coming at all.”

Twilight’s eyes narrowed as she reinforced the magical shield that surrounded her.

“No, it’s not a trap,” the dragon said dismissively. “I just wanted to talk to one of you, and I knew that our mutual friend would tell you exactly where to find me once you reminded her of her place. I didn’t expect it would be you, specifically, though — I thought maybe it would be your blue friend.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Twilight growled, still glancing around the cave warily. Even if it wasn’t a trap, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to be aware of her surroundings.

“Not at all. Now, on to business: I am… well, now that I think of it, I’ve never had a name that could be spoken in your tongue.”

“Carmine,” Twilight suggested, gesturing impatiently for the dragon to get to the point.

“Very well,” he said, nodding. “To you, I will be Carmine.”

“What is it you want, Carmine?”

“I was hoping to change the nature of our little conflict.”

Twilight gave him a skeptical look for a long moment. “You want to surrender?”

Carmine chuckled, the deep sound resonating rhythmically through the cave. “Not exactly. But it doesn’t take any great foresight to see how this ends. Even if we manage to destroy all of Equestria — which I doubt we would — there’s no getting rid of you three, is there? The most we can hope to accomplish is to make you angry, and remove all your reasons for restraint.” The dragon shook his head. “Not a goal for which I have any enthusiasm, personally.”

Twilight frowned. “You’re defecting?”

“I’d rather not call it that, if it’s all the same to you. My aim is to reach an agreement with you that guides this conflict to a less destructive end, for all parties.”

“Ignoring questions about either your sincerity or your ability to deliver, what does that end look like to you?” Twilight asked.

“Largely the status quo of recent centuries. Dragons living peaceably in the same places we always have, leaving the other races to their own business. No more of this agitating the angry ones against you, no more wyvern breeding projects, no more pointless antagonization.”

“You’ve just listed all the elder’s favorite hobbies,” Twilight noted dryly. “You can just convince him to give them up?”

“Yes, well… the elder is not included this particular vision of the future.”

“Ah,” Twilight said, a knowing smile growing on her face as understanding dawned. “You want us to kill the elder for you, and install you in his place.”

Carmine’s wings ruffled slightly in the draconic equivalent of a shrug. “I’m sure you find ambition distasteful, but mine you could serve you well enough.”

“And why should I believe that you’d be any better than him?”

“I’m not insane,” Carmine said flatly. “For now, that ought to be enough.”

Twilight had long agreed with Carmine’s blunt assessment of the elder’s mental state, but this was the first time she’d heard of a dragon questioning it. “Why do the dragons follow him, if he’s so obviously crazy?” she asked.

“Some are afraid, some are just as lost as he is — or so I assume. Draconic politics are not easily explained. We rarely gather and don’t talk amongst ourselves often. I have no real idea what the popular sentiments might be on the elder and his war at the moment. He’s been laying the foundations for this for centuries — since before you were born. Nothing less would bring us together to the extent required for his little project.”

“What is he hoping to accomplish?” Twilight asked. The rare view into Draconic culture, or perhaps the lack thereof, was in its way more interesting than anything else Carmine had to offer.

“I have only theories, none of which are of particular use to us at the moment.”

“Indulge me,” Twilight insisted.

The dragon gave another of his wing shrugs. “The elder has lived since before the time of alicorns. Since before the time of any ponies, to hear him tell it. In those early days, he fancied himself a god — the greatest individual of the most powerful species. When your Celestia first appeared and showed him what real godhood looked like, he didn’t take it very well. The rest of you have only added insult to injury.

“For some time, he sought to equal you — to no avail, of course. He wasn’t linked to or in control of any fundamental aspect of our world. He couldn’t build a real nation of his own people — we simply don’t work that way. He commanded great destructive power, but no other sort. So, at some point, he decided that the only way he would know the power of a god was through the gods. The alicorns, that is.

“He knows he can’t defeat you in the long run — he’s crazy, not stupid. He might be able to change you, though, and in his current state, that may be enough. What I said earlier, about making you angry and removing all reason for restraint — that may be exactly the outcome he hopes for. Who could change a god but another god? Validation of his true greatness — or so his reasoning goes.”

With a start, Twilight thought back on who she’d become in the past four centuries. Secretive, reclusive, afraid of herself. Then there were the sisters — she now understood that their relationship for the whole period had oscillated between toxicity and near nonexistence, much as it had in the decades leading up to Twilight’s departure.

“You say he’s been at this for centuries?” she asked, keeping her voice as even as possible.

The dragon gave a disinterested nod.

Twilight couldn’t realistically attribute all the alicorns’ difficulties of the past few centuries to the elder, but neither could she discount the idea that with a few well timed and well placed nudges he might have made minor events into something much more severe. Specifically, she wondered what sort of influence he might have had on Spike after his exile.

She shook her head. Trying to find excuses for what Spike had become was not a productive use of her time. It didn’t matter now how it had happened.

“How do you propose to help us defeat him, then? Or were you just going to wait for us to clear off his perch so that you can move in?”

“I can offer insight into his plans. I don’t claim complete knowledge, but I am privy to some information. Also, I can offer dragonfire communication to your forces.”

“Certainly no way you could lead us astray with either of those, is there?” Twilight asked with a roll of her eyes.

Carmine laughed. “Yes, this could all be a clever little misdirection by our beloved elder, hallowed be his swollen presence. It’s your risk to take.”

Twilight snorted and turned toward the cave’s exit.

“Princess!” Carmine called after her. “Before you go, a free sample. While we were speaking I received the most fascinating dispatch.”

Twilight stopped. “Make it quick.”

“It’s been reported that Princess Luna met her unfortunate end above what I believe you call Baltimare Bay. Now, if this were true, I would certainly have to reassess my—”

Twilight disappeared before she could hear the rest of Carmine’s nonsense.

Luna couldn’t be dead. It was plainly impossible. Twilight had collected extensive data on the subject, and her results were conclusive: alicorns could not die. She was being silly, letting this worry her.

Baltimare Bay was a big place to hide a pony not trying to be found. Twilight had techniques for finding ponies making active use of magic, ponies in possession of certain types of magical artifacts, or ponies she had marked with a spell of her own. None of those were of use here.

Far below, choppy waves pulsed across a sea lit only by the stars and moon where they peeked through the patchy cloud cover that appeared to be the spent remains of a significant storm. There was nothing to differentiate one patch of water from the next. In the distance she could make out the lighthouse that sat on the northern side of the bay’s entrance. Behind her, the bright lights of Baltimare were only dimly visible behind a scattering of gray clouds blowing inland.

There was supposed to have been a battle here, if Ash Scribe was to be believed. Where was all the fighting? Where were the airships and dragons and whatever had definitely not killed Luna?

Luna would have engaged an enemy force as far from the city as she could without leaving it completely open to attack. Maybe the fighting was farther out to sea. Twilight pushed forward, resisting the urge to teleport or speed up, lest she miss something important. It wasn’t as if time was a concern, since Luna was just fine.

A small table floating in the water was the first piece of wreckage to catch her eye. Even with her pegasus vision, she only saw it because it intersected the moon’s reflection on the water’s surface. After she knew what she was looking for, it was everywhere. Small pieces of furniture, clothing, spears, and shreds of the thick fabric used for airship balloons dotted the sea surface in every direction. At least one airship had gone down here. She probably wouldn’t be able to tell which just by looking through the wreckage on the surface, as the heaviest parts would have sunk by now.

Had Luna been aboard when it went down? That might explain where the dragons had gotten the idea that she was dead. Twilight’s heart sank as she spotted the first body in the wreckage. It was a gryphon’s, which gave her a moment of guilty relief. There were more as she continued, almost all gryphons and wyverns. She’d spotted two ponies by the time she reached the mouth of the bay, both pegasi with talon wounds that suggested they’d met their ends in aerial skirmish. It seemed the airship had been empty before it was destroyed.

That was good, Twilight supposed, but it didn’t help her find Luna. Another probing of local magic currents verified that Luna wasn’t using any magic at the moment, which made complete sense because Luna had never been in any danger and certainly wouldn’t need to call on any magical tricks to help her with whatever non-event she was engaged in. It was no cause for concern whatsoever, and as such Twilight was definitely not concerned.

She wasn’t about to do anything drastic.

She came to a stop and closed her eyes, hovering close above the water. Her horn began to glow, growing rapidly more intense until a even a close observer would have hardly been able to make out her shape in the overwhelming brightness. Below her, dark waves turned a brilliant white in an expanding radius around her, as her awareness spread across the sea’s surface.

In a place beyond her normal senses, she found, identified, and ignored pieces of wreckage, fish, wyvern and gryphon corpses, until finally she touched something that, ever so faintly, touched back. She opened her eyes, themselves glowing white, and was there. Below her, only visible because of the quickly dimming light in the water, was a clump of dark fur that Twilight might have mistaken for a tangle of seaweed in this light if she didn’t know better.

She pulled Luna telekinetically out of the water and towards herself, inspecting her carefully as she did so. She was clearly unconscious — a nasty cut across the back of her head with accompanying swelling suggested a cause for that. Otherwise she was waterlogged, but undamaged. Of course Luna was alright. Twilight hadn’t worried for a second.

It was a struggle to keep her eyes open by the time she finally found Nimbus. It was funny -- she had avoided sleep for weeks after Stonehoof. Granted, she had been relying on spells that drained her in other ways, but it had been worth it to keep the dreams away. Now, after several days of uninterrupted sleep, she could hardly make it a few hours.

The deck crew didn’t know how to greet her. They settled for an astonished silence as she set gently down, a still-sleeping Luna floating in her grip beside her. The captain was the first to speak.

“Is she alright?” His eyes were wide with a concern that made Twilight wonder how long Luna had been missing.

Twilight gave him a dull stare as she considered her response. “Fine. She got bored, decided to take a nap.”

The bravado drew a nervous half-chuckle from a few, but most remained silent. Luna murmured something largely incomprehensible, as she’d been doing occasionally for most of the flight in from the bay. Twilight was able to pick out a few words, but doubted any of the crew could from where they stood. Her hard eyes panned across the deck, daring anypony to acknowledge the indignity. None did.

“She’s bleeding.”

Twilight gave Luna a surprised glance, then suppressed a chuckle of her own. Apparently her own bandages, which she’d hastily applied after her tumble with Vespida, had come undone as she’d carried Luna back to the ship. “It’s not her blood,” she said, a dark humor in her voice suggesting that the blood was all that remained of vanquished foes.

Not a pleasant idea in normal times, but probably something this particular crew was receptive to at the moment. Another ripple of anxious laughter spread across the deck. Twilight was too tired to give them any real reassurance. They wouldn’t notice or worry themselves about the fact that Twilight was bleeding. All eyes were on Luna.

“She needs a bunk,” Twilight said after a moment’s awkward wait.

Had they thought Twilight would just hold Luna there for them to gawk at indefinitely? They probably weren’t thinking at all, Twilight reminded herself. They’d recently finished a long battle, were running only on momentum, and had been confronted with a situation for which they had no drilled-in response.

“Right away.”

Twilight looked longingly at the bed onto which she’d just lowered Luna. No, not the bed — maybe the not-quite-alicorn-sized patch of empty floor next to it. Maybe there was another cabin available. Probably not — it appeared that Nimbus had absorbed most of the evacuees from Cirrus. The officers had fallen all over each other to offer up their cabins for Luna, but might not be so eager to accommodate Twilight. Not that she wanted them to.

She couldn’t rest yet anyhow. There was still a long list of things to do. Checking on Celestia’s situation in the south, and offering any help needed. Returning to Canterlot to make sure the city had calmed down after the invasion. Probably a thousand other things she hadn’t thought of yet.

Luna mumbled something again. Twilight thought she recognized the words ‘purple’, ‘salad’, ‘carriage’ and ‘shovel’ and was momentarily curious about how they could be connected into any kind of coherent thought. She wondered what Luna’s slumber was like. Head trauma dreams were usually not the best kind, but Luna seemed at least to be at peace.

Twilight shook her head as if to clear it. She didn’t have time to ponder Luna’s mutterings right now. Just one little spell to keep going. The exhaustion would still be with her of course, but she’d get her alertness back and the only cost was a sort of emotional deadening — hardly a cost at all in these times.

She took a breath, gathered her concentration, and woke up in the bed with sunlight streaming in the cabin’s lone porthole.

Odd. Alarming, too, or it should have been, but Twilight was inexplicably calm. The warm bed, combined with a stillness that ought have been impossible on a warship less than a day removed from heavy combat, seemed to disarm her better instincts.

Judging by the angle of the light, she’d slept for at least ten hours. As far as she could tell, the world hadn’t fallen apart without her. There were no alarm horns blasting through the ship, no frenzied footsteps clattering across the decks overhead. Still, she probably ought to get up and at least get an update on the situation.

Luna’s presence next to her felt so natural that it took her a few moments to notice it. In a bed built for a normal pony that now somehow managed to fit two fully grown alicorns, it seemed like that ought to be harder to miss. Twilight’s left side was pressed entirely against Luna, and a blue foreleg hooked around Twilight’s upper body. The position was unmistakably intimate.

Twilight closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, trying to contain a rising panic. She wasn’t ready for this. Luna probably wasn’t either. To say that there were important unresolved matters between them understated the situation in every possible way.

There was a knock at the door. Twilight ignored it. Probably a crewer unaware that the cabin’s assigned occupant was bunking elsewhere for the time being.

How best could she extract herself from this position? Anything sudden would probably wake Luna. Twilight might be able to slide out of the bed without disturbing her too much, but their degree of entanglement made that plan dubious at best. Around the time she was considering techniques for temporarily liquefying the bed and the floor beneath it, allowing her to simply sink through it to the next deck below, the door opened. Twilight’s eyes snapped open in surprise and locked onto the figure standing in the doorway.

Celestia stood there digesting the scene for what seemed like a very long time, shock on her face gradually giving way to her standard controlled expression. “Oh,” she said. Filler words from Celestia were a once-in-a-century occurrence, if that. “I see you’re not quite ready. Very well, I’ll be on the command deck.”

The door closed, and Twilight continued to stare at it for some time longer. In spite of her general mental disarray at the moment, some corner of her mind noted that Celestia was accounted for and seemed to be in good operating condition. She could at least check that box off the list.

Eventually, seemingly of their own volition, Twilight’s eyes drifted slowly to the left, where they met with Luna’s waiting gaze. The other alicorn’s head rested sideways on the pillow, her posture and breathing still suggesting slumber. Only those alert and absurdly blue eyes gave her away. It was unclear how long she’d been staring at Twilight. She certainly didn’t look like she’d only just awoken.

“Good morning,” Luna said. The words were stiff to near the point of formality, but there was also a tinge of amusement to them. She was enjoying Twilight’s clear discomfort.

“Good morning.”

Silence fell again for several moments. Neither alicorn moved.

“Well, we’d better see what’s—” Twilight started.

“Twilight,” Luna interrupted. “You promised we would talk.”

Twilight didn’t remember promising any such thing, but didn’t know that any good could come of arguing the point. It was going to happen sooner or later. “Alright, let’s talk.”

They did not talk, at least not for a while. Twilight rolled out of the bed and moved to stand near the cabin’s porthole while Luna sat up on the bed.

“I understand why you left,” Luna said finally. “‘I don’t understand why you didn’t return until now. I very much do not—”

Her voice broke. She swallowed and began again. “I do not understand why you didn’t — how you could stand not to — give me some indication that you lived.”

Twilight pretended to take in the view through the porthole as she considered her answer. “It seemed like the best thing for Equestria.”

“Don’t,” Luna said sharpy, shaking her head. “Don’t spin me this tale about believing Celestia and I were better off without you.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, surprised Celestia had told her about that. “That was part of it. Maybe it was misguided. Can you honestly tell me it was a complete failure though? Before I left, you were at each other’s throats almost constantly. There was no way your relationship was sustainable in the long term. It would have torn the kingdom apart — probably violently.”

Luna snorted. “Congratulations, you inflicted enough pain to deaden our passions for a time. Does that justify it to you?”

“The job isn’t about being happy,” Twilight said with a grimace.

“You would hurt us — hurt me — like that again, if you thought it would buy another few centuries of something that looked like stability to you?”

Twilight hesitated. “I doubt I could die again to similar effect.”

“Evasion,” Luna snapped.

Twilight searched for words for a time. “If that were my only option, yes I would. This world’s wellbeing can’t hinge on our relationship. I can’t foresee that kind of scenario now, though. What I did wasn’t the best course of action at the time, but I had neither the experience nor perspective to see that.”

“Is that meant to be an apology?” Luna asked.

“No. Was an apology what you were looking for?”

“Would that be so wrong?”

Twilight shook her head. “I am sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for not finding a better way.”

They were silent again for several minutes, Luna looking down at the bed, Twilight out the porthole.

“You said that was part of why you didn’t return.” Luna said finally.

“Yes.” Twilight let the confirmation hang in the air for a minute before expounding upon it.

“I was standing in the rubble of Mareis before I let myself acknowledge the depth of our failure. Not just with Spike — he was one element of a larger problem. All the creatures that jumped on his bandwagon, the disarray that let them gather so much influence so quickly — those spoke to much deeper issues than one angry dragon. We didn’t see it, so of course we didn’t respond to it. I thought about that for a long time before I came back to civilization in any form.

“We lacked the tools to understand what was happening. And while considering that, I realized that I didn’t contribute much of anything in that respect to our triumvirate. Everything I knew about ruling — leadership, diplomacy, politics — I learned from the two of you. I’d grown up in the palace, taking the word of any convenient princess as gospel. I could only be a faint echo in any true debate, with no perspective of my own. That failure of mine went a long way towards enabling the deadlock between you and Celestia.

“Cue centuries of a stagnant Equestria, while the rest of the world grew more dangerous around us. I needed something that was truly my own to bring to the table. I needed to build my own understanding of both Equestria and the world outside our borders — without the influence of either you or Celestia.”

“You didn’t have to let us think you dead for that,” Luna said. Her eyes were boring into the floor next to Twilight’s hooves.

“I don’t know whether that’s true or not. Many things seem less absolute now than they did then. Still, I can’t imagine revealing myself and then continuing to have no contact — and contact is influence, however small.”

“And you needed four centuries of this isolation?” Luna growled the question.

“No. Not for that.” Twilight seemed to lose her voice as she replied.

Luna finally tore her gaze away from the floor, her glower softening to a questioning look as her eyes met Twilight’s.

When Twilight spoke again she was still having difficulty putting any breath behind her words. Luna strained visibly to hear. “What I did to Spike… it was beyond violent. Beyond destructive. It wasn’t something I wanted to believe I was capable of doing — and I didn’t, right up to the moment when I…”

She paused and took a deep breath. “He was my oldest friend. I never stopped caring about him. If I could do that to him, could I do it to you? Could I do it to Celestia, or Canterlot, or Ponyvile, or—”

She stopped again as the breath was nearly squeezed out of her by Luna’s sudden embrace. The elder alicorn’s wing pulled them tightly together before Twilight had processed the fact that Luna was no longer sitting on the bed.

“I may never truly understand or accept all of what you’ve said,” Luna said in a low, firm voice, almost directly into Twilight’s ear. “But the fear — you’ll never have to explain that to me.”

Not trusting herself to speak again, Twilight nodded weakly and leaned into the embrace. They stood like that for some time before Luna slowly pulled her wing back to her side.

“We should go,” Luna said, seeming conflicted about the idea as she spoke. “See what’s become of our world while we slept.”

Chapter 9

Unlike that of Cirrus, the captain’s office aboard Nimbus was an actual office, designed at standard naval proportions for a single pony’s use. Thus the Princesses found themselves in the senior staff briefing room, which was still a bit cramped, but workable. The stools around the map table that dominated the room were standard navy issue — unsuitable for alicorns, in other words. The three stood awkwardly around the table with nothing but each other to focus on.

It would have been easier if Twilight and Luna didn’t seem to repel each other to opposite corners of the room — an odd reversal of the situation Celestia had stumbled into this morning. Celestia waited through a few moments of awkward silence as the two alicorns avoided eye contact with one another before admitting to herself that she would have to be the one to drive this discussion. She cleared her throat.

“We’ve all been rather busy since last we saw each other. Even when it’s not disrupted, our messenger network isn’t ideal for days like these, so before we all flit off to different corners of the globe again I was hoping we could update one another on everything that’s happened. Luna, would you like to go first?”

Luna straightened and locked her gaze rigidly on Celestia, as if any accidental glimpse of Twilight would have some dire consequence. “The battle over Baltimare Bay went perhaps as well as we could have hoped given the strength of enemy forces. We’ll have to revisit our assumptions about what the dragons can field, as we encountered much greater numbers than we previously thought possible. The loss of Cirrus is a heavy blow, but I considered its sacrifice a worthwhile trade to prevent casualties among our forces.”

Celestia had spoken to the captains of both Nimbus and Cirrus this morning. Enough to know that Luna wasn’t telling the whole story. She decided to prod. “I’m told there was some worry about you after the flagship was abandoned. Did something happen?”

Luna quite clearly didn’t want to talk about it. As if at the flip of a switch, Luna and Twilight had gone from each completely avoiding the other’s gaze, to what appeared to be a fairly involved nonverbal conversation.

“Any such worries were misguided,” Luna said finally, prompting a slow shake of Twilight’s head.

Between Twilight’s reaction and Celestia’s own memories of the moon’s bright flash the night before, Celestia knew something rather significant had happened. It was just as clear that Luna wasn’t willing to talk about it now, though. Pushing would only agitate her; better to change the subject.

“Twilight, you woke up at a convenient time,” Celestia said.

Twilight made a sour face. “A few hours earlier might have been better. Canterlot was completely overrun by Vespida’s changelings before I could do anything about it.”

The look of shock on Luna’s face suggested that this was the first she’d heard of changelings. Celestia had gotten a rather muddled description of the invasion herself when she’d stopped briefly in Canterlot earlier in the morning — enough to know that changelings has been in the capital, but not much otherwise. That it was Vespida and her brood raised a number of questions, but they were probably only of academic interest at this point.

“I trust they didn’t present any challenge to you?” Celestia asked.

“It didn’t go quite as I’d hoped. Vespida was at peak strength when she found me.” Twilight held up her right foreleg for inspection. A long, jagged strip of fur was missing, showing the still-healing skin underneath. Even some scabbing was still visible, which said a lot about the depth of the wound, given alicorns’ natural healing abilities. “In the end I got rid of them though. I wasn’t able to stay in Canterlot after that, but hopefully they were able to restore order once the changelings were gone.”

“I was there this morning, as it happens. Ash and the guard were only just getting everything sorted out,” Celestia said, not really bothering to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Leaving the capital in disarray was hardly the way to build her reputation among a population of ponies still acclimating to the idea of her very existence. “You left Canterlot to join Luna here?”

“No.” Twilight shook her head, scowling in response to Celestia’s unsubtle implication. “I wanted to find who was actually behind the attack; Vespida wouldn’t have done it on her own initiative. It wasn’t hard to get her to tell me who and where.”

“So?” Celestia asked.

“A dragon. Not the elder himself, but fairly senior by the look of him.”

Luna raised a suspicious eyebrow. “You found him that easily?”

“He wanted to be found,” Twilight said.

Luna frowned. “Explain.”

“He waited where he knew Vespida would tell me to look. He wanted to talk to us.”

Celestia found herself sharing Luna’s suspicion. “He arranged the changeling invasion just to get our attention?”

Twilight seemed uncertain. “I got the impression that it was already part of the elder’s plan. Carmine just used it for to his own purposes as well.”

“And what was he so eager to discuss?” Celestia asked.

“He wants us to oust the elder for him,” Twilight said. “In return he’ll share intelligence of dubious quality.”

Celestia couldn’t help but smirk at that. “I assume that’s not exactly how he presented it. Did he tell you why he wants to turn against the elder?”

Twilight met Celestia’s smirk with a slight grin of her own. “He thinks the elder is crazy — obsessed with his own lack of divinity, so he’s just been poking at us to pass the time. My words again.” She paused and her grin disappeared. “To hear him tell it, the elder has poured centuries into trying to affect us in various ways, and this war of his is just the latest and most visible manipulation.”

“Nonsense,” Luna declared. “Misinformation to make us doubt ourselves.”

Twilight didn’t seem so sure. She wasn’t as easy to read as she had been when she was younger, but Celestia thought she saw deep misgivings in the short glance she shot at Luna before looking down at her own hooves.

“Did you take him up on his offer?” Celestia asked.

“I wouldn’t,” Twilight protested as she looked back up in surprise. “Not without speaking to the two of you first.”

“You told him we’d get back to him, then?”

Twilight hesitated. “I left a bit abruptly. There was news.” She looked at Luna again, but this time Celestia couldn’t read her expression at all. “The dragons may believe that Luna is dead.”

“What would give them that idea?” Luna demanded, fixing Twilight with an intense glare. To Celestia’s eye, she was either offended by the mere thought of it, or feeling defensive about some shame she wished to hide. The latter fit better with Celestia’s observations that there was some part of the previous evening Luna did not want shared.

“It was reported by dragonfire to Carmine. He passed it on to me as a sample of sorts. I don’t think he believed it, which might mean that others are skeptical as well, but the story is out there, anyway.”

“That little whelp must have bragged to his entire race,” Luna growled. “I doubt he told them he merely watched as I was knocked over the head with my own airship. No, he wove some glorious tale about how he—”

In the back of her mind, Celestia noted the revealed details of what Luna hadn’t wanted her to know, but now there were much more important things to consider. The possibilities were overwhelming; she could hardly believe they’d been given such a gift.

“Maybe they don’t know if they believe it yet, but we could help them,” Celestia said, keeping her voice even despite rising excitement.

“What?” Luna snapped, looking sharply at Celestia.

“Think about the advantages that would grant us,” Celestia urged. “You could be anywhere; they’d never look for you. They would believe us crippled in your absence.”

Luna seemed to calm herself as her tactical sense overcame her wounded pride. “To maintain the deception, I would have to stay out of the war. Hardly an advantage.”

“You would just have to stay out of sight,” Celestia countered. “There’s plenty you can do from the shadows — or is that not the kind of thing you enjoy anymore?”

“How would we go about it?” Twilight asked.

Half-formed plans were still swirling in Celestia’s mind. They all had one thing in common, though, and she didn’t think Twilight would much like it.

“How do you feel about playing the avenger?” Celestia asked, almost timidly.

A look of suspicion immediately found its way onto Twilight’s face. “What do you mean?”

“Show the dragons how angry you are about Luna’s supposed death. Remind them that you’re the pony who left a crater in place of a major city the last time you were upset.”

Twilight flinched visibly at the blunt retelling of Mareis’ end. “That’s not who I want to be. Not even if it’s an act.”

“You want to win don’t you?” Celestia asked. “You didn’t have any trouble showing the elder we meant business when you crushed your prison orb in front of him.”

“That was different,” Twilight said, her voice rising along with a burning anger in her eyes. “Those wyverns were already dead. Worse than dead. And the dragon… I gave him a chance. He chose his fate.”

Celestia raised a curious eyebrow. She hadn’t heard any of this before, but decided now wasn’t the time to press for details. Despite her defense of the act, it was clear from her reaction that Twilight wasn’t at peace with it. Dwelling on it would only make convincing her more difficult.

“I’m not saying you have to go blow another hole in Prance,” she said, falling unconsciously into the soothing tone that had once worked so well with Twilight. “Just show them enough of the wrath of the goddess of magic that they think they’ve hit a nerve.”

“Why me?” Twilight demanded. “Why can’t you do it?”

Luna, who had apparently been content to fade into the background for this part of the conversation, caught Celestia with wry look. Celestia sent a matching grimace back.

“The dragons don’t forget quite as easily as our ponies, you know.” Celestia spoke carefully, watching Twilight for signs of agitation. “Your relationship with Luna was hardly a secret, before. They surely remember it.”

The room was silent for a moment. It was the first time any of them had spoken openly of this since Twilight’s return, at least in Celestia’s presence.

When Celestia spoke again, it was more to break the silence than because she was desperate to continue the conversation. “Besides which, I have a long history of stability under such circumstances. You are quite the opposite in that respect, I’m sorry to say.”

Twilight glared at Celestia, but said nothing. There was nothing to say, and Twilight, to her credit, knew it.

“I don’t think I can do it,” Twilight said finally. The anger was drained from her voice, replaced by something like grief. “I’ve never been good at faking that kind of thing.”

“I can help,” Luna said.

Celestia looked at her in surprise. Luna, in turn, was looking at Twilight, a reassuring expression on her face. Celestia wasn’t sure whether she was imagining that vaguely unsettling glint in Luna’s eyes; Twilight didn’t seem to see it, as she gave Luna a slow nod after studying her for a long moment.

“You’ll have to make yourself scarce, of course, Luna,” Celestia said, putting her sudden anxiety aside. She was probably just inventing problems where none truly were. “Maybe we can find a way to let you coordinate forces without giving yourself away, until we’re ready to use you openly again.”

“Has word of Luna’s return to Nimbus already been sent out?” Twilight asked. “The entire command deck crew and a few others saw us arrive.”

“I don’t believe so,” Celestia said, considering the possibility. “Our courier networks were disrupted rather severely by so many simultaneous threats. As of this morning, Canterlot hadn’t heard the outcome of the battle here. I had to come myself to see what had happened.”

“We’ll have to talk to the crew members that saw her last night, and explain to them that they did not. Even then, we’ll have to find somewhere out of the way for them to stay in the meantime.” Twilight seemed skeptical; probably still searching for reasons the plan couldn’t work because she didn’t like her role in it.

“One of us can maintain command of Nimbus. It’s the flagship now anyhow. There will be no crew transfers until we’re ready.”

“Won’t that look suspicious?” Twilight asked.

Celestia smiled. “It will. It will seem as if like we’re trying to conceal news of something. With the report they’ve received from one of our own, along with the show you’ll put on for them, what do you think they’ll assume we would hide?”

Twilight let out a resigned sigh. “Yes. That could work.”

“I think we have a plan, then,” Celestia said, and turned toward the door.

“You haven’t told us what happened with the mammoths,” Luna said.

“Not much of interest,” Celestia said, turning back again. “They were just a diversion, I’m afraid. The dragons drove them into Equestria by setting fire to their home range. We’ll be hosting them at a camp we’re building in the south until we can help them heal their homeland.”

Luna scowled. “Can we really afford to be taking care of them when our resources should be spent—”

“Who led them?” Twilight interrupted. Her displeasure seemed forgotten, her bright eyes focused intently on Celestia.

“I’m sorry?” Celestia asked, confused by the sudden interest.

“The herd leader, who was it?”

“Arko, was his name, I think,” Celestia said. She ought have remembered more easily, but she’d had a lot on her mind and hadn’t actually interacted much with the mammoth. “The one I spoke to was named Mora, though — she was the only one that spoke any Equestrian.”

“Mora,” Twilight repeated, recognition clear in her features. “I knew her — well, her mother, mostly. Mora was very young then. Her mother used to lead the herd. They owe me a favor, provided I can convince them I’m the same pony. We may be able to use them.”

“I see,” Celestia said, exchanging a glance with Luna. Every significant conversation with Twilight seemed to produce a smattering of hints about the lives she’d been living since Mareis — none of which they ever had time to explore. It almost seemed as if she saved these little tidbits for times when she knew neither Celestia nor Luna would be tempted to follow up. “We can discuss that later. They’ll need time to recover, anyway. The journey was quite draining for them.”

“Fine, the mammoths will keep,” Luna said, waving a hoof dismissively. “So, I’m playing dead. Twilight is playing bereaved avenger. What are you doing, Celestia?”

“I was thinking I’d return to Canterlot, first of all. One of us should be publicly visible and calm for our ponies for at least a short time today.”

“She’s playing Celestia,” Twilight quipped across the table to Luna, prompting a slight grin and possibly even a suppressed giggle.

Celestia paused a moment to analyze the interaction, her gaze flicking between the faces of both alicorns several times while she tried to decide what she thought of it. She was torn between optimism that their relationship had apparently rebounded to the point where they could share a joke, and dread at the realization that she was their only common target for any such humor. It was a wash. She pressed on.

“Yesterday was quite trying for large parts of the kingdom. Besides just making an appearance, there’s the normal bureaucracy to deal with. Funerals and promotions after the battle. Speeches and explanations. We can’t pretend we aren’t at war now, and morale among both the military and general populace will need to be carefully managed.”

“Bureaucracy,” Luna said. There was a special sort of disdain that could really only be expressed by Luna, and only when uttering that exact word. “Isn’t that what you have Ash Scribe for?”

“Ash can handle arrangements and details, certainly, but he’s hardly an inspiring presence, particularly among the military. At the moment we don’t have any compelling public figures besides ourselves for the ponies to rally around. Captain Sails might do eventually — I was thinking we should promote him to fleet admiral. But until we can pretty up his story and get it into the newspapers, he’s just another uniform as far as the populace is concerned. Twilight is still largely unknown to this generation, so she’s not ideal. You’re dead, Luna, in case you’ve forgotten. That leaves me.”

“Someone needs to speak to this Carmine dragon that Twilight met,” Luna said. “It can’t be me until we know where he stands. Twilight won’t be able to do it until after her little show, for the same reason.”

Celestia mentally estimated how long she’d need for what she’d already planned for herself. There really wasn’t enough time, but that had never stopped her before. “I should be able to find time for it. Can you tell me where to find him, Twilight?”

Twilight nodded. “If he still wants anything to do with us, he’ll either be waiting there or leave a clue as to where he went.”

“It’s settled then,” Celestia said. “I’ll return to Canterlot. Twilight, I think you should take Nimbus — I don’t want it sitting over Canterlot, even if nopony disembarks.”

Luna nodded her agreement. “I’ll return to the capital as well — after I speak with Twilight, that is. I’m well practiced in staying invisible there, so until we decide how I’m to actually further our efforts, that is where I’ll wait.”

Before Celestia could reach it, there was a knock at the door. She hoped that whatever it was wouldn’t require them to stay in this room any longer.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice raised slightly so that the pony in the corridor could hear.

“A critical message, Your Highness.” Captain Sails’ slightly muffled voice came through the door. Apparently he was now serving as a courier, since he had no ship to captain.

Celestia sighed and pulled the door open. “Enter.”

The Captain stepped in with a hurried bow and closed the door. “Princesses, I’m sorry to interrupt, but—”

“Go ahead, Captain,” Celestia said, trying to keep her voice pleasant but unable to completely conceal her impatience.

Captain Sails flinched slightly at the interruption, but did as instructed. “The Stonehoof garrison has fallen.”

The room fell silent, Captain Sails standing awkwardly next to the doorway as the three alicorns exchanged looks of surprise and displeasure.

“The village?” Twilight asked.

“Evacuated,” Sails said. “The last scouts out report that the attackers were only interested in the something under the town hall.”

“If they got—” Twilight started.

“Was there anything else, Captain?” Celestia interrupted. Twilight would apparently need some time to remember what conversations were and were not suitable to hold in front of subordinates.

“No, Your Highness.”

“That will be all, then. Thank you,” Celestia said.

Captain Sails bowed again and exited.

“Any idea what that means?” Celestia asked once he was gone.

“There are magical properties to dragon bones,” Twilight said. “I don’t really know much about them beyond that, and I was never tempted to… play with them. Dragon magic is different to ours in many ways I don’t yet understand.”

“If my count is correct, that is the fourth prong of their attacks yesterday,” Luna said. “Baltimare Bay, the mammoths, Canterlot and now Stonehoof. If that was their true objective, it was judged to be worth two attacks and another diversion to get whatever of value was in those bones. We have to assume it’s potent.”

“Maybe Carmine can shed light on their motives,” Celestia suggested.

“Or mislead us completely,” Luna added.

Celestia smiled. “Even lies can be instructive, provided you can identify them as such. Does this change our plans?”

“It might make speaking to Carmine an even higher priority,” Twilight said. “Otherwise, I don’t think we have enough information to change anything.”

Luna seemed to agree.

“Very well. No time to waste.”

Ash Scribe’s patience was clearly near its limit as he closed the door to Celestia’s office and turned to face her. The two had just finished a leisurely walk through the most visible parts of the palace complex following Celestia’s arrival by carriage. Along the way they’d talked about factions of parliament, infrastructure plans for the city and beyond, and public opinion on a few upcoming initiatives — none of those being matters that either of them actually wanted or needed to discuss. Still, after yesterday, Celestia needed to make a point of being seen, and of course she couldn’t discuss details of the war — or anything else even remotely sensitive — in the same places where she could meet that objective.

Ash took a deep breath, his expression suggesting that he’d practiced what he was about to say before a mirror more than a few times.

“Princess, you have to say something to everypony about Princess Twilight. Now that the average pony has started to see the effects of everything that’s going on, they connect it all to her return. You’re acting like it’s a non-event, and it’s letting rumor take over. They need to know that you trust her and why you trust her, and that she didn’t bring this mess with her.” He paused, as if weighing whether to continue. “And so do I.”

Celestia gave him a measuring look, considering how much she could share with him without making either of their jobs unnecessarily difficult. Not much, in this case.

“I understand. Thank you for your counsel,” she said, trying to insert a bit of appreciation into what was otherwise her standard diplomatic smile.

“That sounds like a brush-off,” Ash said, looking disappointed but not surprised.

Celestia suppressed a sigh. If he was going to sulk about it, she had to give him something.

“It’s not, I assure you. Nothing can be done immediately. Twilight is away and I’m not sure exactly when she’ll be back, or what her disposition will be when she is. I know it’s frustrating, and I know you get stuck managing the side effects. I do appreciate it. I wish I could have thrown an impromptu gala celebrating the return of Princess Twilight and expounding upon her virtues for all Equestria the moment she revealed herself. That wasn’t possible then, for a number of reasons — foremost being that it might well have driven her back into hiding. Now, she has an important duty she has to complete before we can even consider her image problems.”

“As you say, Princess,” Ash said. If he was reassured at all, he didn’t show it. “Will you be holding court today?”

“No.”

Ash’s expression soured further.

“I need you to arrange two events for me,” Celestia said before he could complain. “The first will be a military funeral for those lost in the Battle of Baltimare Bay. The guard should have a final casualty list to us within the next couple of days. Try to make it about a week from today. The second should be at least two days later — a military appreciation event, at which we’ll be promoting Captain Sails to fleet admiral. Keep the agenda flexible on that one. We’ll try to feature Twilight heavily there, if conditions are favorable.”

“Yes, Princess,” Ash said, scowling at his note pad as he wrote. “Anything else?”

“Princess Luna will return to Canterlot later today. She won’t arrive by carriage — she’ll be keeping a low profile in general. She may need to talk with you at some point. You’re to make no mention of any interactions with her to anypony else.”

Ash looked up briefly, his eyes questioning, then his gaze returned to his notes as he wrote. Here, at least, was something Celestia could use to make Ash feel included and trusted. He would need to know about the Luna situation anyway, since she’d need him to pass on orders while she was keeping herself out of sight.

“We’re trying to convince certain parties that she’s dead,” Celestia said.

Ash seemed to puzzle over that for a moment. “I see,” he lied. “Wouldn’t it be easier to hold a funeral?”

“A bit too obvious. They would expect us to hide it for as long as we can, so we’re not going to say or do anything public on the matter. Besides that, it’s better if the citizenry does not believe this; we need to keep morale as high as possible. Luna won’t be seen until it’s time to reveal her.”

“And when might that be?” Ash asked.

“That remains to be seen,” Celestia said. Ash’s scowl returned — he clearly didn’t like the idea of playing along with the ruse for any length of time. Celestia resisted the urge to lecture him on the requirements of the job. He’d had a difficult couple of days; she could afford to let his little snit play out.

“Will there be anything else, Princess?”

“I’ll be departing again shortly. Would you walk with me back to my carriage?”

Ash opened his mouth, closed it, took a deep breath and held it a moment, then slowly released it. His shoulders slumped and head bowed down as his lungs deflated with an audible hiss.

“Of course, Princess.”

In the range of snow capped peaks and jagged ridges that sat between Cloudsdale and Van Hoover, Celestia found the cave where Twilight met Carmine. Except at midday, its entry would be hidden by shadows of surrounding mountains such that it would be nearly impossible to see except by ascending from the valley below. It was only because Celestia knew where to look that she found it at all.

The most popular routes through these mountains, including the railroad, took advantage of lower elevations and gentler grades to the south. Celestia’s carriage drivers were likely the first ponies in decades to set hoof on the valley floor as they landed. Not surprising, then, that the cave was not included on any maps of the region.

Mountain goats dotted the steepest slopes of the surrounding mountains, none sparing a glance for Celestia’s party. Their apparent disinterest in everything but scuffling around on cliffsides — maintained for as long as Celestia had known of them — was at once perplexing and enviable. On days like this, Celestia wouldn’t mind having her entire worldview shrunk down to a question of which ledge to jump for next.

She left her drivers and guards with the carriage and flew at a leisurely pace to the cave mouth, making no effort to hide her approach. There was no sign that it had served as a long-term residence for a dragon any time recently, but it could definitely fill that role if needed. She’d have to remember that, if peace wasn’t reestablished soon. She might need to order a survey for similarly ignored caves inside Equestria’s borders, as well.

Going by appearances, Carmine had not been expecting her. He was sitting near the mouth of the cave as she approached, alternately grumbling to himself and glancing nervously towards the exit. She stood silhouetted against the cave mouth for several moments — impossible to miss, she would think — waiting for him to notice her.

Finally, a sharp inhalation suggested that she’d been spotted. The dragon took a few seconds to gather his composure.

“Princess,” he greeted, his attempt at a carefree tone marred by his evident uncertainty.

Celestia waited, knowing an advantage when she saw one.

“I had nothing to do with what happened to your sister.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow and maintained her silence.

“You can ask the other one. I was with her when it happened! I told her about it. I didn’t have to do that!”

Interesting — if Twilight’s description was to be trusted, Carmine hadn’t been bothered by or convinced of the news of Luna’s supposed demise a day ago. Something had changed his mind in the interim, and done so in such a way that he was now visibly frightened by the ponies he had only recently sought to negotiate with. Twilight’s fears about being unable to sell the act were clearly unfounded.

“Tell me everything you know,” Celestia said slowly, her voice low.

“It’s just as I told your Twilight Sparkle yesterday. I received word that Princess Luna had been killed in battle while we were speaking.”

Celestia narrowed her eyes, though she was unsure whether the subtlety of the expression would be lost on a dragon not accustomed to reading ponies’ comparatively miniscule features.

“It was reported by a younger dragon that was only present at the battle to observe,” Carmine added when it became clear that Celestia expected more information from him. “He was to report on the presence of any of you at the bay, but Luna flushed him out. They fought, and… he didn’t offer any details. It struck me as either an exaggeration or a fabrication. A whelpling looking to make a name for himself.”

“You’ve changed your mind,” Celestia observed in low monotone.

“Whatever happened made somepony extremely angry,” Carmine said, a sardonic note making its way into his voice as he seemed to grow confident that Celestia had not come to harm him. “Two of the North Sea sentries are missing without a trace. The entire western coast of Gryphonia is ablaze with flames that cannot be extinguished by normal means. The gryphons’ ancient nesting sites have been cast into the sea.” He gave a short chuckle. “The gryphon ambassador has informed our liasson that the empire can no longer be a part of our efforts.”

Celestia contained her reaction thanks to long practice and force of will. Could the dragon be lying? He’d been visibly uneasy even before he’d noticed Celestia’s arrival, but it was possible that he’d been aware of her presence for longer than he let on. Still, he would have to know of their plans for a lie like this to make sense. Surely there was no way their discussion could have reached him already — even if there was a spy aboard Nimbus who had somehow managed to overhear their conversation without being noticed, the few unicorns on the crew were nowhere near advanced enough to learn how to send dragonfire messages. And when would they have had the opportunity to form the necessary link, if they were?

It had to be genuine — or, rather, Carmine had to genuinely believe it. Whether it was true or not, it was the news the dragons were sharing amongst themselves. How long had it been since she’d left Nimbus this morning? An hour and a half in the carriage to Canterlot, two hours in Canterlot being conspicuously present and speaking to Ash, and two more hours of carriage time to reach this cave. Not quite six hours for the reluctant agreement Twilight had shown when they’d spoken to become whatever fiery passion now fueled this destruction — destruction that was much more severe than anything they had discussed.

Her mind wound back to that shadow in Luna’s eyes as she’d promised to help Twilight carry off her act. She would need to talk to her sister upon returning to Canterlot. A part of Celestia’s mind was already sorting the potential consequences into the proper categories: effects on Twilight’s mental state, effects on Equestria’s relationships with other races, effects on the current conflict, and assorted others. Too many to think about in depth.

For the moment, she needed to focus on immediate practical realities. Even if he hadn’t truly been before, Carmine was now thoroughly convinced that siding against the alicorns was not a healthy choice for him. To make a valuable ally of him, though, she’d need his trust rather than just fear.

“You should know that you were right about Luna. She suffered a minor injury in the battle but was largely healed when I saw her this morning.”

“All this is a reaction to a minor injury, then?” Carmine asked incredulously.

Celestia considered her response carefully. She didn’t want to imply that Twilight’s actions were anything other than the unified will of the alicorns. Revealing to him any kind of rift among them might tempt him to exploit it.

“We try very hard to keep our relationships with other races cordial. We’re forgiving of transgressions, receptive to complaints or requests, and tireless in the pursuit of diplomacy over open conflict. Unfortunately, despite all of this, we are sometimes forced to remind this world why it’s best not to take advantage of our good nature.”

“I hope you aren’t expecting the elder to take that to heart.”

“No, for the elder himself my hopes are the opposite,” Celestia said. “Is he as convinced as you were that Luna is dead?”

“Ah,” Carmine said with a smile of realization. “A ruse. The elder doesn’t share his impressions on such things, but Twilight Sparkle is certainly putting on a convincing show. Even after Mareis, I wouldn’t have guessed she had it in her.”

Celestia opted to change the subject rather than risk revealing that she shared his surprise at Twilight’s newfound ferocity. “What is the significance of Spike’s remains?”

Carmine frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Celestia briefly considered the possibility that Carmine was only feigning ignorance, but concluded that were he still loyal to the elder, an admission like this would serve his interests worse than any other answer. Spinning a fantastic tale about the remains’ powers to panic the alicorns, and perhaps lure them into some foolish action to counter that imagined threat, would seem like a more effective use of any influence the dragon might have.

“It seems that the attacks yesterday were arranged at least partially to allow his remains to be retrieved from Stonehoof unopposed.”

“Interesting.” Carmine struck a contemplative pose for a moment. “Dragons of Spike’s age don’t die often. Most who die do so as whelps — at least, that was the case until now. We’ll see where we are at the end of today. Anyhow, it’s a unique opportunity. As I understand it, dragons are unlike ponies in that our magic is, in a sense, a physical part of ourselves. It grows within us, and is shaped to our needs as we mature. Not all of it dies with us.”

“Why would the elder want whatever remains of Spike’s power?” Celestia asked. “Was he considered a particularly magical dragon?”

“No, I don’t think so. But it may be the nature, not the strength, of his magic, that interests the elder. He spent much of his life among ponies, and if I’m not misinformed, had a great deal of interaction with the alicorns during this time. Perhaps the elder hopes Spike’s magic holds a key to fighting you.”

Celestia frowned and glanced over her shoulder out the mouth of the cave as if to make sure the outside world was still there, then turned her gaze back to the dragon. “Is it even possible for one dragon to harvest the magic of another? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“I don’t know,” Carmine answered with an apologetic shrug. “There have been rumors for as long as I can remember that the elder was not the first of our kind — that he initially had rivals, all of whom eventually disappeared, leaving behind one stronger, more complete leader. Of course, there’s only one likely source for those stories, and we both know how credible he is — particularly on the subject of himself. Probably more idle fantasy and revisionism than truth there, but I certainly can’t say for sure.”

“Spike’s magic didn’t help him much with his own insurrection,” Celestia said with a scowl.

“That depends on how you judge his results,” Carmine said. “He didn’t survive, so that’s obviously a mark against him.” Carmine paused to let out a low chuckle. “But he effectively rid the world of an alicorn for four centuries. And, judging by the events of today, when she came back, she was a changed pony.”

Celestia had no answer for that.

There was — theoretically, at least — some difference to Luna’s palace suite when she was keeping a low profile. The chambers were unlit tonight, but Luna often preferred it that way. They hosted no palace staff at the moment, which was also not at all rare. Perhaps the only distinguishing features Celestia could identify at a glance were the closed blinds on oversized windows designed to drink in the splendor of the night sky. Only a muted glow leaked in around the edges of the thick fabric. Celestia struggled to see for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the dim light.

“Luna.”

A grunt answered her from some corner of the room.

“We need to talk.”

“Talk, then.”

Celestia finally found her sister with her eyes, lounging on a sofa against the far wall, her eyes closed and her posture suggesting that she had misplaced her spine.

“You did something to Twilight.”

“I helped her get into character.” The response was delivered with an air of mischief that made Celestia hope her sister did not understand the gravity of the situation.

“At least two dragons are dead. Many more gryphons. Large parts of Gryphonia may be uninhabitable now. The nesting sites are gone.”

Luna sat up, her eyes opening to look disbelievingly at Celestia. She was silent for a long moment.

“The dragons provoked this conflict. The gryphons joined in willingly — eagerly, even. These things happen in war.”

Celestia fixed the other alicorn with a hard stare, silently daring her to defend Twilight’s actions further.

“It wasn’t supposed to last long enough for this to happen. I only meant to spark a believable performance.” Luna’s tone was still defiant, but growing regret was visible in her expression.

“What did you do?”

Luna looked down to her front hooves. “It’s a dream magic technique. A strong suggestion to her subconscious. I made her believe in my death — made her feel it, the way I felt hers. Only for a short time. Longer than I intended, evidently.”

Celestia gaped disbelievingly at her. “This wasn’t even about our strategic needs. This was revenge on her for hurting you.”

“Is it so wrong for her to feel for a few hours what I felt for centuries?” Luna snapped. “Complain all you want about the collateral damage — deaths of the very beings who made war upon us — but the objective was achieved, was it not?”

“You know it isn’t that simple.” Celestia sighed and shook her head. “You have to stop trying to keep score. If every transgression must be answered in kind, we’ll never be free of this nonsense.”

Luna snorted. “Spare me the lecture. To say that I answered in kind is an exaggeration of such magnitude it’s not even worth dignifying with argument. And don’t act as if you’re above it all, either. You’re just the same, when it suits you.”

“If I behaved as you do, I would have sent you back to the moon the moment the nightmare was defeated.”

“It sounds like you regret such benevolence now.”

Celestia felt anger surging inside her and turned to leave before it could erupt. “We’ll revisit this later,” she warned as she threw open the door with her magic.

Twilight stood on the other side, a hollow look in her eyes. Every part of her seemed to hang limply towards the floor.

“Hey,” she said flatly. She craned her neck stiffly to look past Celestia to Luna. “Fighting?”

Celestia felt herself being pushed backward into the room as Twilight shambled forward to occupy the space where she’d stood.

“Cut it out, you two.”

“Twilight—” both sisters started, but Twilight silenced them with a shake of her head and plodded toward the sofa where Luna sat, eyeing her apprehensively.

“What I did was necessary, both for our immediate goals and so that you could understand—”

“Don’t care,” Twilight cut Luna off without meeting her eyes. “Done with that now. Wasn’t a great day. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Luna was lifted off the sofa in a cloud of translucent purple, and Twilight settled into her place before lowering her again.

“Twilight—” Celestia tried again.

“Good night,” Twilight said, as she wrapped her forelegs around a visibly confused Luna. Something in her voice — maybe her clear exhaustion, maybe the steely undertone to every word she’d spoken since arriving — left no room for argument.

“Good night,” Celestia replied.