Apple Bloom looked up at the sky. Grey clouds were closing in, racing in sheets across the heavens. The trees in the orchard were losing the last of their leaves, the dry wood creaking in the wind.

“Apple Bloom, stop yer lollygaggin’!” Applejack shouted. “A storm’s rollin’ in!”

“Are you sure?” Apple Bloom asked. “It don’t look like any storm I’ve ever seen.”

Applejack didn’t quite gallop for her, but she walked with the measured haste of somepony on the edge of panic and fighting to keep herself together. She took her sister’s hoof and started leading her back towards the house.

“Bloom, I don’t rightly know what kind of storm this is,” Applejack said. “What I do know is, we’re gonna be safer riding it out in the basement. I already got the blankets and lantern down there. How about you grab a few books an’ we’ll take turns readin’ stories to each other?”

Apple Bloom was only half-listening. Something else had caught her attention.

On a clear day, a pony could see all the way to Canterlot from the farm. It wasn’t a clear day by anypony’s reckoning, but against the darkening sky she could see something. A growing light, in every color of the rainbow.

“So we’re in the Astral Plane,” Dust asked. “And none of this is really real?”

“That’s a crude way of putting it, but yes,” Doctor Sparkle said. “It’s more accurate to say that the Astral Plane is a kind of Recognition Superspace where nothing exists unless it is in the mind’s eye of at least one observer.”

Dust looked over at Sunset.

“She means if you imagine something it becomes real,” Sunset said. She waved a hoof and for a moment her whole body changed into a weird hairless biped before shifting back into the much more sensible pony form.

“So which one of us is imagining this table?” Dust asked.

They were seated at a circular table, part wood and part glass.

“I felt a table meant we could begin with a discussion,” Princess Celestia said. “And a round table means nopony is sitting at the head of the table.”

“Easy to claim when you’ve got the biggest chair,” Chrysalis grumbled. “I’m a Queen. I should rate a bigger chair than you.”

“Feel free to change your seating as you wish,” Celestia said. She glanced past Chrysalis into the darkness swirling around them. “Or one could deign to sit at all, sister.”

“You say that as though I was at fault,” Nightmare Moon crooned from the shadows, her eyes briefly visible in one spot, then another, like she was all around them. “As I recall, you were in the middle of trying to murder all of these poor ponies. Now you want them to sit down and talk. I wonder what changed?”

“She’s going to try and convince us to help her destroy you,” Doctor Sparkle said, entirely at ease. “She can probably defeat the rest of us, eventually, but not if she also has to face you.”

“Correct!” Nightmare Moon crowed, laughing. “We’re evenly matched. All it takes is a tiny tipping point, a distraction at the right time, and the victor is decided. And you poor little things are just perfect for it.”

“I’m liking this,” Dust grinned.

“You shouldn’t,” Celestia warned. “She will betray you. As soon as I am dealt with, you will be next.”

“Big words for somepony who literally did just that,” Nightmare Moon said. “You let them deal with Sombra and then stabbed them in the back.” She appeared behind Marble and whispered in her ear. “She let your coltfriend die.”

Marble shivered in her seat and said nothing.

“Hm. I think she’s a little traumatized from not having my shade keeping her company,” Nightmare Moon said.

“Is that what was going on with her?” Dust asked. “I thought she was just going cuckoo from having too much power.”

“I used our connection to hitch a ride,” Nightmare Moon said, reaching forward and pinching Marble’s cheeks. “I do apologize if I caused any trouble. I just got so excited for a bit of time outside.”

“Speaking of which, I’m concerned about your feelings towards us for imprisoning you,” Doctor Sparkle said.

Nightmare Moon sighed and let go of Marble. “Yes, there is a need to clear the air between us, isn’t there? You kept me in a changeling pod for years and extracted bits of my essence just to use in your tests. It wasn’t pleasant.”

She turned to look at Chrysalis.

“And you. You’ve been using me as a puppet to invade pony dreams. Clever, I admit. But they are my ponies. My dreams!”

“And I was feeding my subjects,” Chrysalis countered. “We did no lasting harm. Just happy dreams. You should be thanking us!”

“You and I both know that isn’t the point,” Nightmare Moon growled. “But! I am magnanimous. With all the losses my sister has inflicted on your hive, I suspect you want revenge. We can settle up afterwards, hm?”

Chrysalis deflated.

Cadance coughed. “Miss, um, Moon…”

“Please, call me Auntie,” Nightmare Moon said.

Cadance smiled. “Auntie, then. Maybe there’s some way we can resolve all of this without violence? I mean, we’re all sitting down at the negotiating table. Can’t we just talk out our differences and then all leave happy?”

“An excellent idea,” Celestia agreed.

“That’s what the losing side always says,” Nightmare Moon noted. “But why not? I need a chance to stretch my legs anyway.”

“You don’t even have legs here,” Doctor Sparkle muttered. “They’re just part of a temporary body created by your subconscious. They’re more like phantom limbs that other ponies can see.”

“If we’re going to talk about anything, how about we talk about why Celestia decided to murder all of us,” Sunset said, folding her hooves and sitting back. “We saved Equestria and she immediately decided it was time to take us out.”

Celestia sighed. “How much do you know about alicorns?”

“A lot,” Sunset and Doctor Sparkle said, at the same time.

“You might think that, but there is one fact you don’t know,” Celestia said. “Alicorns cause instability in the world by raising the ambient magical level. Actually, let me…”

She looked back and a blackboard appeared. She started drawing on it with chalk.

“Imagine the ambient magic level of the world is like the sea. Before there were alicorns, before Luna and myself, it was shallow, far more than you can imagine today. Magic was weaker, and even cutie marks weren’t entirely common. I believe we were just barely at the baseline required for sentience to develop at all. Imagination, dreaming, complex thought, all of those are to some extent magical.”

“Counterpoint, I’ve been to a world where there’s very little, if any, local magic. There’s still sentient life,” Sunset said.

“That world isn’t without magic,” Celestia said. “Though the level of magic is extremely low, as you say. It’s even lower than it was before Luna and I became alicorns. That’s why only one species there achieved sentience.”

“Please stop calling me Luna,” Nightmare Moon sighed. “But continue. I want to see where you’re going with this.”

“You don’t know either?” Cadance asked, surprised.

“No, clearly this is something she discovered after I was banished.”

“It is,” Celestia agreed. “Lun- Nightmare Moon, you remember when we were ruling, we defeated Discord and then it seemed like every few years something new would come out of the woodwork, every time more horrible than the last?”

“Yes. And I never got any credit for stopping them!” Nightmare Moon spat.

“After you were banished, it stopped happening. It was almost a thousand years of almost total peace. From magical disasters, anyway. The usual cycle of empires rising and falling and pressing at borders happened, but nothing like Discord or Sombra or Tirek.”

Celestia sketched a side-view of a shoreline.

“Like I said, imagine a sea. At first, it was down here, only in a few puddles and low spots. Our birth and ascension was something not seen in history, a one-in-a-billion chance. Like waiting for the right movement of the continents and weather to produce a puddle that lasts long enough and is filled deep enough to allow a fish to crawl onto land.”

“Discord,” Nightmare Moon said. “You’re implying he stirred things up.”

“Yes. The natural force of Harmony is to balance things, to flatten. Discord… I’m not entirely sure he is even native to this universe, but he changed the fabric of the universe. It’s like he reached down into the primordial ooze and swirled it around...”

She turned the smooth floor of her seabed sketch into jagged, uneven terrain.

“And in that chaotic environment, conditions became right for us to ascend and imprison him,” Celestia said. “But the moment we ascended, something else changed. The sea level rose.”

She drew the ocean creeping onto land, covering everything, a single body of water now instead of thin puddles.

“It seemed like a golden age. Ponies were learning more about magic than ever before. Great civilizations rose. And terrible threats to match them. You see, even though each pony had more access to magic than before too, the world was suitable now for terrible creatures that we’d never seen hence, and we were forced to lock them away in Tartarus.”

“I had to lock them away in Tartarus,” Nightmare Moon corrected. “While you assured ponies nothing was wrong.”

“Think of it like the water being deep enough that sharks could swim in it now,” Celestia continued, ignoring her sister. “When my sister was banished, though, the sea level dropped… and the sharks found themselves beached.”

She erased the waves and drew them again, lower.

“And like that, it was perfect. Ponies could grow and be happy and use their special talents to the fullest.”

“It was a thousand years in the dark ages!” Doctor Sparkle snapped. “Star Swirl made more discoveries ten centuries ago than every scholar since then! Didn’t you ever think that this might be why?!”

“It’s true,” Celestia admitted. “It was simpler. Less challenging. But ponies were happy and leading full lives. That’s all that mattered.”

“Centuries of stasis,” Nightmare Moon shook her head. “How sad.”

“And then I was born,” Cadance said, quietly. “That’s when it all changed, didn’t it?”

“It changed when you ascended,” Celestia agreed. “I… shouldn’t have allowed it, but my attention lapsed, and I was too late to stop it.”

“You would have-- you wouldn’t have let me become an alicorn?”

“It’s nothing personal, I’m sure,” Sunset scoffed. “She just showed up five minutes late. Just think, you could have been the same stifled, bitter pony she wanted me to become.”

Celestia glared at Sunset and continued her story, raising her voice to speak over any other quips. “And then there were two alicorns again. It took aeons and the intervention of an outsider for the first ascension, then less than a thousand years for the second. Orders of magnitude less.”

“I ascend, and then Chrysalis, Nightmare Moon, Sombra…” Cadance whispered. “Is the war my fault?”

“...Indirectly,” Celestia admitted. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“She’s also responsible for us, then,” Dust said. “You said it yourself. The more magic around, the more talented ponies can be. If there wasn’t enough pegasus magic in me I’d fly like a regular brick instead of a majestic winged brick.”

Sunset glared at Celestia. “Why don’t we get to the point? You’ve been keeping ponies from ascending. On purpose. You made me your student just to make sure I wouldn’t become an alicorn and wreck your little fake peace!”

Celestia looked down, saying nothing.

“It’s true?” Cadance asked. “I thought she just said that before because she was jealous and mad but… what she said all those years ago was true?!”

“I was protecting my little ponies!” Celestia snapped. “I had to do it! I treated you like my own daughter, Sunset! I just guided you onto paths that wouldn’t destroy the world!”

She angrily started drawing waves higher and higher.

“The more alicorns in Equestria, the more dangerous the situation becomes! With one alicorn, disasters come once in a lifetime for mortal ponies. Two and they come annually like the seasons. It gets exponentially worse from there. Worse, every pony that becomes an alicorn makes it easier for others to follow. A pony just below the borderline suddenly has access to enough magic to make that leap. And then the one below them can do the same. It’s a chain reaction, and in the end…”

“In the end we’re all immortal,” Doctor Sparkle noted. “What a tragic fate.”

“All immortal?” Celestia asked. “Twilight Sparkle, how many ponies do you think would survive that long? You surround yourself with the best and brightest, but you forget that most ponies are average. How many alicorns can exist before the world becomes too harsh for a normal pony to survive?”

“The strong will survive,” Nightmare Moon said. “As always. It’s natural selection.”

“Natural selection is for animals,” Celestia retorted. “We aren’t beasts. When a pony is nearsighted we make glasses for them to wear. When a pony is cold they wear a coat. When a pony is sick or injured, we care for them. The strong serve the weak. That’s how society functions.”

“This is the real problem,” Sparkle said. “Lecturing us. Expecting us to sit and listen when you killed ponies we cared about. When you were trying to kill us. Spouting justifications about the strong serving the weak when you would never follow through! If it was so important to stop alicorns from existing, why didn’t you seal yourself away, too?”

“Somepony has to tend to the garden, or it grows wild,” Chrysalis purred.

“If I didn’t, where would the world be?” Celestia asked. “Look at you, Sparkle. Your lust for power has brought us to the edge of disaster. This could be the end of the world, and you wonder why I take drastic action?”

“Lust for power?” Sparkle scoffed.

“What else would you call it?” Celestia asked. “For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been a brilliant pony who could never accept her own limitations. All you’ve ever wanted was power.”

“You’ve never understood me,” Doctor Sparkle said, shaking her head. “I never cared about power. I wanted to be healed! I wanted to make things right! I wanted to be whole again!”

“You could have been happy without magic,” Celestia said, her voice soft. “You could have had friends, done research that helped ponies, found love. Instead you’ve brought ruin to Equestria.”

Celestia motioned with her wing, and windows appeared in the air, showing scenes all over Equestria. Pillars of light shone down over the sky, the heavens caught between day and night, a spreading sickly rainbow growing from the border between them.

“What is this?” Cadance whispered.

In one window, ponies huddled together under palm trees as a blizzard came down around them, the waves behind them frozen solid on the beach.

“Even with all of us here, removed by a half-step from the world, the increased magical pressure is threatening to crash down on Equestria like a tidal wave,” Celestia said. “Each of those pillars of light is an uncontrolled magical event, like a spell going off uncontrolled, with no caster and no target.”

Reflected in another shard looking out into the world, rifts tore open in the air, showing other places and times. Ponies fled from the things that shambled through into the half-light of the shattering world.

“I’ve seen this before,” Dust said. “No. I’ve seen the aftermath.”

“Your dream,” Nightmare Moon agreed. “Yes. It was a vision of a possible future.”

A window drifted in front of Marble, and she looked up to see the streets of a town somewhere in Equestria. Ponies, half-transparent and wearing clothing decades or hundreds of years out of date appeared on the streets, walking through the crowds and ponies watching like the ghosts they were.

“Is it the future that has to come to pass?” Sparkle asked.

“No,” Nightmare Moon and Celestia said at once. Both of them glanced at each other and frowned in annoyance before looking away. Nightmare Moon gestured and Celestia continued.

“Luna and I had visions like that before many disasters,” Celestia said. “They’re warnings, not something set in stone. It can be changed. For the sake of Equestria we must change it. Every moment we debate, the effect strengthens and spreads.”

“Because they’re ascending right now, aren’t they?” Sparkle asked. “Or at least, they’re on the cusp of it.”

“In this place, the initial burst of magic can be contained,” Celestia explained. “If the process cannot be halted.”

Doctor Sparkle stood in silence, looking at the windows into the world. After a long moment, she swiped her hoof through the nearest one, shattering it into motes of light.

“I had my magic taken from me by fate. I had so many ponies I care about taken from me by destiny. I had my home destroyed. And now you want to take my work from me.” Sparkle turned to glare at Celestia. “I refuse. I won’t lay down and take it. Not from you. Not from anypony.”

“The future she saw--”

“You said it yourself! The future can be changed! Either it will change, and we can fight for something better than being imprisoned and crippled, or it will refuse to change and you can’t hope to stop it!”

Celestia closed her eyes and sighed. “I didn’t say I was giving you a choice about this. For the good of Equestria, you will never leave this place.”

“I don’t think so,” Sunset growled. She stood up, and the others stood one by one along with her. “If the ponies out there are so important to you, maybe you should be the one to stay here instead!”

“Without someone to tend to them, they wouldn’t survive,” Celestia said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not going to get a chance to do anything,” Chrysalis snorted. “We have your sister, your equal, on our side!”

“She was my equal a thousand years ago, before her magic was sealed for centuries, before she was captured and drained.” Celestia spread her wings, and the round table collapsed into stardust.

Lightning Dust got into the air just in time for the wave of force to hit them like the tide rolling in, a sudden crushing pressure that forced her back and down to the ground. Nightmare Moon managed to take a step forward, and the pressure redoubled, forcing her back.

“I’m going to seal you in the deepest part of the Astral Plane,” Celestia said. “You won’t suffer. It will be like a waking dream, for the rest of eternity.”

The ground, what they thought of as the ground, collapsed like the table, the support it had given vanishing as the maw of an infinite void opened up under them.

“This doesn’t look good,” Starlight Glimmer sighed. “Here I am, like an idiot, wanting to help and too late to do anything but look at the pretty lights…”

She walked casually onto what had been a battlefield. The sky above her was cut in half between night and day, and multicolored auroras spread like the surface of an oil slick across the heavens. Stars twinkled and fell, others rose to take their place, and the less said about the weather the better.

Ponies in EUP uniforms and black-shelled monsters both worked to treat the wounded where they lay, helping some of them up and getting as many as they could into tents and on blankets. The ground was blasted and burned as if from some great heat, and whatever fighting had been going on was over now, ended in the face of something too great for an army to wage war against. Now they were all simply trying to survive.

“Who’s in charge here?” she yelled over the din.

“I am.” A pony in a ragged labcoat stepped away from where she was putting boxes and wires together. “I’m Moondancer. I’m Doctor Sparkle’s--”

“I know. Celestia made me read all your files,” Starlight said. She offered a hoof to shake. “And I’m--”

“Starlight Glimmer, Princess Celestia’s current student. I’ve read your file, too,” Moondancer countered, giving her hoof a firm shake.

Starlight smiled wryly. “So aside from the end of the world, what happened? I was halfway to a country without an extradition treaty with Equestria when everything went nuts. For some reason, I got the bright idea to come back here instead of finding a sunny place to wait it out.”

“The EUP launched a large-scale invasion of the lab with the intent to capture any valuable assets and suppress Doctor Sparkle’s research,” Moondancer explained. “The situation rapidly became chaotic.”

Starlight looked at the fire and flames around them and nodded. That story checked out.

“The assembled fleet was destroyed, mostly by Sunset Shimmer, but Lightning Dust arrived back from the moon in the middle of the battle and used the Sunny Day as an impromptu lithobraking target. The invading troops were repelled by an allied changeling hive, there are massive casualties on both sides.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It gets worse. Celestia took to the field, there was a short exchange of spells, and then Doctor Sparkle…” Moondancer hesitated. “She released a large-scale threat. There was a huge eruption of thaumatic radiation, the Sunny Day vanished, and that appeared. That was hours ago, and I’m still trying to get any useful data.”

Moondancer gestured to the massive rift in space. The edges were twisted and bent like the light around it was passing through a lens and the inside of the portal was a twinkling mass of light and crackling sparks.

“That doesn’t look particularly healthy,” Starlight said.

“And I don’t have Doctor Sparkle here to try and explain it,” she said. “If you’re here to help, I need antennas pointed at that thing so I can get some readings on just what’s happening.”

“I’m guessing the fighting is over?” Starlight guessed.

“After Celestia vanished and that rift opened, everything went crazy,” Moondancer said. “Nopony is up to fighting right now. Things are happening all over Equestria and it seemed stupid to keep trying to kill each other when we’re not sure there’s going to be anything to fight over.”

“Great,” Starlight said. She picked up one of the scattered antennae. “So much for a vacation. Where do I put this thing?”

“Rarity, what’s happening?” Sweetie Belle asked. Her sister stood at the entrance to their tent like a sentry on guard, watching outside through a window she’d sewn into the fabric. It had once been a standard Royal Guard issue refugee tent, but she’d spent every spare moment making things more comfortable since it had become their temporary home.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Rarity said. She was lying. Sweetie Belle had heard her lie over and over again, and she always did it the same way. When she sounded like nothing was wrong and she wasn’t bothered at all, it meant something was deeply wrong.

“You just don’t want to tell me,” Sweetie mumbled. “You never tell me anything! I’m not an idiot! I know something’s wrong! Don’t treat me like I’m stupid!”

“It’s an adult’s job to worry so foals don’t have to,” Rarity said. She sighed and turned to her sister, kneeling down so they were on eye-level with each other. “I don’t think you’re stupid. I just… I want to protect you.”

“How am I safer if I don’t know anything?” Sweetie asked.

Rarity smiled sadly. “Part of protecting you is protecting your innocence. There are things fillies shouldn’t have to know until they’re older. Mother and Father asked me to take care of you because Canterlot was supposed to be the safest place in Equestria, and I haven’t been able to keep a roof over your head, I’ve barely been able to feed you, and…” Rarity closed her eyes, wiping away tears before they could fall. “I’m sorry, Sweetie. I’ve done an awful job as a sister.”

Sweetie hugged her tightly.

“You’re a great sister,” Sweetie said.

Rarity laughed a little as if that was an absurd notion.

“At the moment I’m not much of anything,” she said. “Maybe we’ll feel better if we have some warm tea.”

Rarity reached for the teapot, and her aura flickered, the strain increasing like the teapot weighed ten times as much, like her magic became an order of magnitude weaker. Her vision started to go black around the edges.

Lightning Dust tried to stand, and the crushing force crashed down on her, driving her back to her knees, the ground under her sinking lower.

“I don’t understand it,” she gasped. “What’s going on?”

“It’s like being at the bottom of the ocean,” Cadance said, her horn blazing. “I’m trying to keep up a shield, but--”

“I knew that mule was always holding back,” Sunset said. She struggled to her hooves, joining her magic to Cadance’s. “If we can’t find a way out of this, we’ll be crushed flat!”

“It’s worse than that,” Doctor Sparkle said. She looked up, far up, at the glimmer of light shining above them like the light of a distant sun. “The Astral Plane is a recognition space. Death is the least of what can happen here.”

“Indeed,” Nightmare Moon agreed. “This isn’t a real space. It’s a place where dreams and thoughts form the basis of reality in the way matter does in Equestria. If we lose sight of our senses of self, we can suffer total ego collapse and the loss of our physical forms.”

“That sounds bad,” Lightning Dust groaned.

“It is,” Doctor Sparkle said. “You would become less than nothing. Even the space you occupy would stop existing.”

“That makes me worried for Marble,” Dust muttered. “She spent more time being possessed than being herself. How long can she hold up?”

She glanced at the earth pony. Marble sat silently, either deep in thought or near-comatose.

“All ponies pretend to be something they’re not,” Sparkle said. “None of us are in control of ourselves all the time. She had to learn how the hard way. Marble might be better suited to surviving this than the rest of us.”

“I admit, I’m impressed by the little team of friends you put together,” Nightmare Moon said. “Most ponies would have lost themselves entirely by now.”

“Like I told Moondancer, I wanted wolves, not sheep.”

“It begs the question of how you’re still alive at all,” Nightmare Moon continued. “You’re neither immortal nor augmented by sorcery.”

Doctor Sparkle’s body flickered, a line of magenta magic and sparkling twinkles racing across her body like a pencil drawing her form.

“It’s recognition space,” Sparkle said. “What matters here is my ego. I remember my body perfectly.”

“I see,” Nightmare Moon said.

“You two could help,” Sunset growled. “This isn’t as easy as it looks!”

“I’m conserving my strength,” Nightmare Moon retorted. “It’s not over yet. It’s not enough to fight just to survive this one moment. To win, we have to fight for victory.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Marble asked quietly, the first thing she’d said in a while.

“We need to wait for the right moment,” Nightmare Moon said. “Even from here, I am not a helpless foal.”

“Oh my stars,” Moondancer whispered, as she looked at the readings. She put down the radio she’d been listening to.

“What’s wrong?” Starlight asked. “Aside from the obvious.”

“The disasters all over Equestria -- they’re being caused by discontinuities in a changing magical field,” Moondancer said. “Like bubbles appearing in water when it starts to boil.”

“And that’s bad?” Starlight asked.

“Bad and worse,” Moondancer said. “For the first few hours, when the disasters were starting, the average background thaumatic field across Equestria had nearly doubled. It peaked and suddenly dropped, and now…”

“Now?”

“It’s going below normal,” Moondancer said.

“Pretend I don’t know a lot about thaumatic cosmology. How bad is that?”

“You’re Celestia’s student! You should know this! It’s awful! As the background thaumatic field drops… the magic goes away. If this continues, unicorns will stop being able to cast spells, pegasus ponies will fall from the sky, and earth ponies will lose their strength.”

“What’s causing it?”

“I have no idea,” Moondancer said. “Something in there.” She pointed to the gate.

Starlight picked up a rock and threw it at the gate. One of the sparks dancing around the portal hit the stone and cracked it, shattering it into red-hot pebbles.

“It might be tough getting a look,” Starlight said.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Moondancer said. “That barrier is caused by another discontinuity. Whatever is on the other side of the gate has massive potential thaumatic energy, and with the background thaums dropping here, it’s forming a kind of pressure curtain.”

“And that’s bad,” Starlight said.

“It’s… well, you saw what it did to the rock. A normal pony doesn’t have the internal thaumatic pressure to survive entry.”

“Right,” Starlight said. She stared at the portal for a long moment. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you--” Moondancer asked, before Starlight vanished in a burst of teleportation magic that sent a wave of static across all her sensors. “Great. She’s as bad as the ones Twilight hired. If I was in charge of Horse Resources I’d have hired ponies that had citations for excellence, or long resumes involving charity work, or at least a college degree to prove they can listen to somepony long enough to get a diploma.”

“What was that about a diploma?” Starlight asked, from behind her.

Moondancer jumped and turned to see Starlight holding a suit of golden armor.

“I figured this would still be in the castle where I left it,” Starlight said. “Help me put it on.”

She set it down, and Moondancer started opening panels and joints, marveling at the construction within.

“This is a work of art,” she said. “Half the suits I built with Doctor Sparkle were just rough bench models, but this… even the wiring is clean!”

“Celestia spared no expense,” Starlight agreed. She pulled on the peytral. “The most important thing right now is the paint job.”

“It’s a little gaudy,” Moondancer said, helping her with the shoes.

“It’s some kind of fancy and extremely expensive anti-spell coating,” Starlight said. “Maybe it’ll hold up for a few extra seconds so I can get through.”

“It’d be nice to run some tests,” Moondancer said. She connected the last part, and lines of magical light flickered across the armor like veins pumping luminous blood.

“Do we have time for tests?” Starlight asked.

“No,” Moondancer said. “The best I can do is wish you luck.”

Starlight winked. “That’s gonna have to be enough. Stand back.” Starlight gave her a moment to step back and unfolded her wings, planes of magical energy flickering to life at her sides and sketching out polygonal feathers in the air.

Moondancer nodded in approval as Starlight took off.

Starlight had plenty of experience with magical barriers, but she’d never felt anything like this before. The lightning was like a solid wall of wind, like trying to fly into a hurricane. The average shield was more like a steel plate, something that could be broken, something rigid and solid. It could be broken with enough force. But you couldn’t just smash aside an avalanche.

The golden coating on her armor was starting to heat up. Sparks crawled around the edges.

“A little thing like the impossible never stopped me before!” Starlight shouted. Her magical wings folded in, the feathers coming together in front of her like the bow on a ship, focusing everything she had to a single point of contact.

She slipped forward, just a tiny bit. The force deflected to the sides, straining to crush her shields in.

“This is nothing!” Starlight shouted, her horn blazing as she poured more energy into her armor. A conduit over her flank exploded, shrapnel not even making it to the ground before the energy around her vaporized it.

Starlight grinned madly and started rotating her shields, twisting them so the crush went around her, not letting it settle. She slipped a little closer to the event horizon.

“Who do you think I am?!” She yelled, ignoring the metal of her armor twisting from the warring magic inside and outside it, the foil-thin layer of orichalcum plating flaking away.

The very tip of her wedge-shaped shield passed through. She could feel everything about to fail. She let the rotating drill-wings explode in every direction, a burst of force like setting off dynamite in a tornado, blowing out the winds for just a moment, disrupting the vortex. Starlight kicked herself through with one last telekinetic burst, just before it collapsed again.

Celestia watched the windows into the world, trying to divine what the future would hold. She could only get a glimpse of it from here, even with all the power in the world at her disposal. Threads of magic wove together in great waves across Equestria, and every flaw in the weave was twisting into a new horror. It was slowly abating, but how many of her ponies would suffer before the storm ended?

And then space itself tore apart.

She turned, ready to defend herself with spells that hadn’t been cast in centuries. The Astral strained as something transitioned from the real space outside to recognition and thought, imagination replacing matter and form shaved away in favor of habit.

Starlight Glimmer was ejected into the starry expanse, her armor vanishing from around her as she fell to the ground, bouncing twice and landing at Celestia’s hooves.

She looked up. “Oh, hey, Princess.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Starlight, I have to admit this is a surprise. Not an unpleasant one.” She helped her student up. “I wasn’t sure where you were. I’m so relieved!”

“You are?” Starlight asked, dazed. She looked around. “Where are we?”

“On another plane,” Celestia said. “It’s alright now. I was so scared for you.”

“You were… scared for me?”

“I thought I’d have to track you down myself and drag you here against your will,” Celestia said, picking up her student in her golden aura. “You were the one missing piece of the puzzle. If I seal you here, Equestria will finally be at peace again.”

“You--” Starlight’s dizziness went away in a hurry. She teleported, tearing herself out of Celestia’s grip. “Seal me away?! What are you talking about?!”

“It’s my fault, and I hope you can someday forgive me,” Celestia said, stepping towards her. She seemed to cover more ground than the motion would have allowed, like the world slid them closer at her will. “You were merely a powerful unicorn, perhaps near your own ascent to a higher level, but I pushed you too far. I played with the same primal force as Doctor Sparkle because I thought I could control it.”

Starlight touched her chest. The scar over her heart flickered in and out of sight.

“You mean you want to lock me away in a dungeon because I’m too strong for you to control?”

“I need to seal you and your magic here because you’re too strong for the universe to control,” Celestia corrected. “It isn’t your fault, and that’s why this hurts so much.”

“Oh yeah, I just bet me being locked up for a thousand years is going to hurt you more than it’ll hurt me,” Starlight scoffed, trying to get away, blinking from place to place and finding Celestia a little closer each time despite her efforts.

“You have no idea what it’s like, being forced into that kind of responsibility,” Celestia whispered.

Starlight caught her glimpse and followed her gaze to the side, where a rippling ball of black became visible through the mist. Something about it seemed to eat at her, like it was sucking at her attention but also muting her perception, like just looking at it was making her lose time in the same oblivion as a deep sleep.

“What is that?” Starlight whispered.

“It’s where I had to put them,” Celestia said. “There aren’t many prisons that can hold alicorns. They’ll stay there, forgotten, until I can find a way to safely allow them to exist. Perhaps they can even become mortal again, and lead normal, happy lives…”

“You’re crazy!” Starlight snapped. “Do you even know what’s happening out there?! Magic is draining out of the world, there are disasters everywhere and--”

“It’s a painful transition,” Celestia said. “And ponies will be… less talented than they were. It has to be done. They’ll have centuries of quiet peace instead of a few years of turmoil.”

“Great, so it’s up to me to save the world from my crazy teacher,” Starlight muttered.

“It’s not crazy,” Celestia said. “You don’t understand the horrors I’ve seen. This war was the final straw.”

Starlight snapped off a spell, and Celestia didn’t even block it, simply leaning slightly to the side to avoid it.

“That wasn’t anywhere near the target,” Celestia said. “I thought you were a better student.”

“I learned a lot,” Starlight agreed. “Like when you decided to teach me about the magic of friendship. You told me I’d run into walls in life that I couldn’t break through on my own, but that with friends at my side, nothing would stand in my way.”

Celestia felt the texture of the Astral change, and turned to see Starlight’s magic embedded in the black sphere like a harpoon, the spell burrowing down into the depths and leaving a trail through it.

“What have you done?!” Celestia demanded.

Starlight rose into the air, a golden aura surrounding her and choking her in a way that was actually metaphorical but felt very real and very much like being strangled in the moment.

“I have no idea,” Starlight admitted, struggling for breath. “But if I don’t know what I’m doing, you probably don’t have a plan to stop it!”

The black sphere cracked like an egg.

There was a flash of light in every color of the rainbow, from Sunset’s crimson magic to Twilight Sparkle’s magenta aura to the green of Chrysalis’ toxic sorcery and the blue of Cadance’s glow. The light peeled back the dark, and there was a rush like a vacuum being filled up, a sonic boom as the pressure equalized.

“I told you, we just had to wait for the right moment,” Nightmare Moon said, stepping forward. “All I could do was send out a few daydreams, but they were more than enough to inspire my little ponies to free me.”

“Impressive,” Doctor Sparkle said. “I thought there was a zero percent probability that anypony could get here to save us from the outside, but I guess the odds don’t count around ponies like this.”

“You haven’t done anything except delay things,” Celestia said. “I’ll just put you back where you belong!”

Her horn blazed with solar light, and the mists around them started swirling in a magical wind.

“You have no right!” Sunset shouted, appearing next to her. A long blade of roaring magical energy extended from her hoof, and she swept it down at Celestia. The alicorn jerked back, raising a hoof to defend herself, a sabre of her own appearing just in time to block it, the rough, moving edge of Sunset’s blade chewing into hers.

“I have every right!” Celestia retorted. She pressed forward, and Sunset’s blade started to fizzle out, the teeth dulling and breaking against Celestia’s will. Sunset’s star sabre started to crack and--

“SNEAK ATTACK!” Lightning Dust yelled. The blade of her massive black axe came down on Celestia’s sword, breaking the lock between her and Sunset and slicing right through the Princess’ spell like it was butter. Dust twisted it around, the blade reforming into a spear as she jabbed with it. The tip hit Celestia as she tried to dodge, cutting into her peytral and shattering it, the armor breaking away when the Princess moved.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sunset demanded, glaring at Lightning Dust.

“Mad I interfered in your duel?” Dust guessed.

“No, I’m mad you didn’t go for the head while she was distracted!”

Dust shrugged and twirled the axe around, the edge snapping out like a switchblade into a scythe. “I decided to save you from being cut in half instead. You’re welcome.”

“How naive,” Celestia said, touching her shoulder. A tiny trickle of blood leaked from a scratch where the weapon had broken through the armor entirely. “I’ve kept to my duty for a thousand years. A thousand years where the sun rose every day, where ponies could live in peace and know tomorrow would be just like today!”

“That’s not enough!” Cadance shouted from above, diving towards her. “Ponies should be able to look forward to the future! They should have hope that tomorrow won’t be like today because it’s going to be better instead!”

She let loose with a magical blast at point blank range, just before she would have impacted with Celestia. The force of it kept her in the air, her momentum adding to the force of the acid-green blast of magic.

It took Celestia a moment to realize what the color meant, and by then, the real Cadance was right next to her.

“You’ve been poisoned by hate and anger!” Cadance shouted. “Remember your love for all the ponies that look up to you!”

A wave of soft blue washed over Celestia. The elder Princess’ expression softened.

“Oh Cadance, that’s just like you, trying to solve this without violence,” Celestia said, her voice kind and quiet. Then she turned back to Chrysalis and redoubled her efforts, blasting her out of the air. The disguised changeling queen lost her focus, shifting back to normal as she careened back across the Astral.

“No, don’t!” Cadance yelled.

“Everything I’ve done is out of love, Cadance,” Celestia said. “That’s why I didn’t simply kill all of you and be done with it. I couldn’t bring myself to do such a thing. But I will do what I must to protect my little ponies!”

She fired an energy blast at Cadance’s hooves, knocking the Princess of love up and away, giving herself space.

“Which one of you is next?” Celestia asked. “Maybe you’d like to throw yourself at me, Twilight? Or maybe you want to try, Luna!”

Her horn lit up with golden light, blazing brighter and brighter.

“Thank you for reminding me, Cadance!” Celestia said. “I can’t be afraid to make sacrifices! If I have to sacrifice all your lives, I’ll bear that burden!”

Celestia’s mane erupted in flame, the soft colors being consumed by the burning pyre of a solar flare raging across her body.

“I can’t even cast this spell in Equestria without risking burning half of the continent away! Take this! Supernova!”

Everything turned into flame, not just like the heat was so intense that the air caught fire, but that her spell aggressively transmuted everything, every thought, every atom of an idea, into fire.

Except where Marble was blocking it.

The plasma cascaded back from her shield in wide wings, cutting through the void and leaving a sliver of space between them that was safe, a sliver holding all of her friends. She took a step forward, pressing against the attack, her shield refusing to buckle.

“You took everything from me,” Marble hissed. “My family, my friends, my life…”

“The war did that!” Celestia snapped, her voice deepening. “A war that only happened because I allowed you ponies too much freedom! Too much power!”

“Tell that to Sunburst, you son of a bitch!” Marble screamed, shoving herself right into the spell and slugging Celestia in the face, the Princess’ crown falling away and melting in the lingering flames as the spell sputtered to a stop.

“This is it!” Starlight yelled. “Everypony get in, get in!” She launched a spell, a stream of pure magic slamming into Celestia with all the force she could muster. It was joined by a twin from Sunset, and Celestia stumbled back, fighting to keep upright.

“We’ve got to keep up the momentum!” Sunset shouted.

“Put everything into it!” Chrysalis ordered, as her wavering beam joined the others. “I’ve fought her more than any of you, and she always has another trick planned!”

“What you’re doing isn’t out of love, it’s out of fear,” Cadance said, adding her magic to the wave. “Ponies need to be loved like people, not like pets kept in a gilded cage!”

Dust focused her pegasus magic, launching a bolt of crackling lightning at Celestia. “You want to keep ponies from being the best they can be, and that’s something I can’t stand!”

“This is for all the ponies like me,” Marble whispered. “All the ponies that you want to step on!” A beam of almost-uncontrolled force ripped from her body, a horn flickering in and out of visibility on her forehead.

“No!” Celestia shouted, as she was shoved back. “You can’t do this! I’m the only one keeping Equestria safe! You don’t have the willpower to do all the things I had to do!”

“I’ve been waiting for this moment,” Nightmare Moon said, flying up above the torrent of energy. “It’s time for you to go to sleep, sister! Dream about your beloved, backwards world where ponies never change!”

Her horn burned with black light, and a beam of pure night shot down at Celestia from above, hitting her and wrapping around her, the spell spinning around her like a spider spinning a web around its prey.

“You have no idea what you’re unleashing!” Celestia shouted. “They’ll never accept you! They’ll never love you! They’ll just remember all of you as the ones who overthrew the pony they loved!”

“Everypony in Equestria knows the truth,” Doctor Sparkle said. “While you’ve been ranting and raving, I’ve been using these windows of yours. They were surprisingly easy to reverse-engineer. While we’ve been talking and fighting, I gave the ponies in every town and major city a show they’ll never forget.”

She waved a hoof, and a window appeared between them, flashing between Las Pegasus, Manehattan, Seasaddle, and all the towns between them. Floating over them, huge fields of light broadcast what was going on to every corner of Equestria.

“And you think that’s enough to win their hearts and minds?” Celestia spat, as black silky tendrils wrapped around her. “They know who their real ruler is!”

“They don’t need a ruler like you,” Doctor Sparkle said. “Maybe they need to rule themselves for a while. I heard democracy is all the rage in some countries. And with all our magic, they’ll be strong enough to decide for themselves.”

Celestia scoffed. “It will never work.”

“Maybe, but they deserve a chance,” Sparkle said.

The Princess’ expression changed, as the last few links of the spell fell into place. “Promise me… that you’ll take care of Equestria? Don’t let everything fall into ruin!”

“Of course we will,” Sparkle said. “Believe in us. Have faith in your little ponies.”

“You’re sure she won’t escape?” Dust asked. “Because it wasn’t easy getting her in there.”

Nightmare Moon scoffed at the notion, adjusting the way the cocoon hung in space, tendrils of darkness stretching off of it and into the misty distance. “This is the same sorcery Queen Chrysalis used on me. It’s almost impossible to break from within, I assure you.”

“No hard feelings, I hope,” Chrysalis said.

Nightmare Moon took a deep breath. “No. It seems I’ll have to learn to live alongside quite a few other immortals. It will take some effort, but I will have to learn to let go of a few small grudges.”

“You’re not going to betray us and leave us all here?” Sunset asked.

“That seems more like the kind of thing you’d do,” Starlight quipped.

“Nah,” Sunset smiled and tossed her mane, uncovering her once-missing eye. It was just a glowing ball of light now, like a small star in her face. “I’m starting to really appreciate having all of you around, even if some of you are idiots with muscles where their brain should be.”

“You’re just jealous I can bench press more than you,” Dust retorted.

“When we get back…” Cadance hesitated, looking at Nightmare Moon.

“I liked that democracy idea Doctor Sparkle had,” Nightmare Moon said. “All the paperwork and ceremony… from what I’ve seen in dreams it’s only gotten worse since I sat on the throne. I gave ponies inspiration and ambition, it’s only fair with my return that I allow them to exercise them.”

“A really free Equestria,” Marble whispered.

“It could be interesting,” Dust said. “Ponies chasing their own dreams. Deciding what’s right or wrong on their own instead of listening to royalty.”

“Mm. Democracy wouldn’t work with my hive, but maybe you ponies will surprise me.” Chrysalis shrugged. “If you don’t collapse into anarchy, that is.”

“I wish I could see it,” Doctor Sparkle said.

“You can,” Dust said. She pointed to the rift Starlight had used to enter. “That’s the way out, remember?”

Doctor Sparkle smiled at her. Twilight’s whole body flickered and shimmered.

“I can’t leave,” Doctor Sparkle explained. “When I freed Nightmare Moon, the thaumatic radiation… well, if I wasn’t standing in the rift portal when it opened, I’d be completely gone already.”

“You mean… your body was destroyed,” Sunset said. “Total thaumatic conversion. Like a disintegrate spell all the way down to the subatomic level…”

“Yes,” Sparkle said, turning away from them. “I can maintain myself here, as long as I maintain my focus.”

“There has to be some way to fix it,” Marble said. “I can’t… I don’t want to lose anypony else.”

“If she ascends, she’ll be able to leave,” Nightmare Moon said. “But it could take some time. It doesn’t happen on a schedule.”

“When you leave, tell Moondancer--” Sparkle swallowed, getting choked up.

“If we did things right, you’ll be able to tell her yourself,” Dust said. “She’ll be waiting for you when you figure out a way out of here.”

Doctor Sparkle wiped at her eyes and nodded.

“It’s not goodbye, it’s just ‘see you later’,” Cadance said, pulling her into a hug. “I’ll be waiting for you, too.”

“We all will,” Sunset said. “I don’t want the only pony smarter than I am to be stuck here forever.”

“And I’ll need you around for my next scheme,” Chrysalis said. “I haven’t planned one out, but I’m sure you’ll be an asset.”

“Marble and I will be there too,” Dust promised.

Marble nodded. “Mm.”

“Huh?” Starlight asked, after a moment. “What? Am I supposed to say something sappy?”

“Idiot,” Sparkle scoffed. “Get out of here. I’ll be watching you, so you’d better not do anything too stupid! That goes for all of you!”

Dust saluted and turned to the portal.

“Let’s go see what kind of Equestria we can build,” Dust said.

They walked into the sunlight, and the future.

Author's Note

Scootaloo sighed and looked up at the sky, watching the stars. Some of them were moving, flashing around so quickly the eye could barely follow, slamming into each other and bouncing away. She could only see the brightest from here on the ground, with the lights of the city behind her, with all its nightlife and noise, washing it out.

“What’s wrong, kid?”

Scootaloo turned to look at the pony behind her. It was some mare in a dull grey cloak that was burned around the edges like it’d been pulled out of a fire. The teal mare sat down next to her, and Scootaloo tried not to look at her horn, or the shifting of wings under her cloak.

“I’m stuck down here,” Scootaloo admitted, looking away. She was ashamed to say it, but the stranger was… well, a stranger. A pony who wouldn’t judge her. “My friends are up there playing starball.”

“That’s an alicorn game, isn’t it?” the stranger asked. “I haven’t kept up with all the sports you kids invented.”

“Yeah, alicorns only,” Scootaloo said. “You need magic and wings, or you can’t play. And I guess it’s not really safe if you’re not immortal but that’s what they say about hoofball now and it didn’t stop anypony from playing it before when they just had helmets.” She huffed.

“So you can’t play until you become an alicorn, huh?” the stranger asked, looking up at the spectacle.

“My friends and I were supposed to ascend together,” Scootaloo explained. “But it didn’t work out that way. They left me behind…”

The stranger nodded. “Okay, then. It sounds to me like you just need a little help.” She stood up, and offered a hoof to Scootaloo.

“Why would you want to help me?” Scootaloo asked, taking her hoof and standing.

“Sometimes there are arguments or fights, but real friendship is forever,” the stranger said. “We’re all in this together.”

“So what’s the first lesson? Magic lasers? Punching boulders? Beating up monsters?”

Lightning Dust tossed back her hood and smiled. “You look like you’re pretty fast, kid. How about a race?”

Scootaloo grinned. “You’re about to lose, old lady!”

“That’s what I want to hear,” Dust said. “On three. One--”

Scootaloo took off, flying right past her and turning to blow a raspberry.

Dust grinned and chased after her.