Breaking Dawn

       After my horn appeared (with accompanying explosion), I stepped down from my position as Captain of Twilight's guard.

       Or rater, stepped up into the role as Prince.

       I didn't really want the job. But the public found it inconceivable that an alicorn was not royalty, so I took the position.

       It did come with benefits, though.

       I already lived in the castle with Twilight, and I remained there, just as usual.

       But I did have authority now, and, with permission from Celestia (I was new at this sort of thing), I created the Equestrian Space Administration, or ESA.

       To my great surprise, Luna, who wholeheartedly supported my venture, removed all of the Equestrian stars, revealing the fainter, but genuine ones that had been for so long hidden.

       At first, the astronomers were outraged. But with more powerful telescopes came more discoveries. Discoveries of other planets. Of other systems. And Equestria had a passion for space again.

       The stars were kept in Canterlot Tower for safekeeping. You never knew when a star might come in handy.

       And mages no longer dominated the world of the scholars. They were important yes, but there was another discipline that was gaining respect -- science.

       And under my guidance, the ESA built the first rocket capable of bringing a pony into space.

       Magic-propelled, but technology-controlled, it was the most successful melding of the two. Supplied with more than enough oxygen for the one brave inhabitant, it took off, and for the first time, a pony achieved orbit.

       The systems of the rocket had backups and backup-backups for almost every system. Nopony would die under my watch. And nopony did.

       Many ponies with a bit too much ambition tried to advance too fast, pressing for higher goals without the means to safely do so. I put a stop to that.

       And on July 14th, 1025, the first pony set foot on the moon.

       Luna's moon, of course. I wasn't stupid.

       The moon missions went on for some time. Data was collected, technology improved, and the moon was mapped in detail.

       Rockets improved, and their size was drastically reduced.

       And a colony was established on the Moon.

       Luna liked it there. She spent nearly all of her time at the colony, helping it grow. And grow it did.

       A branch of the ESA was established there, and it was generally agreed that it was there that any further explorations would be launched from. The moon's lower gravity greatly increased the efficiency of the rockets.

       But it might be a stretch to call them that anymore. More elegant, and a lot smaller, they became more and more like the ships from science fiction. Magical propulsion had developed, and now they had really reached a limit.

       For you see once again, we had reached that barrier: my old enemy, the speed of light.

       We stayed far enough away from it now to avoid it's time-altering effects.

       But unlike before, a voyage of a few months was no problem. Food, water, and air were no longer a problem.

       Personally, I didn't need many of those things at all.  I still needed a bit of food and water, since I had not fully matured, but alicorns do not really need any of those things. Right now, I could have walked into the vacuum of space and had no ill effects.

       But I knew that I couldn't do it alone.

       And finally, we were ready. It was time.

       And then the Nightmare disappeared.

       Of course, I would have been fine with this, if I didn't know where it had gone. I would have been glad to be rid of it.

       But I had seen it escape. It had escaped to the stars, and this time, the distant ones.

       It must have seen my preparations.

       It was not ready yet.

       So it was biding its time.

       And now, frustrated in my efforts, I had to as well.

       I couldn't ask any of these ponies to make a voyage that they could not come back from. For an interstellar journey would take more than a hundred years.

       For you see, the speed of light had beaten me again.

       All the scientists, all the scholars said "Impossible. Inconceivable!"

       But they said that to the sound barrier. They said that to the stars. And they had said that to space. And they were all wrong.

       There was some way to cheat. There was some way to break the system.

       And I was going to find it.