Black Hawk Over Equestrian Skies

Southern East Portion of the Everfree Forest

Ponies knew of the wicked forest through the scary and ominous looking vegetation as well as the dangerous creatures which could do any manner of things to a stray wanderer, turned to stone or made into a meal. Few ever tried to navigate its depths, for the vine covered conifers and raking birch trees were enough to instill fear in all but the most strong willed. The legendary flora and diverse animals was its own territory to never colonize, as even unicorns knew a strange magic existed within its boundaries that only grew in power the closer to the heart one drew. The weather pegasi could not control the rampant weather patterns which could turn a sunny day into a fierce thunderstorm for days, at best manage to beat back the disturbances after a rigorous bucking. Being as vicious as a hungry manticore or cause widespread damage as a roaming Ursa Major, no pony could ever mess with the forest or at least that was the legend.

No pony could lay a hoof on the formidable woodlands, yet the two other worldly entities that had come through tears in reality had grievously as their powers were unfathomable. When the magical incident which ripped the air with many sores of lavender light, a large chunk of the Everfree was soon laid to waste as it smoldered beneath two godly forces. Even from afar where the tops of the forest's indomitable foliage obscured much of the scene as it unfolded, the clouds of dust and smoke were enough to speak volumes.

Guards posted at the Crystal Castle of Friendship and even from Canterlot Castle could view the devastation for what it truly had become. Years of training, fighting rouge beasts, and reacting to one and only invasion that befell the capitol couldn't prepare them for Tirek's theft of magic nor the awesome struggle with the Princess of Friendship herself. Where they sought the future of Equestria, the newest battle zone was a conundrum to officers and soldiers alike as to why war continued. A war which was quickly proving to be one that might even ravage the lands of their home without so much as a declaration or reason for the mauling.

The quarantined zone itself was a mind boggling space of madness through a universal sense of the word, even Discord himself spared a little piece of his twisted form to watch from the top of the castle's spear-like spires. Prime ticket seats to the most interesting moments in his life he could only akin to the era of his rule over ponies.

For him and so many others the spectacle was almost apocalyptic, hundreds of acres of once prime and untamable Everfree were easily mowed down from lashes of brilliant blue light and crackling black lightning. Shattered trunks and uprooted cores of even the most resilient elder trees were but sticks and kindling to the demigods as they went for each others necks. Giant boulder sized chunks of earth were ripped from the ground and used as projectiles, further crushing and smashing anything caught in their unforgiving path. Rough trenches had been dug out and burned by the entity of fiery anger in an attempt to catch the dark one with lances of scorching heat. Even some places where the land had been mulched from horrific means, five acre sized slabs of the forest were lifted and slammed in such force that minor earthquakes rattled all within five miles.

The Crystal Castle itself groaned as the shock waves passed, though its solid crystalline build would not break from such weak vibrations. It was enough to alert those inside its halls that things were far from over, from earth pony to unicorn and then the princesses they were all on their hooves. For them it was a matter of not if but when the dueling forces either grew tired of one another or one came out victorious.

A giant plume of rolling dirt and haze floated lazily like fat clouds from the mutilated crater of the Everfree, as if a volcano had erupted in Pomphay. A tower of sandy beige rose upwards to collect in the upper atmosphere from whence they were carried off by the winds, making the sleeping dragon who nearly smoked out Ponyville to be a goddess sent reprieve. To the ponies of the little village it was the end times as they knew it, none had ever seen such a column rolling bulbs tumultuously churning like a canvas sack filled with parasprites.

They could never have figured out that the origin to the mountain of choking ash and detrius hovered near the edges of the burning forest. Two tigers starred each other down showing little to no fatigue nor magical exhaustion, from all they had done to eliminate the other they barely broke a sweat. The demoness and the witch were barely dirtied by the battle, instead they shone with a small glow of their powers which continued to remain highly charged. Though only Discord was privy to who they were, so many ponies and sensitive creatures knew they were dangerous as if they exuded a toxic aura.

Minutes seemed to go by without so much of a twitch, but the battle had gone from impulsive random attacks to more calculated strikes when they proved to be of the same level of might. Where one tried to force the other into the mud and clippings, the other either teleported or returned the blow in kind to nullify it. The dog fight in the air soon rolled into a lobbing of earth, and attempts to leave met with scorched ruts of the timberland like a fire serpent had slithered through.

The demoness herself twisted and cracked the joints in her hands, flexing the digits to soften them from the pressure forces they utilized prior. Her scowl could scare the soul from anyone who saw it, the utter unadulterated rage seething in the flesh held in check out of the need to win. She had underestimated the tact of her would be hunter, but that was a one time mistake she wouldn't let happen again.

"Perhaps you're smart enough to understand this..." she began with a confident tone, "We've come to a stalemate as much as I hate to admit."

Midnight returned with a crooked grin and tilted her head as a giggle came upon her, "Really? I hadn't noticed!" she said as the enchanted land began to turn into fireflies of embers that danced in the tidal breeze.

Vegetation directly below the raven winged possessed had begun to wilt and brown as if the very moisture were sucked from them. What animals that hadn't fled the shocking fight had darted from the dying trees and rotting earth in their panicked calls, the beady eyes begged for amnesty and salvation from the alien sense of primordial fear. Sunset hadn't let the detail go unnoticed, she could sense the flow of magic wafting from the dead and dying woodland as it appeared to fuel her adversary as it even crept under her and to the untouched portions of the wilderness. She could only figure it to be a passive Leech spell common for dark magicians, even someone of her caliber was susceptible to such vile magicks if she wasn't careful enough to avoid its miasma.

Sensing that not even a battle of attrition would win against their resolute stamina she felt her blood boil, "Cut the horse manure! I know what you're doing and you know how I'm able to keep you at bay! So why continue?! Are you that demented that you can't see how much of a waste of time fighting me is!?!" Sunset demanded as her hair blazed like the forest fires below.

Midnight hissed with pleasure that tingled every nerve in her body, "Demented would imply that I am incapable of comprehending new knowledge and utilizing it to its full potential! I'm merely driven... driven to know all that is magic and you... you have so much of it!"

"Uggggghh!! I'd rather be fighting Princess Know It All and those kanker sores..." Sunset groaned irritably as a claw ran down her face, pulling the skin slightly.

Irritation sank into her like a tick embedding itself for a long blood feast, she had begun to see red halfway into the ordeal and it only grew darker. Somehow she had been whisked away from the human world and thrown back home, all to eager to begin her new reign as Equestria's Empress. With the witch as the perfect test she had every avenue of magic to explore as if she were facing the Princess herself, the crown was her game changer. Yet the delay only stalled her future accomplishments she'd always been destined for, and in the not to far recesses of her mind very evil ideas were spawning from fertile hateful soil.

Beyond brute force, some methods of freeing herself of the little gnat had journeyed into gruesome territory even too much for her liking. What permitted more of the gratuitious solutions had become from the desperation that Sunset embraced, there was no way she could maintain the fight for much longer. No unicorn let alone an alicorn could endure such high magical output without burning out, that lesson she remembered well during her studies long ago. While she set limitations to even simply wrapping her hands around the crazy girl's neck there was nothing short of a complex multi spell deception strike that would earn her victory. Grunting at the possibility of even accepting crippling the sorceress, something shimmered out of the corner of her eyes and she capitulated herself to the moment as it unfolded. A train wreck in the very making and no possible way of saving herself trapped in the car on the rails.

Invisible serpents whose only sign of existence was the warped air from bending light seemed to encompass her with their numbers, as if she were inside a metal whisk. She could feel them intertwine behind her from the magic they exuded, so simpler feeling than hot light bulbs beaming all around her and upon the vibrant red wings. In as short of a time as it took to take a breath she was trapped by an orb of nothingness, one which attempted to pin her into a fetal position which she valiantly kept at bay. Jerking her deep blue rings in the sea of jet black at the likely caster, Midnight seemed to be as happy as a foal during Hearth's Warming Eve to her latest attempt at ensnaring her.

"You're messing with a future Princess you will never beat!" the demoness roared as every limb and wing pushed back against the ceaseless weight put upon her, even with magic the strain had begun to hurt almost seconds after the new fight started.

Midnight could only ecstatically quiver, "Oh I don't care who or what you are, I'll find that out when I dissect your magical pathways and absorb your magic! Then I'll classify you... as the first major stepping stone to my future accomplishments. Don't worry 'Princess', I will endeavor to sing praises of you for all that you displayed for my measurements and first hand experience!!"

A horrid cackle raked the air, the taunting laughter followed quickly by a mere hand extension of the dark being. Sunset narrowed her sight upon the hand who from its finger tips shot forth arrow tips of bright blue light, the sudden flash was all she ever witnessed before going blind in pain. A torturous shot into her very brain with the strength worse than the freeze she received when trying a frozen malt shake after her first few offensives to secure Canterlot High's social ladder. Leaving only suffering and fluctuating colors of the color wheel where her nemesis hovered before the towers of wild fires. The after image paused like a movie on demand fading away as the overstimulated nerve attempted to recover. Even without vision, Shimmer refused to give in and only doubled her own efforts to earn more room within the trap trying to close in, her heart forcing adrenaline throughout every vessel in her body. A fire raged within her burning hotter as her soul offered every ounce of resentment and a denied right towards Celestia, a new sun had begun to form from all the vexation.

"Ahh... you know as they say?! For the pursuit of knowledge, there's never a wrong answer!!" the words echoed as the laughter earlier.

Sunset's magic bolstered by soul magic she gave into and tapped had gained her another half a foot and more ever slowly. She knew it would be a matter of minutes before all ability to perform magic would be reduced to ashes and burnt mana lines. It was now or never for her, even with the forbidden magic that drained ones soul she had to contend with the tireless witch who showed no signs of letting up.

Sweat had already beaded all over her, the coolness of the air from their altitude no better as ice tossed into a boiling pit of magma. She steamed from the mana compression occurring within, it was her last ace in the hole that would break her out. Nothing would be left to waste, nothing given to mistake, no error would become of what she willing gave from herself. A rouge thought passed like a feather drifting in the wind, wondering what Celestia would be doing while she was alone risking so much for the good of the kingdom. Was she watching her suffer in some hope of a lesson to be learned? Was she sleeping the day away like the derelict goddess she was, or perhaps eating so much cake she had grown fat over her time in exile? A pony only worth her weight because she could move the sun and moon?

"This will not hold me!!" the demoness spat, the kaleidoscope of colors and black finally breaking away.

"Hold you? Far from what I'm trying to do here..."

The ruined Everfree Forest below had taken up the first images Sunset took in, somehow at some point she ended up putting enough force in her appendages to let her head go slack. The flaming hair burning around the crown intensified as it took on an ethereal transformation, unlike the alabaster alicorn's mane and tail Shimmer's seemed to burn outright with a fathomed fire. Hearing Midnight reveal her real intention was the hair trigger for the ball of mana that took shape, fearing the worst she dipped into the concentrated reservoir to prepare her breakout escape.

Her new strategy in the making came to an abrupt halt as a bullet train of agony erupted within her very skull. Forcing the magic to stop feeding into her muscles she planned to send a counter spell body wide to shatter the hold on her, the sensation of cold nails slowly descending past the bone of the cranium seized even the powerful possessed girl.

Shimmer gagged while giving some ground back to the force holding her still, spittle seemed to drip from her lips as they were stretched in a grimacing fashion. After nearly extending her arms, legs, and wings just enough to not be at a bend they had lost the progress, though she was too distracted at what was going on to give into what indignation should have been felt. Midnight caught onto the faltering strength and snickered as a bully to their prey.

"I see you felt that one? Do you like it? It's a combination of ancient electroshock therapy to disperse whatever you were trying to do!" the witch grinned, "I can feel how successful that was."

With the cat out of the bag with its head poking out the plan had only been halfway anticipated, as frustrating as it was the witch's ingenuity was all the more disturbing.

"You used a Dodecahedronicus?! Mind Spike!" she yelled through clenched teeth, each point of stimulation counted and visualized into the shape it had taken. An old Equestrian spell often used for locating illnesses in the brain tissue, and somehow it was stumbled upon by the enemy who weaponized it. She recalled that specific medicinal magic by sheer coincidence, as human history books offered her quite a dark insight to their earlier beginnings.

Twilight seemed almost gleeful to gain such a reaction, "Ah ah ahhhhhhahhhh?! You really think I'd reveal my methods before I publish them in the Global Scientific Journal? For shame... now that I've got you controlled, allow me to do what I must and learn from your existence. Then this... this new world will be next!!" a purple fist clenched the air before Midnight.

She drifted to close the distance between them with black wings splayed out, the long magical horn jutting from the forehead glowed hot as forged iron from the pressure spell holding the demon. Flickering flames spun free from the ethereal eye frames, her myriad of purple and violet colored dress played in the air like giant leaves of tropical plants. For all Sunset tried to discern there was nothing but madness that she could read of the interloper, a madness beyond her drive for rule over Equestria. The kind not to tip a hat too, but the variation which was boundless in its options to attain what was desired. A sickness akin to what happened to greedy ponies who tried to take a dragon's horde, and she already pocketed some of the coins and gems to jump start the infection.

It was a slight brief exposure to their proximity that something became apparent to Shimmer, even in her condition she could feel the mana winds as faint as they were. Even more so their current which differed as the flow focused towards the witch herself, not a single wide light tickle as mages often described the feeling. The words came to mind faster than an arrow as the raven winged monster's power source had made all to much sense. Such a discovery brought some relief to her even amidst it all, so she decided to go with the obvious tide and see where it would take her.

"I already know... you're draining the magic from this world in order to function nearly on par with me. So... you haven't even been using your own magic then? You're only doing me a favor!" Sunset roared defiantly, "You're only preparing me as a warm up for when I take down Celestia, and then my rule over my kingdom will be undeniable!!"

Flowing in a long skirt of violet reds and plum purples wearing magically generated glass shoes, the enthralled girl came to a halt mere feet away tapping at her chin smirking all the while, "Ha! Like a lab animal who thinks they can escape its cage. I really admire your resilience, even if we don't know each others names. But this Celestia sounds just as deliciously interesting to study as you are, so I'll tell you what? I'll reduce her to memory... numbers... and books about her being and magical prowess just for you?! How does that sound?"

Daring to let her fury get the best of her a stab of her blue irises honed onto her capture with grievously saturated abhorrence, 'She's seriously a foal with magic!! Only I can beat the Princess! She's mine and mine alone!!'

"Tut tut? You're still fighting what is inevitable between you and I. I guess I'll just have to speed things al... what?" Midnight gawked from the red glow flowing off her prize like a light bulb that had been switched on.

Immediately she reactivated the demoralizing shock spell to ward off the magical spike, but in her rush to do so she errored in the casting. The magic was weak and the specifics of the spell sputtered out from the mismatched runes needed to enact it, coupled with a power surge from the barely contained the Dodecahedronicus dissipated into bluish dust-like vapor off her raging fiery scalp.

Midnight's magical senses detected the fluctuations that prodded and fractured what kept the cage in place like an iron ball under a hydrolic press, "... can't BE!!"

Sunset managed to finally unfurl herself wings and all with the destruction of the spell, arcs of lightning skirted along her body from the counter spell she utilized to dismantle the trap. Upon the flaming entity's visage bore the most furious scorn Midnight could recall from her life at Crystal Prep, she winced in what felt like fear her old friend greeting her spirits once again. After evading boulders, jabbing pines, searing beams of pressure and heat, with all other sorts of mental wonders of fantasy finally the insatiable Midnight Sparkle stopped in her machinations and research ventures.

"NO!? NO!!!" the witch decried trying to ready a new encasement before they once again entered a stalemate of contest.

The demoness flexed her body in one stretch before relaxing herself, but not her stare which hadn't lost its ire, "I've strove to become the rightful ruler of Equestria since I was granted status as Celestia's pupil! I pushed myself to learn from all my mistakes, spent sleepless nights studying every ounce of history, every stupid law, and learned all the types of magic that existed so that I... I!" she thrust a thumb towards her chest, "Could take Celestia's place when the day finally came! To be the better Princess than she EVER was to me!!"

Midnight slowly moved away from the pressing threat, dumbstruck in what to do from the mana that outright poured like a flowing river off her catch. The magical horn lit and powered down numerous times like a dying light in a lonely hallway. It was as if she stood before Principle Cinch who had her recommendation to Everton between both hands and threatened to shred it into pieces unless she kept up her invaluable efforts at creation, no one there to help her not even Dean Cadence nor her brother. The creep of helplessness was a bitter mistress as it muddled her abilities, there was nothing left but spontaneity and that had already proved to be no match at apprehending the enraged being.

"Wha... what are you doing!?! What..." Sparkle stuttered as something about the perfect specimen had changed, the glowing aura gave birth to a whole new phenomenon which sent her on alert till she felt she was on the tips of her toes.

Contrasting the bright blue sky of Sunset's side of the world, an inferno encircled the red winged female until it spanned outwards from its center three feet in radius. The attitude and behavior were also altered, so much so that the way in which the following words were spoken it was as if Midnight were either not there or envisioned as someone else. The losing psyche even jarred her to an extent that a portion of the once human girl beneath the magic coward by the righteousness in each vocalization.

"All I wanted to know was about that cursed mirror!! Day after day she denied me any reason behind not knowing anything about it! That I wasn't ready... that I couldn't study it yet... for no real fear other than her COMMAND!!" she shouted with such force that a sound blast had forced the raven wings to come to the defense of the witch.

'I can't... every scenario fails!' with hands joining the feeble defense, 'The variable is to unstable! Got to move!'

Midnight began to strafe to the left trying to gain some peace of mind in that moving as she was likely being targeted might save her from a direct hit. The brisk force of which she sped into whipped away at her face and skin, but she couldn't even bother with the discomfort as the fire ring started to spin of its own accord opposite of her direction.

Sunset followed the amateur sorceress with her eyes while turning slowly in the others direction, those livid ice blue eyes whose conviction were an attack all their own. Demoralizing in their gaze they could nearly melt glass with the vexing standing alone, but it wasn't Midnight that summoned the hatred within. Red had come back to her like a tinted sheet, and who there standing like a glorified sundial was the alicorn herself.

"I crossed that mirror when I couldn't take it anymore! I exiled myself because Celestia said I wasn't fit to become a princess! I was the most educated, I was the most capable... I HAD the qualifications!!" her hair seemed to erupt in even more fiery anguish, "Given the magic of an alicorn I could have given her a run for her bits! But nooo!! And I come to find out where the mirror went to... some place of no strategic value to Equestria, no dire threat to ponykind, and certainly not a place to condemn denial of knowledge of!" with the rising volume the circle around her tripled its flow till a bright hot yellow light was all anyone could see with the naked eye, "Tartarus... I even mastered their young and manipulated them into a controlled social heiarchy that even the Principles couldn't touch! Ha! How pitiful!!"

In moments the ring contracted into a thin stream as bright as the sun, the very air around it warping and undulating like water. Midnight could sense the compression, magic of great quantities had been forced into a state that made it both controllable yet volatile. A single misstep in containment would detonate and release the magic with a dangerous area of affect that would put the all in harms way for the next five miles. There was not a doubt in her mind that she might not survive the blast, she still had little knowledge of spells beyond the immediacy of crafting on the go. The snippets she gained from stealing the magic from Canterlot High somehow harbored a few sequences of runes she implemented with quick study. Most of which were experimented on during their first engagement of battle, none of it would help her in the face of such instability.

The worry on her face had been detected and ready like an open book, "You even remind me of a certain pony princess... the one who took my spot and received the ascended position I so RIGHTFULLY deserve!" she forced a fist forward and clenched it so hard the hand trembled along with her deep seeded anger, the ring condensed one last time into a thin line no wider than string or fishing line.

"Impossible!!" Midnight shockingly replied as her eyes contracted in dread, even as her speed picked up she wouldn't escape the woods.

Shimmer pointed a finger at the witch from that fitful hand like a jabbing knife, "Tell me your name?!"

Unsure of where else to go or do in her situation she answered cautious of an immediate attack following, "My name?" her wings fanned out wide and ceased her flight trajectory.

"Midnight... Sparkle, I use to be Twilight Sparkle of..."

Those ice blue eyes of a cold heart widened, the fire that had become of the edges of the demonic girl's hair simmered away and shrank in overall size. When the only part of the ever dangerous entity which moved was her venomous yellow and black striped skirt, it was the precipice of danger that only a dead person would realize before it all happened. The magic in the air already saturated and burning at the same time with the scent of ozone from their destructive meeting, had grown still as any wind gentle or gusty froze. The foreshadowing as clear as day had told Midnight that her answer was both good and bad, but a worse fate awaited her within minutes of her admittance.

What might as well felt as if she had the water bucket of ice water prank played upon her after entering the next class for the day, a realization kicked in for the witch as well. The demoness before her had grown a hearty chuckle from a minute giggle, evolving into a full belly laugh as her hair seemed to lose its hellish life and take up some semblance of a familiar style. Those wavy locks and curly ends of near reddish orange and deep yellow, they gained the appearance of none other than that one Canterlot High student who had tried to stop her.

"Sunset Shimmer!!"

Before finding herself in a magical land ripe for her research she had just about readied a concussive blast to drive off the white robed demigod. Yet how she had gone through such changes into the thing before her was all lost to any train of thought, nothing made sense in what she had been saying all the while either.

"Ya?" the being of malice incarnate said with a warning as a rattlesnake would shake its tail, "Princess Twilight SPARKLE!!"

The final stick that broke the Ursa Major's back finally snapped and up rose the monstrous creature who could tear a city to rubble and smoke. A twitch of the finger was all that it took for Tartarus to break loose. The mention of her name suddenly threw her off balance with a chance at finishing the job that stood between her and Celestia, before her imminent reign over Equestria. The opportunity to show how better she was at everything than the usurper who rose in her spot had overwhelmed what grasp she had over the charged mega blast she had been amassing.

Triggered before she felt the power spike at the tip of the finger she so bitterly jabbed blow out and release. A fine beam of light speared with a loud ear scratching hiss through the distance between the two demigods in a fraction of a second, missing Midnight by inches as the edges of the stream burned her right wing which had been too close. The feathered appendage disintegrated where closest to the light and visibly it pained the owner who dropped away to escape.

Behind Shimmer the ring seemed to vaporize like the end of a fuse string to a blasting device, eating itself until it would eventually reach the end which sat atop of the newly inflamed hair. The demoness paid no further heed as with the magic attack so had her deep seeded hatred go with it, part of her soul siphoned off to give the spell power.

Aghast at her folly, Sunset witnessed the comet of destructive energies head straight for a castle of sorts she hadn't yet noticed until then. Striking it with such force that an existing shield around it that had been invisible exploded outwards from the might that impacted it, silvery fish seemed to fearfully swim away in the sun's light. There were countless glints of glitter of the structure itself that poured from the wound she inflicted upon the crystalline building. Yet there was not a moment to spare to a thought, as miles behind the fortification and village under it's shadow came a torrent of violent malice in the form of an explosion. The attack had finally met the ground before a row of rounded mountains in a bright blossom of annihilation followed by a rising mushroom cloud of dust and dirt. The ground shook from the raw power wrought onto the earth, a visible line surged from point zero as it washed past the two girls who gave the scene their full attention if only stunned by the magnitude alone.

The entire sky became as yellow as Sunset's dress, the flash at first too bright to behold without going blind. Though it only lasted half a minute before orange became everything, the land and air a tangerine while the darkest parts were of the growing column of cloud rising high a dark dirty brown. The mountain range dwarfed utterly but the titanic size of the dispelling energy, it was little short than a small nuclear detonation to Midnight who knew of such weaponry from the Great War years before her birth. The history books could only prepare her for so much when the real thing was in itself a whole other experience, and for that sliver of time she had forgotten about Sunset as a threat at all.

Sunset herself did not dread what she did, she felt proud at the forces she had at her beck and call. Fearing nothing at all as she swelled with self idolization, what she had just done to several hundred acres of land proved to her how so much more powerful she was compared to Celestia. The things she learned in the human world and about their conflicts of yor served only to put pony problems into their proper place, as hoof slaps at best. What made humanity peaceful and complacent she would use to root herself in the throne for time immortal, ponies were in deep need of improvement and they in need of the right alicorn for the job to see them through it. She could see herself then and there as the god she was meant to be, how life engineered her and gifted her all the chances to do so. The mirth born in an insane expression that made her high on life, it was a crowning moment for her for all of Equestria to forever see if the crater she made was a testament.

"Ha... hahaha... hahaha... ah ahahahAHAHAHA!!"

The light that had blotted out the sky by her power only then just began to dwindle. Not even the white orb up above could make much of a dent through the orange and rich earth tones until the star of Tartarus burned through every ounce of mana. The caster herself stood with her god finger still pointing at the hell spawned chaos continued to gaffawed at her jaw dropping capability, she could make a whole new sun by the looks of it.

Midnight herself vanished to parts unknown as her form phased out in a blind attempt at teleportation, though it was by a single act of wanting to escape that lead to it. High above the charred portion of the Everfree whose own fires made a snoring dragon ever more pleasant only added to the ash choked sky quickly growing darker from the other dramatic release that tore the land a new wound. In between the towers of smog and ruin stood the Crystal Castle of Friendship and Ponyville left mostly untouched, but the ponies there were left with the aftermath that could not be stopped. Fathoming a return to peace seemed far from their minds as the battling demigods were soon begone.