Return to Disharmony

Hours later, the sun began to set as Luna brought in the new night. The sky had slowly begun to change from blue to a rainbow of fantastic colors before finally beginning to darken.

Two guards stood outside the main gates of the royal castle, taking in the breathtaking sight of the setting dusk as they momentarily forgotten their duties.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” One guard said to his companion as he smiled warmly.

“Yeah, it’s moments like these that make you glad to be alive.”

As the dark sky slowly became illuminated by the stars above, the two guards stood silently by as they kept a watch out for anyone suspicious.

As they stood guard, a thought suddenly appeared in one of the guard’s heads.

“Hey John…you ever wonder why the princess even needs us to stand guard? I mean…she and her sister are so powerful, you’d think that they’d be able to handle almost anything by themselves.”

John merely shrugged in response to his friend’s question.

“Well you know how the princess is Joe, always doing something for the good of her people and such. I guess she bothers keeping us around so that she’d have more time to focus on her…royal duties and such.”

“Meh, I guess you’re right, I just found it od-“

In a flash, Joe had disappeared in a flash of black light, startling John into jumping into the gate, causing it to ring loudly behind him as he frantically looked for his companion.

“Hey Joe, where’d you go? This better not be another one of your tricks!”

“I prefer the term magic myself.”

John turned around to see a gray mare standing behind him, causing him to take to the air out of reflex before calmly landing across from her.

“Did you do this? Where’s Joe and what did you do to him?”

John looked at the mare as she smirked coldly in response. She had gray fur, gray and white hair, and a single buck toothed fang. Her cutie mark was partially obscured by the cloak she wore which hung loosely off her body but for some reason it almost looked transparent, as if it faded in and out of existence every time you watched it.

John angrily asked the mysterious mare what she had done to his partner only be told that she had “sent him away.”

“Sent him away to where?”

The mare had smirked and shrugged her shoulders, as if she had simply had simply made a simple mistake instead of sending a pony to oblivion.

“Why don’t you step forward and see for yourself?”

Red filled John’s vision before the Pegasus took a running charge towards the gray mare. Before his eyes, the mare disappeared in a flash of smoke before he hit something hard which suddenly made him see spots of white. In his last moments of consciousness, John looked up to see the mare smiling before his vision went dark and he felt himself being pulled away…to nowhere

●●●

“That was spectacular Trixie,” Discord said with joy, “you took care of two of the royal guards as if it was nothing.”

Discord’s approval filled Trixie with shame and pride. On one hand she had wished that there was another way to dispatch the princess’s guards but on the other hand she had done what no other pony was able to do. In her mind, she assured herself that they would be safe inside the box she sent them too, especially compared to where Discord wanted her to send them, but some part deep inside wondered whether or not what she had done was truly the lesser of two evils.

She pushed these feelings of worry away before she warped herself into the other side of the royal gates. As she walked deeper into the castle grounds until she found herself walking through a garden. As she walked through it, she couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of it. Wildflowers of various colors and scents grew all throughout the garden, emitting an intoxicating scent that waif through the air to blend into a single, amazing olfactory sensation. Animals like squirrels, blue jays, red jays, flamingoes, buzzards, rabbits, chipmunks, and various other woodland creatures happily frolicked through the courtyard as if there wasn’t a care in the world.

As Trixie looked around, she couldn’t help but shed a tear at the beauty of this place. She felt guilty for what she was about to do and casually wondered what would happen to the creatures once she was finished with the princesses.
She quickly pushed this feeling out of her mind and pulled up her hood, careful to obscure her face so that nopony would see her face. She bolted up the beaten path toward the entrance of the castle. As she ran, she noticed too late a pair of guards looking at her from the highest window before a horn sounded from somewhere inside, awakening every guard and alerting everypony in the vicinity to her presence.

●●●

Trixie wasn’t a fool; she knew that it wouldn’t be easy, waltzing up to the princesses as if it was a stroll at the park. She knew that there was no way that she’d get out of it unscathed, but she didn’t think that the princesses would have so many guards on hand to defend the castle.

Seconds after the horn was blown, wave after wave of pegasi flew in from behind the castle filling the sky with wave of white and gold as they all swooped down in unison like a bird of prey.

Trixie took a running charge into the fray as she built up the power into the base of her horn. As the first wave swooped in, she released the energy, warping herself into the air, atop a guard who had realized too late that Trixie was on his back. Trixie then covered his eyes with her hoofs and awkwardly steered him through the crowd until they both burst through the door and crashed into the castle lobby.

On the other side, more guards (a wider assortment of unicorns and earth ponies) went about their business before immediately spotting Trixie. Trixie warped the guard away before warping around the guards without slowing down. Behind her, she could hear the guards closely behind her in hot pursuit but she kept on running, jumping, charging, and warping around any obstacle that stood in her way.

As she ran, something caught onto her leg and tripped her up as she fell to the ground. She looked down to see a wave of green magic creeping up her leg and keeping her in place as the guards quickly closed in.

Frantically, she looked around and spotted an old gray mare peeking from around a nearby corner. She quickly built up energy into the base of her horn and felt herself being warped.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself at the end of an empty hallway. As she peeked around the corner, she found the gray mare lying on the floor with the creeping magic holding her in place as the confused guards tried to sort out what had just happened.

Trixie ran down the hallway and quickly tried to find a staircase to ascend to the highest level.

“Good show there with the ol’ switcheroo there Trixie.”

Trixie ran in circles as she tried to navigate the halls of the castle. With every step she took, she reflexively looked over her shoulder to make sure that nopony had followed her or alerted any of the guards to her presence.

After what felt like an eternity, Trixie spotted a staircase outside which led to the top of one of the many adjacent towers which lined the perimeter of the castle grounds.

After making sure that the coast was clear, Trixie warped outside a few feet from the tower and quickly dove for some cover in a nearby bush. For a tense moment, she expected a wayward servant or guard to spot her and sound the alarm before she worked up the nerve to run towards the tower. Thankfully, she heard nopony around and quickly made a break for the tower before anything else happened.

Just as she was closing in, a purple flash appeared before Trixie and knocked her backwards through the air. After recovering from the unexpected flight, she looked up, in a mixture of awe and fear, to see Princess Luna standing between her and the tower.