Clay Swords and Crossed Dimensions.

Celestia was pleased with how the new Gala had turned out, her protege and her friend's were enjoying themselves and her sister Luna was also fitting in nicely, they had greeted the guests as they entered the celebration and sat on thrones at the end of one of the gala's many dancing ballrooms. They watched the crowd move to the classic music, it calmed Celestia to see her pony citizens so calm and happy at any given time.

The main doors of the gala burst open, three tall figures stood in the middle of the doorway, they stepped into the light of the gala's ballroom. They made their way through the crowd, odd entirely brown soldiers on their tail, they approached the royal princesses, the royal guards moved in front of the royalty and the creatures started to speak.

"Greetings Princesses Celestia and Luna, we are the new emperors of Equestria." Proclaimed the middle one, a couple of the ponies around them scoffed at this remark and were regretful of their action immediatly as the brown soldiers struck out at the laughing ponies, each one getting a brown spear to the heart.

"What makes you think such claims are true?" Luna said with a scowl, the royal guards were already charging the intruders but were cut down before they even touched the three.

"Simple, if you don't hand over all power to us, you will watch your precious Canterlot burn before you eyes."  The lead one spoke up again.

"Who are you to cut down my ponies and threaten us?" Celestia spoke her voice booming and echoing in the chamber, all the party ponies had shrunk to the ground in fear, holding their hooves on their heads.

"Well if you must know I'm Spectre," He motioned his arm towards his left, "This is Shade and here on my right is, well she doesn't like being called anything." The figure chuckled. "Please, don't try any magic or anything, you will just hurt yourself!" Spectre began to laugh more, it was almost to the point of lunacy.

A few of the brown warriors came up the thrones and subdued Celestia and Luna as the rest of the warriors started too massacre the party-going ponies. Celestia saw Twilight and company sneaking out the main door, holding down an angry Rainbow Dash. The warriors had bits of stone crumbling from them, Celestia studied one, it was a horrible thing it had a frowning face with two elongated canine teeth sticking out of it's mouth, it had bits of stone falling off of it everywhere. The rest of the warriors marched out of the building, the three original beings had started to survey the warriors work, by the sounds of it they were impressed at the work the stone soldiers had done.

Lights rose up in the distance and smoke columns rose with them, "Oh no." Was all Celestia could say, she tried to struggle and use her magic on the stone men but nothing worked.

Day quickly turned up, the stone men shattered for some reason beyond Celestia, she got up and hurried over to the castle entrance, a stallion was running up to the gates as well.

"Princess! We heard the commotion and all hell broke loose, ah buck we were out right just ambushed in our own town!" The young guard said.

"What happened to the intruders? Is everypony ok?" Celestia asked the guard, he looked sad as he answered her question.

"The stone men are tough but we took out a few and no, alot of us guards died and some of the civilian ponies." He said wincing at the horrible night before. "News spread about the attack rather quickly though, everypony is chipping in, conscription levels are at a new time high." The guard said trying to sugar coat his bad news.

"Alright guardsmen return to your duties, make sure there are no odd figures in Canterlot." Celestia said as the guard saluted and trotted off. She walked back to the gala room and sat on the thrown.

"I've failed, war has finally come back to Equestria..." Celestia said as she just sat there thinking.

The gods above had an idea to try and help Equestria even they had personally frozen it many times, had no intention of letting it die now, they started chanting, thunder and lightning danced around them.

"Equestria will have it's heroes now dear princess." Chuckled one of the voices, the chanting resumed and storms of monumentous magnitude brewed.