Friendship Is Magic - Extended Cut

by AdmiralSakai

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike, Nightmare Moon, Mystery, Adventure, Violence, Princess Celestia, Death, Alternate Universe, Twilight Sparkle, Main 6
Length: 115700

Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic rewritten and expanded as a mature fantasy adventure.

Twilight Sparkle didn’t care about overseeing the Summer Sun Celebration in some podunk little town. She just wanted a chance to study the history of the Lunar Rebellions and maybe, just maybe, convince Celestia that her sister’s return was a real possibility. Now it’s a lot more than just a possibility, and one Canterlot egghead isn’t going to be able to take on Nightmare Moon and her army alone.

(Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic rewritten and expanded as a mature fantasy adventure)

Published 2019-05-22 23:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-05-27 17:11:01 UTC

The Plural of 'Anecdote'

(♫)

The flight to Ponyville took approximately thirty minutes. Perhaps not coincidentally, that was almost exactly as long as it took for Twilight’s good mood to evaporate completely. She’d read over Celestia’s instructions regarding the Celebration the night before and found them incredibly vague, of course, but assumed the townsponies could flesh out the details themselves and leave her plenty of time to investigate. Now, looking out at the chaotic sprawl of Trotter-style thatched roofs slowly resolving itself on the horizon, the young scholar was developing serious second thoughts.

She’d initially been surprised when Celestia had requisitioned a Guard air chariot for her personal transport- she’d been expecting to have to hire a cart from her personal stipend, or worse yet be sent off to the public rail system. She’d been grateful, back in Canterlot, but the Princess wielded passive-aggressive stagecraft like a fine rapier and minutes into her flight the vehicle had begun to feel far too large and opulent for just her and Spike. The metaphor for the immense scale of the project she’d just permitted the two of them to take on effectively alone was obvious; no doubt Celestia knew that Twilight would realize this when she’d assigned the chariot, and know that Twilight would know she knew, and on and on in an infinite regress that somehow always kept the alicorn one step ahead. The chariot was a fractal, physically assembled in pearl inlays and enchanted gold.

It had thus been a quiet trip, with Spike’s few attempts to clarify a section of the research notes he was annotating having received vague, noncommittal answers. He picked up on her discomfort with commendable speed, however, and went over his data in silence after that.

The buildings -‘huts’? No, that sounded demeaning. ‘Cottages.’ They were cottages.- enlarged themselves at a vaguely alarming rate, and with nary a bump Twilight and Spike found themselves on the ground once again.

“Good flying, soldier,” Twilight said, and the pegasus corporal in front of her favored her with the best approximation of a curt nod as was possible when strapped into a drover’s harness and twisted around a hundred and eighty degrees. That was one good thing about commissioning military transport, at least- Twilight didn’t need to figure out how much to tip. The expected scaling factor seemed to fluctuate wildly between fifteen and thirty percent with no clear rhyme or reason, and the behavioral economics papers covering the subject she had found universally to sport serious methodological flaws.

Evidently Ponyville didn’t receive a great deal of air traffic, as the drover had been forced to land in a vacant patch of grass which happened to be mostly flat. As she stepped out of the chariot Twilight could already see equine shapes emerging from the nearest cottages, no doubt to gawk at the new visitor. Foremost among them was a pudgy, bubblegum-pink earth pony mare with a wildly unkempt curly mane and the sort of smile that in Twilight’s experience immediately presaged either a sales pitch, a lesson on being Good Colts And Fillies, or some form of severe cataleptic seizure.

While the rest of the onlookers kept at a reasonable distance she barreled right on ahead and introduced herself in a high, painfully earnest voice. “Hey, are you Twilight Sparkle? I’m Pinkie Pie! The Mayor asked me to show you around Ponyville and make sure you had everything you needed!”

“That’s, umm, great, but I’m on kind of a tight schedule so if you could just dispense with the tour and get us directly to the… uhh… Town Hall I’d really appreciate-”

“- but I figured you’d want to meet up with the Mayor first thing and check out Ponyville later, so I can just take you right to the Town Hall,” the earth pony said near-simultaneously.

“… Huh.” Twilight hadn’t been expecting that. “Well, Spike, we’d… better get going, then?”

The young drake made his presence known by climbing out of the chariot, and Pinkie gave him a friendly wave but nothing more. Twilight thought that was surprisingly tactful of her; ponies in Canterlot who met her assistant for the first time universally gawked and asked the exact same sequence of incredibly stupid questions. Spike had even offered to remain back at the Observatory during last night’s preparations, but Twilight wouldn’t hear of it. She was going to need all the help she could get before this was over.

“I’ll see if I can round up somepony to take your luggage… err, well, your saddlebags at least?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Twilight cut the pink mare off. She preferred to keep her research notes and significant reserve of bits close at hoof, and aside from basic toiletries had packed precious little else anyway. Her Academy stipend was by no means large, but her day-to-day expenses were an order of magnitude smaller and she’d been confident that the coin she’d saved would be more than enough to purchase any equipment or labor she wound up needing on-site. Now, however, she was starting to have her doubts that proper excavating tools would even be available out here.

“Okie-dokie!” Pinkie Pie seemed completely unfazed by the curt reply, and turned to leave with the Canterlot party following wordlessly behind. The field soon narrowed to a rough dirt track as the homes surrounding it grew closer together and marginally more expansive; a few even adding a second story. Many of them had been done up festively in garlands of flowers and multicolored banners, a trend which redoubled itself once the track opened up again into a sort of market square. A few ponies in distinctly artisanal tool-harnesses were busy affixing wings, a horn, and yellow-painted regalia to the whitewashed statue of an earth mare that seemed to be the central fixture of the place, and tents were already being erected promising any number of amusements. The Summer Sun Celebration was as much a religious holiday as a civic one- while it was held directly holy only by the cult of the Unconquered Sun largely confined to the Equestrian military and civil service, most of the other major temples paid some obeisance -and much of the assembled finery bore motifs of Gaia, the Four Winds, and the All-Seeing Eye.

Not long after her admission to the Academy Twilight herself had fallen in with a group of gnostics who held that the ancient magus Starswirl the Bearded had discovered a method of spiritual apotheosis and hidden it away in his writings. As a result she had little interest herself in the common religions of the Three Tribes. In fact, it had been ages since she’d attended any sort of meeting with the other gnostics, either- she simply had too much else to do. She supposed, though, that the artistic expression of the Ponyville natives could be considered charmingly quaint at least.

As soon as they crossed into the square proper the trio were immediately set upon by a fresh new swarm of onlookers, foremost among them a sky-blue pegasus mare with a fashionably curled manecut. “Hey, are you from Canterlot?” she asked, interposing herself directly in Twilight’s path, “My cousin’s in the Guard, and she wrote a letter to me that said her unit’s gearing up for a big airship flight, and now it’s in all the papers! Is Equestria really sending troops to clear all the pirates out of Kluge Town?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Twilight admonished, trying in vain to find an exit vector amid the suddenly close-packed crowd, “I’m just part of the General Staff.” In Canterlot, simply mentioning her department was typically enough to deflect any untoward interest.

Apparently, however, Ponyville had a different understanding of Ministerial prestige. “And right after that big electrum shipment from Abyssinia hit the docks in Manehattan,” muttered another pegasus, this one a dark gray stallion, “Quite the coincidence, innit?!”

“I think a coincidence is exactly what it sounds like,” Twilight continued, “There’s no way Celestia could plan and organize a major military action like that so quickly just because the Abbyssinians-”

“That’s exactly what an agent of the Crown would say, in’it?!” the stallion demanded, earning him more than a few odd looks from the other townsponies.

“Uhh, sure, yeah, whatever you say…” Twilight backed away, and a shove from Spike managed to properly orient her to a less-populated portion of the market.

“I don’t care what they say about the corruption in Canterlot,” the blue pegasus was continuing just within earshot, “I don’t think I’ve ever had the chance to vote against Mayor Mare…”

“You’ll have to take that up with the Election Board, I’m just here for the Festival!” Twilight shouted back, then pulled up short having almost trod over a pair of fillies who both gazed up at her in awe.

“Wow, is that a tame dragon?” the one on the left- an orange-and-purple pegasus- asked.

“Can it talk?” continued the curly-maned white unicorn next to her.

“Certainly not, that would be ridiculous!” Spike snapped, earning a snicker from Pinkie Pie and a venomous glare from Twilight.

“Do you know what’s Celestia’s favorite type of flower?” asked a cream-and-red earth pony from behind a market stall.

“What about her favorite type of cake?” cut in a yellow stallion in a baker’s apron.

“Yeah, sure, OK,” Twilight said and kept walking, locked onto Pinkie Pie’s highly visible mane.

“That doesn’t answer my-”

“Perfect, sounds good, see you at the Celebration!” Twilight nodded approvingly and ducked through the mahogany doors of the large, cylindrical structure the placard outside identified as Ponyville Town Hall. Spike followed a moment later and shut it behind him, cutting off or at least muffling the ruckus building outside. Looking through one of the large windows on either side of the lobby, she saw that Pinkie Pie was at least managing to field their questions in a somewhat organized manner.

It was a very nice lobby, all told, paradoxically much more comfortable than the one outside of the Day Court, paneled in fine hardwood and furnished with a number of low green-velvet benches. As a result it didn’t take long for Twilight to catch her breath and realize that she had no idea where in the building she was supposed to go. Voices and the scent of cheap coffee were issuing from what the directory identified as a conference room and the door there was propped open. That seemed as good a place to start as any.

Inside, a quintet of ponies sat in ratty leather desk chairs around a scuffed oaken table. One of them- a tan-coated, white-maned earth pony in a slightly nicer chair with a nameplate in front of her simply reading ‘MAYOR’- looked up when Twilight entered and motioned her forward. “You must be the inspector from Canterlot,” the Mayor said, age doing little to soften a voice that was obviously meant strictly for business. “We’ve been expecting you. These are Councilponies Granny Smith,” She waved at the ancient-looking green earth pony two seats to her left, “Derpy Hooves,” next in line was a younger gray pegasus with a jagged, straw-colored mane and something… off about the way her golden eyes tracked over the papers in front of her, “Cheerilee”, on the other side of the Mayor a plum-colored earth pony gave a friendly wave, “and Amethyst Star.” The pony on the far left was a fuchsia unicorn with a bright purple mane and a stack of three-ring binders in front of her that made Twilight briefly jealous. “Esteemed Councilponies, this is Twilight Sparkle, our liaison to the Crown.”

She motioned to an empty chair on the other side of the table and Twilight gratefully sat down. Then she remembered the debacle in the market square and set out to do a bit of preemptive damage control: “That makes me sound a lot more important than I am, really. I just took a job as a clerk to help pay my way through magic school.” That wasn’t technically a lie, at least for certain definitions of ‘clerk’, ‘pay’, and ‘magic school’. Twilight had, in fact, received her Doctoratum Arcanis some two years previous, and while her current status in the Canterlot hierarchy was somewhat ambiguous she certainly outranked most of the rest of the General Staff.

There was an open seat beside her- one of ten in total, in fact- and Spike climbed into it, realizing a bit too late that his head was barely visible above the surface. Twilight knew her assistant well enough to recognize that he was currently considering whether or not it would be simpler to just sit on the table, and she quietly shook her head no. She wanted to salvage what good impression she could here.

“I’m just not sure if Dash- uhh, Captain Dash can get the skies cleared and still have time to prepare for the Naming of the Four Winds…” the gray pegasus was saying. Her speech was odd- simple and labored, with some consonants overemphasized and some absent entirely- but the content of it was articulate and she seemed to have little trouble comprehending the complicated shipping manifest in front of her despite her clearly out-of-focus eyes. While by no means a trained physician Twilight knew enough from reading over her father’s medical texts to make a tentative diagnosis of neuromotor ataxia, although whether from a congenital condition or from some injury in the pegasus’s past she had no idea.

“Well, the mock-Accession is always set up early,” Amethyst Star responded, “I could always send a few unicorn workers to help your crew set up the banners and such.”

“Not much we can do ‘bout the food prices, though,” Granny Smith cut in, “least ’til exports from Appleoosa finally pick back up…”

“We’ll be able to make the difference up twice over in sales tax,” the Mayor replied, “It’s not an issue. I’m more concerned with the increase in Timberwolf sightings near the Everfree. With so much of the Militia pulled in to guard Princess Celestia I worry we won’t have sufficient troops to patrol the border after dark.”

Anxious to head off another round of pointless reshuffling, Twilight spoke up. “I wouldn't bother, Celestia’s never called on a security detail herself and always leaves the ones she’s given behind as soon as she can.” The young scholar had been unlucky- or, perhaps, lucky- enough to witness an assassination attempt on her patron first-hoof not long after coming to the Academy, specifically an incredibly precise cannon volley fired from a hilltop a kilometer away, and was fairly certain nothing physically could harm the Princess. “In fact, she likes to wander around and talk to her subjects more than anything; it’s hard to say for sure but I think it bothers her when she’s behind a barricade or anything like that.”

“Oh, no,” Cheerilee said, “that means we’re going to have to reschedule the Cultural Exposition to accommodate her!”

Twilight knew that she was relatively unique among ponies in that she actually found bureaucracy to be an incredibly fascinating area of study. It was a trait she shared with her brother and which she was fairly certain had been a significant contributor to her family’s rapid ascent to Celestia’s patronage. Where the rest of high society might drink or take in a play, evenings often found her and Shiny sprawled out on the floor of one apartment or another surrounded by flow charts and civil codes, tracing the path of particularly important decisions through different ministries and inking in suggested improvements to the process.

That, though, had been back in Canterlot, where the engines of policy were vast and beautifully complicated things upon whose continued smooth operation literally millions of lives depended. It was beginning to dawn on the young scholar that she had made a terrible mistake in assuming that just because the issues facing Ponyville were several orders of magnitude smaller in scope and many more orders less complex, the ponies in charge would spend any less time bickering over them.

Bored almost to tears, Twilight regarded the ceiling as the others continued on without her. It wasn’t even a very interesting ceiling, as far as ceilings went- just plaster and a few crystal lamps hung for illumination- and her eye soon wandered to the Summer Sun bunting that had been hung between the lampshades. “Spike?” she muttered, too quietly for the others to hear, “Notice anything out of the ordinary about the banners in here?”

He followed her gaze. “Wait, are those…?”

“Yeah. I thought I was seeing things, at first.”

The fabric was stitched using modern techniques in the traditional holiday golds, whites, and oranges, but there was no mistaking the smooth, gently-curving lines of the depicted ponies’ armor and the single, eye-like gem placed front and center in the pattern as anything other than Lunar in origin.

“Hey. Other side.” Her assistant nudged her in the shoulder, and Twilight quietly twisted around. A white unicorn mare with an elaborately-curled purple mane had slipped into the conference room and was carefully readjusting one of the fabrics in a blue telekinetic aura. Her saddlebags bulged with other neatly-folded sections of cloth upon which similar patterns were visible.

“Well that’s strange…” Twilight whispered. The general historical consensus was that the last true holdouts of the Lunar Rebellion had died out by the early 500s, and had been a shadow of their former influence for decades before that. Occasionally ‘Rebels’ or ‘Moon Cultists’ had made appearances right up until modern times and would in all likelihood continue to do so, but universally these proved to be groups of disaffected young ponies who thought that wearing too much eyeshadow and writing poetry about Nightmare Moon’s "gaolment within the stygian voids of tormented dissolution" made them seem impressive. Needless to say they bore little to no resemblance to the terrifying zealots described by General Gold Dust, the Black Talons, and other genuine First Century sources.

That said, if anywhere in modern Equestria was likely to harbor an authentic survival of the Lunar ideology when it had dissolved everywhere else, a dismal little town not four kilometers from the Everfree Forest was probably the most likely candidate.

That also said, inserting identifiable but completely benign Lunar imagery into decorations for the Summer Sun Celebration seemed an odd way to undermine the “great Sun-Tyrant”. Twilight decided the whole affair was definitely worthy of further investigation.

Unfortunately for her, that was also when the mysterious unicorn decided to finish what she was doing and leave for parts unknown, and also when Councilmare Cheerilee decided to slide several clipboards’-worth of hoofwritten paper across the table to Twilight’s position. “We’re having some trouble scheduling the night’s speakers and I was wondering which speech would fit best before Celestia’s arrival… and, of course, if you have any edits you’d like to make please feel free...”

Under cover of giving each of the clipboards a quick once-over, Twilight swung her head back towards her assistant. “Spike,” she hissed, “see if you can follow that mare and figure out where she’s going.”

“Got it.” He slipped down from his chair and disappeared under the table. Despite his rather loud coloring, the young dragon’s small stature and flexible lizard-like frame coupled with over a decade escaping curious ponies had made him surprisingly good at avoiding notice. If the others were even aware that he was no longer at the table they gave no sign; and Twilight tried her damnedest to look busy as she reviewed the boringly adequate speeches which were to be delivered two days later and the Councilponies continued discussing… whatever it was they’d been discussing previously.

“Do you think Celestia would be impressed by an exhibition on the town economy, or do you think that would be too crass…”

“Or maybe an informal honor guard made up of veterans and the militiaponies…”

“… wait, look, they’re both assigned to the parade and the demonstration stalls…”

“… can have Thunderlane fill in for Roseluck at…”

“… ain’t y’all worried he’ll try an’…”

“… All right, that’s finally settled at least. Now we’re free to move on to evacuation routes…”

After what seemed like hours, Twilight dimly registered a four-fingered claw brush her right forehoof, and slid a little lower in her chair. “What’d you find?”

“She decorated most of the building and everyone acted like she belonged there,” Spike whispered, “but now she’s on the move, headed out around back.”

(♫)

Twilight fought down panic for a moment, before realizing that sending her assistant away for some indeterminate period and then having him return to whisper urgently to her was in fact a perfect way to set up her exit. “Uhh, excuse me,” she said, silencing Derpy Hooves in the middle of an enthusiastic scribbling session with Granny Smith, “I’m really sorry, but something urgent’s come up that I need to deal with. Don’t wait up on my behalf.” She slipped out of the room, brushed past Pinkie Pie heading the other way, and ducked into another office filled with filing cabinets, janitorial equipment, and- most importantly for her purposes- no other ponies.

A quick mental calculation of the radius of the Town Hall later, and she winked out of existence in a globe of violet energy only to reappear, dragon in tow and only mildly singed, in an area of flat-packed earth to the rear of the building which evidently served as a crude loading zone.

True to Spike’s word, the white unicorn from the conference room was in the final steps of hitching herself to a simple wooden cart containing a few other Summer-Sun-themed accouterments and a prodigious amount of empty packaging. Now that she was up close Twilight could finally get a decent look at the mystery mare, and was a bit surprised by what she saw. Her target was heavily but tastefully made-up, and her her coat and mane were glossy with some sort of conditioner- Twilight caught the faintest scent of vanilla and beeswax. Although on the thin side she looked healthy enough and carried herself with a sort of natural grace, and Twilight suddenly felt rather uncomfortable with her well-worn canvas saddlebags and practical manecut. She wasn’t sure what she had expected a survivor of the Lunar Rebellions to look like, but it wasn’t this- if it wasn’t for her short stature and stubby three-spiral horn, the workmare could easily pass as part of the Canterlot gentry with an uncommonly sensible budget.

She supposed that in relation to her primary objective it didn’t really matter. Digging deep into her saddlebag Twilight extracted the writ authorizing her to oversee the Summer Sun Celebration as a personal agent of Princess Celestia. The document didn’t actually grant her much of any power over the residents of Ponyville or for that matter any other part of Equestria; but it was written in complicated legal jargon, it shared the same format as search warrants and bills of impoundment, and Twilight doubted any of the locals here had read anything more complicated than a beer label in a good long while.

Twilight strode confidently forward brandishing the paper in her telekinesis and summoned up her best Buck Bower impression- she wouldn’t say that she legitimately enjoyed the jingoistic serials that had become disturbingly popular as of late, at least not in the way their authors had intended, but she had to admit it was great fun to sit down with Spike and Shiny over a long weekend to pick apart their numerous tactical, historical, and magical inaccuracies. “Excuse me, miss, I’m Twilight Sparkle, agent of the General Operations Department. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

The lot was empty aside from the three of them, and it occurred to Twilight that the mystery mare might take the opportunity to either flee or attempt to overpower her outright, so she quietly prepared a powerful stun spell. She had no formal combat training, it was true, but a magical prodigy didn’t spend ten years living under the same roof as the current Commander of the Equestrian Royal Guard without acquiring certain skills.

However, the other pony just turned, favored her with a small but nonetheless dazzling smile, and nodded. “From Canterlot? Certainly, darling! What is it you need?” What began as a slight Appleoosan drawl transmuted mid-sentence into the posh accent the better class of finishing schools tended to produce, and which very few of the Canterlot set bothered to retain once they came into their inheritances. Curious.

Perhaps she was just a dupe or a courier, and the Lunar materials were sourced from elsewhere. “Do you know the origin of those hangings you’ve been transporting?”

“Oh! Well, actually, not to brag, but I’ve sewn all of them myself. Is someone in Canterlot interested? I have others!”

“Well, not exactly,” Spike cut in, “I was just wondering who gave you the idea to include those patterns.” The banner pony gave him an odd look, but he continued, “In… the Dragonlands I’ve never seen their like. Are these designs common in Equestria? I can’t remember any in the other towns we’ve toured.” Twilight had to admit she was impressed with Spike’s verbal maneuvering, and wished she’d thought of the ruse herself. Given the accent and her general demeanor it wasn’t hard to guess that the white unicorn had aspirations to move in the same circles as politicians and foreign diplomats; obviously if she’d managed to accomplish that dream she wouldn’t be in Ponyville. Twilight had grown painfully familiar with the sort from Celestia’s numerous political functions -back before she’d accumulated enough academic clout to stop attending, anyway. She figured that such a pony would jump at the chance to impress a dragon ambassador without recognizing the absurdity of dragons engaging in diplomacy or questioning why word of his arrival hadn’t been made available beforehand. Twilight could have done without Spike’s insinuation that she was some sort of attache or security officer assigned to support his fact-finding mission, however.

She supposed it didn’t matter in the long run. “Well I’m flattered to have caught the eye of such a well-traveled dignitary,” the mystery mare continued. Twilight thought she was laying it on a little thick, although obviously it wouldn’t do to call her out on that just now. “These designs are based on motifs I’ve noticed at older historical sites around Ponyville. With so many important ponies- and dragons, it would seem -arriving for the Celebration I thought it was the least I could do to celebrate our heritage.” Idly, Twilight wondered if the pony would bend down and kiss Spike’s claw should he bother to extend it. “I’ve more work based on that motif back at my shop, should you happen to be interested.”

“Yes, actually, we would like to take a look, miss…” Spike trailed off expectantly. Twilight supposed she was lucky his sibilant, utterly inequestrian speech would hopefully mask to the untrained ear his attempts to sound important and dignified.

“Rarity, darling. And... whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?”

“Just ‘Spike’ will do. You’ve already met Twilight Sparkle, my liaison with Canterlot.”

As Rarity and the dragon set off back to what was presumably Ponyville’s commercial district, the newly-demoted arcanist fought to keep her expression neutral and motioned for Spike to fall back out of earshot with her as soon as he turned her way. “Is all of this really necessary?” she whispered.

“It got us a lead on the Lunars, didn’t it? Besides, she seems friendly enough, and I don’t want her hauled back to Canterlot for interrogation just because she reminds you too much of Upper Crust.”

“We’re not here to make friends, we’re here to get answers.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive, you know. And, honestly, Twilight, we could both stand to spend some time outdoors. See the rest of Equestria for a change, maybe.” He waved a claw at the quaint storefronts on either side of them. Fortunately, Rarity’s shop didn’t seem to be located too close to the statue square and its mob of festival-goers. “I mean, just look at this place. It’s like something off a postcard.” He paused and flicked a claw against the rigid, bony plates that protruded from his conical skull and continued down his serpentine neck, “How are my spines, are they still straight?”

Twilight nodded, spotting another Lunar slit-pupilled eye incongruously superimposed over Celestia’s cutie-mark on a string of hanging pennants. “Postcard? I don’t know, I’m thinking more The Shadow over Bitsmouth myself.”

“Oh, you mean the story where the protagonist gets an entire town destroyed even though the Sea-Ponies are barely seen and never themselves do anything demonstrably bad? Yes, I can see it.”

“Spike?”

“Mmhmm?”

“Kindly be quiet."

Rarity’s shop proved to be a good bit more modern than what Twilight was already starting to consider the ‘standard’ for Ponyville architecture. Roughly cylindrical and featuring an actual glass storefront, she supposed it was a decent enough approximation of Canterlot Deco given the severely limited materials the tailor no doubt had available to work with out here. Spike once again took the lead as they stepped inside- a welcome respite from the afternoon sun- and the white unicorn led them past a showroom of admittedly very finely-dressed mannequins to a section of velvet curtains that blocked off the rear corner.

Once they were pulled back in Rarity’s blue telekinetic aura, Twilight had to admit she was impressed. The place was in equal parts a workshop and artist’s studio, and the young scholar’s eye roved over an incredible and neatly-organized array of dyes, lapidary’s tools, fasteners, and a thousand other things she couldn’t even recognize with barely-contained hunger. Magical theory and historical analysis were generally abstract quill-and-paper disciplines, and Twilight had always held a potent mixture of envy and admiration for ponies who actually spent their time making anything from fine tableware to stock alchemical reagents. The proprietor, for her part, seemed to sense this quickly enough and kept at a discreet distance as Twilight explored, and as a result the scholar decided it was only courteous to refrain from touching anything with either her hooves or telekinesis.

The Lunar inspiration was evident to a greater or lesser degree in roughly half of what Twilight found. At times it was as subtle as a preference for certain shades of purple or blue in an otherwise unremarkable selection of raw fabrics, although Rarity also seemed to have been building an entire suit of completely period-accurate Night Guard armor tucked away in one corner. Twilight had only ever seen illustrations of the equipment before, and decided to take a closer look.

Even partially disassembled on a workbench there was a sort of fierce, predatory beauty to the design, all reflective midnight blue alloy and sleek, sharp-tipped curves, although to her disappointment she saw that several of the loose plates not attached to the primary structure were dented or rusted nearly through; a few others were soaking in a tub of some sort of pungent-smelling solution evidently designed to clean them.

Rarity wasn’t building the armor, Twilight realized with shock, she was restoring it.

“Excuse me?” the scholar asked, then waited for Spike and the other pony to look back in her direction, “Would you mind telling me where you… acquired this?”

“Why certainly, darling! Most of this material was rescued, I guess you could say, from an old Lunar burial site on a farm outside of town. Sweet Apple Acres, it’s called.”

“Wait a minute, you opened up a Lunar Cairn?” The Cairns were easily the best-known and best-documented physical remainders of the Rebellions. Indeed, they were the only Lunar-built structures to occasionally be found outside of what was now the protean Everfree Forest. There were perhaps several hundred in total, holding all or nearly all of the doomed Lunar Army -accounts couldn’t agree whether Celestia had ordered them wiped out to the last mare, whether they’d committed some form of mass suicide, or if some had in fact slipped away to continue their insurrection elsewhere- and old laws intended to protect friends and family from retribution by the victorious Solars also forbid tampering with the tombs.

“Oh, firmament, no!” Rarity shook her head. “It was open well before I came along! I… I know that the Lunar Republic did some horrible things in their day, but they poured so much beauty into everything they made.” Idly, the tailor picked up a pair of what appeared to be pegasus flight goggles, half of the crumbling leather headband cut off and re-threaded with fresh material. The lenses were given an aggressive downward slant and tinted pale yellow-orange, possibly to enhance contrast in the low-light conditions the Lunars had no doubt favored. Twilight had never before seen their like. “I couldn’t let all of that rust away underground; if the pony who made these was alive today I know she’d want her work shared with the rest of Equestria.”

Twilight eyed the set of deployable hoof-blades soaking in a mineral bath, and hoped for Celestia's sake that Rarity didn't mean that literally. She didn’t know quite what to think about the information the tailor had supplied. Nopony had bothered to even propose any kind of physical testing on the Cairns in the last thousand years because their construction was unusually well-attested: detailed, independent contemporary sources all agreed to a high degree of precision on what they contained. However, none of those sources mentioned artifacts even remotely like what Rarity had evidently uncovered, and certainly none had ever described a Cairn being left open. She turned to Spike and gave him a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

“Actually, if you could point us to the site I’d be very appreciative. I know the Lunar Rebellions were a traumatic time for Equestria, and I’d like to… pay my respects on behalf of the Draconic nations.”

Apparently the patent absurdity of Lord Torch paying respect to anypony whatsoever was lost on the tailor, as she simply nodded. “Just head due East and you can’t miss it. Ask for Applejack, and tell her I sent you.” Idly, she wandered back into the front of the shop. “It is a bit of a hike, so perhaps I could interest youin a pair of boots? It’ll take but a moment to adjust them for claws-”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Twilight snapped, perhaps a bit more curtly than was entirely appropriate, and backed towards the door.

For a moment Rarity seemed genuinely hurt by that, before her expression settled back into the quiet pleasantness shared by shopkeeps the world over. Spike seemed to have noticed -in fact, he seemed to be looking a lot more at the tailor than he’d been looking at Twilight the entire conversation- and immediately headed back towards the center of the shop floor with an odd look in his eye. “I’ll have to apologize for Twilight, her appreciation of the finer elements of Equestrian society seems a bit… stunted.” He stopped and regarded a dummy in the center of the shop clad in a leather duelist's harness of the same sort of light, unconstricting type favored by the better class of Canterlot sportsmares. “I for one think that a harness like this would suit a dragon quite well, if you wouldn’t mind cutting off a few of the buckles for me.”

“Oh! No no, that’s not for sale!” the tailor snapped, and Spike leaped backwards as if shocked. “I’m… terribly sorry for raising my voice,” she continued in a more normal register, “It’s just… I’ve had that piece since I was a filly; it was… the first thing I ever made myself, in fact. I… couldn’t bear to part with it after all these years.”

“I’m terribly sorry, in that case I wouldn’t ever suggest-”

“Oh, darling, it’s quite understandable. Everypony in town knows how attached I am to it, so I never had any reason not to put it on display and show it off, but with so many creatures from far and wide arriving for the festival I should have realized-”

“No, no, it’s no trouble at all, and I must say the workmareship is truly incredible.”

“Oh! You’re too kind…”

Twilight coughed, a bit louder than was entirely necessary. Spike’s slitted eyes narrowed to a hair's-breadth and he began backing away again.

“I am sorry to have to leave so suddenly, but I’m afraid our presence is needed elsewhere. Perhaps later I can return and look over a few more of your designs- I know that would bore Twilight terribly, so perhaps I’ll give her her leave for the evening, and-”

“Oh, but I don’t want her to feel left out! Perhaps, Twilight, I could interest you in a new traveling cloak for your trouble? It’s reinforced cotton, light and breathable. More durable saddlebags? I’ve just finished a leather attache model, if you can spare a moment I’ll fit a clasp to match your cutie mark…?”

Twilight was already heading for the door. “C’mon, Spike,” she whispered, “Quickly! Before she decides to dye my coat a new color!”

(♫)

Whatever else Twilight might have said about "Rarity", at least she gave accurate directions. All the young scholar had needed to do was head East for a little under a kilometer, before the stone-and-thatch buildings of Ponyville fell away to reveal a neat grid of cultivated apple trees stretching off to the wooded horizon. She doubted she could have missed it if she’d tried- “Sweet Apple Acres” seemed to comprise, at a rough estimate, at least forty percent of the town’s perimeter.

There was a collection of painted wooden buildings visible on a hilltop close to what Twilight supposed was the center of the property. Noting the distinctly insecure barrel-height fence, she stepped off the road and headed directly for it, Spike following a few steps behind.

“Do you think we should be on their property without permission?” the dragon whispered.

“It’s not like we’re stealing their crops, and obviously they aren’t too worried about other ponies coming here. There’s some pegasus bum sleeping in that tree over there.”

“Maybe that’s one of the farmers? Or a… a what are they called, a hired hoof?”

“Then why doesn’t she have any equipment? Why isn’t she doing anything productive? Surely they wouldn’t pay ponies just to loaf around all day.”

“I think I saw somepony in that outbuilding over there. D’you wanna take a look?”

The building in question turned out to be a sort of subsidiary barn -Twilight was certain there was some sort of specific agricultural name for that type of structure, but Tartarus if she knew what it wa- which had been converted into a crude large-animal veterinary station. Inside, a small buttercup-yellow pegasus mare with a pale-pink mane was hard at work applying some variety of herbal compress to the bruised rear leg of a scruffy-looking dog. She was muttering quietly under her breath to the animal as she worked, but turned back to look at Twilight -startled, actually- as soon as the scholar cleared her throat.

“Excuse me? You wouldn’t happen to be… Applejack, would you?”

Gaze fixed firmly on the ground at Twilight’s hooves, the yellow pegasus shook her head.

“Do you know where I can find Applejack?” Twilight asked, a bit more quietly this time.

The pegasus backed up a few steps, wings clamped hard against her sides, and waved a forehoof towards a more residential-looking two-story building.

“Umm…I guess everything’s in order. Keep up… the good work?”

The pegasus scampered off, dog in tow, at a slightly different angle from where she had pointed that would take her behind the farmhouse.

“Well, that was easy!” Twilight headed up the well-trodden dirt path while fishing around once again in her saddlebags for the Summer Sun memo. Bluffing had worked reasonably well on that tailor pony and she figured there wasn’t any reason to keep fiddling around. Non-destructively poking around an already-open cairn technically wouldn’t be illegal, but she didn’t exactly have a magistrate explicitly backing her up either. She’d read enough Daring Do novels -A. K. Yearling represented the historiographic and archaeological process with surprising verisimilitude, even going so far as to demonstrate an uncanny sixth sense for which competing theories would soon be vindicated or debunked by new evidence- to know that inbred locals were typically far more defensive of their historical sites than was in any way reasonable.

Writ held firmly in her telekinesis, she motioned for Spike to slip to the side and out of sight and rapped her forehoof purposefully against the front door.

After a few seconds of indistinct shuffling, it opened to reveal a powerfully-built earth pony mare with a bright-orange coat and a brown leather hat- a Stilton? Hinton? Something along those lines- perched smartly atop her neatly-tied blonde mane. “C’n Ah help yah?” she asked, in easily the thickest Appleoosan accent Twilight had ever heard.

“Umm, yes, actually, you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find a pony named Applejack, would you?”

“’Bout two feet’n front a’ ya, in fact,” her broad features shifted into a friendly smile, “You in town for the Festival?”

“Good. Right.” Twilight paused to take a breath and brandished the document. She’d honestly been expecting three or four more cycles of searching around the property before actually meeting up with the pony she was supposed to talk to. “I’m Agent Twilight Sparkle, with the General Staff of the Royal Ministry for Arts and Antiquities. I’ve gotten a report that a site of archaeological value on your property’s been damaged, and if you don’t mind I’d like to inspect its condition and determine if any restoration work needs to be performed.”

The earth pony’s smile faded and her green eyes narrowed in suspicion. “C’n Ah see that paper there again, please?” Without asking she snagged the document out of Twilight’s aura and began quickly scanning through it. “Funny how Canterlot figures they oughta’ finally send somepony to take a look at the old Cairn a hundred an’ fifty years after it got broken into… an’ it’s awful funny how they sent her with paperwork for talkin’ to the Mayor ‘bout the Summer Sun Celebration…”

Realizing that her cover was disintegrating before her eyes, Twilight opted to execute a tactical pivot-and-retreat. “Look, I’m terribly sorry for taking up your time, I’m just working for the General Staff to pay my way through school, I’ve been assigned some historical research, Rarity mentioned there was a Cairn out here and I just wanted a look, I won’t bother you again…”

She reached out once again with her telekinesis and managed to snag the now somewhat-crumpled document, pulling it towards her with surprisingly little resistance, even as Applejack grimaced and yelled “Hey, cut that out!”

In retrospect, she probably should have listened. Instead, the document was immediately followed and soon overtaken by Applejack’s front hoof, which collided with Twilight’s horn just above the base.

She had bumped her horn on a variety of surfaces before, of course, some of them quite unforgiving. Each time her response had been the entirely sensible one of spending the next few minutes on her haunches swearing a blue streak and waiting for the universe to stop spinning. After one particularly ignoble incident involving a stack of hardbound meteorurgy journals, a pegasus engineer with whom Twilight had been working at the time had asked her exactly what getting hit on the horn felt like to a unicorn. She’d answered honestly that the closest tribe-agnostic comparison would be undergoing invasive dental work with insufficient anesthesia. Indeed, the structure of a horn and a tooth weren’t too dissimilar, although the outer layers of the former were keratin instead of enamel and the whole structure could in time regrow if it was sliced or broken off.

This was markedly worse.

After a few minutes of undignified spitting and staggering, the pain receded enough that Twilight could once again form coherent words. “What was that for?” she yelled.

“Ah saw your horn flarin’ an’-”

“So you hit me in the head? What’s wrong with you ponies?”

“Ah tapped you on the head. If Ah’d’a hit ya that horn a’ yours’d be halfway to Canterlot by now. Now you’d best clear off my property ‘fore ya do anything you’ll regret later.”

It was beginning to dawn on Twilight that she may have gotten herself into a potentially dangerous confrontation.

It was a common piece of athletic folk-wisdom that earth ponies were stronger than unicorns or pegasi. In fact they were not, at least in terms of actual muscle mass. What they were, however, was naturally attuned to the magical forces that kept solid matter solid and living things alive. A skilled earth pony geomancer could shatter mountains just by tapping them in the right place, and against that sort of power the more etherial magics of telekinesis and most direct-action unicorn spells might as well have been so much hot air. It was no coincidence that, in the endless territorial squabbles between the Unicorn Kingdoms and Greater Pegasopolis before the founding of Equestria, the most valued soldiers of the pegasus legions hadn’t been pegasi at all but earth pony mercenaries.

Obviously a farmer wouldn’t have that kind of magical and military training- probably just a few spells to hasten the growth of crops, ward off blights, and the like- but then again Twilight didn’t either, and as she’d just been shown her odds in a direct physical confrontation could charitably be described as ‘slim’. Tribal stereotypes aside, this particular earth pony looked STRONG enough to merit all capital letters.

Spike might fare somewhat better with his claws, firebreath, and tough mineral scales, but probably not much better, and in any case Twilight wasn’t about to endanger him unnecessarily. So instead she opted to de-escalate. “Look, I’m sure we can talk this out like civilized ponies-”

“Oh, ya think Ah ain’t civilized do ya?” The earth pony made a distinctly contemptuous gesture with her hoof. “Go on… GET!”

Fearing for her safety, Twilight got.

Spike was still waiting for her, just out of sight around the corner. “Good to see you’re still in one piece,” he rasped, “I didn’t think you’d need help so I went to have a look around. I saw you get hit but I couldn’t get there in time to-”

“No, you made the right decision, we’re not here to start hooffights.” We’d almost certainly lose, Twilight added mentally, exhaling as the dull ache in the base of her skull finally abated. Strenuous telekinesis would probably be beyond her for the rest of the day, but the lack of any persistent pain indicated there wouldn’t be need to seek medical attention. “Find anything interesting?”

“Yeah, actually, that yellow pegasus went in through the back door. I think she and Apple-whatever are talking about you.”

“Great.”

One of the windows above her was open, and Twilight caught the sound of hoofsteps on hardwood floorboards approaching it. She and Spike flattened themselves against the far wall as the farm pony’s distinctive Appleoosan drawl became audible. “… arrogant big-city egghead thinkin’ she can just blow inta’ this town an…”

“Oh! That must be the mare who asked me for directions. She looked tired, maybe she just didn’t want to come all this way and come back empty-hoofed…” This was a new voice, quiet and slow but clear- presumably, the pegasus from the barn.

“… serves ‘er right fer…”

“Applejack, sometimes desperate ponies just do things that…”

“… suppose Ah do owe Rarity a favor fer mendin’ all them baskets…”

“… hope she hasn’t gone too far…”

Twilight scampered away from the window and then continued on down the dirt track to the barns at a much slower pace. A moment later the front door of the farmhouse slammed open to admit both Applejack and the pegasus, wearing matching pairs of well-worn canvas saddlebags. “Hey! Twilight, was it?” the former called.

Twilight didn’t have to fake her apprehension when she turned around.

“Look.” Applejack removed her hat and tucked it against her chest, “Ah’m awful sorry for takin’ a swing at’cha, that ain’t no way to welcome a pony to town. Now, if’n ya really wanna take a look at the old Cairn… well, a guide’s wages ‘round these parts run ‘bout ten bits an hour; Ah suppose Fluttershy an’ Ah could take you.”

“Oh! Umm… all right!” Twilight had been worried that the farm pony might try to gouge her, but that was a surprisingly honest assessment of the average wage for odd jobs in rural Equestria- something she had picked up from an economics journal while attempting to figure out whether it was appropriate to haggle with Griffon rare-book importers. She dug through her saddlebags and telekinetically extracted a few five-bit coins, wincing slightly at the twinge of pain that accompanied even that small effort. “Here’s twenty up front for your trouble. I might need a spare hoof digging and moving debris around once we get there.” She’d considered mentioning that for some reason her horn wasn’t feeling up to it today, but decided there was no point in potentially alienating the earth pony again. In retrospect, she probably should have just led with the bits to begin with.

The pegasus -Fluttershy- whispered something to her companion that sounded an awful lot like “See, now was that so hard?”

The earth pony accepted her payment, but then her green eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Wait, what’s all this 'bout digging?”

Fluttershy turned to look at her and blanched. “Oh! I hope you aren’t going to do anything to hurt the bodies… I don’t think their families would want to see that…”

“No no,” the scholar rapidly shook her head, “Look, my research is bound by nondisclosure agreements with my institution so there’s things I really can’t tell you about why I’m doing it,” Twilight wasn’t even sure if she could mention that the nondisclosure agreements in question were in the form of state-secrets regulations. The level of security in which Celestia had wrapped Twilight’s research was on reflection somewhat unusual. Sure, her work concerned a potential threat to all of Equestria, but other ponies at the Academy studied potential threats to all of Equestria and they at least got to inform the Commander of the Royal Guard of their progress, “but I can promise you that I won’t take anything from the site, disturb the position of anything, or perform any sort of destructive scans, sampling, dowsing or divination.”

“Ah figure that’s fair enough.” Applejack fished the bits out of Twilight’s aura and slipped them into her saddlebag. “Y’all ready to get moving?”

Without waiting for an answer the earth pony set off deeper into the orchards that seemed to make up the overwhelming majority of her property, heading for a small blob of woodland that protruded from the larger, dark mass on the horizon. Twilight and Fluttershy fell into step behind her, but when Spike slipped around the corner and brought up the rear she stopped, turned around, and blinked several times in a futile attempt to clear her vision. “’Zat a dragon?” she asked.

“No, I’m a ten-year-old filly wearing a very elaborate disguise.”

Twilight cringed in sympathetic embarrassment. Spike knew better than to truly antagonize any of the ponies upon whose goodwill their work now depended, nor was he likely to let slip the classified details of the same, but she’d seen enough repetitions of this conversation with the Canterlot gentry to understand just how painfully awkward it was for him. “He’s my assistant,” she said by way of explanation.

Applejack, however, merely shook her head and kept walking. “Well, if’n yer a fire breathin’ dragon assistant, I hope you understand it’s nothin’ personal when Ah tell ya to watch yer mouth ‘round my property… which, ya can see, is mostly made a’ wood.”

Twilight thought that would be the end of it, but to her surprise Fluttershy dropped back to Spike’s position. “So, what’s your name?” she asked in that soft, deliberate voice.

“Umm… everypony calls me Spike.”

“How’d a nice dragon like you end up working with a pony like Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight wanted to ask what exactly that was supposed to mean, but decided against doing so out loud.

“Well…” Spike shifted awkwardly and then continued all at once, “I… actually started out as another one of Twilight’s experiments. The Aca- uhhh… the place Twilight’s from somehow got ahold of a dragon egg a few decades ago, and she’s the one who finally figured out a spell that would make it hatch. She’s raised me like a little brother ever since,” he stood up a little straighter and puffed out his narrow chest in pride, “Well, once the both of us were old enough. Before that, I was a personal ward of Princess Celestia!”

“You mean Celestia had executive oversight of the research initiative that raised you,” Twilight corrected with speed borne from long practice. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Miss Sparkle, are you sure yer a mage?” Applejack cut in, eyes once again narrowing in suspicion, “’Cause nopony but a lawyer’d be so darn good at takin’ ten words to explain somethin’ that oughta’ only take two!”

Twilight laughed at that, and only half-nervously.

“Oh my, was that… difficult?” Fluttershy asked her assistant.

“Is growing up ever not difficult?” Spike retorted, “It wasn’t too bad, really. Twilight and I used to read a lot of Supermare and X-Mares comics together. At the time I thought it was just for fun but as I got older I realized she was teaching me about how to get along with ponies when I was… well, different.”

Applejack turned to regard him once again. “You mean… you never even knew the names a’ yer ma an’ pa?”

“To be honest, I don’t think those dragons ever even cared if I was alive or dead. Twilight did. She gets a little… obsessed with things sometimes-”

“Focused. I’m focused.” Twilight amended

“- but she’s not a bad pony.”

“Ah hope yer right.”

Without Twilight realizing it they had made it into the forest proper; now the thick, ancient trees thinned out to expose a grassy clearing perhaps twenty meters across. Overgrown as it was with moss and small, spiky tufts of grass, it took her a good few seconds to realize that the Cairn was even there, but once she did the long, low, rectangular shape was umistakeable.

Feeling suddenly energized she trotted over, dragon in tow, and began a quick survey. Just as the texts in Canterlot described, the only aboveground portion of the structure was an arched roof of dressed stone bricks, mortared and partially covered over with loose earth- which, she supposed, technically made it a barrow and not a cairn. To Twilight’s admittedly less-than-trained eye the craftsmareship seemed simple but competent enough by the standards of the late first century. At the narrow end of the structure, however, where she had been expecting a staircase to the subterranean main chamber, she instead encountered a disorderly pile of stones and rubble easily half again her height. “Spike?”

“Mmmhmm?”

“I thought she said this place was supposed to be open.”

“Oh.” Twilight jumped and executed a crude hind-leg pivot to find Fluttershy behind her. “The Mayor at the time had that put up to keep ponies from coming in and damaging the graves.”

“Yeah,” Applejack cut in, “My pa said his pa always did have no end of trouble keepin’ the local schoolfillies outa’ there. They’d dare each other to spend the night down in the pit, then they’d light fires and drink and get upta’the black earth knows what all else.”

“Well I’m glad to see at least somepony’s taking measures to protect the site,” Twilight shook her head, “But if you’d told me ahead of time that this was there I’d’ve liked to bring some heavier equipment and maybe see if you could put me in touch with a few more laborers.” She again considered mentioning that she could have dealt with the problem herself but for some reason wasn’t feeling up to major feats of telekinesis at the moment, but in the interests of politeness decided to let the matter lie. If she was being entirely honest she’d admit that she was being a bit of a foal about whatdidn’t even really qualify as an injury. Shining had once described to her a Royal Guard training exercise where unicorn recruits were expected to telekinetically lift their hog-tied pegasus and earth pony fellows over some kind of obstacle track, while a drill sergeant moved back and forth behind the ranks and clubbed each in the horn at random intervals with a wooden truncheon. In comparison an intermittent headache did not, in fact, seem so bad.

“Aww, don’t lose yer prissy purple head over it,” Applejack replied and ambled over to the sealed entrance, turning around and giving the stones -boulders, really- a few experimental shoves with her hind legs. Then, quite suddenly, she drew back and bucked two of the larger ones clean off the pile in rapid succession. Both of them sailed off into the treeline, and while it was difficult to see Twilight was fairly certain one had broken in half.

Involuntarily the scholar shuddered. She was suddenly entirely convinced that the earth pony’s threat to land her skull in Canterlot had not been hyperbole.

“Hmm,” the farmer regarded the small gap she had created and shook her head, “Ah reckon that’s ‘bout all Ah can do for you right now… if’n Ah knock off any more the whole thing’s liable ta’ come down.”

Twilight supposed she was right. What the scholar had initially assumed to be nothing more than a disorganized pile in fact functioned as a crude sort of booby-trap. Several of the smaller were rocks positioned to appear loose but in fact holding up much larger ones- an impressive display of rustic engineering, to be sure. “Spike, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

“On it.” The small dragon slithered inside and after a few seconds of rather ominous clunking and rattling his sibilant voice rasped back from the depths. “I… think a pony could fit through here… it’s only about forty centimeters before it widens out and if you get stuck I’ll push and AJ can pull.”

“Well that’s encouraging…” Twilight shucked off her saddlebags and left them within easy horn’s-reach of the entrance, surprised by how damp the fabric had become- she’d worked up quite a sweat without realizing it. “Alright, here goes nothing.”

Author's Note

UPDATED 09-05-2020

Bit of a slow-burn on this one, but I promise things will be picking up very soon.

While it’s far older than any of the cultural influences that helped shape the rest of pony society, their religious practices wound up taking a very Roman direction. I guess ponies in general would best be described as syncreatic or henotheistic in that they acknowledge the existence of multiple deities or supernatural figures, sometimes putting them in hierarchies or relationships of alliance and opposition, but typically only worship one or two each. Those cults have a strong civic component- they’re heavily bound to tribal, regional, and vocational allegiances, and ponies with some kind of leadership role in those groups tend to also become local leaders of the cults (although I’d imagine there are laws in place to prevent religious participation or non-participation from influencing promotion decisions and the like).

I am not yet sure how the concept of Harmony fits into these many little religions, or for that matter if it is even considered religious as opposed to more of a philosophical or even physical concept, and I am also not yet sure if the entities worshiped are objectively real in the sense of their actions having a measurable and mechanistic effect on the world aside from just influencing pony intermediaries. I don’t think we’ll ever see conclusive answers to these questions, but who knows.

I’m not going to take a stand on whether Derpy’s voice is the retconned or un-retconned version here, or for that matter another entirely, since that whole debate got profoundly stupid incredibly quickly and more to the point I don’t really care. Neither voice is exactly what I’d consider ‘normal’ and Twilight reacts accordingly; the explanation I’ve set out for her I think is the best match to what we see both in the show and in secondary sources like the comics.

I was never a fan of Spike’s design in the show, so I have kind of been changing him up a little to make him taller and more lizardlike in his build; it doesn’t really have much of an effect on a written work (although he does appear different in the cover art) but if he ends up being able to get places the show Spike would not be able to get or reach things the show Spike would not be able to reach, that’s why. His voice is not remotely like a young colt’s, or for that matter like a pony at all, because I always just kind of assumed that dragons have a very different vocal structure than ponies. I haven’t fully settled on an age for him yet, but he is shaping up to be a bit more mature than he is in the show. Chronologically he’d be around 14 since Twilight hatched him when she was 9 and is currently 23, but his childhood was far from normal and dragons justgrow differently.

I dedicated some time to filling out magic for the other two tribes to patch the power disadvantage compared to unicorns that is commonly portrayed in fanon.I’d say the show itself is… unclear on this point; the early seasons kinda-sorta imply that unicorns are more powerful than the others, and then later seasons kinda-sorta bring in more magic and legendary feats performed by the others, but it’s never really ever explicitly discussed (which, honestly, given that this was the Internet tinderbox of the 2010s, is not surprising). Also established unicorn horns as being able to regrow. That causes some problems if I ever get around to doing an extended cut of “The Moive”, but it’s likely Tempest Shadow’s injuries were atypical in some way- either because of some special property of Ursa claws that makes injuries by them resistant to healing, or just because her horn wasn't sliced off, it was ripped off, which caused so much damage to the root that it was impossible to regrow.

Astronomy

(♫)

Twilight dropped down onto her haunches and started to wiggle inside the opening. Rough stone scraped against her back and barrel in alternating sequence, leaving grime and moss wherever it passed, and she suddenly wished she’d taken Rarity up on that offer of boots and a traveling cloak. Born and raised in marble-paved Canterlot, she had always dismissed clothing in general as the domain of distractable socialites with nothing productive to do with their time and the anonymous tradesponies who were only allowed in to clean up their messes. Now that she was the one crawling on her knees and ankles through the consequences of some long-dead land baron’s poor decision-making, she was beginning to see the appeal.

Finally she felt the stone fall away beneath her front hooves, and a moment later four-taloned claws wrapped around her forelegs and pulled her the rest of the way out.

Stumbling back onto all fours, Twilight peered across the dim, underground space. It must have been around eight in the evening- or at least that was her best estimate; after graduating from the Academy her mother had given her an expensive gold hoofwatch, but she was too afraid of damaging it to wear it routinely and too afraid of appearing ungrateful to buy a cheaper one. The sun hung low at exactly the right angle to shine through the opening she had made and provide limited illumination of the dusty flagstones beyond. Twilight wondered if that was sheer coincidence or something the designers had intended. She hadn’t realized quite how hot the day had gotten when she’d been out in it; that only became apparent by contrast with the pleasant coolness she was experiencing now that she was underground.

The space was larger than it looked on the outside, and cleaner than she’d been expecting given Applejack’s accusations of vandalism. While the great iron doors to either side of her showed clear signs of being pried open by force, the floor held only a few scraps of cloth and desiccated leaf litter and a single long-extinguished lantern. She muttered a quick illumination spell and directed the glowing orb it produced into the center of the room, revealing it in its entirety for the first time in probably the better part of a thousand years.

The majority of the place was made from bricks of some sort of dark blue stone, possibly the same type that lent the mountains Twilight had seen to the south their blue-green tint but polished and cleaned of patina. A double row of columns reached up easily five meters to merge seamlessly with the arched ceiling, and delineated a series of alcoves along the entire length of the structure. Within each was a simple, rectangular plinth of either basaltic andesite or particularly fine black marble, Twilight couldn’t immediately tell, and atop each of those rested a single equine skeleton. Some of them still wore armor and had weapons of nearly every description laid across their barrels, the midnight-blue finish seeming almost to glow with the faint purple tint of her magelight; others had obviously had their equipment pulled away sometime more recently and been left to fall apart. There was far more missing than Rarity had taken to her shop for restoration, and Twilight was surprised by how angry seeing that made her.

Cautiously, she walked down what she supposed was the central isle of the place, counting as she went. Eighteen alcoves to a side, for a total of thirty-six. Every third body has wingbones, each one after it has the shell of a horn. If she recalled correctly, that matched up pretty much exactly with the Equestrian Army’s “new doctrine” of mixed-tribe units, implemented some years after the Lunar Rebellion had drawn to a close. Interesting.

The Cairn finally came to an end at a raised, circular platform about two meters across, the Lunar crescent inlaid into its surface in what appeared to be silver; Twilight didn’t dare take a sample for later alchemical analysis.

Drawing closer she saw that carved into the curved wall behind it were four rows of nine names each, written in Old Ponish majuscules but recognizable enough to Twilight’s studied eye, and below that four lines of text:

As the sunset fades away the yellow turns the gray

The moonlight shines across the land, a calling we obey

From purest black we shadows rise to fight a greater fight

Our brothers and sisters move as one, we soldiers of the night!

“Twilight?” Spike called from further back near the entrance, but she didn’t respond just yet, still silently mouthing the words, trying to place them in her memories of recovered Lunar propaganda, and coming up with nothing.

“Twilight!” he called, more urgently this time, and she turned around to find him making his way slowly towards her, ducking into each alcove in turn. “Why were they all buried looking up?”

Peering onto the nearest few alcoves herself she saw that the dragon was right- each and every intact skeleton lay on its back, head tilted at just the right angle to point directly at the central vaulted ceiling. Muttering a quick cantrip Twilight dispelled her first magelight and cast another farther up, then stepped back and gasped. What she’d mistaken for plain black stone at first now glowed with hundreds of tiny pinpricks of reflected light. The ceiling was low enough that she had a good view of what was causing the effect- tiny, circular inserts of silver, some empty and the stone around them marred by tooling marks, but others still intact and holding exquisitely-cut gemstones. Heedless of the dust and grime Twilight crouched down and then rolled onto her back to get a better look at the whole of it, a pattern that had already seemed hauntingly familiar suddenly resolving itself into the same one she’d seen thousands of times through the lens of a telescope and filled several pads of graph paper with as she deciphered its arcane significance with growing dismay.

“Starswirl’s bells! It’s a map! The rest of the sky must be in the other Cairns, and that circle at the end is the Moon! It’s a map of how Nightmare Moon’ll return!”

As she got to her hooves Spike was already heading back to the entrance. “Nothing you found in the archives even mentioned this. Let me get some parchment and we can write a letter to- HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”

Hearing her assistant hiss in alarm Twilight bolted forward, only to find him standing with his claws crossed over his chest in front of the pink-maned pegasus from the farmhouse.

“Fluttershy? What in Tartarus are you doing down here?!” Twilight demanded, but the pegasus just lowered her head and backed away. Twilight realized she’d just assumed the locals knew she’d want to continue with her investigation undisturbed, but had never actually made mention of that fact.

“I’m… I’m sorry for scaring you,” Spike amended, making sure to keep his voice low and gentle, “You just startled me is all. How much did you hear?”

Slowly, the other mare got back to her hooves, tremors subsiding. “Just… just something about writing a letter? I hope I didn’t get Twilight in any trouble with your professors… now that the boulders are clear I just thought I could make sure all the bones are put together properly…”

Spike cocked his head to one side and muttered under his breath, “So, she’s terrified of postdocs but wants to make friends with the skeletons. That’s… interesting.”

“Oh!” Apparently, Fluttershy had heard him as well, and somehow her already-downcast expression turned even more contrite. “Well, they are the only ponies you can be sure won’t ever hurt you. And you can also find all kinds of interesting bugs down here!”

Twilight knew some necromancers back at the Academy who could present very effective counterarguments- it was in fact perfectly legal to experiment on donated cadavers under controlled conditions- but decided not to force the issue and instead stepped back to let the strange little pegasus further inside. Fluttershy stopped at the first disrupted skeleton and began carefully reassembling what appeared to be a pile of wingbones, although judging by what Twilight knew of anatomy she wasn’t doing a very good job.

That wasn’t surprising- amateur restoration efforts typically did more harm than good at historical sites, although since there were other undisturbed cairns in the Everfree, and this one was probably already a lost cause, Twilight wasn’t going to press the issue. But as her work progressed Twilight realized the pegasus did indeed seem to have some knowledge of anatomy- it was what she was working with that was wrong. “Twilight, take a look at this…” Spike whispered, and motioned Twilight closer. She stepped to Fluttershy’s side and examined the thin, twisted bone structure of the wings. They lacked the three strong phalanges of a normal pegasus wing in favor of four light, agile ones, and were tipped with a strange, wicked-looking hook. “These... were made for combat,” the dragon muttered.

Now that Twilight knew what to look for she could see the odd curvature of each of the unicorns’ horns as well, and wondered what other differences might have been apparent had the bodies still been covered in flesh.

There was a school of art during the Rebellions that focused in equal measure on the famine and disease faced by the Lunar Army, their zealous fighting style, and the supposed physical changes they underwent in the service of their dark sovereign. Those painters in the early second century had filled their canvas with gruesome images of emaciated, bat-winged soldiers fighting grimly on despite wounds that would cripple any normal pony, but Twilight had long ago dismissed it all as sensationalized nonsense. Conditions in the ‘Lunar Republic’ were poor, certainly. But according to what little had made it into the archaeological record soldiers were fed at least enough to get by even if that meant others had to starve- an odd decision for a group that railed against the ‘tyranny’ of the Solar Army, certainly, but one that was well-attested by excavation of granaries and graveyards alike. Deformities of the wing and horn had been more common in ponies of that era, though; the possibility of so many otherwise fighting-fit individuals sharing the same deformities strained credulity, but perhaps they had been preferentially recruited for some religious or political reason? The old Telekinetic Order Of Moon-Raisers that had early on pledged itself to Princess Luna’s service had, after all, employed much iconography of bats and been accused of binding their foals’ horns with cloth and wooden splints to reshape them.

“I doubt it,” was all she said aloud.

“That’s not the only thing that’s odd,” Spike continued as Fluttershy worked on, oblivious. “These are Rebel war casualties, right? So why are there so few signs of trauma? No holes in the skulls, no missing ribs…”

Twilight made another circuit of the nearby alcoves and confirmed the observation for herself. There were obvious injuries to some of the bodies, but nowhere near as many as would be expected from her experience with other battlefield excavations. “I mean, some of them could’ve bled out or suffered some other kind of damage that wasn’t visible, but… all of them?”

“Do you think it was magic?” Fluttershy’s soft voice called from behind them.

Twilight shook her head. “We won’t know for sure until we can bring in a precision dowsing specialist and even then environmental exposure’s probably drowned out any residual mana, but I don’t see any characteristic burns or corrosion.”

“Were they… buried alive?” Fluttershy sounded more regretful than afraid.

“I doubt it,” Spike cut in, “There’s no sign of restraints and they were all carrying weapons. Some kind of disease, maybe.”

“No, look at their teeth, they’re all healthy and intact,” the yellow pegasus spoke with surprising conviction. “These ponies were in their mid-20s when they all just… died.”

The sun finally dipped below the treeline completely, and in Twilight’s wan, fading purple hornlight the sepulchral atmosphere of the ruin ceased to be peaceful and dived towards oppressive. “Y’all doin’ OK in there?” Applejack called from outside, and Twilight caught a tinge of apprehension in her voice. “It’ll be gettin’ mighty dark ‘round here soon enough, might wanna call it a night.”

“Oh, don’t tell me a tough, sensible mare like you is afraid of some dusty old graves,” Twilight joked, although she wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince the farmer or herself.

“Well it’s gettin’ hard to see an’ that hole’s jammed full a’ rusty old sharp things. Ah’d be a fool if I wasn’t! That, an’ this ain’t the Everfree proper- if’n it was Ah’d’a brought along my granny’s old warhammer- but sometimes the Timberwolves do come out this far when the Moon gets high enough…”

Not a great deal was known about the creatures since specimens disintegrated into mundane woodland detritus if brought too far from the Everfree, but Twilight had read enough reports from official and unofficial expeditions into the place to know that her chances going up against a pack of them were slim. “Actually, that is a pretty compelling argument.”

“Timberwolves usually are…”

“All right. I think I’ve made a good start on what I wanted to find here and I’ll need some time to go over it all. Spike, Fluttershy, after you?”

Both managed to squeeze through the opening in the door with relatively little difficulty; Twilight followed with significantly greater struggle, shook what dirt she could off of both herself and her saddlebags, and repositioned them on her back.

(♫)

She was dimly aware that Spike, Fluttershy, and Applejack were chatting jovially on the way back to the farmhouse, but was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to pay any attention. The obvious implication of the Cairn’s starmap that the Lunar Rebels themselves knew of what would later become Mist Watcher’s prophecy should have concerned her, but more than anything Twilight felt vindicated. What she’d found in the Cairn was concrete proof of her theories, and if the Lunars had known about the prophecy and references to it had been interred alongside them, then a proper team of archaeologists and diviners could very probably reconstruct an intact copy of the text.

What concerned her more, though, were the implications of the structure of the Cairn itself. Obviously a great deal of time and care had been put into its construction, but by whom? The generally-agreed-upon account of the structures’ origins came from a stone history tablet smuggled out of the Dragonlands and an undelivered letter to Princess Celestia from a certain Major Firefly of the Day Guard, which both attributed the structures to ‘friends and family of the fallen Lunars’. Later analysts, Twilight included, had concluded that this most likely meant neutral ponies or moderate Solars who had been reluctant to take up arms against their loved ones but at the same time hadn’t directly aided the Rebellion. That theory fit well enough with the long-held contention that few if any actual Lunar soldiers had survived the Battle of Everfree and the old capitol’s subsequent fall- there was, after all, no record of their integration into wider pony society during the whirlwind of Celestia’s reforms that had followed.

The exhaustively-cited and meticulous report delivered by the famous tactician, spymaster, and scholar General Gul to the newly-crowned King Grover less than a decade after the Rebellions described the Lunars’ operation as something a cross between a guerrilla campaign, a secret society, and a cult. Their ranks, the griffon wrote, had been filled by the outcasts and disaffected of Equestria- more often but by no means always younger than their opponents, comprised of each tribe in roughly equal thirds, and while no more inclined to recruit from the upper or lower classes in general showing a preference for ponies who had recently experienced major upward or downward changes in fortune. While relatively few career soldiers defected to join the Republic, their troop base did recruit heavily from former criminals, mages, woodsponies, artisans, and other groups predisposed to learn skills directly or indirectly relevant to a major war effort. Most importantly, operated almost to the point of obsession in secrets and riddles, constructing a complicated symbolic system derived from the old imagery of the Order of Moon-raisers.

Against the conventional armies of the Council of Five Hundred that secrecy had been their greatest asset, and against the more organized and efficient Day Guard of Princess Celestia it had ultimately proven to be their undoing. The same compulsion that led them to conceal the entrances to their secret shelters -some of which were still being discovered today- with expertly-crafted puzzles was evidently on display inside their burial Cairns, including iconography that remained unknown elsewhere. Had members of the Lunar ranks proper- possibly even close retainers of Nightmare Moon herself- actually survived the Battle of Everfree? Towards the end of his life Gul had insisted that they had, and some of his later writings even described a covert trip to Equestria to ‘pay respects’ to the Lunars. Due to what seemed to be errors in his descriptions of the Cairns and claims of having gotten inside of them by reciting some form of poem the general academic consensus had been that the old bird had taken leave of his memory by that point. But now, his accounts had been in some ways corroborated.

As her small party crossed from the forest into the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres proper Twilight’s thoughts turned again to the star map. She wondered how accurate it was, and if using it as a secondary point of reference against the stars as they were now would allow her to bypass some of the instrument imprecision that had so far frustrated her attempts to model Nightmare Moon’s entry. Without knowing anything about the verbal, somatic, material, or environmental components of the spell Nightmare Moon was casting there wasn’t much she could do to understand its function, but while not quite as useful as a precise arrival time itself the end-configuration of the summoning stars would be useful. Knowing where the stars were now and having an upper bound on their velocity based on their lack of detectable motion, a time was that much closer to being known for sure. The map was obviously spread across multiple Cairns, however, and some of them would not be accessible without expensive, dangerous expeditions into the Everfree.

That was another concerning development. The ceiling she’d seen corresponded pretty much exactly to a rectilinear projection of a five-degree angular sector stretching from the Moon to the opposite end of the sky- she’d recognized the constellation Canis the Diamond Dog taking up most of it. Unless major sections of the sky were duplicated, that implied a total of only seventy-two Lunar Cairns, far fewer than the accepted estimate of two to three hundred. Even if the Cairns were in general twice the size of the one she’d explored – which Twilight doubted, as the dimensions of their construction seemed of strong ritualistic significance, and in any case that would give each an even larger portion of the sky – that still meant only about five thousand Lunars in total were interred. That was out of a force estimated by farmers’ sales records and similar documents to have numbered closer to ten or fifteen thousand, a staggering casualty rate by any reasonable modern standard but low compared to other known battles where entire Rebel brigades had fought to the death. Why didn’t they do so at Everfree, and what exactly happened to the ones who weren’t buried?

(♫)

By the time they were back in sight of the farmhouse she had settled on a plan. As she rooted around in her saddlebags for her companions’ pay, she asked “By the way, I’d like to get a few aerial sketches of the ruins made to compare back against my institution’s records. Could either of you by any chance point me to the weather captain, or somepony else who might be able to take charts?” She didn’t actually know if Ponyville had a commissioned professional weather team or just some variety of volunteer arrangement, but figured the townsponies would be flattered by her assuming that they did.

“Oh.” Fluttershy half-raised a hoof. “I’m sure Rainbow Dash would be happy to help you. She’s the chief weathermare and she spends a lot of time down on Sweet Apple Acres.”

“Wait, I thought Derpy Hooves was the chief weathermare,” Spike rasped as he handed over two small stacks of bits, “What was she doing at the Celebration meeting, then?” Much like worship of the Unconquered Sun held particular prominence in the higher levels of the Equestrian military and government, the weather services and the Four Winds’ religion heavily overlapped. Although there was no official requirement for it, the positions of weather captain and regina sacorum were generally considered synonymous.

“Well…” Applejack rolled her eyes, “Rainbow used to lead ‘em back after she first came here from Cloudsdale, but the pegasi ‘round here got tired a’ her whole “logistical grace” schtick quicker than honeybees in a cauliflower patch, so Sparkler, Honey Rays, an’ White Lightnin’ sat her down and talked her inta’ steppin’ aside. Derpy’s got a good head on her shoulders, lotta’ the town looks up to ‘er, and she was lookin’ for somethin’ else to keep herself useful at ‘sides flyin’ packages all day, so they all figured she was the logical choice. Poor mare… ain’t fit for weather work on account a’ ‘er condition an’ all, though, so it’s still Rainbow you’ll want for maps an’ the like. Bet she’s still out ‘round the farm at this hour… just look for the tree with the lazy rainbow tail hangin’ from it!”

“Wait, that bum we saw on the way in was the chief weathermare?” Twilight asked, incredulous.

Applejack and Fluttershy both chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds ‘bout right,” the former answered. “She dun’ like to move much after ‘bout four in the afternoon, so I reckon she’s still wherever y’all left ‘er. Prob’ly shouldn’t call ‘er a bum to ‘er face, though… I mean, not to imply she ain’t a bum, of course, just that you prob’ly shouldn’t mention it.” She shook her head, but her green eyes still warmed with affection.

“Uhhh… thanks for the tip?” Twilight and Spike both turned to leave.

“Hey, if’n you do run into ‘er do me a favor and tell ‘er Ah still need ‘er to move them rainclouds out over the East Orchard. She’ll know what that means,” the farmer called from behind them.

“I’ll be sure to make a note of it.”

The sun had well and truly set by the time Twilight made it back to the section of orchard from which she had first entered, although the glow over much of the horizon still made it easy enough to see. Exactly as Applejack predicted, the blue outline of a pegasus was still visible through the dense summer foliage.

Spike took the opportunity to scrabble up another tree on the opposite side of the row and disappear from view as Twilight gave the trunk a quick rap with her hoof. “Excuse me?”

“Fine, fine! I’m leaving!” the pegasus above called, and bolted downward with surprising grace for a pony who had a few seconds ago been fast asleep. Without the obscuring foliage she proved to be uniformly sky-blue in coloration save for her loosely-combed mane and tail, which were split into such vibrant and perfectly-delineated rainbow bands that Twilight wondered idly if they were entirely natural in origin. She was a good bit taller than Twilight, with the lean and sleekly muscular build of a professional flier, and her striking, pinkish-purple eyes tracked suspiciously over the treeline before settling on the young scholar. “Wait… you’re not Applejack…” Her voice was odd, simultaneously scratchy and fillyish, giving the impression of a teenager who spent most of her nights screaming along to those horrible My Mystical Romance records that had swept through Canterlot a few years back; although Twilight recognized the condition as equally common among high-altitude fliers and airship crews who spent more time than was entirely healthy sucking down cold, dry, low-pressure air.

Twilight stood her ground. “Let me guess, you’re Rainbow Dash?”

“The one and only…” Her ears flicked forward. “Wait, you’ve heard of me?”

“Sort of,” Twilight shrugged, and pulled out Celestia’s much-abused royal writ, “My name’s Twilight Sparkle, I’m a clerk with the Day Court here to make arrangements for the Summer Sun Festival. I was on my way back from Sweet Apple Acres and Applejack told me if I ran into you she needs some clouds moved over to the East Orchard.”

“Huh.” The pegasus turned and began to walk away, stretching her wings in preparation to take flight. “I’ll get to it after the Celebration, don’t worry.”

“I got the impression it was… urgent?”

“Don’t worry, Applejack takes everything that seriously.” She jumped off the ground and pulled into a hover, “I gotta get back home, come find me at the Celebration and I’ll get you a good seat at my aerobatics show!”

Twilight scowled. She supposed she did owe Applejack and Fluttershy for trying to con them into accessing the Cairn, and dealing with the recalcitrant pegasus would probably be considered a favor. Dash was clearly not a Canterlot fop in the same sense as Jet-Set or Blueblood and would probably take offense at being compared to either, but Twilight recognized the similarities just the same. “Well, if it’s too hard for a small-town weathermare like you,” she turned as if to leave, “I suppose I could have some pegasi from the Royal security detail handle it… they could move a cloudbank in ten seconds flat.”

Rainbow Dash blew past her before Twilight even had a chance to register her approach, climbing skyward at a military-precise thirty-degree angle and executing a neat trio of rapid barrel-rolls for no apparent reason other than that she could. She dove through a section of cloud near the edge of the property and slashed off a particularly thick section with imaginary wingblades, looped overhead in what Twilight recognized as a standard Equestrian Army thundercloud-delivery maneuver and deposited her cargo over what was presumably the Easternmost section of the orchard, finally streaking back to land scarcely out of breath directly in front of Twilight. By the scholar’s estimate, the entire process had indeed taken a little under nine seconds.

“That was… actually pretty impressive!” Twilight reached back into her saddlebags and extracted her pouch of bits. “Hey, if you’ve got the time, I’d be interested in making use of your skills for… I guess you could call it a personal project.”

“I’m listening.” The pegasus reached up a hoof and a-little-too-casually adjusted the black leather strap of her flight googles. Twilight recognized the model as a top-tier replica of the Wizard’s Peak Obsidian goggles worn by the most elite Royal Guard and Wonderbolts combat fliers. Those were typically collectors’ items not meant for routine use, although judging by the faint green glow leaking out from around her eye sockets Dash had had an aftermarket night-vision enchantment none-too-precisely installed. In anything resembling the actual combat situations the real Obsidians were designed for that glow would be a major liability, and Twilight wondered why Dash hadn’t just secured one of the many brands of hunter’s and surveyor’s goggles available on the civilian market that were ensorcelled more properly.

“You know those ruins around here, the Lunar Cairns?”

“Yeah… you know,” Dash’s eyes narrowed behind the green fog of her goggles, “They say that when old Idle Rich busted one open, the bodies inside it were still as fresh as the day they were buried…”

“That’s… interesting.” And necrologically dubious, Twilight amended mentally. She could hardly blame Applejack for failing to mention every stupid filly’s story the locals had cooked up, particularly such an implausible one. Necromantic preservation spells did technically exist during the late First Century, but had yet to make it beyond the laboratories of a few specialist wizards and in any case would have required an immense amount of power to sustain over so long. “I’m not actually looking at what’s inside the Cairns right now, though. I just noticed some discrepancies relating to their locations in the official registries we have in Canterlot, so I’d really appreciate it if you could map them out firsthoof. There should be a total of seventy-two, but that’s one of the things I’m trying to double-check.”

“Nuh-uh. Nopony’s supposed to fly over the Everfree forest after dark.”

“What’s the matter, are you scared-”

“I’m not scared, I just…” Rainbow suddenly dipped her head and pawed nervously at the dirt. “I don’t wanna have the rest of the weather team out looking for me or following me into something they can’t handle.” From anypony else it would have sounded defensive, but Twilight thought she picked up genuine concern in the pegasus’s expression.

“Look, I never said you have to do it at night,” Twilight amended, “I just need it done sometime before I leave Ponyville after the Celebration. You can take care of it when the sun’s back up.”

The pegasus hovered for a moment, eyes tracking back and forth between Twilight and a spot on the eastern horizon.

“Please, I’ll make it worth your while, I just really don’t want to go back to Cel- well, my superiors empty-hoofed.”

“You can count on me!” Dash pulled off a sloppy salute and was gone a moment later.

With nary a sound Spike descended from the tree where he’d been concealed. “Well that was… interesting.”

Pinkie Pie was waiting for them on the road outside Sweet Apple Acres, that slightly alarming grin still plastered across her muzzle. “Oh, hey Twilight!” she called as she trotted over- skipped, really. “The big meeting just ended and Rarity said you went up to the farm to check on the Apples!” Her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously, “You were in the bathroom a really long time!”

“Oh! Uh… yeah, I remembered I had some other errands to run around town. I… didn’t want to annoy anypony by running in and out,” Twilight finished lamely. Starswirl’s bells, the damn thing really did take all day.

Pinkie turned away from her and headed back towards the center of town. After a moment’s hesitation, Twilight and her assistant followed. “Hey, thanks for covering for me at the meeting, by the way. This whole festival’s been just a massive headache for me… in more ways than one.”

“Don’t worry about it, planning parties is kind of what I do. And the Summer Sun Celebration’s just a really big party where some of the guests can charge you with treason!”

Warm yellow lights were flickering into being in windows around them. Ponyville, Twilight realized, had no street lights, and the sky above presented a truly mind-boggling collection of stars. She thought of a vaulted ceiling of heavy black stone, and shivered despite the warm weather. “So, Pinkie, you’re… what, the Mayor’s executive assistant? Ombudsmare?” she asked, anxious to dispel the sudden gloom building up in her thoughts.

“Oh, heavens no! I’m apprenticed to be a baker!”

Twilight was finding it increasingly difficult to determine when the pink earth pony was being serious. Probably never. Potentially always. She wasn’t sure which possibility was more alarming. “You know, that actually explains a lot about the condition of this town.”

“Hey, baking’s as much an art as a science, you know! I still don’t know how I’m going to make Celestia a ‘Yeah-sure-OK’ cake like you told my boss about. I tried baking a few that were adequate in every way but also completely uninspired, but those were kind of hard to chew and I also thought a yeah-sure-OK cake should be more accommodating, so now I don’t know what I’ll do…” She gave Twilight another sidelong look, “You know, a lesser pony might think you weren’t paying attention when those ponies in the square wanted your help with things…”

“Uh.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ve been awful busy!”

“So, tell me,” Spike asked, “Is it customary for visitors to Sweet Apple Acres to be greeted with a kick to the head?”

“Only during cider season!” The inner part of town had emptied out significantly since Twilight had been mobbed that morning, but there were still a fair number of ponies out and about, covering the distant noise of crickets and night-flying birds with laughter and faint snatches of music. It wasn’t dissimilar to what she heard from the windows of her tower in Canterlot Castle overlooking the Academy gardens, and for the first time since coming to Ponyville Twilight felt herself beginning to relax. It helped that there was something profoundly disarming about Pinkie Pie; her constant, low-grade absurdity helped put a pony’s concerns into perspective. She caught the scent of herb-roasted oats issuing from an open-air cafe and was immediately and sharply reminded that her Lunar explorations had left no time to break for lunch. She considered stopping to grab a quick bite but decided that might unreasonably inconvenience her host and guide. Better to just grin and bear it until she was set up with accommodations.

“So… Pinkie Pie…” Spike continued, “What’s the deal with Rainbow Dash?”

“What isn’t the deal with Rainbow Dash? If you think she’s crazy now, you should’ve seen her when she first came here from Cloudsdale and tried to run the whole town like a flight school. When it comes to being entitled and pushy your friend Twilight’s not even in the top ten.”

Twilight and Spike both chuckled before the unicorn worked fully through what she had heard. “Wait…”

A rebuke died in her throat as she realized they had come to a stop at the large tree she’d initially assumed to be part of a small park off of the square- it was, in fact, hollowed out to serve as a decent-sized building. That style of construction had originally been an export from ancient Zebrica long before the nation had voluntarily cut itself off from the rest of the known world; carving rooms out of a tree without killing it was a fiddly, complicated affair typically performed only at great expense to create something more a work of art than a structure. The idea of such an artifact being commissioned in Ponyville of all places baffled Twilight, but what gave her greater pause was the sign beside the front door.

“Pinkie?” Spike asked, “How’d you know to put Twilight in the library?”

“Wellllll… all the inns around here are full with ponies coming in for the Celebration, and the big hotel’s still under construction… but if you don’t like it I’m sure Rarity’d let you stay in her shop overnight, you’re into all that gothy Lunar stuff, right?”

“’Gothy’? ‘Gothy’??” Spike fought to twist his features into an overemphasized parody of outrage, but couldn’t keep his grin from breaking through.

Twilight contemplated the idea of spending a night with that suit of half-assembled Lunar armor looming over her, and shuddered. “No, the library’s… the library’s fine, thanks!”

“Why, it’s not like Rarity’s mannequins’ll get possessed by the souls of murdered fillies and rise up and stalk ponies in the dead of the night, stuffing their victims in their cold, rusty innards! Well, not anymore, at least…”

“Why would the souls of murdered fillies possess mannequins?”

“You’re right, that doesn’t seem to make very much sense.”

Twilight fished back into her saddlebags and telekinetically extracted a quill and some sturdy parchment. “Hey, Pinkie, out of all the ponies in this town you're probably the one I've found to be closest to actually coherent.”

“Oh, wow, good one, Twilight!”

“Can… can you do me a favor?” She scribbled a quick note to the Interior Ministry in Canterlot asking for any information on ponies named Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Applejack, or Rainbow Dash, and then signed it with a small ink stamp of her cutie mark. Dusty Pages, the mare in charge of the Records Division, was an avid collector of rare manuscripts and owed much of her library to Twilight’s research. She’d make sure Twilight’s request was fast-tracked through the typical three-day approval process; it wasn’t like she was asking for anything confidential. “Run this down to the post office for me.” She transferred the letter and a few bits for postage to Pinkie’s waiting hoof and stepped through the library doors.

Author's Note

UPDATED 11-05-2020
Is it bad that I love writing Twilight being an arrogant prick? Because I love writing Twilight being an arrogant prick.

I wish I could take credit for the Lunar verse included in the Cairn, but my lyrical skills compare unfavorably to Vanilla Ice. The verse is in fact an extract from SlyphStorm’s excellent Soldiers of the Night; give it a listen as simply writing about it cannot do it justice.

Friendship is literally metal.

Publish or Perish

(♫)

Twilight woke from a deep and dreamless sleep to the sound of somepony knocking none too gently on the Golden Oaks’ front door. The clock hanging from one of the loft’s walls read 11:15 AM.

Spike’s basket was empty, and she could just make out his distinctive voice filtering up from below. One of the benefits of eschewing clothing and keeping her mane cut reasonably short was that it took Twilight virtually no time to ready herself in the morning. She made it to the stairs just as Spike headed up to rouse her.

“It’s that rainbow pony from the farm,” he muttered as they passed, “she’s… well, you can just see for yourself.”

That was always reassuring.

There was nopony in the main reading-room, but the front door had been left ajar. Twilight trotted over, pushed it the rest of the way open with her telekinesis, and then immediately backpedaled- her first thought was that the Town Council had somehow taken umbrage at yesterday’s expedition to the Sweet Apple Acres Cairn, and ordered the local militia to place her under arrest. True to Spike’s word it was indeed Rainbow Dash waiting for her outside, but instead of the Weather Team vest Twilight had been expecting the cyan pegasus was kitted out ears-to-hooves in a suit of light chainmail barding, complete with a sabre sheathed within easy reach on her right shoulder and a pair of extremely well-polished and extremely sharp dogfighter’s wingblades. Her night-vision goggles had been flipped upwards onto a mount on her helmet, still glowing a brilliant green, and she had populated the bandoleer strung across her chest and the equipment belt wrapped around her barrel with what very much appeared to be a matched set of throwing knives. Someone- very probably Dash herself- had tried to obscure the original metal and leather with a crude layer of flat black paint, although the pegasus’s thunderbolt cutie-mark had been duplicated with marginally more skill on her left flankguard.

Twilight’s initial jolt of panic died down quickly, however, when she saw that Dash was grinning and also entirely alone. “Hey, uh… Breaking Dawn, was it? I got that survey you wanted done, and when I was on my way here Derpy asked me if I could run some mail to you from the Post Office.” She twisted her head behind her and after much rooting around and fiddling managed to extricate a slim leather messenger’s satchel from her armor’s equipment webbing.

“Twilight, actually,” Twilight corrected as she took the satchel in her magic. What kind of a name is ‘Breaking Dawn’, anyway? “Wait… you went and did that whole survey already!?”

“Well, yeah,” the pegasus puffed out her chest and mock-casually flicked out one bladed wing as if to stretch, “I get more done by 5 AM than most ponies do all day! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get the weather ready for the Celebration. Wouldn’t wanna leave Ponyville hanging!”

She flew off with an alarming rattle of blades.

Twilight opted to review the documents she’d been given over lunch at one of the cafes off of the town square, specifically the one with the delicious-smelling spiced oats. Ordinarily she would have preferred the relative solitude of the Golden Oaks loft, but it was a genuinely lovely day -the weather team had truly outdone themselves for the Summer Sun Celebration- and more to the point the energy she’d burned over yesterday’s adventures hadn’t been fully replaced by just one dinner. The square outside was filling up rapidly as local ponies put the finishing touches on their display stalls and out-of-towners wandered hither and yon trying to locate this or that amenity, but relatively few of them crossed over the wrought-iron fence to Twilight’s section of the patio. That suited her just fine. She set to work on the contents of the messenger bag spread out in front of her and a bowl of lentil soup tucked discreetly off to one side.

She probably should have gone right to Dash’s map of the Cairns. That was why she was in Ponyville to begin with, after all. But Twilight found herself much more curious about what the Interior Ministry might have been able to unearth on the village’s inhabitants. Evidently there had been a fair bit of it, as under the brown paper wrapping Dusty Pages had split the records into five different folders for each pony-of-interest.

Rarity’s was the thinnest by far, containing only a business license for the Carousel Boutique. Twilight was, however, somewhat surprised to learn that the other unicorn had only been in business for a few years.

Applejack’s file was somewhat thicker. Apparently the Apple family’s ownership of Sweet Apple Acres had been a direct Act of the Day Court in recognition of Councilpony Granny Smith’s ‘long and valorous service to Equestria’ (whatever that meant). As a result there was an official writ of succession on file which would pass the property on first to a brother named Big Macintosh, then Applejack, then a younger sister named Applebloom. Twilight was sure there were a million explanations for it, but she still found it odd that Smith's title would pass over her own child(ren?) and directly to her eldest grandfoal. She’d look into that discrepancy when she had the time. Under a small stack of utterly mundane licenses and approval forms from the Ministry of Agriculture she also found a Manehattan City Watch report mentioning Applejack’s arrest for drunk and disorderly behavior. The farmer had pled guilty, paid her fine in full, and even personally repaired the storefront she’d destroyed. Twilight found all of that oddly commendable, especially when she saw the listed date-of-birth of 1077 and realized that the earth pony had been all of fourteen at the time.

Twilight was briefly mortified to learn that Pinkie Pie was currently wanted for a string of bloody train and wagon robberies all along the Saddle Arabian border, until she read that the pony in question was a unicorn last sighted a week previously in Fillydelphia.

Somewhat surprisingly, many of the documents in Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash’s files referenced each other. Apparently the two had grown up in Cloudsdale together and been enrolled in the same youth flight-training camp which eventually fed into the Equestrian military. Fluttershy’s scores were middling at best and a number of instructors had left notes wondering why she had bothered to enroll at all when her interests clearly lay elsewhere. She was mentioned in a number of disciplinary reports, never as in instigator and always as a target, and it seemed that after a particularly violent incident which had placed her life in serious danger- the specifics were redacted with a note explaining that the camp instructors wished to protect her privacy- the teenaged Fluttershy had decided she’d had enough and politely announced her departure for Ponyville. There was mention of her potentially seeking out a formal education in zoology, druidcraft. or veterinary medicine, but apparently nothing had come of it.

Dash, on the other hoof, had shown truly exceptional scores counterbalanced by an equally exceptional number of demerits and infractions. Nonetheless she had managed to keep a top position through what, to Twilight’s experienced eye, looked to be a combination of genuine love for flying and sheer Minotaurean stubbornness, and seemed to have been well on her way to an early spot in the Wonderbolts.

Then she’d attacked another student, and left him injured badly enough to need hospital treatment.

The dates seemed to line up to within a few days of the mysterious incident that had resulted in Fluttershy’s departure, and Twilight wondered if they were related. That made her suspicious. While the Wonderbolts were nowhere near as debauched as the more salacious of the Canterlot broadsheets made them out to be -if they spent even a tenth of the time they allegedly did in wild twelve-way rutting parties, they'd never have a moment to eat, let alone practice or fly missions- they and the other EUP platoons were highly sought-after with exclusive recruiting standards. That led to no small amount of underhoofed competition among young prospects.

On any other day she would have found the prospect of uncovering a potential conspiracy involving a promising young recruit getting drummed out of flight camp so hard she bounced off the runway to be enticing, or at least worth passing on to Shining Armor to resolve. Today, though, there was the more pressing matter of a possible demon of the night returning to Equestria, so she let the matter lie. The remainder of Dash’s file consisted of Weather Team pay stubs, fines and official warnings for trying to purchase weapons not available to civilians, and declined applications to five different special-operations-track recruiting programs.

In retrospect, that explained a great deal.

Feeling vaguely uncomfortable and more than a little sorry for the mare, Twilight turned to the chart that she had prepared. Rainbow’s mouthwriting was nigh illegible and Twilight very strongly suspected that the locations she’d marked on an old Naval Ordinance Survey map of Ponyville and its environs had more than the officially permitted error bounds, but nonetheless exactly seventy-two of them were shown.

Twilight supposed the positional errors didn’t matter. She’d seen that pattern of stars enough times recently that it was very probably etched into the backs of her eyeballs.

She slid a few bits onto the table for her meal and stood, intent on heading back to the Library to get a hold of a more accurate and detailed map for comparison, but before she could get far she spotted a telltale brilliantly-pink mane out of the corner of her eye.

“Hey, Pinkie, can you come over here for a minute? There’s something you might be able to help me with.”

“Okie-dokie!”

Twilight tapped a hoof against the empty spot on the map where the Moon would rest in Equestria’s actual sky. The projection was different from that used on the Cairn ceiling, and not all of the same stars were represented- it cut off most of the Northern sky, leaving the bulk of the Cairns deep in the Everfree and the ‘Moon’-spot closer to Ponyville proper. “Do you know if there’s anything of… well, historical or magical significance located right around here?”

Pinkie’s eyes lit up and her grin took on a cheerfully diabolic quality that put Twilight in the mindset of a schoolfilly who’d just found a particularly interesting dead animal. “Oh! Yeah, you wanna see where they keep Nightmare Moon!”

“… Wait, what?!”

(♫)

In Pinkie Pie’s defense, it was a very realistic statue.

Whoever had carved the life-sized figure of Nightmare Moon from Ponyville’s blue-gray stone had obviously been an incredibly skilled craftsmare, and more importantly had been able to reference some of the earliest and most accurate illustrations that Twilight had only been able to procure at incredible cost of time and money- or, she supposed, given the obvious age of the site, had gotten a look at the genuine article. Standing rampant as it did on an ornate, Lunar-style square pedestal with one hoof held out and downward at a forty-five degree angle, it almost seemed to be accusing anypony who stood too near in front of it, although of what Twilight couldn’t even begin to guess.

“Well, this is the place,” Applejack muttered from behind her, “Ah just hope you’ll be careful without Fluttershy bein’ ‘round to keep an eye on you.”

“Spike’s an ambassador, you brute!” Rarity replied, “Surely his assistant doesn’t need round-the-clock supervision just to avoid making a scene.”

“Really now! ‘Ambassador’s assistant’, huh? ‘Cause Twilight told me she was some big important muckety-muck from the Antiquities Department.”

Twilight had decided to bring the two locals along because she’d figured Rarity’s eye for craftsmareship and Applejack’s experience with the geology and history of the area were the closest thing she had to archaeological expertise right now. Rarity had been quick to agree and had even packed some of her more delicate tools; the farmer had taken a bit more cajoling, but with a few additional bits and a reminder of last night’s shower over the East Orchard she’d come around soon enough. By that time, Twilight had entirely forgotten that she’d never come clean to either of them about her own actual position in the government. As the mares fell into arguing she decided that, since he seemed to have built up something resembling a rapport or at least tolerance with the townsponies, it was probably best to let Spike handle it while she focused on more important matters.

A quick ambit of the small clearing in which the statue was located revealed nothing more than moss and fiddleheads, although the overgrowth made Twilight grateful she’d finally taken up Rarity on her offer of a sturdy pair of boots. That wasn’t unexpected- the statue wasn’t particularly hard to get to, after all, and if there were additional ruins visible around it Applejack or Pinkie Pie would have been able to tell her. That didn’t mean there wasn’t more to the site, however, and Twilight had come prepared to find it. Finding a reasonably clear and dry patch of earth not far from the structure she sat down, closed her eyes, and began concentrating. If she’d had the full resources of the Academy at her disposal she could have simply called in an earth pony druid capable of interrogating the very stones themselves for actionable information, but even on her own a high-level detection spell was well within her power. Bit by bit, the blackness behind her eyelids began to take on form and structure. First the two ponies to either side of her delineated themselves as luminous equine skeletons; then a blob of green fire became visible through the refractive effect of Spike’s draconic scales; then the entire clearing lit up with a sort of vague blue-green radiance generated by the natural magic of the various plants and small insects that occupied it. Twilight muttered a series of cantrips to blot out the most powerful sources of magic, and as they receded the structure of the statue itself became visible, outlined in a warm, gently-pulsing golden glow.

It didn’t surprise her that the thing was enchanted- after all, something had to be keeping Nightmare Moon’s exquisitely-detailed features sharp despite a thousand years of weathering and probable local abuse- but the quality of the spell certainly gave her pause. It was radiating magic at an incredibly low rate, right at the edge of what her own spell could detect, which implied incredible precision on the part of the original caster. At the time of the Lunar Rebellions, the only way that could have been done at all would have been for the same ponies to reconvene at the site every few weeks for several years, take detailed measurements of the spell as it stood, and reapply a weak version in the hopes of averaging out any imperfections. Even then, the spell should have faded away long ago unless the original casters (and, indeed, there must have been at least three as those sorts of stone-preserving spells required earth-pony, unicorn, and pegasus magic in equal measure) had been immensely powerful- or, she supposed, kept up a tradition to periodically renew it. At this point anything was possible, although she decided not to read too terribly much into the uncanny familiarity of the thaumic spectra she was observing. Quite a few ponies, in fact, had magical signatures similar to Princess Celestia’s simply by coincidence, and the idea of her own mentor and the champion of the Solar Restoration having had anything at all to do with this place was too absurd for even her newly-expanded reality to accommodate.

More to the point, however, her scan had revealed just how far down into the ground the statue extended. “All right,” she said, opening her eyes once again and trotting back over to the front of the structure where Spike and the locals were assembled. “There’s a larger… I guess a kind of a plinth under this thing that extends out in front to right about here.”

“Well, ‘course there is, sugarcube,” Applejack trotted over and began unclipping her saddlebags, “If’n’ it didn’t go down underground a good ways it’d get top-heavy an’ fall over.” She extracted a small folding shovel in her teeth and favored Twilight with a skeptical look above it. “They din’ actually teach you too much in whatever fancy magic school you came from, did they?”

Spike and the farmer made quick work of the roughly foot-thick layer of dirt that had accumulated overtop of the plinth; once they had gotten within a few centimeters Twilight and Rarity finished off the rest with softer brushes taken from the tailor’s manestyling kit and precision telekinesis. It took Twilight only a few minutes of work to completely expose the text that had been carved into the structure’s base:

As the sunset fades away, the yellow turns to gray, the moonlight shines across the land, a calling we obey.

“From purest black we shadows rise to fight a greater fight…” Twilight murmured, more to herself than to anypony else. “Our brothers and sisters move as one, we soldiers of the night.”

Deep inside the stonework base, something mechanical clicked.

Spike and Rarity both scrambled backwards as Twilight lit her horn and Applejack brandished her folding shovel like an impromptu poleaxe, but whatever threat they had all been expecting failed to materialize. Instead, the entire top surface of the plinth, Nightmare Moon and all, slid backward with impossible smoothness approximately twenty centimeters to expose a small, dark chamber underneath.

After a moment, Rarity gave a demure cough. “I’m… not sure if I understand. The surveyors scanned that statue years ago! You scanned it just now. How would…?”

Spike stepped forward. “That is strange. A cloaking spell a thousand years old shouldn’t even have had an effect, much less been able to mess with modern magical scans. Maybe the chamber’s a lot more recent than the statue itself, or maybe my assistant’s just off her game.”

Rarity tittered at that.

Twilight glared at Spike and then carefully, cautiously approached the statue. She hadn’t been sure what she’d briefly thought reciting that Lunar verse might have brought forth, only that it had for just that moment seemed ancient, immensely dangerous, and very, very real. She, along with every first-year magic student, knew perfectly well the dangers of reading inscribed spells aloud, but that poem contained nothing but arbitrary, non-magical Ponish words. Didn’t it?

It was a bright afternoon, which was fortunate because Twilight still didn’t want to risk even the magical leakage of a magelight to illuminate the contents of the plinth. Inside were eight square obsidian tablets, four on top of four, deeply inscribed with what looked to be Old Ponish scribal shorthand.

In retrospect it made sense- if she had been one of the last of the original Lunar Rebels, where else would she have hidden information relating to her leader’s return? “Rarity, can you go back to your shop and fetch me some clean silk? I don’t want to carry these the whole way telekinetically.”

“Certainly, darling, but… do you mind if I ask whatthey say?” Ironically, Rarity probably wouldn’t have had much trouble understanding the words on the tablets if they had been spoken aloud, but the alphabet reforms of the fifth century and the spelling reform of the eighth rendered written Old Ponish more or less incomprehensible to the modern laymare. This particular sample also seemed to be in code, but that wouldn’t stop Twilight for long.

“I’ll need to take them back to the Golden Oaks to get a start on decoding them, but… if I had to guess, this is a prophecy.”

(♫)

Twilight finally released the quill from her telekinetic grip and rubbed her tired, bloodshot eyes with both front hooves. The Old Ponish dictionaries and cryptological tomes spread across the table in the center of the Golden Oaks had taken her and Spike far longer to locate than she had planned -they had, in fact, been buried during Twilight’s search the night before- and as the sun began to set the locals took to singing, playing instruments, firing off rockets, and otherwise making concentration extremely difficult. But she had persevered, and now the original contents of the Lunar Prophecy had been extracted from their archaic, tabular cipher and rendered into something easily comprehensible:

When the Sun crosses one third of its arc below the horizon on the longest solar day of the thousandth seasonal year following Nightmare Moon’s confinement within the Circle of the Moon, the stars will aid in her escape and she will return with the Princess of the Night.

She had, quite honestly, expected a good bit more. Briefly she considered whether she’d somehow missed entire sections of significant text amidst the mixing cipher in which it was contained, but the likelihood of such an error producing any comprehensible sentences at all was incredibly remote. It was simply one of the shortest prophecies she’d ever encountered.

Spike leaned over from the stool beside her and tapped one claw against the final line. “That’s a pretty big corruption at the end there. I can understand Mist Watcher paraphrasing the calendrical stuff, but the last line changes the whole meaning of the prophecy.”

“I don’t think Mist Watcher was the one who changed it, at least not deliberately and not on her own. It might be a translation error.” She slipped off of her own chair and telekinetically rifled through a pile of discarded linguistics texts until she came across the one in particular she was looking for. “A lot of what we know about Nightmare Moon and the prophecy comes from Griffonic sources, and Mist Watcher spent time studying magic in the Griffon Empire.” Pages of the dictionary fanned rapidly past in her telekinetic grip until she settled on the one she had been looking for, “See here! Middle High Griffish didn’t have a distinct word for alicorns or Princesses, they were just called ‘immortals’ or ‘eternals’. So ‘Princess of the Nighttime’ and ‘Nighttime Eternal’ would actually be the same phrase!”

“That’s still odd, though,” Spike continued, “Why would a prophecy describe Nightmare Moon returning with herself? There’s something obvious we’re both missing, here.”

“Well, obviously. There’s still a lot about this prophecy and the events that led to its creation that we don’t really understand. Like why it predicts Nightmare Moon returning at such a thaumically disadvantageous time…” When Twilight had plugged a return date of slightly less than a year from now into her model, she’d found the amount of mana the spell required to be insanely high- so high that even an entity of Nightmare Moon’s approximate power level would find herself effectively crippled upon completing it, if she could pull it off at all. “… and why it doesn’t give that date in a specified timeframe but with actual, physical seasons which are controlled by ponies and can’t really be predicted that far in… advance…” Something between a stormcloud and ice settled in the pit of Twilight’s stomach.

She’d assumed from the very beginning that when it described ‘the longest day of the thousandth year’, the prophecy was speaking of the endpoint of a section of time- the time it would take for Nightmare Moon to assemble the stars into a self-contained spell circle of immense enough power to bring about her physical manifestation on the Material Plane. That’s what her model was set up to calculate. But summoning spells often took advantage of conditions in their environment in order to function more easily- specific astrological, meteorological, or geological formations, typically, but also the natural ebb and flow of magic that occurred at specific times of day or specific times of year. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be easier variations of difficult summons that could only be cast successfully at, for instance, nautical sunrise on the third clear day after a full moon, regardless of how much actual time those events took to come about.

The prophecy didn’t predict when Nightmare Moon would return at all. It predicted the conditions that would allow her return, however long it actually took ponies to bring them about. That explained why even Twilight’s most precise instruments had been unable to detect any directed motion in the starfield. She’d assumed that was because the movement was too slow to observe on timescales of less than a few years, but in fact the relevant stars weren’t moving at all. They had, in fact, been in the correct positions the entire time Twilight had been alive, waiting for the other conditions of the spell to be fulfilled.

And if one of those conditions was the existence of a thousand seasonal cycles since the Nightmare’s banishment…

The paralyzing chill inside of her dissolved, and suddenly Twilight couldn’t move fast enough to satisfy her own racing thoughts. She grabbed the nearest piece of mostly-blank paper she could find, made a few scratches on it with her quill, then quickly reconsidered and extracted another from her pack by the door with a copy of her cutie mark already magically imprinted in the bottom right corner. “CELESTIA,” she wrote, unconcerned with the acute angle her large, blocky script made on the page, “DO NOT MOVE THE SUN BELOW THE HORIZON. Extreme danger! Will explain when face-to-face. Twilight.”

“Spike, send this to the Princess right away!” She rolled the letter into a rough tube and lobbed it telekinetically towards him, relaxing only when it vanished in a bolt of acid-green flame.

The spell he used to transfer small documents had originally been developed for use by the Equestrian Navy and only reluctantly picked up by the postal service some two centuries ago. Normally it was applied to a pair of braziers which needed to be kept continuously stocked with enchanted fuel, since if the magical fire on either end were to run out of energy both would need to be rekindled. While outages were rare in the populous, prosperous, rail-crossed Equestrian heartland, portable versions weren’t exactly practical. Twilight, however, had realized early on that Spike’s draconic metabolism naturally produced exactly the raw materials the spell needed to operate- he himself could operate as an always-on living terminus.

They’d run into a myriad of problems trying to link his adapted version of the spell to a brazier, but upon being read into the project Moon Dancer had hypothesized that another living entity might be compatible. After initial experiments on rats and deer had proven safe, Twilight had applied the spell first to a volunteer in the form of Shining Armor, and then after further refinements to Celestia. Thus, unlike virtually every other method of communication, Twilight could be certain her letter would indeed reach the Princess despite the complete isolation in which she usually spent the night leading up to the Summer Sun Celebration.

Holding the sun at one position or moving it back above the horizon wasn’t by any means optimal or even safe, and would quickly have profoundly negative effects on everything from grain prices to the equicide rate. But it would at least buy them time- time to scour Paper Clip’s notes for the location of the Elements of Harmony, or figure out how to redirect Nightmare Moon’s spell, or find some other way to head off the crisis.

It took, by Twilight’s estimate, about five minutes for Celestia to reply. Paradoxically, being acutely and painfully aware of each passing second made a proper measure of the total much more difficult. Then, just as the unicorn began to worry that her racing heart rate was going to have long-term effects on her overall health, Spike coughed up another globe of emerald fire and from it emerged a scroll neatly bound with the Day Court seal.

Twilight could barely focus as she unrolled it with spotty, intermittent telekinesis.

“My dearest Twilight Sparkle,
I trust your time in Ponyville has been enlightening, and as always my heart is warmed by your concern for my well-being. However, I think it’s time you were permitted to know the truth about your work here. Nightmare Moon is not coming back to the Material Plane. Thanks to alterations discreetly made to the calendar system and exemplary performance by the weather patrols she has, in fact, been here for quite some time, and with the help of Shining Armor and our armed forces I have made sure she presents no possible threat. Your research, therefore, will no longer be required and I wish you the best of luck in your future studies.
Princess Celestia”

Twilight and her assistant both stared blankly at the text for a good long while. Spike’s mouth kept opening, staying like that for the space of a few seconds, and then closing with a barely-audible click before he glanced briefly towards his partner, turned away in embarrassment and repeated the whole process over and over again. Twilight… didn’t know exactly what she was thinking at first. One emotion after another flashed through her exhausted brain in a mixture of outrage, dread, relief and fascination that should by all rights have been impossible for a single pony to experience. “She… I… but…” Coherent sentences were briefly beyond her as she tried to marshal her jumbled thoughts, finally settling on a fury more intense than anything she’d ever experienced before.

“A year, Spike.” She stood up from the desk and began pacing back and forth in front of the stairs, “We spent an entire year chasing this prophecy, and the whole time she’d already… does she have any idea how much of the common pony’s money got spent on this project… the other very important work I could’ve been… All the time I’ve wasted?! WHY?! What… possible rutting purpose would she have in keeping this secret?!”

“Twilight…”

“Does she want me to throw away my life, Spike? Does that qualify as a lesson on being a better pony?!”

“Twilight.”

“You know what I’m going to do, Spike? I’m going to publish that journal in the basement. I’m going to verify it, find the sources I need to corroborate it, annotate it, and then I’m going to get it in every paper from here to Zebrica so the whole Known World can see just what a rutting fraud-”

“Twilight!”

“Yes, what?!” She rounded on the smaller dragon, horn briefly flaring with magic before, abruptly, the urge to strike her assistant evaporated as soon as she became fully aware of it.

If the dragon was in any way alarmed, he gave no sign of it. “Twilight, I think that’s an excellent idea.”

“… what?”

“You’ve been busting your tail on this for no reason, and you’ve got every right to be… I was going to say angry, but I think ‘furious’ is really more appropriate. I’m behind you every step of the way… but this is gonna take time, and the important thing is we’ve got time. Nopony’s in any danger right now. We’ll get back to Canterlot and run some tests on the journal to confirm it’s First Century, and see if we can match the writing with other documents that Paper Clip guy wrote. But right now… there’s a festival on. Can we actually enjoy Ponyville, just for one night?”

“Spike… You’re absolutely right.”

>Nightmare Moon: Descend

(♫)

It was a perfect night for celebration, balmy and dry, the narrow streets of Ponyville lit by dozens of hanging paper Sun lanterns. Twilight wandered among the throngs of ponies more or less aimlessly, seeking out wherever she was more comfortable, and never having been much of a fan of loud music or dense crowds soon found herself ascending a rickety staircase that led up onto the roof of the Town Hall. Spike had split off from her some time ago to investigate a display of local gemstones at the Carousel Boutique; judging by the occasional flashes of lime-green flame she was spotting from within a particularly dense cluster of onlookers not far away and their subsequent stamping of applause, he was having more than enough fun on his own.

Off in the distance, somepony had set alight a box of skyrockets, but Twilight was high enough up and far enough away that the sound wasn’t too intrusive; instead the collective chatter smoothed itself out into a sort of white noise over which she could still detect animal calls from the surrounding forest. Twilight took a deep breath, and sucked in the scent of sautéing vegetables and wood-burning fires and the old musty odor of the building she was standing on. She wondered how many of the ponies below her would ever realize how close their reality had come to being utterly upended by cosmic forces only she and a select few members of the Day Court had been permitted to comprehend. Then she wondered how many other near-misses had occurred over the thousand years of the Pax Equestria of which she had been kept unaware, and what proportion had occurred during her own time as Celestia’s so-called ‘personal student’.

“Lucky mare I turned out to be,” she finally said aloud, “I don’t even know who I really worked for any more.”

“Oh!” A familiar, soft voice issued from the shadows of one of the building’s eaves, and Fluttershy stepped out into better view. Twilight made a little, involuntary jump- she hadn’t even known the pegasus was there. “I didn’t think I’d… see you up here.”

“Yeah… well…” Recovering her equilibrium the scholar settled herself onto her haunches so that she could peer over the edge of the roof. It was chillier up here with the wind coming off of the Everfree, but a full day’s sun exposure had baked the shingles to a pleasant warmth under her legs and barrel. “It seemed like a good place to ponywatch.”

“You’re right, it is.”

Another pony might have found the silence that ensued awkward, but Fluttershy seemed to understand better than most that there was nothing rude about simply not having anything else to say.

A pegasus mare and stallion flew overhead, almost wingtip-to-wingtip, eyeing the rooftop contemplatively before spotting Twilight and gliding onward. Down below, a pair of earth ponies and a unicorn in pieced-together armor worked to liberate a bottle from the jaws of a tottering red earth pony stallion, bickering goodnaturedly as he held on for dear life and allowed himself to be dragged back out of sight.

“Hey.” Fluttershy’s voice came again from just over Twilight’s shoulder.

“Yeah?” The scholar didn’t look up.

“Is… everything going all right? With your… research?”

Twilight let out a long, slow breath. “Actually, it’s done. You might hear about it in the papers a few weeks from now… assuming I can get it past Celestia, of course.”

“… Princess Celestia?”

“Yeah, look, it’s a long and kind of stupid story.” She noticed that the crowd around one particular stall near where the earth pony had come from was abnormally thick, and thought she saw a pyramid of wooden tankards set up behind it. “Hey, do you know if there’s cider down there?”

“… even though other researchers, when they bothered to look at it at all, dismissed it as Mist Watcher’s own invention. I did too, at first, but after I noticed the correspondences with the obviously genuine Luna Bay fragment which contained information available nowhere else, I knew I was onto something.”

The game at which Twilight was currently trying her hoof was a very simple one, which involved tossing head-sized leather balls at something resembling a giant, tilted Roulette wheel; and before it Twilight’s doctoral-level knowledge of probability, ballistics, and telekinetic field dynamics was proving entirely unhelpful. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Pinkie Pie hadn’t racked up twice the scholar’s prize money despite downing five tankards of cider to Twilight’s two.

“You know, that is a kinda' screwy prophecy,” Rainbow Dash cut in from where she hovered at Twilight’s left, taking a temporary break from the bag of carmelized popcorn that was consuming most of her attention, “Why does it have to have all that confusing stuff about arcs and solar years and Moon Circles? Can’t it just have a year where she comes back?”

“Well...” all of Twilight’s interest in the ballgame was abruptly forgotten as an opportunity to educate the Common Pony presented itself, “That kind of dense, pedantic detail is actually really common for prophecies. Part of the standards for professional divination -and something that by the early First Century was being actively enforced by their Guild- is that prophecies have to be written in a very formal way. What’s described has to be completely unambiguous and literally correct according to an agreed-upon dictionary. Otherwise, ponies might misinterpret it, or worse, the questions you feed into the working will have ambiguous answers and show you uncertain or even outright impossible futures. That’s not the same as being easy to understand, though.”

“Ya’ mean like a legal document or somesuch,” Applejack cut in from the next stand over. Twilight hadn’t known she’d been listening in.

“Exactly! For instance, just talking to you, I'd say the ocean is filled with water. Saline water, if I was feeling pedantic. But there's other things in the ocean, so a prophecy would either have to spend six pages confirming the existence of different kinds of fish... or use a phrase that meant the same thing according to strict logic but didn't suggest details that might pull the working away from a guaranteed future, like ‘there is water contained within the maritime boundaries defined by the Celestia-Galatian Treaty.’"

“Or like, ‘Nightmare Moon will bring back Nightmare Moon’!” Pinkie supplied.

Twilight nodded approvingly. “To make matters even worse, prophecies can’t reference or describe events that might or might not happen, based on the choices of intelligent beings like ponies- and since ponies work together to decide on calendars and turn the seasonal cycles, prophecies can’t just use those to tell time! Usually they get around that by including their own definition of a calendar and just continuing that into the future, without saying it’ll still be what everyday ponies recognize when the prophecy’s fulfilled. That’s what I was expecting to find here, and why I was so surprised there wasn’t more to the Lunar Prophecy, but now I realize that it’s not describing dates or times, it’s describing specific events of astrological significance and warning of what would occur whenever ponies got around to causing them.”

The teal stallion running the ball-throwing booth whickered at her impatiently, and Twilight realized that Rainbow Dash was only the first pony in a sizable line forming behind her. She stepped out of the way, but noticed Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and several of the customers sharing cider and candied apples at the farmer’s stall were still watching her with interest. “And it's the dichotomy, where the text switches from a ten-page list of all the types of pottery used by a specific ancient people, to a curt, three-line abstraction of a war party's makeup, that makes interpreting prophetic materials such a nightmare… so to speak. And remember, you can’t divine anything at all, or use it as context in a divination, if it’s something that an intelligent creature can potentially change or decide not to do.”

“But isn’t Nightmare Moon moving the stars and casting her spell something she could decide not to do?” one of the patrons asked. Twilight realized it was the tailor, Rarity.

“That’s entirely true! One of the more common ways modern diviners get around the limitations imposed by pony interaction is to split their prophecies into conditional cases, based on assuming different possible decisions a pony could make- that’s why so many divinations commissioned for business forecasting and prospecting and so on are just big charts comparing numbers to other numbers these days. That technique wasn’t fully developed until about the 720s, though, and in any case while the description of seasons in the Lunar prophecy could be seen as a sort of proto-conditional, that doesn’t answer your question about Nightmare Moon’s involvement. It’s rare, but there have been ponies whose actions are actually predicted by prophecies in the past, and they all describe the same thing. They inevitably ended up in situations where, even when they knew what the consequences of taking the actions that were prophecized would be, circumstances were such that they felt like they literally had no other option. Their basic nature could only let them act in one specific way.” It was interesting, watching the dynamics of this crowd. Ponies with no concern for the subject matter ambled off whenever they felt like it, but every single one of those who did stay, listened with genuine interest. Unlike the soldiers she’d briefed on magical subjects in the past, who’d listened because their lives depended on it, the townsponies’ attention felt earned. For the first time in a good long while Twilight seriously considered abandoning her Crown-commissioned research and applying for a lecturer’s seat somewhere other than the Academy.

“Most of those prophecies were divined during laboratory psychological experiments with very specific controlled conditions, though, and even the few that were taken in a realistic setting predicted events only a few days or even a few hours ahead of time, where there were a lot more elements out of anypony’s control. A prophecy predicting the actions of an intelligent creature a thousand years after it was written is, as far as I know, completely unprecedented. I guess it really is… err…was fundamentally against Nightmare Moon’s nature to do anything but get back to the Material Plane as soon as she was physically able.”

“Orrr, maybe Nightmare Moon isn’t actually intelligent and just operates off a big list of reflexes and routines baked into the inside of her skull,” Pinkie suggested, “You know, like Applejack!”

The farmer scowled and took a swing at Pinkie Pie, which managed to connect only with the smaller earth pony’s outsized mane as she darted nimbly away. Applejack and Twilight were both laughing along with the rest of the crowd not long after.

“Now there’s an odd thought…” Twilight herself didn’t know quite what to think about any of it any more. She’d more or less come to terms with a radically revisionist history of the Lunar Rebellions that made Nightmare Moon and those who’d followed her… well, certainly not right, of course, the famines and tribalist violence that had occurred as a result of their gross mismanagement of ‘liberated’ Equestrian territories were a matter of archaeological record; but following a misguided path to the same civic ideals that modern ponies understood. It was also clear that something had drastically changed in Princess Luna on that fateful night a thousand years ago. Could a pony -an alicorn, no less!- really take such complete leave of her senses that she ceased to function as an intelligent being at all? Twilight wasn’t even sure if the problem could be considered scientifically well-defined. How would she even go about measuring such abstract qualities? There were, of course, spells -illegal spells, but that didn't much matter in the grand scheme of things- that could reduce a pony to operating mindlessly on a rigid set of instructions, but the idea of such a thing lasting for a thousand years was nearly as absurd from a thaumoentropic perspective as the psychological argument.

She supposed it didn’t matter now. Celestia had implied, with unusual directness, that for better or for worse Nightmare Moon was dead and gone. Between the loud, slightly-obnoxious amateur music and the cider sloshing around her brain, she decided she would write to some of her Canterlot colleagues on the matter sometime tomorrow and let it lie until then.

Not long after, midway through a truly delicious ice-cream sandwich, Twilight realized that she had no idea where the aerobatics demonstration was scheduled and if she continued to sit in one place pondering the limits of cognitive psychology her odds of getting a decent viewing spot would be significantly diminished.

Amethyst Star was more than happy to provide Twilight with a copy of the night’s schedule, although the slot that Dash had claimed would be occupied by her aerobatics demonstration was instead dedicated to the town-wide fireworks display. Twilight’s confusion turned to horror when she realized that there was, in fact, no mistake at all and the pegasus intended to fly through the fireworks.

Only afterward, sharing a picnic table in the market square with Twilight and a few others -still wearing her mildly-singed armor and reeking of sulfur- did Dash question why the Ponyville Militia and small Canterlot security contingent had been so dead-set on grounding her.

“What exactly were you expecting?” Twilight asked, “For the Royal Guard to be so impressed with your flying they’d offer you a position on the spot?”

“Of course not!” Dash rolled her eyes and stretched out a bladed wing alarmingly close to Twilight’s muzzle, “Obviously for a pony on my level they’d call in the Wonderbolts! I don’t know who’d even think about weighing down these girls with that all that bulky, noisy gold armor…”

“That… wasn’t my point.” In fact the electrum armor of the most elite units of the Equestrian military -not pure gold as claimed by many popular sources- was enchanted to be nearly weightless and completely silent among many, many other functions, but that wasn’t exactly the point either.

“Hey, at least everypony got something more entertaining than just fireworks this year,” Pinkie Pie supplied, “Maybe you’ll even get into Dead Air’s newsletter this time!”

Twilight was in fact an avid consumer of the publication in question, although given that last week’s issue had featured a stallion who held up the Canterlot-Baltimare Rail Line for three hours by jumping onto the tracks to search for his dropped orange, a mare who’d pulled a loaded crossbow during a backyard hoofball game, and the ‘That Doesn’t Go There’ 1097 Rectalspective, she was pretty sure being featured in it didn’t particularly count as an honor. Then again, knowing Rainbow Dash…

“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be interviewed once Twilight’s research is published,” Fluttershy suggested quietly.

“Well, it’s not like any of it really matters anymore,” Twilight snapped, feeling suddenly embittered, “Nightmare Moon’s back to being history.”

Rarity shook her head, the distant firelight transforming her elegantly-curled mane into a cascade of dozens of tiny stars. “Well, I’m sure the Lunars would appreciate having their work acknowledged, even after a thousand years.”

“Wait…” Rainbow Dash’s eyes narrowed and her helmeted head swiveled in Twilight’s direction, “I thought you said all this was classified!”

“What, you gonna arrest me? None of my work is really militarily relevant, I really don’t think anypony outside of a university department is even going to care about the details.”

“Well, I hardly think that my contribution is even worth mentioning, but it would be nice for somepony in authority to acknowledge the work everyday townsponies put into your discovery,” Rarity suggested.

“Hmph.” Applejack looked up from her own mug of cider and shook her head, “Personally, I dun’ think any a’ this’s ever gonna see the outside a’ some archive under Canterlot Castle again. Kinda’ a shame, but that’s how it is.”

Twilight was not inexperienced in keeping secrets from ponies, and realized that Applejack was probably right. Nonetheless, she was now beginning to see the others’ point. It hadn’t just been her work that had made this possible… for all the good it would do them. She leaned forward and put both forehooves on the table. “Look, I… can’t really promise you anything, but if I get the chance I’ll try my best to get some kind of official recognition, OK?”

“You’d better…” The cyan pegasus trailed off.

Twilight, for her part, wasn’t optimistic about her chances, and for a few minutes lapsed back into awkward silence. Then somepony tossed Applejack a fiddle and convinced her to lead them all through a complicated sort of folk ballad about messengers and dragon bandits, and the scholar made a very well-thought-out decision to stop caring.

As the night drew on, the speeches and civic dedications began. Having to sit in an uncomfortable folding chair and listen to some minister or high priest lecture on the True Meaning Of The Solstice had never been one of Twilight’s favorite parts of the Summer Sun Celebration; it was even worse when the speaker was somepony she knew. But Ponyville seemed to treat oratory as just another attraction no different from the cake shop or Rarity’s gem exhibition, leaving ponies to come and go as they pleased from a few small seating areas set up around the Town Hall. Twilight had stayed in Canterlot the year Celestia had held her celebration in Cloudsdale and as a result had never seen a formal Naming of the Four Winds, so she decided to watch that ceremony for a while. It was a surprisingly lively affair, with much cheering and surging of wings whenever Derpy Hooves completed a slow, laborious section of the litany she was reciting, and Twilight quickly realized that while she wasn’t by any means the only non-pegasus attending, she was the only one who wasn’t singing along. She resolved to study up on the wording at a later date.

Not long after that a general current became apparent in the milling crowds, and after a great amount of fanfare from the attending locals Twilight realized the ceremony had ended. She slipped into the larger, thicker stream of ponies in the center of the square alongside the other observants, and was carried along at a relatively gentle pace to the Town Hall in the center. What she’d found two days ago had evidently been the business entrance, as the doors she was heading for now were much wider and opened into a sort of central amphitheater, nearly the height of the entire building and richly draped with Summer Sun banners. Ponies already filled the balconies up above and most of the tiled floor, forcing her and other latecomers to make do with a spot near the back. She thought idly of attempting to locate Spike before catching site of his telltale green spines on one of the balconies. He seemed deep in conversation with Rarity, and she decided there was no point to bothering him. Instead, standing at her right shoulder, she found Pinkie Pie.

“Isn’t this exciting?!” the earth pony asked, “I’ve never been so excited! Well, except the time I saw you flying into town, but who can top that?!”

“Umm… thanks, I guess?”

A high-powered crystal spotlight came on somewhere up above, shining down on the raised dais at the far end of the hall and the small tan earth pony standing on it. “Fillies and Gentlecolts!” Magically amplified by an amulet at her neck, the Mayor’s businesslike voice echoed over them, reading out the traditional Salutation To Celestia with easy confidence: “In just a few moments, our town will witness the magic of the sunrise and celebrate this, the longest day of the year! And now, it is my great honor to introduce to you the ruler of our land, the very pony who gives us the sun and the moon each and every day, the bringer of Harmony to all of Equestria, Princess Celestia!”

The Day Court fanfare followed a moment later, not in the traditional trumpets but in birdsong. Looking up on one of the other balconies, Twilight spotted Fluttershy with what appeared to be trained songbirds. Impressive. Spells to control animals certainly did exist, but required a greater reserve of willpower than she’d thought the little pegasus possessed. Perhaps Fluttershy had developed a different approach, or Twilight’s own estimation of the mare was simply inaccurate.

By that point, though, the velvet curtains on the upper balcony had been pulled open, and it took Twilight a moment to realize that the entire crowd was waiting.

Whispers developed, then murmurs.

“Hey, you’re from Canterlot, right?” Across from Pinkie, a brown earth stallion in a slightly out-of-date but nonetheless expensive suit asked, “Is this how Celestia… normally does the Raising?”

“Well she does typically show up from seclusion with little to no fanfare, but… usually she’s on time.”

The eight-pony Royal Guard contingent began conferring with increasing frequency, first with each other over their enchanted helmets and then in somewhat louder voices with the local militiaponies who apparently lacked such equipment. There wasn’t much they could do given Celestia’s well-known tendency to escape her own entourage, but it probably at least helped to feel busy. Twilight sympathized.

(♫)

Finally, a pony in the front row -Councilpony Granny Smith, Twilight thought, or was the younger earth pony Cheerilee?- worked up the courage to speak aloud. “Where’s Princess Celestia?”

Rarity’s balcony must have had some connection to the central one, as the unicorn disappeared from view only to return moments later. “She’s… gone!”

From the far side of a paradigm shift, a wizard could no more understand how a new theory had been anything less than perfectly obvious all along than she could unlearn how to read. Twilight realized then that watching that process occur in another was in fact far more of a shock than enduring it herself.

Perhaps, then, the townsponies were fortunate that their confusion was interrupted by the sound of hooves on dirt tracks outside. A lot of hooves, all in time, and distant, sonorous voices.

Twilight and the others in the back were able to turn, in time to see what appeared to be the whole of the Everfree Forest at the edge of town step forward.

The distant shapes resolved, bit by bit, into individual ponies clad in exotic, indigo armor from which the moonlight seemed to slide off like cold water. Over the sounds of syncopated hooffalls the movement of metal and leather became audible, and bit by bit the ponies’ raised voices resolved into comprehensible words.

We stood at arms before our liege, each one of us just a pawn

Now we reign supreme throughout the dark until the light of dawn

Memories we have left behind us might cripple lesser souls

But those of us brought up from nothing have risen, remade whole

We see it in her moonlit eyes, the fury held at bay

A battle waiting in the ashes to resume another day

And as we disappear into the shadows to fill their souls with dread

We fight tonight to rule tomorrow and a dark day lies ahead!

The times we live in now have changed, honor is long gone

And now that good and evil are shades of gray a cruel impasse is drawn

For all the good we have created it doesn’t make us right

But those of us who hide in darkness seek a different kind of light

As the sunset fades away the yellow turns to gray

The moonlight shines across the land, a calling we obey

From purest black we shadows rise to fight a greater fight

My brothers and sisters move as one, we soldiers of the night!

Twilight finally realized she knew the tune. It was the Royal Guard parade anthem, but the wording had been altered; corrupted. She experienced a curious flash of anger at the strange ponies’ crass impropriety… and then realized that the Celestia-praising version sung each morning by the cadets on Hurricane’s Green was, and had always been, the corrupted one.

This was the original.

By that point the mixed force of Royal Guards and militia had pushed forward out of the building and set up a loose skirmish line some distance in front, weapons drawn. “Stay your blades and hold position!” An officer called, “No sudden movements…”

As the shapes in the dark drew closer, it became increasingly clear that there were far, far more of them than the militia. The order was given to close ranks, and before the advancing Lunar Army, Ponyville’s troops pulled back. Twilight wondered why they weren’t trying to shuffle ponies out of one of the rear entrances. She worried she already knew the answer.

A runner from somewhere behind the building arrived, then, and shared a muffled conversation with one of the Royal Guards.

“… what do you mean encirc- …”

“… right out of the shad- … never seen anyth-…”

“… calm and … situation cont- … need a panic on top of …”

Now, flying shapes could be made out against the night sky they so closely resembled- shapes with leathery, bat-like wings.

“What… are those things?” A filly asked.

Twilight could no longer form words. She was only dimly aware of another pony trying to drag her telekinetically deeper into the building, but she held her ground, transfixed. Curious. She had expected there would be more screaming.

The soldiers advancing on her looked half-dead already, their coats thin and patchy and strung far too tightly over the bones underneath. One, she was fairly certain, was missing her lower jaw; another still had the shaft of an arrow protruding from one hollow eye socket; a unicorn stallion’s ribs jutted out so visibly that at first she didn’t realize his earth pony companion’s were in fact completely exposed by a wicked magical burn.

The oldest texts had been right all along, and for a moment Twilight wasn’t certain if she was feeling revulsion or sympathy or some combination of the two.

That was impossible, though, the rational part of her reasserted. Many of those wounds should have been instantly fatal regardless of how the pony in question thought about them. In fact, a thousand years in a crypt should have been invariably fatal.

It was only then Twilight remembered, that one of the many individually tiny slights that had first brought about the Lunar Rebellions had been an edict by the Day Court -repealed, no less, a year after the Reconstruction Acts thanks to “the wise council of Minister Paper Clip”- that had forbidden even theoretical research into the discipline of necromancy.

The oldest texts hadn’t been correct at all. They had been, no doubt with the best of intentions, sanitized.

No no, that wasn’t a fext carving through our best soldiers, just a lunatic berzerker. No no, that wasn’t a lich raining down magical fire on your town, the poor rutter was just starving and half-mad with lowland fever. No need to look into the matter any closer than that.

All of it was impossible. Unreal. That cider had to have been stronger than Twilight had thought; she was passed out on a bench dreaming of her wasted work in some perverse vindication fantasy. But what was really more implausible? That Celestia had silently and covertly dealt with a threat of Nightmare Moon’s obvious power years ago, or that she too had been somehow fooled? If Nightmare Moon had returned and been defeated years ago…

Most of the townsponies remained transfixed by the spectacle, eyes locked straight ahead. The moon was behind the Town Hall, and Twilight was reasonably certain that she was the only pony in attendance who thought to look away and find a window through which it could be observed. She shouldn’t have bothered; all she’d done was confirm what she already suspected.

The Mare In The Moon was gone.

If Nightmare Moon had returned and been defeated years ago, why had the Mare only vanished now?

Some detached part of Twilight boggled at the fact that she was less disturbed by what was going on in front of her, than she was by the fact that Princess Celestia had lied to her.

Then, behind her, somepony laughed. It was high, and clear, and cruel, and disturbingly equine in character.

Now there were screams, or at least shouts of surprise. The slow movement of ponies back into the Hall suddenly reversed, but Twilight fought against the crowd to turn around and face the interior.

There was an alicorn standing on the upper balcony; one that Twilight recognized.

Her face, despite its fanged mouth and slitted turquoise eyes, was nearly as familiar to the scholar as Celestia’s own; and indeed this was not the first time Twilight had noticed the significant family resemblance. It was naive of her to have thought, however, that simply looking at pictures of the beast in dusty grimoires and fragments of banners had in any way prepared her to face the real thing. Paint could never properly capture the inky blackness of her coat, a curious substance that absorbed all light but somehow still revealed in perfect detail the contour of muscle underneath. Artisans had done a decent enough job reconstructing the pale blue astral steel of her smooth, tooth-edged armor, and perfect white enamel of her fangs, but had failed utterly to capture the ethereal quality of her mane; not so much any material at all, in fact, but an absenceof material which removed any obstruction between the viewer and the stars outside. Nor was there a single account that even mentioned the change in atmosphere that the pony brought with her- a smell of dew and ozone and something electrical in the air.

Nightmare Moon was the most terrifyingly beautiful creature Twilight Sparkle had ever encountered.

“Oh, my beloved subjects!” Her voice was surprisingly light for a pony of her tremendous presence, confident and refined certainly but at the same time oddly dismissive. It carried easily throughout the entire hall without any hint of amplification, and more amazingly to Twilight without any hint of effort on the alicorn’s part. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen your precious, sun-loving faces.” From another pony the sentiment might have sounded bitter, but the utter sincerity with which Nightmare Moon delivered it as a complement cut a thousand times deeper.

“What’d you do with the Princess?” Rainbow Dash shouted, and for a moment the spell was broken. She launched herself upward with a throwing knife clutched in her mouth, but before she got more than a few feet Applejack had wrestled her back to the floor.

The alicorn clearly saw her outburst, and indeed turned to look right at her, but continued on as though Dash was nothing more than a stagehoof providing her expected cue. “What… am I not royal enough for you? Do you not know who I am? Does my crown no longer count now that I’ve been imprisoned for a thousand years? Did you not recall the legend? Did you not see the signs?” For the first time, her oddly pleasant expression began to take on the quality of a smirk. “What has Celestia been telling you all?” The entity -the Princess- shook her head sadly.

The militia must’ve been waiting for that moment of apparent distraction. “Seize her!” yelled the Mayor, and four Royal Guard pegasi leaped upward with longspears in their hooves. “She’s the only one who knows where the Princess is!”

Casually, almost dismissively, Nightmare Moon flicked out her left wing, and an arc of blinding white lightning chained through each of the guards in turn. They were knocked out of the air and landed hard, and Twilight was fairly certain she’d heard bones snap. For a moment she thought they were trying to get to their hooves, but their movements were frantic and uncoordinated; where one had curled into a tight ball like a newborn filly, another was bent almost double the other way. When bystanders rushed to their aide it took two or three ponies each to try to restrain them. One started screaming, louder than Twilight had ever heard a pony scream before. The others were trying to, but could only manage a horrible, choking-gasping-whimpering noise.

Twilight looked away, more out of pity than any fear.

The alicorn leaped down from her perch and landed absolutely silently on the floor below, steel-shod hooves failing to leave so much as a scuff mark on the polished stone. She walked slowly, casually over to the Mayor’s position. Nopony tried to get in her way. “So you’re the mare who commands these brave little ponies. I hope you’ll see reason and ask them to lay down their arms.”

The Mayor seemed to mull over her response for a moment, then in lieu of words spat a glob of congealed saliva at Nightmare Moon’s forehooves.

The alicorn didn’t seem to notice. “If that’s what you want, I won’t try to talk you out of it. I’ve waited a long time to take back my place in Equestria… we can all stand to wait just a little while longer.” The posture of her wings shifted slightly, and the guard who had been screaming tapered off to a raw, almost-breathless whine. Their spasms intensified, and additional ponies moved in to try to keep the four still. One, a white-and-pink earth pony with a medical bag in her hoof, looked up at the nearby alicorn with wide eyes, “I’ve never seen… I don’t know how… please, whatever you’re doing, just stop!”

“Is this the sort of leadership my sister encourages? Ponies who stand idle, holding onto their power while their subjects suffer?” Nightmare Moon’s smile fully exposed her long, wicked-looking fangs now. “Surrender, or I’m sure your successor will.”

The Mayor’s mouth opened, but she produced no words. Finally, she held up one shaking hoof and, once she saw the militiaponies focused on her, waved it outward. To a mare, they lowered their weapons.

Abruptly, the guards’ convulsions ceased. The one who’d screamed drew in a long, rasping breath. Twilight suspected he was the only one who still held onto consciousness. One of the others, she was fairly certain, wasn’t visibly breathing. All of them lay absolutely still.

The silence was, briefly, overpowering. Then, as they collected the defenders’ weapons, the Lunar soldiers started taking charge of the crowd. Twilight found their short, matter-of-fact orders- “Over there”, “You three come with me”, “Where is your mother?”- somehow a more palpable show of force than if they’d hurled threats and abuse. She noticed that the majority of those coming forward looked… well, alive, and wondered if that was an intentional psychological tactic. It seemed to be working, at least until one of the militiaponies- the runner from earlier, in fact, a skinny red unicorn who didn’t look far out of adolescence- refused to release her shortsword. Instead she swung it in front of her with obvious killing intent, narrowly missing the snout of the bat-winged pegasus who’d been trying to grab it, and darted for the exit. “C’mon,” she yelled, her voice at once loud and tremulous, “W… we can take ‘em! We can-”

She was cut off abruptly as the pointed end of a warhammer met her shoulder. There was a loud crunch as her armor crumpled and a thump as she dropped out of sight. Then complete and utter silence. Twilight wondered if there had been enough force behind that swing to kill a pony by impact alone. There wasn’t any visible blood splatter so it hadn’t hit her heart or carotid artery… right?

Nopony put up much resistance after that.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Twilight forced herself to ignore the continued presence of Nightmare Moon in the far corner of the room, watching the proceedings with something that very much resembled amusement, and instead shouldered her way through the mostly-paralyzed crowd to where the Mayor was still standing. “You don’t-” she started, then lowered her voice, “You can’t-” the Mayor was ignoring her so she went back to shouting, “You have no idea of the gravity of-” That was getting nowhere, “This is more important than just one town, dammit, that thing over there is Nightmare Moon!”

That cold, cruel laughter froze Twilight where she stood. The electrical presence drew terrifyingly close to her and she found herself wrapped in magic, staring directly into Nightmare Moon’s perfect, horrible, slitted blue eyes. “Well, well, well, somepony remembers me! Then you also know why I’m here…” The creature in front of Twilight smiled again, and without changing tone in the slightest her voice once again filled the entire hall. “Remember this day, ponies, for it was your last.”

Author's Note

UPDATED 4 OCTOBER 2020 to fix some grammar and formatting issues.

I wrote the entire scene of Nightmare Moon’s introduction, from Twilight’s arrival in the assembly hall to the end of the chapter, in a single sitting the night before my Master’s diploma ceremony completely from scratch. I started at 7 in the evening and finally went to bed at 2:30 AM. Normally I’m the sort of writer who outlines, re-outlines, and picks away a sentence at a time over the course of several days, but once I got started on this I couldn’t not finish it. I’ve tweaked phrasing and sentence structure here and there since then (apparently me at 2AM really likes the word ‘terrifying’ for some reason), but the essential structure of it is basically the same.

I had seriously considered having Nightmare Moon or her troops actually unambiguously kill a few of the townsponies just to show that violent death is a real possibility here and we aren’t playing by TV-Y rules any more, but there really is no other narrative purpose to doing that and so I opted not to.

I am aware that Zephyr Breeze complains about the weight of his Guard armor in Episode 200. While I don’t generally consider Extended Cut to have to hold to every element of canon, this I think is something that is in fact explainable:

Zephyr could have been given an unenchanted suit as part of a hazing ritual

He could have had the lightening enchantment removed as a disciplinary measure

He could have failed to activate the enchantment, grabbed an unenchanted trainer by mistake, or somehow disabled it

The armor doesn’t become totally weightless, but is still light enough for any reasonably fit pony to carry… and Zaphyr still complains about it.

Actually, all of those seem plausible. Possibly simultaneously.

Blackout

(♫)

They were permitted to set up an impromptu hospital tent in one of the larger dining areas in the town square. Twilight found herself shuffled inside in the middle of a clump of other citizens, likely more just because she was a unicorn than because of any actual appraisal of her skills. She couldn’t muster any reason to complain. It was something to do, at least, other than just standing around and waiting for whatever would come their way, and at least it got her away from the town hall and the… entity that as far as anypony she’d overheard knew was still holding court inside.

The entire town seemed to have sunk into a near-catatonic state. Some ponies shuffled back to their homes or shops, or made a halfhearted attempt at clearing the streets of Festival debris, or tried to find loved ones; many just stood or sat where they’d been left, ignored except when somepony bothered to fetch them a blanket or something to eat. Twilight supposed that to the common villager all of this must’ve seemed quite unreal, and she could hardly blame them for their numbness- or possibly it was Twilight herself who was numb. Or both.

Some remaining ember of curiosity in her had given her a brief impulse to examine the Royal Guard pegasi who’d been hit by Nightmare Moon’s lightning spell, but she hadn’t been able to muster the effort to shoulder through to where they’d been laid out. None of them had regained consciousness since the incident, and Twilight quite frankly had no idea if they ever would. After the effort expended just to get here, such a display of magical power should have been utterly beyond even Nightmare Moon. Obviously that meant something about Twilight's model of the transit spell was very, very wrong, but she had no idea what it was. Bits of arcane formulae and half-formed theories drifted through her mind like fireflies in thick fog, but nothing held together long enough for her to make any sense of. There was always somepony around to tell her to wash this or hold that or shine a light on something else, so she chose to focus on that instead.

Between the militiaponies who’d been patrolling the edges of town and the few residents who’d chosen both to skip attending the Raising ceremony and offer some kind of resistance to the Lunar Army, their makeshift infirmary had about a dozen casualties to tend to. She still had no idea what had become of Spike, but she forced herself to consider his absence from the hospital tent an encouraging sign- it wouldn’t do, right now, to consider the alternative. She hadn’t heard tell of anypony being outright executed by the dark-armored soldiers yet, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened and even having limited themselves to technically nonlethal force the Lunars were brutal. Without access to intensive magical healing that Ponyville was in absolutely no state to provide, Twilight doubted that all of the patients would make it to the next sundown with the gashes and blunt trauma they’d sustained. Assuming, of course, that there ever was another sundown.

Twilight didn’t want to think about that, either, or about anything, so she went back to dispensing carefully-measured drops of analgesic potion to poor Citrine Sparks, as another unicorn named Golden Something-Or-Other tried unsuccessfully to magic the head of the Lunar warhammer out of her shoulder. It had dug in deeply, and deformed a section of plate armor with it, and their only proper chirurgeon had been called away to see to a stallion with two crossbow quarrels in his back, so it wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. They’d had to cut the handle off with a bonesaw just to be able to maneuver her properly onto the table, Citrine crying out with every vibration and slight twist; now she just made odd little ‘guh’ noises every now and then when Golden shifted too abruptly, her eyes glassy and unfocused. The potion they were using on her was meant for farm animals, and Twilight was no pharmacist- she had, frankly, no idea if Citrine’s responses meant that she needed more of it, or that she had already been given too much.

The scholar had sat in on her fair share of dissections, even tested a new spell on cadavers in one memorable experiment, but those had been prepared corpses- clean, bloodless, and smelling overpoweringly of formaldehyde. This was different, but it wouldn’t have been quite so bad if the other ponies she’d met didn’t seem to be bothered. She’d spotted Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash running supplies, and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie stood out from the crowd of other conscripts every now and then as they worked, but Twilight didn’t have the nerve to speak to them. As far as she knew she was the only one who had any awareness either of the conditions they were working in or the continued, silent presence of two bat-winged pegasus guards near the entrance.

Abruptly, Twilight felt a hoof tap gently against her shoulder, and looked down to see that she was letting the potion bottle in her telekinetic field slowly tip over and dribble out onto the ground. She quickly righted it and realized she was being looked at with some concern by one of their few proper medics- Redheart, she thought her name was.

“Why don’t you go out and get some air?” the pink-and-white earth pony suggested, and when Twilight opened her mouth to protest, continued, “If your horn cuts out or you knock something over, you won’t be helping anypony either.”

“I… I guess you’re right.” She set the potion on one of the last remaining bare patches of table.

The two Lunar soldiers turned to look at her as she pushed her way through the hastily-suspended cloth drapings, but made no move to stop her. In contrast to the walking skeletons that seemed to make up much of their forces, these two did indeed seem to put on every appearance of living ponies- yellow-eyed, slit-pupilled ponies with leathery chiropteran wings and more than their fair share of scars, but ponies nonetheless. Twilight wondered what they thought of her leaving. Possibly horrible things. Possibly nothing at all.

Despite everything that had happened in the hour and a half since the failed Raising- Harmony, had it really been only that long? To Twilight it may as well have been ten months- it was still a lovely night. The cool breeze off the Everfree still carried the scents of dew and wood-burning fires, and very briefly Twilight found herself confused. She had forgotten what it was like to smell anything other than sweat, disinfectant, or offal. There was a sizeable part of her that wanted to find somewhere out of the way to curl up on the ground and sleep, but the continued presence of the dark-armored guards stationed around the square were a more than effective reminder that she needed to stay on her hooves. Orange light gleamed on their armor, and when Twilight turned to locate the source she saw that the Lunars had set up an enormous bonfire where the orators’ stages had been. As she watched, a trio of bat-winged pegasi flew into view from a side street and meticulously ripped every banner that held Celestia’s mark off of the bunting up above. Those were added to the collection they already held in their forehooves before the lot of it was tossed into the flames. Earth ponies and unicorns on the ground added a wad of crumpled sun-lanterns and what appeared to be the mock-regalia that had been affixed to the whitewashed statue before spreading out again in search of fresh material.

By some unfortunate coincidence, an earth pony stallion headed directly for Twilight. “Thou wouldst best be on thine way now, lass,” he muttered, slitted eyes narrowing, “Would’nae want t’be caught interfering with the change a’ heraldry, now, wouldst thee?”

His accent and grammar were indistinguishable from authentic Old Ponish- a Trottish Highland dialect, if Twilight wasn’t mistaken. Once again she found herself wondering just how much of their old memories the reanimated Lunars actually possessed- or if they were indeed reanimated at all, and not simply somehow… preserved. Then the soldier ducked his head to his shoulder, eyes shining yellow-orange in the moonlight, and clasped the handle of a wicked-looking spiked flail in his teeth. “Go on… on wit’ thee!”

Twilight picked a street at random and didn’t look back.

She was three quarters of the way to the next intersection when something small and hard bounced off of her right shoulder. Almost by reflex she pivoted and began charging a stun spell before she caught sight of purple and green in the shadows between two houses.

She briefly considered funneling her charged mana into a magelight, but then stifled it entirely when she realized she had no idea how the Lunar guards would react to something so conspicuous. Cautiously she edged closer.

“Twilight? Twilight!” The voice was barely audible, but she recognized it immediately.

“Spike?!”

“Shh!” The young dragon extended a claw out of the shadows just for a moment, beckoning her into the alleyway.

She followed his lead and as she drew closer was finally able to make out his form with enough clarity to confirm a lack of any serious injuries. “Where’ve you… what have you… I’m so glad you’re safe, but…”

“I’ve been keeping to the rooftops, mostly. They’ve got those bat… pegasus… things flying patrols overhead, but there’s a lot of eaves and overhangs around this place and I’m pretty sure they don’t even know I’m here. Do you know what happened to Rarity? We got split up when Nightmare Moon appeared and…”

“She’s fine, I saw her rolling bandages in the hospital tent. I think everypony’s still in one piece, so as long as we get-”

Spike’s slitted eyes suddenly focused on something over her shoulder and he pressed a claw against her muzzle. “Somepony’s coming!” he hissed.

Spotting an empty cider bottle nearby, Twilight flopped down on her side as quietly as she could manage and rolled it over near her muzzle, watching through one half-open eye as a pair of Lunar soldiers strode past on either side of Amethyst Star. The Councilpony’s coat and mane were in disarray and there was something small and metallic wrapped around the base of her horn; but she didn’t seem in any immediate danger and in any case there wasn’t much Twilight could do to help her. Instead she waited until the sound of the Lunars’ steel-shod hooves vanished down the far end of the street, stood, and brushed herself off as best she could.

“Look, it’s not safe out here,” Spike admonished from where he crouched in the shadow of a rain barrel, “You can’t climb the buildings and I’d attract too much attention on the ground, so I’ll meet up with you at the library and we can figure out what to do, all right?”

“All right. Just… be careful, okay?”

“Okay.” She didn’t see or hear Spike leave, but when she pawed at the shadows behind the barrel a few seconds later there was nothing there.

The walk back to the Golden Oaks was weirdly, disconcertingly peaceful. The Lunar Army, even its seemingly animate members, seemed to have little interest in policing the movements of Ponyville’s citizens within the town limits. After all, what could anypony do? She doubted they’d be so forgiving of anypony that actively tried to leave the area, however, or gave any sign of active resistance. In fact, that was probably what had put most of her patients in the medical tent. Twilight didn’t intend to join those unfortunate souls any time soon, but from what limited observations she was able to gather of their interactions with other passers-by, the skeletal troops seemed to have very little awareness of suspicious or unusual behavior – or much of anything at all that wasn’t a direct provocation, for that matter. They also seemed to outnumber their flesh-and-blood comrades by a factor of between ten and twenty to one, which was doubly strange, since when they’d marched on the town hall the ratio had seemed closer to five or six to one. The scientist in her wondered if more skeletal specimens were arriving from somewhere else, or fleshy ones were leaving, or both.

The library door was unlocked and the interior seemed, to Twilight’s limited night vision, to be relatively undisturbed. She briefly considered bringing up the lamps, then decided concealment was more important, then remembered that the magically-modified Lunars were no doubt perfectly capable of seeing in the dark. She opted to light one or two to avoid appearing suspicious and then draw several of the curtains. Even with enough light to see by Spike didn’t seem to be anywhere to be found, but after a momentary rustling of scales he carefully extracted himself from a crevice in the ceiling, silently dropped to the floor, and immediately wrapped his arms around her neck.

“Spike, I’m so glad you’re all right,” Twilight muttered, mindful as ever of his stiff dorsal spines as she returned the hug.

“You too. I didn’t want to risk trying to get inside the hospital tent to look for you in there, but…”

Twilight shook her head. “No, you made the right decision, Spike. Nopony needs to try to be a hero here,” involuntarily, she recalled the ghastly wet crunch of a warhammer meeting Citrine’s shoulder, and hoped her assistant didn’t see her wince, “We just need to sit tight and wait until somepony from Canterlot realizes the town’s… uhh… gone dark.”

Spike pulled away and began pacing back and forth, almost unconsciously avoiding the line-of-sight of any of the open windows. “Twilight, I… don’t think help’s gonna be coming any time soon. I took a look inside the Post office and it’s filled with Lunars trying to figure out how to start the firepot back up again. That pegasus Councilpony said she wasn’t going to help them but then they brought out this filly that I think might’ve been her daughter, and…” he turned and gestured beside him to one of the open windows, “well, look at the Moon!”

Twilight did as she was commanded. The entire walk home she’d carefully avoided taking more than a fleeting glance skyward, and now she gasped as she saw the Mare-in-the-Moon image once again in place. In retrospect, it made perfect sense, as so many things lately did. Nightmare Moon would want all the time she could get to gather her forces and fortify Ponyville; given the prowess with illusion spells so many of the histories ascribed to Princess Luna and her inherent connection to the Circle of the Moon, it wasn’t hard to imagine such an image being within her capabilities. That, in turn, meant…

“The rest of Equestria just thinks the Raising’s been delayed a few hours,” Twilight gasped, suddenly unable to sit still as she rifled through her saddlebags by the table, “Celestia… Celestia told everypony who asked that Nightmare Moon was already gone. Nopony outside of town even knows she’s here.” She didn’t have more than a rough estimate of how long the alicorn could maintain her ruse of normalcy; certainly not more than a day, probably much less, but… given her army and her own formidable and difficult-to-judge combat prowess, that might be enough time to organize a major assault. Twilight still doubted that she would be able to stand against the entire Equestrian armed forces, but Twilight had been wrong before, and even if they were eventually put down the Lunars could take quite a lot of innocent ponies with them.

She finally found what she was looking for- a quill, a scroll, and a bottle of special alchemical ink keyed to her personal thaumic signature. “Shiny. Shiny’ll know what to do.” After a moment’s thought she paused, steadied her telekinesis, and began to write:

Shining Armor:

I’m not sure where to begin. I don’t know what this situation looks like from Canterlot or anywhere outside and a great deal of what I’m telling you won’t make sense or will seem to be outright untrue, but it’s vitally important that you take immediate action to at least verify my claims. Ponyville is currently occupied by an assembly of necromantic troops that give every appearance of the former Lunar Republican Army, emerging from Lunar sites in and around the Everfree. They are seemingly under the command of an alicorn-like creature calling itself Nightmare Moon. I would estimate the number of troops at approximately one to three thousand, all armed with Rebellion-era weapons; I was not able to perform a thorough assessment of the creature commanding them myself but I’d estimate its raw magical output to be in excess of Princess Cadance. I don’t know where Princess Celestia is, but her lack of intervention in these events, and the failure of the Raising itself, suggests she too has been rendered unable to react. The hostile force controls the Post and has isolated the entire village; any reports that Ponyville is still under Equestrian control are illusionary. We’ll try to hold out as long as we can, but several civilians were severely injured after they tried to resist and require immediate medical assistance. Please send as many combat troops as you can muster right away; a scouting party could easily be overpowered. I’d prefer the entire force available, but the others need to be on high alert as there may be other, remote sites where dangerous Lunar artifacts are now active. I can’t possibly overstate the danger we, and all of Equestria, may face.

-Twilight

Even with Princess Celestia indisposed -and indeed she had to be indisposed, the alternative did not bear considering- the flame-spell would still be operating, and she had never disconnected it from Shining Armor. She folded the scroll into a neat tube and tossed it to her assistant, watching with barely-controlled anxiety as it disappeared in his bright green flame.

(♫)

Commander Shining Armor was in the middle of an argument with a minotaur Strategos whose name he honestly could not care enough to recall, when a scroll materialized in between them. The general continued talking for a few seconds longer- “… the Heliadae are never this tardy, but I suppose this is what you get when you invest control over your Sun to a single Princess…” before he seemed to finally realize the paper tube was lying at his feet. “Seems you… dropped something?”, he muttered, bending over to pick up the document while somehow managing to avoid spilling even a drop from the full goblet of wine clutched in his other hand.

“Excuse me for one moment. Guard business, I’m sure you understand?” Shining snatched the scroll out of the minotaur’s hand with a bit more telekinetic force than was entirely necessary, and scanned the Great Balcony for a more secluded spot. He caught a glimpse of pink and gold a few meters away, and headed in the opposite direction as quickly as he could while remaining inconspicuous- Princess Cadance was doing an admirable job of holding the attention of the Celebration’s various esteemed guests, and he knew he’d just get in her way. It had been about two hours since the Sun should have appeared, and ponies and foreign dignitaries alike were starting to get concerned. Delayed Raisings weren’t especially uncommon over the course of Equestrian history, their causes ranging from assassination attempts to timekeeping errors, but Shiny could recognize a potentially unstable situation when he saw it. He’d been called away some five or six times now for official reports, but the letters they were receiving from Ponyville had been properly formatted, properly sealed, properly reassuring, and utterly uninformative. He knew Princess Celestia had been called away on some sort of urgent, life-or-death business in the countryside, but other than that not a great deal.

He didn’t know how Cadance was managing not only to keep everycreature calm, but to keep them from noticing his absences. He made a mental note to let her know how much he appreciated her assistance some time in the near future- perhaps a disguised visit to one of the rowdier lower-city pubs was in order, or an invitation to accompany him on an inspection tour of the remote border outposts; he knew Canterlot high society bored her terribly.

Tugging at the velvet collar of his Guard dress uniform- despite the carefully-maintained alpine climate of Canterlot, the presence of so many bodies and a few large firepits had rendered the Great Balcony uncomfortably warm- Shining unrolled the message and immediately recognized Twilight Sparkle’s neat, blocky script:

Shining:
The situation in Ponyville is currently under control. Princess Celestia, her troops, and Ponyville civilians were occupied assembling a scouting party to locate myself after I tried to perform a necromantic assessment of Lunar Army bodies in the Everfree and was injured after three Rebellion-era magical weapons were rendered active.
Please isolate this situation from Canterlot and Princess Cadance. I cannot verify my former claims and my reports severely overstate the danger of Nightmare Moon. I’d prefer they not react to my failure right away.
-Twilight

Shining sidled over to where a set of crystal lanterns provided more reliable lighting, and read the message over once again. He’d known that Twily had for the last year or so been deeply involved in some sort of secretive archaeological project relating to the Lunar Rebellions, but even for the Royal Academy the whole thing had been buried in an unusual amount of red tape. In fact, he knew basically nothing about what she was actually studying- an uncomfortable position to be in for a pony of his rank and responsibilities.

He knew his sister more than well enough, though, to understand that her reaction to so much work apparently having been wasted would be… messy. To be certain the way her letter was constructed seemed damned odd, but given the strain she was under and the uncertain extent of her apparent injuries, he could more than explain the stilted phrasing. His first thought was to make a long-range teleport to Ponyville himself, right then and there, but the weight of his obligation to manage any situation that might develop either in the capitol or elsewhere across Equestria reasserted itself a moment later. In peacetime, in the mainline Equestrian Army, an officer might have been granted emergency leave to see to an injured relative, but the elite Royal Guard considered themselves to be made of sterner stuff.

Instead, Shiny’s eyes tracked over the assembled crowd until he spotted another familiar face engaged in what looked to be a none-too-exciting conversation with professional dilettantes Jet Set and Upper Crust. Major Forward March was head of the Guard’s combat medics, as well as one of Shiny’s old Academy buddies. The two of them and Twilight had played more than a few games of Ogres & Oubliettes together when they had all lived in the same section of Canterlot Castle, and occasionally they still corresponded.

“Forward.” As Shining sidled up to the ochre pegasus mare, Jet Set and Upper Crust took one look at his concerned expression and trotted off in search of fresh victims. He’d expected the public revelation that he was courting Princess Mi Amore Cadenza to bring about no end of trouble, but in fact he was growing to like the influence that came with it. “Twilight just sent me a… very strange letter, and I think she’s hurt pretty bad. If you could swing a long-range teleport and make sure she’s all right I’d really appreciate it.”

“Oh, thank the Sun, an emergency!” Despite her flippant tone, Forward’s expression was concerned as she made her way to the staircase, and the long-range focus circles where the Guard’s staff of teleportation mages were stationed. Once he was sure she was on her way, Shining fished a quill from one of the pockets of his uniform and began to write a letter to send ahead of her. Pondering what to say, he stared at the Moon holding position just above the horizon, and was briefly, immensely relieved to see that the Mare pattern remained just where it had always been. A moment later, though, the feeling was gone, replaced by puzzlement over why he had ever expected the Moon to look any different in the first place. By the time his liaison with the Canterlot Watch pulled him away to brief him on a bar fight near the dockyards that had gotten out of hoof, the incident had slipped from his mind more or less of its own accord. It was probably nothing more than a half-remembered dream.

Author's Note

Hell yeah, back to new releases after almost a year! The entire rest of the ‘fic, more or less, is already just about written, but it’s not yet been second-pass edited and so you really would not want to see it- some chapters are going to need substantial revision before they’re ready for prime time. Thanks to AmarthGul on DeviantArt for the excellent new cover picture, thanks to Serketry for listening to me ramble about all of this night after night, and most of all thanks to my readers for, well, reading!

UPDATED 05 OCTOBER 2020 to fix some grammar and phrasing issues.

Hearts & Minds

(♫)

When she’d first seen the dark-armored ponies marching in to seize the Town Hall, Applejack hadn’t put a lot of stock in the idea that they were actually undead Lunar Rebels. It made much more sense, she thought, for them to simply be ordinary ponies in elaborate costumes- at least until she got a proper look at them up close and the big horrible one that said she was the Mare-in-the-Moon showed up. Applejack hadn’t put a lot of stock in that at first, either. It was an Apple family tradition, after all, to keep superstitious folk from meddling with the Cairns and try to stamp out the rumors they tended to spread of ghostly Nightmare soldiers slinking out at night to cut off the heads of disobedient fillies and other nonsense. But now that the evidence had literally stared her in the face, it all made a weird sort of sense. There was, after all, a whole chapter in the Purple Book For Farmers that dealt with spells and potions to preserve things; Applejack used those every harvest on everything from zap-apple jam to next year’s branch cuttings. Who could say there wasn’t a spell of that sort that could be applied to living ponies? A proper medical mare could probably find eight million problems with that thinking, but Applejack wasn’t a physician, and wasn’t ashamed to admit she didn’t know the answers to those questions any more than old Dr. Greymare up at the hospital would be ashamed of not knowing how to rotate crops or call up a swarm of honeybees. The fact of the matter was, the Lunars- or whatever they were- looked to be in Ponyville to stay, and if Nightmare Moon- or whatever she was- meant what she said about the Sun then Sweet Apple Acres was going to need to prepare.

Fluttershy had accompanied her back from town and volunteered to scout out the fields for any immediate trouble. Applejack, in turn, had spent the last half-hour with every almanac, herbal, and ledger her family owned spread out on the kitchen table under the big crystal lamp, but thus far it had gotten her absolutely nowhere. Without the rising and setting of the Sun to pull fresh nutrients up from deep underground, it was only a matter of time before their entire crop stunted and withered in the fields. There were ways around that, of course, but they required time and skilled labor and expensive reagents- all things that Applejack suspected would soon be in very short supply around Ponyville. Sweet Apple Acres had never had an exorbitant profit margin- Granny wouldn’t have it any other way, in fact- but by her reckoning they could now either raise prices until half the town starved, or let the crop fail completely and starve along with everypony. And that wasn’t even considering what the weather teams would now have to deal with…

With Granny Smith still nowhere to be found, Big Macintosh still in town looking for her, and Applebloom sent up to her room for her own safety, it was left to Winona’s barking to alert Applejack that somepony else was moving around the farmhouse. It couldn’t have been Fluttershy- Winona knew Fluttershy, and in any case the last Applejack had seen of her in this weird perpetual night Fluttershy was around back. She was out of her seat and halfway to the front room when whoever it was struck the door with what sounded like metal shoes in three quick, purposeful raps.

(♫)

She peered through the window.

Two Lunar soldiers waited for her on the porch outside. Both were stallions, with the same ashen coats, dark purple manes, and slitted yellow eyes as all of their fellows, but that was where the similarities ended. The one on the left was a stocky little earth pony, oddly well-fed and fresh-faced compared to what seemed to be the standard for their group. He wore very light armor, little more than an open-muzzle helmet and steel sabatons over a belted indigo tunic, and although a crossbow hung from the bandoleer across his chest the majority of it was occupied by what Applejack recognized as old-fashioned alchemists’ phials filled with concoctions unknown. The one on the right was a taller unicorn clad in field plate; from what little could be seen under it he seemed to be made of nothing but bones and wiry, corded muscle with heavily-scarred hide stretched overtop. There was a longsword slung across his back, and his eyes and ears were in constant motion as he scanned the countryside for some perceived threat. Applejack wondered idly if it had hurt to bend his horn backwards like that.

“Apple… Jack?” the earth pony asked. His voice still had a sort of scratchy, coltish quality to it that made it more difficult than usual for the farmer to get a read on him, but he didn’t seem either overly threatening or artificially at ease- rather, he gave every impression of genuine concern. “I am Mage-Ensign Foxglove, a journeymare herbalist, and this is Lancepesade Smoky Mirror.”

They had seen her. Applejack bit back a curse, then went ahead and opened the door. If they wanted to bust in and run her through, at least now Big Mac wouldn’t need to get the lock replaced.

“What’d… what’d y’all need?” she asked, careful to keep her voice level. These two seemed a bit more dangerous than Twilight Sparkle. She could probably take one or the other hoof-to-hoof, or both at the same time if they weren’t armed, but as things currently stood she had to admit that her chances weren’t particularly good.

“Councilpony Smith had told us this was the largest plot of private-held land in Ponyville”, the plant mage continued, “so we were sent on behalf of the Lunar Republic to aid you in preserving it through the changes that will come to pass. May we come inside to speak?”

It took Applejack a moment to parse his odd, antiquated speech, and as she was doing so his fellow soldier spoke up for the first time. “Mayhap… it would be better… if we met in town, instead?” He had the flat, clipped tone of a constable, but there seemed to be a great deal of anxiety underneath it.

“Nonsense, nonsense,” Foxglove corrected him, before looking back at Applejack, “unless, of course, thou wouldst rather we all went to town?”

Very briefly Applejack actually considered the proposition, before remembering that she had no idea when Fluttershy would be coming back and no way to alert the pegasus of her whereabouts. She figured that if they’d wanted to force their way in with hostile intent the Lunars could have just brought more troops, so she took a deep breath and nodded. “Ah s’pose y’all may as well step inside.”

They did so in lockstep, the lance-corporal still seemingly scanning every nook and cranny for some imagined threat. As the three returned to the kitchen, Foxglove’s eyes widened. “I’d no idea thou werest also a mage! Dost thee by any chance study alchemy?”

Briefly confused, Applejack waited for him to explain how in Tartarus he’d come to that conclusion before realizing he was pawing carefully through the almanacs she’d spread out on the kitchen table.

“You… uhh… do know those’re just ledgers an’ the like, right? Or, well, Ah reckon some of ‘em have spells, but nothing any other farmstead ‘round these parts wouldn’t have.”

“Everypony hath books like these?” Foxglove murmured, reaching for a copy of Astrology as Applied to Plantings and Harvests, “May I?”

“Go on, it’s not like Ah can stop-”

Applejack was cut off abruptly as Smoky Mirror yelled “Above thee!” and twisted around, incredibly quickly, longsword unsheathed and held in his telekinesis with obvious threatening intent.

On the landing at the top of the kitchen stairs, Applebloom made a strangled little “yaa-urk” noise and leaped backwards from where she’d been peering down between two of the banisters.

Immediately, the stallion brought his weapon back to chest level and backed over into the narrow space between the wall and one of the cupboards, head still swiveling back and forth like a spooked dog, ears flat against his skull and slit-pupilled eyes unnaturally wide. It was hard to tell under all that armor, but Applejack thought she could see him shaking.

“Applebloom,” the farmer commanded in what she hoped was a firm but calm tone, “Ah think you should wait for us in your room, okay?” She watched as her younger sister disappeared from view, listening to her hooves against the floorboards and the squeak of her door opening.

“Smoky…” Foxglove was muttering as he stepped carefully forward, “Smoky, calm thyself, ‘tis but a filly.”

“I know,” the unicorn snarled through gritted teeth.

“Smoky, I… think ‘twould be best for everyone if thou waited without.”

After a few seconds the unicorn swallowed, hard, and returned the sword to its scabbard. “Aye… aye, thou art… aye, sir.” He pulled open the back door with exaggerated care and stepped outside. Applejack walked back over to the table and took a seat. She tried not to listen to Mirror’s pacing hoofsteps and occasional labored breathing, but with the back door hanging open it was difficult not to.

After an awkward few seconds, Foxglove cleared his throat. “Thou toldest me that… everypony here hath such a collection?”

“Well, not everypony, but anypony who’s willing to take the time and learn to do her job right’ll have at least a few books and articles for reference.”

The plant mage cocked his head to one side, “What about the ponies who cannot read?”

“You mean, like, blind ponies? Well, ‘bout five hundred years back they came up with this thing called Baylle that’s like an alphabet made a’ little bumps you can learn to ‘read’ by feelin’ ‘em with the frog a’ your hoof….”

He laughed, nervously. “What strange times thou liveth in!”

“Well, it ain’t helped me one bit, so far. Ah found… uhhh… this here thing…” From beneath a pile of price tables Applejack extricated the Apple family’s copy of Cobblestone’s Illustrated History of Agriculture, which she had opened to a full-page reproduction of a much older pamphlet entitled Fortifying Crops Ravaged by the Cruel Dark of the Nightmare Whore. The margins were decorated with woodcut illustrations of a dark-colored alicorn standing rampant atop a pile of skeletal corpses with a wailing foal pinned in her jaws. Applejack experienced an unexpected flicker of embarrassment, but if Foxglove thought anything at all of it he gave no sign, “… but none a' the hoof positions in the ritual make a lick a’ sense!”

The plant mage fell silent for a turn, eyes roving over the print and occasionally muttering to himself.

(♫)

Applejack realized that she could hear Smoky Mirror talking to somepony on the porch outside: “So… dost thou serve here? For Sweet Apple Acres, I mean,” the soldier asked.

“Uhm… a lot of the time, actually, I guess?” To Applejack’s surprise, the other voice was Fluttershy’s. “But there’s always ponies around town who need help with pets and wild creatures. The Apples just have a lot more problems because their farm is so close to the Everfree.”

There was another, longer pause as Foxglove pulled a grubby scrap of parchment from his tunic and appeared to begin checking it against what was printed on the page.

“Are… you all right? You look… nervous,” Fluttershy asked from the porch.

“’Tis naught,” she heard Smoky say, some of the old military sharpness coming back into his voice.

“Are you sure?” Fluttershy continued.

“Aye… nay. I do not know. I… will be all right… in a while.”

There was a sizable part of Applejack that wanted to keep an eye- or at least an ear- on the lance corporal for Fluttershy’s sake, but it was about then that Foxglove cleared his throat and tapped a section of text with his steel-shod hoof. “Whoever wrote this must hath looted the work of some of our own mages. The ritual calls upon the power of the Moon, through our Sovereign Princess Luna. Thou must take our Oath ‘ere thee casteth it.” He dug into one of the pockets of his tunic and extracted a round plate of some kind of dark stone about half again the size of Applejack’s hoof, the top surface inlaid with a silver crescent and surrounded by a circle of incredibly detailed runes; and then a small phial of black liquid that didn’t seem so much opaque as a place where light itself ceased to function normally. Looking very closely, Applejack could almost convince herself that the material was filled with dozens of tiny stars. “The changes will take a few nights, so if thou art prepared I can administer it now.”

“Whoa, hold up there, you mean…?”

“Thou wouldst become like us, aye. ‘Tis a great change, true, and I shant think any less of thee if thou needest time to decide, but the sooner we can begin the sooner thine business here can resume.” He stepped back and seemed to purposefully avoid eye contact.

Applejack stared at the plate and the potion he’d left on the table. The idea of willingly joining the ranks of a usurper army like the Lunars, if that was indeed what they were, almost made her physically ill, but she’d been in business far too long to trust her gut that blindly and she knew her own limits. She wondered if she was so opposed to the concept simply because she was afraid of change.

On the porch behind her, Smoky Mirror was speaking in a flat, dead voice. He was quieter, now, and Applejack kept missing whole sections of words. “… Morningstar was carrying most of our provisions, and the map … with her gone … Jasper and Orrey sought to … … … from a Solar patrol, but … … that deep in Solar territory, so I split off… … … must have walked for three days, more or less … … … naught but snow and dead trees as far as the eye could see … … found the farmhouse around sunset … much like this one, though I saw they grew oranges… … was trying to force the lock on the storehouse when everything started to go black…”

Foxglove’s voice once again snapped Applejack back to the matter at hoof. “I know how difficult this must be for thee. ‘Twas difficult for me. But I promise you that under the Republic things will be better than they are now. We shall repeal Celestia’s taxes, lift restrictions on the spells and potions available to thee… thou canst hire more laborers, take a seat in the local government…”

Applejack’s eyes narrowed, “You think we’re strugglin’, do you? Mah Granny’s the one who taught me simplicity. She wouldn’t be interested in any a’ that high honors business, and I sure ain’t either.”

Foxglove just nodded. “Of course.”

Outside, the Corporal still went on. “… awoke next to a roaring fire with a bowl of chicken broth next to me. The first thing I saw was Celestia’s Sun on a banner over the chimney … … … family that owned the place came running when they heard … …filly and two colts, neither more than ten years old… … perfectly happy under Celestia, if thou canst believe, but never once were they anything less than friendly … … … … another day or so before they heard the patrols would be about and sent me away … made it to the Republic camp in close to fighting shape at just about the same time Jasper did… Orrey had stayed behind to try to draw off the Solars they had gotten chasing them …”

For the first time since Applejack had begun listening in, Fluttershy spoke up. “I’m… sorry. Do you still miss him?”

“’Twas the damn fool’s own fault. ‘Tis not my trouble.”

The farmer forced herself to pay attention to what Foxglove was saying. “Thou dost notneed to do any such thing,” he admonished, “The Lunar Republic respects thy rights and the cultural autonomy of local communities. If thou dost want the damn cloudhumpers off thine land, nopony is forcing thee to employ them. Thou art well within thine rights to declare thine farm a sovereign tribal holding.”

“Ah’m sorry, what was that last part?” Applejack snapped almost on pure reflex. “You do know who casts the weather ‘round these parts, right?”

Foxglove actually physically backed away a little. Idly, the farmer wondered if he was having second thoughts about sending away his sword-wielding friend. “Well… I mean… if the pegasi doth not offend thee then then thou canst certainly permit them… after all, ‘tis thanks to Luna’s laws that mine brother was able to wed a unicorn…”

Applejack stalked after him, head bent down to his level the whole time. “Tax breaks and political favors for under-the-table deals? And then when I call ya on it, you back down like a nervous schoolfilly? Ah'm sorry, I thought y’all Lunar types were against the Day Court!”

This time, the plant mage reeled backwards almost as though he’d been struck on the nose. Then he blinked, lowered his head, and slowly sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. “I am… truly, dreadfully sorry I even spoke of it,” he murmured, looking her right in the eye. “Thou art right, of course. Equestria has changed, and… ultimately, we are all but ponies, and we have been asleep for a long time. All… all I ask of thee is that thou keepest an open mind, and answerest our questions when we ask for thine help.” He reached back into his tunic and extracted a small, purple-velvet pouch, carefully slipping the plate and the potion inside before pocketing the collection once more. “I promise thee we shan’t make the same mistakes those Canterlot sloths are making every day, but we have so much catching-up to do. If thou canst aid us in that, it will be that much easier for thine farm -and thine kin and neighbors- going forward. If thou art unwilling to work with me, I can always spare thee the trouble and summon my commanding officer. Steel Shank is a pegasus himself, and so thou needst not fear offending that tribe without knowing.”

Applejack always considered herself to be more than capable of reading ponies, and was surprised to see that the alchemist seemed entirely sincere. For the first time, she thought about the everyday trials of running a business in modern Equestria; the constant pressure to compete with minotaur and Abyssinian imports that Celestia stubbornly refused to limit, and the seemingly daily scandals of misplaced taxes and vanishing subsidies. She’d always considered such things just to be the way the world was, but now that it had been proposed the idea of changing was… strangely liberating. She’d always considered herself a realist, but these were surreal times. She had her farm and her family to look out for, foremost, and any fighting she started would just cause more bloodshed. If working with the Lunars could prevent that…

“We took the whole valley a week after,” Smoky Mirror continued behind her, “I was still on light duty in the rear, but I had heard 'twas tough fighting all the way up. Now that it was safe to walk the main roads again I took some silver coin and slipped out of camp one day to find the farmhouse. Somepony… everything was burned to the ground. I buried what was left of them best I could and never came back… but what keeps me awake is that I… I never did learn who set that fire- the Solars, or our own.”

After that there was a lot of difficult-to-interpret motion. She thought she might have heard Fluttershy say something, or perhaps the Lunar was sobbing quietly to himself, or perhaps it was both.

Applejack remembered the ponies being carted into the hospital tent- some thrashing, some completely limp. She remembered the looks of panic on her neighbors’ faces as the Lunars had marched on the Town Hall. She’d heard the Canterlot mare talking about what those exact same Lunars had done a thousand years ago, and now she was seeing it firsthoof. Nightmare Moon, if that was really what the thing in the town hall was, had said as much to their faces. If they handed over control of the town to the Lunars, eternal night would be the least of Applejack’s problems, and she was lying to herself if she ever believed anything else.

“Thank y’all for comin’ by to chat with me,” she said to Foxglove, her voice perfectly level, “but Ah think it’d be best for everypony if y’all cleared outta here sooner, rather than later.”

The alchemist stood and adjusted his bandoleer, seemingly paying extra attention to keep his hooves away from the crossbow that hung from the center. “As you w-will, then,” he said, real fear creeping into his coltish voice for the first time since he’d arrived, “but I will warn thee… one greenhoof to another… that our Sovereign is not as patient as my commander and I.”

He shuffled out without another word, leaving her alone in the kitchen for a few moments before the sound of steel-shod hooves on the floorboards alerted her to the return of Fluttershy and Smoky Mirror. The Lunar was standing tall and looking straight ahead now, and when he spoke his voice was clipped and military-sharp. “I heard what thou said to Foxglove, and, for what it is worth… ‘twere the bravest thing I have ever seen any pony do.” Then he too stepped out into the unnatural night.

Applejack made her way into the sitting room, Fluttershy close behind. She sat down heavily on the rug and through sheer force of will compelled her hooves to stop shaking.

“Do you… think they’ll come after us?” the pegasus asked.

Idly, Applejack chewed on a strand of mane that had come loose from its tie as she looked out over the darkened countryside. Somepony was setting off bright purple flares somewhere deep in the Everfree- the farmer had no idea what that meant, but she doubted it was good.

“Ah doubt it, least not right away,” she finally said aloud. “Ah think they really do want all the help they can get right about now, and if they reckon they still got a chance to get us on their side they won’t wanna spook us. Sooner or later, though -and prob’ly sooner- they’re gonna figure out we ain’t listenin’, and when they do…” The farmer found herself turning to stare at the bookshelf over Fluttershy’s shoulder. On the very topmost shelf sat the warhammer and armor Granny Smith had once used in the Landsknechts- the elite earth pony specialist forces of the Equestrian Army. Applejack had always wondered if the gear would fit her, and really looking at it for the first time since she’d been a small filly she concluded that it probably could. “Hey, Fluttershy, you got any idea where that purple unicorn who was studyin’ them Lunars mighta’ gotten herself off to?”

(♫)

Pinkie Pie had been the one to notice that Rarity’s horn was starting to give out, albeit a little too late to stop her from dropping a stack of linens into the fountain in the village square. In truth, Pinkie herself wasn’t far behind- keeping everypony out of catatonia, blind panic, and other entirely unhelpful states was a challenge and she was rapidly running out of fresh material. After Rarity had littrally thrown in the towel -or more accurately dropped the towel, which sounded much more appropriately pathetic anyway- they’d retired to Carousel Boutique for drinks. Pinkie supposed that was really the onlyreasonable response to having your town taken over by ancient mutant zombie bat terrorists working for Princess Celestia’s creepy estranged sister who lived on the Moon, anyway.

Of course, when she’d heard that said ancient mutant zombie bat terrorists were going door-to-door- selling undeath insurance, maybe?- Rarity had even dimmed the building’s lights as a courtesy. Pinkie, for her part, wasn’t sure why anypony would want more of the things to come around, but come they did, like moths who were so rebellious they headed directly away from any flames and subsequently froze to death. Grumpy, grim moths- ‘Goths’, perhaps? No, that sounded ridiculous.

It was a pair of them that knocked on the glass front door. They always seemed to travel in pairs or more, or at least the not-completely-skeletal ones did, presumably so they wouldn’t get either mobbed or quietly knocked off by their newly-‘liberated’ subjects. Or maybe they found long walks through occupied territory to be unbearably romantic; or maybe, secretly, they were all in fact mortally afraid of the dark. Pinkie couldn’t pretend to know what, if anything, went through those ponies’ heads.

“Just stay here, I’ll talk to them,” Pinkie said, leaving the white unicorn to her drink in Carousel Boutique’s annoyingly orderly kitchen.

“Well, if you’re sure, dear…”

There were two mares waiting for her at the door, a unicorn and a pegasus. The pegasus looked young, thirteen or fourteen maybe, and too small and stringy for even her light flyer’s armor, shifting back and forth on her hooves like a filly at a doctor’s appointment. Pinkie wondered just when she’d last had a proper meal- not in a thousand years, of course, unless somepony had thought to build a snack bar into those crypts, but in this particular case it showed. The unicorn, on the other hoof, had obviously once been quite striking- powerfully but gracefully built, with the same lean, almost predatory features as the title character in those trashy Sapphire: Equestrian Commando comics Rainbow Dash was always reading. The lines starting to form around her muzzle and the streaks of gray decorating her indigo mane shouldn’t have changed that, but nonetheless she looked faded and simply worn down in a way that Pinkie couldn’t exactly describe- although the long, livid, bright-pink scar tracking from the tip of her muzzle, just past her left eye socket, and up under the metal of her helmet might have had something to do with it.

“Hail,” the unicorn greeted, in a voice that was right on the border between husky and outright abrasive, “I am Sergeant Catseye, and this is Private Rain Chaser. May we enter?”

“Oh! Lemme ask Rarity, it’s her shop!”

The tailor must’ve been listening through the open kitchen door, as her voice echoed back a moment later, “Oh, by all… means, dears!”

Pinkie supposed it wasn’t like either of them had much say in the matter.

She stepped back and watched as the Lunars advanced into the shop floor like they were scouting an enemy fortification, blades drawn as they prodded this or opened that. She saw Rarity step out from the kitchen to watch, looking a good bit more composed than when she and Pinkie had entered, and wondered what on the material plane the soldiers were even expecting to find in her clothing shop- a squad of Royal Guards hiding under fabric bolts or posing as mannequins, maybe?

The older one pulled Rarity’s dueling harness from its place of honor in the center of the display floor and began fiddling with it, and Pinkie saw the tailor grit her teeth and wince, but then the soldier nodded, returned it, and seemed about to head back for the door.

(♫)

Then the scrawny pegasus, Rain Chaser, ducked back behind the curtain leading to Rarity’s workshop, and came scampering out a moment later. “Moon and stars! Catseye, thou wilst wish to see this!”

Oh.

Right.

Catseye drew a rather deadly-looking broadsword, waving it in her telekinesis in a generally Pinkie-and-Rarity-ward direction. “Both of thee. Come with me. Slowly, now.” As the baker drew closer, Catseye gave both her and her friend a few none-too-gentle pokes with the hilt of the blade to get them into a line with herself at the back and Rain Chaser at the front, then started herding them back into the workshop.

Pinkie, for her part, was not especially fond of being poked- at least not by other mares, anyway- and began to wonder if they even needed to put up with that sort of treatment. She knew Rarity’s telekinesis had always been unusually strong for a unicorn without any formal training in the subject, and Pinkie herself could do some damage with her hooves- and, if all else failed, she could always just sit on one of the Lunars. But there weren’t just two of the rebels, there were… well… multiple, at the very least, and Rarity would never forgive Pinkie if she got the Boutique trashed needlessly. After all, red was very much last season. That, and long experience working the front counter at Sugarcube Corner had taught her that there was a certain class of ponies for whom the best possible course of action was just to smile and nod, like that one lunatic who kept barging in and insisting that there was some kind of horrible torture-dungeon concealed under the shop despite all evidence to the contrary. If Pinkie was in the business of torturing ponies at random with the same boring methods over and over again -which she wasn’t- why in Tartarus would she be doing it under a bakery owned by somepony else? Health violations were serious business, after all!

Once they had made their way into the workshop proper, Rain Chaser motioned Pinkie over into the far corner and flicked out a wingblade maybe a foot away from the earth pony’s chest. Pinkie could see quite clearly that her wing was shaking, although it was difficult to tell whether that was from anxiety or anger given the weird, beaked helmet she was wearing. Pinkie was sure there was some kind of system determining which bat-pegasi got those versus the open design, but was equally sure it was some boring nonsense about valor, heroism, and other really-hard-to-understand things.

Rarity, on the other hoof, was roughly prodded over into the center of the room, where Catseye barked “Where didst thee find our armor?”

“I… I bought it from the Rich family collection…” the dressmaker stammered, her legs shaking as she stared at the blade in front of her. Pinkie tried to keep up a reassuring face for her; it wasn’t like the baker could do much else at the moment.

“Fie!” the soldier barked, edging her blade a little closer to Rarity’s neck, “’Tis in too fine a condition to have come from anywhere but the Cairns.”

“W-well, yes, the Collection is from the Cairn at Sweet Apple Acres, but-”

“Aye, so, she doth confess!” the pegasus soldier cut in. “I say we end her here and now, and bring the body to the Square to explain what she hath done!” Rarity’s eyes, understandably, got a little wider at that pronouncement, but she didn’t give any other obvious sign of distress.

“Nay, Private. She will be taken before Our Sovereign Empress Luna, the charge of murder will be presented, a plea entered, a jury convened, and this will all be done properly.” Catseye’s sandpaper voice then dropped a few grit numbers. “And then we will have her head.”

So much for a fair trial under the great Lunar Republic… Pinkie thought to herself. And what kind of ‘republic’ has an ‘empress’ anyway?

“No, it’s- it’s not like that at all”, Rarity continued, “the Cairn was already open before my parents were born!”

“Aye, verily it was!” Catseye suddenly flipped her blade off to the side and headbutted Rarity, sending the slimmer mare stumbling back onto her haunches.

Pinkie decided she’d had more than enough. “Excuse me!” she yelled, “that armor’s in waaay worse condition than it’d be if she’d just dug it up.”

“Thou would best be quiet,” Catseye snapped, and swung the blade around towards Pinkie’s own neck, which the baker supposed was at least a little better than waving it at Rarity.

“No, no, look, the plates are still rusty, and all the original leather’s gone! It’s been outside for a hundred years!”

There was a long, painful stretch of time where nothing at all happened.

Then, abruptly, Catseye lowered her sword and bowed her head, Rain Chaser also pulling her bladed wing away at the unspoken command. The unicorn soldier just stood there for a minute, looking like she was trying to cough up a live frog or possibly swallow one back down again. “In that case… I apologize,” she finally said. “’Twas wrong of me to presume.”

“Wait, if… she did not open one of the Cairns, then who-”

“A local landowner named Idle Rich,” Rarity volunteered, “That was maybe… a hundred and twenty years ago?”

Catseye’s ears dropped downward. “So… there is no chance…”

“No, he’s… been dead for quite a while,” the tailor finished.

“So there really is nothing to be done, then.” Rain Chaser kicked the tile floor with surprising vehemence, digging out a small chunk with the edge of her steel sabaton. Pinkie knew Rarity would be too gracious to bill her for it. “The fool is out of even Our Sovereign’s reach.”

A sort of tired melancholia descended over the entire room, and Pinkie Pie very quickly began to find it intolerable. “Well...” she suggested, “If both of you really want to I could show you over to the graveyard and Rarity can lend you her shovel and we can all kick Idle’s skull around like a hoofball until you feel better?”

The leaden atmosphere vanished abruptly, replaced nearly as quickly with a weird, twisty-tangly sort of silence between herself and Catseye that nopony in the room- least of all the two mares themselves- seemed at all able to make any sense of. Then the soldier shook her head, her careworn features creasing into the first genuine smile Pinkie had seen from any of the invaders since they had arrived -she was surprised they even had the right muscles for it- and laughed out loud. “Nay, at least not now. Although I shall remember thine offer, once all of this is done!”

Now that they weren’t actively trying to kill each other, Pinkie was able to notice the Lunars’ oddly inquisitive gazes at the armor and weapons on display- which, she noticed, had been restored to a somewhat better condition than what the soldiers were actually wearing. It was a look she very much recognized from prospective customers. “So… I’m guessing you Lunars don’t get a lot of time to sit around and… uhh, polish your stuff or whatever the super-proper military word for it is?”

Catseye and Rain Chaser both shook their heads, and when she was sure they weren’t looking Pinkie gave Rarity a tiny nod.

“Well, if you’ve time I could fix a strap here, refit a plate there, perhaps change out a few of the worse-off sections,” the tailor said, “assuming that’s… well, allowed?”

(♫)

Catseye seemed to consider it for a good long few seconds as Rain Chaser shifted her helmeted head back and forth. Pinkie noticed the muffled squeak of metal on metal every time she moved too far to one side, accompanied by a slight pause that seemed to be caused by some measure of resistance. It got very obnoxious, very quickly, and she wasn’t surprised when Chaser kept looking expectantly at Catseye.

Finally, the unicorn officer nodded. “Mayhap the Captain would not approve, but I see no harm in it. The soldiers in that Cairn would want for their equipment to find some use… ‘tis how I came to own mine, in fact."

“You guys were really that short on equipment?” Pinkie asked, genuinely curious and also hoping to keep the Lunars talking as Rarity collected her tools and began fiddling with their gear.

“Aye, though ‘tis better than how the Army was before. The nobles could commission their own equipment, and fine it was, but the rest of us…” Catseye trailed off.

“Only the damn Day Guard were outfitting their troops with Royal funds after a month, perhaps,” Rain Chaser continued, “And the rutters could afford to forge it all new, wasteful fools that they were.”

It was not lost on Pinkie that the rebels' obsession with thrift didn’t seem to be confined to their equipment -’Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate’?- but now that the Lunars were finally talking and not waving sharp metal things around she decided to keep the observation to herself.

Rarity went about her work with quiet efficiency, fiddling with this or that in as unobtrusive a manner as possible, and after a few more minutes Rain Chaser spoke up again, more quietly this time. “Starflower… was in one of the easternmost Cairns, was he not?”

“Aye,” Catseye nodded, “Though it matters little which one. I saw him cut down by one of the Tyrant’s damnable Day Guard as we pulled back to the Castle.”

“Oh. I am sorry.” Rain Chaser’s beaked helmet tipped downwards against her neck, the pony underneath avoiding eye contact like a scolded filly, and once again Pinkie realized just how young she was.

“’Tis nothing to mourn, girl. Had it not been for the Rebellion he and I would never have met, much less been permitted to wed…”

Feeling more and more like an intruder, Pinkie very much considered leaving the room entirely, before spotting the bottle of expensive Pferdlich brandy she and Rarity had been sharing. She grabbed the bottle and a few glasses- the means by which she was physically able to do so as a quadruped, as usual, never receiving more than a moment’s conscious consideration- and poured a generous sampling for the Lunars. “Here, you look like you could use this more than I could. Rarity?”

The tailor nodded her assent. Catseye lifted the glass in her telekinesis, swishing the liquid inside around for a few seconds and sniffing at it suspiciously. Then she floated it out towards Pinkie, called out “To absent friends!” and downed it in a single gulp.

After that, she went straight for the bottle, and Pinkie was entirely expecting her to swallow the entire contents of that as well, but instead the unicorn seemed to become fascinated by the staff-and-pinecone distiller’s mark on the label. “Is this… Thyrsus brandy? I remember liberating a brewery by that name from the Empire!”

Rain Chaser tentatively sipped at her own glass, held awkwardly in the hook of a leathery wing. Pinkie saw her wince slightly under her helmet, and briefly wondered if anypony would come after her for providing alcoholic spirits to a filly when all of this was over. Alternatively, perhaps she should see about getting Sugarcube Corner a liquor license. “Was not the keeper of the place a close friend of Our Sovereign?”

Catseye shook her head and poured the two of them another round. “Nay, ‘twas the stallion we appointed after beheading the Sun-loving rutter who owned that land.”

Lovely ponies ‘round these parts this time of year, Pinkie thought to herself.

If anything, Rain Chaser seemed to take that admission as something to admire in the older unicorn, and leaned forward eagerly. “I had… no idea thou marched with the force that took The Downs!”

“’Twas in all the broadsheets.”

“Oh.” Rain Chaser ducked her head again. “I… well… I never did have much chance to learn my letters.”

Catseye seemed to get offended by that, and for the life of her Pinkie couldn’t figure out why. Visiting the market district with a bloodthirsty thousand-year-old filly was entirely reasonable, but visiting with a bloodthirsty thousand-year-old illiterate filly was ridiculous? What kind of logic was that?

“But were not both thine sire and dam officers?” the older unicorn asked.

“I know ‘twas wrong to squander the Republic’s schooling, but I… suppose I had more important things to do…”

Beginning to fill in some of the blanks, Pinkie wondered exactly where free schooling for the children of soldiers would have left all the ponies in the Lunar Republic who were either unable or unwilling to fight… although, at this point, she was beginning to understand that nothing her own little brain could come up with would be as bizarre as whatever the transformed rebels might say next. The whole thing was just so utterly… surreal.

She let them keep talking.

“My dam never had much trouble with it,” Rain Chaser continued, “she said the schools were naught but a waste of bits better spent on arming our bravest. Oh, how she grumbled when Our Luna banned the selling of commissions…” Abruptly the mutant pegasus’s voice dropped in volume, “She was in Sixth Company, and my sire in the Eighth. Has there… been any news?”

Catseye nodded, and divided the remaining contents of the bottle between their two cups. “Aye, last I heard there were a score or more distress flares in the forest we’d yet to locate… perhaps fivescore troops, although I cannot know if their souls remain or not. Either way, we will need them soon enough.”

That seemed to mollify Rain Chaser, at least a little, and Rarity stepped back a moment later. The pegasus gave her helmet another experimental twist, and this time the cowling below it followed smoothly and silently.

“Impressive work,” Catseye conceded as she lead the way back to the shop’s glass front doors. “If thou art interested in finer things than armor, I am sure thou wouldst make a welcome addition to Her Majesty’s court!” Then she pushed the door open and stepped out into the night.

“Thank you, both, I’d be honored!” the tailor called.

“And thou!” Catseye turned around briefly and waved in Pinkie Pie’s direction. “A light heart is a rare and valuable thing in these times! For sharing it, I commend thee!”

Pinkie waited until both of the Lunars were well and truly gone before turning around to face Rarity head-on. “You’re… not seriously thinking about taking them up on that, are you?”

“Oh, goodness no!” She paused, then retreated back deeper into the shop. “Were you… able to find out anything interesting from that officer? All I was able to do was get some idea of how the armor itself could be put on… nothing much I didn’t already know from working with it before.”

“Nah, that’s fine. Not every mare has the pony skills to work a counter! I did hear they had more troops coming in from the Everfree, and they’re planning something big I don’t think a lot of the ponies here are gonna be too happy about.”

“Dear, do you think… we might have to stop them?”

“Well we’re not doing much sitting here gossiping!” Pinkie searched over Rarity’s accumulated collection of Lunar weapons, flipped up a rapier with one hoof, and snatched it out of the air in her jaws. It didn’t seem too difficult to wave around, despite Rarity’s concerned expression, although if she had a chance she’d definitely be adding some kind of flavoring to the handle- bubblegum, maybe, or possibly lemon. “We should go see if that Twinkle Sprinkle or whatever from out of town might need our help.”

Author's Note

UPDATED 07 OCTOBER 2020 to fix various random grammar and phrasing issues.

I don’t think plants in Equestria rely on sunlight directly because we see they are apparently fine in Nightmare Moon’s timeline in Season 5, but presumably such a massive change in the day-night cycle would cause some kind of problems a farm would need to adapt to. The idea that the motion of the Sun causes nutrients to be pulled up from the ground is derived from a Reneissance-era theory (I first encountered it in De Re Metallica) that claimed the same thing about precious metals.

The “Old Ponish” the Lunars speak is based off of the way Luna talks in Luna Eclipsed; beyond that I don’t really know what era of IRL English it corresponds to if any.

I’m really satisfied with the way the Pinkie scenes came out, but they’re kind of hard to write so I don’t think we’ll be seeing many of them. I kind of have to make multiple passes through them, one to just write down what happens and another to add in her… unique take on same. Coming up with that many gags is actually pretty hard work.

Clair de Lune

(♫)

It took exactly fifteen minutes and twenty-six seconds for Shining Armor’s reply to reach her. Twilight knew it had taken that long because she had been staring at the clock on the wall for the entire duration.

Finally a scroll materialized in a flash of green energy directly above where Spike lay curled up in a light doze, and she snatched it up in her telekinesis before it even hit the ground.

She squinted through the fatigue headache that had been slowly building up over the entire morning, and forced her wobbly telekinesis to undo the Guard-issue cloth ribbon:

Twilight:

Canterlot is aware of the situation and a force is currently being mobiliced to retake the town. Please stay out of the way and don’t do anything to try to interfere with the Lunar troops. Just go along with them for the time being. In a little while we will take care of everything and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you got yourself hurt attempting any kind of heroics before then.

Just hold tight and I promise we’ll see each other soon.

-Shiny

Twilight exhaled audibly, days of stress and sleep deprivation finally beginning to pile onto her with the realization that the whole nightmarish mess she’d found herself in had, at last, been transferred to the hooves of somepony better-equipped to deal with it. She was staggering up the library stairs, aiming for the loft and the chance to take at least a brief rest, when three hard impacts sounded against the front door.

Her fatigue vanished in an instant. “Spike- get out of here!” she hissed, able to spare only a moment to watch the young dragon scramble to his feet as she dashed back downstairs.

The knocking sounded once again, and this time a stallion’s voice followed: “Open up, in the name of the Moon.”

Twilight grasped the doorknob in her telekinesis and fumbled with the lock, finally managing to pull the door open a little less than a barrel’s-width and block the way inside with her body. A scrawny, scruffy-looking bat-pegasus stood outside, dressed in an officer’s tunic with a pair of empty saddlebags slung over his back, and flanked on either side by a unicorn and earth pony revenant. He peered down his long muzzle at her with surprisingly large, watery eyes and gingerly licked his lips. If Twilight didn’t know better, she’d say the mutant pony was nervous. “I am Major Steel Shank. This… is a library, aye?” He asked.

He moved as if to step inside, and Twilight realized she had no idea if Spike was still in the foyer. “Hold on, what makes you think you can just barge in here and…” she babbled, more concerned with filling the air with words than what they actually meant.

“By order of Her Royal Highness Empress Luna the sovereign protector of Equestria, all citizens of the New Lunar Republic are… are obligated to provide information and assistance in support of the liberation of pony-held lands from the tyranny of Celestia and her regime!” Bit by bit his expression hardened as he rattled off what seemed like a long-ago-memorized sermon.

Twilight held her tongue and stood her ground.

Then one of the unicorn revenants unslung a crossbow and aimed the business end of it just above her head. Idly, Twilight noticed that its telekinetic field was the exact same electric blue as the revenants that had been tearing down the decorations in the town square. The live Lunars had auras in the expected variety of colors, but every single revenant’s was identical to the others… and identical to Nightmare Moon’s.

“Listen,” the scruffy pegasus hissed, “Wouldst thou rather talk to them, or wouldst thou rather talk to me?”

Twilight risked a glance behind her and caught sight of the secret panel that led to the Library's bolt-hole sliding closed. She also noticed that the obsidian slates containing the prophecy had vanished from the table where she’d left them. She’d completely forgotten about those, and now fought to suppress a quiver at the thought of what the Lunars might have done if they’d discovered her interest.

She relaxed ever so slightly, finally stepping out of the doorway. The Lunars seemed to take that as all the invitation that was required and brushed past her, one after another; Twilight scampered back another few steps rather than make contact with the revenants’ flaky, tattered hide or the… components underneath. They didn’t smell like decay, exactly; the sickly-sweet odor of putrefaction she had expected was in fact completely absent, but there was an unpleasant mustiness about them that hung in place well after they were gone. All of the Lunars seemed to ignore her utterly, focused entirely on the bookshelves around them.

(♫)

The officer scanned each shelf carefully, occasionally fishing a volume out with his surprisingly dextrous hooked wings; the majority were reshelved while others were slipped into his saddlebags.

Modern Cryptology, Decline and Fall of the Griffon Empire…

The revenants were much less cautious, extricating whole stacks at once and tossing whatever disinterested them to the floor in heaps, but no less thorough.

… The Illustrated Book of Airships, Abridged Operating Procedures of the Equestrian Rail Service…

The splintered bones of a revenant’s broken-off muzzle swung dangerously close to the spot on the table where Twilight had left Shining’s scroll; working hard to control her breathing she carefully levitated it over, and tucked it as discreetly as she could manage against her barrel, backing out towards the door the whole time.

Magical Networks Certification Preparation Vol XLVII, Order of Battle in the Saddle Arabian Campaigns… the list went on and on.

As soon as she was outside she broke into a run, staggering aimlessly away from whatever parts of the neighborhood seemed to hold the thickest collections of purple astral steel, and fighting the bile that threatened to creep back up her throat.

Cautiously, with unsteady telekinesis, she unrolled Shining’s letter once again. Looking more closely by the light spilling from an open window, she realized that both instances of the letter ‘o’ in “soon” were identical, stroke-for-stroke. Her gaze panned over the rest of it, and her breath caught in her throat- not just two, but three, four… five copies of exactly the same letter, complete with the little spur at the end where Shiny’s quill hadn’t quite completed the circle and dipped inward. Now that she knew what to look for, she saw the duplication everywhere. The more common letters cycled through five or six forms, and the rarer ones were identical every time they appeared…

A flash of reflected moonlight registered in the corner of her eye. She folded up the letter and started moving again, trotting past the greensward across from Sugarcube Corner where the Lunars had amassed a pile of heavy-duty crystal lamps, artillery pieces, air chariot parts, and other miscellaneous enchanted or mechanical equipment. Specialists in mages’ tunics and tool-harnesses swarmed over it like noctilucent ants, pawing at particularly complicated pieces, and Twilight was suddenly reminded of herself when she’d been little more than a foal, taking apart home appliances and learning how the magic inside them worked -

… When she’d appeared in the Town Hall, Nightmare Moon had spoken modern Ponish. The alicorn couldn’t have predicted the way the language would evolve all on her lonesome, so she had to have learned of it as it evolved. Somehow, she had to have possessed a means to observe the interactions of individual ponies, in detail, in the Waking World even during her confinement in the Moon. That skill could just as easily be applied to copy the mannerisms of ponies she knew to be close to her hated sister…

Twilight pressed herself against the plaster wall of a building as a double column of Lunars marched past her. In between them, shackled and stripped of their equipment, were ponies she recognized from the Celebration as artisans, healers, weatherworkers, and members of the constabulary-

… The use of offerings and sacrifices in summoning spells was one of the oldest and most established magical techniques- the overall mana cost was dramatically decreased if, instead of simply drawing the desired object to the caster’s location, like could be exchanged for like, or a thaumaturgical aspect replaced with its natural antipode. What was a better sacrifice to bring about the return of the Princess of the Moon than her biological sister, the Princess of the Sun, who had maintained an active magical channel to influence the Circle of the Moon, day in and day out, for the last one thousand years?

Twilight’s imagination filled her old model of the summoning-spell with dozens of new terms, entire blocks of unresolvable unknowns suddenly canceled away, the familiar false-color lines of a Feymare diagram tying ethereal ground state to physical distance, Nightmare Moon’s corporeal form seeping down from the Lunar Shells even as Princess Celestia was hurled bodily upward, out into the deep Firmament…

as she staggered deeper into the center of town, Twilight found herself forced to duck and weave through teams of press-ganged locals as they hammered together barricades and boarded up windows, all under the watchful eye-sockets of the omnipresent revenants. The undead definitely had to be coming from somewhere; before they had been a constant but ignorable presence, but now every street was lousy with the things-

… In terms of physical force, Princess Celestia wouldn’t have experienced much more than a sharp jolt, a transposition without motion, but the instantaneous thaumic shear would have been immense. At those energy scales, Twilight knew, the materia-mana coupling broke down completely and embedded enchantments reverted to a host-independent field state. They’d collapse back down a split-second later, of course, but by that time Celestia would already have been gone and Nightmare Moon would be occupying the exact same space she’d left. As far as the contingency spells applied to the Princess by the Day Court were concerned- spells whose operation was based on the assumption that nothing could decouple them and leave anything resembling a suitable host for them to collapse onto- Nightmare Moon was now, and always had been, the rightful ruler of Equestria…

Somepony was shouting, angry and a little afraid, and Twilight watched as a team of Lunars filled wagon after wagon with lanterns, shovels, rope, and other survival equipment pulled from a smashed-open storefront. They ignored utterly the protests of the green pegasus mare whose campfire cutie mark was depicted on the sign hanging overhead, until a big earth pony backhoofed her across the muzzle and sent her sprawling into the dirt. The very same scene was being duplicated with only slight variation at the blacksmith’s shop, and dry goods store, and the druggist’s on the other side of the square -

… Her own dragonfire spell was intended for official Equestrian communiques. Not only Celestia’s own terminus, but Twilight’s, Spike’s, and Shining's as well were keyed to Celestia’s wards. It had seemed the safest and most prudent option at the time- after all, what was more secure than the personal protective spells devised by the Day Court?

-she caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd, and the unexpected gleam of golden armor. She drew closer and, just for a moment, Colonel Forward March stared at her in bafflement before a revenant unicorn in mage’s robes pressed its horn against March’s forehead and her eyes rolled back in her skull-

Twilight uncrumpled the scroll she’d received, one more time, noticing for the first time what she’d thought was Shining’s misspelling of the word ‘mobilized’. She now suspected it wasn’t a misspelling at all: Whatever Shining Armor had actually sent her, he hadn’t included the letter ‘z’, and so when Nightmare Moon had taken the letter apart and put it back together again to serve her own purposes the alicorn hadn’t been able to duplicate it.

After a few seconds of silent convulsions, the Lunars undid the shackles binding Forward’s hooves and wings, and she stepped over to join a cluster of unbound Royal Guards and Ponyville Militia who laughed and joked with each other as though this was any other ordinary security detail, oblivious to the fact that nothing around them was in any way ordinary -

For a brief moment Twilight felt a perverse sense of relief that she had an explanation for Celestia's dismissive response the previous evening. Then the true implications of what she’d concluded settled down onto her.

The Princess was, for all intents and purposes, gone, and had been since well before the failed Raising. Nopony in Canterlot, or anywhere else in Equestria, had the faintest idea that anything was any more amiss than during the Ten-Hour Morning of 1022. The Lunars, it seemed, were gearing up for a full-scale war. And only Twilight Sparkle had the faintest idea of the gravity of any of it.

(♫)

Before she could lose her nerve, Twilight shouldered her way to the business entrance of the Town Hall. In the lobby harried townsponies scurried this way and that with papers in-hoof, their countless conversations blending into a dull babble, the smell of coffee and strong tea tinged with an undercurrent of sweat. Nopony stopped her as she weaved through the morass deeper into the building, ducking from one packed office block to another, until she found the desk where the Mayor was furiously scribbling entries in some kind of accounts book while Cheerilee and Granny Smith looked on.

“Excuse me… excuse me!” Twilight demanded, and three pairs of eyes quickly refocused on her before narrowing in suspicion.

“You’re… Twilight, the clerk who was managing the Celebration, right?” The Mayor asked, more than a little snappishly.

“No, no- well, yes, technically, but my actual position is with the Royal Academy of Magic and I’ve just worked out that-”

“Well, you’ll have to come back later, there’s quite a lot of urgent issues I need to see to right now.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Twilight snapped, and the dozen other ponies occupying the space looked up from what they were doing at her, “You need to get everypony here to start fighting the Lunars again before they can-”

“Miss Twilight, we don’t have much choice, you saw what they did to Citrine and Noteworthy-”

“Well, they’re going to do a whole lot more to the rest of the country very, very soon, and nopony outside of town even knows to be looking out for them because Nightmare Moon is executing a type of mare-in-the-middle attack on incoming corresp-”

“Twilight, I’m aware that all of these goings-on have been difficult, but you’re just going to have to queue up with everypony else and-”

Abruptly the entire room went quiet, and Twilight turned to see a Lunar’s blue-armored head in the doorway. “Is there… a problem?”

“Oh. Nothing you need to… worry about, Shade,” the Mayor answered with unsettling familiarity.

“What are you doing, why are you working with them?” Twilight snapped, the words tumbling out of her faster than her brain could consciously process them.

“Miss, you’re frightening ponies-” Cheerilee began.

“Well they should be frightened! They’re-”

Twilight suddenly registered the presence of two large militiaponies standing uncomfortably close on either side of her. “Miss, you really ought to leave,” the earth mare on the right warned.

“Fine. Fine! Ok! I’m leaving!” Twilight stammered, common sense finally catching up with her racing, panicked thoughts. “Clearly nopony here is in any position to help me.” She stumbled back through the lobby and out into the market square, which somehow during her brief time indoors had grown just as crowded as the hall itself. She darted and probed between the shuffling townsponies, heading for anywhere that wasn’t here, when her hoof bumped into something warm and furry.

She turned to apologize and found herself staring at a little orange pegasus with a short purple mane. “Hey, aren’t you that mare from Canterlot?” the filly asked before her eyes widened and she darted back out of sight.

“Hey, yeah, that’s right!” Another voice called, “I saw ‘er badgerin’ poor Miss Rarity about somethin’ back behind the Town Hall yesterday!”

Twilight, initially, was thankful that she had ended up with a little bit more room to stand in, before she realized that the crowd wasn’t thinning out, it was pulling away. Very quickly she found herself standing in a rough circle of townsponies, searching unsuccessfully for a way through the wall of tightly-pressed bodies, the tension in her chest threatening to metamorphose into a full-blown panic attack. “Badgering?” she stammered, “N-no, I was just asking if she’d ever en-encountered any Lunar-”

“Wait, that’s right,” a red-maned earth mare cut in, “She was talking about the Old Cairn out on Sweet Apple Acres!”

“Hey, wait, I saw her slinking around out there when I was busting clouds!” added a charcoal pegasus.

Twilight wondered why the Lunars dotting the square hadn’t taken an interest in any of this, when she realized that they had all been replaced at some point by revenants- and civilians harassing civilians apparently didn’t count as provocation.

“Wow, Thunder, I think I saw that mare carrying something back from the old Nightmare Statue last morning, too!” a yellow-and-orange earth pony cut in.

“Do you think… she woke those soldier things up?” her tan stallion friend added.

“Does seem like a pretty big coincidence, doesn’t it?” the charcoal pegasus answered, “Those things showing up just a day after some Canterlot egghead starts poking around all the places ponies aren’t supposed to poke?”

“Now, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation why-” began a cream-colored earth mare with a curious pink-and-navy mane. Twilight, for a moment, was struck by an uncanny sense of familiarity. The others, however, didn’t even seem to hear her.

“Yeah, c’mon, what’d you do?” the pegasus demanded of Twilight.

“What’d you do?” the rose-maned earth pony stepped forward and jabbed a hoof at Twilight’s chest. Moments later, the rest of the circle stepped forward a little. “C’mon, what’d you do?”

She searched again for an exit and again came up empty, charging her magic for a teleport spell before a forehoof lashed out and grazed the tip of her horn. “What’d you do?!” called somepony else in the crowd who might have been its owner.

Another hoof slammed into Twilight’s flank and sent her staggering. “What’d you do?!”

"What'd you do?!"

"What'd you do?!"

“Alright, that’s enough!” Both Twilight and her accusers looked up in surprise to find Rainbow Dash hovering overhead, clad in her gleaming metal armor with a pair of luminous green flight goggles hung around her neck. The crowd pulled back, just a little, and Twilight realized that Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity had all scaled the rim of the fountain in the center of town.

“Now, Ah was watchin’ when Twilight here went pokin’ round that Cairn in the field,” the farmer continued, drawing more than a few eyes off of Twilight much to the unicorn’s relief, “an’ she didn’t do nothin’ some a’ yer own fool selves didn’t do when y’all were younger. So I dun’ wanna hear nothin’ more ‘bout her wakin’ up them spooks, understand?”

“Indeed!” the tailor stepped forward and gazed out over them all with the same sort of utterly unpretentious contempt it must have taken Celestia a hundred years or more to master, “Nightmare Moon wasn’t hiding under that statue… all we found there was a prophecy of her return- something Twilight was trying to prevent!”

A few ponies backed up. A few more left the circle entirely, but Twilight was too transfixed to even consider attempting to flee.

“So… really,” the baker’s apprentice finished, “You’re all just about the most self-defeating angry mob in history, and if anything you should all be beating up on Twilight for not coming here sooner and messing around in things more. Don’t actually do that, though,” she amended almost as an afterthought, “Otherwise you’ll just get us all into even bigger trouble.”

Twilight had to laugh at that, and she didn’t seem to be the only one in the crowd to do so. Feeling warm feathers tap lightly against her withers, the unicorn looked over to see that Fluttershy had somehow made her way up alongside. “C’mon…” the smaller pegasus whispered, “I know a couple places where they won’t be able to find you.” She slunk off just shy of a distance where Twilight would have lost sight of her completely, and with a final look back at the dispersing crowd, the scholar hurried to catch up.

(♫)

“… all of which, in laymare’s terms, means we can’t count on a response from Canterlot anytime remotely soon,” Twilight finished, gazing across the small, homey sitting area of Fluttershy’s cottage at the five ponies and one dragon who had offered her sanctuary.

“So you… think Nightmare Moon might… actually take over Equestria?” Fluttershy asked.

“Going up against the Wonderbolts? And the whole Royal Navy?” Rainbow Dash countered as she circled aimlessly near the ceiling, “I doubt it.”

“Ah dun’ think the Navy’s comin’, is the problem, Rainbow,” Applejack corrected her.

“I mean, sooner or later somepony’s gonna wonder what’s taking Celestia so long…” Spike began.

“… but an incremental response might be even worse than none at all,” Twilight continued, “Every account of the Rebellions agrees on the Lunars’ ability to fight very effectively against larger, better-equipped forces, and Princess Luna herself was always known to be very skilled in necromancy, illusions, abjuration and mind control. You all saw those Guards and militiaponies her mages’d gotten to…”

“Oh, dear, I think she’s right!” Rarity spoke up, “If they send just a few ponies here to take a look around, all they’re doing is giving that horrible Nightmare Moon more… raw materials.” The normally composed tailor was shaking, badly, and Twilight thought she could see tears in the other mare’s eyes. “We’re… we’re all…”

Spike loped over and gently patted her shoulder, still looking back to Twilight and the others. “Yeah, and her goons are all mixed in with a whole village full of innocent ponies.”

Even Rainbow Dash went a little paler at that, and Rarity broke down into audible whimpers. “Spike, please stop helping,” Pinkie Pie admonished as she wrapped a foreleg around the thinner mare.

They all stayed silent for a little while after that, consciously avoiding paying too much attention to the white unicorn until she’d regained her composure. Then, Applejack spoke up once more: “So… what do we do?”

Twilight chewed on her lower lip. “Nightmare Moon herself is the biggest threat- she’s what’s keeping the rest of Equestria from coming to help us, and she’s what overpowered all the serious resistance here. If we can eliminate her, and let the Army know what’s happened here, the others will be just a woefully outnumbered force with severely outdated weapons, no supply chain, and very little knowledge of the modern world. If they follow the tactics they used a thousand years ago, they’ll try to hide out in the countryside after a defeat like that and leave the town of their own accord, and even if they don’t the Army will still be able to-”

“Be able to what? Kill them all?” Both Twilight and Rainbow Dash turned in surprise to see Fluttershy standing up and looking both of them right in the eyes. “Those are still ponies under that armor!”

“Brutes though they might be…” Rarity sniffed.

“I think Twilight was going to say take them into custody as nonviolently as possible,” Spike countered, “But that’s assuming they don’t all go back into that weird stasis again like they did when Nightmare was gone the first time.”

“So they just… sleep forever?” Rainbow asked, “That sounds worse than just looking ‘em in the eye and killing ‘em.”

“Well, from what Twilight’s told us, it’s soundin’ more and more like before too long it’s gonna either be them, or us,” the farmer countered.

“And most of ‘them’ are already just walking skeletons that hunt you endlessly and have no understanding of mercy, remember,” Pinkie continued, “So, really, there’s nothing to be afraid of!”

Twilight made a few more orbits of the rug. “Look, I’ve gone my whole life up until now without killing another pony – or any intelligent creature – and I really don’t want to start now. I can’t say I know what’ll happen when the Lunars are cut off from Nightmare Moon, but… well, we’ve got a thousand years of arcanobiological research behind us that Firefly and Paper Clip had never even heard of. Once everypony in town is out of immediate danger, we’ll… try and do everything we can.”

“Hey, hey, hey, aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves here?” Spike spread his claws in a quick warding-off gesture, “How would the seven of us even do this? You all saw what Nightmare Moon did to those soldiers in the Hall- and those were Celestia’s personal bodyguards, with airship-grade shielding on their armor!”

Twilight’s ears folded back against her skull and her frenetic hoofsteps slowed. “Spike’s right. Even Princess Celestia needed the Elements of Harmony to-”

“You mean these Elements?”

The scholar turned to see Pinkie Pie offering her a thick book bound in ancient red leather that she was entirely certain the baker had not been holding just a few seconds ago. Carefully, Twilight pulled the thing towards her in her telekinesis and read off the deeply-stamped letters that still retained a fragment of gold leaf here and there: “The Elements of Harmony: A Reference.”

“It was under ‘E’,” the baker explained.

With a free hoof, Twilight rubbed the base of her horn. “Pinkie, there is no ‘E’ section…”

“It was in with Paper Clip’s other references,” Spike said, “Pinkie, AJ and I went back to the library after the Lunars trashed it to try to find you, and when that didn’t work we just looked for anything they’d dug through.”

“Nothin’ in that box had anythin’ ‘bout the Lunars,” Applejack finished, “so Ah reckon you musta’ put it aside when you were rootin’ ‘round down there last night.”

Twilight sighed. “Yes, because I already know there’s not going to be anything helpful in it. The Reference is a well-known text with copies in every major library in Equestria. I wrote a comparative analysis of different commentaries on it for a two-hundred-level history class, for Starswirl’s sake!”

“Twilight.” Spike admonished. “This one’s… different.”

Carefully she fanned through the faded pages, skimming over long philosophical discourses on the virtues of equinity, and paying significantly more attention to a number of truly spectacular maps depicting lost Everfree and the Castle of the Two Sisters. More than a few locations were annotated in a plain, workmarelike script- “Completely caved in”, “Blew out this wall”, and so on- and after a moment Twilight recognized the writing as General Firefly’s. She turned the page to a detailed schematic of the courtyard, and the Great Solarium that held the Elements of Harmony. Here, in shakier mouthwriting, were a few cramped lines: “Long way up to the Solarium. Things in the way. Would not throw away the lives of good mares and stallions for a few baubles.” Twilight’s eyes widened, and her heart hammered in her chest. “In the Solarium they remain.”

“Ohhh, OK!” Pinkie Pie nodded, “So we can fight Nightmare Moon if we can just make it to the center of the creepy forest that’s famous for nopony ever being able to make it to the center of. Works for me!”

The problem with archeological investigation of the Castle of the Two Sisters and other sites in the Everfree wasn’t that their locations were unknown- after all, there were dozens of incredibly detailed maps of Equestria’s first capital in libraries across the known world, and indeed on a clear day with a moderately powerful spyglass the Castle’s crumbling spires were just about visible from the forest’s edge. It was that reaching them was far more complicated than just travelling the right direction in the right distance.

Even the most skeptical of mages now generally agreed that in the chaotic depths of the Everfree, spacetime itself was… twisted in complicated ways and ceased to function quite as it should. The geometry of the place was labyrinthine, and some wondered whether it was really accurate to call it ‘spacetime’ at all. The greater the distance one traveled through it, the less reliably time flowed, and the more time spent within it, the less reliably space behaved. There were well-attested accounts of an expedition from Trailhead College that projected magical beams to guide them in a perfectly straight march towards the Castle for two-and-a-half days; they reemerged along the same road by which they’d entered six years later, after the outside world had written them all off as dead. Another group, from the Rangers' Guild, had made camp together one night and then awoken to find themselves in different locations scattered over nearly a mile. Airships and pegasi who braved the unpredictable weather to fly above the castle and then dove straight down would eventually land somewhere else entirely, more often than not under dense and unbroken canopy.

“Wait,” Rarity cut in, “aren’t the Lunars coming from inside the Forest?”

“That… is where they were buried,” said Fluttershy.

“Yeah…” Spike scratched at his muzzle, thinking, “Yeah, the Cairns were all set up around the Castle!”

“You’re right! And we have a map!” Twilight dashed over to the room’s sole un-shuttered window and peered outside. The faint purple sparks of Lunar signal flares were just barely visible over the treetops… and on a table nearby, amongst a pile of other notes and documents salvaged from the Golden Oaks, she spotted the topographical chart containing Rainbow Dash’s survey of the Cairns. Quickly she grabbed the parchment in her telekinesis and held it next to the page in Harmony where General Firefly had scribbled the location of the true and decoy Cairns on a map of the fields surrounding Everfree. The scale was different and no two features exactly matched, but that didn’t prevent her from determining that the pattern was, for all intents and purposes, identical.

That wouldn’t mean much once they got into the interior of the Forest, but with a constant stream of Lunars marching out from the deeper Cairns right next to the Castle, it might just be possible to use them as additional points of reference, and develop at least a temporary mapping to relate the space as it existed in Firefly’s day and the space that existed currently. “Yes… yes, I think that could work!”

(♫)

“So… we’re… we’re really going into the Forest?” Fluttershy asked.

“What if we do find the Elements, and we can’t figure out how to use them?” Rarity added.

Looking over the gear the locals had managed to stockpile, Twilight grabbed a pair of saddlebags and gently slid both Dash’s chart and the annotated Reference inside along with some quills, scrap parchment, geometer’s tools, and a slim black volume of magical and mathematical tables. “The Elements are described as being ‘intuitive’, whatever that means… obviously, this whole plan is a huge gamble, but… do we really have any other option?”

The room stayed silent for a good long while.

Sizing up the rest of their supplies, Twilight began to slip on a set of steel-shod leather boots and a light cotton mage’s tunic. Rarity had somehow managed to get a hold of proper armor ranging from chainmail to field plate- some of it Lunar, some of it the more modern design of the Ponyville Militia. Shiny had once shown her, though, much to her embarrassment, that taking a direct hit even when clad in full plate still hurt like Tartarus, and she quite frankly lacked the practice needed to deflect or blunt impacts properly. Fortunately, as Shiny had also been fond of telling her, a mage was never defenseless.

“Rainbow Dash.” She looked to where the cyan pegasus was fiddling with her own rather more material armament. “This could get really complicated, really quickly, and I need to know you’ll do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, without any explanation. If the Lunars end up chasing us, I won’t have a chance to outline the eighteen months of research I did to figure out whether we can cut through a cave somewhere or are better off taking our chances overland. Can I count on you to do that?”

Dash screwed up her face for a few seconds, seeming to parse Twilight’s words, then her eyes widened in surprise. “Wait, you’re going with me?!”

Twilight gave her saddlebags an experimental heft and then settled them across her back. “I mean, if you know how to compute optimal three-dimensional homographies, I don’t suppose I need to…”

“Well, in that case, darling, you’d best bring me along as well.” Twilight turned to see that Rarity had slipped on her duellist’s harness, and was currently weighing a Lunar-made saber and dagger in her hornglow. It looked to be a perfect fit, and Twilight wondered why she’d ever expected anything else. “I assure you, I’m more than capable of defending myself, and I’ve worked with the Lunars more than anypony in… well, this century at least.” Seemingly unable to decide between the blades, she slipped both into the loops on the right side of her harness and did a quick twirl for seemingly no other reason than to show off.

“Then… umm… I think I should go with you, too.” Fluttershy murmured. “There’s creatures in the forest you’ll need to know to look out for, and I have a healer’s kit in my kitchen in case the Lunars… in case somepony gets hurt.”

“Well Ah suppose Ah won’t be doin’ much good sittin’ round here…” Applejack said, casting another long, appraising look at the golden barding and warhammer she’d brought up from the family farm, “Ah know the forest ‘round here like the back a’ my hoof… well, the outer parts, at least, and Ah reckon y’all ain’t gonna resent havin’ another strong leg or four ‘afore this is over. Count me in!”

“Ooh, me too!” Pinkie Pie added.

“Pinkie,” Twilight admonished, “Are you sure a baker really needs to…?”

“Who said anything about baking?” The pink mare suddenly hefted a round stone about four inches in diameter in one hoof -Starswirl only knew where she’d gotten it- wound up, and hurled it at one of the spare sets of Lunar barding in the corner at blinding speed. There was an audible pang as it punched a neat hole clean through the astral steel and lodged in a hoof-sized dent in the helmet behind it. “I also have a license to pack explosives, and most importantly you still need a bard to fill out the party!”

“I’ll help in any way I can,” Spike added, “Rarity, do you think you could put some of this armor together to fit a dragon?”

Twilight knelt down on her haunches and looked him in the eye. “Spike, I… need you to not go with us.”

His slitted eyes widened. “What… why?”

The scholar ruffled through her saddlebags and extracted a quill and a piece of parchment, beginning to copy out another report to Shining Armor. She detailed everything that had happened since her arrival in Ponyville as concisely as she could manage, followed by what she intended to do next. “I’m putting a plan together for Rainbow make a route for us out of town and into the Everfree proper, but when that happens I need you to sneak out along the road to Canterlot and head straight for the nearest train station. Don’t use the Post, or your fire spell, and don’t stop anywhere along the way even if everypony there seems completely normal. Just deliver this, in person, to Shining Armor as quickly as you can. If we can’t make it to the castle and back again-”

“We’ll make it…” Rainbow Dash interjected.

“Whether or not we make it, the outside world needs to know what’s happening here so they can do something about it. You’re… the only way they can.”

She studied her assistant carefully, noticing how his breathing hitched and he shifted his weight back and forth. But then he nodded. “Yeah. OK. Yeah, OK. I can do that. I… good luck.”

The young scholar stood up again, fished a sheathed dagger off the table, and slipped it into the bandoleer of her tunic. A mage was never defenseless, but a mage could also never be too careful. “Ok, everypony, here’s what we need to do…”

Author's Note

UPDATED 7 OCTOBER 2020 to fix some minor grammar and phrasing issues.

Dead Reckoning

(♫)

Armed and armored to the teeth, Rainbow Dash strode down the north road to Canterlot. Townsponies and Lunars alike stopped to gawk at her passage, but she paid them no mind as she continued on her way. For fake-midnight it was surprisingly bright, more than bright enough to see by, but she kept her Obsidian flying goggles over her eyes anyway. It was the principle of the thing.

“Halt! Thou canst not go this way!” shouted a unicorn in officer’s light plate, standing in the middle of a wedge formation with two skeletal, bat-winged pegasi to either side and the shambling remains of an earth pony and another unicorn shoulder-to-shoulder directly in front of her.

Rainbow Dash kept right on walking.

The two grounders in front advanced in eerie lockstep, polearms held in teeth and telekinesis with obvious threatening intent. The things that had once been pegasi lifted off into a low hover, moonlight glinting on an assortment of small wearable blades. Their faces, to the degree that any of them still had faces, remained utterly blank, but the unicorn officer’s eyes narrowed and her lips pulled back ever so slightly from her muzzle. “Halt, I say! I shant give thee another warning!”

“Heard ya the first time,” Rainbow Dash snapped.

She sprung forward, half-bounding and half-flying, ducked under the swing of the unicorn revenant’s poleaxe, and came up to slash one steel-bladed wing hard across its neck. Its flesh felt dry and papery, offering little resistance, and Dash heard the poleaxe slam into the dirt as the telekinetic field holding it abruptly cut off. “A pegasus on the North Road!” the officer called, firing off a bright purple light from her horn, and Rainbow had to roll away as the earth pony revenant slammed a rusted claymore nearly as long as she was into the cobblestones where she had just been. She turned the roll into a jump as soon as her hooves were under her, then beat her wings and pulled up into a tight vertical loop that brought her up and over the other pony, buying her the second or so needed to draw her sheathed charger’s sabre in her teeth. On her way down she jammed the blade into the revenant’s neck just in front of the segmented neckpiece of its armor.

Rainbow had expected the blade to once again slice cleanly through the reanimated Lunar’s stringy flesh, but instead she had to bite back a snarl of surprise and pain as instead it caught on something and the mouthgrip twisted in her jaws. Her head was wrenched sideways and her entire body followed, but the revenant was still moving- she barely managed to avoid the ground as the earth pony took another swing at her, abandoning her grip on her sabre in the process. It was an acceptable loss; when all of this was over, she could always order another one out of the back of Soldier of Fortune Magazine.

She caught sight of the unicorn officer’s hornlight and ducked back downward, barely managing to dodge the worst of a conical blast of luminous, magical ice fragments. A few still hit, stingingly cold as they froze little circles of mundane frost on her mail, but the quilted padding she wore underneath seemed to hold back the worst of it. A lot more hit the earth pony, but if it was in any way bothered it gave no sign.

“Hey! No… fair… usin’… magic!” Realizing she was in a potentially bad situation, Dash flapped hard for altitude while her hoof groped for the flash-and-smoke capsule stashed in her bandoleer, already feeling the weird prickly-slippery sensation of a telekinetic field beginning to pull her back down towards the earth pony’s waiting blade. She abruptly leaned into the field and started what should have looked like a strafing dive just as she tossed the capsule away, but she needn’t have bothered with a distraction- the unicorn didn’t seem to recognize what the capsule was, and made no effort either to catch it or flee the blast radius. Dash still had enough freedom of motion left to wrench her head around away from it when it went off and close her eyes, but the officer wasn’t so lucky. She cried out in what seemed like genuine agony when the flash washed over the street, vanishing into a cloud of thick gray smoke and screaming something about the half-breed spawn of the Tyrant Celestia.

“Yeah, it’s not so fun on the other end, huh?!” Rainbow pulled back up, leaving the earth pony revenant behind and tossing a pair of her throwing daggers at it for good measure.

She was about to throw two more into the center of the smoke cloud when the first bat-pegasus came corkscrewing at her from her right. She pulled her wings in and barely managed to dive under it, rolling and extending a wingblade to slice open its barrel from sternum to pelvis, but the only reaction it gave was to slam an armored hoof into her helmet.

Dizzy and seeing dots, she was almost too late to notice the other bat-pony gliding up on her right- whatever else they were, the damn things were quiet. Wing muscles straining, Dash flew full-out for the center of town, making it perhaps a dozen yards or so, and as soon as her head was clear she realized the revenants were falling behind. Sensing an advantage she slowed down again, flaring her wings out as though to brake, and as soon as the revenant that had tried to flank her blew past she pivoted as quickly as she could and met it wing-for-wing. She felt a moment of solid resistance and heard a sound like canvas ripping, and then watched as the revenant’s right wing and the rest of its body spiraled down to the road below on ever-more-divergent trajectories.

A wild blast of ice shards slammed into the cottage beneath her, and Dash realized the smoke she’d dropped was already starting to clear.

The other revenant was trying to climb up to her, but its flight was uneven; its plate armor had
come loose and started to wobble where Dash had cut the straps, and the blue pegasus held back a retch as it slid off entirely to reveal the nearly skinless, charred backbone underneath. She caught sight of the earth pony still gazing up at her from below, positioned herself, and then pulled into a steep dive. Air whistled past her ears as the bat-revenant’s figure grew larger and larger with incredible speed, then at the very last second before collision Dash flipped herself around so that she was falling hindlegs-first and bucked it right in the wing joints.

The feeling was not unlike treading on a canvas sack filled with dried leaves and a few sturdier branches. The revenant crumpled beneath her and she kept on going; its earth pony companion put up only slightly more resistance when she powered into it, but Rainbow wasn’t done yet. Her back legs touched the road only for a moment before she sprung forward directly towards the mare in the officer’s armor, rolling and zigzagging to dodge the quill-thin rays of cold the unicorn fired one after the other. A particularly close call froze a lock of her mane solid, leaving it to break off in the wind a second later, and when the unicorn’s horn glowed again Rainbow didn’t even bother to change course. Instead she brought her left wingblade up across her chest, and watched the frustration on the unicorn’s face turn to shock as her beam reflected harmlessly off the enchanted metal.

Then Dash made contact, head-first. The unicorn didn’t have much chance to avoid being knocked clean off her hooves by the impact, sending them both rolling back ten feet or more in a tangle of limbs and equipment- for all of her gear, the officer was surprisingly light, and Rainbow was reasonably certain she had felt one of the other mare’s ribs give way on impact.

Hard cobblestones slammed into Rainbow’s wings and back in alternating sequence, but she refused to give up the hold she’d gotten, and when they finally skidded to a halt the pegasus was on top. The officer snarled inarticulately and began charging another spell, but Dash had been expecting that. She slammed an armored hoof into the unicorn’s weird bent horn once, twice, three times in quick succession until its magical glow sputtered and died. The Lunar took a wild swipe at her face with a forehoof after that, but Dash caught it with her wingblade and was rewarded with a yowl of pain and a spray of hot, red blood. She drew back the same blade, aiming for the Lunar’s throat, when the mare’s slitted eyes refocused on something directly behind her and she suddenly called out “Please! I… yield!”

Cautiously, Rainbow lowered the blade so that there was about a hoof’s-length of clearance between it and her opponent’s neck. She flicked it upward, motioning for the unicorn to get up, but the Lunar just winced and rolled over onto her side, breathing fast and ragged.

Looking up from her, Rainbow Dash found the road to be packed with townsponies, all of them staring at her as though she’d just sprouted a second set of wings. “These Lunars aren’t so tough,” she yelled, then forced out some laughter that she hoped didn’t sound too nervous. “C’mon, who’s next?!”

“That would be I,” came a voice from above her.

The stallion it belonged to was unmistakably a Lunar- his freakish, bat-like wings didn’t allow him to be much else- but that was where the similarities to his brethren ended. Instead of the ubiquitous astral steel armor, he was clad in a form-fitting purple coverall of some flexible, elastic material that left only his muzzle and ears exposed, putting Dash in the mind of a cruder version of the starspider-silk suits worn by dedicated maneuverability fliers. A harness and belt of thin leather kept any number of deadly little sharp things close at hoof, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of yellow-tinted goggles given an aggressive downward slant.

He just hovered there at about rooftop level, over the Canterlot end of the road, and Rainbow Dash developed the strangest sense that if she just stayed on the ground and walked out of town he wouldn’t raise of hoof to stop her. The other Lunars even now shouldering their way through the crowd very likely would, though, so once again she beat her wings and took to the air.

The two pegasi began to slowly circle each other perhaps a body-length apart, trading little jabs and half-kicks without making any serious attempt to connect. Idly, Dash noted that however she turned, the Lunar always kept himself between her and the way out of town. “What are you, anyway,” she sneered, “Some kinda’ Nightmare-knockoff Wonderbolt?”

“Oh, is that the name the Sun-Tyrant’s given us? I see the passage of a thousand years has done little to dull her arrogance.”

“Hey, you’re the one who’s dressing up like some of our best and bravest, you bat-winged freak.”

The Lunar just shook his head slightly, then almost managed to catch Dash with a right-hoof jab at her wing before pulling back at the last second. “They truly have told thee nothing of thine own history, have they? A pity, but perhaps when this is all over thou will understand that the Shadowbolts were, indeed, the first.”

“The… uhh… only pity here’s what you’re gonna look like if you don’t get outta my way,” Rainbow snapped.

“Enough.” The stallion calling himself a ‘Shadowbolt’ began to pull his wings in and tilt forward, in preparation to dive at her. Rainbow didn’t give him the chance, and threw herself towards him with a rapid-fire series of kicks, punches, and more complicated strikes she’d been practicing ever since Physical Culture ran that article on lost Zebrican martial arts. He was able to dodge most and block the rest, but they kept him busy, and before long he brought his right forehoof up just a fraction too slowly to stop Dash’s own from slamming into his shoulder.

She pressed the brief advantage and powered herself forward, catching the Shadowbolt in a four-leg tackle, the both of them thrashing wildly to try to stay in the air. “Guess… ya… ain’t… such… hot… stuff… after all…” Rainbow snarled through gritted teeth as she fought to keep a hold of him and get him into a position where she could put a wingblade between them.

The Lunar just laughed, reared back, and headbutted her right under the brim of her helmet.

Dash reeled back in pain, feeling blood start to pool in her mouth, as her vision was covered in a spiderweb of white cracks and the green glow of her goggles’ night-vision enchantment guttered out completely. Half-blind and dizzy she felt the both of them tumbling increasingly out of control, but refused to let go of her quarry. Instead she redoubled her struggles, and slammed her free left front hoof into his shoulders and throat over and over again.

Then, impossibly, the pony she was holding onto seemed to soften and lose solidity, leather and flesh alike becoming hazy and insubstantial, even as she tightened her grip with a fury borne of desperation. First Rainbow’s hooves and then her entire body slipped into what felt not unlike a dense raincloud, if rainclouds were oily and cloyingly, coat-crawlingly warm. The sensation vanished a moment later and Dash realized with a shudder of disgust that she had just, somehow, fallen through the Shadowbolt.

Her hooves fumbled with the quick-release catches on her helmet, finally managing to rid herself of her ruined flight goggles just in time to catch a purple, vaguely equine shape compacting and solidifying right next to her right flank. She tried to turn her rapidly-increasing downward velocity into a barrel roll out of the way, but the Shadowbolt seemed to anticipate that and drifted sideways with her, extending a bladed wing of his own and drawing a long, shallow slash down her unarmored right hock. The blue pegasus howled, more in fury than in pain, and dove full-out for the street below. She pulled up with only a yard or so to spare and quickly backpedaled, watching the other pony gently descend to her level and spitting out the blood that stubbornly refused to stop accumulating in her mouth.

He didn’t draw any closer and the both of them gradually rose back up above the rooftops, breathing heavily and struggling to match each other’s altitude.

Thinking quickly, Dash reached into her bandoleer, extracted the last two throwing daggers she had, and tossed both of them directly at the bat-pony. Just once he flapped his wings a little harder, rose slightly upward, and watched disinterestedly as the daggers embedded themselves in the thatched roof below. “Thou knowest that targets move, dost thou not, Imperial?” he asked, as calmly as he might’ve inquired about the next week’s weather.

Rainbow Dash was about to reply when the Shadowbolt’s right wing flicked outward and he hurled an arc of brilliant blue-white lightning directly into her barrel. She fought the horrible burning, tingling sensation and brought herself into a sideways motion that was only partially a controlled dive, narrowly managing to avoid a second and third bolt hurled her way. He dove after her and kicked out with a hoof that thunked against her heavily-armored back, then pivoted and held both wings together as she spun around and tried to arrest what was now backward momentum. A glowing ball of energy took shape between them, and launched towards Dash with a muffled ‘pop’; she snapped her right wing out in front of her and met its corkscrewing trajectory just in time. The ball glanced off the enchanted metal, spiraled out again, and detonated against somepony’s chimney, scattering fragments of smoking brick a good ten feet.

With his goggles still down over his eyes it was difficult to determine the Shadowbolt’s expression, but Dash chose to interpret his lack of an immediate followup as shock. Pressing the temporary advantage she once again swooped in with her blades at the ready, aiming for his center of mass. She almost made it, too, before at the very last second he dipped down underneath her and slashed at those very same blades with impossible finesse.

“Enough of this.I am suitably impressed, Imperial. Now, thou shouldst yield.”

Rainbow felt the straps of her blades come loose from her wings, along with more than a few primary feathers. She flapped frantically to try to maintain altitude, but the Shadowbolt was right overtop of her, raining quick, fast blows on her armor as he sought out weak points in the unfamiliar metalwork; when she squirmed away and rolled upwards to get her hooves between them, she could feel herself slowly but surely starting to accelerate down. With clarity born of desperation she spotted the way he was favoring his left wing and shoulder, no doubt thanks to the drubbing she’d dealt him earlier, and twisted to that side. Stretching to the limits her aching muscles allowed she wrapped a hoof around his bad wing and pulled him into another lock with the blade pressed in between them.

Now they were both falling- falling, and struggling for a single blade hoof against hoof, the Shadowbolt’s flight muscles all but useless in the awkward position he found himself in. Bit by painful bit, Dash pressed both her front legs forward against his. He gave a strangled gasp, the first emotional reaction Rainbow had seen all night, and she could finally see his slitted eyes growing wider and wider behind his mask as the blade edged closer to his own jawline. She couldn’t stop her own muzzle from pulling back into a savage, predatory grin. “Nuh-uh…” she ground out through gritted teeth, “’M thinkin’ you oughta’-”

Then her back and head both slammed into the cobblestone street at almost the same time.

The whole world went hazy and red for a little while after that, and when her vision cleared Rainbow Dash realized she was flat on her back and staring up at the Moon. She made a couple of failed attempts to suck any air back into her lungs, and it was only when she finally succeeded that she realized the Shadowbolt was no longer on top of her. She struggled to push herself up with her wings, and when that didn’t work struggled to roll herself over. Then a familiar shadow fell over her and a blade made of cold astral steel pressed against the fur of her neck on the edge of a leathery, bat-like wing.

“I did warn thee, did I not?” the Shadowbolt muttered.

The entire affair had taken a little under three minutes. But by the time the Lunars pulled Dash off the pavement and set about shackling her fore- and -hindlegs together with thick steel manacles, Twilight and the rest were already long gone.

(♫)

It had taken Twilight longer than she probably should have to realize it, but the unnaturally prolonged night of the Lunar Republic wasn’t, in fact, all that dark. Even in the deep woods that made up the border of the Everfree proper it wasn’t at all difficult for the scholar to read her maps or locate the five ponies walking with her. It was possible, she supposed, that removing Nightmare Moon from the Circle of the Moon had somehow altered its luminance, although she was unable to imagine a mechanism that would do so without purposeful equine intervention of some kind- it couldn’t be as simple as the removal of the Mare effect having exposed more of the Moon’s luminous area, could it? Perhaps, instead, the Nightmare had conceded that ponies would require at least basic illumination to operate under her rule? When she had the time, she’d have to reanalyze the most detailed accounts of the Lunar Rebellions in order to determine whether or not the same phenomenon had been reported during the chaotic day-night cycles of that era as well.

All told they made good time, and after perhaps ten minutes under Applejack and Fluttershy’s guidance the forest around them began to change. Having studied the logs of previous expeditions to the Everfree, Twilight had some idea of what to expect from its anomalies great and small- the shifting, twisting, almost mobile qualities of the plant life, the sudden spots of hot and cold and unexpected wind, the pools of filthy wetness that appeared unaccountably on otherwise dry trails and couldn’t be detected until one’s hoof was in the middle of them- and if the others were in any way bothered they gave no sign of it. More troubling was the omnipresent, unaccountable feeling of being watched by something not quite intelligent and not quite animal either- watched, pursued, and judged. Ponies didn’t belong here, the presence seemed to want to communicate, or perhaps the Everfree simply didn’t fully belong to the rest of the world.

Twilight kept her eyes on her map, and on the beacons still sporadically visible through the shifting treetops, aware perhaps too acutely for her own good that if they wandered off the course she’d set it might not be possible to get back again.

Visually, all of the beacons were still in front of them, but already every so often her hearing caught the sounds of some kind of struggle- raised voices and the sizzling of spells and steel slicing against things she’d rather not try to characterize. It all sounded far-off and strangely muffled, and came from directions that didn’t make much sense- sometimes behind the group, sometimes directly overhead. Somewhat more rarely hoofprints, hacked-through vegetation, and even bloodstains or bits of discarded Lunar equipment provided more tangible evidence. At one point, at a particularly trampled patch of undergrowth, Pinkie Pie even fished out what proved to be the entire left front hoof of a revenant, still clad in its steel sabaton, and severed at the ankle by something that had generated a great deal of twisting, pulling force but hadn’t left behind visible claw- or toothmarks. Some of the hoofprints were relatively clear and led along wider paths than the one the Ponyville group was following, but nopony bothered to suggest changing course. With a few notable exceptions, they were trying to avoid the bulk of the Lunar forces.

It was after about twenty minutes of walking, subjectively, that Fluttershy suddenly pulled to a stop, and held up a wing with one primary feather raised over her muzzle. The five of them stopped immediately, Twilight carefully and quietly stepping her way to the head of the group. “What’s going on? Did you see something?” the unicorn whispered.

“Lunars,” Applejack hissed back.

(♫)

Twilight fell silent, straining her eyes and ears, and after a moment she too began to perceive the glint of astral steel through the undergrowth and the faint crunching of foliage underhoof. Quickly, she pulled out her compass and ruler, sighted along the two beacons that were still visible, and scribbled another geodesic that would, hopefully, circle around the patrol entirely.

Off what had until now passed for a trail, the forest seemed to darken and curl around them, pressing ever closer on either side like a soggy, rotten cloak. Before too long, the five of them had been forcibly condensed down, from a loose diamond formation to a single-file line with Twilight at the fore. The scholar tracked her head nervously from side to side, hyperaware of every dripping leaf and shadow that didn’t shift quite the same way the others did. There was no pattern to any of it, at least not that she could consciously identify, but the impression of somepony- or something -moving alongside them just out of sight was positively overpowering. Twilight’s heart began to beat a little faster and she tore her gaze away from the darkness in front of her just long enough to ask Applejack behind her “Do you… you think there’s somepony in here with us?”

“Ah was just workin’ up the nerve to ask ya’ the same thing…” the farmer muttered, before her eyes widened. “Whoa up there, what in tarnation?!”

The clearing in front of Twilight was familiar- muddy but not a proper bog, festooned with bizarre purplish vines and a disgusting slime-covered variant of Caballish moss she’d observed nowhere else in the Forest. She peered at her map, then the five sets of hoofprints preserved with incontrovertible clarity in the mud in front of her, and then back at the map again.

“How are we back here?” Rarity asked, a tinge of panic creeping into her voice, “How are we back here?”

“Space is warped and time is bendable!” Pinkie Pie muttered, as though that was the only explanation required.

“One might choose to describe the situation thusly, yeah.” Twilight peered at her map with renewed focus and began sketching out yet another course. Curiously, the three beacons she’d used to triangulate her position earlier were now absent, replaced with two at entirely different angles. “But I did something really wrong if we’ve ended up in a loop.”

The scholar jumped a little as something brushed past the moss on the other side of the clearing, and started to edge closer.

“We oughta’ get movin!” Applejack whispered.

They set off again, moving just shy of a proper gallop now, as Twilight’s heart threatened to hammer its way out of her chest. There was somepony, or several someponies, keeping pace with them, she was sure of it- she could hear hoofsteps just at the edge of her awareness, but the cadence was off somehow and she got the strangest impression that there weren’t always a multiple of four.

Twilight veered off to the left, trying to get herself and her fellows away from the bizarre sound, hastily checking and re-checking her map. She searched the treeline desperately for a beacon but not a single one was visible, and now somehow whatever it was was closing in on them from the left instead. This time she caught a brief glimpse of patchy, scabrous hide and an equine silhouette that didn’t move the way anything equine should have.

She broke into a gallop, barely conscious any more of the others keeping pace with her, checking and re-checking her map as the figures seemed to melt and shift before her eyes. The whole forest seemed suffused with a damp rottenness that invaded her lungs with every breath and brought tears to her eyes.

Whatever it was, its creaking, stumbling, out-of-sync hoofsteps had somehow reappeared directly behind her. Its uneven, putrid breath washed over her back and something fast and sharp whistled through the air; Twilight ran full-out and then dove to the side, rolling in an awkward jumble of cloth and hooves.

(♫)

She came up panting in a clearing perhaps fifty yards wide, surrounded by a dense and impenetrable grove of gnarled, twisted, ancient-looking trees. They were bathed in an uneven pinkish-red glow that seemed to emanate, to the degree that it had a source at all, from the Cairn-like structure in the center- although this one was broader, still mostly above-ground, and built of rough-cut black stone swaddled in… Twilight wasn’t sure if it was a plant, or a fungus, or something in between that stretched out along the ground to the treeline in thick, gently-pulsing webs of indeterminate color.

Her breath caught in her throat as she realized the detritus was moving. On some unheard signal, twisted and misshapen things made themselves known within it and began stumbling and scuttling and squirming towards her- here an equine skull and spinal column still wrapped in stringy muscle and hauling itself forward with a Lunar’s pair of bat-like wings; then the gutted husk of a blue mare with woody thorns jammed into her hooves, and puffy growths that might have been gilled mushrooms or rolled-up fronds sprouting from suppurating lesions where a pegasus’s wings would have been; beside her a hideously bloated, pale thing with naked skin that split open whenever it moved on its stumpy bowed-out legs, trickling pus and some kind of fuzzy white seeds that squirmed aimlessly on their own.

Involuntarily the young scholar backed away, fighting nausea and panic in equal measure, then whirled as she sensed unsteady movement immediately behind her. A giant, headless, scorpion-like thing of blackened bone and rotten meat was waiting for her, a long, grisly tail composed of dozens of equine skulls arching up over its back- some ancient and bleached white, others recent trophies still shrouded in rotting cheeks, their jellied eyes rolling madly in their sockets. Beside it the withered corpse of a unicorn hung inverted in the air like some sort of bizarre trophy, suspended by the eight sharp-tipped, jointed legs of reddish woody material that extended from its ruptured barrel. Its inverted head scanned back and forth at the end of an unnaturally long neck, dozens of tiny black eyes crammed into the space behind its swollen purple tongue and chelicerae as large as Twilight’s horn flicking from its eye sockets.

In a blind panic she turned back around and began firing kinetic bolts with lethal force. One of them struck an odd, stumbling, only vaguely equinoid thing that seemed to be covered entirely in rustling, leathery leaves- they scattered all at once in a cloud, leaving behind a pony skinned like an anatomical model still wearing golden Guard sabatons that sobbed and gurgled in the mud before it sank, thrashing, out of sight. Beside her Rarity slashed at a mass of charred, greasy flesh within which only the vaguest suggestions of equine facial features were occasionally visible, her rapier drawing great gouts of purplish ichor with each strike but failing in any way to slow it. Applejack bucked down a white monstrosity with three unicorn horns protruding from its fleshy head, its spine bent upwards to stand it on two legs like a minotaur and its forehooves sliced open in a grotesque parody of griffon talons, only for half-a-dozen more pony-headed, griffon-bodied bipeds to rise out of the webbing around her, roaring and clawing like wild animals. Fluttershy flapped desperately to gain altitude above a twisted knot of what could have been entrails or vines or possibly a little of both, but held just shy of the treeline lest she give their position away. One of the things that had clung to the flayed Guardspony swooped down at Twilight from above, revealing itself to be a single sheet of leathery skin, half-filled with blood like a tick, topped with the putrefying skull of a newborn foal. She batted the thing away with her telekinesis as it snapped at her muzzle; only to find Citrine Sparks lurching towards her, the militiammare’s ruined foreleg torn off at the shoulder and her mouth and eye sockets sliced open to accommodate a mass of sickly blue flowers.

Twilight realized she couldn’t see Pinkie Pie, and began to suspect the worst.

Then she heard the baker laughing. “These have to be the stupidest illusions Nightmare Moon could ever come up with,” the earth pony babbled from behind Twilight where the spider and scorpion had been.

“Illusions?” Applejack asked, eyes going wide even as she dug her forelegs in for another powerful buck.

“Yeah, you didn’t think any of those were real, did you?” Utterly unperturbed, the pink mare strode forward even as the things surrounding them began to converge on her and Fluttershy reached out a wing to try and haul her back to safety.

“Not… real?” Twilight stammered.

She was backed up alongside the others now, surrounded by a shifting wall of rotten and twisted flesh. And still the baker continued on.

“Look, their eyes are sliding around on their heads like billiard balls in watered-down pudding! And the shadows don’t move when they do! I thought the Princess of the Night’d get that right, at least, but I guess it’s more important to rub Twilight’s failures in her face or something. How were Citrine and that guard supposed to get here so fast, though? Did Nightmare Moon teleport them just to mess with us? Can you even teleport things in this forest? I don’t think you can! None of the others are even anything a necromancer would ever make, either! What’s so fun about just cutting open a pegasus and taking all her organs out? I mean, I guess you could tell her jokes or something, but they’d have to be really good jokes and even I don’t know if I have that kind of material ready to go for hours on end, so it’d probably just be a bunch of lame organ puns and the whole thing’d get really boring. And spiders and scorpions are terrible designs for siege engines, what, are we going to have to fight a giant turtle next? And the two-legged things are just silly. Who even needs three different horns, anyway… what’s he compensating for? Why is having no eyelids and a big fish mouth scary? Why is any of this scary? They’re so overdescribed they bleedpurple, for Shor’s sake!”

(♫)

Surprised, Twilight felt the physical signs of her panic evaporate with bizarre speed. As Pinkie kept speaking the horrors in front of them began to look less and less detailed- or, rather, more and more detailed, and at the same time less and less real. There was no definite fading or transition, but nonetheless when Twilight looked around the clearing again there was no Cairn, or smothering vegetation, or monstrous necromantic constructs; just broken rocks and splintered trees outlined in the light of the Moon. She could remember that being all there ever was in the clearing – herself firing a kinetic blast at a pile of leaves and downed branches and knocking them into the air around her; Rarity’s rapier slicing strips of bark from a rotten stump- even as she remembered simultaneously the horrors she’d thought she was fighting. It was disorienting her just thinking about it, and she too laughed as she sat down on the ground and closed her eyes in exhausted relief. Not long after she could hear the others starting to join her.

“Was that… I thought… but…” Fluttershy stammered, and Twilight opened her eyes again to see Pinkie Pie gently cuff the yellow pegasus on the shoulder.

“Hey, the more you think about it the more it’s gonna hurt your head, so cut that out, OK?”

“That stuff is gone, though, right?” Applejack asked, shifting awkwardly from hoof to hoof. “Ah mean, y’all’re really here and all?”

Twilight reached out with one hoof and picked up her map from where it had fallen into the grass beside her. The calculations remained intelligible, the markings remained stationary, and looking back up at the sky she saw there were still three Lunar beacons in a recognizable pattern. Throughout the entire ordeal, they had in fact traveled less than thirty meters. “I… think it’s over? I mean, I don’t think we could even be asking that question if we were still… if the Nightmare was still influencing us.”

“Why bother, though?” Applejack asked as she re-seated her brown leather hat. Twilight hadn’t even noticed she’d lost it. “It ain’t like ponies can actually die of fright… can they?”

“Maybe… she was trying to get us lost?” Rarity suggested.

“Or trick us into hurting each other?” Fluttershy added.

“Oooh, or keep us in one place until her real ponies could show up!” Pinkie Pie cut in.

Twilight nodded. “Pinkie’s right. We should probably get moving.” She checked her map one last time and turned around to find their hoofprints leading back to a very familiar marshy glade. “I don’t think we’re too far off-course… I just hope Dash can hold out a little longer.”

(♫)

They’d bound Rainbow Dash hoof-and-wing, although not tightly enough that she was in pain or for that matter had too much trouble moving as long as she did so slowly. They’d also trotted her in front of a scowling bat-pegasus healer who’d bandaged the gash in her right hock, briskly felt around her barrel, scrubbed the blood off of her muzzle, and given her some herbs to chew for her still-pounding head. The herbs didn’t do much for the pain and made her just the slightest bit sick to her stomach, but she figured that was more likely due to a lack of anything better available than any real malice- if the Lunars wanted to make her suffer, they had a lot more effective ways of doing that.

That damn Shadowbolt had remained practically glued to her through the entire process, for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious- bound and surrounded, even Rainbow Dash wasn’t going to be a serious threat to them anymore. He didn’t speak to her of his own initiative, and Dash didn’t ask him anything. After a few dozen minutes spent awkwardly standing around, two other Lunars – a little wisp of a bat-mare with a funky helmet, and a wiry unicorn stallion with a seemingly permanent thousand-yard stare – fell into step beside her and they all started to walk.

At first, Dash thought with a tinge of panic that they were going to bring her to the Town Hall, or possibly the big hospital tent out in front, but then just as that weirdo Twilight Sparkle had predicted they passed through the square and out the other side, to one of several roads that passed through Sweet Apple Acres and then on to the thick, dark forest.

The path they followed was strange and wandering, apparently determined by retracing a series of hoofprints leading back to Ponyville which were at times all but invisible, and despite her best efforts Rainbow Dash quickly found herself hopelessly disoriented. Twilight had insisted that Dash swallow a tiny, rune-inscribed gem before setting out, and had mentioned being able to track it somehow, and then a lot of geometrical gobbledygook that the weathermare had mostly tuned out, the upshot of which was apparently that they were already on their way to rescue her from the captivity her diversionary stunt had placed her in. With each hoofstep into the unfamiliar woods, however, she found herself growing less and less certain that was even possible.

They stopped, several times, and she was told to keep quiet and still as the Lunars drew their weapons and searched unsuccessfully for the source of noises in the foliage, but nothing ever came of it. “What happens if you get killed or need to run away, and I’m still tied up? Do I just sit here and let some horrible monster eat me?” she’d asked, after one particularly tense almost-encounter. None of the Lunars had given any indication that they’d heard.

Then, after what might have been half an hour of their bizarre forced march- or two hours, it was next to impossible to tell in this weird, static not-quite-morning -the Shadowbolt turned his head to look at her. “Imperial,” he asked in that smooth, level voice, “what is thy name?”

Underneath her bonds, Rainbow’s wings reflexively tensed. “Why do you wanna know?”

His muzzle showed, just for a moment, the faintest ghost of a smile. “So that some fine night, when all of this is over, I may properly tell my grandfoals the tale of how narrowly I bested one of the old Sun-Tyrant’s finest fliers.”

The weathermare paused for a moment, and decided there really wasn’t any harm. “Uhh… I’m Rainbow Dash.”

He nodded. “Hmm. Fitting.” There was a long pause in which the sound of dripping water became audible off to their left and then faded away again. “I… am called Vortex.”

“I think I’m gonna stick with calling you Bat-Winged Freak, actually.”

He bobbed his head, and that ghost of a smile took on a little more clarity. “I would expect nothing less.”

They kept on walking in silence again, although now Dash noticed that the other two Lunars had spread out a little bit and were no longer looking so frequently in the direction of her and the Shadowbolt- her and Vortex, rather. They weren’t interrupted for a good long while, and her mind began to wander, replaying the fight that had gotten her into this position. Twilight had been honest about her role as a distraction to buy the others time- that, after all, was what the gem was intended to get her out of -but Dash had at least been expecting to do a good bit more damage to the Lunars before her prearranged surrender. If she was being entirely honest with herself, the pegasus supposed, it hadn’t even been any great skill on her own part, but rather her compound armor and flash pellets that had prevented the Lunar troops from outright wiping the pavement with her. Or, at least, delayed the Lunar troops in wiping the pavement with her. And now all of her gear had been confiscated. “So… uhh… one a’ Celestia’s finest fliers, huh?” she mused.

“Aye.” Vortex slowed his pace slightly until he was directly beside the shackled pegasus. “Somewhere deep inside thine thick skull, there is a soldier’s mind, calculating tactics and weighing options. With thy tricks, and what little experience thou hast, thou nearly bested me. But imagine what thou couldst become if thou werest properly trained.”

Rainbow scoffed, to hide the fact that her initial reaction had been to wince. “Not much chance for that now, is there, freak?”

Vortex seemed to retreat back into his own thoughts for a little while after that- although perhaps that was just the natural result of his inscrutable tinted glasses. “Was there chance before, Rainbow Dash?” he finally asked. “Thou art skilled, clearly, but thou carriest thyself with the empty bluster of a green recruit. How didst thee come to be here?”

Dash didn’t answer. Vortex was the enemy, but that didn’t mean his low measure of her didn’t hurt. If anything, the fact that he’d so perfectly sniffed out her failures without having even heard of the camp in Cloudsdale made his dismissal even more damning.

After a little while, though, he ducked his head and briefly tapped a forehoof against his leather-clad chest. “Forgive me, I meant no insult. Thou hast lived thine whole life under unchallenged Solar rule… t’would be cruel of me to imply that thine meager station was reached through any fault of thine own.”

Rainbow Dash considered herself as patriotic as a mare could be, in every sense that really counted, at least, and felt a brief impulse to contradict him, but the words died in her throat. The… Incident hadn’t been her fault, and Vortex knew it, damn him. It wasn’t fair- he could read her like a filly’s picture book, and she still couldn’t figure out anything behind those goggles.

The walk dragged on, and so did the silence. The bat-pegasus in the funny helmet flew off, briefly, and then returned, and muttered something to Vortex. The wiry unicorn fiddled with Dash’s wing-bonds where a knot appeared to have been coming loose- Dash herself hadn’t even noticed it. Then, Vortex fell back to her position once again. “So tell me, Imperial. From where dost thou hail?”

“Cloudsdale,” she answered. All of his questions had thus far seemed harmless enough, nor did there seem to be any great urgency behind them, so presumably one of the reasons she was being brought deeper into Lunar territory was to meet with a more proper interrogator. It then occurred to her that she had virtually no memory of the lessons she’d been given as a schoolfilly on the sky-city’s history. “They, uh… Cloudsdale was around back then, right?”

“Aye, indeed, I was born and raised there! Perhaps, when we’ve wrenched it from the Tyrant’s iron hooves, thou wouldst be willing to lead me to a few of thine favorite taverns…” his expression suddenly turned downcast, “… I doubt many of those I remember are still open.”

“You just keep on saying that, freak…” Rainbow Dash muttered, just loud enough that she knew Vortex would hear.

“’Tis odd, I say,” the Shadowbolt continued, his melancholic tone fading away now that a challenge was put in front of him, “How little of a fight we faced in town- thine own efforts excluded, of course. Didst Tyrant Celestia perhaps abandon thee to thine fate?”

“What? No!” Dash shook her head. “Look, I know things were a lot rougher back in… uhh… whatever the time you grew up in is called, but nowadays the militia’s more than enough to keep the local monsters in line and we can get help from the Army whenever we need them. So, uhh, you all’d better look out!”

Vortex seemed, as near as Dash could tell, to be genuinely surprised by that. He cocked his head to one side and looked at her dead-on. “But… with what force does the Daybreaker suppress her detractors? Without conscription, how does she raise armies to fight in her wars?”

Very suddenly, Dash felt as though she were trying to explain the basics of Equestria’s defense to a madpony, or perhaps a very small child. “Look, freak, in the time you’ve been gone there’s been wars, sure. Dozens, even. But they’re small, they’re… whadda they call ‘em these days, ‘police actions’?” She tried to use her wings to represent the quotes, remembered they were bound, fell back on gesturing with her hooves and realized they were shackled too, finally setting for rolling her shoulders and hoping Vortex would understand her sarcasm. “There’s always enough ponies like me who want to sign on because we like adventure” -unfortunately, more than enough, in fact- “so they don’t have to… to force anypony to fight! It’s not like…” Rainbow cast her mind back to grade-school Equestrian History, trying in vain to locate an appropriate example and coming up largely empty. “It’s not like Trot or some shit,” she finally finished.

There was a long pause, in which Vortex presumably mulled over what she’d just told him. For all Dash knew, he might have been figuring out the best way to thicken rainclouds. “So,” he finally asked, “Did we… ever win?”

“Win against… who, freak? I’ve got a thousand years of bad guys to pick from!”

“I do not know!” For the first time since they’d gone hoof-to-hoof, genuine frustration entered his voice. “Who didst the Tyrant offend, and in what order?”

Dash shrugged, as best she could through the uncomfortable tension building in her wings. That unicorn had tied the ropes binding her a lot tighter than they'd been originally, and it was starting to hurt. “Well, the Griffon Empire finally gave up the ghost about a hundred years ago; we can count the number of dragons still on the continent with just our hooves; and the Frozen North’s kept those stupid yaks out of our business for… Boreas, I don’t even know how long. I mean, the Minotaurs are always making trouble, but they’re really only dangerous to sea navies, and we don’t even really use boats for much anymore, and the Abyssinians are trying to cozy up to us. There’s always gonna be monsters and criminals and stuff, but… Celestia and most of the other creatures are friendly, or at least not trying to kill each other all the time.” She thought back to the ‘situations’ beyond Equestria’s borders reported in the big newspapers she almost never read, which Soldier of Fortune Magazine only covered when they devolved into open fighting. “Oh yeah, and I think Klugetown’s gonna get wiped off the map soon too. That answer your questions?”

“… what is this… Kluge-town?”

“Stupid place full of stupid pirates. Don’t worry about it.”

“Hmmph. ‘Tis almost a shame we missed such battles.” They walked on in what might have passed for companionable silence for a good while after that, before Vortex spoke once again. “The Lunar Army could use soldiers like thee, Rainbow Dash. Think about it.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am never anything but serious.”

Dash considered the offer – really, genuinely considered it – for just long enough for the fact that she was doing so to consciously register. Then, the little-used rational part of her brain assured her that in no way was it a good idea. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“’Tis thine own choice,” Vortex reassured her, before the expression on his exposed muzzle became grave. “But… thou dost understand why thou art being brought this way, yes? The Lunar Army needs to know if there are more of you to fight, and how commonly we may find thine armor and weapons. These maker’s marks, this… Trotter, and Equestrian Apparel… ‘twould be better for all concerned if thou wouldst tell us of their location of thine own free will.”

She didn’t think they knew about the purpose of her now-destroyed goggles, or the enchantment on her wingblades. They definitely didn’t know about the gem. Rainbow Dash wanted to keep it that way. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Vortex shook his head and raised a wing, motioning for Dash and her guards to come to a halt. “Then I shan’t force thee,” he said, low enough that only she could hear. “But know that Our Sovereign is not as patient as I… especially as of late.”

Dash’s eyes narrowed, and she turned to face him head-to-head. “Is that a threat?”

“Nay. Only a warning.”

“Answer’s still no, freak.”

Vortex sighed, and reached up a leathery wing to push his goggles away from his muzzle. His eyes were the same weird, slitted, yellow ones all the Lunars had. Dash was suddenly unsure why she had expected anything else. “Then… when Our Sovereign has finished with thee… I will at least see that thou dost not linger.”

“Uhh… thanks, I guess? ”Rainbow tried to put up a tough front, but the memory of veteran Guardsponies screaming like newborn fillies on the floor of the Town Hall wouldn’t quite leave her.

They kept walking.

(♫)

They were starting to close in on Rainbow Dash’s position when Twilight saw the light cutting through the trees. The five of them crouched down in almost perfect synchrony as the pale yellow beam passed overhead. As the sound of somepony moving through the vegetation became audible, Twilight wormed her way over to Rarity’s position. “Can’t afford to go off-course again,” she whispered to the tailor, “D’you think everypony can hide?” Rarity nodded, and slunk off into a particularly dense clump of brush to the side of the trail, disappearing completely. Twilight joined her as without being prompted Applejack and Pinkie Pie vanished off the opposite side, and Fluttershy slipped into the thick canopy up above.

The noises of hoofsteps and rustling leaves were definitely closing in on their position; Twilight forced herself to ignore the sudden chill of condensation soaking into the outer layers of her tunic and remain perfectly still. It was odd. From what she’d seen so far, the Lunar troops tended to be… well, not undetectable as they moved through an area, but certainly stealthier than this just by force of habit and their general nature. Thus, Twilight wasn’t overly surprised when a plum-colored earth pony stallion in golden Royal Guard armor stepped out onto the trail proper, with a bullseye lantern hung around his neck and the handle of a small machete clutched in his teeth. Survivor from the Princess’s security detail? Twilight wondered, But what’s he doing out here?

Recalling the stories Shiny had told her about his training at Hurricane’s Green, Twilight inhaled and made two sharp clicks with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. The Guard paused and looked around, his pale blue eyes widening in surprise under his helmet, then he tucked his machete into a loop on the front of his armor and clicked right back at her.

Twilight turned to Rarity. She mouthed “Stay here for now,” and the white unicorn quietly nodded. Then she began charging her horn and stepped out into the open.

The Guard twisted in place to look at her, then reached a forehoof up to his barding and extracted a small flip-open notebook. “Twilight… Sparkle, right?” he asked, “Everypony’s out lookin’ for ya!”

“Wait,” the scholar commanded, as she continued to feed power to her horn. Keeping one eye on the earth pony, she scanned the forest around them for an object of sufficient mass and settled on a small boulder off to her right. “I’d like you to pick up that round rock in front of the bush with the orange flowers and carry it over here.”

The Guard bobbed his head, confused. “Uhh, Doctor Sparkle, why-”

She began mouthing the first lines of a disjunction spell powerful enough to dispel- or at least visibly affect- even the most sophisticated illusions; it was also more than powerful enough to do serious, lasting neurological damage to a living pony. “Please, just… do what I’m asking you.”

“Umm… all right?” He stowed his notebook again and, with some effort and no small amount of muttering, managed to heave the stone up onto his armored back and carry it over to Twilight, letting it roll off and hit the muddy trail with a muffled splat. Twilight unloaded the disjunction spell into it, inflicting nothing but a small scorch mark, then charged and fired another at the hole from which it had originally been removed for good measure. The rock remained a rock and the hole remained a hole. All the while, the Guard looked on, bemused.

Illusion spells could look, sound, feel, and smell utterly real. If somepony were foolish enough to lick one of the monsters in the grove, in fact, it probably would have tasted utterly real as well. But the sole absolute limitation on that sort of magic was that illusions could not physically affect the real world. Nightmare Moon could simulate an illusionary Guardspony moving an illusionary rock, or make Twilight think that it had been moved when in fact it was right where it had always been, even creating the sensation of empty space at that location… but if it had been real at the start, and was real at the end, then there was nothing she could have done. There were other methods of lifting objects remotely, of course, and there was no reason on the level of basic magical principles why Nightmare Moon’s telekinesis couldn’t reach this far out, but if she could generate that much force at such a distance, there would have been no need for her to bother with illusions at all- she could have just as easily wrung Twilight’s neck. “Girls? I… think he’s the real thing!”

As the others cautiously stepped out from their hiding places, the Guard began counting under his breath. “Four… five… great! That’s all a’yous!” he finished at a more normal volume.

Twilight looked him up and down a second time. He was on the young side, chubby for a soldier, with a dun-colored mane and the sort of broad, homely, expressive features that made it hard not to immediately take a liking to him. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” the mage asked.

“Oh! I’m, uhh, Private Beaten Track-”

“Private Beaten, eh? Bet he had a hard time in Basic…” Pinkie Pie muttered, just loud enough for everypony to hear.

“Uhh, yous can just call me Track, OK?” He chuckled quietly, more to himself than anypony else. “Anyways, I’m part a’ the search party that got sent out to look for the six a’ yous after we kicked Nightmare Moon and her zombies outta Ponyville.”

Applejack blinked, confused. “Kicked Nightmare Moon…?”

“Yeah,” the Private suddenly became animated, trotting in a small circle, “It was awesome! They had a bunch of us grunts go in and draw her out inna the open, then the Warm Light of Dawn came out from behind a cloudbank and shelled the blue offer hide!”

“Luna’s… dead?” Fluttershy whispered.

“Her and a buncha’ those weird slit-eyed skeleton guys, yeah. Most of ‘em dropped just as soon as the big mare got hit, and we’ve just about rounded up all the rest. Been a busy couple days, otherwise we’d a’ been out here a little sooner.”

Rarity jerked upright as though struck. “A couple of… days?” she stammered.

Track closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, there was this kind of a siege for a little while, we had negotiations over hostages, and… yeah. It’s been about three days since you all went in here.”

Twilight and Pinkie Pie looked at each other, then back to Track. “Everfree,” they said, near-simultaneously.

“So,” Track continued, “I… reckon we should prob'ly get a move on, link up with the rest of my squad, and get the lot a’ yous back to civilization.”

“What about Rainbow Dash?” Rarity asked, “Those Lunar brutes got ahold of her and dragged her in here, we can’t just leave her behind…”

“Yeah, we know, we know” the stallion nodded, “I got a message… I dunno, five minutes ago or so that another group managed to spring her. That was pretty clever of yous with the gem and all, you know. Probably saved her life.” He turned around and waved a hoof down the trail. “Now, c’mon, we gotta move before somethin’ bigger and hungrier than us comes along!”

(♫)

Slowly, cautiously, they started walking.

“Ya know,” Track continued as their pace picked up, “We got a whole loada’ Academy mages back in town workin’ to pull back Princess Celestia. Couldn’t make much sense outta’ most of it, but I get the sense that more than anything theys could just use somepony to tell ‘em all what to do, ya' know?” He scoffed. “Yous shoulda seen their faces when Commander Shiny told ‘em off for not taking Twilight’s work seriously back before alla' this hit the propellers.”

Applejack stepped past Twilight and made her way closer to the front of the procession. “Ah think it is awful funny runnin’ inta’ ya out here… our run a’ luck’s not been nearly this good ‘fore now.”

The stallion shook his head. “I dunno, we’re not outta the woods yet… uhh, so to speak. Probably gotta head up to Canterlot a couple times before this is over, too. Interviews with the Day Court and so on.” He turned briefly to face Applejack head-on, never once slowing. “Don’t worry, we’ll run yous up there free of charge,” He flashed a reassuring smile at Fluttershy, “and we’ll make sure the press gives everypony a wide berth. Have the whole town back to normal in no time.”

“That’s awful nice of you to think a’ Fluttershy, seeing as ya’ve never met ‘er before…” the farmer responded, awkwardly fiddling with her leather cowmare hat- Twilight wasn’t entirely certain how she’d gotten it to stay overtop of her full-face helmet.

“Oh,” Track’s ears shifted back and a faint pinkness appeared under his plum-colored fur. “The Lieutenant asked for a volunteer to keep an eye on the cottage, make sure it stays just like ya left it. Took the liberty of carting out mosta’ that armor and stuff that was piled up, our ranger didn’t think it was all that safe.” He turned to Rarity and flipped another page in his notebook. “Thought that armor looked pretty neat, though. Are you really the mare who owns that fancy workshop? I caught some a’ the higher-ups from Canterlot drooling over it a couple times.”

“This all just gets better and better…” Applejack muttered.

His ears tucked down completely now. “Well, we were gonna win this whole mess eventually, weren’t we? Either that or die, right?”

The farmer shrugged. “Ah suppose…”

The canopy above was growing ever denser, and without the light of Track’s lantern Twilight didn’t think she’d’ve been able to see more than six feet in front of her. “Are you sure we’re not going in even deeper?” she asked.

“Everfree.” Private Track rolled his eyes, then waved at a solitary line of hoofprints matching the shape of Royal Guard sabatons heading the opposite way along the damp ground, “so it might not be the most direct way, but I know we’ll get back eventually.”

A momentary break in the canopy allowed brilliant purple light to shine through. It was hard to tell from such a brief glimpse, but they seemed to be heading more or less directly for the source. “’Zat one of the beacons?” Pinkie Pie asked, “What are they doing still up?”

“Every camp’s got a mage or two working pretty hard to keep ‘em up. They make this place a lot easier to get around and those old Cairns are good bases. We might finally make some headway in getting through here, now; the eggheads were all pretty excited about it.” He whistled, “There’s gonna be some celebration for yous when we get outta here…” He flipped open his notebook once again, “Hey, uhh, Pinkie Pie, right? This thing says you work at the bakery, any chance you could set me and some a’ the others up? I’m 'bout hungry enough to eat my own helmet…” Another page flipped up onto the chapboard backing. “And… Applejack, you probably already know this, but your whole family’s been out lookin’ for ya. Lieutenant had to talk ‘em outta comin’ along on the search, and I don’t think it really stuck, so it’s good for everypony involved I found ya now before any of ‘em did somethin’ drastic…”

The farmer nodded. “Yeah, Ah reckon so…”

For the first time since they’d met, Track’s expression darkened. “What’cher deal, exactly, anyways? You’s been breathin’ down my neck ever since we ran into each other.”

There was a long, tense silence. “Ah don’t got a… deal,” Applejack finally said, “Ah’m just… havin’ a hard time wrappin’ mah head ‘round alla’ this business. How’s a’come you know so much ‘bout all of us, anyways?”

“Oh.” The stallion smiled again, and patted his notepad. “Well, they did tell us everything they knew about’cha so’s we could try’n figure out where's yous woulda’ gone. We interviewed yer pals and families, that kinda’ thing.”

Applejack nodded, ears folding back slightly. “So… uhh… is Applebloom doin’ all right? Ah reckon them Lunars gave ‘er quite the scare, and Ah ain’t had the chance to sit down an’ talk to ‘er as Ah’d’a liked.”

Once again the notebook was produced. “Oh, Big Macintosh’s lookin’ after ‘er.”

“And Fluttershy’s rabbit?”

“One a’ the rangers minding the cottage’s been leaving food out for it.” He laughed, rather more loudly than Twilight thought was entirely appropriate given the situation. “Me, I think that thing needs to be locked up someplace far away from decent ponies, but… ours is not to question why, and all that.”

“What about that little filly who’s always hangin’ round with the weatherponies?”

“The orange one? She started pesterin’ us too, you know. Wish her folks were around more, they’d be gettin’ a piece of the Commander’s mind about it.”

Applejack nodded, “Well, ya sure do know a lot about Ponyville for somepony who’s only been there three days… or, well, less, actually, since ya spent some a’ that time in here lookin’ for us.”

Track almost physically glowed. “I take my work very seriously!”

“Yeah, Ah reckon you do…” Applejack shifted the warhammer on her back ever so slightly. Track didn’t seem to notice. It was probably just an attempt to get the heavy weapon situated in a more comfortable position, Twilight decided. The farmer was walking quite close to Track, actually, closer than was entirely proper, and seemed focused on him far more intently than the others. “Hey, Ah know this is kinda’ a weird question, but… can Ah see them notes a’ yours?”

(♫)

“You really better not, there’s personal information in there,” the Guardspony said immediately, and moved to tuck the pad back into his armor.

Applejack was faster. Her right front hoof snapped out and connected with Track’s, knocking the notepad into a high arc over his back. Twilight reached out towards it with her telekinesis, but for whatever reason couldn’t get even the faintest hint of a grip, nor did she see or hear where it hit the ground.

“Hey! That was my Lieutenant’s!” Track cried out, bewildered, but Applejack wasn’t done with him. She brought her hoof around and slammed it hard into the Guardspony’s unarmored chin.

He staggered backward. “Eeeeow, hey, what was-”

With a terrible, sick feeling Twilight saw Applejack twist around and grab her warhammer in her teeth. The scholar cried out, charged forward and lit her horn, the others right behind her, but her telekinetic field slid off Applejack's heavy, spellforged Landsknecht armor like quicksilver on cold glass. The hammer met Track’s barrel with a meaty thud and a pulse of earth magic that Twilight could feel vibrating in her bones- the stallion didn’t even have the breath to cry out as he was launched clean off his hooves, skidding to an awkward stop a good yard or two further down the trail.

Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie all slammed into the bigger mare at about the same time, Twilight trying to wrench the hammer away with her jaws and telekinesis, as the others simply piled on and tried to immobilize the farmer through sheer weight of bodies. “What… in Tartarus… were… you… thinking?” Fluttershy demanded through gritted teeth.

Applejack seemed to be having little if any trouble staying upright or keeping her grip on the hammer, but after a moment she relented and released the handle from her jaws. The others looked to Twilight, and when the scholar nodded they all climbed back to their hooves. “What Ah’m doin’, is killin’ another one a’ them damn illusions.”

Up ahead, Track had managed to roll onto his uninjured side and lift his head up far enough off the muddy ground to speak. “What… wha… no…” he paused, wincing in pain, “Forest musta’ gotten to her… she’s… no, I’m not…”

“Applejack.” Twilight struggled to keep her voice calm and level, but internally her thoughts were chasing themselves in circles. “Illusions can’t manipulate physical objects. You saw me check him.”

“Ah believe ya, Twilight,” Applejack strode closer, green eyes fixed on Twilight’s purple. Her voice, too, was flat and perfectly level. “But if he’s for real… how’s he still talkin’ after Ah put a hammer right in ‘is ribs?”

Twilight set the warhammer down by the side of the trail and carefully advanced on Private Track. The stallion was struggling to move himself now, eyes wide and unfocused in panic. The armor over his ribcage was warped and dented, blood oozing from underneath to darken his plum-colored fur, the skin around it already beginning to bruise. It was possible she hadn’t seen exactly where the hammer had hit, and was mistaken in believing it had been lower- just as it was possible she hadn’t seen where his notepad had landed, and possible that the outside world had experienced three days in what was for her almost certainly less than an hour. “Don’t try to get up,” Twilight said in what she hoped was a reassuring, authoritative tone. “I’m just going to run a few medical divinations on you.”

“No, no, come on, look,” he stammered, “My name’s Beaten Track, I was born on the Upper East Side’a Manehattan, I joined the Guard right outta’ high school, went through Basic at Marris Island, I can put Rainbow Dash on the Sending-spell for you if you-”

Twilight began repeating the chant of a high-powered disjunction spell, slowly playing the cone of silver light up and across Track’s hoof.

“Hey, what are you… ow, OW, hey, that feels weird, cut it out!” The stallion cried out as his leg began to twitch. Twilight wrapped it in a telekinetic field and upped the power.

“What is that, what is that, you tryin’ ta’ shock me to death or somethin’?!” He demanded. “Cut that out!” He was sweating now, and thrashing in the dirt as he struggled to free himself.

Willing herself to ignore both countless hours of magical-safety training and the headache building up just under the base of her horn, Twilight upped the power once again.

“Seriously, stop that!” Track panted, “Doc, c’mon, you’re really hurtin’ me bad, aww, please, just stoaaaAAAAGH!”

The semicircle of hoof exposed to her spell dissolved into a vaporous blue absence-of-material, through which shone thousands of tiny, cold stars.

Twilight backed away and cut the spell.

“Y’all… might not wanna watch this,” Applejack said as she advanced, but when the farmer slammed her hammer down directly into Private Track’s skull, Twilight didn’t look away.

Even when she’d been expecting the transition, she couldn’t even begin to properly identify the point where golden armor became blue, muddy plum-colored fur became desiccated hide, and blood and brains became fragments of pulverized bone- only that ‘before’, she remembered the corpse of a Guardspony laid out in front of her, and that ‘after’ it was and had always been just another revenant.

“Hmm,” she muttered to nopony in particular, “Project a major image or something similar directly over a physical substrate she also controls, so it can interact with the real environment. Neat trick, but it must be hard to keep the two synchronized…”

“Umm… Applejack?” Sidling up beside the two of them, Fluttershy’s soft voice broke Twilight from her thoughts, “How did you know that pony was… that he wasn’t real?”

The farmer calmly pulled her hammer out of the mud and gave it a few experimental swings at nothing in particular. “Shucks, reckon that was the last a’ the charge, ‘m afraid… no surprise since it’s been up on a shelf since Ah was a little filly,” she said, then slid the weapon into its designated loop and turned back to the pegasus. “Well, ah saw that funny little book a’ his disappear inta’ thin air when Ah knocked it away from ‘im, and the first time Ah slugged him, there was just a moment where my hoof went through ‘im an’ Ah felt somethin’ dry an’ bony. And ya know them dead Lunar things never really do have a proper barrel.”

“We mean, before that, darling,” Rarity cut in. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to hit everypony you meet from now on just to make sure that they’re really alive!”

“Naw, don’t be silly, Rares,” she paused, adjusting her hat. Twilight suddenly realized she never had bothered to learn what the thing was actually called. “But, well… his whole story… Ah mean, he had an answer for every single question Ah could ever ask ‘im. An’ they all made perfect sense. Fer the Sun’s sake, he even got all a’ y’all’s names right the very first try!”

“And… that’s bad?” Pinkie Pie asked.

The farmer shook her head. “Real ponies… ain’t perfect. We forget things, we contradict ourselves, we… uh, what’s it called, umm, con-fab-u-late eight diff’rent kindsa’ nonsense without ever meanin’ to. Ah didn’t reckon he was a revenant right away as such, but as much as Ah wanted alla’ this to be somepony else’s problem I had ta’ face the facts that he was hidin’ somethin’. He was just… too good to be true.”

That seemed to be enough for the others. Pinkie Pie nodded and waved a hoof further up the trail. “I bet they’re waiting for us up where that beacon is. And somehow, I don’t think they’re gonna have a chariot back to Ponyville.”

“Pinkie’s right, darling. We should probably keep well away from that place.”

“I think I can manage that, yeah.” Twilight was already fiddling with her theodolite and compass. The signal for Dash’s gem had moved about thirty degrees since they’d run into what they’d thought was help- assuming a constant velocity of travel, that meant they had to be getting close. In fact, it was entirely possible the Lunars were leading all of them to the same fortified Cairn- and if that was the case, they didn’t have any more time to fool around chasing apparitions.

Author's Note

UPDATED 09 OCTOBER 2020 for small phrasing, grammar, and formatting fixes.

Wondered if I’d be needing to bump up the rating for this one, but everybody already knows these random creepypasta monsters are illusions… right? The interesting part is seeing how they figure that out compared to the original episode.

I was initially concerned about narratively favoring some of the Mane Six over the others in the Everfree. Rainbow Dash’s canon test was badass and I was able to generate a bunch of other material for her and the concept of loyalty extremely quickly (it helps that she is probably my favorite pony after Twilight), but for the others not so much (particularly AJ- how do you test honesty when there are few other ponies around?). However, Serketry had long been of the opinion that Nightmare Moon should mess with some of the Elements more than others because Luna wielded three elements fighting Discord and presumably was more attuned to them than the ones Celestia wielded. I was initially skeptical, mostly just because that would have meant more work for me writing the challenges (and also more text for you to read without there being a clear point to it), but it turns out that Loyalty was one of Luna’s elements and I was with some effort able to expand out Laughter and Honesty as well and thus had justification for not going to too much of an extreme with the others.

That, and, really, while the idea of favoring some of the main characters more than others initially offended my idea of symmetry, there’s really not a lot of other reasons not to do so provided I am willing to admit that’s what I’m doing.

By Cover of Night

(♫)

Rainbow Dash spotted Pinkie Pie standing casually in the middle of the trail a split-second before the Lunars reacted- they could see better in the dark than Dash could, surely, but for that brief moment they must simply not have believed she was really there.

“’Scuse me,” the baker said, trotting closer, “Would any of you know how I can get back to Ponyville from here? I’m kinda lost…”

For a moment, it seemed as though the skinny pegasus in the helmet was going to step forward. Then her unicorn friend drew his blade and held it flat-side-out in front of her chest.

“I do not like this…” Vortex muttered.

They all just stood there for perhaps a second or two, the Lunar soldiers looking from Pinkie to Dash and then back again.

From somewhere in the canopy high above, she heard Fluttershy call out “Go.”

Rainbow Dash tucked her legs underneath her and hit the dirt.

“Go.”

Applejack charged out of the underbrush behind the party, hammer in her jaws and already swinging. Ignoring what sounded like an awful ruckus already taking place not too much farther up ahead, she barreled straight for the unicorn with the sword- who, as it turned out, proved to be none other than Foxglove’s guard, Smoky Mirror.

It was, she supposed, next to impossible to actually take the wiry stallion by surprise, what with his head seemingly always on a swivel-mount as it was, but Applejack figured she’d just about managed it. The unicorn yelled something inarticulate and leaped sideways out of the way, his sword moving in the opposite direction entirely to slash across Applejack’s throat.

The farmer bit back a curse. If she’d been wearing the same sort of armor Smoky himself was wearing and not the more modern Landsknecht gear, she didn’t have the slightest doubt that strike would’ve sliced her windpipe open. Even with the armor it still hurt worse than a drunken brawl with a hydra, but Applejack refused to let that slow her down as she wrenched her hammer out of the trailbed and wound up for another swing.

By that time, though, the unicorn was already halfway back up the trail, blade swinging for the back of her head. Applejack twisted her neck and managed to turn the hammer’s motion into a desperate parry, then powered forward to close the distance between them.

“Go.”

Rarity pulled herself up onto the top of the berm she’d been hiding behind, and locked eyes with Twilight Sparkle on the other side of the trail. Before Rarity could even draw her rapier, the scholar had already fired some sort of force-spell that made a noise like a firecracker going off underwater, and swept out a cone about four yards long with an expanding disc of shimmering magenta energy. Much of it slammed into the berm beneath Rarity’s hooves and gave it a noticeable kick; what passed overtop left her with a low ringing in her ears and an awful, squeezing sensation just behind her eye sockets; but the two bat-winged Lunar pegasi on either side of the hunkered-down Rainbow Dash got far and away the worst of it. They had just made it into a low hover ahead of their bent-horned unicorn comrade when the wave hit them; now they flapped aimlessly in seeming confusion, Rain Chaser fumbling with her elaborate helmet as her leather-clad stallion friend flapped desperately to gain altitude, fighting against the magenta glow of Twilight’s telekinesis.

Further back she saw Applejack charge out of cover and take a wild swing that missed her Lunar unicorn target entirely. Rarity lifted her rapier into a guard position and jumped up over the berm, ready to assist, when Twilight called out “Help, I can’t holdhim!”.

The tailor twisted around mid-gallop and added her telekinesis to Twilight’s own, gritting her teeth against a surge of feedback as the bat-pegasus thrashed and flapped to get free. She considered lifting one of the odd, vaguely squarish stones that dotted the path to throw at him, but it was taking all of their combined force just to keep him from climbing any further- whatever else she might have said about those bizarre, bat-like wings, they were certainly extremely strong.

She spared a look at where the other Lunar pegasus had last been standing and saw that the bat-filly was gone. “Twilight? What about Rain Chaser? This wasn’t part of the-” she shouted, before the sound of rattling armor cut her off. On the other end of the trail, Pinkie Pie and Chaser were rolling around on the trail in a tangle of armor, hooves, and lurid-pink tail.

“Wait, which one’s -guh- Rain Chaser?” The baker asked, before continuing to slam her hooves into the other mare’s face and chest.

“Wait, which one’s -guh- Rain Chaser?”

Fluttershy didn’t know the answer to that question and, in all honestly, didn’t particularly care. She glided down from her perch in the branches up above whisper-quietly, her greenish-brown cloak almost invisible in the shadowy forest, and slunk through the melee more or less completely unnoticed. Rainbow Dash was, for once, doing exactly what she had been told to do, which was to stay low and keep out of the way, and thanks to the rest of Fluttershy’s companions the Lunar guards were nowhere near her. She was tracking the melee with barely-contained jealousy, but when she saw the other pegasus her mouth dropped open. “F-Fluttershy?”

“I’ve got you, just hold on…” As she fiddled with the ropes binding the weathermare’s wings, Fluttershy realized that whichever Lunar had patched Dash up hadn’t done a particularly good job. There were still smears of dried blood on the end of her muzzle, judging by the depth of the portions Fluttershy could see the wound on her right hock should really have been poulticed instead of just bound, and at any rate the cloth it was wrapped in was saturated with blood and starting to come loose; perhaps more dangerously her wings had been bound far enough behind her for so long that there was some risk of tendon injury.

Finally the ropes were unknotted, and as they slipped free Fluttershy cast an appraising look at the astral steel shackles wrapped around Dash’s hooves. They looked far too sturdy to stand much chance of forcing, and she didn’t have the key. “All right, it looks like I’m going to have to try to pick those locks. Try to hold still just a little longer, okay?”

Rainbow was already struggling to her hooves, however. “Doesn’t matter, I can still fly!”

“Wait, no, you-”

Fluttershy reached out a hoof to hold her friend back, but it was already too late. Rainbow flicked her wings forward, then howled in pain as the left one failed to stop at full extension.

The smaller pegasus was at her friend’s side in an instant, struggling to pop Dash’s wrist back into joint as the weathermare quivered and nearly chewed through her own lower lip in her struggle to stay quiet, but it was already too late.

“The prisoner! And -oof- and another!” The bat-pony that was wrestling with Pinkie Pie called out in between strikes. She managed to slip above the larger mare and free her wings from where they’d been pinned, immediately swinging them down and using the hooked joints to draw deep cuts against Pinkie’s shoulders. The baker yelped and lost her grip- just for a moment, but that was all it took for the Lunar to wrench herself free and dive towards the still-grounded pegasi.

Fluttershy was only dimly aware of somepony -it might have been Rarity- yelling “Look out!” behind her, far too late for it to do any good.

“Look out!” Rarity yelled, but she knew it was far too late to do any good.

She could see her rapier shining on the ground where she’d dropped it, not very far at all from the path Rain Chaser was taking towards Dash and Fluttershy. She could, even at this range, lift it up and do some serious damage, or she could keep her hold on that frightening purple-clad one, but Rarity knew very well her own limits. She couldn’t do both.

“Terribly sorry, Twilight.”

She reached out with her telekinesis and yanked her blade upward, twisting it sideways in the air with all the force she could muster. It skittered across the armor on Rain Chaser’s shoulder and down on under her wing, scarcely injuring the bat-pegasus while sending a spike of force-feedback knifing through Rarity’s horn that set the unicorn’s teeth on edge, but it had done its job. The Lunar cried out in a mixture of surprise and anger as she spun off course, hoofblades carving long furrows in the Everfree mud as she struggled to push herself back up from a full-on collision. She’d not gotten within a yard of Dash or Fluttershy.

By that point, though, Vortex was already long gone. As soon as the telekinetic pressure on him had become anything less than completely immobilizing, his entire body goggles and all had begun to fade away and become insubstantial, and in under three seconds he’d simply evaporated into thin air.

“Dammit!” Twilight shouted, and began hurling bolts of pure force one after another- at Rain Chaser, at Smoky Mirror’s armored figure far off down the trail, and at the bat-winged shadow that flickered maddeningly between the trees just out of easy visual range. But she was rapidly beginning to realize that having studied the structure of kinetic bolt spells well enough to cast novel variations in her sleep, and actually hitting another pony who moved fast and stayed out of direct line-of-sight, were two very different things.

After a few seconds she had to stop, as the ache underneath her horn developed to the point where concentration was impossible, and contemplate the fact that the entire engagement was going sideways extremely quickly.

“Marvelous display, Darling,” Rarity called out from across the trail, making a strangled little nnh! noise when Rain Chaser seized the opportunity to swat the unicorn’s rapier back out of her telekinesis. “Just a suggestion, but if you opened your eyes you’d be able to see it too!”

“Gonna be a while, Ah’m afraid!” Applejack yelled from even further away. “This slippery varmint just won’t stand still!”

“Hey, you’d better be careful!” Rainbow Dash added, Fluttershy still struggling to set her twisted left wing,“That purple guy can… I dunno, turn into smoke or somethin’!”

“Rainbow, it would’ve been very nice to know that before he’d just done it!”

(♫)

“Look out!” Somepony called out, far behind Applejack. It might have been Rarity, or it might have been Twilight Sparkle. It didn’t particularly matter, because at the moment there was precious little the farmer could do to help either way.

“Gonna be a while, Ah’m afraid! This slippery varmint just won’t stand still!” She yelled, by way of explanation, and then took another swipe at Smoky Mirror for good measure. Her hammer wound up doing quite a number on the tree right behind where he’d just been, but as usual by that point the stallion himself was already long gone. She’d managed to graze him a couple of times before now, and he was sure as Tartarus going to feel the bruises in the morning, but that was the extent of it.

Applejack was not as dumb as a lot of ponies took her for. She knew full well the bent-horned Lunar unicorn was trying to run her around and tire her out; then wait for her to slip up. What she was reasonably sure he didn’t know in turn was that between the enchantments on her hammer, the enchantments on her armor, and her own admittedly limited ability to draw strength from the ground under her hooves, it’d take a good long while before he’d even put a dent in her stamina. If it came to that, and privately she hoped that just maybe it would, Applejack was entirely capable of keeping this up all night. The farmer knew she wouldn’t be much use against either of the bat-pegasi, especially that scary flying cloud, and she also knew that if she let an experienced swordstallion like Smoky Mirror get anywhere near Rarity or Twilight, they were as good as dead. So she was fine keeping him occupied until somepony could help her properly pin the bastard down.

She reared her head back and made a wide, powerful, and most importantly obvious swing for his chest, hoping that he’d duck under it just like the last few times she’d tried to power directly through his guard. She flicked out a forehoof to strike at where she was expecting to find his unarmored chin, but somehow he knew to stay put this time and refused to take the bait, slashing along her ankle for good measure. It hurt, of course, but that was nothing new. She tried to circle around him, shoving the handle of her weapon towards his head five or six times from different directions to try to goad him into the underbrush, but under the sort of fine telekinetic control Applejack was used to seeing only from Rarity his blade flipped, twisted, slid, and effortlessly parried each and every blow.

She was already bleeding for a dozen cuts through the gaps in her armor- which was why she absolutely could not stop moving. She couldn't afford to pause for breath, even for a second. Then he could slide that blade straight through her visor and be done with her. It really wasn’t any different from what she was trying to do to him, just with speed and precision replacing her overwhelming blunt force. He was smart; she’d give him that, and it’d be a damn shame when she ended up pancaking his skull.

Applejack felt the steam from her breath building up inside her helmet, the blood pooling in her sabatons from the dozens of tiny nicks she’d sustained on her legs. It hurt, but all her life she’d trained herself to push through the pain until her job was done. This was no different.

She didn’t even realize that the entire time Smoky had been leading her further and further away from her friends until she heard Twilight Sparkle swearing a blue streak about something and had absolutely no idea what it was.

Pinkie Pie scampered underneath one of Twilight Sparkle’s big, lens-shaped shields, a ball of lightning scorching a few of her tailhairs as it exploded directly behind her. The claw marks dug into her shoulders were annoying, to say the least, but she was reasonably certain they were just flesh wounds- which, if she was being entirely honest with herself, most injuries to her were. She’d hurt herself worse than that by running into furniture before. She’d be fine.

Taking advantage of the brief protection her friend’s spell was offering, Pinkie produced a good-sized rock and hurled it right back along the path the lightning ball had taken; but, of course, the stallion who had produced that lightning was no longer anywhere nearby. It wasn’t that his movements were random- Pinkie had a damn good handle on randomness, after all, and if that had been the case she’d’ve been able to nail him every single time. His flight was purposeful, but whatever logic directed it was effectively impossible for her to grasp.

That, or he was just doing that stupid thing where he turned into smoke and became effectively untouchable for some indefinite period of time, which as far as Pinkie was concerned should really be considered unsportsmarelike conduct. The Lunars would probably just call it being ‘clever’, though, and insinuate that everypony else was a sun-blind idiot for not having spontaneously developed ephemerality themselves.

She was, at least, lucky enough to be looking right at him when he came in for another pass, which was good because Twilight was staring in the other direction entirely and would have been absolutely no help at all. She tossed another projectile at him, and he actually had to dodge this time, although all that gave Pinkie Pie was the chance to slam into Twilight and push her out of the way of his lightning bolt. The mage cried out, surprised, and the spell she’d been charging fired off sideways to strip the leaves from a tree that was nowhere near either of the bat-winged pegasi.

It was only then that Pinkie Pie realized Twilight’s shield-and-spellwork had been gradually edging the two of them closer to where Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were still hunkered down. She produced a smoke charge, one of the little quick-popping ones that Rainbow Dash had ordered about a month ago and subsequently lost interest in, and hurled it to the ground about a yard ahead of them. It detonated immediately, enveloping the two mares in a thick white cloud.

“Pinkie, what’re you doing?” Twilight demanded, “Now I can’t see, and-”

The first bolt of lightning struck a good three yards from their position.

“C’mon!” Pinkie set off at a full gallop right for Fluttershy’s hideout, the sound of Twilight’s rapid, desperate panting the only confirmation she needed that the mage was following along behind her. Lightning spells incinerated the foliage around them but Pinkie didn’t let that slow her down, ducking and weaving in a complicated pattern that nonetheless always brought them closer to where she wanted to go. Then they were out of the smoke cloud and charging full-out for the natural dugout where the pegasi had taken shelter, Vortex- for the moment- far behind them at the other end of the trail.

Then something else shot overhead, fast and dark and making the telltale snap-snap-snap of leathery wings. “Oh, no,” Twilight muttered, “That filly’s coming around for another pass…”

Rain Chaser saw the mage and that scrappy mud-thrower running for the prisoner, but she didn’t care. She was a leatherwing, one of Princess Luna’s finest. She was faster than both of them combined. Skimming just above ground level she adjusted her course slightly, aiming for the prisoner herself- as Captain Vortex had nearly learned the hard way back in town, the armored mare was almost certainly a much greater threat than the upstarts’ quiet little healer should she make good on her escape plan.

Her hooves met solid ground again and Rain Chaser charged forward, one bladed wing held out at neck level ready to slice.

That was when the healer stepped out in front of her charge and looked Chaser dead in the eye.

The Lunar pegasus skidded to a halt in spite of herself. In the six months she’d spent fighting against the Sun-Tyrant’s army, Rain Chaser had personally killed four different ponies. Three hadn’t known there was a blade headed for their throats until it was too late; the fourth had cursed and spat as she struggled to free herself from the wreckage of a collapsed watchtower, and then died promising Chaser would pay for her treason a hundred times over. She’d never seen a Solar just stand there and look her in the eye.

“Well?” The healer asked, then shook her head. “You don’t have to do this.”

Rain Chaser was a leatherwing, one of Princess Luna’s finest. She’d flown a pallet full of blasting-crystals all by her lonesome to the Solar garrison in Manehattan to earn that honor, and then lain in the back of a wagon for six days with nothing to do but feel her skin stretching and wingbones shifting in order to make good on it. She could hardly back out now.

She raised her blade again. “B-by my oath to Princess Lun-”

The Solar mage struck her from the other side with a beam of pure force that knocked her off her hooves and sent her rolling to an undignified stop in the underbrush easily four yards away.

Pinkie had gotten Twilight to where Dash and Fluttershy had gone to ground, and for that the scholar was eternally grateful. But she’d still come up empty for ideas as far as the problem of that one leather-clad Lunar pegasus was concerned. If they were going to get out of this mess, and quickly, before one of the other Lunars could break off and call for reinforcements, they’d need to do something more than just hold him off- and even that was proving to be a tall order.

“Shield, blast, blast, shield…” Twilight muttered, trying to find any sort of a rhythm or pattern to the way he was flitting about up above and strafing them. Her amniomorphic shields – a magical innovation of Starswirl the Bearded’s that had been largely ignored at the time of the Rebellions and only fully realized three centuries hence– were more than proof against the stallion’s lightning spells, and shooting at him at least temporarily forced him to let up in his assault, but he was getting bolder and more direct with each passing second. “Shield, blast, blast, blast- dammit!” A bolt slipped through the space where her shield by every right should have been, and lanced across Fluttershy’s left foreleg.

The pegasus cried out and fell to her haunches, shaking and struggling to rise as the Shadowbolt circled around to finish what he’d started. Before he could make it, however, Rarity jumped up from behind the berm on the other side of the trail, grabbed Fluttershy in her telekinesis, and hurled her bodily under the next shield in Twilight’s pattern.

“I can’t see Applejack any more!” The white unicorn called.

“Whaddaya mean you can’t see Applejack?” Twilight shouted back, then for the first time since their struggle had begun thoroughly searched the area around their dugout and realized the farmer was nowhere in it.

“This is bad… this is really bad…” Rainbow Dash muttered, searching unsuccessfully for any weapons left in the pouches of her now dented and bloodied armor.

Twilight stopped focusing on the pattern of her shields, throwing out a new and larger dome that would hold just long enough for her not to have to worry about it. She spotted the other Lunar pegasus just pulling herself to her hooves in the underbrush four yards away. She spotted Rarity’s sword, still lying unattended and largely unnoticed in the middle of the track. She had a plan.

Twilight’s telekinetic abilities had always been strong- clumsy, certainly, but strong. She knew that she could easily kill the stumbling Lunar soldier with that sword… but a dead mare wouldn’t be much help against her two more experienced fellows. So Twilight decided to make her help.

She waited for the Shadowbolt to realize her shield wouldn’t break immediately- it took him two more lightning strikes and a head-on physical charge against it, which was more effort than Twilight had anticipated and enough to leave her nauseous and dizzy, but then just as she’d predicted he broke off his attack and winged his way over to Rarity’s less obvious but more vulnerable position.

As soon as his back was turned, Twilight grabbed the rapier in her telekinesis, shot it through the air, then twisted it in place and stabbed it cleanly through the leathery membrane of the fallen bat-mare’s left wing.

For a humble farmer, Applejack was certainly a lot more adept at violence than Smoky Mirror had expected. At this point he felt he’d have an easier time breaking down a curtain wall with a field knife than genuinely besting the Solar loyalist, but that wasn’t necessarily his job. So he fell back on his training, let his body and blade move without thought, and focused on keeping himself – and his squad – alive.

Then, from somewhere a good twenty yards or more back the way he’d come, he heard young Rain Chaser scream in agony.

“Ruttin’ mage just stabbed me! I am- agh, that hurts…”

Immediately, Smoky reversed course and leaped back the way he came, slashing and parrying madly to ward off Applejack until his blade was at the very edge of where his telekinesis could effectively support it, struggling to buy himself even a few seconds of breathing-space. “Private Chaser!” he called out, “What has become of thee?!”

Her voice seemed to come to him from a great distance, unsteady and slurred, about to break down completely, “Pinned… pinned my wing… they are… all around me… I cannot… Captain… anypony… please, I need help!”

Smoky yanked his longsword back towards him just in time to prevent another hammer strike from either breaking it or knocking it away where he’d never be able to find it again. He slammed the flat of his blade into the sun-addled farmer’s neckplates once more, aiming to stun because he knew it was currently impossible to do any more damage, and then dashed back the way he came.

In the thicket where they had been ambushed, he couldn’t see any of the Solars, but he could see their hoofwork plenty well enough. Private Rain Chaser was crouched on her haunches on the edge of the trail, her left wing held out at an awkward angle and pinned in place by a slim silver rapier. As the Lancepesade watched, vaguely appalled, Chaser struggled to twist her neck around far enough to grab the handle, gasped in pain once again as the movement put additional tension on the delicate membrane of her wing, and then after a few seconds more of struggling let her head flop forward onto the ground, glassy-eyed and panting.

“Hold fast, Private!” he called out as he bolted forward, “I shall-”

He never got to finish. From behind the berm off to his left, a white unicorn in a duelist’s harness abruptly materialized, horn already alight. He spun in place, raising his blade in a guard position… and then the mare hurled a globe of mud and greenery directly at him, completely engulfing his weapon and slipping past it as more or less a single cohesive entity. Smoky reeled backwards as the projectile slammed into him, seeping through the joints of his armor and the visor of his helmet to cover him in foul, sticky Everfree mud. He stumbled, blind and suffocating for a horrible moment before his telekinesis found the catches on his helmet and yanked it off, backing away by reflex as he coughed and wiped at his eyes.

When he could see again, the unicorn was running at him, a dagger that matched the silver rapier held in her telekinesis and already heading directly for the gap between his legplates. Smoky jerked away, barely managing to avoid a strike that could easily have hamstrung him, but the mare was impossibly nimble and he still felt cold metal slide across the bone of his right pastern. He stumbled, thought of Rain Chaser still trapped, now somewhere behind him where he couldn’t see, grit his teeth against the pain and forced himself to stand. When he looked up again, Applejack was standing next to the white mare with her hammer in her teeth.

He held position and picked his blade up from the trail where it had fallen, painfully aware that now he was fighting two of the Solars.

“Ruttin’ mage just stabbed me! I am- agh, that hurts…”

The bat-pegasus that Rarity had identified as Rain Chaser thrashed and struggled in the Everfree mud, one wing pinned in place by a silver rapier. Twilight Sparkle was briefly reminded of a bug on a piece of corkboard; then she was surprised by just how little the comparison bothered her.

“Private Chaser!” a stallion’s voice called out from deeper off the trail, “What has become of thee?!”

“Rarity…” Twilight muttered, just loud enough that she could be sure she was heard, waving her hoof at the tailor’s hiding-pace on the other side of the trail, “Get ready.”

A flash of purple mane was her only acknowledgment.

“Pinned… pinned my wing… they are… all around me…” Chaser continued, “I cannot… Captain… anypony… please, I need help!”

Fluttershy stared at Twilight, aghast, and began to step forward. Twilight brought a hoof up to the pegasus’s chest. “Wait for it…”

On the trail below Rain Chaser struggled to free herself, before collapsing back down on the trail. Twilight had meant to stab her with the hilt facing towards her tail, to make any escape impossible by simple anatomy. As always her telekinetic control hadn’t been quite up to the task, but given that the transformed Lunars did not, in fact, show a significantly elevated tolerance for pain it had ultimately been unnecessary.

“Hold fast, Private!” the Lunar stallion who had disappeared with Applejack came galloping out from cover, “I shall-”

Rarity wrenched a collection of earth from the berm she was behind and hurled it at him; she charged after him as soon as it hit and both ponies disappeared back into the underbrush.

Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash both stepped forward to join Fluttershy, eyes narrowed. Twilight shook her head and started scanning the canopy up above. “Wait for it…”

“Somepony, anypony… please, I… I do not want to die out here…” Rain Chaser sobbed.

High up in the canopy, something foggy and iridescent slithered out of the shadows. It drifted towards the stricken bat-filly with agonizing slowness, seeming to wrap around the rapier’s handle of its own accord. Then very rapidly it started to define and solidify, collapsing back into the form of a stallion clad in purple leather with the handle clutched securely in his jaws.

Twilight unloaded another kinetic spell square in his side, with enough force to toss him half a meter back.

He cursed, Rain Chaser howled, and the blade ripped out of her wing and spun away over the berm on the other side of the trail. The Lunar stallion immediately rallied, grabbed his comrade around the barrel and pulled into a steep climb, but with her weight to carry and the possibility of fading back into the ether removed, he was just that critical bit slower. Most of Twilight’s spells and Pinkie Pie’s missiles still missed him- but not all of them. When Rain Chaser wriggled out of his grasp a few seconds later and split off in the other direction, he was flying with a noticeable list to the right.

(♫)

Struggling to ignore the searing pain in her left wing, Rain Chaser flapped hard to gain altitude but could only manage to maintain a low hover. Her earlier fear had all but deserted her, replaced with a far more familiar vicious outrage at seeing Captain Vortex tricked by that Imperial mage- tricked, no less, with herself as bait. If she died to cover his escape, then so be it, but she was at least taking a few of those sun-blinded dogs down with her.

She twisted her head side to side, searching for a target. She thought she saw a flash of brilliant pink amidst the trees and lurched in that direction, but when she looked directly at it there was nothing left- not even hoofprints in the mud.

“Show thyself, coward!” She called out, disgusted at the tremor she could still hear in her voice.

“Hey, so, does that mean you didn’t like my entrance?” The earth mare replied from somewhere behind her.

Rain Chaser wheeled about and snarled, finding herself face-to-face with the Imperial for the first time since she’d carved up the pony’s sides- but now, somehow, they were both in the air.

“Well, I guess it was either that, or… ‘Surprise!’”

Something hard and metallic slammed into the back of the bat-filly’s skull, and then her wing wasn’t hurting her any more.

Only out of the corner of his eye did Smoky Mirror see Rain Chaser break free- he couldn’t spare the attention from his task of defending against the two mares in front of him. He could only afford to consider the event at all because it meant that the slim white one’s rapier wasn’t stuck in the ground any more; if she realized that and got ahold of it, his situation would become even more untenable. Gaining ground was out of the question; it took all of his skill and stamina just to hold them off in a fighting retreat.

He heard voices in the distance, Chaser’s and another mare’s, before Chaser abruptly fell silent. He didn’t dare speculate what had happened to Captain Vortex.

He ducked and parried, hunting desperately for an opening that would give him the chance to disengage and flee. He found none.

Something shifted in the bushes behind him. He didn’t dare turn around. If he had, he might have had a chance to avoid the full-body tackle from their blue pegasus prisoner… but probably not.

The two ponies flipped over and slid across the leaf-litter, armor scraping on armor. The pegasus batted away his weak right hoof, jabbing for his throat and starting to press on his windpipe. Eyes watering and vision going faint at the edges, Smoky reached out telekinetically for his blade- and found, to his surprise, that another field already had a hold of it.

He struggled against what could only be the telekinesis of the white swordsmare for a good few seconds, even as the fuzziness behind his eyes intensified and he could feel the energy of his own horn trickling away to parts unknown. Then something very definitely solid intervened and plucked the weapon out of his grip; to where he couldn’t tell, and somepony who sounded vaguely familiar was saying, “Now, now, Rarity, you already got yer own…”

Lancepesade Smoky Mirror had been fighting other ponies for a very long time, longer than he could really care to remember, it seemed, and he was very, very tired, and the weight on his chest and neck were extremely heavy, but at least he was warm and his belly was full. He let his eyes drift closed, sure that when he opened them again he’d be back in his cot by the fire, and maybe be able to get down another bowl of broth.

“I commend thee for thine cleverness, mage, even as I wonder about thine morals,” the Shadowbolt’s voice filtered down from somewhere in the canopy, “Mine oath forbids me from letting thine little band take me alive, but before I… confess that I thought that a pity. Now, my doubts have quieted.”

Twilight Sparkle stood stock-still, out in the open, horn pointed skyward. A bolt of lightning lanced down from above, and stopped short a foot from her head against the smooth dome of an amniomorphic shield. Its job done, she let the shield dissolve, and fired a stunning-bolt of her own back the way it had come- this time, unlike her previous two attempts, she was rewarded with a strangled cry of pain.

“There you are…”

The Shadowbolt came tumbling down from whatever branch he’d been perched on in a cloud of displaced leaves, managing at the last moment to turn his fall into a glide and pivoting directly for her.

Had he been uninjured, he might even have made it. But even at this distance Twilight could see the awkward angle he was holding his right wing and the blood trickling from his ear, and his descent was far too slow and his flight path far too linear. She wrapped him in the tightest telekinetic field she could manage, and held him in place.

“So… mage… am I to become the bait… in thine next trap?” He asked, thrashing ineffectually against her field. “Or will… my fellows in thine town… receive mine hide… sliced to ribbons… as an example of what happens… to those who stand against the Tyrant’s rule?”

“Hold still,” Twilight hissed, then gathered herself and spoke more clearly as she started to pull his frantically-kicking body towards the ground. “Hold still and let me bring you down here and I won't have to hurt you.”

Just as she’d anticipated, his form began to soften and fade, losing its details and going hazy around the edges. In her telekinesis he felt more like some sort of gel or thick fluid for a few seconds, then not much of anything at all. Almost immediately the wisp of purplish vapor that had just been the Shadowbolt shot upwards out of her grasp, making for the treeline- and then slammed into the interior surface of the perfectly spherical, airtight shield bubble she’d been preparing the entire time he’d been taunting her for just that purpose.

The whole structure pulsed on an odd, syncopated low frequency as soon as the mist came into contact with it, but it held- which was more than could be said for whatever spell was responsible for the Shadowbolt’s incorporeality. He resolidified rapidly from the point of contact backwards, and hit the bottom of the shield with a meaty thud, and after a moment of gasping surprise began scrabbling against it with hooves and wings. “What? Stars, what is this, I cannot…”

“Stop thrashing around in there,” Twilight ordered, “Take off your wingblades, stand in one place, and I’ll put you on the ground.”

“Nay… nay…”

"Stop moving."

He ignored her and continued his squirming, so she simply made the shield smaller. He had to hunch up with his wings wrapped around his barrel now, where before he’d been able to extend them almost fully. “Stop it,” she ordered again.

“Twilight? What are you doing, you got him!” The scholar acknowledged, and ignored, Rainbow Dash standing directly in front of her, and kept her focus on the shrinking ball of force above her. That bat-winged freak had done more than enough damage to her and her friends. She wasn’t about to endanger them again just because she couldn’t keep her focus. “Stop it.”

"Let me go. In the name of the Sun and Moon I beseech thee to let me go…" The stallion appeared to be hyperventilating now, but Twilight didn’t think she had the time necessary for him to exhaust the air in his bubble and suffocate himself into passivity. More aggressive measures were called for. “Stop it.”

She constricted the sphere again, shuddering when she felt something snap. His howl of pain only confirmed what she already knew. “Stop it.”

“Twilight, that’s horrible, you’re killing him…” Rarity stammered, looking from the trapped Shadowbolt to Twilight and back again.

“Stop it.” She continued to contract the sphere, feeling a hip, a shoulder, another wing dislocate.

“Through the benevolence of Our Luna I am reborn,” the stallion repeated, over and over again, “Through-the-b’nv’lence-of-’r-Luna-I am-reborn…”

“Stop it.”

He was banging his head against the shield, now, or at least he had been before Twilight had taken away the room required to pull his neck back.

“Stop it.”

“Twilight, you got him, that’s enough!” Fluttershy said.

Twilight looked down from the sphere, just for a moment. The five mares from Ponyville were staring back at her- at first she thought they all simply looked uncomfortable, which was understandable. Not every pony off the street had the mental fortitude to do what she was doing, even if it was in the immediate best interests of those same ponies. She thought that maybe they might have been surprised, which also made sense, given the novelty of the methods she was using. Then she realized they weren’t looking at the shield and its captive at all. They were looking at her, and they were all disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” was all she said, before she dropped the shield to the ground and let it dissipate.

The pony inside stayed curled up more or less the way he had been for just a moment, before he flopped onto his back and began pulling in long, shuddering breaths that gradually took on the quality of coherent speech- “Luna, oh, Luna…”

Twilight trotted over to him, pressed her horn to his forehead, and muttered a quick sleep spell.

She looked up, conscious for the first time of the fact that wherever it wasn’t covered in mud or leaf litter, her tunic was entirely soaked through with sweat. “Is… is everypony okay?” she asked, as soon as she had the breath again to speak.

In front of her, the five townsponies slowly and carefully lowered their weapons. One by one they nodded.

(♫)

Fluttershy broke ranks first, her healer’s satchel clutched in one wing, and almost immediately their odd, impromptu skirmish line dissolved into a few loose clusters.

“Can somepony please get these shackles offa’ me?” Rainbow Dash called, and a moment later Applejack was at her side. There was a sharp clang of metal giving way under immense force, and then the blue pegasus was laughing and staggering around as she tried to stretch her legs.

“You really should let me close that wound on your leg,” her saffron friend muttered, “Wouldn’t want it to scar or anything…”

“You kidding? I’m gonna look badass with a scar like that!”

“Oh, darling…” Rarity cut in, “We both know you’ll just get all broody over it, like you did last Hearth’s Warming.”

“What happened… last Hearth’s Warming?” Twilight asked.

“She got into a fight with Rarity’s tool rack and lost,” Pinkie Pie answered, as though that was the only explanation required.

“Land’s sakes, Fluttershy!” Applejack hissed, “Stuff some nettles in there while you’re at it, they’ll at least seem like no big deal!”

“I’m sorry…” the healer stammered, almost sub-audibly, “The herbs will staunch the bleeding and hold off any infection. The burning means its working, but, I'm sorry, I'll stop."

“Well Ah reckon Pinkie Pie could use ‘em more than Ah can, seein’ as she’s got some kinda’ problem with wearin’ armor…”

“It’s simple, really! Haven’t any of you ever heard of armor penalties? The less I wear, the harder I am to see!”

“Harder to look at, maybe…” Rainbow Dash muttered.

“Pinkie, darling,” Rarity explained, a bit less quietly, “Your coat is day-glow pink, and I’m surprised Nightmare Moon couldn’t see that mane of yours from orbit.”

Feeling strangely left-out of their good-natured bickering, Twilight turned to the unconscious Lunars. They looked a lot less threatening now that they were laid out helpless in the mud; less like something out of a fever dream and more like actual ponies- and thin, patchy-coated, rather small ponies at that, even the youngest among them sporting her fair share of scars.

“Rarity?” Twilight called, remembering that the tailor had also managed to avoid serious injury, “Do you… think you could help me bind these guys?”

“Would you believe that’s not actually the first time a pony’s requested my services in that department?” the white mare asked, her primly arched eyebrow at odds with her generally battered condition, but she trotted over regardless and began quickly assembling a set of crude manacles from the rope in her saddlebags.

While that project was underway, Twilight rifled through the Lunars’ own equipment. She discarded their weapons first and foremost. Smoky Mirror’s sword proved to be worn but serviceable- iron, of course, since he predated the Bessemare process and cheap steel by a good five centuries, but the finest grade a commoner would likely have had access to. The Shadowbolt’s wingblades were of much finer quality even than that, genuine if impure steel stamped with the insignia of what Twilight guessed was a defunct branch of the Cloudsdale noble families. They would’ve fetched quite a lot of money at auction, in fact, if their user hadn’t seen fit to batter and scratch them to within an inch of usability. The quality of Rain Chaser’s iron blades was much poorer, to the point where Twilight wondered if they’d originally started out as wingblades at all and not a pair of side-mounted scythes or similar piece of agricultural equipment. She carefully replaced the battered tin canteens and the few tiny cloth bags of dried oats each Lunar carried, noting with chagrin as she did that Chaser’s canteen still held a stamp of the Solar emblem under a crude layer of black paint. Next, she briefly fanned through the small wood-bound books she’d found- discovering them to contain mostly woodcut illustrations of smiling, slit-eyed ponies at work and play under starry night skies, a great many portraits of Princess Luna, and few if any words- before replacing those as well. The runestone she located on Vortex which matched Applejack’s description of the one Foxglove had presented was quickly taken for later analysis. Finally, she extricated an iron nullifier ring from one of the Shadowbolt’s pouches and slipped it over Smoky Mirror’s horn.

Contrary to popular belief, nullifiers were not a direct application of earth pony magic, nor any active magic at all, although they had first originated in the Confederacy of Earthshire and some of their components were alchemically produced. The rings were hollow, and shards of crystal were suspended within them in a solution of mineral spirits with nearly the same density- thus making them neutrally buoyant. Any external magical field excited the crystals and caused them to circulate chaotically; pressed up against a magical organ like a unicorn’s horn, pegasus’s wing, or earth pony’s hoof, that feedback effectively prevented any sort of coherent spellcasting. A quick telekinetic probe revealed to Twilight that the shackles with which the Lunars had bound Rainbow Dash had been constructed with a similar mechanism- still not yet routine in the late First Century- although Applejack’s unique brand of concussive lockpicking had rendered them inoperable.

As soon as all three soldiers were properly bound, Rarity looked back to Twilight. “Now what do we… do with them?”

“Do with them?” Pinkie Pie shrugged, “Can’t we just leave ‘em for somepony else to deal with when we’re done saving the world?”

Applejack shook her head. “We all just splashed a lotta’ blood around, and made an awful lotta’ noise. This here’s the Everfree. If we leave ‘em out here in the middle a’ that, without weapons or even any kinda’ light, they’re gonna get ate.” She stepped a little closer to Twilight and looked the smaller mare in the eye. “If… that’s what we’re really set out to do… somepony might as well just go ‘round and slit their throats while they’re out and be done with it. It’d be… cleaner, that way.”

Everypony seemed to balk at that suggestion, which Twilight supposed had been Applejack’s intent all along and also to the rest of the party’s immense credit.

The scholar fished out her much-abused map and theodolite. There were a cluster of four Cairns nearly equidistant from their estimated position not far away, spaced in a rough arc, but when she examined the nearby beacons she found only three and a roughly double-wide gap between the second and third. Either everypony at that Cairn had already cleared out… or the Forest had made sure they’d never woken up to begin with. “No, no, I’ve got another idea,” she said aloud, “Fluttershy, do you think you can get those soldiers walking?”

The little yellow pegasus didn’t answer for a few seconds, chewing contemplatively on one of the strands of her mane. Then, “Yes, I… well, at least I think I can, but… if it’s all right with you… they got hurt pretty bad and it’ll be easier to take care of them while they’re still unconscious.”

Twilight nodded. “Sure.”

Fluttershy immediately busied herself bandaging the transformed ponies’ various cuts and scrapes, even managing to repurpose the rope immobilizing Rain Chaser’s wings into a very effective binding for the compress she applied. Up close the sword wound in her leathery wing looked both painful and dangerous, and its owner looked very young indeed, and Twilight registered a brief pang of regret at what she’d put the filly through. The metal plate lying next to her bent muzzle was rather more difficult to process, and Twilight shot Pinkie Pie a confused glance.

“Whaaat?” the baker asked, “Applejack always does swear by her cast-iron pie pans…”

By the time Twilight had finished attempting to wrap her head around that statement, Fluttershy had gotten the bat-filly secured again and had moved on to Vortex. She splinted and bandaged as best she could, but the Shadowbolt had suffered mostly magical impacts and crushing trauma- even Twilight could tell that more than a few of his bones were broken, and there wasn’t really much that could be done to set them in the field. The pegasus trickled a few drops of some malodorous sort of potion on the ground in front of his muzzle, then tilted her head as though surprised that nothing further had occurred. “Could you, maybe… lift that spell you put on him?” She asked.

“Well, technically, yes, but then he’d have to go back into the bubble again, and he didn’t take that well to it last time. It’ll wear off in an hour or so on its own.” Ordinarily, simply binding a pegasus’s wings in close to his body effectively neutralized any spellcasting capacity he might have possessed, but the Shadowbolt’s bizarre ability to become incorporeal wasn’t anything Twilight was even remotely familiar with. She wasn’t taking chances.

Fluttershy rolled his head to one side with her hoof, eyeing the nasty swelling along his jaw. “He’s probably better off unconscious anyway.”

“So… who’s gonna move him? ‘Cause… I guess it might as well be me,” Rainbow Dash suggested, “I guess I owe him that much.”

“Don’t worry, the other Lunars are gonna take care of him,” Twilight said, as Fluttershy repeated her administration of the aromatic potion for each of the ponies in question. This time the effect was more obvious. Smoky Mirror groaned and rolled onto his haunches, eyes gradually sliding open; Rain Chaser bolted upright, screamed in inarticulate fury, and charged forward at Twilight before quickly ending up back on her barrel in the dirt. Gently, Rarity and Twilight lifted the both of them back to their hooves. On their hooves they stayed, shifting around and looking awkwardly from one another, to the Ponyville mares, to Vortex and back again.

(♫)

“Imperials…” Smoky Mirror finally said, almost growling. “Woke us up to read one last sanctimonious speech ‘ere our heads come off, hmm? Well, be on with it, then.”

Rainbow Dash quickly glided forward. “No, no, that’s not right at all!”

The Lunar unicorn seemed to look right through her. “Hmmph. That mage of thine would do it, I think.” He rolled his head towards Vortex’s supine form, “She has already mostly finished with the Captain. So, please. Spare us the indignity of parading us around this damnable forest. We are ready.” Beside him, Rain Chaser was starting to hyperventilate, shivering hard enough to rattle her armor as tears built up around the edges of her slitted yellow eyes, and when Smoky looked over at her his expression took on a complicated mixture of sadness and warmth. “Well, I am ready, at least,” he finally finished.

“Calm down,” Fluttershy said, “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“T-t-t-t-then what of… Vortex,” Rain Chaser finally stammered.

Twilight looked her in the eye and tried to muster the same tone she was used to using to talk undergraduate students through dangerous magical rituals. “He’s just under magical sedation- asleep, like he’d been given a draught. It was the only way I could keep him from hurting himself any worse trying to fight us.”

Smoky Mirror seemed unconvinced. “Then… what is to become of us?”

Twilight looked to the others, and they nodded back to her. “You’re going to follow us to shelter- another Cairn, an empty one. We’re going to leave you there until a search party can come back and get you out of the forest safely. Now, that might be the lawful authorities, in which case you can expect to be brought back to civilization and given full medical care just like any other injured traveler, or it might be your own troops in which case it’s entirely up to them how they handle your failure, because we’ll be long gone.”

“The Lunar Republic doth not kill our own fighting mares and stallions over such things,” Rain Chaser snarled, abruptly, “’Tis an excess solely of the Sun-Tyrant!”

“They actually told you that?” Twilight asked. She supposed she should’ve been angry at the slander, but it was hard to muster anything other than bewilderment. “Look. When this is over, you and I are going to visit the locations where you think these massacres occurred. I’m willing to bet they’ve already been excavated, and there’s not a single body that… you know what? Never mind. They said the exact same thing about Princess Luna in the Solar accounts, and it’s just as unsubstantiated, and it doesn’t. Matter. Now. You three are my responsibility, and I’m going to make sure you’re treated decently to the best of my ability. Understand?”

Even as Pinkie Pie and Applejack nodded in approval, the Lunars showed no reaction that Twilight could determine- then again, they didn’t resist, either, as Rainbow Dash and Rarity worked together to sling the unconscious Shadowbolt onto their backs in a dual firemare’s carry. Twilight was surprised to discover their armor, and Vortex’s in turn, was outfitted with exactly the sort of buckles necessary to secure a pony in such a position- something that in the modern Army and Royal Guard was reserved for dedicated field medics. The two Lunars bore their companion’s weight with obvious practice, and Twilight found herself wondering just how many of their fellows they’d had to carry in such a manner.

Then, much to her own surprise, the Lunars started moving, and without any spoken signal the Ponyville party coalesced into a loose formation around them. Twilight, theodolite still held in her telekinesis, once again took point.

For a few minutes, maybe ten, they walked in uncomfortable silence; nopony from the town had anything at all to say. Then, quite unexpectedly, Smoky Mirror sighed and looked around at the lot of them. “I… in another time, I would have surely loved to duel thee, Lady… Rarity, was it? And thou, Applejack. We… Our Sovereign could have used more ponies like thee… back when it mattered. All of thee, answe-”

“Shut up, shut up!” Rainbow Dash abruptly snapped, and the Lunar stallion flinched backwards as though struck, “I am so ruttin’ tired of you yellow-eyed freaks trying to recruit us!”

“Well, of course they’re trying to recruit us. They lost, remember?” Pinkie Pie cut in.

Smoky didn’t seem unduly perturbed by the baker’s remarks, but he shut back up again just the same.

“Hmph. Brave talk from thee now that we are bound and beaten,” Rain Chaser muttered.

That seemed to embolden her comrade once again. “...But thee. Mage. Thou taketh joy in this, dost thou not? Thou art no mere scholar. I would be willing to wager thou hast the blood of the Sunslut herself in thine v-”

“No.” Twilight had had enough. She rounded on the Lunar, theodolite hovering, temporarily forgotten, over her shoulder. It had, in fact, been only fifty years or so since Princess Celestia had last seen fit to take a husband, but her -admittedly rather numerous- mortal children were all carefully tracked. Twilight Sparkle knew perfectly well that she wasn’t any more related to her patron than half the population of the Central Mountain Dominon- not that Celestia would have allowed anything of substance to come of it if she was, for that matter; the Princesses did not play favorites. But that wasn’t what was bothering her.

“No. You’re wrong. You’re both wrong,” she continued, looking over her shoulder and never once slowing her pace, “I don’t enjoy any of this. When you came after my fr- these ponies I’m working with, all I could think about was how to… neutralize the three of you as quickly as I could because I. Don’t. Want. Any. Pony. To. Die. Today.” She punctuated each word with a stamp of her hoof. “I… don’t know if any of you even remember what that was like, that there was a time in Equestria where ponies weren’t fighting each other to the death day and night, and… in this age, in the Equestria I grew up in… that’s normal. We’ve lived in peace for… hundreds of years, a thousand years, and… I want you and your comrades to be alive to see that, and I’m terrified that Nightmare Moon might take it away before you even have a chance! You understand?”

“I am sure the view from the gallows will be breathtaking,” Rain Chaser murmured.

“Nopony’s going to be hanging anypony,” Rarity said. “You’re… there was an amnesty, a long time ago… for rebels just like you.”

“Well…” Pinkie Pie continued, “You did kidnap Rainbow Dash, and tried to assault the rest of us, but I’m sure this whole mess counts as extenuating circumstances and, anyway, you’ll earn your parole in, what, five years?”

“Less, with good behavior…” Applejack muttered, then trailed off when Fluttershy gave her an odd look, “What?”

“So… striking nobility is not a hanging offense?” Chaser asked, just as quietly.

Twilight finally stopped walking, turned around, and ducked down to meet the Lunar filly eye-to-eye. “Rain Chaser… none of us are nobles, and even if we were… no. You’d never be hanged for harming us.” She stood up straight again and addressed them both. “This isn’t the Equestria you fought for any more, but it’s also not the Equestria you’ve been fighting against. It’s been a thousand years and the whole world’s changed. I’ll admit that I really don’t have enough information to properly compare, but… I’m willing to bet most of those changes’ve been for the better, and however much better it might’ve been back in its day, the Lunar Republic isn’t going to improve on that.”

They started moving again. Twilight for the most part kept her eyes on the trail in front of her, but every so often she spared a look backwards to see Smoky Mirror’s jaw working back and forth, almost-but-not-quite able to form words. Finally, he spoke up again. “But… the Sun-Tyrant rules unopposed… thou may not knowest the difference, but…”

Pinkie Pie rounded on the Lunar stallion then, her chubby features unexpectedly venomous. “Listen. How many times are we gonna have to pound it into your thick batty skulls that we’re. Not. Suffering? You were in town; you saw all the shops, and all the food and… stuff your own guys stole, right? Nopony’s hungry any more, and even I know that wasn’t true back when you were born. Did you read any of the newspapers? Do you really think a ‘Tyrant Celestia’-” here she waved her front hooves in a vaguely ‘spooky’ gesture “- would let them print so much stuff that made her look so bad?”

“Your Princess knows all that,” Rainbow Dash continued, “But she didn’t tell you. Did she?” The Lunars just stared at her, soundlessly, their expressions growing more aghast by the moment. “She didn’t try to negotiate. She didn’t give anypony any time to even look around. She threw your lives away out here for nothing. For less than nothing, even, just… not even to make anypony rich, just to make the ponies in our town poor!”

“How… how darest thee speak of Our Luna in such a manner,” Rain Chaser stammered, but it sounded almost perfunctory; the fire had gone out of her.

Twilight kept moving. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about Princess Luna. Even though I’ve… frankly come to admire her, I never met the mare. If you tell me that Luna would never do what Nightmare Moon’s doing, then I certainly don’t have any reason to disagree with you. But you have to acknowledge what Nightmare Moon is doing, and… if she is, then… the mare giving you orders can’t be Luna.”

There was a long, heavy, painful silence, for a minute at least. Sneaking another glance behind her, Twilight could easily detect the Lunars’ indecision; how Rain Chaser looked to Smoky Mirror, and Smoky Mirror looked to the unconscious form of Captain Vortex. Up ahead the trees were thinning out, ever so slightly, and the young scholar was just about able to make out the low, dark shape of a stone structure half-buried in the soil. They wouldn’t be burdened with these strange, anachronistic ponies for much longer, and Twilight was surprised by how much she regretted that fact.

Then, as if sensing that same undercurrent of urgency, Applejack spoke up, her voice strained and earnest. “Y’all… listen. We can’t promise a lot; Ah don’t understand a tenth a’ any a’ this, and even Twilight ain’t much better off, but… If there’s a way to bring back Luna, the real Luna… if there’s any a’ the real Luna left in that Nightmare Moon… She ain’t our enemy. We’ll do what we can for her.”

The Cairn was clearly visible now; its great iron doors open wide, unlatched from the inside. Twilight had, for a brief moment, expected to find rotten horrors and swaddling vegetation, but there were no signs of anything that had even once been alive. They all came to a gentle halt at the entrance. “Thou… thou wouldst do this… for us?” Smoky Mirror asked, quietly.

Applejack nodded. “That’s the honest truth.”

“Then… thou wouldst best know that Our Luna has indeed… not been herself for some time.” said the unicorn, “She has heeded the counsel of her generals less and less, and produced strategies seemingly from thin air. I had heard from one of the Captains that she speaks to herself near constantly.”

“Do you… know when this began?” Twilight asked.

“Aye. Not long after… not long after she began to resurrect our fallen,” said Rain Chaser.

“That’s interesting. If she’s really mentally controlling that many revenants, she’d be experiencing intense telepathic feedback- I’m not surprised she’s behaving erratically, I’m surprised she’s able to function at all!”

Smoky nodded. “Aye. All of our number who… survived guard thine town. Our Lu- Nightmare Moon’s court and guard are made up entirely of the dead. This struck me as strange as soon as I woke, but… now I believe I understand why.”

“She holds court from the old Castle;” Chaser finished, “Only from there do the sending-spells come with our orders.”

Rarity stepped forward and gave a small bow. “Thank you. Truly. I know this can’t be easy for you, but… helping us might’ve made all the difference.”

There seemed to be nothing more to say. Twilight shot a brief pulse of magelight into the interior of the Cairn, revealing it to be as empty and desolate as the tomb it so closely resembled. Only against the distant rear wall did her magenta light catch the glimmer of silver. She stepped inside and the Lunars followed, closely accompanied by a wary Applejack and Rainbow Dash.

“Listen,” the scholar said, “Helpful or not, I really can’t risk the two of you following us- you might interfere, or you might hurt yourselves. So… I’m going to have to cast a low-level sleep spell on you, like the one we used on Vortex.” At Twilight’s unspoken command, Dash and Applejack stepped around the Lunars, unbuckled their still-insensate Captain, and carefully slid him to the stone floor. “It won’t hurt, or have any long-term negative effects, or last more than half an hour or so, but… you probably don’t want to be standing when I cast it.”

Rain Chaser looked to Smoky Mirror. Smoky Mirror looked to the unconscious form of Captain Vortex. Then he looked back at Twilight and nodded. With practiced ease, both soldiers lowered themselves to their haunches and rested their muzzles on the flagstones. As her friends looked on, Twilight knelt and pressed her horn first against Rain Chaser’s helmet, and then Smoky Mirror’s, watching their slitted yellow eyes slowly drift closed. Then she stood, slipped the nullifier off of the stallion’s horn, untied the ropes around their hooves, backed away, and pulled the iron doors almost-but-not-quite closed.

“Do you… really think this is going to work?” Fluttershy asked.

“I… don’t know,” said Twilight, “But I think it’s the best chance any of those ponies are going to get.”

“Now we’d all best get movin’,” Applejack admonished, “We’ve been movin’ slower than a pack mule on a Friday night.”

Rarity chuckled, Pinkie Pie shook her head, Rainbow Dash shot the farmer a particularly confused look, and on they walked.

Author's Note

UPDATED 10 OCTOBER 2020 to fix some minor phrasing and spelling issues.

Before Dawn

(♫)

Little by little, the forest around Twilight Sparkle and her friends began to change. The foreign-looking white stones they’d noticed earlier became both more frequent and more regular in structure, until it was no longer possible to dispute that they had once been worked by pony chisels. Twilight wasn’t willing to call the evocative squareness of the earthworks around her the foundations of buildings just yet, but the suggestion was a nagging one, and while the pattern of stone under her hooves still fell far short of being called a road it wasn’t quite a track any more either. There was no more need for the theodolite, at least right now- as much as the path she’d led them on twisted and turned in its modern incarnation, the scholar no longer had the slightest doubt that it had once been one of the radial roads that led straight from the outskirts of ancient Everfree to the Castle of the Two Sisters at the very center. Now, all they needed to do was follow the cobblestones.

The fact that the trail was also growing appreciably wider did not strike Twilight as particularly unexpected at first, but the signs of more recent destruction very certainly did. The forest wasn’t simply pulling back away from the road- stones had been overturned, foliage trampled and uprooted, and tree trunks in some cases slashed near completely through by something very large and very sharp.

Applejack whistled under her breath. “Somethin’ big came through here…”

“Wait, really?!” Pinkie Pie asked.

Rarity pulled up short, quite suddenly, and cocked her head to the side. “Listen.”

Twilight came to a more gentle stop along with her fellows, pivoted her ears, and held her breath. Up ahead, something crashed through the foliage, slammed into something else that sounded stony and resilient, then let out a teeth-rattlingly loud noise that might have been a roar or might have been a yowl, it was hard to say with any certainty. It wasn’t getting any closer to their position, she thought, but then again it wasn’t getting farther away quickly enough for Twilight’s liking either. “Rainbow. Fly up ahead and see what you can see,” she whispered.

“You got it.” The pegasus quickly flew around a bend in the trail and was from then on lost from sight. For thirty seconds or so, the sounds of horrific violence against nothing in particular continued unabated. Twilight muttered the tracking-spell for the gem Dash had swallowed, and was immeasurably relieved when the generated tug on her horn reversed its bearing and began growing in intensity again. This deep in the Everfree, passing out of sight of somepony for even a moment could easily mean never finding them again; Twilight would never have allowed even this brief diversion without the pegasus having a TC-strong mana resonator literally inside of her.

Moments later, Dash glided quietly back to their position. “Manticore. Big one. Looks pretty out of it, I think we can get closer without it seeing us. Sneak past it or maybe get the drop on it,” she whispered.

Twilight nodded, and motioned forward with her hoof, and the six of them cautiously advanced. Once around the bend in the trail, Rainbow Dash dropped onto her barrel and began creeping forward more slowly; Twilight and the others followed her lead.

Not a great deal was actually known about manticores, due to the generally isolated locations in which they sequestered themselves. They were believed to be highly intelligent apex predators, able to set complicated ambushes and even use simple tools, although they were by nature solitary and had no known language. How long they lived, how they reproduced, exactly where they fit on taxonomic charts, and the upper limits on how large they could get were all open questions, and Twilight didn’t have the naturalistic background necessary to understand the details, but she had her doubts that the actions of the one in front of her were in any way normal. It stumbled around the clearing it had created almost at random, slashing at trees and rocks and overgrowth and other clearly inedible things, slamming itself bodily into larger detritus over and over again whenever its claws and scorpionlike tail proved insufficiently destructive, and yowling all the while. Although still quite formidable at five or six times the size of a very large pony it was actually much smaller than Twilight had been expecting; the stupendous width of the path it had created was in fact mostly a result of its zigzagging drunkard’s-walk. Ignoring the reasons why it was acting that way for the moment, it was actually the fact that the swath of destruction followed the road at all that was surprising.

“Another illusion?” Rarity asked.

Pinkie Pie shook her head. “I doubt it, unless Nightmare Moon faked destroying the whole forest… or she just has a really big zombie…”

Twilight turned to Fluttershy, confused. “I don’t get it. What’s it doing?”

“I don’t know,” the pegasus whispered, “If it was interested in hurting us, it already would have-” The manticore let out a particularly loud screech, and twisted around incredibly quickly to look directly at them. “… picked up our scent.”

(♫)

It leaped straight for the center of the party.

“Look out!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

Twilight charged another disjunction spell and fired it at the creature mid-air. Illusions grew less and less stable the larger they got- if the thing had in fact been a knitted-together horror of plants and equine bodies under a manticore image, that blast would have exposed it with power to spare.

Instead, Twilight was reasonably certain she’d just made it even madder.

By unspoken command they backtracked and scattered, forming a wide and ever-expanding arc with the manticore in the center. As soon as the charge was back in her horn Twilight wrapped the beast in a bright magenta shield- she could only hold it for a little under two seconds before it dissipated again, but that was enough time for Rainbow Dash to get into the air above the manticore and begin harrying it with quick, abortive dives. Applejack charged towards it and kept on running, clipping its hind leg with her hammer at full velocity before she began circling around to make another pass. Rarity had by that point summoned her own telekinesis and was in the process of extricating some of the larger pieces of debris the manticore had created for use as projectiles; Fluttershy lurked in the rear, healer’s kit already clutched in one wing; Twilight couldn’t see Pinkie Pie at all anymore and that fact didn’t concern her nearly as much as it probably should have.

Twilight began charging another forcecone spell, then quickly abandoned it and watched with bated breath as a swipe from the manticore’s hooked tail scraped across Rainbow Dash’s flank armor. The thing sprang forward quite suddenly as the pegasus flapped for altitude, and Twilight and Rarity immediately abandoned their previous pursuits to channel their full telekinetic force into arresting it. That didn’t quite work, at least not completely, but they were able to slow it down enough for the others to establish something resembling a fighting retreat. Pinkie Pie leaped vertically into the air from parts unknown and bucked it hard in the head, producing another howl of anger and little other apparent effect, as Rainbow Dash tried to fly underneath the thing, made a swipe for its left rear leg, and barely managed to avoid ditching herself as it kicked back at her. Suddenly finding the leg she had been aiming at was no longer there, Applejack twisted around to abort her charge at the last possible moment, lost her hoofgrip on the turned-up mud, and cursed as she slid off to one side.

“Don’t… think… I can hold it…” Rarity muttered through gritted teeth.

Twilight nodded, and scrambled back another few feet as the manticore pushed particularly hard against the force field slowing it. “This isn’t working!”

“Ah, uhh, Ah think it’s favorin’ that right paw pretty bad!” Applejack called out as she hauled herself back onto her hooves.

“Good point! AJ, go for the front legs,” Twilight shouted back, “I’m gonna try to detonate the soil under it and see if we can give Dash a shot at its neck-”

Suddenly, Fluttershy cut her off. “Wait! Let it go.”

Twilight twisted around to look at her in confusion, the stabbing pain at the base of her horn temporarily forgotten. “What?”

“Let it go.” The little pegasus took another step forward, even as Twilight and Rarity scrambled another few back.

Everypony stopped dead in place. Everypony but Fluttershy, anyway. “You… can’t… possibly… be… serious…” Rarity snarled.

“Let it go.” She was out in front of the others now, staring the restrained beast right in the eye, a look on her face that Twilight had a hard time reading, but was very obviously devoid of any aggression. “You hurting it isn’t making it angry. You’re scaring it out of its mind.” The scholar wondered how she could possibly tell the difference. “And… while I’m not as… familiar with manticore habits as I’d like to be, I… I can tell… he’s fighting like he’s cornered, not like a predator on the hunt…” She seemed to lose any awareness of the other ponies at all after that, speaking directly to the manticore in a low, soft voice. “There. It’s all right. What happened to you?”

Amazingly -whether due to lack of provocation from the others, or direct interaction with Fluttershy, or some combination of both, Twilight didn’t know- the manticore’s frantic scrabbling began to cease. The awful pressure under her horn abated, and beside her she heard Rarity pull in a long, slow breath. The monster itself was still breathing heavily and twitching its head from side to side, growling periodically, but even those movements became less frenetic as Fluttershy drew ever closer.

Twilight eased off on her telekinesis, partially because that was what Fluttershy had told her to do and partially because, if whatever the little pegasus was trying didn’t work, she’d need all of her power all at once in order to be able to yank her back out of claw range as quickly as possible.

Fluttershy gently felt her way down and around the manticore’s right front paw with her hooves, purring and trilling like an overly-chatty housecat. She turned back to the others and whispered one more word- “Look.” Then she fiddled around and, much to Twilight’s shock, slowly and ever-so-carefully began to pull a sliver of astral steel easily six inches long and an inch wide at its base from the flesh directly above the beast’s paw.

There was, oddly enough, little if any blood.

As soon as the mysterious object lost contact with it, the manticore let out a strange warbling whine and collapsed, paws stretched out in front of it as though it were dozing. Fluttershy fished around in her healer’s kit and set about dressing the wound in its paw. Then she took to the air and backed away slightly, and after a few more seconds of… resting? Recovering? Twilight wasn’t sure exactly how to describe it, the beast hauled itself back onto all fours, stumbling about as if drunk. Its bat-like wings flapped experimentally a few times, Fluttershy gave it a tap on the muzzle, and very slowly and cautiously it lifted itself into the air and disappeared into the thick canopy up above.

(♫)

“Wait, what was that all about?” Rainbow Dash asked, eyeing the object in the other pegasus’s teeth suspiciously. “Twilight, can you take a look at that thing?”

The scholar lit her horn and, after Fluttershy nodded, gently took the object in her telekinesis. Almost immediately a sort of buzzing began to manifest at the back of her skull- a whispering, almost- and when she muttered the incantation of a weak magical-detection spell the entire object lit up bright blue with a complex series of overlapping and interacting thaumic fields. Faint silvery energy channels stretched from it to the Moon up above, to Twilight’s own body, to Fluttershy, to a shifting target near the treeline that she reasoned was likely the manticore, and another immobile, seemingly random point far off in the distance that the scholar was willing to guess would overlap nicely with the Castle Of Two Sisters.

“It’s a… something like a spell anchor,” she said aloud, “it’s a way to cast more powerful magic on a specific target at long range. Nightmare Moon probably hit that manticore with it to try and… I don’t really even know what.”

She wasn’t making much headway analyzing the thing from a distance, and Fluttershy had been in physical contact with it for a good long while without experiencing any obvious physical effects, so Twilight cautiously floated it down to eye level and tapped at it with her forehoof, trying to tease apart its tightly-bound thaumic fields by physical shock-

Cast a wide-dispersion stun spell to incapacitate the others and buy me time. The contact wards on Applejack’s armor have expired- get in close, push the incantation of a high-intensity fire spell directly into its meridians, and roast the hidebound brute alive. Pull Rainbow Dash down before she can get altitude, remove her helmet, and smash her empty little skull to pieces with that boulder. Given the shock and her abysmal willpower, the classical formulation for Dominate Equine has a better than average chance of giving me Rarity in one attempt- I’ll have her either kill that giggling pink twit or kill herself in the attempt while I grab her other blade and slice apart Fluttershy’s barrel, laterally, to avoid the ribs and reach every major organ-

Shocked at the sudden intrusion into her thoughts, Twilight immediately yanked her hoof back again. The entire encounter had taken less than a second, but in that time without even realizing it, her lips had pulled back from her teeth and she was already channeling mana into her horn.

The mage looked at Fluttershy with a new mixture of appreciation and horror. “You were carrying that in your mouth?”

Fluttershy, for her part, seemed to be trying to retreat into her own mane. “Well, I don’t think it’s as strong for ponies, obviously. Our minds…” She paused and shifted around awkwardly on her hooves. “aren’t built the same way manticores’ are.”

“We better hang onto that either way,” Rainbow Dash suggested, “I’m sure Miss Egghead here can find something to use it for, and I… really don’t want to leave it sitting around out here for somepony to maybe wander into later.”

“Good point.” Twilight fished a large sheet of chart paper out of her saddlebags, folded it into a crude envelope, and slipped the charm inside. An experimental tap confirmed its mind-altering effects to be nullified. She slipped it back, nodded at the others, and they started back down the trail. Rainbow Dash once again took point, although this time she was careful to remain for the most part in Twilight’s line of sight as the forest closed back in around them.

(♫)

The foundations were becoming more obvious now, some of them even containing enough structure to be considered the remnants of walls. Twilight even thought she was able to make out the remnants of carvings on some of the more columnar and linear pieces of stone, although whatever inlays they may have once possessed had long since been dislodged. The weathermare whistled appreciatively when she saw what Twilight was looking at. “This musta’ been some place when there were ponies around…” she muttered, almost sadly.

“Hey, Fluttershy?” Pinkie Pie asked, “Why didn’t you ask your Manticore buddy to show us the way to the Castle?”

The yellow pegasus shook her head. “Well, I was… a little nervous. I’d never seen one that old before… or that big.”

“Manticores might be reasonably intelligent,” Twilight added, “But they aren’t educated and they aren’t really wired for long conversations about abstract topics like geography. Think one of those ‘feral-foal’ stories times several hundred generations.”

Pinkie nodded. “I… guess that makes sense.”

“When I’m talking with animals like that,” Fluttershy continued, “I’m not really using words. The spell… it turns senses and… emotions, I guess… into words and then back again. A question like ‘what’s the fastest route to the Castle of the Two Sisters’ isn’t really something I’d know how to, uhh, explain.”

“We couldn’t just tell it the name,” Twilight finished, “we’d have to describe what it looks like and smells like, and nopony’s seen its current condition in over a thousand years- the drawings we have from back in the day might not be accurate any more, and even if they did they focus on features like arches and tapestries and things. Those might be relevant to a pony, but wouldn’t be to a manticore.”

“You could explain it, though, right?” Applejack asked, “What’s a castle look like to an animal? Stone trees or summat.”

“So do a lot of other ruins in the Everfree, though.”

“Yes, about that,” said Rarity, “We are seeing ruins, so the castle can’t be too far now… can it? This old city couldn’t have been that large…”

“Well, yes, actually it was,” Twilight corrected, “About the same size as modern Fillydelphia, in fact, and there’s a lot of space in what’s now the Everfree Forest that simply wasn’t there at all in Everfree City. But… you’re right. These streets are broader, and what’s survived is stone- monumental architecture from the government buildings near the city center, not the wood-and-plaster construction that was used nearly everywhere else at the time.”

Pinkie Pie seemed about to reply, but was cut off when Rainbow Dash called out from up ahead- “Holy crap, everypony, you gotta come see this!”

Ignoring the protests of her leg muscles, Twilight bolted forward, then stopped dead in her tracks. The trees and plantlife cut off abruptly in front of her, exposing a great circular plaza of finely-worked stone easily a hundred yards or more across. Though the expertly-laid bricks under her hooves had been faded by time and the moonlight, and turned up in places by thick clots of gnarled roots, she could still pick up here and there brilliant colors they’d once possessed -inlays of gold and lapis lazuli, malachite from the Arimaspe Desert, and Draconic obsidian that until the systematization of alchemy in the eighth century had been more precious than adamantium. Even now vague suggestions of lettering and equine figures remained; Twilight recognized Princess Platinum and Smart Cookie on sight, while only through the letters “L__A_TY” inscribed beneath her moss-covered figure was Commander Hurricane identifiable. Halfway across, though, where the remaining three Founders should have been depicted, the plaza crumbled off into a chasm so deep Twilight couldn’t see the bottom and could only hear the sounds of rushing water.

The Castle of the Two Sisters stood on the other side of that gap- and stood was indeed the correct term, as despite the gaping hole torn through the roof of the main hall and broken-off stubs of some of the narrower towers the entire structure seemed in almost perfect condition. Though the land on the other side of its island was choked with dark, confusing, tangled foliage that moved in ways not entirely attributable to wind or water -and that seemed, at times, not fully explicable in only the usual dimensions at all- not even a single clump of moss seemed able to cross the chasm and impinge on the structure of the Castle itself. The abnormally bright moonlight from the starry sky above pulled the whole of it into a level of ethereal detail that was somehow more-real-than-real, and Twilight’s eye traced the patterns of ornate filigree and flying buttresses that should by all rights have long ago crumbled into unrecognizability.

Cautiously, almost reverently, the six of them advanced.

“That’s… it, right? That’s the Castle of Two Sisters?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Ah guess Ah… never really believed it’d ever been real before…” muttered Applejack.

“Do you think we could just… fly over to it?” said Fluttershy.

“I wouldn’t want to risk that, or a line-of-sight teleport,” Twilight admonished, “It looks like a straight shot, sure, but there’s no telling where we’d actually end up.”

Applejack trod closer to the edge of the chasm, turned her back on a head-sized loose block, and bucked it up and over the gap. Instead of the parabolic trajectory Twilight had estimated it would take, the rock curved into the chasm in a perfectly circular arc before plummeting straight down and out of sight. If it ever did hit the water, nopony heard the splash.

“This is the Founders’ Plaza,” Twilight muttered, working entirely from memory now without any need to consult her maps, “The southernmost of the four surrounding Castle Rock. There should be a bridge to the Castle district proper on either side…”

“You mean that big white arch thing?” Pinkie Pie asked, pointing off into the distance.

Twilight squinted, trying to see what piece of overgrown construction the earth pony was pointing at. Then she stopped, and cautiously turned back around.

There was a cold, blue-white light gradually building in one of the tallest of the Castle towers. Before long, it was bright enough to cast a noticeable amount of illumination on the plaza around them.

Rainbow Dash shifted awkwardly from side to side in the air, and Twilight realized she could now clearly see the pegasus’s shadow. “Girls? I… think we’d better get moving.”

(♫)

Twilight was about to agree when something high up in that very same tower went snap.

A tiny speck of bright white light shot upward, leaving a fading trail behind it very much like a falling star in reverse. Another snap, and another followed it, then another, each on a slightly different trajectory.

“Uhhh… girls?” Applejack asked.

Twilight Sparkle was already moving. “RUN!”

They ran. In fact, Twilight couldn’t recall ever having run so hard, or for so long, in her life. At a full gallop they split apart and headed for the treeline, trying to get away from the light as something high above them began whistling.

Twilight, at the very back of the group, had made it perhaps three quarters of the way when the projectile struck the plaza. It made an unimaginably loud crash, like a thunderclap amplified several thousandfold, and her system reeled under the force of a combined kinetic, electrical, and magical shock as the unicorn felt herself lifted bodily off her hooves and launched a good dozen meters forward. She hit the pavement hard on her chest, bounced, struck again on her shoulder and slid another meter or so.

Suddenly and acutely aware that all she could hear was the painful ringing inside her own skull, she tried to haul herself back onto all-fours, but the very stones underneath her were themselves shifting and dropping away. She slid and scrabbled against the building rockslide, any thought of gaining distance rapidly abandoned in favor of the struggle to simply keep herself more or less upright and avoid being crushed. Purely by accident she found herself twisted around to face the treeline and the others- she watched as Rainbow Dash swooped in to grab Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy braced her hooves against Rarity, slowing them both down enough to allow the tailor to get her hooves under her and start to clamber back upward; Applejack grabbed a protruding section of root in her teeth, wrenched herself around, and began to half-dig-half-climb her way up the slope that had formed. The mage felt herself slam hard into something cold and rocky, bounce again, and then slide down onto a flatter section at a much slower rate. She tried digging in her hooves again and was rewarded with the wrenching pain of their nearly being pulled out of joint, but her second attempt was more successful and this time she managed to halt her descent completely.

Nearly all of the plaza was gone now, as far as she could tell, replaced with a morass of earth and fractured stone that was still in many places falling away. Her hearing was back by that point, but all she could detect was the sound of rushing water somewhere below her and, far off in the distance, still more snaps, whistles, and thunderclaps.

Fluttershy’s voice gradually became audible as Twilight pressed her barrel against the cold dirt and tried her best to dig her shaking limbs into it. “… down there, she’s down there! Twilight? What… is that?”

Forcing herself to ignore the instinct that kept her locked in place on her perch, Twilight twisted her head to look up and back. A roughly pony-sized pearl of magical energy was floating more or less at the center of the- of where the plaza used to be, at any rate- rumbling and snapping, sending out tiny feelers of shimmering light in time with the impacts deeper in the forest… and growing. Twilight glanced back up the slope and saw the others slowly advancing on her position, unaware of the danger she knew the artillery spell posed.

“Girls, you have to get out of here!” The mage cried out, “All of you, get to the treeline! It’s going to explode!”

“Hang on,” Rainbow Dash called, “We’re not gonna leave without’cha!”

“No I’m fine just go!” Twilight gasped, then marshaled her unsteady energies and engaged a line-of-sight teleport to the top of the slope. She flashed out of existence-

-into a cold, airless, interstitial darkness shot through with millions of tiny streaking stars. A ghostly image of Nightmare Moon grinned back at her, slitted eyes boring into Twilight’s own through a silvery bubble of space turned back in on itself-

-and rematerialized right back on the cliff face where she’d started. “Dammit. Dammit!” She growled.

Another round of projectiles slammed into the forest behind them, dislodging fresh rockfall and nearly kicking her off the cliffside; she’d worry about those once she wasn’t about to fall to her death or be consumed by the sphere directly behind her.

“I got ya, I got ya,” Rainbow Dash called out and dove towards her position, momentarily heedless of the sphere becoming more and more egg-shaped, its hazy dark core drifting directly towards her.

“NO! You CAN’T fly near that thing!” Twilight screamed, just as the pegasus’s trajectory began to curl unnaturally towards the sphere’s surface. Dash cried out, and braked hard, suddenly flapping with all her might just to pull herself downward, barely managing to break free and spiral off to one side. The kinetic, ephemeral nature of pegasus magic might have made her flight more strongly affected, but Twilight knew that unicorn telekinesis would also be disrupted more than a few feet from anypony’s horn, and even Pinkie Pie and Applejack would both find themselves unable to stay grounded if they stuck around long enough.

Warily, the earth ponies and pegasi above her backed away- but Rarity was making her way closer.

Without a word, the tailor ripped open her saddlebags, extracted the rope she’d used to bind the Lunar soldiers, and telekinetically knotted it back into a single line. She wrapped it around her hoof, dropped to the ground, and dangled it towards Twilight, only for the both of them to discover to their mounting horror that it only covered about half the distance.

Static began to prickle over Twilight’s coat.

“Applejack!” Rarity called, “Get me the rest of the rope!”

Immediately, the farmer unslung her own saddlebags and fished out another coil. She balled it up in her hoof, drew back… and then the impact of another sphere in the treeline almost knocked her off her hooves. The wad of rope hit the slope, bounced once, and then disappeared into the chasm below.

“Well, that’s just perfect!” Rarity snapped, “Did nopony else bring more rope? Has nopony else ever gone spelunking?!” Horn still alight she drew her dagger and shredded her own saddlebags with incredible swiftness, twisting the long strips of leather she’d created together into an additional length of cord. Simultaneously she tied it to the rope wrapped around her hoof and played out the additional length, which dangled mockingly just out of the reach of Twilight’s jaws.

The air around her reeked of lightning and woodsmoke and the odd syrupy-sweetness of alchemical aether, torn apart into its component elements by the tremendous magical energies of the sphere’s corona. “It’s gonna go! Girls… you need to move!” Twilight called out.

Rarity shook her head. “Never! I’m not leaving without you!” Her dagger flashed back and forth once again, and suddenly her telekinesis was occupied braiding and knotting her own elaborately-curled mane and tail into the line. Twilight caught it, this time, and with her own rapidly-guttering field tied it securely around her barrel, but even with the aid of a limping Applejack the tailor couldn’t lift her more than a few feet at a time.

“C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon!” Pinkie Pie muttered.

Twilight could feel the wind picking at her coat as the sphere behind her sucked in more and more air. She didn’t have long to wait now before the upward force became so great that she’d be able to jump to the top of the cliff; the only problem with that plan was the millisecond-long window before she would be unable to stop herself from being sucked the rest of the way in.

“Well, that’s it then.” Rarity pulled in a deep breath, closed her eyes, and flipped her dagger around.

For a moment Twilight wondered if the tailor had for some reason decided to slice her own chest open, before her leather dueling harness broke apart into its component straps. In her deft telekinetic field, the majority of it wrapped around the surviving buckles to form a makeshift carabiner while the rest was tied onto her line; with her free forehoof the tailor motioned for Applejack to stand sideways to the hole and used the farmer’s powerful barrel as an anchor point.

The force on Twilight suddenly multiplied, and she found herself half-rappelling-half-simply-being-lifted back up the rockslide as the fizzing and snapping behind her reached a crescendo. There was a brief, horrifying moment of weightlessness right at the top of the cliff, where Rarity and Applejack suddenly had to pull her back down, and then for the first time in what felt like hours her hooves were set back onto solid stone.

Twilight galloped for the treeline and did not look back.

There was an enormous crash of stone and soil as the orb behind her detonated, and for perhaps half a second or more she and the others were being dragged back the way they’d come by its immense attractive force. Then a more conventional shockwave slammed into them and hurled them forward again.

(♫)

Twilight remained where she’d been thrown in the Everfree mud for a good long while, waiting for the oxygen to come back to her brain and the tremors in her burning limbs to subside. Finally, she turned to look at the pony slumped over next to her. Even covered in mud and scratches, with most of her mane and tail sheared off, the white unicorn somehow managed to hold herself with the sort of poise Twilight was only used to seeing at the more important sort of diplomatic functions. “Rarity?” She finally managed to rasp, “Thanks.”

The unicorn stood, and shook the dirt from what was left of her mane. “Don’t mention it. I just did what I’d hope anypony would’ve done.”

The bombardment finally seemed to have cut out- Twilight could hear the last few spells pop, distant and far away, and no new ones replaced them. She tried to get to her hooves, couldn’t quite manage it, and then gave a little squeak as Rarity easily lifted her back up into a standing position. “But… well, your harness, and…”

Without even looking at Twilight, Rarity responded in a measured, even tone, "Oh, that old thing? Pffffff, I n-needed a new one, anyway. Fleur-de-lis brass rivets are horribly out of style."

The mare was a surprisingly poor actor. As soon as she could stand properly again, Twilight turned to face her. “I mean, it must’ve meant a lot to you. I thought you sai-"

"Never mind what I said," Rarity snapped. Then in an instant, her features softened, "I'm sorry, darling. You’re right, of course. I… it really can’t be replaced." Rarity's eyes locked onto Twilight, filling with a grim confidence, "but neither can you. Let’s… let’s go ahead and give that usurper princess a good what-for, hmm?"

Twilight laughed for the first time in a long while. “All right.”

It was at about that time that Pinkie Pie gave a surprisingly restrained cough. “So, uhh, Fluttershy and I found that bridge you were looking for…” the baker said, “but… there’s kind of a bit of a problem.”

Rainbow Dash gazed out over the cracked, crumbling stub of what had once been an incredibly fancy marble bridge. She had no idea if the thing would’ve been sound to cross after Boreas-only-knew how long out exposed to the Everfree, but Nightmare Moon’s shelling had very effectively made the question -as well as most of the structure itself- strictly hypothetical.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit we do not have time for this!” Twilight Sparkle cursed.

“Sugarcube, if you could stop gripin’ long enough to help me ‘n Rarity with these ropes, we’d be over there an awful lot quicker…” Applejack muttered as she and the tailor knotted together what was shaping up to be a more or less serviceable rope bridge. “Dash, Fluttershy, think the two a’ ya can run the other end a’ this over when it’s done?”

From her position almost directly under Rainbow’s hooves, Pinkie Pie eyed the fog collecting on the other end of the chasm with uncertainty. “I don’t know… there’s something funny about that mist. I don’t think it’s natural.”

“Hmm… Pinkie’s right.” Tying off another line, Twilight trotted back over to the edge. Her horn flashed, she muttered something under her breath, and a weird bluish film slid over her half-closed eyes. Rainbow Dash had seen magesight spells before, owned a pair of goggles enchanted with exactly the same ability, and was even technically certified to be able to create thaumoluminescent clouds and mist herself, but the effect was still more than a little bit unnerving. Then again, so were a lot of other things about the weird little Canterlot egghead. “Hmm… I’m not getting much mana scatter,” Twilight muttered, more to herself than to anypony else, “so I don’t think it’d be able to physically harm anypony or for that matter create the sort of seamless illusions Nightmare Moon’s produced previously… It might still be confusing or disorienting to come into contact with, or alert Nightmare Moon to cast a more powerful spell indirectly, so whoever goes inside it is going to have to keep on her hooves and be ready to clear out at a moment’s notice. There’s less obvious ways of performing both of those functions, though, so… I’m not really sure what its purpose might be.”

Rainbow flew down to the scholar’s level -or at least as close as she could get to the shorter pony without bending down- and was secretly relieved when the bluish film over her eyeballs dissipated. “Well, if it’s dangerous, or… well, might be dangerous, I guess… then I’ll handle running the bridge over.”

Fluttershy shook her head, "Um, actually, I'm fine with traveling with Rainb-"

"Twilight, we can't lose all our air support in one push!" Applejack cut her off.

"Well I'm not going send Rainbow Dash over there without support!" Rarity shot back.

“Girls!” The weathermare climbed back up to her usual more comfortable altitude and re-situated her helmet. “Look at me! I'm amazing! I'll have the bridge up in 30 seconds, just watch me!"

“Well, when you put it that way…” Pinkie Pie muttered, as she took a thick wooden peg from Applejack’s saddlebag and drove it by hoof into the solid stone near the collapsed section of the bridge.

Without another word, Rainbow slipped two other pegs and a mallet into her armor’s webbing, grabbed one end of their improvised bridge in her teeth, and set off across the chasm.

She half-expected the fog to manifest jaws or claws or tentacles to grab her as she approached, but it remained exactly where it was, roiling in a little area perhaps ten yards across centered some ways back from where the original bridge ended. Cautiously she glided closer, and prodded at it with one hoof- it seemed to have no temperature or texture of its own, and neither did her action seem in any way to disturb it. It slowly dawned on her that trying to simply clear it away it like any mundane weather would be a futile exercise.

“Altius volantis… I-huh. Wow, I thought there was more to it than that,” she muttered, and dove inside.

Only when nothing remotely threatening occurred as a result did she realize that she had no idea what part of the crumbling marble hoofway would serve as the best anchor point. She descended, picked a spot more or less at random, slotted the peg in between two thick stones, gripped the mallet in her teeth, and gave it two sharp whacks before looping one of the rope ties around it. It seemed to hold well enough.

Then she reared back upright and scanned the area. Very faintly, she thought she’d heard somepony -or something- whisper her name.

(♫)

She was about to dismiss it as a confusing echo -fog generally didn’t echo, she knew that much at least, but maybe this kind did- when she heard it again, much more clearly: “Rainbow Dash?”

The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t immediately place it. Her memories were cloudy and jumbled and it was getting difficult for her to concentrate, even though her physical senses somehow seemed to have been rendered hyperacute. Dash could smell the forest around her and even the fog itself had become lighter and easier to see through; she felt lighter on her hooves than she ever had before and not even remotely tired, giddy almost, and if her injuries were even still present they weren’t causing her the slightest bit of pain, despite her every other sensation feeling as though it had been multiplied severalfold.

She thought she picked up movement, back towards the base of the bridge, and charged off after it. It would take just a minute, after all, and Twilight said the mist couldn’t hurt her, and Twilight had a doctorate so Twilight would know things like that.

There was nothing at the base of the bridge, so she took wing and began flying the very start of an outward-spiral search pattern. There was nothing but fog around the bridge, either, but when she circled back to where she started at the end of her first arc, a stallion clad in dark purple leather was sitting next to the peg she’d installed. “Thou werest about to fly off and leave this,” he said, extending a leathery, bat-like wing to offer her the second anchor-peg. “I would not have expected an Imperial to be so sloppy.”

“Vortex?!” Rainbow demanded, landing and immediately brandishing her wingblades.

“Ah, so now I’ve a name that is not ‘Freak’.” His mouth pulled back into the faintest hint of a smile. “I am flattered!”

“H-how did you get out here?”

“Oh, I did no such thing. Unless somepony was thoughtful enough to move me, I still lie stricken on the trail where thine fellows left me. But... through the power of Our Glorious Sovereign Luna, my dreams of thee may appear to thee in the Waking World.”

“Actually,” she snapped, “yeah, we did move you. You didn’t think we’d just leave you and your pals out there to be manticore food, did you?”

He gave a short little bow. “How kind of thee.”

“But… you really came all this way just to tell me you’re dreaming about me?” Rainbow snickered, then broke down into full-fledged laughter. “Wow, you’re even more pathetic than Zephyr Breeze. I didn’t even think that was possible!”

“Oh, and how many victories has this… Zephyr?”

“No, uhh… he’s not… he’s just this one weird colt from Fliers’ Camp…” Dash muttered, suddenly feeling uncomfortable before Vortex’s yellow-goggled stare.

“Aye. I suspected it was not many. Yet… I fear the same could be said for thyself, aye?”

“Wait, wait, I know what this is,” Dash rolled her eyes, “You freaks are still trying to get me to turn traitor for you! That is pathetic!”

Vortex stood in one quick, fluid motion and began circling Dash in turn. “Really, now? And what is so… pathetic… in recognizing potential unjustly squandered and left to fade in obscurity?”

Rainbow’s ears flattened back against her skull.

The Shadowbolt just smiled. “Ah, thou knowest of what I speak, I see! Thou gainst nothing by disguising thine feelings… I truly do wish only the best for thee.”

“You got a funny way a’ showin’ it,” the weathermare growled.

“Orders are orders. My comrades feared thee, and I say they were right to do so.”

“Your ‘comrades’ were going to torture me!”

“Desperate times make brutes of us all, Imperial. But before Our Sovereign revealed me to thee, we spoke in some depth. ‘Twere not easy, but I believe I… convinced Her to forgive thine past transgressions as the acts of… a desperate mare. There shall be no more chains waiting for thee in the Lunar Republic, Rainbow Dash. We would much rather thou would come to us of thine own free will.” His circles drew in closer and closer almost to the point of physical contact, and Rainbow knew she should probably have been concerned about that, but she had a hard time mustering the will. He smelled of lightning and fresh spring rain.

“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.,” she finally said.

“If thou willst, thou canst still fly away. I cannot hold thee, this time.” There was a long, tense pause, then he cocked his head to one side. “Ah, but thou seest reason… Yes, I see how life under the Sun-Tyrant bores thee… I think life in the Shadowbolts would suit thee better… no more weather reports, no more catering to the whims of grounders or fearing that thou mayst offend the child of the wrong noblemare… thou willst find that we do much… differently. Fly with me up to the new castle of Our Luna. I shall show thee the way, and join thee upon waking. Accept Her honors.” The very end of his tail flicked lightly across her muzzle as he continued to circle. “Tell me the names of the ponies who wronged thee, and with Her blessing I shall fight them side by side with thee…”

Rainbow struggled to focus- she’d been doing something terribly important, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was. “If… I… say yes… what’s gonna happen to the others?”

“Nothing much, I hope,” Vortex laughed again, smooth and deep. “They cannot even reach Our Sovereign without thine aid… why dost thou think thou werest sent ahead? Indeed, without thee, they would never have gotten so near… if thou wishest, we can go and bring them to safety, although it is their own decision how they will react to thee now… unlike mine own comrades, I make no promises how they may see thine choice…”

Rainbow shifted awkwardly from hoof-to-hoof, grateful for the lightness and flexibility of her purple leather flight suit compared to her old plate-armor. “And… after that?”

“Then, I shall train alongside thee, and fight alongside thee, and thou willst be remembered as the finest warrior of the Lunar Republic…” Vortex murmured.

“That’s… umm… a lot to… think about…” As she considered the opportunity she’d been given Rainbow unfurled her wings, giving them the first good stretch they’d had in quite a long time, relishing the sensation of leathery skin pulling tight over the long, thin fingerbones; free of suffocating feathers…

“Indeed, ‘tis a great thing I am asking of thee, so, by all means, take thine time to decide.” He stepped up beside her, and it took all of Dash’s willpower to pull her wing inward and keep it from ending up against his smooth, sleek back. His muzzle hovered an inch from her ear, her own head about level with his powerful chest and wing muscles, which was strange, because she hadn’t remembered him being that tall. “I am not… going anywhere in mine sleep, after all,” he more hummed than whispered, “Though when I wake I shall again seek thee… in the flesh.”

She had to wait a moment before her mouth stopped being too dry to speak.

Then, “Sorry, Freak, answer’s. Still. No.”

“Then you will die, along with everypony else who still clings to the memory of my fat despot of a sister,” Nightmare Moon hissed.

Her armored, jet-black frame towered over the weathermare, sharp white fangs a hair's-breadth away from tearing into the skin of Dash’s ear, luminous blue eyes locked with the pegasus’s own. Rainbow yelped and scrambled away under combined wing-and-hoofpower, ending up halfway over the edge of the bridge and flapping hard to tip herself back onto solid ground.

The alicorn threw back her head and laughed. “Well, it looks like we won’t be working together. No regrets, Rainbow Dash. I will see you up ahead.”

She reared back on her haunches and coiled her wings, sending Rainbow cowering and bracing for the immense downdraft, but instead on the Nightmare’s down-stroke Dash registered herself -and the entire world around her- beginning to drop sickeningly downward while the creature in front of her remained exactly where she was. On pure reflex Rainbow closed her eyes, bracing for… something, she wasn’t entirely sure what, but it never came.

When she opened them again, there was no dark alicorn and no beguiling mist, just a half-finished rope bridge, a loose support peg, and a mallet lying at her hooves where it had slipped out of her slackening jaws.

She positioned the peg, gave it a few sharp whacks, and then looped the rope around.

Fluttershy was the first to cross, gliding gently with her hooves barely touching the bridge. “Are you all right? Is it safe?”

“Yeah,” Twilight muttered as she made her own traversal, surprisingly adroitly for a pony who evidently didn’t spend much time with her hooves out of contact with carpet, “I thought I heard… voices. Or, well, your voice, at least. Not too sure about any others…”

“We were just debatin’ whether or not to send Fluttershy over after ya’”, Applejack explained, “when we saw ya yelp, slide off the bridge, fly back up, and then… I guess do somethin’ to fan off that weird fog. Darndest thing.”

“I knew we should’ve gone with the catapult idea,” Pinkie Pie cut in.

“Well you do look a bit… flustered, but I suppose that’s more than understandable,” said Rarity. “Just as long as you think you’re all right.”

Rainbow nodded. “I got a little turned around in that cloud but… I think we’re fine now. We should get back under cover, I… don’t like being out in the open like this.”

(♫)

The ruins were so densely-packed now that Twilight almost missed the turnoff towards what Firefly’s notes identified as the primary Day Guard camp. If it wasn’t for the markings his scouts had left on the crumbling walls nearby, she almost certainly would have- chalk markings, no less, which should have sloughed off long ago but nonetheless persisted. Curious.

No buildings still stood, which she’d been expecting, but while civil engineering wasn’t a field Twilight Sparkle had a great deal of expertise in, she was beginning to develop the strangest sense that the damage surrounding her wasn’t the work of time at all, but solely of fires and spells and catapult strikes.

Curious indeed.

Nopony seemed willing to dare conversation as the path they were on wound between collapsed pillars and piles of undefinable crushed marble, then finally opened out again into a circular plaza perhaps half the size of the Founders’ Court outside, paved entirely in black marble and inlaid with thousands of gemstone ‘stars’- the original Court of the Night.

It no longer even seemed worth remarking on to Twilight that they had ended up here, on what should have been the westernmost end of Castle Rock, by passing from the north through another courtyard south of their current location and then turning left.

There were paintings of this place in museums in Canterlot- not as many as of the original Day Court from which Celestia’s seat of government took its name on the opposite side of the Castle, but paintings nonetheless- and architectural drawings in its archives. Some had even tried to reconstruct, from imagination and fragmentary accounts, how it might have looked at the end of the Lunar Rebellions. None of them had managed to capture the scale of the camp laid out in front of Twilight now. It seemed, impossibly, as though everypony who had staffed the densely-packed collection of canvas tents spread out in front of her had simply stood up and left, leaving behind everything from bedrolls to entire siege engines to dead bodies- rows upon rows of them, little more than skeletons now even though their armor remained as bright as the day they had fallen, Solar and Lunar and Loyalist and many others besides, laid out in preparation for a decent burial that had never come.

Twilight Sparkle found them incredibly fascinating.

Some of the corpses showed obvious signs of death by extreme heat- most were Lunar, but a few were Solar, in every case their half-melted armor fused with one or more rebel soldiers’; some with the remains of weapons still lodged in between them.

The scholar muttered another mage-sight spell, and at once the entire courtyard was awash in color. Outside, the ambient magic of the Everfree swirled in brilliant, nauseatingly psychedelic patterns that at times brought out impressions of gaping mouths and grasping claws and other, worse and less-definable things, but not a single feeler of it managed to cross the bridge to Castle Rock. Instead, on the other side, the mana field was one of the most uniform she had ever seen outside of a laboratory; though the scorch marks and craters surrounding the camp were still effervescent with power, as though the spells that had made them had been cast only hours ago.

Twilight whispered another incantation, and dimmed out everything she could currently see. As she’d expected, all of the burned bodies still glowed pale yellow, but what surprised her were the greater number she now saw covered in a cold blue-white aura that was nearly as familiar to her: Nightmare Moon’s victims, by a rough estimate, outnumbered Celestia’s nearly two to one, and only perhaps seven out of every ten were Solars. Many were her own ponies. Others wore no armor and carried no weapons at all.

She hurried to catch up with the others, muttering to herself all the while. “She killed her own mares to get at the Solars… I always thought that was something the Golden Dawn made up later because there was zero archaeological evidence of Luna ever having actually done it, but… she did it here.”

Fluttershy must’ve heard her, because the little yellow pegasus turned around and looked at Twilight for a long moment. “But… are you sure… that was Luna?”

Twilight looked at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I’d believe that sort of behavior from Nightmare Moon, obviously, but...” Rarity continued before Applejack cut her off.

“Well, she went mad, didn’t she? That’s what you said, right, Twilight? Makin’ all them revenants drove her crazy?”

“Actually… I’m not sure it did.” The more she thought about that theory, the less plausible it seemed. “Neurological degradation due to the overuse of telepathic links causes memory loss, mood swings, and delusional psychosis. But when she appeared in town -and when she tried to stop us out here- Nightmare Moon was acting in a very lucid, rational way, just out of step with the goals and methods all my sources ascribe to Princess Luna.” Off to the left, Twilight could just about make out a dark, ragged-looking hill that was all that remained of the Equestrian Council Hall. Paper Clip had been surprised by the loss of civilian life there, but the attack itself had been subtle and sophisticated in its execution. Unless… “There’s… something that’s been bothering me about that, actually, but I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or not. Maybe you can help me put my hoof on it, but at the same time I don’t want to lead you on by telling you what it is, okay?”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “Fine by me.”

“You were all pretty close to Nightmare Moon when she appeared. Well, closer than I was, certainly. You got a good look at her, right? You remember the little details?”

“Much as Ah’d like to forget, yeah,” said Applejack. “Reckon Ah’m gonna be seein’ that face in my dreams.”

“Was there anything… strange about her?” Twilight prompted.

“You mean other than the fact that she’s pitch black, seven feet tall, and has nasty sharp pointy teeth?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Yeah, besides… well, all the obvious things.” She had led them through the camp to the outer wall of the Castle almost unconsciously. The tunnel dug by Firefly’s sappers was hard to miss; just as his annotations described, he’d taken out a ten-foot section of the wall. The six of them didn’t hesitate as they stepped into the rough-hewn tunnel beyond. However much it twisted and turned, Twilight was confident there would only be one exit.

After a minute or so more of walking, Rainbow Dash finally spoke up. “Her eyes were creepy. Nightmare Moon’s, I mean.”

Rarity and Fluttershy both nodded in agreement.

“Creepy… how?” Twilight prompted.

Dash frowned, concentrating. “I dunno… empty, I guess.”

“Exactly, like… like a doll’s, almost,” Rarity continued.

Applejack seemed to focus on something far off into the indeterminate distance. “Wait… yeah… wow, that ismighty strange.”

“What is?” asked Twilight.

“Well, they don’t have any depth!” Pinkie Pie answered instead.

The unicorn had to bite her lip to keep her expression outwardly neutral. She didn’t want to suggest anything, but if the five of them were thinking of what she guessed they were… “Go on?”

“Well,” Rarity began, “If you look very closely at another pony’s eyes, they aren’t just orbs. There’s a lens, and then the iris is a little below that, and then the pupil is an opening to a dark space inside.”

Ranbow Dash nodded. “Yeah, but Nightmare Moon’s eyes aren’t like that. They’re flat! They’re just flat, perfect balls!”

“Like they were… painted on, or something…” Fluttershy continued.

“What kind of pony has eyes like that?” Pinkie Pie asked, then when it became clear to her that none of the others were willing to respond, “Something that isn’t a pony, that’s what!”

Twilight grinned. “Exactly. I thought I might’ve been imagining it myself, but… I think we all saw the exact same thing.”

Surprisingly, Applejack grinned. “So… you really did mean what’cha told those Lunars. About trying to bring the real Luna back.”

“No. I thought we’d have to heal her, before, but now… I think you’re all right. Nightmare Moon and Princess Luna aren’t even the same creature!” The others nodded, but Twilight scuffed her hoof nervously. “Everything I’m seeing here is just… so far beyond the boundaries of accepted magical and historical theory; we’ve only come as far as we have on lucky guesses and snap deductions… and I don’t really know if there’s anything of Luna left to save. She might not be alive, and after a thousand years of isolation she might not be sane. Maybe Nightmare Moon is… I don’t know, something that exists alongside Luna, or maybe it ate Luna, or Luna was a mask for it all along, or it just watched Luna’s soul escape her dead body after the Battle of Everfree and decided that, yeah, now it had a good handle on what this whole ‘being a warm-blooded equinoid with audible language and an internal skeleton’ thing was all about.”

Rainbow Dash cocked her head to one side, muzzle twitching as she mouthed almost-words for a few seconds. “But how do we fight something like that?”

“Ideally, we don’t. We sneak in, grab the Elements, and then… use them, I guess. Before they stopped being able to use those artifacts themselves, Celestia and Luna were supposedly able to cure physical and mental diseases with the Elements, including conditions like possession and lycequiny. But the texts don’t really offer a good description of how the things’ powers ever worked, or why they ever stopped working, just that they could be activated by physical contact. The clearest description I’ve ever encountered of the process is ‘when the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth element to be revealed’, and even that’s not much.”

“So… what do they look like?” Pinkie Pie asked. “How will we even know if we found them or not? I mean, we might’ve been the Elements the whole time!”

Twilight had to chuckle at that. “Well, they’re supposed to be indestructible at least to the might and magic available a thousand years ago, that’s one of the few things the most recent- or, I guess, least ancient- accounts agree on. Other than that, though… all the drawings and written descriptions of them are copies of copies; they might be stone spheres, or gems, or fruits, or equinoid creatures themselves. It’s hard to say what’s meant to be allegorical and what’s meant to be a literal description, when we’re reading texts from a time when even the most educated ponies hadn’t given up on the Sun and Moon being physical objects floating around in the Firmament, that a pegasus could reach if she could just fly far enough.”

“And… if we do run into Nightmare Moon?” Fluttershy asked.

Twilight extracted the shard of astral steel from her saddlebags, turning it over and over again in her telekinesis, quietly considering how it might react to different enchantments before concluding that an explosive heat spell would be most effective. “Defensive spells that implemented surface-normal discrimination weren’t developed until the five-fifties. Before that, the only way to allow the user to cast magic back out was to permit anything that matched the caster’s thaumic signature. That’s a weakness, because it meant that even the most powerful wards were useless against the user’s own magic. Unless Nightmare Moon has knowledge of magical techniques post-dating her imprisonment -which I doubt, because I saw her revenants digging through the Golden Oaks for a bunch of technical topics- then this artifact should be able to deliver spells through her defenses. So that gives us… a shot. I don’t think we’ll get more than that.”

It took Twilight a little while to notice as the change was extremely slight, but the tunnel around them was definitely growing lighter.

“Quiet, we’re almost there.” Rarity whispered.

True to her word, the tunnel sloped sharply upward not long after, and the dry soil roof soon opened out to deep, blue-black sky. Twilight cautiously scaled the last few yards, Rarity wordlessly lifting her over a particularly steep patch where her hooves couldn’t find purchase.

They had surfaced in what might once have been a courtyard or garden before nature had largely reclaimed it; a strange idea took form in Twilight’s brain that the thick, wickedly-thorny brambles nearly covering their entrance had been what finally deterred General Firefly and his recovery expedition a thousand years ago. Now, however, they were dry and easy enough to shoulder through, and from the outside the tunnel entrance was effectively invisible- a fortunate thing, the mage supposed, given that Nightmare Moon had almost certainly had time to search the castle grounds by now.

There was no sign of any movement, and the surviving towers were far away, but the six of them still kept a low profile as they tread silently across the overgrown paths to a low, long, ovoid shell of a building located more or less in the center. She recognized the Grand Solarium from its position more than anything else- with most of its walls and all of its windows and roof fallen in, there was precious little else to go on.

For some reason, Twilight found that fact unimaginably sad.

Then she approached a little closer, and realized she couldn’t see any rubble to speak of inside the structure, certainly not enough to have composed the entire ceiling; instead, stone lay piled at random in the garden around her, and tiny beads of glass crunched under her hooves. The Solarium hadn’t collapsed, it had been ripped open from the inside.

Rainbow Dash was the first to make it to the entrance, of course, but as she approached the half-open bronze doors her flight slowed, little by little, and she finally stopped. Then she waved a hoof and beckoned.

Applejack gave the scholar a brief nudge to her shoulder. “C’mon, Twilight, isn’t this what’cha’ve been lookin’ for?”

No artist a millennium ago had ever dared to depict the inside of this building. There had never been any laws against it, at least none mentioned in the records that had survived; it simply wasn’t the sort of thing ponies of the time would have dared.

Twilight Sparkle swallowed hard and stepped inside.

The walls and floor here were bare- polished gray andesite devoid of the opulent inlays that characterized so much of Everfree and scored with simple, geometrical markings; almost untouched save for a great divot of unknown origin back near the door. Six pillars might once have supported the roof of the place, perhaps, but little trace of them remained now; from the leglike shape of what remained near ground level, Twilight supposed they might once have been carved into equine forms, but who or why she couldn’t begin to say. The only structure to hold any ornamentation at all was the vaguely pyramidal stone platform in the center, perhaps half-again Twilight’s height. The sphere at its apex produced, at seemingly random angles, five surprisingly graceful stone beams, each topped with a smaller sphere of about head size. The spheres themselves were perfectly smooth save for a pattern carved in high relief, depicting one of the five regular polyhedra on each.

That sequence was familiar enough to Twilight- it recurred in the writings of Starswirl the Bearded, and studies of the spontaneous visual artifacts that appeared in undirected divinations, and etchings a hundred meters across on a mountain in the center of the Dragonlands, and correlated clusters of the outer fixed stars, and the ruined abbatoir-temples of the Diamond Dogs, and the fundamental mathematics of spell interaction, and a thousand other places besides. There was no academic consensus on where they originated, save that they were far older than pony civilization- perhaps older than any written language, or even older than intelligent life itself.

“The Elements of Harmony…” she whispered, “We’ve found them.”

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were already in the air, flying forward to remove the spheres from their mountings. “Careful… careful…” Twilight warned, anticipating the cracking of stone as the delicate, priceless structure was disassembled, but there seemed to be nothing physically connecting the spheres to their mounts. In short order, they lay collected at her hooves.

“One, two, three, four…” Pinkie Pie muttered, “There’s only five! Where’s the sixth?!”

“When the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth to be revealed…” repeated Twilight.

“What in the hay is that supposed to mean?” asked Applejack.

“I’m not sure, but I have an idea. Stand back, I don’t know what will happen…” As the others formed a ring around Twilight, weapons readied and heads swiveling, the scholar began a close-range intensive scan of the nearest Element. There was definitely something other than rock in its core, but she wasn’t immediately certain what that something was. It was more of an absence than a presence, really, and at first she wondered if the stones were either magically shielded or simply hollow, but a shield would reflect her scan and vacuum permitted things to pass through it; this did neither. It was as though the core was made of the most inert, immutable matter possible. She began charging energy, muttering cantrips to shape it into a tiny, penetrating thread.

“C’mon, now, y’all,” said Applejack as she backed slowly away, “She needs to concentrate.”

“Indeed she does.”

(♫)

If she hadn’t focused it so intently on the Element and only the Element, Twilight’s scanning-spell might have registered the teleportation magic before Nightmare Moon stepped out of the open air in front of the six of them; instead of immediately after when Twilight involuntarily jerked her head upward and took the spell with it. But it probably wouldn’t have made any difference either way.

“Stop her!” Rarity called, and the five mares from Ponyville braced themselves to charge.

Nightmare Moon stared at them, fangs bared in a hungry smile, astral steel armor gleaming in the moonlight. Twilight knew she could have killed them all easily enough right then and there, but she didn’t move. The scholar wasn’t entirely sure why that was- she wanted to isolate and turn each of them, perhaps- but she knew that if they kept drawing attention to themselves sooner or later Nightmare Moon’s patience would run out.

She intended to act before it did.

“Wait!” Twilight called out, and began to walk forward. Her walk became a trot, then a charge as she channeled more and more power to her horn. She felt the enchanted shard of astral steel bouncing in her saddlebag, and carefully tore apart a seam with her telekinesis.

The alicorn’s smile grew, and she slowly shook her head. “You’re kidding. You’re kidding, right?” Casually, almost dismissively, Nightmare Moon flicked out her left wing-

and Twilight activated the teleportation spell she’d been charging, instantly repositioning herself back in front of the Elements. Her saddlebags, and the enchanted bomb inside, had been deliberately excluded and continued forward under their own momentum. She heard the deafening thud as the spell went off, felt the intense heat wash over her, and saw the entire chamber illuminated briefly in a strange mixture of orange and bright white-blue. She heard Nightmare Moon screaming -no, howling, louder than anything remotely equine ever should have been able to, more in surprise and anger than in any real pain- but she dared not look up. She knew she only had seconds to extricate the Elements, if that. Teleportation wouldn’t work, but if she could remove even a tiny column of the natural stone in which they’d been encased and inject mana down the channel…

“No.”

There was a flash of cold white light, brighter than anything Twilight had ever seen before, and the unicorn’s world briefly disintegrated into vibrating, stinging, squirming pain that made her want to tear off her own skin a strip at a time just to get rid of it. Then it was gone as quickly as it had arrived -was this what happened to those Guardsponies at the town hall?- and she realized she was lying among the others, scattered a good meter or two from the Elements. She struggled to pull herself to her hooves, forcing herself to ignore her friends’ own attempts to do so -they were farther away, and all in better physical shape to begin with, they had to be all right- but Nightmare Moon was standing right in among the stone spheres now and Twilight wasn’t immediately sure what to do about that.

The alicorn still loomed as tall and proud as ever, glaring down disdainfully at the Ponyville mares, despite the blast of Twilight’s spell having torn away the flesh from her cutie mark all the way to midway up her barrel on her left side.

The scholar gasped. Whatever she had been expecting to see exposed underneath- ribs and musculature, concentrated starlight, eyes and mouths and tentacles, perhaps- the flank of another, smaller, thinner pony with a dark blue coat hadn’t even been considered.

The alicorn seemed to realize where Twilight was looking and twisted to shift her injured side out of view. She tapped the floor with one steel-shod hoof; it made a single, clear, crystalline sound as it hit, and the stone spheres of the Elements of Harmony silently broke apart into shards each no larger than a feather’s width.

Nightmare Moon smiled again. “Well?”

Knowing she wouldn’t get another chance the scholar bolted forward again, this time charging the blasting-spell directly in her horn and hoping to slip the incipient magic under Nightmare Moon’s outdated wards before they could recognize and block it. It was a long shot, but at the moment she didn’t really have many options left. Even if she couldn’t beat the alicorn, which was very likely the case, she had to make herself interesting enough to give the others a chance at the Elements.

She realized a little too late that Nightmare Moon could easily have swatted her away with a hoof or a wing, or simply stepped aside and let her crash to the floor, but Nightmare Moon didn’t do either of those things. Instead, her form began to grow hazy and insubstantial, softening at the edges, and when Twilight slammed into the alicorn head-first she kept on going. There was a brief impression of being surrounded by oily, iridescent, cloyingly warm fog; then she was being hurled under the force of her own accumulated momentum through an airless, weightless, dark interstitial space filled with hundreds of tiny, streaking stars; then gravity took hold of her again and she landed in a heap on another stone floor.

Biting back a curse, Twilight scrambled to get her hooves back under her again, but before she could even begin to find purchase she found herself wrapped in a cyan telekinetic field and lifted bodily upwards. She tried to wrench free and shout a jamming spell both at the same time, but found herself utterly immobilized from hooves to jaw by the field’s incredible force.

“Enough of that,” said Nightmare Moon, and lifted Twilight up to face her eye-to-slitted-eye. The alicorn’s warm breath blew across Twilight’s muzzle, smelling of dew and fresh rain and something electrical. “I’m going to put you down, now, so that we can talk about this like civilized ponies. If you try to escape, or harm me, or signal anypony outside or otherwise do anything else… dramatic, you will not only fail but the attempt will also leave you very badly hurt.” She pressed the cold astral steel of her sabaton down against the tip of Twilight’s horn, as if she were crushing an unusually large bug. The sensation of pressure was immense- it wasn’t any more directly painful than a mild headache, but Twilight swore she could feel and even hear the bones in her skull creaking under the strain. If Nightmare Moon applied the slightest bit more force, she knew they would give way completely.

“Do you understand?” asked the alicorn, and removed her hoof. Her telekinetic field loosened just enough for Twilight to move her head, and she nodded. What else could she do?

Nightmare Moon smiled again, and gently lowered her to the floor. Her telekinesis faded away completely, replaced by the telltale buzz of a powerful anti-magic field. Twilight realized they had been transported high into one of the Castle’s surviving towers, to a room that still contained the remnants of fine furniture and midnight-blue drapery. Of the many vaulted windows that filled three of its walls, the largest and most central faced directly towards the perpetually-rising Moon; every so often bat-winged shapes fluttered past outside, but the interior remained quiet and still.

“You’re lucky I’m more forgiving of attempted regicide than my dearly departed sister,” said Nightmare Moon. The dark alicorn slid gracefully down onto her haunches, one forehoof crossed over the other. The moonlight seemed to flow over her, that odd hyper-detailed blackness of her coat displaying every muscle in her powerful chest and long, sleek neck, posing just as Luna had always posed in the old portraits she’d spent so long poring over for hidden symbols and Lunar codes-

-and keeping, Twilight noticed, her uninjured side facing towards the scholar all the while.

(♫)

“I knew you were looking for me ever since you started your work, you know. Or, rather, I knew there was a pony looking for me; a pony who dreamed about stars, and tombs, and rebellion against Celestia. Until you came all this way, I didn’t know that the pony having those dreams was you, but now here you are. Impressive.” The corners of Nightmare Moon’s mouth pulled back into another predatory, knowing smile, exposing brilliant white fangs. “Now I know why my sister chose you to seek out the time and place of my return.”

“Excuse me?” Twilight snapped, “No, Celestia-” she quickly cut herself off before she could say anything damning.

Nightmare Moon just laughed, light and clear. “The Tyrant barely tolerated your work and refused to believe the truth until it was far too late? It’s futile to try to hide your fears and resentment from me, you know. I’ve seen your dreams…. And my sister’s. But you’re mistaken. Celestia never cared if you proved that I would return, because she already knew that.” She bent forward and brought her head inches away from Twilight’s own. Her features were every bit as refined and elegant as Princess Celestia’s, but leaner and crossed by delicate little scars. Twilight recognized the pattern, and remembered the nights she’d spent speculating what trials brave Luna had endured to get them-

-and also noticed there was a sort of a seam in between her cheek and the surface of Nightmare Moon’s eye, as though the surface wasn’t quite flush with the inside of the eyelid.

“The prophecy that foretold my return? A thousand years ago, Celestia commissioned it. You were only meant to perform the studies of deep magical theory that would help her calculate where and how I would arrive.”

Twilight nodded. “The statue where the prophecy was hidden. It was protected by a modern stealth spell. Celestia’s. She never needed me to complete the model, because she already had the missing piece.”

Nightmare Moon’s smile widened. “She thought she did, at least. Celestia was confident she knew the place of my arrival outside of Ponyville, and that I would be so drained after a long flight through the Outer Shells that she could dispatch me alone. Quietly. Without anypony needing to know. The disgrace of one Dr. Twilight Sparkle when my predicted return went unobserved… never entered into her calculation. But she withheld too much, and your research traveled paths other than what she intended, and when you learned the secret of how my spell worked on your own, it was too late to make any difference.” She leaned in very, very close, her muzzle almost-but-not-quite touching Twilight’s. “Celestia took only what she wanted from you, and didn’t give you what you needed. The fact that you weren’t able to predict the nature of my return in time is her fault and hers alone.”

Twilight stood, and began pacing small circles in the center of the room. “I… want to argue with you but I’m not sure that I can…” The sky outside was now thick with revenants, hovering silently on their bat-like wings. They all watched her as she moved, tracking her perfectly just like Nightmare Moon herself-

-because what was looking out through their empty, blue-lit eye sockets was Nightmare Moon herself, watching Twilight and not watching anything else-

The creature across from her stood again in a single fluid motion, all silky darkness and shimmering ether. “Fight alongside me, Twilight Sparkle. Turn your back on Celestia and reclaim the recognition you deserve.”

“And what do you get from me?” Twilight abandoned her circling and began tracing a wider arc pattern-

-and as she walked, Nightmare Moon turned to keep her damaged flank always out of Twilight’s view. That meant that as long as Twilight stood about where she was standing… now, the alicorn would be facing away from the stairwell that served as the tower’s only entrance-

“You have a great deal to offer me,” said Nightmare Moon, “My sight of the changes undertaken in the Waking World these last thousand years has been limited, after all. You understand that better than anypony. A knowledgeable adviser such as yourself could be a great boon to the cause of the Lunar Republic. And, what’s more…” she stepped another body-length closer to Twilight, again nearly touching the smaller unicorn. “I know you find me… fascinating. I’ve seen your dreams, remember?” Twilight knew she was shaking-

She hoped Nightmare Moon would take it for exhaustion, or nerves. She’d be right about the last one, in fact, even if she was ignorant of the cause-

“All I’m proposing is that if you answer some of my questions, I’ll gladly do whatever I can to answer some of yours. I will show you all that is hidden by the light of day, Twilight, and you may learn everything about me that was lost in the night.”

-there was movement further back down the stairwell. Nothing audible -Twilight knew the mares from Ponyville were better than that- but movement nonetheless. She forced herself not to look, conscious of those flat, fake eyes boring into her own-

Twilight knelt before Nightmare Moon in a deep, old-fashioned bow-

-a bow that put her curled-back hoof within grabbing distance of the dagger she’d slipped into her tunic back in Fluttershy’s cottage-

“What do I need to do… My Sovereign?”

Nightmare Moon smiled again. “Those five ponies in the Solarium. The locals who came with you. I’d like for you to go back down to the chamber and kill each of them. You’ll be in no danger from them, as I’ll be right behind you, but I’d like to see that you’re sufficiently… committed to preserving the freedom of the Republic from those who might still cling to the old ways.”

“I’d love to,” said Twilight. She stood again-

-careful to keep the hilt of the dagger grasped in the frog of her left hoof-

“But it’s a little more complicated than that.”

-The Elements were indestructible. She’d made sure all of the others knew that, and for the first time in her life Twilight was willing to trust another pony to figure out what that meant- that what Nightmare Moon had destroyed hadn’t been the Elements at all-

“You see, I don’t think those ponies are in the Solarium any more.”

They hadn’t had time to arrange any kind of signal beforehand. They hadn’t needed to. As soon as Twilight finished speaking, Applejack and Rainbow Dash charged around the corner of the staircase, followed by Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and finally Fluttershy.

Nightmare Moon twisted around, impossibly fast, wings snapping out and hooves raised to strike… and as soon as she did Twilight brought her own hoof up and let go of the dagger. It had no mana charge for the anti-magic field to sap; no complicated alchemical reactions to muddle; indeed it had no moving parts at all. It was just a very fast, very sharp piece of metal, and with her own wards and abilities suppressed by the disjunctions she’d cast there wasn’t a great deal Nightmare Moon could do about it.

It was a better throw than Twilight had thought herself capable of executing.

The dagger, tumbling from having been lobbed underhoof, slashed blade-first across Nightmare Moon’s right eye socket from her eyebrow to midway down her muzzle. The alicorn whirled back towards Twilight and snarled viciously- or at least that’s what Twilight figured the sound was supposed to be, since when a pony snarled she didn’t usually crackle and hiss- but she wasn’t blinded or bleeding like the mage had expected. Instead, the inky black coat and most of her eye itself seemed to have split and peeled away like a drumskin under too much tension; underneath a blue, equine eye rolled undirected beneath a half-closed lid, the pupil unnaturally dilated.

If the alicorn was in any way bothered she gave no sign. Instead the buzzing of the antimagic field cut out a split-second before she spread her wings out, a dense sheet of lightning crackling between them, but Twilight had been waiting for that. The unicorn shouted the final syllable of her teleportation spell and was gone in an instant, reappearing directly in front of the odd, hexagonal purple gem Pinkie Pie had just thrown.

Nightmare Moon struggled to turn around, her greater size suddenly a liability in the now-cramped space of the chamber, as Twilight leaped, slid, and scrabbled to reach the gem, hauling herself forward with desperate, wiry strength.

The alicorn managed to turn just as Twilight’s hoof made contact.

That one blue eye was swiveling under its own power now, even as a slitted teal shell was taking form overtop of it, the wound knitting itself closed one shadowy, iridescent strand at a time. It focused on Twilight, then on the Element.

“No… no!” Nightmare Moon shouted, and there was no mistaking the absolute terror in her voice, and Twilight suddenly wondered if the creature speaking those words was Nightmare Moon at all any more.

The Element -if that was really what it was- lifted off the floor, rippling and shifting into a six-pointed magenta star as fine gold wire seemed to materialize from thin air around it, forming a structure not unlike a tiara.

Twilight didn’t remember how, or what Nightmare Moon or the others could possibly have been doing in the interim, but somehow she managed to put it on.

Nightmare Moon stood rampant before her, horn glowing and wings flared, front hooves raised to strike out at her and her friends, sharp-toothed mouth wide open in a horrified scream, utterly immobile. Everything was immobile- from the rubble kicked up by the alicorn’s last, horribly misaimed spell, to the revenants falling to pieces just outside, to the trees of the Everfree, to the twinkling of the stars in the sky above, to Twilight’s own heartbeat. There was a time when that might have concerned her, but that was long ago. What she was now didn’t need a heart to beat, or muscles to move or eyes to see. There was a sense of being watched, of expectation without any clear source, but it wasn’t threatening. Nothing could threaten Twilight now, with reality itself holding its breath and waiting for her to give it its next instruction. A brilliant light suffused the entire chamber, and Twilight realized it was coming from the six of them. Everything else seemed to fade in that light; colors desaturating and shadows stretching away from her before vanishing completely, but paradoxically she could still see perfectly well. In fact, she could see more clearly than she ever had before, the infinite universe laid out in front of her like an architectural blueprint, all the inaccuracies and distractions of her equine visual system removed and only the superstructure left.

Twilight realized she could easily banish Nightmare Moon permanently in this state, or with the same minuscule expenditure of effort kill her outright, or reduce her to something that maggots in the deepest pits of Tartarus would turn away from in contempt. But she could also see what her friends were doing, how they focused their attention- to call it a color would be inaccurate, but no language had words for what it should have been called- not on Nightmare Moon herself but on the smaller, skeletal mare just underneath her skin.

Twilight didn’t want to keep the others waiting, so she went ahead and made her decision.

If there’s anything at all left of Luna inside of Nightmare Moon, I want that Luna back.

The light got a lot brighter very quickly, and then went away again, and the universe continued on along the path where it had originally been set, only now a certain volume of flesh and a certain volume of something that was not flesh of any kind were again separated where they had once been commingled.

Twilight Sparkle gasped, suddenly remembering -why had she forgotten? Had she forgotten the reason too?- what it was like to have hooves and skin and eyes and lungs. She had come a long way -they all had, together- and she was very, very tired.

The last thing she remembered was a midnight-blue alicorn curled up on the stone plinth in front of her whispering “Sister, we are… so, so sorry…” before the exhaustion overtook her completely and she lost consciousness.

Author's Note

Confirming fears that from the dawn of time have been

Retracing footsteps in dark chambers of gray lands

And through the madness, through the terror we must pass

As if awaiting sunlight that may never come…

RD’s final scene came out being a lot more sexually charged than I had originally intended, but I thought it worked really well and just decided to go with it, especially since nothing really actually happens in terms of physical contact. It’s a T-rated story, we all at least have some idea where babies come from here.

I hope.

I’d sort of like to think that, in the Nightmare Moon timeline seen in The Cutie Remark, Twilight didn’t get into the School For Gifted Ponies due to there being no Rainboom to snap her out of her nervous lock, and as a result either didn’t progress into the Royal Academy at all or got in but had a much more distant and antagonistic relationship with Princess Celestia. She still researched the Mare In The Moon prophecy, however, possibly from a different angle such as uncovering evidence that would embarrass Celestia, then when Nightmare Moon came calling Twilight was entirely serious about joining her side. This being Extended Cut and having a fast-and-loose approach to canon I wouldn’t read too much into a Lunar Twilight not appearing in the episode itself or Nightmare Moon not recognizing Twilight Prime.

UPDATED 11 OCTOBER 2020 to fix minor phrasing and grammar issues.

The Longest Day of the Thousandth Year

(♫)

“Attention all hooves! Attention all hooves! Secure for hostile fire and report to battle stations! Repeat, all hooves to battle stations! Make ready for hostile fire! This is not a drill!”

The voice from the speaking tube yanked Warrant Officer Junior Grade Armillary from a sound slumber and sent him rolling out of his bunk flailing and cursing. The darkness visible from the porthole beside him was his first clue that something was terribly, terribly wrong- as third-shift navigation officer aboard the cruiser R.E.S. Dauntless, he was on duty from twenty-hundred hours to oh-four-hundred and slept from oh-five-hundred to thirteen-hundred; the only reason why he’d be awakened at this entirely normal early-morning hour would be if they were heading into a situation where he might be needed to take over the charts because the primary navigators were injured or worse.

Then he saw that the clock at one end of the bunkroom read 09:55, and his confusion only deepened. “Wait, that can’t be right!” he called to nopony in particular.

“Raising’s been delayed, that’s all I know,” snapped the sole remaining other occupant, a big oaf of an earth pony Guardsmare whose name Armillary had never bothered to learn. He hadn’t been particularly happy about spending the Summer Sun Celebration on-ship in the Canterlot docks, but orders were orders and if Princess Celestia wanted the Royal Navy to rally and make ready to ship out to parts unknown then rally and make ready they would. The assignment of a platoon of Royal Guard hardasses to their already-cramped living space had done little to improve things, however, not in the least because it was entirely unclear what if anything the Guards were there to fight.

Leaving the mare to finish buckling her armor in relative peace, he scrambled into his parachute harness -whose idea was it to require pegasi to wear the things, anyway? They even had wingholes cut in them!- and shouldered his way into the bustling corridor outside. Whatever was happening, he could tell from the regular thrumming in the boards beneath his hooves that they were already under way at maximum speed. Brushing past fellow sailors, Guards, and Royal Army regulars rushing this way or that, his ears caught disconnected fragments of conversation over the general din:

“… ‘d you see the moon?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with…”

“… nopony can reach Princess Celestia…”

“… Mare’s gone…”

“… wait just now?”

“… feels like it’s been like that for hours at least but that doesn’t…”

“… like a dream or something…”

Then he was up on deck, fighting against the wind, and struggling to find the fastest route to the bridge through the barely-controlled chaos of too many ponies trying to move too many extremely dangerous things in too little time. There were more airships visible off to either side of the deck keeping pace, frigates by the look of them, but those weren’t what caught his attention- true to scuttlebutt, the Mare In The Moon had indeed disappeared.

“Gangway!”

At the shouted command Armillary dodged to one side, narrowly missing an Army private dragging a trolley full of cannon rounds as an air chariot swooped onto the deck from what he estimated to be a generally Canterlot-ward direction. A rather disheveled older pegasus stallion with half-moon spectacles stumbled out just before it took off again, still clad in a rumpled silk pajama shirt emblazoned with the emblem of the Royal Academy- “Department of History?!” Armillary asked aloud.

The stallion stomped off to another area of the deck and began shouting in what looked like a mixture of equal parts outrage and confusion at a cluster of higher-ranking officers which included some sort of small purple lizard creature and… “Is that Commander Shining Armor?”

“Oi! Yer some kinda’ navigator, ain’tcha?” Another voice called, and Armillary turned to spot Powderkeg, one of the other Guards who normally resided in his bunkroom, and the only one who’d thus far bothered to give him so much as a how-do-you-do, stuffing ampules of alchemist’s-fire into the pockets of his own parachute harness, “I heard some a’ the other Navy pukes talkin’ just ‘afore we shoved off… the numbers fifteen-point-five-two East by one-twenty-point-three-three South mean anythin’ to ya?”

Trying to tune out the chaos around him, Armillary managed to recall the relevant section of charts. “Wait, no, there has to be some kind of mistake,” he said, “That’s right in the middle of Equestria!”

(♫)

“Flyover just reported back and it’s pretty much what we saw from the ship,” said First Lieutenant Marigold as she took her hoof away from the audio rune on the side of her golden helmet. “Whole lotta’ bodies but not a lotta’ movement. We’re gonna split up into individual squads and check street by street.” She surveyed her troops, both the familiar ones she’d served with for the last two years and those significantly less so. The three six-mare squads of Royal Guards she led were each being tailed by a dedicated Equestrian Army medical unit today. A week ago they’d all grumbled about having to foalsit the medics on whatever poorly-conceived errand of mercy the higher-ups had planned for them, a situation only aggravated by their long confinement together in the cramped belly of a docked airship. Then they’d heard the town they were heading for was right in the middle of the Equestrian heartland, and had all hoped quietly that the medics wouldn’t be needed. Then they’d seen the bodies in the streets and hoped much more openly that the medics would still have anything they were able to do.

It wasn’t Marigold’s job to worry about that, though. Her orders were simple.

“Alpha Squad, you’ve got Farrier Street!” she barked, tapping a gold-shod hoof at the map spread out on the folding table in front of her, “Bravo, you take Founder’s. Canter, you’re with me; we’ll head up Carousel and all meet up with Lieutenant Ratcatcher and Second Platoon in that big market square. Understood?”

There was the expected chorus of “Yessir”s, although Corporal Subtle Spark was notably not among them. “Sir,” the small blue-gray unicorn asked, shifting nervously on his hooves, “They got any idea what was up with that flash?”

“Dauntless’s gonna be heading over where it came from with some Academy eggheads pretty soon, but from what the Captain told me before we landed they think it was just a big surge of free mana or something, like breaking one of those enchanted spinny-tops times a couple million.” Marigold had a husband and two school-age foals back home in Baltimare; she was thus painfully familiar with how well cheap carnival enchantments held up under the pressure of a pony’s hoof. “Long and short of it is, it’s not our problem.”

Corporal Spark seemed unconvinced. “Sure, fine, but if it turns out to be one of those slow-acting curses I keep reading about, I’m gonna make extra sure I’m in slopping-range of your stampbook when we all start melting into puddles of goo, okay?”

“Sparky?”

“Sir?”

“Can it.”

“Yessir.”

“Now move out!”

They started down from the small hill where they and three other platoons had been dropped off and moved into the raggedy outskirts of the town proper, advancing slowly and cautiously. It was deathly quiet in the streets, the first rays of the rising sun painting everything a lurid red-orange- smashed Sun-lanterns and torn banners, halfway-boarded-up windows and collapsing excuses for barricades; a Summer Sun postcard from Tartarus.

“Bodies. Out in the street.” whispered Private Aqua Regia from the front of their formation.

They fanned out and established a loose perimeter while Marigold and the medical squad’s own lieutenant- a gangly white earth mare named Salmon Salt- peered down at the equine forms that lay slumped over in the middle of the dirt road. They were both clad in odd, curving, tooth-edged blue armor that looked as though its best days were well behind it, and both had weapons nearby, but there was no sign of a struggle. As near as Marigold could tell, they’d both just keeled over while walking side-by-side down the middle of the street. One appeared to be a pegasus and the other clearly wasn’t a unicorn; beyond that they were in too bad of a condition for the Lieutenant to say much for certain.

“What’s wrong with those wings?” asked Private Parhelion, gingerly unfolding the exposed one in her telekinesis. What Marigold had initially mistaken for a regular if featherless wing proved itself to be bony and membranous, with four long fingerbones.

“I don’t know,” said another of the medics, “Look at them, they’re practically mummified, it’s like they’ve been dead and buried for a hundred years.”

“Well, obviously,” Salmon Salt countered, “that one’s skull’s smashed in, and the other one has a half-dozen arrows in its chest cavity. There’s clearly necromancy behind this, but that doesn’t explain the wings…”

Out of the corner of her eye, Marigold spotted something moving in one of the ground-floor windows of a cottage on the other side of the street.

“Quiet!” she hissed, and then motioned with her hoof. Aqua and Parhelion quietly slipped into position on either side of the door, blades at the ready. Then at Marigold’s signal, Aqua reared up on her hind legs and slammed forward, effectively pulverizing the flimsy wood surface. They both charged forward into the interior- and pulled up short just before they would have simultaneously impaled and trampled the small gray earth stallion with a spiky black mane, who had been peering through the keyhole on the other side.

“Whoa! Hold up!” shouted Parhelion, then stuck out a hoof to where the stallion was hunkered down with his hooves over his head. “Easy, easy! We’re not gonna hurt you…”

It took him about a second to look up, and take the offered hoof in his own. “S… soldiers?” he asked as Parhelion pulled him back onto all-fours.

“Yeah. It’s OK, you’re safe, we’re here to help,” said Aqua Regia, and gingerly guided the stallion outside.

“Can you tell us what happened here?” Marigold asked.

The stallion cocked his head, blinking bloodshot eyes. “Not… really? I… had a little too much to drink at the Celebration, so Berry walked me back home around… I dunno, one o’clock, maybe, and then I fell asleep and when I woke up those things were already crawling all over town. Then that light happened and they all fell over and… then you all showed up.”

Another voice echoed in Marigold’s helmet. “Lieutenant, it’s Chamomile. We caught one of those weird gray rutters still on his hooves, but I… think there’s something wrong with him.”

Marigold stepped away from the bewildered local and tapped the rune that would allow two-way communication. “You captured one alive?”

“Well, capture’s a strong word,” Sergeant Chamomile continued, “He was just leaning up against a wall, looking right at us like he didn’t care.”

“Can he talk?”

“He… mumbles. Same thing over and over again: ‘The Moon has set. Our light is lost’, whatever that means.”

“Creepy,” muttered Corporal Sparks beside her.

Marigold ignored him. “Sergeant, have a medic and two of your Guards run that prisoner back to the landing site. I want at least four eyes on him at any time, understand?” She didn’t wait for a response before cutting off the listening-spell in her helmet and gesturing to Private Parhelion. “Sundog, stick around, guard our friend here, and see if he knows where anypony else might’ve hid. Rest of you, form up!”

The street narrowed and made a sort of zig-zag up ahead around a particularly large shopfront. Judging by the signage it might up until recently have been a bookseller’s; now it dealt primarily in smashed timber and broken glass. Aqua Regia leaned around the corner, then looked back at Marigold in confusion and motioned her forward.

A single blue-armored pegasus was standing in the middle of the road amidst a pile of discarded shields and collapsed mummy-troops, a pike still held in one odd, bat-like wing. She was gray with a dark blue mane, just like the dead husks that surrounded her, but seemed relatively… well, alive. Cautiously, Marigold stepped out into the open.

“Halt!” The gray pegasus shouted in a rough, fillyish voice. She brandished her weapon in a stance that would have been much more threatening had there been even a single other pikemare to back her up, and if the tip wasn’t shaking like a leaf in late autumn. “Thou shalt not pass!”

The Lieutenant stepped forward, calmly and slowly. “We’re not trying to hurt you,” she said, “we can offer you medical assistance and get you to safety. Put that weapon down, and we can talk this over properly.”

“Nay. Nay!” the pegasus snapped. Her eyes were bright yellow and slitted like a cat’s, something Marigold would probably have noticed a lot earlier had the pony’s head not been jerking around constantly in panic. “We will never parley with the forces of the Sun-Tyrant! ‘Tis blasphemy to the memory of Our Sovereign!” The mare was practically screaming now, swinging her pike back and forth between the Lieutenant and the Private. Her armor rattled, too big for her bony frame and not well-put-together in the first place.

“Nopony’s gotta die today,” said Marigold, and took another few steps forward. As she did so, one of Subtle Spark’s crossbow darts buzzed over her right shoulder and struck the slit-eyed mare square in the forehead. It shattered on impact, the liquid inside splattering over her fur before rapidly sublimating into a faint green mist.

“Ha!” She yelled, apparently having expected the projectile to have been tipped with something much stronger than glass. ‘Tis but the bite of… a… flea…” She gave an oddly relieved-sounding sigh as the sedative draught overtook her system, and crumpled forward onto the cobblestones.

The rest of Marigold’s squad moved up to join her, as the medics hung back. “It’s an aerosol, Sparky. You didn’t have to hit her in the head,” she admonished, then decided she had more important things to worry about. “All right, get her restrained and-”

“Hey! Lady! Hey!” Somepony called from up ahead.

“Oh, now what?” Marigold heard Aqua Regia mutter.

Another mare rounded the corner, this one a violet earth pony clad in the sort of older, mismatched armor common among the smaller town watches and militia. Her muzzle scrunched up for moment as she registered the sheer number of sharp, explosive, and magical things pointed her way, and she wisely backed up a few steps. “Oh, thank the Sun! Finally, they sent somepony to help us!”

As she talked, more and more chatter was starting to come in through Marigold’s helmet. “It’s OK,” Chamomile was telling somepony, “he’s a healer, he’s just gonna take a look at that hoof-”

“Listen. All those freaky gray guys are heading into the town square…”

“- No, no, you’re free to go, we just wanted to make sure you’re all right; can you tell us where your family might be?-”

“… but we managed to get all the wounded out and back up to the hospital before they started to get their act back together…”

“- That’s it, nice and slow, now kick it towards me-”

“… that one Major who got herself hypnotized says she’s fine now, but…”

“- gonna need a couple more stretchers over here -”

“… some of the ponies from Celestia’s security detail reckon we could just surround ‘em and keep hitting ‘em from range until they’re all gone…”

“- must’ve taken some real guts to show yourself, looking like you… well. Let’s see if we can get this little scamp back to his parents-”

“… but now that you’re here to back us up…”

Marigold silenced the militiamare with a raised hoof. “I’m sorry, what? This is a search-and-rescue mission. You didn’t think we usually bring this many medics with us, do you?”

The mare blinked, confused. “But… we’ve got the upper hoof…”

Something rustled in the forest still visible on the other end of the street. Three more of the gray ponies stepped out from the underbrush, a bat-winged mare and a unicorn stallion with a weird curved horn supporting another bat-stallion over their shoulders. Marigold watched Parhelion and the rest of the rear guard draw their blades and fan out, but all the new arrivals did was lay down silently in the street with their hooves in front of them. The one in the middle looked to be in particularly bad shape, and at Marigold’s nod Salmon Salt and her crew began assembling their supply of canvas stretchers.

She turned back to the militiamare. “Private, I think we need to have a long talk with whoever’s in charge of this… seige you’re trying to assemble.”

Author's Note

Figuring out the actual rank of Shining Armor is difficult; IIRC he is referred to as both a Commander and a Captain in the show, one of which is a naval rank and both of which are far below the actual responsibilities he is shown to possess in both the show and EC. He is probably some sort of general or marshal, but without developing more of the full rank structure of the Equestrian military I don’t feel quite ready to say for sure.I do already know that his “Commander” title here is used in the sense of “Commander in Chief”, as he is in charge of an entire (if relatively small and exclusive) branch of the Equestrian military and reports directly to either Celestia herself or some sort of defense minister.

UPDATED 11 OCTOBER 2020 to fix some minor grammar and formatting screwups.

A Different Kind of Light

(♫)

Twilight Sparkle awoke to warm yellow sunlight, and the rhythmic chup-chup-chup of airship rotors.

Every bone and muscle in her ached, which was unsurprising given what she’d put herself through over the last few days -and had it really only been that long?- but she refused to let that stop her. She forced herself back onto all fours and surveyed the dusty ruins of the chamber. All she cared about then were the five mares slumped over on the stone floor around her.

“Girls? Girls!” Twilight called, and quickly the five forms began to shift and stir.

“Urgh… my head!” Rainbow Dash slurred, working her jaw from side to side.

“Don’t worry, you’ve done fine so far without using it!” Pinkie Pie quipped even as she trotted over to help the pegasus back upright.

“Is… is everypony OK?” Fluttershy asked, already rooting through what little remained of her healer’s kit.

“Ah reckon so,” Applejack answered, before Rarity’s telekinesis pulled her to her hooves. “Rares, you got any idea what’s up with them funny-lookin’ necklaces?”

“They’re amazing!” the tailor exclaimed, before turning to Twilight, “Look at hers!”

“Mine?” It was only then that Twilight realized she was still wearing the golden crown that seemed to be the most recent incarnation of the Element of Magic- it was unbelievably light for such a large gem, and the mounting fit against the shape of her skull so perfectly it might as well have been custom-made for her. In fact, there was no ‘might’ about that hypothesis. She’d seen the thing reassemble itself right before her eyes. “You know, we should… probably take them off before they activate again,” she laughed, nervously, “they are an immensely powerful weapon we don’t fully understand, after all.” With some reluctance, she grasped the Element of Magic in her telekinesis and set it gently on the flagstones, where it was followed in short order by the other five.

Only then did Twilight gradually register that somepony was making odd, anguished little gasps behind her. When she turned around she saw the same curious midnight-blue alicorn from before lying in the middle a pile of shredded astral steel, and after a moment’s hesitation cautiously approached. The pony was much smaller than any depiction of Cadance or Celestia that Twilight had ever seen, and curled up in a tight ball that made her appear even smaller still. She seemed to be little more than skin and bones covered in a dry, thinning coat that came out in clumps with the faintest probing from the unicorn’s telekinesis; the feathers of her wings weren’t faring much better. Her ethereal mane and tail hung limply around her- not the confusing anti-substance of Nightmare Moon’s, but a soft teal blue sparkling with thousands of tiny multicolored stars. More experimental probing from Twilight confirmed that whatever muscle she still possessed was bunched up tightly in place. When Twilight attempted to pull open one eye to determine if she was able to respond to changes in the light, her eyelid remained clenched shut and the scholar had to cut off her telekinesis for fear of causing injury, although she did note a large amount of seemingly uncoordinated movement underneath the lid. Despite her obvious state of exertion and distress the alicorn did not seem to be sweating, nor for that matter were any tears being produced, and Twilight was suddenly unsure whether to characterize her continued noises as sobbing, dry-heaving, or some sort of unique variant of seizure. Whatever it was, it did seem to be very slowly growing less intense as she watched- Twilight hoped that was good news, and not just the final expenditures of what little life seemed to be left in the mare.

Rainbow Dash’s voice pulled Twilight from her examinations not long after. “Hey, Twilight, you hear that?”

“… Alpha Squad, move into that big hall. Canter, take Cloudy and Flash and start checking windows…”

“Hey, you’re right!” Deciding there was nothing more she could do for the alicorn at the moment, Twilight trotted over to one of the tower windows and looked outside. In the courtyard below, two-dozen-odd ponies in brilliant gold armor and a single purple, vaguely lizardlike figure were coalescing into orderly groups of three or four under the direction of a very familiar blue and white officer. Heart feeling like it would push into her throat, Twilight stuck her head out the window and yelled, “Hey! Heeey! Up here!”

The pony on the ground spun at the noise and looked up, startled. “Twily?” he asked, then vanished in a flash of magenta energy along with the nearest third of his troops. “TWILY!”

Twilight spun around and leaped towards Shining Armor as he materialized in the room behind her. She wrapped both of her forelegs around the bigger stallion’s withers, heedless of his hard metal armor or the smears it was receiving from her own muddy, sweaty, partially-singed coat. She felt Spike’s claws around her own neck a moment later, and just stayed like that for a while before realizing that she was starting to literally lean on her brother as a means of support.

“When Spike told me you’d gone into the Everfree…” the Commander muttered as she pulled away, “when he told me about Nightmare Moon and all the rest… I didn’t know if I was ever going to see you again! You idiot! You brilliant… clueless idiot!” He stamped a steel-shod hoof, then shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m just so glad you’re safe.”

“Ah’m fine, we’re fine, yer fine, everypony’s fine!” Twilight’s awareness of a world beyond the three of them suddenly returned as Applejack none-too-gently shoved away a Guard medic with a light glowing on the tip of his horn. “So quit’cher proddin’ at me an’ help somepony who actually needs it!”

Shining turned and appeared to mentally size up the five of them, his gaze scanning quickly over Twilight, the pile of discarded Elements, the five other ponies, the blue alicorn, and his own Guards. Then he pressed a forehoof against the starburst emblem on the chest piece of his armor. “And… I guess I have the five of you to thank for her safety. I think all of Equestria does, actually. If Twilight and I could have the honor of escorting all of you aboard the Dauntless, we can get you back to Ponyville and set up a proper hero’s welcome.”

Everypony went quiet for a little while after that, save for the continued, muffled sobbing of the blue alicorn on the dais. A half-dozen Guardsponies surrounded her, some with their weapons at the ready and others beginning the same basic healer’s checks Twilight had attempted to perform- the scholar recognized Forward March foremost among them.

“Uhh, sir? What about her?” the senior corpsmare asked.

“What under the sun?” a dark-green unicorn mare with a halberd continued as she trotted over. “Is that an… alicorn?”

“If I had to guess, that’s Princess Luna,” Spike answered.

Forward’s eyes narrowed. “You mean… the actual Mare In The Moon. Luna The Ungrateful. Alive, in the flesh, right here.”

Shining’s look of relief turned rapidly to indecision, then to pleading as he turned back to Twilight. “Twily, you’re the Rebellions expert, what do we… I mean, should we try to arrest her, or-”

“There’s something outside, up high!” Rarity shouted, then, cutting Shining off mid-sentence. Once again Twilight joined the others at the window. At first she couldn’t see much of anything at all, other than the bulk of the presumed Dauntless holding station high overhead, but then she too detected the white, somewhat-larger-than-pony-sized object flying in from due East at what appeared to be a very great velocity indeed. After only a few seconds, it had taken on enough definition to be easily recognizable: “Princess Celestia?!”

Everypony stood, unsure of what to do, some open-mouthed in surprise, as Equestria’s sole leader arrowed directly towards them in what was looking more and more like a barely-controlled dive. Celestia blew through the open window and made an awkward, stumbling landing, seeming for a moment as though she would pitch over entirely to one side or the other. Only when the dust cleared did Twilight get a proper look at her. The Princess’s wings were already missing half of their feathers, great swathes of her opalescent fur had been burnt black, and whenever she moved paper-thin shells of frost broke away from her form to shatter against the floor. Her golden regalia looked as though it had been simultaneously melted and pressed forward against its wearer by some unimaginable force, and both it and every square inch of front-facing flesh had been sliced and pockmarked by dozens or hundreds of tiny, hard impacts- Twilight was even reasonably certain she could see more than a few chips taken out of Celestia’s horn. Her mane and tail were both nearly limp and almost completely colorless, but her magenta eyes still shone with a brilliant, almost feverish intensity even as her legs shook alarmingly and threatened to give out underneath her. Almost immediately Shining Armor and the green unicorn Guardsmare were at her side, enclosing her heaving barrel in overlapping telekinetic fields, and her trembling quickly subsided.

She turned her head to smile at Shining, seemingly heedless of the cuts along her chin and neck that the movement caused to reopen. “T-t-t-t-hank.. You. Comm… and-er,” she said in a halting, raspy voice.

Spike dashed over to her, slitted eyes wide. “Are… are you OK?”

“”Mfhn. Fi…. Fiiii.... I… I will be… f-f-f-fine. Soon e-nough.” Bit by bit, the frantic action of her breathing subsided, and Twilight watched in awe as a few of the shallower gashes across her muzzle began to slowly seal themselves closed. “Now… tell. Me. Please. What… of. M-m-m-m-y s-sub. Jects?”

Shining stood up a little straighter, and began to recite in a clipped and even but somehow reassuring voice, “Ponyville’s been secured, Your Grace, and the Lunar Rebels – if… that’s really what these ponies are – have all been disarmed. Supplies and a dedicated hospital ship are inbound from Canterlot as we speak to treat the most seriously wounded civilians.” He stopped and looked to Forward March, who gave a quick nod. “No fatalities.”

“Good work. You have… my personal… gra… titude. We’ll discuss… the appropriate honors…” With the Guards’ assistance, Celestia pivoted herself to face Twilight directly, “And a… sincere apology… that my faithful student… r-r-r-r…rich. Ly deserves… once everypony is accounted for. In… particular…”

The Princess closed her eyes, seeming to gather herself as color began to trickle back into her mane. She opened them again, and reached up a hoof to the ruined neckpiece of her regalia as though noticing its existence for the first time. With a quick, sharp tug the solid metal snapped off and fell to the floor, and Celestia stepped out of the Guardsponies’ telekinetic field. She strode across the chamber under her own power, still burnt and bleeding but regaining more and more of her familiar stature with each hoofstep as Guards and civilians alike backed off to let her through.

“Princess Luna!” Celestia called out, advancing on the trembling alicorn with her wings extended and her horn held high. For the first time since Twilight had examined her, the other pony’s fits seemed to abate. Luna looked up, and opened her eyes, and focused on Celestia- then she gasped in fear and her tremors redoubled. “It has been a thousand years since I have seen thee like this.”

Then, to Twilight’s surprise, the older Princess knelt in front of her sister and gently nuzzled her forehead. “It is time to put our differences behind us. We were meant to rule together, Little Sister. Willst thou accept my friendship?”

Luna’s mouth opened and her throat and tongue flexed, but only a faint whine came out. Eventually, she took a deep breath, swallowed hard on empty air, and nodded.

Celestia smiled, and wrapped her forehooves around Luna’s neck. “I missed you too, Little Sister.” Her horn sparked and flickered alarmingly for a good five seconds before lighting in a warm, soothing golden glow that, even at a few yards’ range, brought noticeable relief to Twilight’s strained muscles and aching joints. The blue alicorn’s eyes slowly drifted closed again, but now the spasmodic tension had drained completely from her frame and her breathing was slow and even.

“Wait…” Pinkie Pie muttered, “You mean all that stuff about a rebel sister of Celestia was actually real?” Twilight turned away from the scene unfolding in front of her just long enough to give the baker a particularly venomous look. “Whaaaaat?” Pinkie tilted her head to the side in a confused shrug. “I thought those crazy bat-mares’d just made the whole thing up.”

Celestia had stood again by that point, even though it seemed to take her a few more seconds to properly get her hooves under her. “Major Forward, I’m afraid now I must leave Princess Luna in your own capable hooves.”

“You… Your Grace?” the pegasus Guardsmare stammered.

Celestia’s eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. “Major, the enemy has been very effectively routed and she’s left a wounded mare behind her. I don’t think the proper course of action is that difficult to figure out.”

“Uhh, yes, Your Grace. Of course.” Forward tapped a rune on the side of her helmet with one primary feather and began muttering something about needing a litter and a dragon’s breakfast worth of chariots in the courtyard outside, as one of the lower-ranking unicorn corpsstallions unslung a canteen of water and began carefully trickling a few drops down the insensate Luna’s throat. Celestia leaned sideways against the chamber’s outer wall, eyes closed and head drooping forward; when a pair of Guards stepped up beside her and began guiding her towards the staircase, she didn’t resist. Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie were all moving in among the remaining troops- Twilight caught snatches of conversation that sounded like “If there’s anything at all we can do to help,” and “reckon y’all got more’n your share a’ questions ‘bout this whole stupid business”- before Shining Armor’s hoof came to rest gently on her withers. In her exhausted state, it was nearly enough to send her to the floor.

“C’mon, Twily,” he muttered, “Let’s all go home.”

(♫)

She’d anticipated nightmares, horrible ones in fact, but Twilight’s sleep had been deeper and less troubled these last few nights than any other time in the year since she’d begun her research. At first she’d credited that to nothing more than exhaustion, but now she was beginning to wonder if that fact had some more direct relationship with Nightmare Moon’s demise- or, she supposed, Luna’s restoration.

She’d anticipated being incredibly busy dealing with the fallout of the whole affair as well, but the expected deluge of reports and interrogations had also failed to materialize. There was certainly a lot to do before Ponyville would be back to normal again, to say nothing of the wider consequences that would be felt over the whole of Equestria and its neighboring nations, but the local citizenry had their own plans for how Cantrerlot could help them deal with it all, and for arguably the first time since her very early childhood Twilight Sparkle had a group of ponies around her she trusted to handle all of it without her constant oversight. That left her with an abundance of a previously extremely precious commodity- time to sit, and think, and try to set the events of the last chaotic three days into some sort of logical order of cause-and-effect.

It was mostly a solitary exercise accomplished from her improvised base-of-operations at the Golden Oaks. She also had been given a cabin -stateroom, really- aboard the royal flagship Warm Light of Dawn hovering above the outskirts of town, but with Princess Celestia personally directing so much of the reconstruction effort, the Princess and her student hadn’t had time to say much more than five or six sentences to each other since their meeting in the ruined Castle. To be perfectly honest, Twilight was thankful for that. Her brief encounter with Nightmare Moon had left quite a few questions she was obligated at some point to ask, and she still wasn’t sure she wanted to hear Celestia’s answers- if the Princess was even willing to provide them.

That didn’t mean Celestia had been avoiding Twilight, however, and when the scholar introduced herself to the guards outside of the Dawn’s conference room she was allowed in immediately.

“Princess?” She blinked, and swallowed hard. “Your sister is awake.”

Celestia looked up immediately. Just as quickly the other ponies she’d been speaking with- the Ponyville Council, along with Spike and Shining Armor- stood and began to file out, although the last two stopped abruptly when Celestia made eye contact. “Please, walk with us,” the Princess commanded as she stepped forward.

Noting Celestia’s use of the plural, Twilight followed along behind the others as they wound their way through the Dawn’s fine, wood-paneled upper corridors. Nopony seemed willing to speak.

Originally Luna had been kept in the medical bay, but almost immediately Celestia had seen that her sister was moved to an ambassadorial suite on one of the upper decks, which she’d personally refitted into as close a replica of Luna’s original bedchamber on Castle Rock as had been possible on such short notice. Not for the first time, Twilight was struck by the resemblance of its diaphanous midnight-blue tapestry and spare dark furniture to the chamber to which Nightmare Moon had brought her.

As they entered, the room’s sole other occupant tilted his beak-faced helmet in the slightest nod, and otherwise remained immobile. Steel Shank had become the de facto commander-in-chief of the Lunar Army more or less by default; no other ponies above the rank of Captain had survived their millennium-long interment. Twilight had never heard him speak at any length since he’d taken up his post beside Luna’s bed- although according to Shining Armor he’d been a little more talkative when negotiating the terms of the Lunars’ surrender- nor had she ever seen him leave that position. As near as she could tell, he simply watched the nurses and servants, ate food that was brought to him, and slept sitting up in his chair. Starswirl only knew what happened when he needed to take a piss.

The curtains were drawn, as they always were in daylight, and coming from the brightly-lit corridor outside Twilight found it difficult to see much in detail, but Luna herself looked… better, all-told. Her starry mane had been cut short, to make at least a little less obvious the portions that had fallen out completely, but already it had returned to nearly half a yard in length; the exposed edges of her wings were beginning to show a few new, dark blue primary feathers; and there was now hard keratin visible where her left front hoof had previously been a thickly-bandaged nub. Celestia’s physicians had repeatedly warned that her sister’s demise was imminent and certain, and that all that could be done was make her comfortable before the end finally came, but the elder Princess had steadfastly ignored them every time. Bewildered, they had then been forced to adjust their dire forecasts from a few hours, to sundown, to sunrise, to “sometime in the next few days”, before finally admitting that Luna was indeed likely to make a full recovery.

Thanks to her enchantments, ranks of elite Guards, and the general peace Equestria had enjoyed over the last few centuries, Princess Celestia hadn’t suffered much in the way of injury within living memory. Now Twilight was beginning to think that the older accounts of her shrugging off mortal injuries -what she’d always chocked up to tall-tales and propaganda- had in fact understated alicorn resilience.

The blue mare’s ears swiveled as they stepped closer, and her eyes slowly slid open. “T…. Tia?”

Her voice was dry and scratchy, barely above a whisper, but her speech was clear and articulate.

“Luna.” Princess Celestia ran -and that was the first time Twilight had ever seen the Princess truly run- to Luna’s bedside and wrapped her forehooves around the smaller alicorn.

Twilight was briefly worried the frail Luna might end up seriously injured as a result, and given that he had abandoned his chair and dashed towards her Steel Shank seemed to have been thinking the same thing, but Luna simply shook her head at him and returned the embrace with her one good hoof. “We were… not certain We would ever wake again, but… thou hast kept thine promise…” she rasped.

"Luna, Nightmare Moon, whatever you call yourself,” Celestia paused, blinking back tears, “You are, and have always been my sister, and I will always love you. I can think of no greater joy than having you at my side again.”

“So… when thou didst offer to share thine throne with us…”

“I meant every word. I won’t lie, you have a lot of catching-up to do, sister. But I know you’ll be able to figure it out.”

Luna’s unnaturally-thin lips quirked upward for just a moment, and then her expression became grave. “But… what of Our ponies? We shall not abandon them. If they are to stand trial for Our rebellion, We will stand alongside the-”

“They are forgiven,” said Celestia.

“… What?”

"They will be kept under watch until we’re certain they can function in modern society, but no longer. They should know that they have nothing to fear in the light." Even Steel Shank seemed surprised by that. Celestia turned and looked back at the assembled dignitaries- Twilight’s confused brain finally began to piece together that they’d been called along as witnesses, and now that the job was done Celestia had no further reason to command their presence. “Now, please, leave us be. I’d like to speak to my sister about topics… unrelated to the future of Equestria.”

The three of them filed out, suitably chastened, and not knowing what else to do Twilight led the way back to the uppermost deck.

It was busy up there, but not hectic as it had been just after the attack. Sailors and troops and Academy researchers paused more often than not in their duties to share food and conversation with Ponyville natives- it had, in fact, been Celestia’s idea to open the Dawn up for tours. Over by the railing, a stocky unicorn mare in a Navy parachute harness was showing Councilpony Cheerilee and a whole gaggle of schoolfillies how to operate one of the cannons, her physics-heavy lecture liberally seasoned with the sort of onomatopoeia Twilight was more used to seeing in comic books. "Well hey, I wouldn't mind getting a cutie mark in gunning," a vaguely familiar orange pegasus filly remarked.

"I think it's 'gunnery', but, hey, you're right!" her pink-and-white friend corrected.

"Huh. Y'all don't have your cutie marks either? Well howdy, Ah'm Apple Bloom," a third cut in.

Not far away, Fluttershy was supporting Citrine Sparks as the militiamare worked her way across the deck, her foreleg still wrapped in bandages and supported by a complicated brace. The little yellow pegasus gave her a pat on her good shoulder when she made it to the railing, and then she continued on under her own power to a quartet of shaky-looking pegasus Guardsponies that Twilight recognized from Celestia’s security detail. They let loose with a cheer when she finally made it to them, raggedy but spirited, and Fluttershy took to the air not long after to glide back in Twilight’s direction. “Oh. Hello, everypony!” she said once she was in easy speaking range.

The scholar waved a hoof at Fluttershy’s charges. “Everypony doing all right?”

“Much better, actually. Noteworthy’s already back at home, Straight Shot’s throat isn’t bothering him any more, and with some more exercise I think Citrine’ll be able to get back to the Militia in a month or two.” The pegasus’s ears flipped back. “Assuming she, well, wants to…”

Shining Armor made an odd little herr-um noise. “Well, if she does want to, I wonder if she’d consider the Royal Guard.” -or were they back to being the Day Guard now that Luna was being reinstated? Twilight had no idea who was going to sort that one out- “What she did in the Town Hall was… really brave, and with the right training I think she could do pretty well.”

Fluttershy seemed about to reply when a collective groan emanated from a pile of crates currently serving as an impromptu table-and-chair-setting for Pinkie Pie, a collection of Academy mages, and a few of the more bookish sort of Navy pony with Friendship: The Gathering cards spread out in front of them.

“I thought you said you’d never played this before!” shouted a yellow-and-blue pegasus stallion with an armillary cutie-mark.

“No, I said I hadn’t played in a while, and you just didn’t listen,” Pinkie Pie replied.

There was a lot of incomprehensible grumbling after that, followed by the pink earth mare shouting “Damn right I’m ruttin’ funny!”

Spike gave Twilight’s foreleg a tug. “Do you think we should… do something?” he whispered.

“Don’t worry, I’m good!” Pinkie Pie said in Twilight’s other ear. “I mean, have you seen the kitchen on this ship?”

“Galley, Pinkie Pie,” the unicorn corrected, “It’s called a galley on a ship.”

“Oh.” The pink mare sat down and stared at Twilight for a few seconds without blinking, head tilted far further than was probably entirely comfortable. “Why?”

“I swear, some ponies…” Rarity muttered from among a clump of Canterlot dignitaries, and jabbed a hoof in the general direction of another group of ponies that skewed much more heavily towards soldiers… and also much more heavily male.

“And there they were! Dozens of them! Hundreds!” Rainbow Dash was shouting from somewhere near the center. “With rotten flesh and viney growths, purple ichor leaking from their shattered barrels! And I fought them all!"

Meanwhile, Shining Armor had somehow gotten himself deep in conversation with Applejack. “Ah dun got no problem with ‘em,” the farmer was saying. “They’ve been mighty helpful cleanin’ up and haven’t been botherin’ none a’ the townsfolk or causin’ any trouble. Dun’ even complain when I put a squad of ‘em to work replantin’ all those saplings them Lunars trampled comin’ in.”

Her brother flashed Applejack a knowing smile. “Yeah, well, free home-cooked meals will have that sort of effect on soldiers.”

“Hey, are you feeling all right?” Fluttershy asked Rainbow Dash as the weathermare pulled away from her crowd of admirers. “I mean, with that gem and everything?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dash slipped a scrap of paper containing what appeared to be a cabin number into one of the pockets of her weather-team vest, and extracted in its place a round red stone about the size of a toy marble. “They got one of those surgical tell-oh-whatsits to come in…”

“A surgical teleportation specialist?” Twilight suggested.

“Yeah, uhh, what she said, to come in and zap it right out.”

“Now Ah was just gonna suggest prune juice…” Applejack said, “Thinkin’ ‘bout usin’ magic inside a pony just gives me the screamin’ willies.”

“Nah, I’ll take the specialist, thanks. This thing has edges.”

“Well, if you’re so tough, why didn’t you just digest it?” Spike cut in, “Ponies are weird.”

“Well, if you really want it…” suddenly, the gem was balanced atop Pinkie Pie’s upturned hoof.

Spike waved his claws in a quick warding-off gesture. “Oh, no, no thanks, I know where that thing’s been.”

A cheer went up from the far rail, as a squad of Landsknecht heavies stepped off an air chariot and onto the deck, clad ears-to-tail in bright golden armor.

“You’re really not bringing in the Wonderbolts for this?” Rainbow Dash asked, incredulous. “Nopony cares about those armored jackasses.”

Shining’s expression remained outwardly unchanged, but Twilight could hear the tension in his voice. “Chief Dash, if you keep making those sorts of racist remarks, I’m not going to be able to include you in the photo shoot.”

That shut her up right quick.

“You told me there wouldn’t be any cameras,” Fluttershy whispered.

Rarity rapped a hoof against Applejack’s shoulder. “And you told me you would wear something nice!”

“Ah am wearin’… Ah’ mean, Ah even brought mah fancy hat!”

That seemed to mollify the tailor at least a little bit. “Oh, good, the one you’re wearing now is looking a mite disheveled…”

The farmer’s ears flattened back against her skull. “This is mah fancy hat!”

“Ah. Um… say no more, darling!”

Spike shook his head. “Please!”

“Photo shoot?” Pinkie Pie asked, “I was kind of hoping for the Proceedings of the Royal Academy myself. They keep sending me these really passive-aggressive rejection letters no matter how clearly I explain the Material Plane’s harmonic simultaneous four-day time cube…”

She trailed off and the lot of them slid into an easy, companionable silence. The Sun was just beginning to touch the mountainous horizon now, and the first lamps were flickering into activity in the windows of the village below. The Army repair crews must’ve decided that their work for the day was done, as the only sounds that filtered up to the Dawn’s level now were voices, birdcalls, and the occasional pop and crackle of somepony’s last few skyrockets. There had been talk early on of a do-over for the whole of the Summer Sun Celebration, but it had seemed… insensitive, somehow, with Princess Luna herself stubbornly clawing her way back to consciousness just a few cabins over and a Rebel battalion camped under guard in the fields below.

“Do you… really think Celestia’s gonna get those Lunars off the hook?” Spike finally asked. “I mean, you all heard what she said, right? But how does she actually… do that?”

Twilight had to admit that the dragon had a point. The power structure of Equestria was a lot more centralized than, say, Saddle Arabia’s, but it was still first and foremost a nation of laws and procedures. Princess Celestia couldn’t just declare a pony exempt from criminal prosecution any more than she could order a pony arrested without charge, and in their brief time in modern Equestria the Lunars had accumulated quite a list of offenses. The truly outrageous ones- the forcible infliction of psychotropic spells, the disruption of vital civil services up to and including the motion of the Sun, and most of the outright assaults- were the direct work of Nightmare Moon and her revenants, it was true, but the Lunar soldiers had still willingly assisted her in unlawfully detaining and generally terrorizing some two thousand Equestrian citizens.

“Well, there was an amnesty, wasn’t there?” Fluttershy suggested.

“I think that only applies to what they did during the Rebellions a thousand years ago,” said Shining Armor, “It isn’t like if your name was written on the thing you were free to commit whatever crimes you wanted for the whole rest of your life… I hope?”

“But Luna wasn’t… herself when she did what she did,” said Rarity.

“And she’s not being accused of anything for precisely that reason,” the dragon continued, “But the soldiers who followed Nightmare Moon’s orders weren’t under any kind of control.”

“But they do predate Equestrian law as we know it,” said Twilight, “and they had a lot of bad information on what they were going into, and I’m sure some of them didn’t understand, and… none of that would excuse what they did, but it’d all need to be addressed, at least, at a trial. And there’s two hundred of them to try! By the time we got through half of them, the other half’d’ve died of old age. There’s going to have to be… expediencies made, and if we’re being expedient we can really only be expedient on the side of the defendants. I think Celestia can convince the courts of that.”

Shining Armor nodded and made a little hmmm noise.

“I’m not sure if I’m okay with that, actually,” said Spike, “Even before Nightmare Moon, uhh, happened, well… we mapped a lot of graveyards all over Equestria that Princess Luna helped fill.”

“Spike,” Twilight knelt down to look him in the eye, “If redemption was only ever made available to ponies who’d never done anything wrong, it wouldn’t exactly count for very much, now would it?”

“Well said, Twilight Sparkle!” said Princess Celestia, and the young scholar jumped a little in place. She’d thought Celestia was still down in the ambassadorial quarters.

The others, perhaps anticipating the private topics such a conversation would likely delve into, quietly stepped away. Celestia lowered herself onto her haunches in a single fluid movement, which still left her a little bit taller than Twilight leaning against the railing with her forehooves up on top of it.

The alicorn didn’t say anything for a good long while.

Twilight made a few false starts, swallowed hard, and finally managed to ask “So… how’s Luna?”

“She fell asleep mid-sentence, I’m afraid,” a hint of mirth crept into Celestia’s voice. “For once the doctors and I agree that’s to be expected of a pony in her situation, and we anticipate she’ll wake more and more in the days ahead. Soon enough she’ll be strong enough to start physical exercises, and walk again, and eventually… back to normal.”

“That’s good to hear. As you can imagine, I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask her when she has a little more stamina.”

Celestia’s violet eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly, and the waves of color in her prismatic mane became infinitesimally more turbulent.

“No, no, not like that!” Twilight quickly amended, and laughed nervously, and then continued more softly. “I mean… I feel like I’ve read so much about Luna from so many different sources that I almost know her, but it’s not the same as talking to the real, live pony.”

(♫)

The faint suggestions of turmoil in Celestia’s omnipresent aura stilled. Instead she seemed to lose something ineffable and vitally important. The colors of her mane suddenly seemed faded and worn, even though they remained visually the same as they always had. “No, it’s not the same. You translated journals and dug up trenches. You don’t remember the smell of sweat and smoke and so, so much newly-dug earth. You never looked at your subjects’ hollowed-out faces and… and hollowed-out souls.” The fading influence itself faded away, replaced by the brittle brightness of costume jewelry. “Perhaps that’s for the best.”

Celestia shifted, and seemed about to get up, and Twilight realized with a bit of panic that if she didn’t get an answer out of the alicorn now about what she’d unearthed, there was a very real possibility nopony ever would.

“Princess,” the scholar began, “when I fought Nightmare Moon in the Everfree, after I drew her away from my friends and before they got back with the Elements, she… talked to me. She said you were behind the prophecy that predicted her arrival. At the time I thought she was just trying to get inside my head, but, really, it’s only if she was telling the truth that a lot of the things you did this year make any sense.”

“Go on?” Celestia’s voice betrayed nothing but idle curiosity. Twilight concluded that even an alicorn couldn’t possibly dispose of her on the deck of a crowded airship without ponies asking uncomfortable questions, and then was surprised that she was even considering the possibility.

She continued. “You asked me to create a mathematical model of the spell that would return Nightmare Moon, but lost interest when it became clear that all it needed was an arrival time. That’s because you already knew her arrival time, from the prophecy, and with that the model was enough to predict a location, and a mana drain so high that Nightmare Moon would be in no condition to fight after her transition. And that statue containing the prophecy had a modern stealth spell operating on it, and a preservation spell matching your thaumic signature. I… I think you even let me come to Ponyville right before the Celebration, right before Nightmare Moon would arrive, because you thought I’d be less likely to interfere with your preparations here than in Canterlot. You might have even figured the Cairns and so on would keep me busy, and keep me from discovering what was really going on.”

“That’s all very cleverly deduced, my faithful student. In fact, almost all of it’s correct.” Celestia’s horn glowed a warm gold, and despite the sun still being a good ways off from truly setting the smooth white disc of the Moon rose into visibility over the mountains. Twilight wondered if she’d ever get used to the Mare pattern’s disappearance. “But I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“I found some… documents under the Golden Oaks… the library in town, I mean. A journal by a pony who would later be recorded as one of your less significant early ministers, who described how you… supported the Council of Five Hundred in the Rebellions. Against the Day Guard, which wasn’t even your idea at all.” Twilight saw Celestia’s eyes widen the tiniest fraction at that statement, but kept going. “What I don’t understand is, you apparently went to incredible lengths to hide anypony and anything that could’ve revealed those actions, what… really happened with Luna, and the Rebellion, and all the rest, because there’s not a shred of evidence in the official literature. But you left that journal, and the prophecy itself for that matter, out here instead of destroying them or burying them somewhere in secure deep storage behind modern locks. Why send me here, and not off to the old Black-Talon Library in Griffonstone or some other superficially promising site without anything like this left? Why let me talk to Luna?”

Celestia’s smile settled somewhere between knowing and wistful. “So you found Clip’s journal, did you? I don’t know if he’d be glad to finally know where it ended up, or furious that somepony’d dared read it. I for one always suspected the haulers he’d sent had just left it in Ponyville, perhaps because they simply couldn’t find his hideaway, but he refused to let me scry for it. Private information, he said.”

That was about the last response Twilight had expected. “Wait, wait, no, why would he tell you-” she stammered.

“It would be much easier, for a number of reasons, if I… showed you the information you’re missing.” Celestia closed her eyes, and lit her horn, and sketched complicated symbols on the deck with her hoof and in the air with the tips of her wings, and muttered foreign-sounding syllables, and a small yellow bubble began to coalesce just in front of the base of her horn.

Twilight recognized the spell. The orb it was producing was a condensed memory- a complete record of a pony’s sensory experiences over a certain period of time, precipitated and stabilized for somepony else to relive. The memories were incredibly detailed and impossible to alter or forge, but the spell only worked on a willing subject and even then very rarely. Twilight, like many high-level mages, had experimented with casting it on herself more than a few times in graduate school, but had managed to produce only a brief flash of some inconsequential part of her foalhood on her very first attempt and never gotten it to work again.

Celestia finished the incantation, and the orb floated freely between them, its glow already beginning to dissipate. Twilight stared into it and let it seem to expand until it filled the whole of her vision…

And then she was striding down a corridor in the Canterlot Day Court. She didn’t recognize the furniture, and while she recognized the architecture it seemed off for a good few seconds before she realized she was looking at it from twice her usual height.

Celestia’s elegant frame felt incredibly strong, her vision and hearing fantastically sharp, and she could smell the stone dust left over from the Court Hall’s recent construction in the seams between the segments of the marble floor. The first thing Twilight thought to do was go and explore, but she was merely a passenger inside the Princess’s head now. Attempting to turn around or even look in a different direction would only result in a scrawny purple unicorn stumbling around and making a fool of herself a thousand years in the future.

Celestia was headed for a plain wooden door at the end of the hallway, and while the alicorn’s thoughts weren’t accessible to Twilight the quick pace she set and the rapid pounding in her chest gave the scholar a fairly good idea of her trepidation as she drew ever-closer to it. Nonetheless, draw closer she did, and eased it open with a gold-shod hoof.

There was an office on the other side- a cramped little one with a single wooden desk of the sort a clerk might use, and judging by the way Celestia’s gaze now scanned over its neat stacks of parchment and blandly comfortable furniture the Princess had never seen inside of it before. The torches inside were lit, and the solitary window on the wall opposite the door revealed a dark, starry sky.

There were guards in gold armor waiting just behind the door, however, and they startled at Celestia’s presence, and one swung a fauchard down an inch from her muzzle. Beyond them, a group of ponies in cloth uniforms and ministers’ sashes continued talking with each other, nearly oblivious.

“… if we had the troops available, I would,” a light blue earth stallion with a dark blue mane and a neatly trimmed beard was saying in a rough baritone. “but Trot was, if we are being honest, never that economically important. If by letting this… ‘Emperor’ Incitatus fellow secede peacefully we can guarantee free passage back to Equestria-proper for the ponies who opposed him, then I’m willing to make that sacrifice. Maybe in a few decades they’ll realize what a mistake they made, and come back just as peacefully… assuming something doesn’t attack them first, since I’m not sure how Incitatus plans to defend his… country without the Equestrian Army garrison…” The stallion finally seemed to notice Celestia and the guards, and sighed and rolled his eyes. “I suppose you might as well give us the room. I’ll come and get you when this is done.”

Celestia stood aside to let the others file out, leaving just the stallion and his guards. It was only then that Twilight noticed the pronounced dip in his upper back and the faint, thin old scar that traced across the sheaf of papers on his left flank- this, at long last, was the notorious Paper Clip. He was younger than she’d expected, perhaps thirty or forty, and although of impressively large stature far more pudgy than fit. Just like his comrades he wore a black cloth ministerial sash, although his seemed devoid of any rank whatsoever.

He gave a curt nod and the polearm in front of Celestia’s face was removed. “Well?” he asked, yellow eyes narrowing.

Twilight could feel Celestia’s mouth open, but the Princess seemed unable to immediately form words. The stallion sitting at the desk across from her circled his hooves in a quick little ‘go on’ motion.

Then Celestia’s golden sabatons became visible in front of her as she sank into a deep, long bow. Twilight was surprised by that, and then surprised that she was surprised. Celestia bowed to her staff and subjects all the time in her era, but here it seemed somehow incongruous. “We are… no… I’m sorry.”

That got his attention. “You’re… sorry?”

Twilight couldn’t feel what Celestia was feeling, but she could see the tears clouding her borrowed eyes more than well enough. “I’m sorry I hauled you up in front of that ridiculous Council hearing when I should’ve been giving you my blessing to take whatever measures were necessary to safeguard the livelihood of the common pony. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to organize the Day Guard myself, I’m sorry I wasn’t fighting alongside them from the very beginning, I’m… sorry I let those Councilors live as long as they did!”

Paper Clip pulled in a big barrelfull of air and then let it out slowly, his eyes sliding momentarily half-closed. “Well, the thing is you’re… not really mine to forgive.” He plucked another scroll from the basket beside him and smoothed it out with his hooves. “Head back to Everfree and dig up some of the ponies we had to leave behind in the Fall… the ponies who never made it far enough to see the Fall. Maybe they’ll forgive you.”

Celestia stood up, then, and made a few steps towards the desk. “I’m not… asking for forgiveness, because I know there can be none. I suppose I’m just stating a fact. I did wrong by my subjects, and I… need your help to make sure that never happens again. I owe So-” Twilight felt a word taking shape in Celestia’s throat, but it never materialized. “I owe everypony that much, at the very least.”

“You want me, General Secretary of the Equestrian Provisional Government, to help you,” Paper Clip asked, incredulous.

“I need you to help me.”

“Was that an order, Princess?”

“I want you to have me… what’s the term, read in on how you make decisions. And…” Celestia’s gold-shod hooves shifted minutely beneath her, “I’m… I’m not going to sign any more of your decrees until you do!”

The pony behind the desk leaned forward, his plain, chubby features suddenly taking on a predatory appearance that suited him surprisingly well. “Was that a threat?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“You think you can threaten me?” Very suddenly, he smiled, and nodded. “Didn’t know you had it in you!” He waved a hoof, and the guards returned to their posts. Even with Celestia’s senses, Twilight hadn’t even been aware they’d come up behind her and brandished their weapons. “I want you to understand one thing, though. This won’t be like it was under the Council. Power means responsibility now, and if you don’t do right by the ponies of Equestria, you’ll have to face up to the consequences.”

Celestia’s head tipped downward, although she didn’t make a full bow this time. With the aid of his chair, Paper Clip ended up more or less on her level. “I’d expect nothing less. I know you don’t trust me right now. I wouldn’t trust me either. I know I have a lot to learn and a lot to prove, and that’s going to take time, but… if you’ll teach me…”

The minister scratched at his short little beard. “You make a surprisingly compact and well-reasoned argument. Guards!” he shouted, quite suddenly, “Arrest this highly-intelligent changeling and find out what happened to the real Celestia!”

There was a long, uncomfortable moment where Twilight felt Celestia’s entire frame tense- although in preparation for doing what, the scholar had no idea. Then Paper Clip chuckled, briefly, and then Celestia laughed and after that the guards laughed as well.

(♫)

The minister motioned to one of the ratty little cushions that surrounded his desk, and Celestia sat down without a word. “I think we can make this work in a way that’s helpful not just to the both of us, but to Equestria as a whole. But I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“All the work we’ve done has your signature on it. I’d like to keep it that way, and I don’t want your sudden turn of good sense to extend to telling anypony what was really going on. The majority of Equestria… just isn’t ready yet to accept the Lunars, or a lot of their ideas, and I don’t know if we ever will be. There’d only be more bloodshed if the public knew.”

“Then…” a gold-shot hoof pressed against the fur just below Celestia’s neckpiece. This was the first time since the memory had begun that the princess had bothered to look at her own chest, and Twilight was surprised to discover that the torc appeared nearly identical to its modern version. “By the light of the Unconquered Sun, I do so swear.”

“Good.” Paper Clip seemed to have decided he’d had enough with the scroll in front of him, and rolled it up again and tossed it in another basket. “Come morning I’ll summon the others and brief them about this. They follow my lead on a lot of issues, but ultimately we make decisions by consensus.” His expression turned grave. “I’ll speak on your behalf, but they still may not be willing to accept you.”

“Then I ask only that they give me a reason why I’m not worthy of their secrets,” said Celestia, “so that I can someday, hopefully, do better.”

Paper Clip’s smile returned. “With an attitude like that… I think you’ll do fine. Now go on, get out of my office.” His tone was sharp, but there was a newfound warmth behind it. “Got work to do.”

Celestia stood, and turned to leave, but then stopped in front of the solitary window. The Moon outside shone across a Canterlot Castle district that Twilight found eerily familiar despite currently being made more of scaffolding than stone- the Halls of the Day Court, the Guard academy at Hurricane's Green, and some of the earliest buildings of the Royal Academy of Magic were already starting to take on recognizable shapes in its soft white light. “Do you think she’s… really up there?” the Princess asked.

“How in Tartarus would I know?”

Silence fell. Woodpeckers called to one another around the mountain spring that would centuries from now become the reflecting pool of the Prince Saturnine Memorial.

“I’ve been hiring diviners,” Celestia finally said. “To try to find out more about what happened.”

“Not out of civic funds, I hope!”

“No, no, then you would’ve found out about it and stopped me.”

“That’s… surprisingly clever of you.”

“They’re making good progress, I think. It’s hard to say, everything about… all of it… is so strange. I still can’t get answers to the simplest questions, at least not ones that make any sense, but… every day, our methods improve.”

“You, uhh… you keep at that.” There was a brief pause when Celestia’s head turned back to the pony at the desk, and her ears turned back against her skull. “No, no, I’m serious!” he amended, “Wish I’d thought of the idea myself. I you ever need any… any resources, or information, or something, don’t hesitate to talk to me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Celestia turned away from the moon and back towards the door, and blinked quickly a few times, and Twilight expected to see more tears but there were none. “Good night, Mister Secretary.”

“Good night… Your Grace.”

Celestia strode out of the office with her head held high, and the vision started to fade out and blur around the edges, and Twilight Sparkle was back in the body of a scrawny purple unicorn again.

“I… think I’m starting to see,” she said, “You weren’t trying to protect yourself, you… and Paper Clip… you were trying to protect the Lunars, at least at first. That’s why you never told anypony about the Cairns, and kept up the fiction that you were the only one responsible for the reunification of Equestria.”

Off in the big field to the East, the indigo-clad figures of the over two-hundred-strong Lunar survivors were falling into formation. They had been permitted to keep their armor and personal effects, and had not been fitted with any restraints, and they marched out in good order with their heads held high to board the troopships that would take them to a temporary holding facility at Fillydelphia Harbor. Even from this altitude Twilight could hear their voices raised in a strange, wistful sort of half-harmony utterly unlike how they had sounded during the siege of the Town Hall.

The times we live in now have changed, honor is long gone

And now that good and evil are shades of gray a cruel impasse is drawn

For all the good we have created it doesn’t make us right,

“But those of us who hide in darkness seek a different kind of light,” the scholar finished, then gasped slightly as she realized she wasn’t the only one who had spoken. Princess Celestia smiled at the surprised look she must’ve spotted on Twilight’s face, but then her levity faded away.

“That’s how it started, at least, but over the centuries… when everypony else who remembered was dead, and the ponies who came after them taught that lie in our schools, carved it into our statues and wrote it into our novels, I… suppose it just became more comfortable than the truth. I told myself so many times that next year, when things were calmer, I’d assemble a tribunal and testify to all of it, but there was always a whisper campaign that didn’t need fanning, or an unpopular law that needed to pass, and almost before I knew it my time had nearly run out.”

Twilight leaned against the railing and thought about that for a while. She’d been expecting some grand conspiracy, but to hear the Princess tell it first-hoof the whole thing seemed so incredibly… mortal.

“I found copies of the prophecy, didn’t I?” the scholar finally asked. “Ones that you didn’t know about. One of the diviners you worked with must’ve been a Lunar sympathizer, or known a Lunar sympathizer, and the text got smuggled out of Canterlot and hidden in that statue. Then the Lunar fled to Griffonia, or maybe one of General Gul’s spies got involved, or really any number of things could have happened so that by the beginning of the Seventh Century a Griffish translation of the thing was left somewhere for Mist Watcher to find.”

Celestia nodded. “It’s ironic, I suppose. I must’ve visited that statue a dozen times to renew the spell on it, and never once did I consider that what was inside that compartment was anything more dangerous than a supply cache. I knew there was one of those in Ponyville, and that Paper Clip had taken it over, but I always supposed the statue was the entrance and there was nothing… incriminating left inside. When I sent you here I did hope you’d find it, though, and publish something so you didn’t think your work was completely wasted.”

The Dawn was being allowed to drift essentially without power, its captain more or less content to keep it in the general area of Ponyville. From her position on the port rail Twilight could see the orderly rows of Sweet Apple Acres and, beyond that, the glow of high-powered crystal lamps surrounding the open Cairn. There was to be a proper excavation conducted by the Royal Academy, and two of the department’s most respected archeologists were currently jockeying for her approval to oversee it. Both were currently accusing the other of altering the letter they’d jointly published in last month’s Epigraphical Review to call Twilight’s analysis of the Luna Bay fragment ‘alarmist pseudohistory’; she had already decided she would be much better off with a member of the junior faculty in charge.

Once that work was completed, the bodies inside the Cairn would be transferred to Canterlot and reinterred in one of the military cemeteries there- after all, the structure wasn’t a tomb and had never been intended as such. How much of the local Rich dynasty’s fortune could then be confiscated as the proceeds of a robbery that may have cost up to thirty-six ponies their lives would be up to the courts.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Twilight finally asked Celestia.

“Once my sister had been… subdued, I planned to negotiate with her and together we would coordinate a more peaceful return, and then a gradual disclosure. I never anticipated… anything like this. Paper Clip never did figure out that her soldiers were merely hibernating, or that what came back from the Moon would…" Celestia paused, and shuddered ever so slightly, "not be my sister. I ask only that you don’t confuse my ignorance of the threat Equestria faced for a lack of concern… although, ultimately, that’s hardly better. If it hadn’t been for your actions, Twilight Sparkle, Luna and quite a lot of other ponies wouldn’t be here right now.”

Twilight shook her head. “Paper Clip and his cabal lived in an era where psychology, physiology, necromancy and astrolimnology were all barely scientific disciplines. There’s no way they could have identified-”

“You’re completely right, of course. But I’m leading Equestria now, and I have no excuse to repeat their mistakes any more than I had excuse to follow that ridiculous Council.” She tapped a hoof once against the deckplates, producing a loud ringing sound that Twilight suspected was more magical than material. “That ends today.”

For a little while, nothing happened. They were passing over the outer sections of the Everfree now, pitch-dark even though the sun still hadn’t quite set. It was a fine, clear evening, and with a moderately-strong spyglass Twilight would probably still have been able to just about make out the crumbling spires of the Castle of the Two Sisters. The theories that the Fall of Everfree had somehow been the work of the Lunar rebels, or of the Elements themselves -theories that had dominated academia for the entire time Twilight Sparkle had been alive- were looking decidedly untenable now; Spike said there were already pamphlets circulating in the more superstitious parts of society reviving the older claims of direct punishment by this god or that. Twilight had her doubts about those, of course, but she didn’t exactly have a ready explanation at hoof either. She wasn’t worried. They could come back to the Castle in good time, now that they knew how to find the way to it, armed with better equipment and a clearer perspective, and plumb its secrets with no need to hide in its shadows.

A soft little cough from Celestia informed Twilight that she’d been woolgathering again, and the scholar turned around to encounter a pair of stocky Royal Guards carrying a golden metal box about half Twilight’s size, between a pair of poles clipped to their armor like a stretcher. They nodded at Celestia in perfect synchrony, knelt until the box was resting on the deck, unfastened it from their armor, and stepped aside. The Princess fiddled with the complicated-looking lock on the front of it for a few seconds, and with a great deal of clicking gearwork and fizzling enchantments the top detached and levered open on perfectly oiled hinges.

It looked to be the single most physically and magically reinforced object Twilight Sparkle had ever seen, and was plastered with warnings describing any number of downright grisly things it could do to ponies not duly authorized to interact with it, so she was initially leery of even approaching it. After a few seconds, though, Celestia nodded, and motioned with one hoof, and the scholar stepped forward and looked inside. The case was filled with paper- blueprints and ledgers and dozens upon dozens of thin black-leather journals, and when Twilight added the light of her horn to the rapidly-fading sun she realized she recognized a great deal of the mouthwriting.

“You asked why I didn’t lock away the history of the Lunar Rebellions somewhere deep under Canterlot, behind modern walls with modern locks, Twilight?” said Celestia, “In fact I did exactly that. This is everything our… cabal, as you put it, managed not to misplace. I want you to analyze it, annotate it, summarize it, and then present it to Equestria at large.”

Twilight had to restrain herself from physically reeling backward. “But… Your Grace… this can’t… you can’t seriously…”

“I am entirely serious, Twilight. Equestria deserves the truth, and I want you to help me tell it. I can’t explain everything, simply because a thousand years of information can’t fit in one mare’s lifetime, and there are questions I don’t have the answers to and answers that aren’t mine to give. But if you ask me anything, if it’s in my power I will give you an honest and complete explanation.”

The troopships had raised their gangplanks and begun gaining altitude; now they set off with a whir of propellers to ferry the Lunar survivors to Fillydelphia Harbor and from there… who knew? Twilight watched as they crossed in front of where Canterlot perched on the mountainside, the better part of a hundred kilometers to the North, the sunset painting its marble spires with molten iron. Far beyond that out of sight, Twilight knew, were the weatherworks of Cloudsdale and the oat-mills of Chicoltgo and the steelyards of Bayjing, and a dozen other cities that fueled the industrial might of Equestria. She'd spent her entire life in a bustling empire of rail and alchemical flame that was the envy of the Known World, and only now did it dawn on Twilight Sparkle that save for the actions of a very few ponies a very long time ago, the intervening thousand years might have been spent very, very differently.

A gold-shod hoof tapped her gently on the shoulder. “Well?”

Twilight swallowed hard and looked back to the pony who had, for better or worse, seen all of it take shape. “What are the Elements of Harmony?”

“I really don’t know. Ponies just… found them, buried, one day, during work on an expansion of the original Council Hall, and brought them to my sister and me. I know that they’re immensely powerful, and extremely dangerous, and that a single pony can indeed use all six at once, but that way courts calamity. When I used them against Lu- against Nightmare Moon, deep down I suppose I… was frustrated, and tired, and this war of hers had been going on far too long, and I… just wanted her gone, back to wherever she'd come from. And so the Elements fulfilled that request as best they could.” The alicorn blinked back tears that shone with a prismatic brilliance all their own. “After that I could never get them to operate again, and when Paper Clip said they’d been left behind in Everfree I figured it was best just to forget about them. Until you used them, I thought they would never work without Luna. Now it seems the problem lay with me and not the artifacts… which is also something I should have realized a long time ago.”

“What eventually happened to Paper Clip?”

“He and I worked together for… maybe twenty years in Canterlot. Then he stepped down, and spent another eighteen teaching engineering at the Miner’s Guild back in Frankpferd. Then he… well, died, peacefully, in his sleep, an obscure civil servant history never bothered with. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

The glow of the setting Sun finally disappeared completely from the sky over the mountains, leaving only the pale blue-gray light of the unblemished Moon and millions of tiny, iridescent stars. Nestled in the shadows and surrounded by mountains, the lights of Ponyville reminded Twilight of a bowl full of fireflies, or perhaps gems set in an arched ceiling of heavy black stone.

“Celestia, do you know… anything at all about Nightmare Moon?”

“You know exactly as much about her as I do, Twilight. Possibly more. Maybe you’ll find some answers in the other old Lunar sites-Sol Invictus knows you’re quite adept at discovering things I’ve repeatedly missed- or with that mathematical model of yours now that it’s finally completed. You are free to use whatever materials and methods you see fit in that study, save any tests that might possibly harm my sister.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Something else was puzzling Twilight now. Something usually was, these days, and she didn’t expect that to change any time soon, but this wasn’t as concrete as a flawed spell model. She was awake, alive, clean and well-fed. A year or more of work had finally been vindicated in the most spectacular fashion imaginable, and her detractors had been silenced- Tartarus, some of her detractors were currently falling over each other to try to become her subordinates. She had been given the opportunity to literally rewrite the history books on perhaps Equestria’s most important era. She’d saved all of Equestria from eternal darkness, literal and figurative, and in the process given some two-hundred-odd souls -Princess Luna by no means the least among them- a chance to step out from Nightmare Moon’s shadow. And yet…

“Why so glum, my faithful student?” Princess Celestia asked, as though she was reading Twilight’s thoughts. “Are you not happy that your quest is complete and you can return to your studies in Canterlot?”

“That’s just it. I’ve been… thinking,” Twilight stammered in reply.

The alicorn’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Well that’s always an ominous sign!”

“Everything we have on the Lunar Rebellions, and Paper Clip, and the Council, and everything else I’m charged with annotating, is either in that box or buried somewhere around Ponyville, isn’t it?”

“Yes…”

“And with my new security clearance, I can work on analyzing it basically anywhere there’s a firelink to the Canterlot Library and a space to keep my notes, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“And if we’re going to make any headway on determining what exactly this ‘Nightmare’ entity actually is or where it came from, and how it relates to the Elements of Harmony, and what actually happened during the fall of Everfree, we’re going to need a long-term research and exploration presence near the Lunar ruins in and around Ponyville…”

“That’s a very reasonable assumption.”

“… and somepony’s going to have to oversee that operation and make sure it doesn’t endanger or inconvenience the townsponies…”

“Indeed.”

“… and this whole project has, from the very beginning, been my idea…”

“Well, yes. I can take some credit, but not for the parts that succeeded.”

“And, in case we ever do need to use them again, it makes sense to have all six ponies demonstrated to be capable of using the Elements of Harmony close at hoof…”

“A fair assessment.”

“… and that library I’ve been living out of doesn’t really have anypony currently using the loft inside it…”

“Mmmhmm?”

“Do you think it’d be possible for me to… stay here? In Ponyville? Long-term, I mean.”

“I think I could arrange something like that. Spike, take a message…”

Author's Note

And… here we are. The end of Friendship is Magic: Extended Cut.

What a ride it’s been. What I thought was going to be a little month-long side project wound up taking me over a year, and in that time I’ve gotten a Master’s degree, moved houses for the first time in my life, and gotten a full-time job.

I think it’s obvious where to go from here- I have every intention of continuing to extend more of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, although I am still figuring out exactly what to do with the main-season episodes and how much time I want to spend on each. One thing I do know is that I probably won’t be following the original plots quite so closely in the future, as I have some ideas of my own for early-season story arcs, but I am as of yet unsure exactly how much I want to condense the mid-season material.

We shall see.

UPDATED 11 OCTOBER 2020 with some minor grammar and phrasing fixes.

Moonshot

“Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn while the younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all three types of ponies.

But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night. One fateful day, the younger alicorn refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn. The elder sister tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young one’s heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness- Nightmare Moon. She vowed that she would shroud the land in eternal night.

Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponykind- The Elements of Harmony. Using the magic of the Elements of Harmony, she defeated her younger sister, and banished her permanently in the moon. The elder sister took on responsibility for both sun and moon, and harmony has been maintained in Equestria for generations since.”

(♫)

“Curious text, isn’t it?” In Twilight Sparkle’s telekinetic grip, her favorite lecturer’s pointer tapped each gorgeously-illustrated page of the historical document she’d had photoalchemically enlarged to occupy the easel on her right. “In tone it’s superficially similar to late Solarist polemics- for instance in its description of Celestia ‘taking on responsibility’ and the repeated motif of ‘harmony’ as a political or social concept instead of simply metaphysical. However, we also see the inclusion of a great deal of background information that any pony in Equestria would already consider common knowledge.”

The purple unicorn took a half-step forward, tensing unconsciously in excitement. “That’s why I’d posit that the Fragment is in fact at least partially Griffonic in origin. The parchment is composed of yellow Ujumqin calfskin, which until the Fourth Century was rare in Equestria but common in the Griffon Empire, and the two-illustrations-to-a-page layout was used commonly in the historical primers provided to the children of Griffon nobles! Note the attribution of a comprehensible motive to the rebel Princess Luna, something a Solar polemicist of the First or Second Centuries would never have done; a description of the Moon having been held in place, which was dismissed as exaggeration as early as the one-seventies and only confirmed with the advent of modern analytic thaumotracing in the nine-eighties; and the complete absence of any of the formal moralistic closings.”

“If that’s the case…” with practiced ease, the pointer executed a quick sweep for added emphasis, “we could be looking at the one of the only surviving accounts of the Lunar Rebellions not to have been subjected to factional censorship, possibly even based off of one of the otherwise lost Equestrian texts collected, translated, and annotated by Gurdur Black-Talon herself!” While Equestria’s official record system had been well-established by the First Century of the Circadian Era, the secrecy and corruption and factional infighting that increasingly surrounded the ruling Council of Five Hundred had seen it degrade significantly as the century approached its end. Once Luna’s rebellion began in earnest and even the time of day became subject to a battle of wills between two recalcitrant Princesses, the public annals had disintegrated completely into a series of contradictory polemics. Anything dating before about the mid Second Century was now generally recognized to be unreliable at best and pure propagandistic garbage at worst.

Suddenly aware that she was advancing out of range of her easel, Twilight backtracked and sidled over to the right. “It’s a simplified, secondhand account to be sure, but if it is derived from material held by the Black Talon Society- which, at the time, took immense pride in rigorous, factual impartiality compared to the revisionist historians of a divided Equestria, and had been established when the events of the Lunar Rebellions remained in living memory- then we can conclude with some certainty that the facts depicted in it had been verified by authoritative sources!”

She fought back a smirk borne from long-overdue vindication. It wouldn’t do to appear unprofessional before the Day Court. “It’s not lost on me that those facts include a description of the Elements of Harmony as real, physical objects. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say anything about where they might have ended up, and personally I won’t believe any of it until I’m holding the things in my hooves.” Now she permitted herself a bit more of a smile. Serious scholars were more or less evenly divided on whether the fabled artifacts had ever truly existed; The Elements of Harmony: A Reference and the few other sources that discussed them at length were heavy on philosophy, metaphor, and allegory to the exclusion of concrete details or for that matter comprehensible sentence structure. Twilight Sparkle considered herself agnostic on that particular question.

“But that’s at best, a secondary concern. Much more importantly to the issue at hand, this fragment unambiguously identifies the rebel Princess Luna as both Nightmare Moon and the cause of the Mare-in-the-Moon Phenomenon!”

The pointer was left to float idle for a moment as Twilight flipped her canvas back onto the not-inconsiderable stack behind her, revealing the next in sequence; another enlargement of an ancient text, this one depicting a stylized Mare-in-the-Moon above a block of cramped, heavily stylized Early Modern Ponish.

“This brings us to the year 642 and Mist Watcher’s Predictions and Prophecies, a popular-magic encyclopedia which contains an entry on the Mare in the Moon eerily consistent with what’s described in the Luna Bay fragment- and completely contrary to the prevailing wizardly consensus of the time that the image was simply a projection created by Princess Luna to rally her forces, which Celestia was then unable to remove following her sister’s presumed death.”

Twilight knew that taking a stand against the so-called ‘execution theory’ would go over well with the Day Court. The Princess of the Sun had always maintained that Luna was alive and somehow imprisoned within the immaterial firmament, but that didn’t stop various Canterlot talking-heads and conspiracy theorists from occasionally suggesting otherwise. Even Celestia herself was short an explanation as to exactly where her sister had ended up or how she had gotten there, and every attempt to return Luna to the physical world to stand trial for her insurrection had ended in failure- sometimes disastrously. It was a sore spot for her patron, and that in turn was one of the main reasons why Twilight had started this line of research to begin with.

“The Mare In The Moon: Myth from olden pony times.” Twilight read, “A powerful pony that wanted to rule Equestria, defeated by the Elements of Harmony and imprisoned in the Moon. Legend has it that on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape and she will bring about nighttime eternal.”

“Obviously this is at best a secondary source, and a woefully incomplete one at that, but the parallels with the Luna Bay Fragment- many of the same assertions for which this text was originally derided- are certainly curious. Additionally, the implication of a prophecy predicting Nightmare Moon’s eventual return is extremely concerning.”

Another slide was revealed, this one containing a brief overview of the star charts and astrological calculations with which Twilight had opened her presentation. Even in summarized form and barely-readable font the canvas was left with more ink on it than white space. “In particular, if ‘the stars’ really will aid in her return, then a number of these puzzling stellar convergences within the outer etheric shell could in fact be reinterpreted as a deliberate attempt to create a sort of giant astrological summoning circle capable of manifesting a pony-sized object on the surface of the Material Plane!”

Another slide of equations and charts even denser than the first was revealed. “Over the past year I’ve been able to develop an analytic model of this spell class which could provide us more concrete, actionable information with which to counter any such incursions from the Lunar Sphere…” indeed, that had been what Princess Celestia had first commissioned Twilight to create; everything beyond that had been the unicorn’s own investigation after she’d become alarmed by what the model had predicted, “… but without additional parameters there’s a lot we just don’t know about how it might work!” Her pointer tapped a series of bright-yellow patches highlighting unknown variables, which collectively made up about half the page- everything from verbal and kinetic spell components to the final positions of astrologically-important stars. “If we had access to a precise arrival time we’d at least be able to determine a location and provide a lower bound on the mana drain, but without purpose-built telescopes it’s not possible to track the stellar motion precisely enough- we only know the stars are moving at all because we can compare against almanacs that are centuries old; over my lifetime they might as well have been standing still.”

The astrological calculations were banished as well, revealing beneath them a rough timeline of Equestrian history starting a century behind Lunar Rebellions in 98 CE and ending a century beyond the current year of 1097. Multiple thousand-year spans were highlighted with differently-colored ribbon; a disturbing number of their endpoints were clustered around the early 1100s. “The prophecy Mist Watcher refers to could resolve this question immediately, but the portion he seems to have quoted directly is cut off before it can mention what, exactly, ‘the thousandth year’ refers to. It can’t be the thousandth year of the standard calendar; if that was the case Nightmare Moon would’ve already come and gone and none of us would be having this conversation,” Twilight recovered her pointer and traced it along one ribbon in particular, the one that terminated a year from the current date at the thousandth Summer Sun Celebration, “but that still leaves an alarming number of potential entry points, many of them quite nearby.”

Twilight revealed the penultimate slide in her presentation, a collection of similar, well-established prophecies declared and later fulfilled over the course of Equestrian history. Certain common sections and formalisms were highlighted, others annotated in Twilight’s small, blocky script. Very few of them described foregone conclusions, as the Predictions and Prophecies segment seemed to. “We also don’t know under what conditions, precisely, Nightmare Moon can return, or if there’s another clause describing how to prevent that return. To do that, we’d need to find a more intact copy of the original prophecy!”

“So you see, my dearest teacher, honored ministers, that we may very well be standing on the very precipice of disaster! The mythical Mare-in-the-Moon is in fact Nightmare Moon, and she’s about to return to Equestria and bring with her eternal night! We don’t have the background information necessary to bring to bear our most powerful mathematical weapons against her, and the closest thing we have to a surefire solution is the possibility of the Elements of Harmony! Nonetheless, something must be done to make sure this terrible prophecy does not come true!”

The prophecy slide too was cast aside in her telekinetic field, exposing a small block diagram liberally annotated with military and academic insignia as well as a few individual cutie marks in the higher levels. Twilight’s mark had originally occupied the box at the very top, but at the last minute she’d decided that ran the risk of appearing presumptuous and erased it. It wasn’t as though there were any other qualified candidates. “A theoretical development division will attempt to improve our existing spell models, as well as developing improved telescopes to detect and analyze currently imperceptible levels of stellar motion, and also generate testable hypotheses regarding the physical nature of Nightmare Moon- particularly vulnerabilities which magic or tactics could be developed to exploit. A research division will analyze and cross-reference material already existing in Equestrian archives to identify potential other sources of actionable intelligence on both Nightmare Moon and the Elements of Harmony. Existing military forces will also need to be placed on high alert for any sort of extraplanar incursion, and both Royal Justice Agency and the Provincial and City Watches will need to prepare for the possibility of a revival of the old Lunar cult.”

“However, our top priority must be to determine the specifics of the prophecy Mist Watcher references, if it even exists. To that end, we will need to make comprehensive searches not just of well-known Lunar sites in the Everfree Forest, but also potentially armed incursions into Griffonia, Minos, or the Abyssinian holdings in Saddle Arabia. It will be difficult, and it will be dangerous, and I can’t promise that we’ll find anything worthwhile as a result. But compared to the alternative, I believe it to be the safest course of action. Thank you.”

(♫)

Twilight finally released her pointer, slightly out of breath, and stepped over to the small purple dragon who was her only audience in the private laboratory she’d set up atop the observatory tower of the Royal Academy of Magic. “Well? What’d you think?”

“Well, I thought it was both persuasive and comprehensive, if a little heavy on the astrology.” Spike brushed past her- not too difficult a feat given that even on two legs he barely reached the unicorn’s muzzle- and set about the complicated task of disassembling the foldable easel. “But then, I’ve been working with you on this from the beginning so maybe I’m a little biased.”

Twilight spent a few more seconds following the flight of a Royal Navy air cruiser as it made its final descent towards the docks located at the edge of the city. Behind them lay an elegant series of scalloped terraces that provided the bulk of Canterlot’s commercial and residential zoning, and closer still were the intermingled spires of the Royal Academy of Magic, the Halls of the Day Court, the School for Gifted Foals, and the Guard officers’ academy at Hurricane’s Green which collectively made up the entire district somewhat misleadingly referred to as Canterlot Castle.

“I appreciate the help, Spike, I really do. I just hope Celestia sees it the same way.”

“For what it’s worth, I still think you should just take this to the papers. Once she realizes how serious the danger actually is, Celestia’ll understand why you did it.”

“Oh, please.” She rejoined her assistant and set about recollecting her discarded canvasses in the proper order of her presentation. She’d tried to lay them all upside-down in the order they had been removed from the easel, but some of them had managed to end up rotated or off the pile entirely despite her best efforts. Nerves, probably. “Of the twenty percent who don’t fall into a coma as soon as I show them a first derivative, ten are going to write an editorial criticizing Celestia for funding a ‘cuh-razy conspiracy theorist’ with their tax money, five are going to claim Nightmare Moon is returning because Equestria went off the gold standard, and the one who actually believes me isn’t going to do anything about it because nopony reads her boring column about boring scientific discoveries!”

“That doesn’t sum to a hundred percent.”

“Well if they had any aptitude for math they wouldn’t be working as opinion writers.” The unicorn shook her head, finally managed to get her slides organized, and set about carefully rolling them into a more compact tube.

“What about Princess Cadance, then?”

“I don’t know, I… really haven’t talked to her in ages, I don’t want to show up out of the blue just to beg her for what, if we’re being honest, is just a political favor.” She stuffed the canvas roll into her plain, light-blue messenger’s saddlebags with a bit more force than was entirely necessary.

Spike slipped the now-compacted easel into the opposite saddlebag and stole a look at the grandfather clock Twilight had painstakingly synchronized to Canterlot Mean Time. “You’d… better get going, or else you’re gonna miss your own audience.”

“… oh, horseapples!”

Lemon Hearts, Minuette, and Twinkleshine made their way down the marble hallway in companionable silence, still mulling over that morning’s seminar on a novel hyperplane model for classifying spell-like formal grammars. Then at roughly the same time the three of them caught sight of a familiar purple figure heading their way with a saddlebag full of equipment.

“There you are, Twilight! Moondancer is having a little get-together in the West Castle Courtyard-” Lemon Hearts began, a bag of twenty-sided dice jiggling suggestively in her telekinetic grip.

“SORRYWORKHOW'BOUTTHISWEEKEND?” Twilight interrupted as she barreled past them and continued on towards the skybridge leading to the Day Court towers.

Minuette shook her head. “Does that pony ever do anything but work?”

“I think she’s more interested in books than her friends.”

Twilight made very good time and arrived at the throne room six minutes ahead of schedule.

That left her stuck in the vestibule for the better part of an hour as the briefing in progress overran its time slot and completely consumed first her own audience, then the one after it. Unlike the Longshoremares’ Guild representative who gave up and departed in a huff at the forty-five-minute mark, Twilight was at least lucky that the atrium guards knew her by name and were willing to ignore her constant pacing, frequent adjustments of her saddlebags, and occasional murmured invective. Finally, just as Twilight began to worry she was succumbing to exhaustion -Harmony, who thought it was a good idea to build a foyer without a single bench?- the gold double doors swung open.

A head taller than any of her court, Celestia was easy enough to spot, and Twilight’s short stature and scrawny frame proved for once to be an asset as she dodged through the loose agglomeration of ministers, representatives, and various hangers-on to her patron’s side.

“Twilight!” the Princess glided to a gentle stop and turned to face her, “I’m so sorry we kept you waiting, I’m afraid the budget process is taking longer than anypony anticipated.” She turned away briefly towards the retreating figure of the new Vice-Chancellor for Education and, while on an individual level the faint smile she always wore, the tilt of her elegant head, and the shape of her lavender eyes scarcely shifted, the sum total of those elements nonetheless somehow conspired to form an expression which could have stopped a charging Ursa. Then she laughed. “I hope what you had to tell me wasn’t… too urgent?”

“Uhm… actually…” the unicorn paused, shifting nervously on her hooves, then continued all at once, “I’d like it if you could authorize Commander Shining Armor to be read in on my studies of the Luna Bay fragment. I think I’ve discovered significant reason to believe that Nightmare Moon’s return is a real possibility, and the entity may be arriving in Equestria as early as next year! We need to mobilize a search of the Everfree Forest and other nearby Lunar sites immediately!”

“Really?” Having interacted directly with Celestia since she was nine years old, Twilight considered herself somewhat more capable than the common pony of reading the Princess’s often-multilayered emotions. She had expected some measure of surprise from the alicorn, but was disappointed. “And what about the study I commissioned on thaumic resonance in glowpaz?”

Celestia had been sending her a lot of pointless little projects like that lately- just barely not difficult enough that Twilight could claim she was being overworked, and just barely not urgent enough that she couldn’t justify calling in other researchers to help her. It was an odd reversal- early on, the Princess had practically been breathing down the back of Twilight’s neck, pushing her to focus on her astrological models to the exclusion of all else. If she didn’t know better Twilight would suspect the Princess was trying to pressure her into dropping the entire Lunar project, but if that was the case Celestia had grossly overestimated her student’s need for such trivial mortal distractions as food and sleep.

“I had the report couriered to your desk a few hours ago.” Without the ministers impeding their progress Celestia turned down a narrower side hallway and Twilight followed a half-step behind, idly searching over several dozen tapestries that each commemorated a successive Baron Superintendent of the Cloudsdale Weather Factory. She had lived in Canterlot Castle for her entire adult life, and the place never seemed to run out of surprises for her. “I’ve been working on the Nightmare Moon issue on my own time,” she continued, “weekends and late in the evenings, mostly.”

“And you’re aware of the length of the waiting list for non-emergency meetings with the Commander?”

“There’s no need! I’m going to talk to him when we’re both home for the Summer Sun Celebration.”

Celestia stopped walking and regarded one of the tapestries in particular. “I see.”

“You… see?”

The princess knelt down to Twilight’s level and looked her in the eye, heedless of the dust that had accumulated on the flagstones now clinging to her pearlescent coat. “My faithful student, you know it’s wrong for you to exploit your family connections for professional gain.”

“Well it isn’t like I’m pressuring him to do anything. When I mention what I’m working on, he could always just say ‘Not now, Twily, we’re on holiday’, and-”

“Twilight?”

“Hmm?”

“Who is this pony you’ve been writing to, and what has he done with Commander Shining Armor?”

Twilight had to smile at that, but a moment later Celestia’s tone became grave. “Have you been following the papers from Appleoosa? The common pony already sees Canterlot as corrupt and closed off to her concerns. We don’t want to further inflame the situation by sending soldiers to search a completely unassuming village based on the pet theory of the Guard Commander’s sister.”

“Well by this time next year there might not be an Appleoosa to worry about rebelling!”, Twilight snapped, and then immediately backed away and bowed her head. Over the entire course of her time in Canterlot Castle, and at the Royal School for Gifted Ponies before that, and watching from the audience at public Court proceedings even before that, the young scholar had never once seen Celestia cause the slightest harm or disgrace to ponies who had said the vilest things to her, but that didn’t make her own outburst any more acceptable. “Sorry… I’m so sorry, that was out of line and-”

Dimly, Twilight registered the presence of a golden-shod hoof against her shoulder. “You don’t have to apologize to me for anything, you know that well enough by now. And, I suppose, if this work really is that important to you… I could remind you of a bit of Court business you probably missed locked away up in that observatory.”

“Huh?”

“What if I told you that, in recognition of the contributions of small communities all over Equestria, I would be personally officiating this year’s Summer Sun Celebration not in Canterlot or Manehattan but in… say, the town of Ponyville, which just so happens to border the Everfree Forest? And, of course, a member of the General Staff would need to be sent some time in advance of the ceremony to perform a close inspection of the town and its immediate environs…?”

“I knew you’d want to take immediate action! I’ll get Spike to help me pack my things!” Twilight dematerialized a moment later in a flash of purple energy.

Author's Note

UPDATED 09-05-2020

It’s not unreasonable to look at Extended Cut and conclude it’s in some way intended to attack or disparage the original writers of My Little Pony. I’d like to state up front that this is not my intention. Indeed, it’s because I wanted to celebrate the work of the MLP creative team that I decided to start the project. Lauren Faust, Jim Miller, and so many others have come together to make something incredible and truly unprecedented in the field of serial television, and the fans have taken that and run with it and expanded it in every way imaginable (as well as many ways I’d rather not imagine, but that’s a discussion for another day). I wanted to ‘close the loop’ and give the original source material the in-depth development and exploration it deserves without the constraints of a 22-minute TV-Y-rated television episode. That’s not to imply that I think my version of events is better than the actual show, any more than an aircraft carrier is ‘better’ than a Ferarri or a supercomputer is ‘better’ than a Toughbook. The two are simply made to serve very different roles and satisfy different design constraints. Extended Cut isn’t intended to replace the original show but rather to be enjoyed alongside it.

Additionally, none of this would have been possible without the many contributions made by Serketry in his role as beta reader, sounding-board, loremaster, and all-around prosthetic brain. Check him out at Library Of The Damned!

Now, onto the actual story.

This first bit was very much written from my personal experience as an academic researcher, as everyone in my department has at least one pet project they are absolutely convinced is going to save the world, but nobody can ever get anything funded. It’s also always been kind of a personal fantasy of mine to work on something like Ultra-Mega or the Manhattan Project where I could have actual military people at my personal beck and call to go on high adventures and explore strange places with, and I can only imagine Twilight Sparkle feels the same way- although, of course, reality doesn’t quite measure up.

One of the things that has disappointed me in later seasons of the show (although not to the degree that I’d consider boycotting it or anything) is the gradual introduction of more and more modern-looking, apparently electromechanical or even electronic technology into Equestria. I preferred the more vaguely-D&D-styled vibe the earlier seasons gave me, so I’ve made a conscious effort to expunge modern tech from the Extended Cut without turning it too (Grim)dark Ages. This has resulted in a somewhat foreign-looking world that is an odd mixture of the Renaissance and the 1930s in terms of physical equipment, with some social elements brought in from the Victorian era and a few from the modern day. I don’t really think of this as having any one particular cause in-universe; it’s simply the natural way that science/magic (they are one and the same endeavor) has progressed under the radically different underlying physical laws of the world.

As part of setting up a detailed outline for the first ‘episode’ of Extended Cut, I thought it would be prudent to actually re-watch the Season 1 pilot and see if I had missed anything major that I wanted to address. I was expecting it to be kind of cringeworthy, since it took until Season 5 for the show to really grow on me and I remember the earlier writing being a lot less polished. I was, instead, blown away by the quality, in particular of the scene pacing and a lot of the dialog. I took about two pages’ worth of handwritten notes which grew into five-odd pages of typed transcription, and I wound up reusing a lot of lines or even entire scenes either verbatim or with small continuity changes. Readers with sharp memories will note, for instance, that the opening storybook narration has two small differences from canon- Luna is referred to as an alicorn instead of a unicorn and ‘all the different types of ponies’ has been replaced with ‘all three of the pony tribes’, both in accordance with terminology that didn’t exist as of Season 1 but has since stabilized. I even realized that a couple of things I had added to the Extended Cut to try to improve or ‘serious up’ the show were already canonically included in it. So I guess it just goes to demonstrate that even at the very beginning of MLP’s run, before fans as we know them were even a thing, the writing staff did indeed know what they were doing. Friendship is metal.

On The Shoulders Of Giants

(♫)

Once the two of them were alone, Twilight’s first order of business was to make short work of the double-decker hayburgers with cheese, chocolate oat shake, and fries that had been left out on the reading table in the main library room, presumably by Pinkie Pie. After lacing his own portion with one of the pouches of ground glass he’d packed as field rations Spike agreed with her that the meal ranked as one of the best the two of them had ever experienced together. However, Twilight did concede that decorating the entire room complete with a banner reading “ONE-MARE SURPRISE PARTY OF SNOOTINESS” was probably a bit much.

Then, she confirmed that the Golden Oaks was indeed outfitted with reasonably modern living facilities, and treated herself to a long, hot shower to wash every last trace of sweat and grime from her coat. Spike’s scales were to some degree naturally dirt-repellant, but he nonetheless treated himself to a vigorous scrubbing session as well once she was done, muttering about mud and forgetting to bring polish and what-would-that-dressmaker-say loud enough for Twilight to hear through the door. The late hour didn’t bother either of them- there was a reason why half of Twilight’s undergraduate class had taken to calling her Midnight Sparkle before the end of her first semester.

The two of them made their way back downstairs, taking a fresh look at the circular table that sat dead-center in the middle of the room. It was a rather ugly table, as far as such things went, topped as it was with a large, rough-hewn bust of a pony of indeterminate sex with its mane trimmed military-straight.

“Who is that, anyway?” Twilight asked nopony in particular.

“I think it’s Flash Magnus,” Spike suggested. “Look, they used redwood for the crest.”

Twilight took a step closer. “No, I think it’s Commander Hurricane. Look on the sides.” Spike could comprehend Old Ponish perfectly well on his own, but Twilight felt compelled to read out the famous quotation from Equestria’s founders just to prove her point- “They said we must turn back. That we had flown too far from home. I turned myself to the golden sun and flew on. They said our supplies were low. That we had run out of food. I turned myself to the field of golden wheat and marched on. They said our coffers were empty. That we could not afford to continue. I turned myself to the golden mountains and carried on.”

Spike nodded, then cocked his head to one side. “Weird statue to have in a library, though.”

“Who’s saying it always was a library? A tree structure like this could easily predate Ponyville. It could’ve started out as a guardhouse for all we know.”

“I doubt it, these shelves are original, look how they’re curved. The table I don’t think is, though.”

“Storehouse, maybe.”

“Yeah, you might be right. Everything about this is so… weird. Where do we even begin?”

“Well, you take the shelves on the left, and I’ll take the ones on the right.”

...

“Twilight! I got something!”

“What is it?”

“Looks like part of a journal. It was tossed in with a bunch of old almanacs and farm catalogs, but I think it’s a lot older than any of the others.”

“Well? What does it say?”

“Look at this!

Thirtieth of Sun’s Height.

Caught Cornflower hoofing through my ledgers last evening. Didn’t figure him for the Rebel sort, but maybe he thinks I’m a rebel.

First of Blue Skies

Made a formal complaint to General Gold Dust for all the good it will do me, if she’s feeling generous she might cut the order to a mere fifteen hundred pounds. I think I almost preferred those Tartarus-burnt Lunars. They may have filched a bushel of grain every now and then, but it’s this damnable ‘Day Guard’ that shows up with a wagon train a mile long and threatens to put me out of business.”

...

“Ok, Spike, this is a lot more recent, but… well, take a look for yourself!”

“What’s the date on the paper?”

“First Frost 959…”

“Also remarkable was the perfect preservation of the bodies, despite their having been interred in a time when embalming spells were barely conceivable at the fringes of magical theory and in any case lacking the constant and relatively powerful source of mana preserving so many dead would require. The Gazette contacted Dr. Standing Stones, Professor of Ritual and Structural Magics at Trailhead College, who concluded that the followers of Nightmare Moon may have intentionally or unintentionally created a dim, dry, airtight environment which retarded the growth of decomposing bacilli.”

“Hmm. I guess that weird Rainbow pony was right after all.”

“’Bacilli, though?”

“Yeah, a lot of otherwise educated ponies actually held onto the germ theory of disease right up until the turn of the millennium.”

“I know I’ve been asking this a lot lately, but then what did preserve those bodies?”

“I’m… not sure, exactly. Long-running spell, maybe? Powered off of the Everfree itself? There’s mana springs deep inside, after all…”

...

“Something else!

108 15 Sun’s Height-

“That’s only a decade after the Rebellions.”

“- They hanged Star Sapphire last night in the square. Brought out a crowd of about fifty ponies, many of them quite drunk. Wondering if any realized this leaves Poppyseed in line to take over the mill, or if they even remember it was Poppyseed who ‘found’ Star’s moon pendant to begin with. Nopony dares write to Canterlot for fear of being found out and hanged before the soldiers can arrive. Only thing to do now seems to be to wait for all of this to die down, whether because the town at large runs out of interest or because the ringleaders run out of targets. Have been making a show of carefully reading and copying down Single File’s bulletins, so should be able to stay out of suspicion myself for the next few weeks.

That’s the last entry.”

...

Twilight sighed and rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof, surveying the mess of books and miscellaneous papers spread out on the floor around her. Their initial search had yielded such promising results, but now it was pushing eleven at night and their trail seemed to have gone cold. “I don’t understand it,” she said aloud, “We’ve found novel primary sources here, and reference material that discusses the Lunar Rebellions in depth, but no novel primary sources about the Rebellions!”

“It does seem strange,” Spike continued from where he sat halfheartedly reorganizing a box full of Ponyville Gazette clippings, “We’ve found all sorts of little forgotten notes here that aren’t like anything in the Canterlot archives, but they’re all… mundane, I guess you could say. All the important stuff matches the authoritative sources exactly. No early printings, no errors, no ramblings from the local conspiracy nuts added in by mistake. How did that happen?”

Twilight nodded, staring with her eyes unfocused at the lower half of the still-rising Moon framed with almost mathematical precision in an oval window on the open upper loft.

“The Sun and the Moon rise in the same place…” she muttered.

Slowly, she climbed the stairs to the loft and examined the window more closely- in addition to its unusual curved construction, the frame and the wall around it were decorated in surprisingly elaborate carvings.

“Uhhh… Twilight?” Spike asked from the floor below.

“Okay, this is… really weird.” The carvings were, on the whole, highly abstract heavenly motifs- tiny stars and great swirling whorls with no clear pattern- but some of them were much more regular. Perfectly straight lines extended radially outward, crossed by tick-marks that brought to mind nothing more than the axes of some kind of schematic, and near two of them were carved an oddly small Sun and Moon, more icons than proper drawings. “This was carved later than the original library,” Twilight said aloud, “Look at how smooth everything is, in accordance with zebra craftsmareship, except for here where there’s visible tool marks.”

Spike nodded as he began climbing the stairs to join her. “The table’s the same way.”

“Twelve radial lines…” the unicorn muttered, “But they’re not equally spaced around the arc of the window, even accounting for the elliptical shape, and they don’t have the same number of crosshatches."

Spike stopped midway up the stairs. “The shelves! There’s twelve partitions between the shelves in the main room!”

“You’re right!” She turned away from the window and looked out over the floor in question, realizing that the bust of Hurricane was staring directly at her from the table- and, by extension, the window, and beyond. “Hurricane looked to the rising Sun…”

“Then what’s the moon symbol for?” asked Spike.

“I…think I know!” Twilight squeezed past the dragon and dashed back downstairs. She turned so she was facing parallel to the bust of Hurricane, and counted three shelves counterclockwise, then two up from the floor- exactly where the Moon symbol was located in the window’s concentric grid. She lit her horn and removed a dusty out-of-date Encyclopedia Equestria set as a single block, then fired another magelight into the shadowy space left behind. “The Moon was up against the left side so… there!”

A small sliver of wood extended from the side of the shelf, protruding just far enough outward and just close enough forward that a hoof could conceivably reach up, slip between it and the side, and pull down. The back of the shelf was nearly in contact with it, and nearly the same type of wood, and even with the brilliant purple light of Twilight’s spell it was almost invisible, but it was there regardless.

She reached out with her telekinesis and grabbed hold. It was nearly immobile- nearly, but she could feel it shift ever-so-slightly in her grip. She redoubled her efforts, ignoring the ache starting to build back up in the base of her horn, realizing only as she did so that she was in very real danger of breaking the mechanism.

Then the lever shifted, and finally swung downward with a grating squeal of wood on wood. As soon as it did, a section of the hallway to the study indistinguishable from those to either side suddenly sank backward some two or three centimeters.

Twilight dashed forward, horn flaring. She pushed the wooden panel first one way, then the other, feeling it shift slightly further into the wall. Her field glowed and sparked, the pain in the top of her skull redoubling to white-hot intensity, before she registered Spike’s claw on her shoulder and cut off the effort.

“Hey, don’t hurt yourself!” The dragon produced a thick metal rod she’d seen near the fireplace in the study and slid it into the space under the panel. He twisted it around experimentally for a few seconds, before with the aid of Twilight’s hooves managing to lift the door up over whatever it was stuck on and slide it the rest of the way into the wall.

On the other side, a narrow carved staircase twisted down out of sight.

“Twilight… it’s… one of those Lunar shelters, isn’t it?” Spike asked.

“I think so, yeah. They added hints all over the library… even illustrated the quotes on the table, so ponies who weren’t able to read could still recognize the story! There must’ve been other markings around here identifying the tree as a sanctuary, but either they didn’t survive the construction of Ponyville, or we just didn’t have a chance to see them…”

Spike waved one claw in an outsized parody of a courtly bow. “Well, after you?”

It was a tight squeeze at first, and pitch dark once she’d passed out of range of the light seeping in from the hallway outside. Simple iron lanterns hung from the ceiling up above, festooned with cobwebs, but they’d been long ago doused and the fuel left to spoil. Twilight conjured yet another glowing sphere from her horn and set it to bobbing its way down the passage at a gentle pace; after only a few meters the interior wall pulled away to become part of the high ceiling of a round wooden chamber perhaps ten meters in diameter. It seemed, on first glance, to contain a tidy enough living space- an empty table and two chairs, a narrow cot stripped of fabric, and a neat row of three heavy wooden trunks.

“Looks like whoever was down here last had time to clean up after herself,” said Twilight, “I was expecting… I don’t know, more skeletons or something.”

“Yeah,” Spike made a brief scrabbling-and-pounding motion in the air with his claws, “and maybe hoofmarks gouged into the inside of the door…”

Twilight set to work telekinetically sweeping away the thick cobwebs covering all of it, and collecting the worst of the dust into a small force-globe in one corner. “I don’t think anypony’s been down here since the Rebellions, though.”

“If they were, if wasn’t recently, and they must’ve never thought to notify anypony in authority or even write down that this existed.”

“Well if we do end up setting up a larger operation here, this basement might actually make for a good laboratory. Trees are complex enough organisms to maintain internal thaumostasis, so this should be a ready-made magically isotropic environment.”

“Something to think about, at least.” Spike carefully fiddled with the latch on one of the trunks. It proved to be locked, with an enchanted seal no less, but the magic had long ago faded away. With some effort he managed to pry the seal off and push open the lid, then repeated his work for the other two boxes. “Whaddaya make of this?”

Twilight carefully flipped through the stacks of papers and loose-bound folios. “These look like architectural drawings, ledgers, reference books…”

Spike ran a claw across each spine in turn. “Natural History… The Elements of Harmony, A Reference… Pansy’s Tactics… I, Meadowbrook… these are all First Century sources!”

“Still, this is all stuff I’d expect a, a provincial governor or somepony like that to have, not the sort of Lunar advance scouts or sabotours who’d be using a refuge like this.” She located a smaller, thinner volume bound in soft leather. “Hey, look at this one!”

“Paper Clip, Ninety-Eighth Year of the Sisters, Volume II”, the dragon read, “Wasn’t there a Paper Clip who advised Princess Celestia during the Rebellions?”

“Yes… yeah, that’s right!” Twilight eased the volume open with utmost care and began to read aloud, “Twentieth of Sun’s Height. The Council finally managed to get itself into enough order to deliver an official summons to Firefly, Escritoire, and myself on the topic of the Day Guard. I wish I could remember exactly who was responsible, but with nearly five hundred of them all dressed in the same ever-so-tastefully understated finery…”

(♫)

… Paper Clip was honestly unable to tell the difference between individual members. That was, he knew, a critical weakness for a senior records clerk like himself, so he kept a book of sketches and names cross-referenced with factional affiliations alongside his other more routine notes. Today’s summons had come at such a short notice, however, that he had been unable to bring it. As a result he had not the faintest idea who the mare in the black robe and ruffled shirt standing atop a tall oak lectern pronouncing sentence on him and his fellows might possibly have been.

“Escritoire of Sire’s Hollow, Firefly of Cloudsdale, and Paper Clip of Frankpferd,” the mare intoned, eyes never leaving the sheet of parchment in front of her, “By act of the Twelfth Council of Five Hundred approved this day the Twentieth of Sun’s Height in the ninety-eighth year of the Royal Sisterhood, you are hereby denied all title, authority, salary and accommodation once afforded to you on the behalf of Greater Equestria. You are forbidden from receiving or handling secret correspondence; from entering any military encampment, fort, clerical office, or other place of government business unless overseen by a duly authorized bailiff of this Council; and from conducting any negotiation or agreement with a foreign party on behalf of, or giving the appearance of having been on behalf of, the nation of Greater Equestria. Furthermore, you are hereby ordered to immediately disband the unlawful gathering of armed ponies referring to itself as the ‘Day Guard’, to surrender all weapons and materiel accumulated by same to the rightful government of Greater Equestria, and to provide in a timely manner the names, whereabouts, and activities of all participants to the Council Select Subcommittee for Intelligence.”

Paper Clip made his best approximation of a respectful bow. “Honorable Councilmare, I beg you to reconsider. The Lunars could strike Everfree at any time, and the forces currently stationed here are quite frankly in no condition to repulse an assault of any significant magnitude.”

An earth pony stallion- the only earth pony among the ten committee members seated at the raised crescent-shaped oak table extending to either side of the podium, in fact- sat up a little straighter in his chair. This one Paper Clip knew, by position if not by face- as a member of the small but vocal “Concord” faction which advocated good-faith negotiation with the rebel Princess Luna, Councilstallion Palafito’s highly-publicized appointment to the Committee for Public Defense last autumn had produced exactly as much outrage from the more orthodox factions as Paper Clip had anticipated, and none of the civil overtures from the Lunars that those who had arranged his ascension had promised.

“And have you any proof of this incredible claim, Mister Paper Clip?” he asked, in a voice long ago gone rough from shouting. Technically, every member of the Council was to be provided an amplification spell to allow them to be heard in the vast amphitheater that made up the Grand Chamber. The earth pony members’ spells had a tendency to suddenly cut out at the most inopportune times, though. The pegasus wind-mages said they got ‘rowdy’ more often and strained the enchantment by stomping around and yelling. Paper Clip had his own theories. “Everfree is a very diverse city, not as likely to attract Lunar ire as a unicorn stronghold like Canterlot.”

“I don’t have any evidence as such, but, well… Everfree is the capitol of Equestria, it’s centrally located, and there’s a sharp division between the ponies living in the city proper and the nobles here on Castle Rock that could make the population more sympathetic to the Rebel cause,” Paper Clip countered. “If I were a Lunar, it’s where I’d be looking, milord.”

“If you were a Lunar?” muttered a fat tan unicorn mare wearing a red silk officer’s uniform festooned with medals. General Lockjaw was another known quantity, one of several military hardliners to find their way into Council seats following the latest round of Lunar assassinations. For whatever reason, those sort of unicorns- and they were almost always unicorns, in fact- never seemed to have any trouble with their amplification spells, ‘rowdy’ and prone to stomping and yelling though they may have been. Paper Clip wasn’t surprised to hear Lockjaw speculating about his loyalty- he had it on good authority, Escritoire’s in fact, that the General also kept a certain book of names close at hoof, although most of hers were civil servants and private citizens.

“We’ve thoroughly broken the Lunars’ momentum,” continued a third unicorn, a blue stallion with a sleekly-combed white mane and understated dark tunic that might at some point have been eye-catching had five other ponies at the table not been wearing the exact same thing. “There’s absolutely no need to subject our brave fighting-mares and stallions to the… very unusual conditions under which you’ve been operating your vigilante band.”

“Yes, of course,” said Princess Celestia, before she went back to what she’d been doing before, which appeared to simply be staring off into space on her elevated platform at the center of the Council Chamber, higher even than the Committee chairs’. Indeed, some three centuries ago, that platform had been the Council Chamber, back when there had been only a Council of Six that met informally around a roaring fire to drink and debate and pore over maps. Only once Equestria had simultaneously grown and fractured into dozens of federated territories, had the original walls been torn down to accommodate the ever-growing number of representatives.

Paper Clip had never understood how Celestia could be as popular as she was with the noble classes and the common pony alike when all she ever seemed to do was stand on that ancient hearthstone and look imposing. Those three words were the most vocal she’d been all week, although according to Firefly she was much more intimidating when she left the capitol to assist in military campaigns and whatnot. Paper Clip considered himself lucky to have never seen that side of her.

...

“Spike wait, that’s really weird. He doesn’t just not mention Celestia’s involvement with the Dayguard, he makes it sound like she wasn’t involved.”

“Maybe this guy just wasn’t important enough to know about what she was doing? Maybe he’s just not being clear here?”

...

The stallion with the pomaded mane -or possibly a different one, they all looked and sounded the same in any case- nodded sagely. “Well said, Your Grace. With the tragedy of Luna’s betrayal behind us, now is the time for Equestria to come together in solidarity, to bring our people into harmony and restore respect for the institutions that make up the living heart of this great nation, not to try to undermine them.”

Another mare in an officer’s uniform- a pegasus this time, surprisingly enough- continued. “Our spies have received no word that anything is amiss. Everfree is the best-garrisoned city in all of Equestria, to attack it would be suicidal!”

“There’s more to this war than… garrisons. Sir.” Firefly admonished, but nopony seemed to hear him.

On Paper Clip’s right, Escritoire continued more forcefully. “Then your ‘spies’ are incompetent. Or aren’t there at all! Just how many did you send away to hunt down ponies trading with the lesser dragons and other such trifles? Or to help suppress the slave revolt in Minos?” It was not the first time that Paper Clip considered that the small mint-green unicorn, despite being a bookkeeper by training and an assistant to the Keeper of the Treasury by position, showed a disturbing knowledge of espionage. He’d have to ask her why, when all of this was over.

“That’s classified information!” snapped the military pegasus.

“We need to stand by our Minotaur allies against Griffonia, even if their culture differs from ours.” stammered the mare at the tall podium.

“Only a few of those slaves were even ponies-” muttered Princess Celestia.

“And if we come to depend on the dragons for our gem supplies the security of Equestria would be placed at serious risk!” shouted Palafito.

Paper Clip looked first to Escritoire on his left, then Firefly on his right. He wasn’t sure if his comrades looked amused or appalled or some combination of the two. He wasn’t sure how he should have been feeling himself, either.

Then Escritoire continued. “After all, we all know how effective your… spies are in predicting major assaults of this nature. I still remember listening to the dire warnings of a dragon attack on Baltimare the night before Timbucktu fell to the changelings.”

“That tragedy has nothing to do with the situation in which we now find ourselves,” admonished the unicorn on the dais, her tone somewhere just north of absolutely predatory.

“It has everything to do with our current situation. Or do you still think so many pegasi volunteered to become Equestria’s warrior class, out of patriotic sentiment completely unrelated to the destruction of the last great cloudborne trading hub? You took clerks and artisans and made them into soldiers- bitter and battle-scarred when Princess Luna came to them offering to turn their lives back to the way they’d been before.”

“You will not devalue the title of Princess by applying it to that upstart in this chamber.” snapped the podium mare.

Paper Clip knew weakness when he saw it, and stepped back to stand closer to Escritoire. “Over the last three months we’ve seen nearly four-score convoys raided and stripped bare. A dozen priests of the Sun hanged in the middle of Baltimare in broad daylight. Four Lords of the Admiralty poisoned on the same day. A fleet of ten privateer cruisers spotted flying Luna’s banner on the Eastern Sea. The Lunars aren’t on the retreat; they’re growing bolder and better-equipped because every time you raze a farmstead or pull ponies off the street for ‘questioning’, more join their ranks. But in spite of all of this, it’s been two weeks since the assassination of Duke Artfeather, and thus far we’ve seen nothing. The Rebels didn’t just grow the feathers back onto their wings and walk back into town… and I think they’ve given up on suing for peace. So where are they and what are they doing?”

“Do you really think we’d share that information with a known griffon sympathizer?” demanded a well-coiffed mare in a dark blue tabard.

“We will have peace when we’re finally free to bring the full might of our army down on these Lunar traitors!” Lockjaw suddenly snapped.

Escritoire just nodded. “Yes, once the Lunars are gone and you’re in power. Then we’ll have peace. So I suppose that map of Griffonia I’ve seen on your wall these last few days was merely an… artistic touch?”

Lockjaw glared at the podium mare, seeming to demand that she change the subject. As if on cue, another Councilstallion with a gold military star on his tunic spoke up. “Your… ‘Day Guard’ is a disgrace to the Equestrian soldiery. You invite the officers of our foreign adversaries into the capitol and call them ‘trainers’, you hand out weapons and armor to the common soldier for nary a bit…” The ruling Equestrian Unity faction staunchly opposed any changes to the military’s age-old traditions, and were quick to bring that fact up to set themselves apart from the upstart Militarists they vehemently despised.

Not to be outdone, General Lockjaw continued, “You toss officer’s commissions to the common pony without consideration of land or title… you let earth ponies and pegasi share barracks with the unicorns, dress in officer’s capes and order us about like common infantry!” The upstart Militarist faction staunchly opposed any changes to the military’s age-old traditions… and were quick to bring that fact up to set themselves apart from the ruling Equestria Unity faction they vehemently despised.

Major Firefly bowed his head, his voice silky-smooth. “I’ve always believed that promotions should be awarded based on merit, not because of any fondness or antagonism towards the tribe of the officer in question. But I can see how this might be a difficult concept for you to grasp… milord.”

The pegasus General looked aghast. “Are you accusing a member of this Council- the voice of all Equestria- of tribalism?!”

Firefly just grinned. “I think milord is more qualified to answer than I.”

Lockjaw nodded sagely. “No, nopony has said anything about tribalism, for the Sun’s sake! Indeed, I find the concept abhorrent. We simply wish to guide our lesser brethren by the light of our sun and stars! We must focus the brutish energy of the pegasi, and goad the sluggish earth pony into filling his own belly, as well as ours!” That was a lot more poetic than the General was capable of, and Paper Clip wondered which Canterlot pamphleteer had written it.

He stepped forward. He’d been hoping for an opportunity like this. “That’s an interesting way to look at it, certainly, milord. Although I’m surprised this… plan of yours doesn’t make the slightest mention of the Royal Sisters’ contribution!” The entire Committee was looking at him now in confusion. The full Council seated further up were too far away for Paper Clip to get much of a look at their expressions, but he imagined they weren’t much different. He grinned, and continued. “You don’t seriously think it’s a coincidence that the ‘naturally gifted’ unicorns began to outstrip the other two tribes in magical and economic achievement only after the Sisters took on the burden of moving the Heavens, do you? After an utterly unexceptional century of more-or-less cooperative endeavor, and some seven before that filled with sporadic inter-tribal conflicts that never once produced a clear victor? In fact, I suspect that if Princess Celestia had found herself with a Mark to, say, bring the rain and wind to Equestria each season, or to cause our crops to grow; and if Canterlot Keep and its great crystal mines had not been settled predominantly by unicorns; well, then I think this debate between an esteemed Councilor and a humble records clerk would be going very differently.”

Paper Clip reached out a hoof, encompassing the entire Council. “I don’t believe the current situation to be the fault of all, most, or even many unicorns. Nor,” his hoof paused, just momentarily, on the pegasus in the General’s unform, “do I think that a belief in unicorn supremacy, or ‘equine diversity’ or whatever the fashionable term for it might be today, is confined wholly or even largely to unicorns. Indeed, with the ever-widening tolerance of this Council -even praise- for single-tribe schools, single-tribe towns, and single-tribe delegations to Everfree, it is almost inevitable that we'd end up where we are through no real fault of the public's.”

“But we are where we are. When a few of you found yourselves in a position of unusual good fortune, did you respond with the humility and insight expected of those chosen to speak for all of Equestria? No. You listened only to the nonsense spat out in the broadsheets by the smallest-minded, shortest-sighted residents of your home districts. The wealth under Canterlot could have paved roads over the whole of Equestria, but instead it went to the wages of private armies. The adepts released from the ranks of the Sun- and Moon-Raisers could have led their earth pony and pegasus fellows into a new era of magical study, but the academies you’ve established admit only unicorns. If this is what you call ‘greatness’, then you are positioning not only yourselves, but also all of the common ponies who trust you to make decisions on their behalf, for a terrible fall.”

“I established the Day Guard alongside Escritoire and Major Firefly because radical action is necessary to confront the Lunar threat, and because I have, quite frankly, no faith in our current crop of soldiers to accomplish it. The boons of tradition, and unicorn ‘exceptionalism’, will desert you as soon as the winds change. And then Luna and her followers... ponies so desperate for real leadership that they chose a madmare over you and were entirely justified in doing so... they'll be waiting. I formed the Dayguard not to admire the Lunars but to understand what for all their flaws they did right, why they're winning and you're losing, and you can either march alongside us, or be tread underhoof.”

Quite unexpectedly, old Palafito stamped his hoof emphatically against the surface of his desk. “Well said, my friend! Well said! And we wonder why so many among the ‘lesser’ tribes flocked under Luna’s banner? If the pegasi and earth pony communities would only be permitted full political and economic independence from our unicorn overlords-”

Paper Clip rounded on the older stallion immediately. “For a pony who claims to want to be ‘fair’ to Princess Luna, you seem to understand precious little of what she once advocated. If we split off the downtrodden into their own nations, all we’ll be doing is cutting them off from easy access to the resources now held in the unicorn-majority territories. And what of the remaining multitribal centers? The Luna I knew would never have stood alongside separatist-”

“Enough.” Princess Celestia’s voice rang through the chamber. “Palafito may hold different views than… well, most of us, but he is still a member of this honorable Council and is entitled to a place to be heard.” Her magenta eyes narrowed. “One more outburst like this and We will have you and your friends removed from this chamber.”

Paper Clip was beyond caring. “Oh, yes, Harmony forbid a pony with differing views be denied the chance to address them before the ruling Council."

“That’s enough!” Shouted General Lockjaw. “Guards!”

Two beefy pegasi in red-and-gold regalia immediately stepped forward, uncomfortably close to Paper Clip. The clerk just turned, shrugged off their wings, and strode out through the marble foyer into the bright sunlight of late-afternoon Everfree.

...

“No, no, that’s not right, none of this is right. Celestia gave that speech!”

“Twilight… the Council’s records were spotty even before it was destroyed. How… how do we really know she did?”

“Spike.”

“I’m reading. I’m reading!”

...

(♫)

Paper Clip stared out over the mountain of splintered wood and cracked marble that had, until about an hour ago, been the Great Equestrian Council-Hall. He’d been apprenticed to an engineer in the Miners’ Guild back before his desperate financial situation had forced him to seek out a clerkship in Everfree, and had some idea of what must’ve happened. The Hall’s expansion over the years had been haphazard, and attempts at a comprehensive renovation or even permanently moving the Council to a new location had suffered the predictable death that awaited so much legislation these days. All the Lunars had needed to do was secret a few unstable charge-crystals under the original central dais- there was space underneath it very few ponies knew about- and the whole thing had come crashing down.

The metaphor, he supposed, was painfully obvious.

They must have been so proud of themselves right about now, drinking stolen champagne in their bolthole over the success of, what, Project Peacock? Operation Fairway? Something pithy and stupid, he was sure. His hoof met something warm and squishy- grey matter, from the looks of it. He sighed. Their supply of that particular resource was limited enough as it was.

An attack like this wasn’t what he’d expected. The Council Hall didn’t just hold the Council of Five Hundred. There were pages and bailiffs and ponies whose only connection to the institution was to keep the floors clean, and another thing very few ponies knew was that the building held a few prison cells in its lower levels that more often than not were occupied by common folk who’d happened to make themselves suspicious in some way to the likes of General Lockjaw. Paper Clip had no idea if the Lunars had opened those cells before they’d finished their work, but he had his doubts. And, he supposed, not every member of the original Council had been corrupt- the vote to censure him and his comrades had, after all, had some thirty members in opposition. To jeopardize so many innocent lives was utterly unlike the Princess Luna he’d worked under at the start of his career. Paper Clip had heard all the bloody stories of Lunar ‘atrocities’ before, of course, but hadn’t put much stock in them. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Soldiers and fire-brigadiers dashed this way and that, sometimes nearly colliding with him. Off to the left a few of the surviving Councilors stood side-by-side with their backs to the rubble, each trying to speak over the others and capture the attention of a small crowd of curious townsponies.

“… important now more than ever that we reach out to tribal communities all across Equestria and acknowledge their unique and inviolable sovereign…”

“… come together to reaffirm the overarching Equestrian spirit and our faith in the traditions of our forefathers, extending a hoof in unity to…”

“… rest assured, we will hunt the cowards responsible for this dastardly attack to the very gates of Tartarus…”

Whatever else they might have said was cut off by a frightful amount of crashing and rattling from further off to one side of the Hall’s remains. With nothing better to do, Paper Clip trotted closer to the source of the sound, and found it to be coming from Princess Celestia. The white alicorn hovered a few meters above ground, coat smeared with ash and dust, wrenching great wads of debris into the air with her telekinesis and briefly diving to render still larger pieces more manageable with thunderous strikes from her hooves.

There was a good argument to be made that Celestia had been the actual intended target of the blast. If she hadn’t elected to hold the morning Committee session in her own Day Court- there was a disturbingly plausible rumor circulating that she’d done this because she thought the Council chamber was too hot- she would have been right overtop of the bomb when it went off. Paper Clip had had no idea she’d come back, however.

“You probably shouldn’t be doing that, Your Grace,” the clerk said out loud. “If you’re not careful, those piles could shift sideways… crush anypony still alive inside. It’ll take trained digging crews days to get through all this… Your Grace did order everypony working the mines in Canterlot to be brought here as quickly as possible, did you not?”

Celestia didn’t so much as look at him, but after a moment her frenetic digging ceased. Her eyes glowed the dull yellow of some sort of divination spell, and with the muffled fzzt of teleportation equine figures began to flash into existence on the flagstones further away. Some were in various states of mobility; more than a few were incomplete corpses. For his own sanity, Paper Clip chose to assume the latter group had also been that way before the Princess had teleported them.

“We do not see you with a pick and a shovel,” Celestia finally said.

Paper Clip rolled his shoulders. “Can’t, I’m afraid.” He waved a hoof at a few of the nearby soldiers in full field plate, who were looking at him every few seconds as bystanders rushed to attend to the civilians Celestia was extracting. “They were worried I might try to sift through the rubble to find secret documents for my ‘dragon compatriots’.” He laughed, bitterly. “Yesterday, I was working for the griffons.”

“That’s a shame.” Celestia drifted deeper into the wreckage, her horn flickering with energy all the while.

Paper Clip tried to follow her, but the soldiers gave him another warning look as they turned their heads toward the handles of their sheathed blades. He’d have a difficult time wading through the debris anyway, so he settled for shouting. “You confuse me, do you know that, Princess? I think you do care about the lives of your subjects, at least in some rudimentary way. If you didn’t, you’d be off making speeches with the others instead of dirtying your coat over here. But then you go and you shore up policies that have cost us thousands of innocent lives- a number which has increased a great deal today. I just don’t understand how an intelligent being can function like this.”

“If you’re trying to convince Us to reverse the Council’s verdict, We fear your pleas are in vain,” Celestia called back, “Equestria needs to come together in this time of rebellion, not throw in our lot with the latest strongmare… stallion?” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“Your Grace thinks me strong? I’m flattered!” said Paper Clip as Celestia circled back around closer to his location. The Council members seemed to have stopped speaking for a little while, and he could just barely make out some sort of noise building in the far distance, near the outskirts of the City- shouting and tramping, which could have been a spontaneous parade in the memory of the fallen Councilors or yet another riot, it was hard to tell and probably didn't matter. Everfree was a noisy place these days, and one got used to it. “But there’s something else that’s been puzzling me.” He pointed upward. “The Sun is out.”

“It’s mid-morning.”

“Yes, but Your Grace doesn’t seem to be having much trouble keeping it there.”

Celestia took on a strange, wistful expression as the yellow glow in her eyes faded. “Our… sister doesn’t fight us as much for control of it any more.”

Paper Clip nodded. “She saves her strength for when it’s needed, these days. She lets Your Grace work the daily cycle, then pulls down the Sun when her soldiers truly need the advantage of fighting in the dark.”

Somewhere near the city outskirts, something large and heavy went thud, and released a small cloud of white stone dust. The soldiers looked to their officers. The officers looked to the Councilponies. The Councilponies looked at each other. Only Paper Clip looked at Celestia, and quirked an eyebrow, and the Princess hovered a little lower. “Save when she wants to celebrate the murder of loyal Equestrian subjects in one of her… raids…” Celestia continued, then trailed off.

Paper Clip nodded. “Yes, she always brings the Moon out then, or at least tries to. And I’d definitely call the destruction of the Council Hall something the Lunar Rebellion would find worthy of celebration, wouldn’t Your Grace? And yet, indeed, it is still mid-morning.”

Celestia muttered something he couldn’t catch, lit her horn, and took to the air. Up in the sky, Paper Clip watched the Sun start to wobble and sink as the first shapes began to resolve themselves over the crowded lower-city skyline- shapes with leathery, bat-like wings.

Paper Clip lurked near the outer wall of what had until recently been a wine cellar under the Castle of the Two Sisters- before that, it had been a vault for the storage of dangerous magical artifacts. He didn’t know quite where those artifacts had gone when it’d been converted to its new purpose, but given the progression of the war effort so far he had a number of very strong suspicions. Now it had become, for lack of a better term, the bolt-hole of what remained of the “legitimate government of Equestria”.

He wasn’t even supposed to be in here, breathing in air and taking up space meant for ponies far above his meager station. He’d just been caught up with the rest of the group that had been standing around with the Princess and the Councilors near the ruined Council Hall and shuffled off by a gaggle of terrified soldiers, and in the intervening three-and-a-half hours nopony had developed the presence of mind -or absence of heart- to eject him. He figured it was almost certainly mostly the former. When he tried to talk, or inventory supplies, or really do anything at all, one or another of the guards would cuff him on the muzzle and tell him not to interfere in an emergency situation. So he sat on a borrowed cushion in a poorly-lit corner and watched the surviving Councilponies bicker and fuss, as Princess Celestia looked more and more lost and angry and… if he didn’t know better, he might even say scared.

“Lunars are pushing across the East Bridge to Castle Rock,” a messenger stammered, “and we don’t have the crystals available to destroy it!”

“Where’s the Everfree Heavy Brigade?” demanded Celestia, “Where’s General Fletching?”

“Your Grace, A month ago…” a general muttered, barely audible, “the entire brigade marched to Griffonia and swore themselves to the service of Lord Grover.”

“Why were We not told of this?!”

“The commanders feared… the impact on morale, Your Grace.”

“Your Grace, the riots in the Pegasus Quarter are beginning to spread into Founders’ Court-”

“I don’t understand it…” said a High Magistrate, “we had more troops there than anywhere else in the City, we made nightly raids and interrogated anypony remotely radical…”

“What about reinforcements from Canterlot?” Asked Celestia.

“Still a day’s march away, Your Grace.”

“Your Grace, Dayguard militias have seized the outer gates!” shouted a lieutenant, “I no longer doubt that they’re attempting to take the armories there for themselves!”

“Well, fight them!” General Lockjaw practically screamed.

“They’re moving around the city faster than our messengers can reach Castle Rock,” said the Chair of the Committee on Intelligence, “They and the Lunars must be working together, it’s the only explanation.”

“Milord, they’ve been fighting the Lunars. They’ve… cleared out entire blocks!” said a different lieutenant- or possibly the same one; they all looked alike and Paper Clip had a poor memory for faces.

General Lockjaw’s eyes narrowed, and she slammed her hoof against the map table. “How does a collection of authoritarian thugs manage to evade our finest warriors right here in-”

Paper Clip had heard the sounds of some kind of struggle beyond the door next to Lockjaw, and backed further into his shadowy corner. The General evidently had not, and when the door was blown open with a thud of earth-pony magic she was shoved over to one side as soldiers in golden armor immediately poured through. In a flurry of motion he could barely follow, the Council guards were forced back and placed in various states of disarmament- Clip’s knowledge of bladesmareship began and ended with his brother accidentally slicing him across the flank with a sickle when he was eight years old, but he got the distinct impression that the Loyalists hadn’t put up all that much of a fight.

“Lunars!” Lockjaw shouted.

The newcomers were about a dozen strong. A curious and heterogeneous mix of commoners’ work gear, City Watch tabards, and even a few Equestrian Army uniforms were visible under their armor, but they moved as a single unit and all wore the same golden barding. He recognized Firefly and Escritoire centermost among them, and Paper Clip couldn’t resist grinning as he stepped out from the shadows. “Oh, no, we’re not Lunars at all.”

Celestia spread her wings and lit her horn bright yellow, but Firefly was already halfway across the room with a bladed wing pressed against General Lockjaw’s thick neck. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you, Princess.”

“How dare you storm into this chamber…” Celestia began, but then she quieted and the light in her horn began to fade away.

“You shouldn’t’ve come all this way just to rescue me,” Paper Clip admonished.

“We didn’t,” said Escritoire, “Lunar Troops are moving into position to launch a final assault on the Castle, and we can’t move to counter them with the Loyalists still on the streets. We need Celestia to order them to assist, or at least to leave us alone until we can get to the castle and-”

“No. Absolutely not, that would be treason against Equestria,” the alicorn snapped.

Firefly turned to look at her, eyes narrowed, even though the blade on his wing never moved an inch from Lockjaw’s neck. “Look around you, Princess! There is no Equestria any more, just… cowering politicians and powerless generals! You’re not gaining anything by prolonging this… this three-way clusterrut, so call off your troops until the Lunars are dealt with and we can discuss the rest like civilizedponies!”

Celestia froze. Completely. Even the motion of her barrel and the patterns in her prismatic mane seemed to still. Her eyes swiveled from Paper Clip to the prone General Lockjaw to the Chair of the Intelligence Committee to the open doorway. Finally she spoke, barely audible. “We… I… I can’t. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

Paper Clip turned and consciously avoided looking at Celestia as he made his way back out of the room. “Anypony who’s willing to fight alongside us may step forward now. Otherwise, you can stay here and do nothing while you wait for the actual rebels to arrive. Just like your worthless excuse for a Princess.”

...

“Spike this is all backwards, this can’t be right…”

...

“Are you sure this is a good idea, sir?” asked one of the pages who’d joined up with them in the wine cellar- a smart little pegasus stallion by the name of Violet Dart or Purple Shot or something along those lines.

“Absolutely not,” Paper Clip answered. “but I’m going to do it anyway. If there’s any possibility of coming to a settlement with Luna… a way to stop any more bloodshed today… we need to risk it.” Celestia’s troops may have been in disarray and defecting with encouraging frequency, but the Lunar Rebels held onto their positions with a demented tenacity and attacked with little regard for their own survival. The Dayguard had been fighting them block-by-block, often over the same area multiple times- the Castle, for instance, had changed hooves thrice already since Paper Clip had left it. Escritoire didn’t think the Lunars could sustain that kind of attrition forever, and he agreed, but the end of the Battle of Everfree was obviously still a long ways off. The fact that the Sun was currently down, and had been down for a good long time, at five in the afternoon proved that better than any reconnaissance.

“Palafito tried to negotiate with the Lunars…” Escritoire waved a hoof out across the fat, slow river that surrounded Castle Rock, to one of the few public parks in the lower districts of the city. It was, as far as anypony knew, still under Lunar control. In the center, where a kitchen garden had once been, there was a roughly circular patch of the sort of mud made from quite a few hooves moving around for quite a while, and in the center of that a chest-high wooden block with a bloody wicker basket still sitting in front. “Look where it got him.”

“Well, Palafito was a bad negotiator. He would’ve been condescending, severely overestimated his own position -which was weaker than ours is now, by the way- would’ve aggravated the Lunars by demanding symbolic concessions they could never accept, and never even mentioned concrete reforms they would’ve been indifferent to or supported themselves. I… know I haven’t had much luck with the Loyalists, but as a known outsider I might just have a better chance with the Rebels.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Well, I’ve… never asked anypony who’s accompanied me on this venture to risk any more than I’d be willing to risk myself.”

“But what if Luna doesn’t come?” asked Firefly.

Paper Clip peered out through a gap in the barricade surrounding their hastily-constructed forward camp a few blocks from the Castle of Two Sisters. “Princess Celestia’s still holed up inside the Great Solarium, and Luna knows that. She’ll come.”

Some of the lower-ranking troops worked to disassemble just enough of the barricade to let Paper Clip through, and he stepped out into the street. He wore a soldier's light mail, but instead of a weapon one of the loops on the side had been modified to carry a flag made from somepony’s white tablecloth. It would have to do.

He’d walked this route to the Castle many times before, although now with so much rubble in the streets his progress was significantly slower. The entire district was eerily quiet- Clip's own troops had pulled back to their barricade once the civilians were evacuated and he had decided there was nothing left here worth fighting for, the Loyalists were all dead or deserted, and the Lunars had yet to arrive. A plume of smoke still rose from the site of the old Council Hall, but otherwise nothing moved. He perched himself atop a low stone wall in one of the gardens outside the Solarium, jammed the flag securely into a crack between two large cobbles, and waited.

It only took about ten minutes for Luna to arrive. She strode around the corner of a side street in near-complete silence, despite her ornate silver-blue armor. She was taller than Paper Clip had ever remembered her being, thinner and wirier, and she surveyed the area with the flinty gaze of a seasoned hunter.

He hopped off the wall and dropped into a deep bow. “Princess Luna! I’ve come to you on behalf of the people of Everfree to discuss terms for a cease-fire, pursuant to a diplomatic settlement between the Lunar Republic and the provisional government I represent.”

Luna peered down at him with eyes as dull and lifeless as old snakeskin. He searched her features for any sign of recognition, any trace of the awkward and spirited mare he’d worked under before the Rebellion. He might as well have been interrogating the wall behind him.

“Luna… don’t you remember me? Paper Clip, the head clerk.”

The last thing he remembered for a good long while was her forehoof slamming into his chest and the cobblestone wall giving way against his back.

(♫)

He awoke to warmth and birdsong and bright sunlight against his eyelids, none of which were particularly welcome given his pounding headache and general nausea. As those sensations abated somewhat, he realized he was thirsty and insanely hungry. Everything hurt in one way or another, his back and neck most of all, and when he finally opened his eyes he found himself lying on a cot in a sort of large treehouse with a white unicorn stallion in healer’s robes fiddling with some linens across the room. After a few false starts he managed an audible croak, and the unicorn spun around and gave a little yelp of surprise. He dashed over to the bedside and lifted a large earthenware bowl in his telekinesis, revealing it to be full of water. Paper Clip sipped at it as much as he felt able, then before the unicorn could take it away again jammed his entire head inside and just held it there for a good few seconds.

“Sir, don’t strain yourself,” the healer said, placing a hoof on Clip’s chest. “You’re fine, you’re going to be fine, I’ll just get the Deputy Secretary and General Firefly.” He disappeared below eye level- apparently the clerk was on an upper floor of wherever this was- and a few seconds later Paper Clip heard a door open and shut.

General Firefly?

With some effort and much cursing, he managed to roll himself out of bed. With more effort he managed to right himself, and then to stand, and finally begin a few tentative circles around what proved to be a small loft in a storehouse of Zebrican construction. Wherever Firefly had been must have been reasonably far away, as by the time the door on the ground floor opened again he had managed to successfully negotiate the stairs.

There were quite a lot of ponies on the other side, in various forms of official garb. He recognized many of them, Firefly and Escritoire in particular. They both looked different- thinner and scruffier, and not only tired but as though they’d been tired for a very long time, but despite all of it neither looked in any distress. There was a confidence and determination in how they carried themselves that had been absent before, and the healer and other functionaries seemed to look to them for guidance on what to do next.

“Clip, what are you doing down here?” Firefly demanded. “I didn’t think you’d be able to stand!”

Paper Clip tried to answer, but for a little while his tongue seemed unable to follow through. “Haaagh… uhhh… How lon’ve I been sweepi… aswee… asleep?” He finally managed.

“About nine days,” Escritoire said. “It’s the morning of the tenth. Nightm… uhh, Luna did you a pretty bad turn… if that wall hadn’t collapsed behind you you’d probably be paste. We were worried you might never wake up.”

The healer stepped forward. “Your excell- I mean, Minister, sir, you really need to rest-”

Paper Clip shoved past him -perhaps afraid of harming the older stallion, he put up precious little resistance- and stepped the rest of the way outside into what he could only describe as a sea of tents on a scale he was fairly certain nopony had ever assembled before. There was some resemblance to the road that ran north of Everfree, but with so many temporary structures covering the terrain it was difficult to say for certain- and, in any case, if this was north of Everfree then there wouldn’t be that horrible-looking jungle directly to the south.

“What? Why did you bring me out here?” he demanded. “Where is ‘here’, in fact? We… the Lunars haven’t taken Everfree, have they?”

Firefly’s expression became downcast. “No, the Lunars didn’t take Everfree. Clip, that forest… that is Everfree.”

“I’m sorry, maybe that blow did something to my ears, you’re not making any sense…” Paper Clip looked again at the camp surrounding him. The tents were haphazardly constructed in many cases from quite a wide variety of cloth, and clustered together in disorderly groups; many of the ponies hurrying from one to another were either foals or elderly. It was large enough, he estimated, to hold most of Everfree easily, but it wasn’t a military camp like he’d originally thought. “Oh, Harmony help us, you’re serious.”

“Three days after the battle those trees just… erupted, out from under Castle Rock,” said Escritoire. “Trees and... worse things. We tried to contain it but… when Firefly led a squad in to recover the Elements of Harmony, they barely made it back out again. We’ve evacuated what we could, and forbidden any further expeditions.”

...

“He doesn’t say where they went.”

“Twilight?”

“He says Firefly took the Elements out of the Solarium. He doesn’t say where they ended up! He could’ve sent them anywhere in Equestria!”

...

“But what about the Lunars, Escritoire? If they aren’t in Everfree, then where are they?”

“Princess Luna’s… gone. Dead or just sent… away somewhere, we’re still not sure. Something’s happened to the Moon, you’ll be able to see it tonight; the mages we’ve questioned can’t make much sense of it but we don’t think it’s dangerous. Celestia’s… disconsolate. Whatever happened in the chamber with the Elements… whether that had anything to do with Luna disappearing or the city becoming, well, that… I think she was the one who did it. Now she just sits outside and stares at nothing all day… for the first three days, the unicorns in camp had to help her raise the Sun. She just signs whatever we put in front of her now, though, so we’ve been able to set up something resembling a provisional government. I just wish it’d come under better circumstances.”

“And her troops?”

Firefly shifted awkwardly on his hooves. “A lot of the changed ones fell after Luna… disappeared, and it seemed like the fight went out of the living as well. They didn’t offer any resistance. I thought it was a trick at first, and had them disarmed and bound, but there really wasn’t any need. They asked, very politely, to be let go, and be provided with stone and stone-working supplies, and when we let them they started building… structures, we assumed for their dead. I’ve never seen ponies build so quickly… they didn’t sleep, they barely ate… Some of them asked for chilled cider, basic comforts like that. We had a few clerks make rounds and collect messages, since not even all of their elite were literate. I suppose I could’ve stopped them, but it would’ve been bloody, so… I didn’t, and... they sealed themselves in, Clip every last one of them,living and dead." The pegasus sighed, and turned away. "Maybe that’s for the best.”

“Most of the structures ended up deep in the… what used to be the city, but there’s a few outside I can take you to if you want a look at them,” said Escritoire, “the Lunars who hadn’t taken the Oath helped with the assembly, and then slunk off into the camp. I’ve set ponies I trust to tailing them, but they haven’t taken any aggressive actions. A lot of ponies in camp blame them for what happened to the City, so I’ve tried to keep their locations quiet. The ones who stayed," she waved a hoof back at the morass of chaotic vegetation that had until three days ago been a thriving city. "Do you… think they knew?”

“If so, there are easier ways to commit suicide,” said Paper Clip, “Right now, we have enough to do for the ponies who are still alive right now.”

...

“Look, Twilight, there’s more volumes. Year 99, Year 100…”

...

There was, indeed, a great deal for Paper Clip and his fellows to do. Their first concern was to get as much food, water, and medicine as possible into the camp surrounding Everfree, and to get as many ponies as were able and willing to leave back out of it to less chaotic environs. There was a long, long list of missing individuals to track down, and families to reunite, and families that needed to be gently convinced they were probably better off if they gave up looking.

The genteel citizens of the higher districts had suddenly found themselves without their lands and treasuries, and the ‘mere’ tradesponies who had struggled to earn enough to survive in the lower -the carpenters, nurses, weatherworkers, messengers, night-watchmares, and honest-to-Gaia farmers- suddenly found their services in desperate demand. It was thus a nearly Rockhoofian task to make certain that they neither fought to underbid each other nor charged more than they were due. The old guilds were dissolved, and new ones instituted in the Lunar style, with honors- and responsibilities- appropriate to their positions as vital public services. When all was said and done perhaps one out of every ten inhabitants of Everfree City were found to have perished in either Luna’s attack or the subsequent Fall, but they made sure the survivors would on the whole be better off than when they’d began.

Alongside that there was the wider picture to consider. Originally Paper Clip had feared that the outer provinces -which had become more and more autonomous in the waning days of the Council, some out of necessity and some out of greed- might break away completely, or that all of the neighbors Equestria had alienated over that same period might seize the opportunity to invade en masse, or that both might happen simultaneously; but with the right words in the right ears neither proved to come to pass. Denouncing the reviled city-states of Minos earned the grudging respect of Dragonlord Scales. Capitalizing on that respect, Scales was convinced to recognize the upstart Grover as King-of-all-Griffons and end the calls for him to ‘unite’ ponies into his nascent Empire. Then, an offer of free passage for the Griffon Army through Equestria to better prosecute their skirmishes with Minos turned the outrage of the minotaurs elsewhere. Paper Clip reached out to like-minded ponies in the outlying provinces and appointed them to governorships, and made sure they had the resources necessary to check those with greater ambitions. Trade resumed, within and beyond Equestria’s borders, and with it came tax revenue and exotic goods and foreigners who were skilled in things ponies were not. It would be decades if not centuries before Equestria would ever again be considered a serious power in the known world, but for the first time in a long while they were no longer its laughingstock.

Slowly but surely the refugee camp dissolved, but Paper Clip elected to stay in the hermitage outside of what was now being called Everfree Forest. There was a bolt-hole of the sort once used by Lunar scouts underneath it, and he enjoyed the peace and timelessness that came from working underground. Ponies didn’t bother him quite so much down there, and if he was being entirely honest it still disturbed him deeply to look at the sky and encounter a frequently unsteady Sun or that strange, blackened Moon.

Then the surviving members of the old Council government needed to be tried, as the idea of either letting them walk free or summarily executing the lot of them were equally distasteful, and that meant a long and winding reform of the entire judicial system. Corrupt judges and tribe-obsessed jurists needed to be ousted and a new civil service trained up to replace them, and from Luna's earliest manifestos Paper Clip and his clerks distilled the first ever code of Equestrian common law. Eventually, though, the trials were held, and many were exonerated and many others were avenged. The Lunars, and those with Lunar leanings, were a more complex matter, but eventually it was decided that an amnesty would be extended to those who still remained. They were sent to towns where they wouldn’t be recognized and put to work assisting with the reconstruction effort; Cairns were added to the official records to account for them and it became the position of the new government that they had always been interred there alongside their fellows ever since the Longest Day. Many of Paper Clip’s newer colleagues took a very dim view indeed of lying to the public, but the time he’d spent under the watchful eyes of General Lockjaw had convinced him of the value of secrets. In any case, the Lunars themselves had insisted. He even participated in a small, secretive little ceremony with many of them outside of one of the few Cairns not consumed by the Fall, and honored his memories of Princess Luna even as he lamented what she’d become.

The reforms came quickly after that. The Day Guard became the Royal Guard, and alongside the special airborne, heavy, and telekinetic units devised by Firefly served as the elite spearpoint around which the rest of a new-model military was organized. Roads were paved and public schools were built, and when the unicorn residents of Sire’s Hollow refused to allow neighboring earth pony and pegasus children to attend, it was the Guard that marched with those children through the mob outside and stood watch over them as they sat at their lessons. Escritoire began to make plans for a specialized School for Gifted Ponies open to exceptional foals of every tribe, and an Academy of Magic to pursue advanced studies with the full support of the Equestrian government.

Eventually, though, it was no longer possible to continue managing Equestria from the basement of a hermitage, and Paper Clip reluctantly came to admit that his government required a capitol. There was a great deal of debate as these plans coalesced about exactly where to establish it, as the mountainous terrain immediately surrounding Everfree was deemed unfit to support much more than a small town at best and in any case very few ponies were willing to return to the site of such dreadful happenings quite so soon. Canterlot was finally chosen, despite its association with the now generally late and very much unlamented unicorn-supremacist movement, for the simple reasons that it was both the closest major city and the largest in Equestria. Another reason, less publically spoken of, was that Canterlot was where Princess Celestia had taken up residence, and for better or for worse a great deal of the new government’s legitimacy hinged on the surviving alicorn’s continued support… or at least her general apathy and willingness to be told what to do.

According to Escritoire, who worked with the Princess most closely, she remained sullen and withdrawn, spending most of her days in a room deep in Canterlot Keep used for the storage of nonfunctional magical artifacts. Whatever it was she did in there, it was very quiet. That suited Paper Clip just fine. He probably would have to meet with her when he arrived in Canterlot, and he certainly wasn’t looking forward to that meeting, but he wasn’t anxious about it either. He’d faced down Nightmare Moon not too long ago; he was certainly not afraid of Princess Celestia- she simply didn’t have that much relevance to him.

He likely would have to send somepony back to the Hermitage in a few days, though- somepony he trusted more than the pegasus coachmare who shuttled him back-and-forth to official functions, to pick up the documents he’d accumulated. There were copies of nearly everything but the journals in Canterlot already, but the idea of leaving so much of his personal correspondence behind simply made him uneasy. Perhaps he should make that an entire team of ponies. There were quite a lot of materials, after all…

“… and I fear my back is still not remotely up to the task.”

(♫)

Twilight closed the last journal and gently set it aside, and began climbing the stairs back up to the main level. “Spike, we’re bringing these back to Canterlot with us, so we can analyze the mouthwriting and the paper and date them properly. They have to be forgeries. Have to be!”

Spike hurried to catch up with her. “Twilight… he describes the Sun and Moon moving around in detail, which was forgotten by the 120s. He talks about the Lunar Amnesty, which wasn’t public knowledge until the 130s. He was there.”

“That doesn’t mean everything he wrote was true. He could’ve just been trying to… to undermine Celestia, devalue her work, even claim credit for it!”

“By leaving his notes in a cellar nopony knew about so it could be discovered a millennium after he died? Twilight… we gotta start considering that this might be true.”

She paced an endless circle in the loft. If it had been any other night she would probably have remarked on the blunt metaphor for the current state of her thoughts, but tonight she was simply too caught up in those very same thoughts to care. Her loyalty to the very concept of Equestria rested in no small part on the great admiration she’d always felt for Celestia; for the strength and vision her mentor had shown in taking the helm of her fractured nation and personally steering it into a new age. The idea that so many of the building-blocks of what would become the great, thousand-year Pax Equestria- the weather service, the Equestrian Legal Code, the EUP Platoons and all the rest- hadn’t been developed by Celestia at all but rather the work of the reviled Lunar Rebels, hastily repackaged by a cabal of panicking ministers, was corrosive to the young scholar’s conception of reality. The records still tucked away just under her hooves might just as easily have offered incontrovertible proof that two and two summed to five, or that the world was round and orbited a gigantic gaseous Sun.

A cold, electrical sensation washed over her coat as she realized that she’d never once thought to simply ask Celestia about her own memories of that particular era. She wasn’t sure if anypony ever had, when there were authoritative texts to consult- but in those texts, she recalled with another phantom shock, names like Firefly, Escritoire, and Paper Clip had never been hard to locate in references and bylines. If the aftermath of the Lunar Rebellions had been so effectively hidden from public view, then what else might have been buried along with it?

“Twilight?” Spike’s voice startled her out of her ruminations, “You’re gonna wear a hole through that rug if you keep it up, and I’m pretty sure the Mayor’s gonna make you pay for it.” He finished stuffing a large basket he’d extracted from Starswirl knew where with a variety of miscellaneous linens, circling around inside it like a cat for a few seconds before finally curling up with his tail tucked against his snout, “You should probably get some rest.”

Twilight ignored him.

In her second year of undergraduate she had encountered Heart-Of-Progress’s controversial text The Structure of Magical Revolutions, which explained at great length the concept of a ‘paradigm shift’. According to the author, much of history was spent in the pursuit of what he called ‘normal science’- an era of steady progress where wizards tweaked and refined a respected collection of established theories in light of experimental evidence. Every so often an experiment would present evidence that outright contradicted those theories, but explanations were invented for why and how and the anomaly was typically passed over. Eventually, though, the anomalies piled up, and the scholarly consensus couldn’t bend itself flexibly enough to fit around them all. Instead, it shattered, and wizards had to invent a new overarching theory that explained all the evidence in their possession at once. That was a paradigm shift, and from the far side of it a wizard could no more understand how the new theories had been anything less than perfectly obvious all along than she could unlearn how to read.

"Uh, Twilight? You're still tracking dust everywhere."

"Hm? Oh! Oops. It can wait!"

Twilight supposed she had her share of anomalies. The revelation of a secret Lunar influence on early Equestria -Tartarus, she was reasonably certain she’d once found a pamphlet stuck under a napkin dispenser in the Academy dining hall with that exact title- was ruinous enough. But in retrospect the correlations between the grievances that had led to the formation of the Lunar Republic and the reforms of the early United Equestria were indeed blindingly obvious. From there, however, everything simply… disintegrated into contradictions. Who was Princess Luna? Nightmare Moon’s cruelty was an objective, verifiable fact. She’d studied bones exhumed from the Old Dayguard Cemetery herself, matched the tooth-marks to a pony’s jaw and sampled the magic inside them, still potent enough to seize up lab rats after a thousand years’ inactivity but disturbingly slow to finally kill them. That didn’t sound like the pony those journals had described… at least not initially.

And just what had become of the core army of the Lunars, then, if not execution or escape? If there was one point on which she unquestionably agreed with the late Paper Clip, it was that there were far simpler ways for them to have committed mass suicide. What was the "change" the old minister had mentioned, and what, if anything, had preserved the Lunars' bodies? Twilight knew there had to be a logical answer somewhere at the core of all of it, something that in retrospect would appear unimaginably obvious. That was how the universe worked. She recognized from long experience solving exactly these sort of problems that her current discombobulated state was due to missing that final piece of the puzzle… but she had no idea what it was. Every muscle and joint in her ached, on top of the eyestrain and simple tiredness she was already much more familiar with, and her mind just kept revisiting the same points over and over again- stars, Cairns, Elements, ministers, Luna, prophecy; stars, Cairns, ministers, Elements, Luna, prophecy… ooh, ministers, prophecy, stars, Luna, Elements, Cairns!- without making anything from them.

“Twilight!” Spike punctuated his remark with a tiny lick of unnatural green fire. “It’s three in the morning, and the Summer Sun Celebration’s tomorrow. Get some rest.”

She blew nearly all of the air out of her lungs at once, and suddenly realized she was indeed immensely tired. Exhausted, even. She took one last look at the moon visible from the loft’s window, trying to coerce Nightmare Moon into revealing her secrets through sheer, frustrated willpower. Surprisingly, this interrogation tactic proved ineffective.

“Legend has it that on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape and she will bring about everlasting night,” she murmured, as though either of them hadn’t studied the prophecy back-to-front a thousand times already. “I hope the Princess was right… I hope it all really is just an old mare’s tale.”

With incredible effort Twilight managed to drag herself across the room and clamber into bed, far beyond caring about the rougher, homespun texture of the linens compared to her quarters in the Observatory.

As consciousness rapidly left her, one memory in particular seemed to return with surprising clarity. The pile of rocks that had been set up to booby-trap the Lunar Cairn at Sweet Apple Acres was symmetric. For whatever reason, the ponies who had made it had gone out of their way to make sure it would collapse if somepony tried to take it apart from the inside.

Author's Note

Updated 12-04-2020
Updated AGAIN on 08-08-2020 for bits of continuity and phrasing
Updated for hopefully a final time on 02-10-2020 to fix a few phrases and also change some music around

This chapter got almost completely changed from the original version, mostly to fix things that would either become plot holes due to contradictory information in later chapters or were plot holes right here and now, but also just to make things that were originally very unclear much clearer. That, and so much of the world and characters of pre-Rebellion Equestria just kind of took on a life of their own in later chapters, and I wanted to give them more of a chance to shine here.