The Fall of Armonia

The world was ending, and Princess Celestia heard its death scream.

At least, that was what she initially thought upon being roused by a shriek that shook her palace, smashed her bedroom's stained glass windows, and caused her dear pet phoenix to spontaneously combust. Fanning away some stray ashes, her ears ringing, Celestia darted to the nearest window frame. Froze. Gasped. The disturbance's source was impossible to miss.

Miles southward, past Canterlot mountain, past the chaotically deformed plains that she and her sister had spent a month restoring, malignant red magic seethed over Equinox Greens. Even from here the strange, vile energy made Celestia's eyes sting, her nebulous mane stand on end, and her horn reflexively flash gold.

Celestia forced herself to peer closer, and wished she hadn't. The world wasn't dying, thank Queen Eponia, but Equinox Greens was. Within the fading crimson miasma, everything-meadows, trees, streams and mountaintops alike-withered to a sterile, uniform grey. Celestia's heart skipped a beat. She knew that shade.

Everything's petrifying.

Another terrible realization. Another skipped beat.

Equus Nox! She's still in there!

Not wasting another moment, Celestia teleported away in a frantic burst of sunlight.

Crossing miles of sky within moments, Princess Celestia reached out with her magic, and what she felt brought her headlong rush to a cautious glide. A mile ahead, the initial blast-

An enemy attack? An accidental magical overload? What in Starswirl's hopelessly tangled beard bells caused it?!

-had dispersed, but a vast, dense presence of that skin-crawling energy lingered at Equinox Greens' core.

Celestia's eyes widened, and she instinctively drew power from sun over which she held dominion.

Queen Eponia's Heartstone. But who would dare-

Another presence! Celestia wheeled to face it, horn lit with solar fire, her ermine body abruptly encased in magical gold plate. Several hundred meters away, princess Luna gave a slightly chagrined wave. Dizzy from relief, Celestia waved back, concentrated, and used the Link of Harmony.

"Luna!" she said, her mentally relayed words reaching their recipient instantly. "Are you seeing this?"

Celestia indicated the corrupted remains of the land that, years ago, she and Luna had created together.

"Aye, Celestia," Luna replied sadly. "‘Tis a blight of dark magic. We hath ne’er beheld its like, not since-"

Thunder rumbled from afar, like cruel laughter. Both Princesses lapsed into grim silence. Even with their combined might, the six Elements of Harmony, and their strongest spell, it had taken days to make Equinox Greens. Today, somepony had unmade the Greens in seconds.

Celestia's eyes narrowed to fiery slits. She knew exactly who that somepony was. And though the name was poison in her mouth, she spat it out anyway.

"Discord."

"Impossible! We petrified him for all eternity-"

"And now Equinox Greens is being turned to stone. He’s *mocking us."*

Celestia reached a decision, and put on a burst of speed. She didn't know what dire Chaos sorcery the self-proclaimed Prince of Pandemonium had used to reverse his petrification and wreak the havoc below. But so help her, today would be the last day he wreaked such havoc freely.

Down Celestia dived, seconds away from reaching the Greens' center. Below the cyclone ward that shielded its heart, on the shores of a polluted lake, a ruined orphanage sat. On that orphanage's grounds lay petrified animals, frozen where they'd ran. All leaked magic to something hidden in the clouds. Something that burned like the light of a dying sun. Something with the power of a god.

Or a devil.

"Stay close, sister!" Celestia hardened her armor, and held a millennium's worth of combat magic at the ready. "I can’t cast the spell of greater banishment alone."

Before Celestia even finished her sentence, moonlight flickered, and Princess Luna materialized at her side.

"Is Equus Nox safe?" Luna asked out loud as she broke the Link of Harmony, and encased herself in reinforced frost.

When Celestia replied, her oath was a furnace roar.

"For Discord’s sake, she'd better be."

But her next oath, uttered only to herself, held no anger. Only a deep, gnawing fear.

Not again. Please, in Queen Eponia's name, not again!

Armed, armored and ready for battle, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna landed near the lakeside ruin. Once, it was a boarding house. Now, it was a biscuit house. The walls, stale cookies. The windows, cracked toffee. The roof, melted icing. A gingerbread gate sign read: 'EQUINOX FLATS ORPHANAGE'. Alongside the confectionery structure sprawled a smashed greenhouse that didn't contain a trace of glucose.

Past the greenhouse was a crater, ten feet deep, filled by ash, and utterly devoid of life.

Disintegration magic. This was where Equus Nox fought him. Where we found her; scarred, crippled, an inch from death. Where we swore to end it.

Celestia shivered, and looked on.

The crater bisected a wide dirt path, which led to a pier that extended across the polluted lake. At the pier's threshold lay a sphinx. Soon as the princesses saw him, he saw them. Petrified animals were scattered around the winged beast, but though his leonine body was also stained by stony corruption, he still breathed.

"Your majesties?" the sphinx wheezed, blinking through cracked spectacles.

"Intellectus!" Celestia rushed to aid him. "You’re hurt-"

"A mere...trifle." Intellectus rolled over, and lifted a trembling paw. "The child...she gave me..."

He clutched two scrolls. One was perhaps a week old, one was freshly written, and both featured the same familiar script.

Letters from Equus? thought Celestia, completely baffled. We never received these. Equus last sent us one just after Pandemonium, a month ago. When did she write these others? Why-

Celestia shook her head angrily. Enough baseless speculation. Such questions would be answered by the letters themselves. She reached to take them. Hesitated. Liquid dripped onto the parchments.

Intellectus was crying, and his expression turned Celestia's blood to ice.

"We've lost her," moaned Intellectus. "You...you must-"

Thunderclaps split the sky. Celestia and Luna jerked back, and whipped their horns into guard positions. They weren't kept waiting long.

From out of the Heartstone's cyclone ward, something descended, dived, and landed at the pier's end, a mere hundred meters away.

Living shadows churned around the creature, masking it with poisonous fog that stained the pier's planks. Sensing life, shadowy tendrils slithered toward the princesses, and hissed in hunger. By way of reply, Celestia snorted in scorn.

Another new trick, o "prince"? It won't save you from us.

Celestia strode forth, crushing the tendrils underfoot. With each step, her fiery aura drove back more of the cloying mist that the depraved coward hid behind. For the second time that morning - the second time too many - she spoke his loathsome name.

"Discord!"

While Celestia yelled a challenge, Luna cautiously trailed behind her sister, horn lowered. Its tip hummed faintly. In the lake ahead, water rippled. Nopony else save Celestia noticed. Striding faster, she blocked her enemy's view of Luna, and prepared to strike. At the last second, she hesitated. An important question remained unanswered.

"How did you escape?" Celestia snarled at Discord, wreathed in incandescent fires fueled by righteous wrath.

So help me, if you've done anything to my Equus, I won't just banish you. I'll *end you-*

"Discord…"

Sound and movement from behind. Celestia quickly glanced back, and saw Intellectus heave himself to his knees.

"I couldn’t protect her from him," the wounded sphinx said, his bespectacled face a pale mask.

Movement from ahead. Celestia was ready. A roaring wave of flame surged out her horntip, and scorched the cursed fog away. But instead of revealing a malformed draconequus chaos god, Celestia revealed something far, far worse.

"Nor could I protect her from herself," wept Intellectus.

Though only half Celestia and Luna's height, the other alicorn was every bit as imposing as them, and then some.

Like her opponents, she wore spell-forged armor. Blacker than pitch, the alloy exoskeleton tapered into razor-sharp spines that protruded from its wearer's joints. Unlike her opponents, this alicorn's wings were not feathered but membranous, and her face was the stuff of nightmares.

Obsidian scales distorted her features. Her snarling muzzle was filled with serrated teeth. Her spear of a horn could have punched through solid granite. And her eyes were the worst part: fiery, bloodshot, serpentine slits.

For a moment, Celestia was repulsed beyond reason. Then, she noticed two more things about the monstrous alicorn.

She wore a familiar Crown wrought of diamond, its spokes capped by six equally familiar gemstones. And she had a cutie mark etched on her steel flank, depicting a crescent moon against a white sun.

No two pony's cutie marks were alike. Celestia knew this one-and its owner-only too well.

Discord's still imprisoned in Canterlot. The blast, the strange magic, the petrification...it wasn't him, it was her.

The bottom dropped out of Celestia's stomach, and her flames extinguished instantly.

"Equus Nox? Is-is that you?"

Behind, Luna gasped, her water spell forgotten. Ahead, the steel-clad alicorn frowned, confused by Celestia's words. That is, until her own shadow whispered in her ear, dispelling doubt, and leaving only terrible resolve.

"My name is Princess Armonia," she said. "Fear me!"

Suddenly her horn flashed crimson, and forked lightning stabbed straight at Celestia's heart.

In some primal part of a mind gone numb with shock, a counter-spell was readied, channeled, and released. To Celestia's credit, her ward - a convex shield of enchanted sunlight - appeared a split second before impact.

To Armonia's credit, her lightning blasted the aforementioned ward apart a split second later and hit Celestia anyway.

As she was hurled backward, her breastplate a melted ruin, some primal part of Celestia's mind screamed that she had to evoke earth, revert it to mud, cushion her landing, and do it now. The rest of Celestia's mind didn't listen. All it could think of was the morning when she'd first met the little unicorn filly who would come to mean the world to her.

Why, Equus Nox? she thought, over and over again. Why?

Then Celestia hit the ground, and thought no more.