Auroras & Souls

Chapters

1: The Crystaling
2: The Dark Times
3: Missing Spike
4: Fallout
6 : Dictatoral Plans
7: Time to Investigate
8: Our Friends Who Smile
9: Responsibilities of Magic
10: Echoes & Shadows
11: Regrouping
12: Goodnight Cloudsdale
5: Milkshakes and Tape Recorders

1: The Crystaling

Chapter 1

The sun gleamed over the Crystal Empire, glistening off the roads, buildings and ponies who lived there.

High over the ground flew a small red ball, parting the air in front of it with lightning speed.

In a field just beneath the ball, a purple filly with a violet mane and yellow hoofs arched her head to the sky. The blazing sun glared at Yellow Hoof. She lost track of the ball momentarily, forced to squint to keep it in her sights against the cloud free sky.

Yellow Hoof took three steps back, still tracking the flying ball. She tilted her gaze further back to see it and gave a brief glance over to the goal on the other side of the green pitch.

She was not far enough from the ball to make the header. She took another step back and tripped into the dirty grass, her violet crystal mane now caked in dry dirt. The ball bounced off the ground next to her head and made it’s way down the pitch.

Twisted Mane ran up to his friend.

“Are you alright?” The young colt asked lending a blue hoof to the downed filly.

“I’m fine, thanks.” She sighed and took his hoof to pulled herself up, analysing the ground beneath her. “Damn crystal shards! They get everywhere.”

“Well it’s broken now, can’t trip on it again.” His soothing voice and calming smile helped cool her frustration.

Yellow Hoof looked down at the sharp crystal shard she had tripped on. The crystalline structure was indeed broken; the small black shard had been splintered across the grass in a jagged, unpredictable manner.

“We need somewhere else to play!” Twisted Mane jeered, running in the direction of the ball. “First to kick it gets to decide the new goal positions!” He ran off. Yellow Hoof followed trotting a little faster to make up lost ground. The deep black crystal shards stayed still amongst the short grass waving in the breeze.

When nopony was around, a slither of black magic energy relieved itself from the broken shards, joining itself together in a malicious and thoughtful manner. It pointed at the two hoofball ponies then turned acrobatically in the air and made it’s way swimmingly into town.

The centre of the Empire was bustling. There was all sorts of talk about a crystalling and new parents. The slither floated silently into an ally and hid behind a wooden barrel, listening intently to the conversations of the street. There it waited for the summer sun to start setting.

At around eight-o'-clock it shot through the darkened streets to the library, hidden in plain sight by the shadows of the setting sun. The door of the library was opened for it by an obliviously kind librarian, who then walked out and kindly locked the slither inside the building.

The slither had all night in the dark library.

It shone a deep purple light and set about to scan every single book on the shelves until it found... On a low shelf on the third floor it stopped and then slipped in-between two books. One of them glowed a yellow colour which then faded away.

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In the morning bustle of the crystal market, a streak of yellow darted its way through, finding the most efficient path it could.

Spindle Hope was in a rush. He ran into the library with the urgency of a pony who was about to have their door kicked in by a bugbear. He tripped over the star speckled cape of Sunburst on his entrance.

“Oh I'm Sorry!” He yelled apologetically, rolling from the floor back to his hooves.

“Oh dear! What’s the matter? How can I help?” The old mare behind the desk urgently inquired.

“I need a book on how to choose a crystaller. Stat!” Spindle Hope managed to retort as he darted from the floor to the desk, slamming his fore-hooves onto the countertop.

“Oh my!” Was all the library pony could retort, shocked by the rushed colt's manner. His rugged yellow coat and messy brown mane only accentuated his urgency. She pushed her glasses up her nose, “let me check our inventory.” She scrambled about a few pieces of paper with grids and came up with a solution. “Try the third floor, Colts, Fillies and Foals.”

“The book most ponies read before a crystalling is 'Birth, Love and Choices'.” Sunburst called from behind Spindle Hope. Spindle Hope flicked his light brown hair out the way of his pale blue eyes and took in a few deep breaths to recover from his run.

“Thanks!” Two seconds later Spindle Hope was racing up the first set of stairs. He tripped up the second set, picked himself up, and continued up the third more cautiously, while cursing the stairs in his head - He didn’t want to appear rude in front of the reception mare behind the desk.

Sunburst looked at the reception Mare with amusement before heading back to the palace with his book of 'Crystal Foal Traditional Games'. He was staying there while Shinning Armour was out of the Empire on an assignment. He let the door swing shut behind him as he trotted towards the centre of town.

Spindle Hope nosed every book on the bottom shelf of 'Colts, Fillies and Foals'. They all ended up on the floor before he found the book he needed.

A pink book with a photo on the front of a young foal held in the air, next to which was a shinning crystal. The photo was bordered by a dark pink unglimmering, unromantically twisting crystal frame.

Then he looked at the books he had pulled out spread across the floor, then considered the consideration he had shown on the stairs. He had made a mess.

One of the books had slid right onto the edge of the platform and was perfectly balanced underneath the balcony barrier..., until it wasn’t anymore. The book toppled under the barrier, down through the chasm in the centre of the library, past the balconies until it hit the basement floor with a loud thud that echoed throughout the chambers of the library.

Spindle Hope took another quick look at the mess, remembered the crystalling happening in two hours, he darted out of the library..., darted back in, handed his library card to the receptionist, apologised, and darted back out once more. Needless to say the library mare was left shocked by the events, eyeing up the disorganised section on floor three.

"Huh!" She exclaimed in disgust.

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Having studied his borrowed book for an hour, the yellow streak darted through the streets, passing the different coloured crystal houses and the large crowds of non-crystal ponies.

In front of him emerged a massive crystal pillar which arched out from two corners to connect to other crystal pillars, which formed a square base by connecting to one more crystal pillar. Resting on the crystal pillars, high above his head, stood the palace of Princess Cadence and Captain of the guard, Shining Armour.

The arches were lined with red curtains, as is the tradition for a crystalling. Spindle hope stood panting for a second, taking in the grandeur in front of him. The palace was made of blue crystal, and stood tall for ten stories. It jutted a bit after that and then in the centre, a tall spire grew to the sky three-hundred-and-ninety feet above.

He took a breath and pushed the curtain aside.

“I have a book that they recommended, what did you need?”

“He wanted to know HOW to choose a crystaller.” One of the blue guards ponies said approaching him. “He just went to the toilet, he’s extremely nervous.” The guard gave a laugh, “Prince Shining Armour did exactly the same thing. I bet what it says in the book is 'look for good omens and follow your heart.'”

A few seconds later the father returned from the toilet, a deep green unicorn with scraggly turquoise hair.

“Ah you! Did you manage to find a book!?”

“Yes here you go. It should be in there, chapter thirteen.”

The father ran across the room, delighted. He picked the book up off of Spindle and started rifling through it on the floor.

“GOT IT!” The page was almost empty. All it had was the chapter title and number in large print, then a few words printed in small font in the centre of the page. “Look for good omens and follow your heart...What does that mean!”

Spindle couldn’t help but chuckle a little, he had been contemplating that exact phrase since he had spoken to the guard.

“Maybe it means, do what is best, right now.” He said smiling, helping the strange, worried new parent up from the floor. “Don’t worry, you’ve got this, you have your friends and your wife and child, what more could you want?”

“A crystaller.” The father retorted, clawing the ground with his hoof. Spindle Hope made his way to the curtain on the far side.

“I’m heading out for the ceremony. Whoever you choose, I bet they’ll be right for the job.” Pulling the curtain open the green pony stopped Spindle with a force he hadn’t felt before. It wasn’t a bad force, it was warm and loving force.

“I want you to be my crystaller.”

Spindle hope smiled and turned back.

In the few remaining minutes they had, Spindle helped organise the crystals and the beginning of the ceremony was ready. He had to keep checking the family were sure about this. He was a stranger and being a crystaller was a big responsibility.

They were about to go on the platform. The father, joined by his friends and his wife, a light blue mare with long brown hair holding the new-born foal.

Spindle opened the heavy crimson curtain and the group made their way out into the soft breeze of late morning. The sun glistening off the crystal steps as they made their way up to the crystalling platform.

“Spindle, I can’t remember the lines we should say as we perform the crystalling...” The father pleaded quietly. However before he could worry any further, Spindle had rifled through to section fourteen of Birth, Love and Choices.

Relieved, the parents read the book together as they made their way up the steps and onto the platform. Spindle Hope followed close behind. Out the corner of his eye he thought he noticed a thin black sliver of magic float around the book. He figured he must have been imagining it.

On the platform, overlooked by a large crowed of eager crystal/not-yet-crystal ponies, the father floated the book gently to the ground. Spindle came up to him and handed over the purity crystal, a long but thin shard of blue crystal designed to capture magic and amplify it's effects. At this, the mother stepped forwards to start the ceremony as they had read.

"We're so grateful you could all make it here today. We..." Mother was stopped in mid-speech by her husband.

His horn shimmered, pulsating with dark energy and his eyes burned with darkness. A dark coil enveloped the thin blue crystal shard, raising it up to the crystal foal, suspended in the air by his own telekinesis spell.

The crystal foal started crying out, screaming in agony.

Shrouded in darkness, it's coat cracked and bled. The mother screamed from the other side of the platform. Spindle Hope charged at the father in an attempt to douse the magic of his horn.

Before either of them could do anything, the Father had fired two beams of lime green energy into both of them. They stood still and silent, transfixed. Both the mother and Spindle's eyes glowed a still green.

Lesions formed in the once lovely green coat of the foal, and dark red blood poured over the platform.

It's eyes turned red...

There were screams from the audience as the mother collapsed to the floor. Spindle collapsed soon after. The foal exploded, not with the blood of the foal but a deep dark magic which fired into the floor.

The Empire's snowflake shaped roads were left black, freezing everypony on the road or in their houses. Then the darkness hit the crystal heart and the walls of the palace glowed bright red.

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Slice Ray, a member of SMILE and the Crystal Anti-Monster Organisation stared at the blackening streets. With impending disaster unfolding before him, he grabbed a radio walkie-talkie from his belt. Radio waves were an amazing discovery by Doc. He contacted HQ and anyone else who might be listening. He was forced to stop mid sentence.

2: The Dark Times

Chapter 2

Princess Miamore Cadenza was awoken not by the sudden screaming, but the sudden stopping of it. For some reason she had been kept within the dream realm longer than she should have been... She was sure of it.

Then she sensed the shift and a loss of love in the empire. A guard came galloping in and tried to warn Cadence of some thing, but he was grabbed and dragged out of the doorway by a dark energy.

A deep breathing made its way through the halls of the castle. The heavy dark voice echoed in the halls outside her doorway. She slammed the double doors, locked and encrypted it with a spell of security and love. Then she ran to Flurry Heart's crib and gently picked up the sleeping filly. Not wanting to wake her too harshly she opened the door to her right which took her into the throne room.

“Sunburst!” her voice, a calm and warming whisper, echoed throughout the chambers. Flurry stirred just a little, turning over in her mothers hoof. Probably for the best if you awake now sweetie pie, Cadence thought.

She called Sunburst again, who burst into the room from a door on the other side.

“Sssshhhh” Cadence called across to him. Sunburst stopped in his tracks and whispered across to her.

“The Crystalling! That was supposed to be today. We both missed it.” He whispered back, tense and agitated.

“Sunburst, there’s something big in the corridor of this castle.”

“And I was supposed to help advise too. And.... Wait what!” Sunburst took in this new information and observed the door. He felt a deep vibration buzzing through the floor.

“Sunburst, look outside.” Cadence kept herself together and calmly directed the situation. Sunburst did as instructed and saw the streets lined with ponies of all descriptions cast in stone. He turned back horrified.

“Princess...”

“Sunburst, I need you to take Flurry to the safe room and keep her there till I come and collect you, or you deem it safe. I trust you.” She lit up her horn and transferred the sleeping foal to Sunburst's orange glowing magic. Sunburst caught Flurry Heart and hovered her over him.

Then before he could ask any more questions, Cadence charged a spell of dark alicorn magic and threw a beam of blackness into the centre of the floor.

The floor opened up to reveal the long downwards staircase leading to the top of the crystal palace.

Sunburst Hesitated for a second.

“Sunburst! Go!” Cadence ordered louder than she had expected, Flurry stirred again. “You know what to do.” She reassured him warmly. Sunburst nodded and then ran down the staircase.

Cadence cast another spell which locked the floor with all the love she could muster.

The doors to the throne room then flew open to reveal the curved red horn and sleazy grey eyes of old King Sombra. His head floating in a barrier of shadow at the door, his body was non-complete, and non-existent. He laughed his evil meticulous deep spitting laugh.

"I am Princess Miamore Cadenza!" She blockaded the chambers of the castle in a voice only Princess Luna could replicate, "Defender of the Crystal Empire!" The halls resonated with the voice of ancient alicorn royalty.

Then Cadence began to shine with a light brighter than any star or sun in the sky. The room was filled with white light.

From the top of the palace tower a thick green light of hope emanated brighter than it had ever before. The power of a battle cry, a call to war forced its way across Equestria. A battle cry of hope.

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In Canterlot, Princess Celestia finished lowering the sun to it's dusk position.

The night could start to be seen but the orange glow emanated a lovely colour through the sky, a smooth gradient reached into the royal blue of night. She turned and cantered into the hallway leaving the worries of the tiring day behind her. The blue walls illuminated by the calming orange glow of the sun were a lovely colour that filled the room. Celestia became disorientated.

She looked to the end of the hall where she could see Corporal Flash Sentry dismissing another guard from his post at the doorway, leaving only Flash guarding the door. It was 5 minutes until the next shift came around.

She looked outside at the green sun, the shiny blue floor, the brown - not red - rug that runs the length of the hall, the glowing green wooden pillars holding up the ceiling. She felt sick and dizzy.

"No need to worry everything's going to be fine this evening bro, it'll be gone in a flash." Came a smarmy remark from Corporal Flash.

"Sure Flash it'll be a nice walk home." She heard the other guard reply back to him... Hope.

Celestia felt hopeful.
...,

Princess Luna fell out of bed her hooves sliding over the cold castle floor as she gathered herself. She could sense everything from her dreamland. The green aurora had infected everything.

She jumped over her bed landing on the other side, slamming the door open with such force it could be heard outside by the croquet ponies who are all hoping to win the game and won't stop until they have.

She galloped down the corridors casting a connection spell to locate her sister in the palace. She had hope she would find her and she did. Celestia in the west wing. Then Luna's body vibrated and felt a nightmare.

She stopped and realised what was wrong.
This was no time to be hopeful.

Luna passed the Guard Pegasus at the door and called down the corridor.

"Tia!"

"You know better than I what this is about sister." Celestia's voice was weak, yet there was hope and peace there. That worried Luna.

"Only the Crystal Empire could produce such an aurora across such a wide distance. The realm of dreams are interrupted too, it has infected all forms of magical communication." Luna sped through her explanation as quickly as her mouth could move. She could feel the magical aurora closing in around her.

“Slow down sister, what is it?”

Luna felt shock. She snapped a psyche spell over Celestia and balanced a moment of normality into the world. The long blue corridor with its long red carpet returned to its normal colour, and Celestia felt just a little bit better.

“It’s an aurora of hope, do you feel it? It’s more powerful than anything the Crystal Empire has ever emitted before, it’s almost like...”

“...A war cry...” Celestia finished her sister’s sentence. Letting the horrifying thought set in for a second. Slowly the air around them started to close in. Celestia felt her throat slowly tighten into itself.

"Flash Sentry!" She called down the corridor gasping for air as a tear wept from her eye. Her vision blurred as the green aurora started to set back into the corridor around her. Her head felt light...,
Luna's gaze scanned the hallway for as much information as possible... she felt her legs weaken.

Celestia gasped, her legs buckled beneath her. Flash Sentry came running down the corridor to the princess of solace.

"Flash, get message to Princess Twilight Sparkle NOW. The Crystal Empire is in danger, magical communications are being forcefully used to infiltrate the souls of ponies, get more guards with you.” Her raspy voice echoing around the large stone walls of the castle.

She felt a relaxing sensation wave over all her muscles. Celestia then felt her body flung against the wall by a force of dark magic emanating from the north.

Then she felt her soul being lifted.

She had no weight. She has no body, she saw herself in the corridor, her sister collapsed on the red carpet next to her, Flash calling guard ponies in the other room.

She sees all the rooms of the top floor, she sees herself being found by another guard pony, shocked and stunned, she sees the pony run to the Captain's quarters on the ground floor.

She sees the palace, she sees Canterlot, the Mountain next door, orange in the current glow turning a musty green, then Ponyville, Equestria...

Black.

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Forsythia was in the throne room of Princess Twilight's Castle. Her dark pink coat befriended the grand blue crystal walls. She was only employed to decorate the halls with flowers but she had known the mares who lived and worked here for years, so she figured it would be a nice surprise for the esteemed customers if she gave the throne room a lift while she was at it, especially for Twilight and Rarity.

She stepped back from placing a beautiful blue rose on Rarity's chair. The vibrant blue would enhance Rarity's mane. Taking another step to admire her work, she tapped the table with her flank by accident. The pink hydrangeas that had been delicately placed to surround the back of Pinkie's chair fell down.

A whale like call shot from the map vibrating throughout each and every corner of the castle.

The shock petrified Forsythia. She turned to look at the cause of the noise.

Starlight Glimmer was making a daisy sandwich in the kitchen and stumbled back in surprise knocking two pans off the shelf. She ran upstairs to the foyer and bumped into Forsythia charging down the main corridors in the other direction.

"I'm so sorry I only meant to decorate the thrones I didn't mean to...” She panted as she made her way to the door. The castle walls began to turn red. Starlight followed Forsythia's trail. The red crystal castle glowed a deeper, more intense red, the closer Starlight's gaze got to the throne room.

“Go, go, I’ll check this.” Starlight willed the other pony out of the castle and then continued her journey to the throne room.

Twilight and her friends Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were out on a hill having a picnic.

Starlight suddenly appeared for a second, grabbed Twilight in a furl of magic and whipped back to wherever she had come from. The five friends were stunned.

"What.., was that about!" Rarity exclaimed. The five remaining friends then felt a wall of good will suddenly hit.

"I’m sure it'll be fine." Applejack dismissed.

"Yeah, she probably just knocked a book over again or something." Rainbow Dash loused.

"I love it when..." Pinkie pie was interrupted by a dark force as the 5 Mares suddenly became lifeless, their bodies adopting stone like states that no longer were capable of movement.

Twilight was stunned. The round table in front of her was pure red. The cutie-map was red. Deep. Blood curdling, screaming, horrific.
Red.

Starlight had mentioned about Forsythia, but she was sure it had nothing to do with the flower mare.

"No this was not just Forsythia." Twilight perused the map. At that moment they heard a bang. Then another. Flash Century reeled into the room, out of breath. Shocked. Petrified.

"Princess Celestia is gone! Princess Luna too! Magical communication is no longer a viable means of communication... There are more guards informed but I think I might be the last to make it..." He panted.

Then he collapsed on the floor.

"He's still breathing.” Starlight observed crouching next to the colt on her front legs. She suddenly felt a shift, like a warning, she stared at Twilight. Her horn glowed and a crystalline dodecahedral shrouded the three ponies.

Inside Twilight could only move her eyes in the gel like substance. She stared at Starlight whose eyes simply said "No."

Starlight knew what Twilight was thinking, but all Starlight knew was that she could not let either of them go until her shield stopped getting rammed with dark magical energy.

Twilight couldn't feel the difference that Starlight as the caster could. She was hopeful anyway.

3: Missing Spike

Chapter 3

Spike got out of bed, tired, walked across the floor, tired, opened the door, tired, opened the bathroom door next to his room and picked out his toothbrush, tired. As he brushed he thought about the possible list of things he might need to do but also maybe getting a claw massage or something.

He was missing something, he was sure of it, afternoon naps don't normally leave you this tired. He spat into the sink. That was Starlight's toothpaste. Once he had loaded his own toothpaste onto his toothbrush, he closed his eyes and checked his mental list.

Putting his toothpaste on his brush, check, he tidied the library yesterday, check, he replied to Ember's letter earlier, check. He smelt the air. Something mechanical or metallic, he tasted the bitter metallic taste.

He opened his eyes properly and then they widened themselves. The air was a musty grey colour, an ethereal mix of greens and faded grey.... Why... What in Celestia?!

He dropped his toothbrush and rushed to Twilight's room, she wasn't there, he checked Starlight's room. Then he heard an explosion from the throne room. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

He ran, as fast as his claws could grip the surface of the smooth crystal flooring.

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When Starlight finally let go of her shield spell, all three ponies them were flung against the nearest walls.

Flash Sentry was knocked out cold by the blast. Twilight was more resilient to beatings thanks to the pony part of being an alicorn. Starlight caught herself with magic just before she hit the wall but then fell clumsily and was sent sprawling across the throne room.

"Starlight!" Twilight cried out across the room.

"I'm fine," Starlight managed to respond, "just don't leave the room yet."

A scratching came from the corridor outside and then loud banging.

"Twilight! Anypony! What's going on!" Spike yelled through the doorway, "Are you okay? speak to me!"

"I'm here spike." Twilight replied calmly.

"You can't open the door, we're sealed in to keep us magically protected.” Starlight's seriousness grew the more she recovered from the beating and magical onslaught. “I’m so sorry.”

If the power she had just protected them from had been as powerful as she felt, anycreature not magically protected would surely be captured or controlled or, maybe even dead in minutes. Starlight felt guilty, she realised Spike was not protected out there. She couldn't protect him in here.

“I’m so sorry.” She repeated solemnly to herself. It was all she could muster. If only she had waited a few minutes to help save Spike. It was as if the shield had leaked some bleak, dark magic through her shield into her psyche.

"What's happening with the air?" Spike called through.

Twilight looked at Starlight, who, although she was slow to respond, her shrug making it obvious that she didn’t really know.

"I don't know Spike," Twilight looked again at the red, green and grey covered map, "but Equestria is in danger.” The first cog in the wheel of planning started turning in her head. ”Wait there a minute!"

"Will he be okay out there?" she whispered to Starlight, Hopefully.

"I don't know..."
Starlight responded a little too slowly for Twilight's liking.

Twilight examined her map again, this time in closer detail. Everything in Equestria was fogged by a red mist, the map itself still shining bright red. There was a deeper concentration of colour surrounding the Crystal Empire. 'It has to be something to do with Cadence!' Twilight thought.

She looked back at Flash Sentry. Starlight followed Twilight's gaze. There was more to be gotten out of the Royal Guard. Starlight went to him and began to examine him for means of faster revival.

"I'm sure it's going to be fine actually Twilight!” Spike yelled from outside. He sounded confident... Why?

A thought suddenly struck Twilight.

"Spike we can no longer use magic as a form of communication, this aurora must be affecting it, maybe even intercepting it! Don't use your fire breath, got it? We'll need a plan of action first."

Starlight cast a basic healing and restoration spell over Flash who seemed to be coming round slowly. Starlight's attention then focused back on Twilight who was addressing everyone now.

"We need to understand what is happening," that seemed obvious but she still didn't understand, "second, how is it linked with the Crystal Empire. Third, why." again... Obviously. She traced the events rather quickly and then enacted events in her head. Her voice softened, she needn't be so commanding.

"Yeah! Go Twilight good plan!" She still didn't understand Spike's enthusiasm but it was no doubt appreciated.

"Starlight, what kind of energy was your shield blocking, could you sense it?"

"I'm not sure, it was strange, it was a power, like a gathering of ponies, almost like just a beacon, but then it slowly felt heavy and dark, like a thick black energy that could stain the soul of anypony that might absorb it."

"Could that be related to the Crystal Empire?" Spike called out from behind the door.

"I'm not sure," Twilight pondered, "It certainly has the power to reflect love across Equestria, but I've never read anything saying it couldn't be used to spread other kinds of magic." She studied the map again. The red glow was fading around the outskirts of Equestria, but the Empire to the north still shone a bloodcurdling red.

"The Crystal Empire is clearly the source, it's glowing bright red on the map Spike." She called through concerned. Before she could chime in another point she was interrupted by the waking of a certain guards pony.

"I..... Celestia" The two purple ponies turned to face Flash who had slumped himself up sitting on the floor, his hooves cracked and mane facing jagged spiteful angles. He moved his hoof to his head and tried to loosen some tension.

"Woah there, hang on, here," Twilight beaconed him to slow down, “have a drink.”

She went over and poured water into a glass from the emergency jug that was kept at the side of the room in-case friendship meetings went on too long. Flash gave a low energy acknowledgment to the kind deed and holding the glass in both hooves took sips till it was almost empty.

He placed the glass underneath him and finally composed the message he had been given.

"Princess Celestia, I heard her talking to Luna. They said Crystal empire and the magic is invading the souls of ponies." he took a breath, Twilight magically grasped his glass and refilled it.

"I was sent to warn you with a small battalion of troops for protection. No pony else has turned up yet?"

"Not yet..." Starlight said, she gave Twilight a look, at least they both knew.., something. At least a little more than they did before the energy wave hit.

"Flash..., where are the princesses?" she asked hesitantly, did she actually want to know. No was the answer.

"I'm not sure, they looked like they were..., fading."

Twilight sank internally like a brick in bottomless pit. She kept her outwards composure as much as possible.

"You mean like an invisibility spell?" Starlight covered for Twilight.

"I cannot say, I’m sorry."

"Limbo" Twilight thought out loud but it was too late, the mood of the room sunk to match Twilight. There was a long pause as they thought about the last time they had encountered Limbo. Starlight perked up a thought.

"When I was at Canterlot High with Sunset Shimmer, and her friends became trapped in limbo and it was because of me being there I could help them... Maybe we should inform them just in case.”

"But I can't get to my diary and even if I could I can't use it, it's communication magic."

"We can't communicate with them but.., we have a mirror." Starlight nudged her head towards the door behind which was Spike.

"Already on it guys I'll be back before you know it". Spike couldn't see them, but he knew them so well. He ran down the halls to the basement library to find the mirror to the other dimension.

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The mirror was cold and hard against the worn claws of the not so young dragon. Last time he was there he didn't have wings. He wondered if dogs get wings in this other dimension like dragons do. Dogs don't here in Equestria, but you never know.

After preparing for his transformation he took a step back, took a deep breath and then pulled a lever on his right. Magic energy split from the reactor, compressed and flowed around the magic mechanism of the machine.

"Haven't done this in a long time," - well I wasn't really allowed was I - he thought to himself. Moving foot by foot up the steps he took in again the metallic taste of air, the musky auras of Equestria and then turned into the mirror.

Which was the worst way to enter the mirror.

His body contorted and twisted in the chaos and instead of being softly pulled through the vortex he was pulled and mangled in the space between two worlds. Thrown about in the chaotic spacial divide, exposed to the multitude of magic colours in the transportation vortex, Spike got.., dizzy. The fact that his scaly body had been twisted upon entrance had created a great woozing sickness in his stomach.

The moment he appeared on the other side, in dog form, on his hind legs, he collapsed onto all fours and threw up all over the cold hard concrete slabs of Canterlot High.

His shoulder blades felt weird. Like he couldn’t move them.

“Aaawww man, no wings?”

Spike was disappointed.

He twisted around to double check either side of his body. It was like his back had been pulled together. Tightened with some kind of torture.

Then he saw his paws.

Fur.

That was it.

He looked at the white concrete floor to reassure himself where he was at.

Quickly he danced back round to the statue where he had just come from. One side of the concrete structure was a little shimmery from the universal transition between it and the mirror. It reflected a distorted image of a blue dog with green stripes in it's fur before solidifying.

“But no wings.” Spike moped about that. “This body isn’t as cool as it used to be.”

Spike started pacing up and down experimenting with his paws and clearing his mindset.

“Not even opposable claws.”

Then he stopped for a moment. He gave a bark at his tail, which made him smile. There was still something slightly fun about being in a different body.

Once he had stabilised himself from the inertia he came to the time. The sun and moon operated independently from human control here so time was of a constant in comparison to Equestria so the two had the potential to be greatly out of sync, time of day wise.

Space time itself is a constant between the two it seems. This thought sent Spike wondering for a second about the melding vortex between the two universes. Then he remembered why he was here and checked the time.

The sun was nearly over the school roof, casting some shadows over the courtyard. That must mean that it had finished for the day.

Sunset Shimmer would be in one of a few places: shopping mall, beach, lakeside park or home. It was cold so he guessed either shops or home were good bets. Without knowing the day it would be impossible to know. Seeing as people never took too kindly to stray dogs when he was on his own at the shops, he took off to find Sunset's home.

There was a soft breeze blowing his fur as he ran which he quite enjoyed in comparison to his scales as a dragon. Finally he passed the picket fence outside Sunset's house. He ran up and scratched on the door, to both try to open it and make aware of his presence.

No one answered. He then realised that Sunset lived in the maisonette on the top floor.

Last time he had to open a door, he got lucky that Vinyl Scratch was just around the corner and she happened to respond pretty well to his body language. He looked around but there was no sign of anypony... or any...body... did they say here?

Either way, he turned back to the house and his heightened sense of smell caught his attention, another unusual advantage of being a dog he guessed. He was sure that was Sunset's rosy perfume she wore the last time they met.

He remembered people here responded to barking, he gave a few. But then stopped when a window in the house next door was slammed shut. He sat for a second slowly coming to realise a superior sense of hearing had developed drastically since being here.

He tried to listen in carefully to the house, he made out some low moaning coming from a top floor window, a few giggles, definitely Sunset's and then a....

"No flash I didn't do it like that!" whatever that meant. He called out to the open window

"SUNSET IT'S SPIKE I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOU"

Sudden shock and guilt ran through Sunset's body. Using the wall as a stabiliser she pushed Flash Sentry away from her into her kitchen then onto the fire escape.

"Look I'm sorry I'll call you later just go!" She decided the best thing to do was to hide her reminiscent romance with Flash by handing him a fire escape key and telling him to wait five minutes until she had gone to the mall with her friends.

Then she grabbed her dressing gown off the stairs, draped it over her half naked torso and knotted it tightly. Breathed, did a few star jumps so she could legitimately say she was exercising and moved to open the front door.

Spike strolled round from the window to the doorstep.

"Hey Spike!" Sunset said cheerily, was it too cheerily, she wasn't sure, she stopped herself overthinking.

"Hi Sunset!" Spike said eagerly. Sunset went to respond but stopped herself in noticing something she wasn't quite sure of.

"Wait..." she looked again at the dog, wagging his tail. "Spike..." she said slowly lending him a suspicious glance.

"From Equestria!" He retorted with pride. And now Sunset understood.

"Oh Celestia! Spike how are you!? And how's princess Twilight, is she here, where is she?"

"She's trapped in Equestria." Amidst the seriousness of the situation, the light friendly greeting was still welcome to him. Sunset knew that this could mean a multitude of things. But the way the words were spoken sent another mood on the crazy day; from exhilarated to super serious.

"I need to talk to you, well, and all of our friends."

4: Fallout

Chapter 4

On a dimensional plane far away from the standard lives of Equestria, a creature of great confusion arose sick and faint. He churned over and over. Everything seemed to be bleeding, though when he looked directly at the walls, the stairs, the table, the leprechaun, the lion, the bat, the pans, the apples, the games they all seemed normal. But they weren’t. Discord felt uncomfortable. More than that, he felt something imbalanced. A magical Imbalance. A shivering wobble shook him to his core and he went into convulsions.

After a few seconds they stopped. He was back to a mediated state, but everything was still wrong. He worried for Fluttershy. He thought for a split second. He snapped his fingers and teleported to the same spot he was standing.

“Weird, I should have been taken to Fluttershy.” He clicked his fingers again, the same happened.

“What about Celestia then.” He clicked.... Nothing. He couldn’t feel their souls in the space, magic, time mesh that was a chaotic enigma to most.

“What about Twilight, she’ll know what’s going on.” He clicked one more time.

Everything went blood red, and he sensed that something weird was about to happen, and that was to his standards. His standards of chaos made him satisfied. Unsatisfied, Discord got out of bed, he churned over and over. He was sick and faint. Everything seemed to be bleeding though when he looked directly at the walls, the stairs, the table, the leprechaun, the lion, the bat, the pans, the apples, the games they all seemed normal. But they weren’t, Discord felt uncomfortable.

[}<===================≈=======================≈======================≈=================>{]

Celestia felt nothing, she called and said nothing there was nothing she thought nothing she tried casting a spell of nothing she tried to dream and nothing. All connection had been lost. She saw white nothing, tasted nothing.

She tried to look at herself, nothing.

Nothing.

nothing

[}<===================≈=======================≈======================≈=================>{]

Flurry Heart and Sunburst reached the roof of the Crystal Empire Castle... finally.

“Now you stay here Flurry while I secure the perimeter.” Sunburst put Flurry down gently and circled her in a protection spell. Then he set to work, he walked to the edge of the red tower. The floor was cracked and a few dark black shards of crystal seemed to be forming on the edges of the platform. He looked over the empire and felt a great sadness.

Frozen grey pony bodies littered the black streets that had once seemed so glamourous only an hour beforehand. The sun was setting, casting what would have been a majestic orange glow over the mountains of the north, had the air not been a metallic tasting green colour.

He set to work casting a ward around the edges of the tower, taking careful step after careful step. If the ward wasn’t perfectly circular it could create chinks in the spell. But he had always been one for detail. When he wasn’t around his parents anyway, so he enjoyed the meticulous nature of casting this spell.

“Filled with a loving protection you might say.” He said to himself. “You okay Flurry?” He called across the roof to the baby alicorn in a childish voice. Flurry giggled back and he dispelled the orange protective bubble that surrounded her. Flurry immediately tried to fly over the edge of the tower, laughing as she did so. Bouncing off the invisible wall was a good game.

'Of course you would', Sunburst chuckled to himself. The ward was as much for keeping Flurry in as others out. He grabbed her with magic.

“Come on,” He coaxed her, “how about we play a silly game, what about...” he covered his face with his hooves, then revealed himself again “FACES!”

His features were contorted in a silly, clownish expression, one corner of his mouth up, the other down, his eyes facing different directions. Flurry giggled. Sunburst continued the game for her, suppressing all signs that he knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.

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Ponyville was heavy, still and silent.

Twilight solemnly dumped herself on the floor of her throne room. There was a chair. This was not the time for chairs. Where to sit wasn’t important. She looked at the sun. It hadn’t moved. She looked back at Starlight and Flash. Everyone was in the same thought processes... 'what do we do next?' Her gaze drifted up to the higher windows again and then down the walls, crossing the roots of her old tree-house-library to the red map.

A thought struck her as she took a second glance at the map. “Starlight, do you remember the second time we met?” she said in a hushed reminiscent tone.

“What you mean in my village? I dunno... I guess when you came to mine.....”

“No, I mean when you rearranged Starswirl's spell.”

“Oh, right...” Starlight observed Twilight with the bad memories running through her head. Twilight knew she wouldn’t like talking about this. “Yes, how would I forget that.” She muttered sarcastically. She looked at Twilight concerned. There was a mode of anticipation about Twilight. “No Twilight.., no, no, no, there is no way, we can’t use time travel to solve every problem there must be another way around....”

Twilight had realised where Starlight was going and made sure to reassure her.

“Oh no! I didn’t mean that. No I meant. The first time you sent me back to the future – after you stopped the rainboom I mean. I visited a world where Equestria was at war with the Crystal Empire...” Things had started to bleakly connect now, “For some reason me and my friends hadn’t been there to stop Sombra and help Cadence take the empire back.”

“Aaaaaandd...” Starlight tried to incite an answer from Twilight but Twilight was in thinking and planning mode talking to herself.

Flash stood like a royal Guard should, at the door to the room trying to take it in, but he was less accustomed to Twilight’s thought processes than Starlight was. He did hope he could interject with a useful comment at some point, but he figured it was best to stay on duty until he could give useful input to the conversation. Anyway the princess knew what she was doing.

Twilight studied the map more intently than she had before. It had recently started expanding to uncover many undiscovered regions of the world outside of Equestria, other areas that she and her friends had spread the magic of friendship. Her attention for the moment was focused on the northern boarder. The red glow of the crystal empire was prominent – first of all it shouldn’t be red. Sharp jagged red crystal shards were spread along the sides of the mountains and into the frozen north – second note, they hadn’t been there before.

She took in the whole of the map now and looked specifically at the colour change away from the Crystal Empire. The map's aura was actually gradiented. Blood red around the Crystal empire but as it reached Equestria's southernmost boarders the map was more of a turquoise colour – third note, the map was normally just a straight blue.

Fourth note - Twilight had been muttering to herself throughout her observations at extremely high pace. Starlight walked over and observed the map also, then observed the erratic studying Twilight, then the map again. When she believed her ex-mentor had started checking her observations for a third time, she pecked in a comment.

“Twilight what happened with the Crystal Empire?” It took one look at Twilight. Horror shrouded the purple alicorn's face as she looked up from the map. A hoof came up to move her mane out of her face but it made no difference to her fear. Starlight felt sick.

“What happened before has happened again,” Flash was listening intently by the door his heart beat starting to rush in anticipation, he stood calm as he had been trained but inside he was destabilised and terrified, scared of the possibility of... “Sombra returned before, and lead the Empire across Equestria into war. The Empire expanded like that...” she pointed a hoof to the gems that now lay across the mountains, “leaving a trail of its magic wherever Sombra’s influence spread.”

Starlight was fearful but still reaching for an understanding of the situation, “How does that link to when you time travelled and the map looked like this. We rectified the past, I’m sure we did.”

“Yes I believe so.”

“So what are you saying Twilight?”

“I’m saying, that if the past is still correct but the map now looks as it did when me and my friends didn't help Cadence retrieve the Crystal Empire.” The was a momentary pause. Twilight had to take one last consideration on the matter before she put her verdict out to the room. She was sure there was no other explanation.

“Sombra must have found a way to return again.”

6 : Dictatoral Plans

Chapter 6

Ponyville.

Twilight was having a panic attack. Her heart was pulsing and she could feel the blood pounding around her skull. Sombra had returned and her friends had been outside only moments before Starlight had saved her from his magic.

“Breath Twilight, breath.” She had a captivating stare and Twilight was forced to focus solely on Starlight. The two calmed each other as Starlight felt her urgency calm with Twilight. “Let’s not think too big. What do we need? What did you do last time Sombra returned?”

“Sombra never returned last time.. We managed to stop him before...” A worrying thought hit Twilight. “Starlight will the spell frequencies you used on that shield match the ones protecting my school and it’s dormitories?”

“I think so, I don’t know, I kinda just shot it out.”

“Okay, well we’ll need my friends. That’s a place to start, please see if you can find them, do everything you can. I must check on my students, Celestia forbid if anything happened to them. Flash Sentry!” Flash Sentry had been listening, guarding the doorway of Twilight's throne room, but he had also been tightening his armour and was surprised to be called. He stood readily to attention.

“Flash we might even need the legends. Cloudsdale is currently in southern Equestria,” Twilight edged to the map and indicated where she meant. Flash came over to get a closer look. “It seems like it will have been least affected, it looks, at least on this map like whatever force the Crystal Empire has produced is weaker there." The light turquoise of Southern Equestria on the map certainly seemed like a safer colour than the deep red of Northern Equestria.

"I want you to head there and find Flash Magnus. Tell him that Princess Twilight has asked him to collect the legends together and meet me in my castle. Stygian included.” She added on the end.

Stygian was the group's researcher. He was intelligent and had recently published a book on his experiences. If this was ancient magic, he would be just as useful as his more famous colleagues known as the "Legends of Equestria".

“Yes Princess, I’ll be as quick as I can be.”

"Once we know it is safe to leave this room, we can get set. So let's figure out spell frequencies to mask our...." Just at that moment the world was rocked and attacked with a mix of light and darkness, red and green. Everything moved on it’s own. The world around them was warped and twisted, the ground and air boiled and bubbled. And then from one side of the room to the other, normality returned.

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Walls of light and darkness were forced against each other in a strained push and pull.

All you could see in the light was white.

All you could see in the dark was black.

The arched red crystal doorway that separated the room from the corridor shuddered at the tension between the two forces. The Crystal Palace rippled and strained with deep colours of blue and red. The throne room shook with power.

Love and hate.

Sombra strained.

This alicorn had grown stronger than the last time Sombra had met her.

Princess Cadence felt a sudden surge of power and ease flow through her. Sombra faltered for just a second. Cadence took the opportunity and sent shots of light into the black void.

The piercing light stabbed into every corner around Sombra, he could use this.
Allowing the shards of light to contain his darkness, he felt himself being pulled together inside the white void of love. His cracked and withered body reformed. He lit up his horn, producing a red light of anguish which shone as dark as it could.

Cadence felt her body tremble, her spikes of light faded, she felt her wall of love be forced, intercepted and then dispelled. Cadence was only knocked a little by the spell. The light in the grand throne room turned back to normal.

With one exception; the castle was now red.

She stared at the open door to the corridor. The thick crystal pillars that made up the arch of the doorway framed the shimmering black coat of Sombra. The Dark Prince stretched his back.

“Aahhh long time since I’ve had a fully formed pony body.” The deep, gravelly voice haunted the momentary stillness. He glared at Cadence with death in his mind. “I think you’ll find Miss, that this is my Kingdom.”

“This kingdom belongs to its people and the love we share. I will protect that at all costs.”

“Foolish pony!” His curved horn lit again with the now familiar red glow, blood began to seep from the walls of the castle. The echoes of a young foals cry haunted Cadence's ears. She keeled from the shock until she worked out that there was no way that sound was Flurry Hearts.

None the less, she was horrified by the spell.

The two pillars of the large doorway and the two pillars on the other side of the grand hallway were orbited by black slithers of the old King's magic.

Cadence gathered her balance as the floor beneath her began to rumble. She prepared the most intrinsic protection spell she could muster.

Sombra lowered his head towards Cadence, charging a spell and muttering some devilish words of old ponish under his breath. His eyes blackened and matched his own coat. Raising his head to face Cadence, he fired a beam of the darkest energy.
Cadence had never seen anything like this.

His body shook with power, adrenaline, satisfaction. The dark energy travelled at lightning speed right up the centre of the great hallway. It utilised the charged pillars of the red crystal tower and boosted itself up through the central column to the top of the central spire.

Cadence reacted faster than she thought she could. Her charged shield spell morphed into an intercepting ray, the absorbency of the shield spell doubling up with the intercept ray. The combined result was a thin magical lattice with hexagonal magical supports. The ray emanated from the horn of the alicorn spreading wider as it travelled towards Sombra's beam, always staying the horizontal, two dimensional form as it did so.

Within a second of Sombra firing his spell Cadence's intercept beam sliced through the thick magic, dispelling the column of darkness.

“AHAHAHAHAHAAAA it’s too late!” Sombra laughed with a roar.

"No!" She exclaimed, studying the figure in front of her. She had no knowledge of how this King had ruled the empire without love or alicorn capabilities.

Until she had weighed these two things up she decided she would be either outsmarted or overpowered. Sombra charged another red spell full of hatred spreading to every corner of the hallway and throne room, Cadence responded with another shield of light and love, dispelling the magic from the throne room. She pushed, Sombra would be a challenge, he was skilled.

Instead of pushing away the shrouding magic from the castle, Cadence experimented. She was covering about two thirds of the throne room in the light magic, she took a moment to observe the origin of the attack.

It once was rare she would cast more than one spell, but since having Flurry she had been doing it more and more. That thought gave her a warm loving smile. Then her horn glowed brighter with a second layer of magic as she cast a condensing spell. The light in the room pulled into a small sphere around her, glowing intensely.

The darkness slowly seeped into the areas of the room the light had left behind.

Then Cadence focused a dart of light, piercing the blackness, aimed straight at Sombra’s heart.

The spell shot through the wall of magic Sombra had created, slicing away with the force of a hurricane. Her aim was spot on.

A jet black streak shot into the wall. A white streak slammed into the crystal throne. A shimmering black unicorn body fell to the floor. A shimmering pink alicorn body tumbled beside the throne. Magic faded from the room.

Cadence could just about see. She felt lifeless, slumped against the throne but she was still alive. She caught through fuzzy vision the dark pony’s coat changing colour. Erratically flickering between a pearly crystal and the deep black and blood red.

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Back in Ponyville the three ponies were shaken by the events. The sun was exactly where it had been left. The sky was still orangey but the air had lost it’s musky greenness and was now just dulled. The map was however still red.

A patter of claws came from the hallway. Spike knocked on the door. “Guys it’s Spike! did you feel that?! I just got back and then this big wave thing hit the castle. Are you okay in there?”

“We’re fine Spike.” Twilight called, actually quite shaken. She composed herself.

Looking around she took in the throne room of her castle again. Everything was still. Her horn lit up quickly as she cast a detection spell. She looked to Starlight. “Whatever energy was endangering us seems to have disappeared.”

Starlight took the hint and dispelled her shield on the door. Spike reeled in. “I’m so sorry Spike, we couldn’t open the door earlier, there was dark energy everywhere targeting all ponies.”

“Do you know what happened yet?”

“I’m sure it has to do with the Crystal Empire. The structure and colours of the map look similar to the time when Starlight stopped our friend’s cutie marks appearing synchronously." She eased Spike into her theory.
"Remember the world where the Crystal Empire had been captured by Sombra and he was invading Equestria?” Twilight tip-toed knowing how much he cared for the city. Well Twilight did too, especially for her brother, Sister-in-law and niece. Starlight thought about Sunburst too, but didn’t let anything out.

“We think Sombra has returned.” She said 'think' as if it might soften the blow of the theory.

“Well...” Spike Hesitated, “We’ll need to just save it again won’t we. And you’ve got Spike the Brave and Glorious on your side, what can go wrong!” Twilight appreciated Spike’s enthusiasm. Starlight chuckled. The tension in the room eased after that.

“Yes, how was Sunset?”

“Our friends are going to take turns watching the portal and Sunset agreed that she wouldn’t use the journal to write to you. They all agreed to look out for any signs of new or bad magic, and they’ll talk to Principle Celestia tomorrow to get time off lessons so at least two of them can watch the portal at a time.”

“Great! If anything happens we’ll have to let them know.”

Flash hadn’t understood what they were talking about with this mirror portal thing. He had been told during training about magic portals and mirror pools but it seemed rather unimportant at the time.

“Okay, Flash.” Twilight turned her attention back to the Pegasus Royal Guard.

His training kicked in and he was alerted to the Princess' motion.

“I’m already gone Twilight” He always felt comfortable around the princess and now he had to suddenly correct his slip. “Uh um, Princess.” And with that he trotted out of the room with a faked coolness.

“Hehehe” Starlight nudged Twilight as she Blushed. They had both been keeping a professional attitude, but Starlight had heard the crush stories from Spike and Sunset respectively. Only it hadn't occurred until now that the mirror world Flash could be mirrored here.

"Anywaaayy..." Twilight motioned to her sniggering friends, “I will go to the students.” Twilight said readying herself for the road ahead. “Spike go into Ponyville town and see if you can find anypony who might have seen anything important, there might be a chance somepony is still around. Starlight you go find our friends.”

"Meet back here in an hour?” Starlight checked.

“Check.” Spike replied.

The two ponies then charged their spells and teleported to their respective targets.

Spike stared at the red map and the realisation of how big this problem might be sank in. Then he turned and ran down the steps of the castle into the town.

Flash found himself lost in the maze of corridors. Eventually he found a balcony, it would have to do. He opened the doors and stood there feeling the breeze on his face. Or what more confused him was the lack of a breeze. The air felt weird, distorted and still. He took in the sight of Ponyville.

There was a train stopped half way out of the station, a few shopping baskets in the streets. But no ponies anywhere. Everything was eerie and wrong. Fear crept up on him, he knew what he needed to do, he spread his yellow wings and took flight heading southwards towards the last known location of Cloudsdale.

He looked over at the sun on his west. At least if the sun was static it would make it easier to locate south, he just had to keep the sun on his right the whole time.

7: Time to Investigate

Chapter 7

Starlight flashed into existence on a hilltop in one of many fields that surrounded the quaint town of Ponyville. She was right next to the same twig woven picnic basket she had been earlier.

Quiet surrounded her.

Pure, unabridged, non-movement.

She looked round. Then turned around.

In every direction there were no white, yellow, blue or pink ponies.

In fact there were no ponies anywhere.

She had been expecting the trembling worry that rose inside her from before she left Twilight, but now the reality was confirmed she was hit by a force heavier than she could have readied herself for.

“Applejack?”

She called down the hill towards Sweet Apple Acres. The orchard was a couple of miles from the hill, but she had a spark of hope that her friends were hiding in a nearby bush somewhere.

“Fluttershy?”

This time she scouted the side that faced the Everfree forest. It was only a few hundred meters away, she hoped Fluttershy might have run off to help a poor innocent creature. But there was no reply from the giant forest, only the distant rustling of the trees from far away where the forest's magic sustained itself.

Starlight proceeded to check the rest of the green hill searching for any sign of other ponies.

The sun glared at it’s funny angle from the west side. Starlight bought a hoof up to her head to shelter her eyes from the red-orange fireball.

“Anypony there?” she called once more.

She could see the tall blue roof of Rarity's boutique, which gave her an idea. A spell she would cast when she lost a book.
She ran down to the clothes store and knocked on the front door hesitating.

“Excuse me Sweetie Bell are you home?”

Realising no one would answer the door, it made her look around the world. And take in the stillness. Fear started to overturn her worry. She looked back at the boutique and faced the window of Sweetie Bell, calling once more for security assurances.

“Sweetie Bell, Rarity, it’s Starlight I’m coming in okay?”

A second later the door creaked open as the purple unicorn entered, carefully, treading on the hard crystal tile floor like it was thin ice.

Starlight explored the floors, calling out a couple more time to try and establish to herself that nopony else was in the building. She took the winding staircase to the second floor she noted the door to Sweetie Bell’s bedroom at the end of the corridor was a jar. Taking a peek inside helped her confirm once more that she was probably alone here.

A few doors down the landing she found Rarity's bedroom.
Opening the door with fragility, she took in the sight before her.

A multitude of dress plans and fabric cut-outs scattered the room in a chaotic manner. Starlight stepped back at the mess. It felt wrong to enter this room like this. They all knew Rarity could get stressed when big clients wanted more work from her, but she had never dreamed it could get this bad.

This was Rarity’s chaotic organisation she would be stepping into.
That one thing she knew her friend would try to keep hidden from everypony else until she met breaking point.

Which did happen.
'A lot.' Starlight thought to herself.

Then she felt bad for thinking that about her missing friend and her concern flew back into her mind. She needed to find her friends.

Still wanting to respect Rarity as a friend she cast a spell and floated over the floor mess to a sewing cabinet on the other side of the room with some white thread on it. She came across the canister she was looking for: Blossom White.

“I’m glad you’re always insistent on technicalities Rarity.” Starlight muttered as she uncoiled a small chunk of the threat and snapped the end off. Placing the thread reel back onto the shelf with all the other colours of white. Then she walked over to the desk.

She needed three things. A scrap of the item she was trying to locate, the last place she had touched the item in question and a continuum destabiliser. Not something big like the mirror portal although it would be ideal right now and make this so much easier to cast, but a small rune that pulls and warps the magic ethereal energies of the continuum into a brief paradox would work.

Twilight would hate her for casting this spell.

Rarity would hate her for carving runes into her desk.

Sunburst would be impressed by her ability to warp magic.

Casting a simple telekinesis spell, she carved out a rune in the wooden desk using Rarity’s hemming scissors as a carving instrument. Three triangles that connected together with a circle gliding through the centre of each of triangle. A septagonal polygon struck out two thirds of the rune which was intercepted by a square containing eleven dots in randomly fluctuating groups of 5, 2 or 4.

One of the ugliest runes to look at, it looked like chaos, but when activated it would pull all things weird into a mouldable state that then would continue to resonate with itself.

“Rarity would hate the look of the rune just about as much as she would me drawing into her desk” Starlight joked allowed to herself. She took another look at it. “Actually no scrap that.”

The rune was worse.

She prepared her horn and merged an energy beam with the rune laid out on the desk. For a second she felt very floaty but then it stopped and just her horn felt floaty.

She held her hoof out and lifted the small break of thread, placing it in the centre of the glowing lines of the rune.

'Here comes the tricky bit', she thought to herself.

Aligning her body with the second triangle she had drawn, she drew the paradox magic from the far tip of the triangle at the same time merging a memory spell of her own devising with the magic.

The paradox was affected by the string.

Her memories affected the rune.

In turn the string was affected by her memories.

Starlight envisioned herself yesterday stood in this room talking with Rarity about the new scarf that Rarity had just finished. Rarity was going to wear it to the picnic tomorrow morning. She put down the thread on the white thread shelf.
'It’s a nice white.' Starlight had mentioned carelessly 'It’s Blossom white darling, one of the finest whites there are, especially with my coat and mane complexion.'
She had chuckled to herself and that bought her back to the current time.

Before her, the rune now glowed a very blue shaded purple.
Turning around Starlight noted the blue aura that walked the floor and turned out the door. Instinctively she followed it.

Outside the boutique the aura waltzed the green grass and seemed to head back up the hill. Starlight considered the possibility that she had cast the spell incorrectly.

“Eugh, I just came that way.” She whined to herself but when she didn’t move the aura only glowed deeper. “Fine.” reluctance filled the air around her, “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Back up the top of the hill, once again overlooking the boutique, Sweet Apple Acres, Ponyville and the Everfree forest the aura stopped.

“Seriously, I can’t even fin....” Starlight was interrupted by something floating in the air in front of her. A blue outline of a scarf that looked very much like Rarity's. About 4 feet off the ground, on the picnic blanket. She stepped forwards in curiosity.

This spell was meant to take her to the place she could find the object in question not...

Once again she interrupted her own thought process.

She stepped right next to the scarf. She felt like she could see a pony in stone wearing a scarf, no she felt like she could be with a pony, a unicorn, talk to it, understand it, like it was communicating with her but....

She cast a simple detection spell.

The outline of a unicorn pony flared into existence for a second and then vanished into black nothingness and was no longer. Then the aura tracking spell wore off.

She could not understand how this...

Twilight needed to see this.

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Spike left the castle door wide open as he sprinted into town, having wings felt good, but he did wish he had that superior sense of smell and hearing right now. It would make searching for just anypony a lot easier.

He jumped off the ground and used his wings to glide just a few hundred meters above the first few lines of houses until he reached the centre of town. Taking in the dusty, empty streets as he did so.

He passed an applecart on his fly over.

'That must be Big Mac's' he thought to himself. But looking around the intersection it was set up on, he didn’t see anypony whatsoever about. Just a few apples that had been left scattered on the floor by the cart.

As he landed on the roof of the town hall, using his claws to give himself grip, he thought to the last games night they had had. Him, Discord, Big Mac, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie.

Sugar Bell had been over the night before and they all had tea with her, including Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Starlight, Granny Smith and Apple Bloom (who had been very grown up for her age). They finally got to use the big dining room table for an inclusive meal.

It had been a blast. He loved the time they all had together. The expanded friendship group that kept getting bigger, everypony learning more off of everypony else.

As he brushed on the good times he had with his friends he noted that all of it could be gone. that made him well up.

“Not now, now I have to find my friends, and I will find my friends.” He confided in himself.

He looked around, the glaring sun insistent on blocking his view to the west. To the north he got distracted by the waving black magic that was spreading in the direction of the Crystal Empire. So he turned his attention to the east and south of the town.

Now the young dragon appreciated what having bystanders meant. Any form of company would be more welcome than the uncomfortable silence and the light headed sickness that came with loneliness.

“Hello Ponyville! Is anyone there? It’s Spike, I’m here to help!”

When nopony answered he froze, not sure what to do.

Then something big started to move. Spike shot back clutching tight to the centre column of the town hall before realising how weak that might make him look to any evil Equestria banishing invaders. Toughening his stance he used his claws to scratch into the roof tiles, they were hard and dusty against his scales.

Gripping his way down the roof, he peered over the side of the front entrance.

Metal cranked into place and wooden panels ground together below him. A ground shifting crunch of death cupping his ears. He nearly fell off the roof he located the origin of the sound.

The steps leading onto the first floor veranda of the old town hall and tax office had suddenly seemed to inverse. The light brown wooden steps were now replaced with blackened concrete stairs descending into a basement. A basement which Spike the Brave and Glorious had never seen.

He peaked over the side of the roof to the disturbance, keeping quiet as the creepy new discovery unravelled.
From the dark misty staircase emerged a fair brown pony with a long scarf that Spike recognised instantly.

“Hello, anyone out here?” Dr Whoves called out to the empty town square cockily.

“Dr Whoves!” Spike called back from the roof.

“Spike where is everyone? is the princess okay! What are you doing on the roof?” He shot the questions one at a time to the unexpected appearance of the dragon.

“She’s fine she’s at the school. Hang on.” Spike took a second to assess his situation, looking over the world of Ponyville in silence. Then he spread his wings and pushed forwards, circling twice on his glide down to the ground. He landed a couple of meters in front of the brown scarfed pony. "And that's what I'm doing on the roof, looking for anypony."

The scarfed, brown 'doctor' didn’t seem too phased but he did watch the winged dragon intensely on his decent, admiring the wings and newly established flying ability of Spike.

“Starlight has gone to find our friends and a guard pony has gone to search for Flash Magnus and some of Twilight's friends.” They both eyed each other and the world around them with equal curiosity.

“Where were you hidden? I mean you and the princess, the rest of this place is like a ghost town. It's very disconcerting” the doctor did not seem too concerned but he was analysing the situation.

“I don’t know, I just seem to be unaffected by whatever is happening here. Starlight cast a protection spell over herself, Twilight and the guard pony – Corporal Flash Sentry. How did you shield yourself? is anypony else with you?”

“I'm afraid not.” The doctor said, his curiosity trained on the environment around him and the aural movements in the sky. Spike started to follow the doctor’s gaze around the town hall plaza before going back to the pony. 'There is definitely something hiding under that scarf', he thought.

“Where is everypony then?” and with that question Spike snapped Dr Whoves out of his trance.

“I’d like to answer that question too. I’m afraid your friends may be in grave danger.”

“What do you mean?” And there was the big hitter, the most obvious statement of the day. The Doctor, however, seemed to be a consoling force with some hidden answers at the moment, Spike followed this new source of information.

“Here follow me, I’ll show you and then we need to find the princess.”

The only life in Ponyville disappeared down a staircase in the middle of town hall plaza.

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The purple that was Starlight Glimmer appeared in the entrance lobby of the grand purple building that was the School of Friendship. She scanned the room and disappeared in a blur that was so imperceptibly fast it would have impressed the Friendship Games Track Flyers adjudication committee, who had seen some pretty fast stuff in their time.

The lobby was now empty.

Starlight Glimmer appeared in a ferocious blur in the corner of Twilight’s office. She took in the new scene. A desk with draws in front of her, in front of which were the chairs for pupils, staff and guests, the walls decorated with Twilight’s 'official head teacher articles' that always made Starlight chuckle.

The sun was still at its low angle casting an orange glow around the room. Outside the doorway she saw Twilight giving commands to a couple of ponies outside of her office.

She noted a headachy pain on the left side of her head, but she left it alone for now.

“TWILIGHT!”

Maybe shouting was a bit too much, the filly Twilight was speaking to looked absolutely terrified.

“Oh sorry!”

Twilight finished up her instructions, calmly reassuring to the foals and then told another pony that appeared to her right to wait there for a minute. 'There must be a queue or something outside the doorway. Trust Twilight to be so organised', thought Starlight.

“Starlight what happened?” Twilight turned and closed the door behind her.

“I’m so sorry Twilight.” Almost in tears, the severity of the situation was clear.

The alicorn grabbed one of the pupil's chairs and instinctively sat down. Starlight took Twilight’s seat on the other side of the desk, which felt weird but she left that for the moment.

Starlight recounted her trip to the picnic hill and Rarity’s boutique, including the rune she had cast, the invisible scarf and the outline of their friends. Twilight listened and sank in both amazement at Starlight’s discovery and horror for her friend’s fate. But mostly horror.

“It seems like our friends have been hung in some kind... Some kind of like...”

“Oblivion.” Probably the heaviest word Twilight could have chosen at this moment. Twilight noted the shocked expression on Starlight’s face. “Or at least a limbo..... Wait, no, Limbo could mean. Starlight....”

Twilight’s brain was clearly calculating something, and something too fast, Starlight couldn't catch onto it yet.

“I don’t know what’s happened. We can’t even confirm if Sombra has returned or if this is some other unusual magic. It’s all assumption, but if this is linked to limbo, any magic that affects limbo could be linked.”

“Twilight...”

“Think about it Starlight.”

“I think it’s more like a tethered soul separation. It was as if their bodies are in limbo but consequently their souls are tethered to the point they were last connected within our world.”

“So that would mean......”

“Everypony is still surrounding us but we cannot communicate with anyone, and I imagine they can’t really perceive us either.”

They both paused for a moment to take all of this in.

“How are the students doing?”

“They’re fine. I’m keeping them all inside the school for safety. Nopony seems to have been affected in any way resembling that. A few unicorns reported headaches, I sent them to the Canteen and got a couple of our prefect students to serve them water and cook some basic food. For now I’m only letting seniors do work around the place, any of the younger classes, even with their special talents just need to be kept relaxed and calm. They don’t need incentives to be heroes and I think the seniors have all mostly passed those friendship lessons.”

Starlight gave an approving nod, noting the headache on the left side of her head again.

“Some have been asking for their councillor, so you might have a few students to see before we leave here again, if we need to.”

“Okay.” Starlight chuckled a half true chuckle, but the reality of their situation weighed down the room. “I’ll make sure to see them as soon as we finish up.” She pondered. “Were any students outside when the wave hit?”

“Not that I have found. It was dinner time when the wave hit, so they were all inside.”

“I think it should be safe outside now. But best to keep them inside for safety.”

“Agreed.” Twilight gave a nod and sat forward in her chair ready to get up. “Did you find anypony outside at all?”

“No... I think whatever soul separation spell affected our friends happened to everypony else too.”

Twilight noticed Starlight contemplating the wooden desk in front of her. She looked drained and disconnected from the world. Twilight lent forwards and put an offering hoof on the desk.

“Whatever happened to Trixie, I’m sure we will find her too. I wish we could contact Discord, but not being able to send messages on the magic ethereal plane means it's impossible, and without the elements of Harmony I can’t just summon him.”

“With magic on a scale this large, Discord would be really useful.”

“And Celestia and Luna, I wish I could know what happened to them too.”

Accepting Twilight’s hoof, Starlight lent forwards to comfort her. “I’m sure we will find them too Twilight.”

“I’ve never encountered magic on this scale before Starlight. Even Tirek wasn’t as destructive as this phenomena.”

Starlight got up and pulled Twilight to her hoofs as she did so.

“I will help attend to the students for now Twilight. Let’s get them settled into the dorm, and make sure the seniors can help take care of everypony for a day or two at least.” She trotted over to the door enthusiastically, the doorknob reflecting the orange light into her eyes as she went to open it.

Twilight stood by the desk looking over at the window.

“I’ll have to lower the Sun and raise the Moon Starlight.”

Starlight looked back at her and then down to the reflected sun in the golden mirror of the doorknob. It shimmered off the object. It was mesmerising in this moment, she had never really realised it before. Such a power, the overwhelming force that shed light over all of Equestria. She looked back at her thoughtful friend.

“I know Twilight.” She still had that headache, now was not the time to think, she would grab a glass of water from the canteen in a minute. “Let’s sort the students out. I’ll meet you here in an hour?”

“Yeah... No, on the roof of my castle, one hour.”

“Okay.”

Twilight turned and walked over to her colleague, student, graduate, friend. Starlight took in Twilight’s mood, turned and gave her a big hug, wrapping her hooves around Twilight in a tight grip.

“We’ll get through this.”

Twilight hugged back and then after a few seconds Starlight broke the hug.

Twilight looked at her with a smile, took a deep breath and exhaled, pushing her worries away from her with her hoof. Determination and a genuine smile had returned to her face.

Starlight returned her the same expression and opened the door to the corridor of worried students. Twilight followed just behind.

8: Our Friends Who Smile

Chapter 8

Spike took a look at the old town hall. The front steps had been inverted. Instead of leading up to the veranda porch, they lead down... to a basement? Spike questioned. He took a step closer revealing to him the concrete steps that sunk underground.

He took the stairs one at a time, and approached the underground room with caution. Black concrete surrounded the walls and ceiling of the room. Along one long wall sat all the technical buttony machines and tape recorders Doc used on a daily basis.

On the other side was an alcove with, what looked like a smattering of assorted inventions made of metal wires and ... lights and... things.

“What is this place?” Spike asked the rather tired looking Doctor. doctor of what? Spike pondered, 'Whoves' is not the most obvious giveaway to the pony's profession considering he wasn't a real doctor.

“I can’t tell you.” he replied candidly.

And now Spike’s enthusiasm and confusion became more. Confused.

“How long has it been here?”

“I’ll save you the hassle. I can’t tell you anything about this place. Apart from what I need to tell you right at this moment.”

Doc trotted on from the stairway to the wall of tape recorders and flashy buzzing instruments. Spike stood at the doorway and investigated what he could about this room. He heard a click and swiped his head back over to Doc, noticing two of the tape reels on one of the machines were now in motion.

“I’m a member of S.M.I.L.E. and my primary post in Ponyville is for the purpose of protecting both Ponyville and princess Twilight from threats, more specifically, we are the defence between Ponyville and dangerous monsters and magical beings.” His tone was serious but his shaggy look helped comfort Spike.

“I am usually stationed here with regular contact from Special agent Sweetie Drops and Training Agent Golden Harp. However at nineteen-hundred hours this bunker's urgent alarm sounded and sealed off our entrances and exits to Ponyville. Since then I have lost contact with Sweetie Drops and Golden Harp.”

Spike listened intently to all the information that he was being bombarded with. Doc turned and started winding one of the tape reels slowly backwards. Also clicking some buttons. Spike didn’t even try to understand. The hum of the tape reel lay in the room's atmosphere as Doc started talking.

“S.M.I.L.E. started in aid of protecting Canterlot and Princess Celestia as she hauled the burden of both the Sun and the Moon. However we now tend to have branches in most parts of Equestria. Just before our urgent alarm sounded, an old colleague who moved to CAMO division of SMILE in the Crystal Empire sent through this message:”

Doc hit play and then turned back to Spike, pricking an ear up once more at the message from The Crystal Empire. The same anguished, rough, trebly colt voice that Doc had listened to so much was projected from the speaker in the wall once more.

“Slice Ray to all SMILE stations. Crystal Empi ..e..S..d.er..att..k...br...re..urn..d ...sss..a....as... take...zzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Doc stopped the tape and Spike picked up another hum that seemed to underlay the underlying hum of the tape recorder.

“So this is about the Crystal Empire! We had suspicions but that confirms it!” Spike became excited at the prospect of being one step closer to solving this mystery. “What else did he say?”

“We lost contact with Undercover Agent Slice Ray at seven-0-three. We had received nothing prior to this and there have been no communications since.” Doc seemed visibly struck with the thought that this agent could have been attacked or lost. It clearly meant more to him than just a colleague. “Seeing as there is nopony else left in Ponyville and I’ve had no response from HQ or CAMO I’m employing you as my second.”

“Oh thanks.” Spike rolled his eyes sarcastically at the backhanded comment. But then, it was no time for hostilities either.

“Will you accompany me with my research and help me discover what has happened?”

“Sure, of course I will.” Spike said as he caved in to Doc's intense wave of business.

“Ah, great! Right. So first of all we need to properly try and clean up this broadcast and figure out exactly what Slice Ray says behind all the interference. And also if there’s anything you might know that I don’t know, please mention it, as we're working on the same side.”

Doc slipped back into his frantic habits and started fiddling with the equipment behind him. Spike helped by holding one of the tapes Doc had just taken off the reel to reel tape recorder, Doc set up another machine in the wall for cleaning the sound of the tape. Spike started rattling off the day’s events as to fill Doc in with the things he might not have been aware.

Some parts of the tape were nearly legible but confirmation was definitely needed.

“So your cutie mark map could help us discover what is wrong with the Empire. I’ve been through research training on the Crystal Empire, more is discovered every year. Do you really think that King Sombra could be responsible after last time when I believe it was you who helped defeat him?”

Doc was cautious, concerned and investigative somehow all at the same time.

“I did defeat him!” Spike pointed out gallantly.

Doc was not as versed in Sombra as Spike the Brave and Glorious was obviously. But that did bring Spike to think about what happened when he helped retrieve the Crystal Heart from its hiding place.

“WE defeated him,” He corrected himself, “but yes, I’ve seen it, and anything's possible in the Crystal Empire with all that magic Floating around the crystal structures.”

Doc nodded, and took on Spike who seemed to humble about the situation.

“What is this whole 'SMILE' thing about Doc. Being a Princess next to Celestia, surely you would have let Twilight know you guys might be here to protect her?”

Doc thought about Spike’s Question for a second. He shouldn’t answer it, but there was something in the wording that made Doc realise. Maybe he needed to tell this young Dragon, more adolescent now, the truth. So he did.

“As I said, SMILE was set up to help protect Princess Celestia. A few years ago, just after Princess Twilight was assigned to Ponyville, a small handful of us were dispatched to ensure her safety in studying here. We had secured the grounds, but for some unknown reason, the gates of Tartarus were opened and Cerberus let out. Along with him came some of the deadliest monsters to roam Equestria.”

Spike recalled that moment well. Twilight was going through some kind of time travel paradox and she went a little over the top, running Cerberus all the way back to Tartarus by herself. Then he thought of Tirek and the Bugbear which had also escaped.

“I remember that, Twilight ran Cerberus all the way back to the gates and locked them up.”

“Yes, well... Just as me and two other agents prepared to run Cerberus back ourselves we received orders from Canterlot HQ that the entire SMILE operation was to be disbanded and all agents were to assume deep cover until otherwise authorised.
"You see, the Bugbear in Tartarus was captured by us and with the agency splattered all over Equestria, there weren’t enough of us in one place to recapture it, and we knew it would be out to seek us down, so we had to hide. 'Every last shred of evidence' were our orders.”

Spike looked around at the well kitted out room.

“So what’s all this then?” he said, directing a claw at all the spy equipment and weird inventions around the concrete bunker.

“This is what is left. Plus a few of my own inventions. As you know I have my lab in my house, and anything dangerous or if I need some space, I drag it along an underground tunnel I dug from my personal lab and store it here.” He said also indicating to his own inventions. He then turned and indicated the wall of recording and surveillance equipment.

“However most of this is from SMILE. See a group of us couldn’t just leave that life behind, so we simply assumed 'deep cover' even from the other members of SMILE. We used to be part of P.I.&.E.D. squad, or PIED. Predetermined Intelligence and Efficient Defence Squad. We were one of the closest and best trained units in SMILE.

"We had been set aside on a lower case mission for a time, which is why we were tailing you and Twilight to Ponyville, although you guys did a pretty good job at fending for yourself – apart from when Twilight went a bit weird one time and tried to infiltrate Canterlot Library even though she’s a student of Celestia, it’s a good thing we tipped off the Library guards on that occasion.”

He gave a wink to Spike and then proceeded to fiddle with a few settings on the de-static machine, letting Spike take it all in as he set the tape in motion he walked back, and sat in a spinning chair near the speaker in the wall.

“Anyway, yes, so we didn’t fully disband, we simply remained here, kept intact as much of the equipment as we could, as a 'just in case' and left it at that. Until a few years later when you finally managed to defeat the Bugbear and, so it seems, the last of the escaped creatures of Tartarus.

"At that point, we had the idea to kick start SMILE back into action. The small group that we are, we split into factions and started running small divisions from the main areas of Equestria. We renamed each squad too so that they were now located with their respective towns.

"Me and two others stayed here in PIED, now Ponyville Intelligence and Efficient Defence. Two others went to restart CHQ. Canterlot Head Quarters. Slice Ray and Berry Bug created CAMO, Crystal Anti-Monster Organisation. And a few others scattered around elsewhere.”

Spike was wide eyed at the tall tale of this secret organisation he never knew existed but had also been here the whole time, just in-case anything went AWOL. It was all so much to take in, he just needed to stand up and walk around the room a bit. There was indeed history in this room.

Spike turned back around to Doc, who was sat patiently for either Spike or the de-static machine, he wasn’t too sure.

“So why haven’t WE heard of you. Like I said, Twilight is a princess and if you used to work for Celestia, shouldn’t you inform her of your presence too?”

“Well if I’m honest, it took a lot longer to get set back up again. We didn’t want to inform the princesses until we could prove SMILE could be back in business and do the job properly. Hiring was one of our main problems. We used to have strong links through Celestia with the Royal Guard, Wonderbolt's Academy, Canterlot and Manehatten universities.

"But currently our hiring pool is limited by our status. However we have made significant progress in the past months and we were getting somewhere. Until everypony seemed to disappear without a trace. I calculate that since I got that message seven hours should have passed, but obviously they haven’t.”

“Ah yes, because Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are affected too and have disappeared. I forgot. The Guard Pegasus Flash Sentry mentioned that earlier.”

That news did surprise Doc.

“Well that would explain the permanent dusk.”

A beep came from the machine behind them. Doctor Whoves flung the end of his long scarf around the back of his neck and trotted over to the machine. In clicking two switches he set the wheels on the machine turning. The tape flapping a bit as it travelled between one wheel, a little box with a slit in it, then out the box and onto another reel.

The rustling could be heard from the other side of the room, neither of them wished to make a sound.

“SSLICEzRAYzTOzALLzSMILEzSTATIONS.z.z.z.z.z.z..CRYzSTALz.z.z.zEMPIRezzuZndERzzATTacKzzzsomBRazREzztURNnnnnnDzzzzAZzzczztzzzasingzTAKEzzczrzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..................”

The two looked at each other.

“That sounds worse than it was before.” Spike exclaimed.

“There is a lot of background noise, but there is a bit more context. Listen carefully.”

Doc wound the tape back and the two of them went about decrypting the static over and over again until they could be absolutely certain as to its message.

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9: Responsibilities of Magic

Chapter 9

Starlight lead a group of students from their dorms and across the corridor, inviting them into her office.

Twilight watched from a distance down the corridor as she turned out of her office, finally having sorted the last of the students out. She looked back down the other side of the corridor. The halls were empty now. Unless being lead by Starlight, the students should all be in their dorms or in the canteen.

Twilight took in this one moment of peace, taking a deeply relaxing breath in and out. She felt like finding a bed and just collapsing straight onto it. But she didn’t have that option right now. If only her other friends were here too, everything would be so much easier. Well, she would hope.

She trotted past the canteen and paused at the door for a second, watching the students all working together warmed her heart. Some serving other students, a few were helping to calm or distract the scared and worried, others had placed a few of the long tables in a 'U' shape and were telling stories. It was an inspiring sight to see. The fight for each other.

She caught the eye of Sandbar, one of her more mature students and quickly looked away, trotting down the corridor towards the dorms which is where she wanted to check next. But Sandbar was too quick and had caught up with her after only a few steps.

“Principle Twilight.” He called after her.

Twilight stopped and adjusted her manner to a more professional and yet friendly one.

“Yes Sandbar? I hope everything is okay, I have to check on the..”

“Yes it’s fine.” He interrupted her accidentally but it was enough to break Twilight’s train of thought. “Oh I’m sorry.”

“No it’s fine, go on.” Twilight replied, listening truly. Well she was in this conversation now, so she would have to let it play out. Wouldn’t be a very good friendship principle if I just dismissed it now – she thought to herself.

“It’s just. Although we know that there is a magical threat out there, we were wondering, well me and my classmates, what it was exactly. Like, what’s so big that we can’t just go outside. And what’s the deal with the sun not being set, you know? Can we contact out families and tell them we’re okay? We’re all just a bit worried.”

“Everything will be alright Sandbar.” She was more principle like than she expected she could be, it seemed to come naturally now, the reassuring and honest tone, her strong sense of leadership. “I will try to get in contact with your families as soon as possible, but for now we’re not entirely sure on the nature of the threat or for how far it is spread. The Royal Guard are working with us and hopefully it will all be sorted by morning.”

She even believed it herself.

“For now, I have to ensure the school is secure, but please know, I will keep you informed as we confirm everything.”

“Okay Principle. Well, if there’s anything we can do.”

“I’ll come and find you if I need you, thank you Sandbar.”

The colt ran back into the canteen. Twilight looked at her hooves to reassure her she was purple, not white. It was almost like Celestia had taken over her body for a moment. She chuckled to herself.

Then, looking back at the canteen, she teleported herself back to her own throne room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 6 empty chairs disheartened her. But she would retrieve her friends.

She analysed the map once again. The Crystal Empire was now a glowing mesh of blue and red, not just solid red. She approached the map with curiosity and caution. That meant it wasn’t just Sombra left. Surely that meant something was fighting back. 'My brother?' The thought, the hope went through her head before she could tell herself it wasn’t possible.

But the map indicated that it wasn’t all evil. Something was happening, and it wasn’t all bad.

She wiped the stress away from her head with her hoof. As much as that might indicate a battle, a resistance to Sombra would at least mean they might have some time to think up a vague plan. Just like the last time he had returned.

She would come to that later, once her, Spike and Starlight had regrouped.

She grabbed a chalkboard from the supply closet across the hall and dragged it into her throne room. This just reminded her of how she had always been some kind of teacher before she even had a 'school'.

She set it up in the middle of the room overlooking the map, grabbed a chalk, and started tapping into all the spell forms she had learnt in the schools of communication and Cutie-map Entanglement (although this was a fairly new school for anypony to have studied).

Then she whittled out spells too specific to their cause and erased any that she needed to talk with Princess Luna. Then she had to erase any that linked to the Elements of Harmony as well...

This left her with a few basic contact spells, a couple of encryption, decryption and masking spells, one time-travel spell that she proceeded to wipe off the board as well (it was only there to cover all bases anyway) and a few that seemed to allow movement, manipulation, shielding and enticement from the Cutie-map.

Phase one complete. Next job was to locate two books in her library – Predictions and Prophecies & The Underlying Fields.

As she galloped quickly down the corridor she felt a light tapping from the veins in the side of her head. Oh not now, she thought as she rolled her eyes, this is not the time for a headache.

She opened the doors to the circular library and without a seconds hesitation headed straight for the third shelf on the left, three shelves up. The library was organised by Author, Author First name, Title, Title second word, Subtitle, Reference and Index code. It was one of her finest organisation schemes and in times like this, everything was made easier.

In the midst of her excitement to be in the library again, she grabbed a few other books which contain more useful spells, and finally she headed back with a pile of books.

As she trotted back upstairs with the books she stopped at a window and sighed, looking out through the purple, stained glass window to the dusk sunlight.

She then got back on track, got to the throne room, put the books on the table to the side of the room and found the spells she needed.

After a quick glass of water from the emergency water jug, she got to work picking the correct spells from her black chalk board. Erasing the rest of her work, she set about attempting to combine four spells and a calibration spell into one.

She took a breath, poured another glass of water from a jug on the side table, and started writing.

Hydration was important on days like today.

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“Now if you need me, I’ll be checking in every hour on the hour. Use an hour glass to time me. And don’t worry, Nurse Fall and the prefects should be able to handle most things in the time I’m not here.”

Starlight showed the young group of foals and fillies out of her office and into the canteen. Five meetings with different groups of students in half an hour, but it’s all sorted. Hopefully.

As they walked past Twilight’s office she peaked in but could see no sign of her friend. Unlike her to leave the door open. She closed it in passing. When they got to the canteen, she dismissed the students and looked around again but still no sign of Twilight.

She saw Sandbar, Yona the clumsy Yak and Ocellus the green Changeling calmly calling her. She waved and they trotted up to her. Yona nearly tripped over her hair..., twice, bless her. Their other friend Silverstream the hippogriff was tucking happily into food behind them.

“Councillor Starlight, has Twilight managed to make contact with any of our families yet?” Sandbar asked. The group was clearly a bit nervous. And wait, what did they say? Twilight making contact...

“Um I’m not sure, sorry, I haven’t seen her since my last meeting. Did you see where she went?”

“Oh she told Sandbar she was going to check on the dorms.” Ocellus replied.

“Right. Thank you, you three. I’ll go and find her and see what we can do. For Now, please stay here.”

She trotted calmly out of the room and down the corridor until she couldn’t be seen anymore. And then she galloped for the dorms.

The corridors of the dorms were bustling quite a bit. The prefects had set up card games and other entertainment in the public spaces. 'They’re doing well,' she thought to herself. The first two ponies, well not ponies, she met were Gallus the griffon and Smoulder the dragon.

“ 'Scuse me you two has Princess, um, Principle Twilight come through this way?”

“Nah, haven’t seen her. Everything alright?”

“Yep it’s fine, I’m just trying to find her that’s all. Thanks Smoulder.”

Starlight trotted back down the corridor and into the nearest classroom. There was a flash of light but nopony saw it.

“What did she mean by that?” Gallus grunted. Smoulder laughed a bit and gave him a friendly punch.

"Whatever, stop trying to get out of playing cards. You have 15 more bits I'm gunna win." Smoulder taunted. Gallus grunted again.

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Twilight saw the flash of light behind her and whizzed round to face Starlight who looked a little annoyed but Twilight didn’t care.

“I’VE DONE IT!” she yelled across the room.

Starlight was more than a little bemused. There was something she had prepared to say, and now she was stunted.

“Done what?”

Twilight had no outer energy to display but she was bouncing like Pinkie Pie internally.

“I’ve combined four spell forms together to hopefully create an illusion based tracking spell that should tell us exactly what this whole spell is that we’re trapped inside right now. Look!”

Starlight moved over to the blackboard behind the map and examined it.

“This is really impressive Twilight. To use the negative feedback of a communication spell to track and predict the spell fields in a given space, in this case using the Cutie-map as an...”

“An illustrative presence, yes!” Twilight interrupted with excitement, “So you think it can work!”

Twilight could have bounced around the room in circles, but she looked exhausted as she sat instead in her throne around the table.

“Yes but Twilight, you’re exhausted. You have to raise the moon and lower the sun. You Can’t handle a 5 layer spell like this as well. Not today.”

“But Starlight, I need to know, we can’t leave, the students.”

“I know Twilight.” The headachy pain returned to her head again, but she tried to ignore it “I will cast this. You need to deal with the moon and sun.”

“I know, okay, yes well. Starlight, are you sure?”

“yes.”

“Thank you.”

Twilight was sincere. Twilight was exhausted. She took a deep, deep breath and focused her mind. There was absolutely no way Starlight was going to let Twilight cast the spell. In the interest of preserving her energy, she accepted Starlight's offer.

She stood up and Starlight gave her one more hug. Then Twilight made her way up the winding staircase to the roof.

10: Echoes & Shadows

Chapter 10

Sombra felt queasy. The Crystal Palace was shaking, trembling beneath his body. He felt light and lifted but his own self was quivering against the trembling ground from the shock of Cadence’s last attack.

He had been so focused on enveloping her in his darkness, brainwashing her onto his side that he had never expected a piercing attack of such magnitude to needle straight through the darkness. He was light headed and felt his body shutting down. Then he realised what he wasn’t noticing, something was lost.

Adrenaline began coursing through his heart. His body started to warm. He was alerted by the loss. The magic of ancient alicorns that had once been defeated was no longer weighing him down. The magic he had used to control everything and everypony. And yet there was still a tingling presence in him of something... Bad.

He opened his eyes instantly to the fullest extent, which was not quite enough to see clearly. He looked around taking in the glowing red castle around him. Some black magic still circled the four pillars in the centre of the castle.

The large door to the throne room was still swung wide open but the smaller door on the opposite side of the corridor was shut tight. He would know, he had just been flung against it.

The corridor stretched one way to the large staircase at one end and on the other end was the balcony he used to address his subjects with orders.

He started moving, attempting to stand on one hoof at a time, then something made him freeze and forced him to keel against the door that had aided his enemy in knocking him out. His body was translucent and pearlescent. Before Sombra had simply attributed his stiffness to being thrown against stone hard objects.

He normally had a floaty and light state. He normally would cast a simple spell and hover for miles from one leap. He normally was black. His mane shimmered, he could see the castle distorted by his pearly green body. He hated it.

His mane flickered black, just for a millisecond.

His thoughts drifted to the last time he had seen this colour. A millennia ago, or at least centuries. He had a teacher before. Who was a leader. A powerful ruler. A slither of thought came to him, he reminisced a time. His elder, the one who had taught him, an alicorn of love. Different to she who claimed to reside here now. The alicorn of weakness.

He remembered turning back on his master in the very throne room that she stood in now. He remembered rage. He had once called upon magic no alicorn had ever tackled before. And shot down the ancient alicorn of love with all the jealousy and power he had.

He remembered a thin black and purple beam in a deadly accurate straight line hitting the white winged alicorn in the heart. Then Sombra's memory blacked out.

His coat flickered black again, for a slightly longer period this time. He felt very sick. Dazed and giddy. He tried to pick himself off the floor and couldn't.

At that moment a baby pink barrier shot across the hall in front of his body blocking his path. It hadn’t been a deadly beam, but it's sudden appearance sent him staggering backwards, tumbling to the ground.

Princess Miamore Cadenza was leaning herself against the crystal throne in a battle ready position.

She was panting heavily with her jaw open, her rib cage expanding and contracting. She was as weakened as he was. He weighed up his chances.

“You can’t beat me...” He taunted, also breathing heavily. The princess must have known they had both battled to the same level of exhaustion at this point. His back ached and his head was light and dizzy.

“I.. swore to protect.... This Empire and.. All my subjects from your... Evil reign.” And then her struggle was then as obvious to Sombra as his was to her.

“Maybe consider having a lie down princess... you seem tired.” Sombra panted noting the irony in his own words. He flickered black again, the feeling electrifying his body for the brief moment. Cadence took in all the information she could about this transformation.

Sombra was still malicious and a threat but, she noted, there was more to him than just darkness.

“I will never rest as long as you are a threat.” Cadence replied calmly. If there was good in him, he didn’t have to be a threat. Sombra caught on. And in that moment proceeded to attack Cadence verbally, tire her out that way.

“I will always threaten dictatorships like yours.” His deep voice emanating through the chambers. There was silence as Cadence took a step back, Sombra was delirious surely.

Sombra, laughed, his games clearly working. Cadence regained her composure.
“I rule by listening to my councils, peers and an elected body of my subjects.” She insisted wholeheartedly.

“Your subjects! Ha!” Sombra was confident Cadence was trying to avoid using magic. So he took a chance and stepped forwards, edging his way into the throne room.

“Are you not worshiped, I’ve seen them on the streets.” Sombra became swathed with confidence. He challenged her, by taking another step into the throne room. His coat flickered back to black a little longer than before.

Cadence softened slightly. This was her chance to save the pearly pony beneath the dark exterior.
“My ponies will follow me not because I force them but because they believe I will do the right thing when the time comes. Because I trust them.”

“You’re blinded, this nation is weak, defenceless and vulnerable.”

“As long as we have love we are protected.”

“Are you protected right now?” Sombra challenged. He took another step, feeling power. His spell was working. The crystal palace started to tune itself into the rhythm of his beating heart. A heart he had not felt in a long, long time.

Cadence sensed the threat. She remained calm.
“As long as we have love.”

Sombra bursts out laughing in the most cynical way anypony could possibly muster. His pearly body rippling with the effect of his feeling.

“So you leave the rest of Equestria to fend for itself, all those ponies.”

“We all believe in uniting the kingdom with peace and love.”

“ This 'empire' could be invaded by yaks as it is. I enslaved all the yaks and repressed the changelings into a cave when I ruled and now all that work is undone. I kept us safe.” He took another step into the room.
His snide smile returned to his face. His confidence grew, but his body still felt broken. His confidence did not heal the pain that shot through his hoofs with every step.

“You know we’re the same, you and I..." Sombra softened, cajoling Cadence to see his side. "leaders, I mean.”

Cadence could not believe that this tyrannical slave driver was actually trying to appeal to her. She felt like laughing, but she kept herself peaceful, mocking him would bring her down to his level. Love was the way forward. She thought of her subjects once more, each one of them as unique as the other.

She looked at the pearly old prince Sombra and felt pity for him. It was all an act and she knew that, but there was more than just that.

“We will never be the same as long as you keep thinking like that.”

“Be careful of hubris dear princess, that will be your downfall.”

Cadence changed tact.
She appealed to the pony she could see was clearly still there.
The pony motivated by love.

"Maybe you CAN protect the Crystal Empire. If you join with me, with us. You could be stationed here, in the castle."

"And be enslaved by my enemy! AHAHAHA! In what name." Sombra mocked the simulation. He took another step but stumbled and was forced to catch himself. His instincts kicked in and he managed to cast a levitation spell... But his horn felt weird. Like he wasn't casting it....

"In the name of friendship." Cadence pleaded, but she could see she would have to ready herself for another battle. "You can't rule by fear, your subjects will turn on you, to be a good leader you must let..." Cadence was interrupted. He lecture did not get across.

“And I rule by an iron hoof," Sombra mocked once more, "we both 'lead', but neither of us gained power here through democracy. You’re no better than your predecessor.” He felt the castle, his anchor, his lifeline. The dark magic called to him, it offered to help him. To protect him. 'The good fight' he reminded himself, 'I am the good fight.'

“I fight for my subjects you fight for yourself.” Cadence retorted.

Then the crystal castle rocked. It shook with the magnitude of an earthquake. Cadence heard a deafening squeal piercing the air. She tried to locate it, protecting her ears with her hooves, but she couldn't see a source. It was like it was coming from the castle itself.

Sombra felt himself lift off the ground. The four pillars of the crystal castle soaked him in power. Power from some of the most powerful artefacts in Equestria. He fired black energy into the crystal throne in an attempt to open the floor to the hidden chambers, as he had done so many times in the past.

His pearly coat started glowing darker and darker, surrounded by magic. He flickered purple, black, green and pearl.

Cadence charged a shield and blocked the attempt to open the door. Then she did the only thing she could think of and cast a simple spell of telekinesis all unicorns learnt. She threw Sombra back out into the corridor, where his body paused between the four pillars in the corridor.

Black tendrils dripped from each of the pillars, and he gave one more maniacal laugh which ripped the chambers of the castle into chaos.
He could feel power, it surged through his being. Through his core. Like he could reach out around Equestria and pull magic from all sorts of powerful, concentrated areas of magic and use them.

And at that moment he discovered the power he was looking for. Three powers to be precise.

The tower of the crystal castle started vibrating again, but this time it wasn't an antenna, it was a receiver. Thin black strands of magic made their way across the corners of Equestria and swirled their way down the outside of the tower.

Sombra felt the tower reverberating with the darkness. His horn glowed red and the magic slithered along the arched door frame.

He pulled the magic into his body, his being, into his core. He felt queasy and dark. Lightheaded and relaxed. He felt his back arch. His bones breaking and reforming. His coat shrouded in not only black, but a ghostly black of old darkness. And he felt his horn charge with a spell that he could only have dreamed of inventing.

“BRING ME MAGIC OF THE PAST.”

He fired a spell of nothingness.
Nothingness flitted through the air at Princess Miamore Cadenza's heart.

But she had reacted too. She realised what would happen. She couldn’t match the most powerful Equestrian magic, but she could possibly contain it with Equestrian love.

She did what she had to do.

“I OBLIGE MYSELF TO THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE!”

Giving herself wholly to the kingdom, Cadence's body shone a silvery glow that she had never felt before. She felt the elements of harmony calling to her. Loyalty, Honesty, Kindness, Generosity, Love, Trust. There was something slightly different to Twilight's description of the elements.

At that moment the Crystal Heart started to spin up and the building shook, resonating with the quick pulses of love shooting through every inch of the Empire. Cadence floated but didn’t fly on the bed of magical energy, using every attempt to resonate with the dark prince, flitting to different frequencies to establish contact with the pearly crystal pony underneath.

The spells intertwined, black nothingness and white, pure white love melted together around the room then around the castle, till the whole castle was encased in a swirling mesh of magical tendons.

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Sunburst felt the castle shake below.

Flurry Heart woke up crying and he cradled her in his hooves. The tremors and shocks of love bursting up around his shield, shimmering light of pink with light yellow or purple streaks glowed and shone as it floated it’s way to the tip of the tower through the four pillars at the edge of the platform

Then he felt something shift.

He looked up to the ceiling. A blackness was drawn from the tip of the castle around the orange ward keeping them protected. It entombed them in darkness despite them being safe. The energy seemed to be floating downwards into the centre of the castle.

In his usual fashion of trying not to express shock, he was shocked; Sunburst said to himself, “Strange, I thought the castle only emanated auras, it shouldn’t be able to draw in magical energy.”

He would not move from his spot however.
He was petrified to move from his spot.
He knew they would be safe here.

Sunburst comforted Flurry again.

The castle below them shook as the crystal heart pulsed and pummelled at the dark energy shrouding the tower. The original colour of blue lashing and grasping at the red crystal tower in places. A battleground of red and blue illuminated the structure as shimmering magic and dark energy auroras wrapped and wreathed at each other.

The empire shook.

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Far away in the Everfree Forest the Tree of Harmony resonated with the castle of the crystal empire. Though it would never be known to anyone battling in the empire, a shield of light surrounded the cavernous area that encased the Blue tree.

In each branch the elements of Harmony shook, boosting the tree's magical output to keep it safe.
Each little crystal the shape of a cutie mark.
A cutie mark each element was struggling to find at the moment.

But the element of magic reassured them all that the other elements would be found.

What made the elements curious though was that they could still feel each other resonating with the ponies who had once helped found their birthplace.

And if their creators could survive they were reassured that their current representatives could return too.

The air around them shook desperately.

But they were protected.

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Further away, the centre of the gateway to Tartarus glowed. The circular lock, glowed green, blue and finally black.

It transformed into a crystalline structure. And then exhibited a darkness. The aurora grew until it shrouded the entire gateway, and then shot a blast of magic into the air. The beam was consistent. It travelled as far as the Crystal Empire. Reached the tip of the tower with its brothers and sisters of magic auras.

The dark energy melted into the dark prince's heart and teased it’s way around his body.

Cerberus tensed and recognised the emerging threat. The gate, which was linked to everything within the vaults started to shake. His first head sniffed the new magical intervention. Then he ran throughout the chambers of Tartarus. At every point his left and right head investigated the nearby cells.

Although they showed no signs of freeing their prisoners, each vault was designed to absorb the dark magical energies of those within. And each was vibrating violently with the locked gate.

The darkness teased its way into the light just a little bit more.

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A few hundred miles away a dragon territory scout and a griffon messenger happened to meet at the boarders of their two lands. They were caught in an array of confusion having not seen the sun set the entire time they were performing their rounds.

The brown dragon landed on a hexagonal rock, his thin burgundy wings reaching out to stabilise his landing before folding neatly over his scaly back. Behind him the cliffs of the coast rose above them. Water lapped at the rocks beneath his claws. He stared out to the Celestial Ocean. Across the waves the sun was hung in the air, orange beams piercing the sky above.

The messenger griffon landed on a small rock formation just to his right. The griffon shook and ruffled his feathers when he got himself stable on his perch.

“How long have you been flying for?” the griffon asked.

“Too long. My shift should have ended when the sun set. But it hasn’t.” The dragon had a deep voice but he was tired and it came across.

The griffon gave an understanding nod and just looked out. His mind went through several possibilities all at once. Something shimmered in the distance. It seemed like it formed a wall like object.

“Dragons don’t accept help.”

“And griffons don’t offer it.” The messenger retorted.

There was a chill in the air. They both knew this wasn’t the time for hubris.

A wave slashed against the cliff behind and both flew off, headed to their respective leaders.

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“Stay with me and don’t split up, we need to stick together!”

The yellow body of Thorax – leader of the changeling kingdom - dashed through the air and over the forest followed by three other airborne changelings. He was concerned for many reasons, too many to decide which was a primary focus at the moment until something more immediate appeared before him.

He thought about his brother Pharynx, the dark shaded protector of the changelings... That he had left in charge. Oh he hoped he wouldn’t go overboard as he sometimes did. No he knew he wouldn’t, his brother was a good leader and second in command.

Maybe Pharynx would have been better than him for this mission. He was more accustomed to danger than Thorax was. No, no, Thorax had to do this. He was a better diplomat than Pharynx by far and had more of a connection and understanding with Equestrian magic.

And there it was. The shimmering wall in the middle of the forest.
There was the 'something immediate' he had been searching for.

He slowed to a halt, allowing his long, purple, dragonfly like wings to support him, buzzing in the air. The other changelings did the same.

Yes, he did have this, and these guys around him were sharp, and good friends too. They all were. Pharynx had suggested these guys, and he trusted Pharynx.

They buzzed in the air for a second, analysing the situation before them.

“Mr Thorax sir. May I test it?”

“Yes certainly Mr Culex, go ahead.”

The light blue changeling flew towards the shimmering wall and put a hoof up to it.

“It’s like glass sir. Solid. But it’s made of magic. Weird magic.”

He pulled his hoof away and Thorax turned to another one of his accomplices.

“How far out are we from the Equestrian boarder?”

“We should be exactly on the boarder sir.”

“Hmmmmm.” Thorax was worried. He took this moment to calculate and understand the situation like a good leader should. “Right let’s head back to the hive. We’ll need to contact our allies, the dragons, but first I need to consult Pharynx with a plan. We cannot fly over Equestria.”

The small flying squadron turned around and began back for the sunset, towards their hive.

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From each corner of Equestria magical black crystalline forms had appeared to shroud some of the most magical objects of the land. Ponehenge was now formed of black crystal, so was the cutie mark shrine, the vault of the alicorn amulet, the Mirror Pool, and the Well of Shades.

From each place a black aura was drawn, sucking the life and energy from the place. Each stream floating into the sky and heading north.

Enveloped in only in a world of silver, white and blue, Cadence could feel her entire being, her soul and her force in the magic ether pushing, lashing, grasping and flowing into the darkness that stood opposite her.

Sombra relaxed into the dark energy. That thick swam around his hooves and coat. It was like floating in water but without effort. The magic tendrils lashed and attacked with such ease he felt could sleep or bathe in it. He was power.

To the two ponies the physical realm seemed to have disappeared and all that surrounded them was a world of pure magic. An aura that existed only for them to fight their battle. A war of plasmatic magic raged.

Both ponies had reached a state of such purity that all that could win this battle for either pony was will, determination or tactics.

To knock the other off-guard as to disrupt their connection with the realm of pure energy.

Cadence felt her heart speed up as she thought about Shining Armour. He had been away on a mission but she would fight to save him from fighting this darkness as much as he would have fought for her.

And the light pushed away the darkness, lifting the oppressed space that had been. Moulding the darkness into love and light and pushing, insistently.

The light offered to Sombra, it loved to Sombra, it gave to Sombra, and was kind and soft towards him. It wasn’t aggressive or assertive, it was just there. More light than darkness.

And then Sombra felt a chance to attack back.

As he linked to another dark energy that called to him.

Once more he accepted the unknown evil that was presented to him and he bathed in its presence of vile and gruesome power. He pulled the dark string and the darkness shone through, evening the playing field between him and that wretched pink insistent alicorn.

11: Regrouping

The purple alicorn pulled herself up the last step to the castle roof. The effort was like moving the planet underneath her legs rather than her legs over the floor. She took a second to take in the scene. The calm pool lay still in the centre of the roof, surrounded by ten deck chairs for sun-lounging and 'chillaxing' as Rainbow Dash had called it.

She wiped eye dust out with her hoof and made her way over to the edge of the tower. A platform raised up that looked over Ponyville to the south. She bought herself up those extra few steps and took in the view.

The town bellow was silent. That gave her more will to stop whatever was happening. She wasn't just saving her friends, it was everypony.

She inhaled deeply, filling both lungs with still, fresh night air.

Preparing herself, she grounded her four hoofs, steadying her stance and pulling herself up to full height. Lifting her head and looking out over the horizon, her wings unfolded naturally as she prepared her spell. Her horn glistened it's radiant purple in the vibrant orange light of dusk.

Unfurling the tip of the left wing to full span, followed by the right, she let go.

All the tension in her body dropped as she was lifted off her hooves by the spell. She felt weightless.

When the spell reached full charge she felt herself falling, yet never moving. Her body forgot about gravity as she used all her willpower to drag the sun, down from it’s position to set. The sky was black.

Twilight then turned her attention to the moon. She could feel it. When she got a hold, she willed it, and willed it, and willed it and eventually it moved, slowly at first but as it gained momentum so did the spell, she was fully connected with it. She felt the magic of the ethereal plane.
'This is slightly easier than the sun' She told herself, and then before the moon reached it’s full height, Twilight blacked out.

Her body tumbled onto the overlook beneath. She lay there still.

Starlight Glimmer was left in the throne room with the map and some calculations. Between textbooks, Sunburst and Twilight, she had been learning how to calculate the correct approach to combining spell forms. After checking the calculations three times over – which wasn’t hard because it was Twilight’s work – she set about preparing it.

She studied each part of the spell and now she trotted around the cutie-map preparing herself.

“So start with a simple communications encryption. Then combine in a super-receptor with a transaction-prediction. The next layer is an invisible-magic-projection-sweep which I will have to charge but not cast. Finally then connecting with the map by an enticement and throw the triple underlay of the spellform to affect it.”

She sighed, took a breath and read it once more time for good measure.

Carefully she selected five appropriate spell books from the pile of books Twilight had transported from the library to the throne room. Flicking through them she found the pages she would need.

"Right then...," she said, examining the pages in front of her, "So If I start with Enigmaus, then tuningomas and calcamucast, that's an unusual combination I'll never use again." She chuckled. "Followed by..., viscuwarenessem, like earlier, but then I can use..., oh! Cajeria! Like old times." She teased. "And I can activate cojeria by anchoring it to the map."

She turned to the map.

“I got this.”

Then Starlight did as she had read.

Her horn glowed and glimmered it’s pale green aura. Then her magic aura widened as double-cast the second spell. As she cast the third stage she connected with the magical ethereal plane and her body felt a little lighter. The aura around her horn was large now, the first and second layers glowing brighter than the last.

As she shrouded her three layers with a fourth spell-form the aura grew almost as big as her body, illuminating the whole room in bright green light.

She almost lost her balance under her newfound weightlessness, firing the spell into the centre of the cutie-map. A direct plasma beam cut through the air, finding it's place in the centre of the cutie-map.

The bright green beam sunk into the map which flickered, reacting to the spell.

Starlight fell to the floor. Her head was pounding, she was exhausted by the creation of the spell. By some miracle she had pulled it off. She pulled herself up by an arm of Rainbow's throne just in time to see the holographic images on the map flicker and start to change.

Then it became obvious what was happening.

Black streams of magic were flowing through Equestria from all over the land to the Crystal Empire. The Empire was centred in the map because of the spell. A red and blue orb shrouded the Crystal Palace. The red orb created a gradient, slowly becoming less and less opaque as it reached out to Equestria's boarders.

"Twilight was right, there is something seriously wrong with the Crystal Empire." She muttered to herself.

'But that would mean that any spells cast within the reach of these auroras feeds back to the dark energy.' She considered, her vision starting to blur in and out of focus. She looked towards Southern Equestira, It seemed as though it was too far away to be affected by the dark auroric tendrils... Every spell has it’s limits.

As Starlight took this in, a small number of Cutie-marks began to appear on the map. Hers and Twilight’s in this castle. Cadence’s heart in the Empire. A large collection in Twilight's school. Two in Canterlot.... and an hourglass in the centre of Ponyville?

She didn’t instantly recognise most of them. A few others started appearing, but they were too late for Starlight to notice. Her body dropped as she fainted to the floor.

Spike and Doc ran through the empty streets of Ponyville toward the castle.

Having spent an hour decoding the message as much as possible, listening and discussing the possibilities, running the tape through a few phase detectors to try and work out some of the background noise and arguing just a little bit they had a pretty vague idea of the possibilities.

Then one of Doc's machines had switched to alert. Something in Ponyville had changed.

To both their surprises the night sky had appeared and the moon had risen.

It was, to be quite frank, unexpected... Considering everything that they thought had happened.

The moment they set foot outside to double check the readings Doc had said that they should get to the princess and quickly, shortly followed by a rather loud “Alonzee”. In moments like this Spike was glad for his wings, they gave him more independence and also allowed him to keep up with running ponies.

As they approached the now dark castle Spike looked up and saw a fallen purple body on the roof.

“TWILIGHT!” He called as he beat his wings quicker and felt the air drop beneath him pushing him upwards soaring towards the rooftop terrace. He found Twilight cold and unconscious on the floor, her body sprawled over the steps up to a viewpoint on the roof.

His scales were cold normally but her body was freezing, exposed to the new night air.

He looked over the edge. Doc had noticed him flying up and waited for him down the bottom. It was a long way from the roof but given the still air and the lack of background noise Spike called down to him with ease, his voice reverberating off the side of the castle.

“Twilight is unconscious. Starlight was with her earlier, check the castle, the Throne room is upstairs, through the centre corridor, three doors to the right. Starlight's room is five doors later to the left, check both, she’ll be there somewhere.”

“Will do Mr Spike!” Doc called, giving him a small salute before charging up the steps to the front door. With a “YEEHA” he flew the doors open and ran inside.

Spike turned back to attend to his best friend, and adopted sister really.

He did something he wouldn’t normally do. He went over to a deckchair and broke it up. Then took the pieces of wood over to the sleeping body with the blue and white fabric of the chair sling, arranging them in a pile next her.

Breathing in the cold night air he drew a small lungful, let it sit in his chest for a second and lightly blew a light crackling flame from his mouth, setting alight the wood and cotton turning it into a smouldering fire that slowly cracked and hissed.

In a few places flames started to take light and before long it was a small fire that was just enough to shed some warmth over his cheeks and over the body of the princess. The orange flames clashing colours with the purple body.

Even with the heat he was still shaking in the cold night air. He sat next to the body and held her hoof in his claw, waiting for any sign that his friend would wake from this slumber, hoping and wishing that Doc would be able to find Starlight alive and well quick enough. He couldn’t carry an alicorn on his own, no matter how strong, or brave, or glorious he was.

He looked at her still body again.

Her hair definitely looked funny, sparkling even.

12: Goodnight Cloudsdale

Flash Sentry had been flying for hours. He stopped off in a small pear orchard on his fly over for what must have been dinner. He was surprised to see the sun setting, but Princess Twilight must have a handle on it. He had to believe she did, for if this plan failed there would be nothing left to fight whatever it was that was happening in the Crystal Empire.

If King Sombra has returned though, he was prepared to fight. Cadence had been good to him in the past, offering him a job with part time education to get him started on his career as an aerial support private (and he had been allowed to play guitar on the job). There he first met Twilight, in the halls of the Crystal Castle.

That thought always had made him chuckle. He was a Royal Guard and would serve to protect Princess Twilight in every way possible. But he couldn’t help thinking that, for an alicorn, she was daaaaamn cute.....

He focused back to his flight path, now the moon was rising he had to keep checking back on his position.

He noticed that a breeze had started to pick up; the air was no longer flat and still.

He adjusted his wing angle to compensate and then dove to avoid some turbulence. About a mile away was the mobile city of Cloudsdale. He put his head down and soared as fast as he could in the direction if the thick, gusty clouds.

Bellow, sand had transformed the normal green grass of Equestria into a dessertous landscape. The city ahead was beautiful. Lights had just been switched on and the darkness was illuminated by soft golden glows. The underside of the white cloud left a dark blue patch in the night, but the lit cloud reflected the orange and created lovely mixtures of colour.

He landed on the landing platform of a runway and scouted down any officials who might be able to help him.

Then he realised.

All the Pegasi were still here. Even it at night Cloudsdale wasn’t totally lifeless; unlike many of the regions he had just passed over. It was investigating time.

He had briefly been assigned to the Royal Guard quarters in the Wonderbolt’s barracks in Cloudsdale as he made his transfer from the Crystal Empire to the Royal Canterlot Library. Eventually, that post had allowed him a promotion to Commander Hall Patrol in Canterlot Palace.

So he remembered the right pub to go to when in need of some Royal Guard to Royal Guard official business.., and some proper food: The Compass Star Inn. On a Thursday to Sunday when Wild Fire worked, and cooked some of the best food on the floating city.

Walking through, or rather bouncing with floating steps, over the smoothed cloud that made up the streets, Flash Sentry made his way towards the centre of Cloudsdale. This is where you want to be really because the outer rim is just made up of Weather factories and landing strips on most sides.

He did admire the city; there was a grandeur to it. The buildings were tall, but not looming, with all kinds of alternative architecture that just wasn’t possible to achieve with earth-pony materials. Some buildings had bridges connecting a couple of floors together, or staircases running up the outside. Others were tall towers which reached stunning heights. Wide platforms jutted off the edges of the tops of buildings. Some had whole floors that travelled between different buildings and a couple of buildings were floating all-together, which was okay because it was a city of pegasi.

Most buildings had entrances on the 'ground' or 'cloud' level with a second platform for entering halfway up and another platform at the top of the building. Because really a pegasus could enter a building from whichever position they so fancied.

Flash Sentry was armoured and as much as he would fly through the city, it was more convenient to just walk.

There were few pegasus around on the streets, but the city still seemed to be buzzing.

“I guess when the sun doesn’t set on time a whole city might actually notice.” He said to himself, noticing a few ponies in some of the restaurants looking out upon him. Despite his rugged look from the flight, he winked at two mares in a cafe and cantered down the street.

Once he had traversed a few side streets and main roads he found a back alley underneath a cloud bridge. The dark blue night helped shadow his entrance and when he reached the door at the end of the alley he was almost invisible in the dark. The air smelt thick with the stench of sweat, cider and smoke, and opening the door slammed his face with a wall of the pungent fragrances.

“Excuse me.” He said, tapping a Pegasus guard who was sat on the table to the right of the door. “Have you seen my shoes? I want to write a spell book.” The blue pegasus in blue armour with white trim turned to the yellow pegasus in gold armour.

“You had better just stick to flying.” He retorted and the two started at each other.

Each of them knew neither could break the stare, for they would lose if I they did. Then the blue guard shifted only to punch Flash in the shoulder. Flash blocked the incoming attack, pushing his hoof into the foreleg of the blue pony, while thrusting his left front hoof around the side of the blue pony.

The dusty, smoky air shifted around their movements. Flash had caught the guard off-guard and gave him a big hug. Then the embrace was returned and they were laughing hysterically.

“Flash bro, how are you!”

“Good bro, Corporal Flash now. How are you Blocker?”

“Oh well, Corporal, why don’t you sit and have a drink.”

“I will, but I am unfortunately here on more business.”

“The whole sun thing ey?”

“Yeah, it’s set now...” Flash took a moment to take a breath from the action.

“I noticed, yeah.” Blocker replied with exhaustion. Flash could tell he'd been on duty all day.

“...but I'm on orders from the Princess of Friendship to find..." Blocker interrupted Flash once more.

“Look before we start, lemme grab you a drink, you still on the same old stuff?”

Flash let his annoyance subside. It was only due to his urgency anyway, and in truth, he did need a break from the flight.

“Yeah sure bro, if you're getting.”

“Yeah I got this.” The blue pegasus 'Blocker' got up and made his way to the Bar. It was dark in the bar, but the low orange lighting kept the large room viewable, just not totally scanable. That was the point of this place. Everything was made of dark wood and the soft walls helped absorb sound. Bellow the noise was the sound of a jukebox that played rock and roll music non-stop, never allowing a break of more than a second between songs.

The bar was directly opposite their table, Flash kept tabs on Ward Blocker. Wild Fire noticed him from behind the bar and dropped Flash a wink. Flash gave her a smile back, raising his eyebrows in her direction. That was history from a couple of years ago.

Ward Blocker returned with two golden elixirs in two thick glass beer glasses. He balanced them on his wings outstretched, and slid them down onto the table.

“So why are you here old comrade?” he asked, his tone concerned and genuine.

“There’s a lot to cover, here is the short of it.” He thought about telling his old friend everything, but really this was not the time. “Princess Celestia has been taken and I was sent to consult Princess Twilight Sparkle. Something about the magic realms communication matrix being infiltrated with dark magic. Ponies all across Equestria were disappearing.”

He explained the rest, from being rescued, to the Crystal Empire being at the heart of it all. Then he relayed his orders.

“...a pegasus pony called Flash Magnus.”

“Never heard of anypony in the Wonderbolt guard called that.” Blocker thoughtfully replied.

“I don’t believe he’s part of the guard or Wonderbolts. She referenced a group called 'The legends' and given that Cloudsdale happened to be so far away from whatever took everypony away in Canterlot and Ponyville they said I should look here and in Saddlearabia.”

“Well luckily the Wonderbolts are currently docked with Cloudsdale in the East side, so there might be a good place to start. I can look underground and see if I’ve met anyone who knows this Flash Magnus.”

“Thanks Blocker. Meet back here later?”

“Certainly Corporal.” He accepted jokingly the command and then the two of them finished up their drinks and set off to their respective journeys.

5: Milkshakes and Tape Recorders

Chapter 5

The time was half past five.

Seven friends were sat at a booth in the diner on the corner of town. One Spike from Equestria, one Twilight Sparkle wearing glasses, one Applejack, one Rarity, one Rainbow Dash, one Fluttershy and one Sunset Shimmer of Equestria. A one Pinkie Pie was whizzing around on roller skates serving milkshakes.

"Here's your Bananana Flipper Shake, Swirly Strawberry shakes, three Coffees and two waters. I'll be over in a minute guys when I get my break." The pink waitress whizzed off again. It was amazing anyone could understand her considering how fast she could speak.

One minute later the springy pink hair of Pinkie Pie joined the table. With a slice of pie.

“So what’s crackalackin Spike doggy.”

“Spike was just going through what’s happened to Equestria.” Sunset replied dismally.

“It sounds ghastly darling.” Rarity chimed in.

“Basically there’s a place called the Crystal Empire and it and it’s people lead by princess Cadence help spread hope and love across Equestria.”

“Go on...” Pinkie mumbled through a mouthfull of her pie. There being only half left already.

“Well, we believe something is using it's power to send an energy out to steal pony's souls.”

“Just show me where they are and I’ll pound them, no one does that to our friends!” Spike admired Rainbow's enthusiasm.

“That’s just it, we don’t know what would happen if we head to the Empire, It's the centre of the power, that’s why it only ever is used to affect Equestria with love. The whole land is covered by the auras and if ponies get stuck in it, it seems their soul becomes trapped or stolen. I'm not a pony and I don't seem to be affected, but if any of you enter the portal, you might disappear as well!”

“Oh no!” Fluttershy exclaimed quietly from the window side of the booth.

“What happens to their souls?” Rarity asked horrified.

“We don't know that either. We barely know anything about it, but that, me, a dragon, doesn’t seem to be affected and I haven’t seen your guy’s counterparts since yesterday. Although Twilight was out at a breakfast picnic with them this morning, she didn’t mention anything about it. Twilight's trapped in her throne room which Starlight protected with a spell, that's why I had to rush here.”

“What about Princess Celestia and Luna?” Sunset inquired.

“Luna and Celestia were last seen vanishing into thin air, like they stopped existing or something. There was talk of Limbo maybe.”

The whole group gasped. They all had experience with Limbo.

"We've had magic in this world which created limbo, is there some way that same magic is in your world?" Twilight asked both Sunset and Spike. This was a bit weird for Twilight, her dog being sentient was strange and she knew about the doppelgangers in another dimension but this Spike was seemingly more intelligent than her dog, but then this Spike was a dragon, and they supposedly have a more consistent education which fell in line with human education....... She tried not to think too hard about it.

"I don't think it would have, that mirror was completely destroyed. What Spike is suggesting is on a far grander scale than anything one small object would be capable of." Sunset countered Twilight's theory.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen but the whole of Equestria is affected. Apparently communication by magic is another trick it uses to steal souls so we can’t write to you via the diary Sunset."

"The auroras and magic communication might work along similar spell bases. Maybe that's part of the Crystal Empire's trick. I never got a chance to study it fully when it appeared." Sunset suggested. The rest of the group observed Sunset with curiosity, she never really got a chance to talk about Equestrian magic with them, it was litterally a different reality to try to comprehend.

"Does your telepathic magic here work similar to Equestrian communication Sunset?" Fluttershy piped in.

"Not really, here the magic is, one way or another, contained within our geodes so it's a lot closer to using an enchanted object's encantation than performing a soulfully generated casting. I'll go over it with you later if you're interested."

All her friend's nodded.

“With the diary not an option, would you be able to keep an eye out for unusual magical leaks from the portal?” Spike tried to get his quiery accross all the excitement about protecting Equestria.

"Dang it Spike you know we will!" said Applejack, adding enthusiastic support in this troubled time.

“Thank you, thank you all of you.”

A timer alarm inturrupted spike and Pinkie pulled out her phone. She swiped the red bar across while simultaneously finishing up her strawberry milkshake and gave Spike a goodbye hug, laying over Fluttershy and Applejack's laps to do so. Rarity and Sunset rolled their eyes to Applejack as Twilight gave a small giggle at the awkward movement.

“Well I have to get back to work, I’ll help keep an eye on it, text me later girls. Bye Spike.” With a ruffle of his fur she was off. No wonder Pinkie eats so fast with breaks that short, thought Spike.

“I guess I had better get back too." Sunset sighed half heartedly.

"You can stay a bit longer with me if you want Spike.” Fluttershy offered hopefully.

“No no, Endangered Equestria and all that.” His answer was very matter of fact, it was indeed time to go. Fluttershy sighed in disappointment, the prospect of truly conversing with the dragon-dog again was so exciting to her.

“Thank you Fluttershy, another time, I promise.” He felt professional. The girls minus Pinkie walked him back to the portal and there he was gone in an instant this time running into the statue base head first.

Sunset felt a small loss as the only other Equestrian went back home but she loved her friends in this world so she turned back to them. Twilight was talking with Applejack just a little way back. Sunset turned to Fluttershy.

“So we’ll have to all organise shifts as to who will look after the statue then. I’ll tell Principle Celestia why on Monday.”

“Oh good! Umm. I think you and Twilight should take the first shift till tomorrow morning then, maybe.” Sunset was a tad cautious as to Fluttershy's insistence that she and Twilight go first.

“Sure Fluttershy.” Sunset glanced over at Twilight, she didn’t know why but she felt she needed to be suspicious of her. Her stomach was slowly filling with butterflies, she suspected Fluttershy's fascination with them had infected her. Rarity linked arms with Applejack and Fluttershy, she gave a quick skip.

"I know it's all so serious, but we could stop at Sassy Saddle's new boutique on our way home. I hear she is working for one of the next BIG designers again and they opened YESTERDAY!" she sang tunefully, and loudly.

Fluttershy giggled.

"Oh alright then!" Applejack concurred, "See you later girls. Best of luck."

"Oh yes, text us if you need ANYTHING, we'll be here instantly." Fluttershy supported.

"Are you going to come with us Rainbow?" Rarity asked.

Rainbow, who had been leaning against the concrete statue base getting to seventy-five keepy-uppies with her soccer ball, had been listening in with great detest at the idea of clothes shopping once again.

"Oh, uh, no, I can't, I have too, go help Pinkie with her... um, driving theory when she finishes work."

The girls gave each other cheeky smiles, they all knew what Rainbow was trying to avoid.

"That's such a shame..., well if you're sure... I wouldn't normally go to such a frufru fashion boutique mah-self, but I hear she's promoting a new line of sportswear too. leggings with integrated shin pads or somethin." Applejack threw in the temptation.

"Well if you change your mind." Rarity finished off. The three girls left for the high street. leaving Rainbow in a state of social limbo herself.

"Well I guess that organises the shift partners we'll be taking then." Sunset jested. Rainbow got to 95 and bounced the ball off the concrete and into her grasp.

"Well if Pinkie isn't out yet, I gueeeessss I can pop along to see how the girls get on at the boutique...Anyway, see you later guys!" Rainbow yelled as she shot down towards the high street after them. Sunset laughed and turned around to find Twilight on the other side of the square statue.

"Twilight?"

Twilight stormed at Sunset but her words were quiet.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Twi, I’m sorry, what?” she was stunned, her friend had been so serene all evening.

“I know you’re seeing Flash Sentry.”

How on earth did Twilight know she had been seeing Flash, they were always careful not to get caught. She was stunned.

"I could smell him on you earlier... Look I know you guys have a past, the girls have filled me in, but I'm concerned for you. He's a nice guy, but what about the other me, from in there?" She indicated to the portal. "Don't they still have feelings for each other?"

Twilight calmed down, she realised she was being maybe a bit erratic about this.

"Sunset, I just don't want you to get hurt okay?"

Consoled by Twilight, Sunset sat down, leaning against the statue they so often hung out at. Her connection to her home. Her old home.

"Twilight, I am okay, I promise. So is Flash. We're both just. We both felt a bit lost okay, adjusting to life. He went through a lot recently and me? Living here isn't an easy adjustment. Sometimes I get so worried that I'll wake up and never be able to go back to Equestria..."

"Do you want to?" Twilight asked.

"Yes, well no, I don't want to go back, but just in case you know? In case, I fail at absolutely everything here, I can always go back to magic school. Ever since that whole mirror incident and the Friendship Games it's been..."

Twilight pondered this quietly.

"I love you guys, all of you. Flash, well... we were there for each other, we helped each other get through that point in our lives. I don't expect it will last, we didn't really work truly before, but for now..."

"You do care about him don't you...?" Twilight had started to notice tears forming in Sunset's eyes. Sunset nodded.

"I was so mean to him once, I used him, now...." Twilight waited for Sunset to finish. She took her time but came round to it, "now I can be kind to him. I don't love him, but we can help each other for now."

They shared a moment of silence and Twilight sat down with Sunset by the portal, She held Sunsets hand for a moment, and then placed an arm around her, supporting her ss best she could, running her hand down her back to comfort her.

"For what it's worth, I think you'd make a good match, if you want. But as for the rest of it...."

Sunset looked up. She was about to get a lesson, she just knew it. Twilights always had the same 'giving a lecture' approaches.

"If you keep worrying about 'just in case' things, you'll never get to do what you really want to do, because you'll be constantly stopping yourself from doing one thing, because of the fear of missing out of a lot of things.

"I may not have had masses of experience with friendship and choices at Crystal Prep, but one thing that always helped me was commitment. I made a choice and stuck with it. Only when my plans HAD to change, did I change them.

"For now, you can go back to Equestria anytime you want. But if this portal closes and you NEED to go back, I'll bet my chemistry textbooks on you finding a way back. Because you are an amazing person Sunset Shimmer, and pony, and your friends are always here for you."

Sunset welled up and a tear of joy rolled down her cheek. She gave a big deserved hug to Twilight and breathed in the fresh air.

"Thank you Twilight."

They had until morning to watch the portal, maybe they would see the sunset and rise too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luna felt....

She certainly felt.

You know those headaches on hot days when you’re in bed with twenty-seven duvets on you but it’s actually thirty-five Celsius outside and you can’t quite figure out why? She felt like that. Only everything was blurry. In her dreams. It was obvious it was a dream, she couldn’t feel the ground. Not the physical ground. She felt like falling asleep.

'Why does one want to fall asleep when they are asleep?' she asked herself 'why am I asleep?' she asked herself 'What can I see?' she asked herself. She tried opening her eyes fully. They were heavy. Her mouth felt like she was eating an extremely cheap oat and honey breakfast bar. She tried to imagine a place she could pull herself into. Her dream bedroom, her old castle, her mushroom realm, her black night sky.

Her mouth felt stiff like cardboard. She struggled to move it.

She was determined not to sleep.

'why be sleepy?'

Mmmmmm

+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++-+++++

Hidden in a rectangular concrete bunker, slyly hidden away beneath Ponyville, Doctor Whoves was urgently tapping the side of a dull metallic box.

It had three big, round, black plastic dials on it.

It also contained a keypad with sixteen keys on it.

He turned a dial with his brown hoof.

Above the box was another box, fronted by a brown wire mesh, behind which was a speaker of eight inches in diameter. This box had rounded corners unlike the metallic one below it.

Above that was a brown shelf that ran the length of the wall. This contained a mixture of items: books, papers, black filing boxes, tape reel boxes, photo canisters, more books, book ends and a few photos of his friends – Muffins, Sweetie Drops, Slice Ray, Pinkie Pie, and the bowling club he joined a few months back after finally giving in when needing some trousers altered and a scarf repaired.

Despite its chaotic nature he actually quite liked bowling now. The fact the club helped alter his suits for him was a bonus, they were excellent tailors though.

The floor beneath his hooves was made of hard grey concrete.

More contraptions of different styles to the metal box were stored all along the wall, some with flashing lights of yellow and red, some with electrodes that hung from small hooks attached to the machines. There were also a lot of tools, drills, saws, anything you might need to improvise many things.

Along the far end was a staircase, also hard concrete, that lead outside. On the opposite wall there was his main workbench and research stations. Behind Doc stood an array of large and small contraptions and devices that blinked and beeped, produced smoke and sparked.

Although most were, for safety, turned off: like the mind reading machine ponies could sit in and the flameless fireworks producer. There stood a large tank next to these containing any left over fireworks. It was always blinking blue – the flameless fireworks floating in a thick liquid mixture for safety reasons.

Doc’s frantic tapping got him nowhere. The brown box above him just fizzed the same dull fizz. He stepped to the right with all four hooves systematically. There was a recording tape primed in a dull grey tape to tape reel recorder.

He pressed a button and the two circles on the front started moving clockwise in sync.

“Like a side on view of a four wheeled chariot.” He said to himself. Mostly out of worry. He normally spoke to himself a lot when working out puzzles but he had been speaking frantically for the last hour and a half and it had gotten him... This far... Which was barely a step from where he was at the beginning of that time.

He pressed a stop button on the machine and both circular reels jammed in place. He reached up, flicked a switch above him to transfer the current of electrons from this machine to the brown box above the lighter grey box, and then pressed play.

There was a dull fuzz tone. Then a click. A low warbling sound. Then another fuzz and a click. The brown speaker above started to make a sound.

The voice was rough, higher in pitch than most Colts. And there was fear and anguish. “Slice Ray to all SMILE stations. Crystal Empi..e.. S..d.er..att..k...br...re..urn..d...sss..a....as...take...zzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Doc had played the clip back over and over. He had transcribed the entire message over and over, but he couldn’t figure it out yet. He had been trapped in the bunker for too long. The red light above the staircase was still flashing, indicating immediate danger present. Without word from HQ in Canterlot he would stay put and attempt to decode the fragments he had.

He reset the tape machine to listen one more time. The tapes jammed still in the same place. He looked over to the far end of the shelf to the picture of the Crystal Anti-Monster Organisation.

There were 10 of them in his graduating squad in the photo. He could just make out the image of Slice Ray sat on the front row in the middle, his yellow coat and black leather jacket with the agency sunglasses and grapple rope tied round him.

It was the only picture they were allowed to have of their graduating squad mates because it was set to destroy itself if danger presented itself nearby.

Doc pressed play and got back to decoding the message.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Sunburst lead on the floor of the crystal tower. Flurry had fallen asleep beside him. Younglings could sleep anywhere when they wanted. The rumble of the battle beneath had ceased for the past hour. He was scared but knew Cadence would pull through, he was sure, in his heart.

He could feel the darkness resonating throughout the Empire.

“We can’t leave it like this.” He said calmly to Flurry as she slept, “Everything will be sorted soon enough.”

He hoped Starlight might get in contact somehow soon, knowing she knows what’s going on would make him feel worlds better. Together they had accomplished lots even from being at a distance. As long as she was around the two of them could fight this evil.