The Last Light of the Evening Star

What happened next was a blur. First, there was an almighty squealing as the pigs reacted to the bed of scorpions quickly approaching their pen. Then Applejack yelled something about the livestock and Rainbow Dash looked conflicted.

“Get Applejack’s family to safety!” Rainbow Dash ordered.

Evening Star nodded, hopping out of bed and watching as Rainbow Dash and Applejack exited through the window, one after another.

Scrambling to get downstairs, she focused on projecting a force field like the one that Starlight had used to protect her and Rarity’s family when the Ursa Major had attacked. As she reached the first floor, she found Granny Smith, Big Mac and Apple Bloom had all climbed on top of the dinner table and were using brooms and kitchen implements to try to displace the swarm of rattling yellow anthropods crawling beneath the table.

The scorpions, for their part, didn’t seem particularly interested in attacking the family, they were far too busy pilling up at the bottom of the stairs.

“Stay where you are!” Evening Star yelled, before blasting a hole in the mound of bodies at the base of the stairs.

As soon as the smoke had cleared from her horn, the swarm of clicking pincers and glistening stingers had re-formed. In fact, the attack only served to heighten the invaders’ aggression, as they began spilling up onto the stairs at twice the pace as before.

Evening Star fortified herself with the thought that, at the very least, they weren’t ladybugs.

Shuddering at just the thought, she teleported off the stairs and onto the table, beside Big Mac and Granny Smith.
That was a bad idea, as it turned out. The dining table was a sturdy thing, carved by ponies with the intent of being able to host the entire Apple clan if need be. But even it was not intended to support such a load.

The table’s legs creaked and then table collapsed beneath them all, crushing a few hundred scorpions in the process.

“Get ready to move!” Evening Star yelled over the sound of snapping and crunching. She summoned a force field just as the swarm began to change direction and converge on the collapsed table.

“Ha! Git through that ya wanna-be crustaceans!” Granny Smith proclaimed, as the scorpions paused in their assault to test the boundaries of the barrier which had suddenly appeared between them and their prey.

“Wait, where’s Applejack?” Apple Bloom asked.

“She’s fine! She’s outside with Rainbow Dash!” Evening Star promised.

As they spoke, the arachnids, owing to the hairs on their legs, began to scale the dome of force, stabbing their stingers uselessly against the pink energy.

“We need to get out of here!” Evening Star said.

It was slow going, especially since the dome was more than a little small for Big Mac, forcing him to crouch slightly and all of them to press together. Evening Star couldn’t imagine a less comfortable situation, moving slowly through the venomous hordes, while the number of scorpions clinging to the dome increased with every second.

Well, except maybe for doing it without the force field.

They made it out the front door in time to see Applejack and Rainbow Dash throwing open the doors to the barn. The cows housed within were known for being skittish. They had probably stampeded because of an overzealous butterfly in the past.

Now they charged out of the barn, tearing through fences and turning a not yet ripe crop of tomatoes and carrots into pulp in their mad rush to escape the cyclone of stingers. Together with the pigs, they barreled through the recently planted cornfield, destroying the summer crop before it ever had a chance to sprout.

While the Apples watched their livelihood destroyed, Evening Star’s eyes were drawn to the chicken coop, where Rainbow Dash was currently attempting to re-locate some very loud and very uncooperative hens, with a look of serious consternation. The pegasus had just glanced back at Applejack as if to ask why the chickens weren’t intelligent enough to save themselves.

That was when the scorpions, which had squeezed through the holes in the wire chicken fence, seized upon Applejack. She let out a shriek and her world-famous hooves stamped down on the offending arthropods, turning half a dozen yellow bodies into stringy brown paste on her shoes.

Still the damage had already been done. As Applejack staggered at the agony racing through her nervous system, more scorpions poured in, crawling over the remains of their companions dispassionately. Rainbow Dash, who had never gotten along well with most animals in the best circumstances, tossed the chickens she’d been rescuing onto the top of the coop, sending them scrabbling and flapping madly against the tin roof to keep off the ground.

Then she dove in, grabbing onto Applejack with both hooves and dragging the slightly larger and bulkier pony out of reach of the swarm and over the fence. At first it looked like Applejack, whose hind legs were turning purple beneath her coat, was struggling against Rainbow Dash’s grip. But as Rainbow flew closer, Evening Star realized the truth.

Applejack was foaming at the mouth and the jerky movements that Evening Star mistaken for struggles, were the spasms of malfunctioning muscle. The mare’s entire nervous system had been overloaded with neurotoxin, and she had completely lost lucidity by the time Rainbow Dash got her close enough to drop her into the force field.

Big Mac and Evening Star managed to catch the still writhing Applejack after Evening Star had (briefly) created a hole in the top of the dome. As they tried to keep her spasming legs from bucking any of them, Evening Star looked up at Rainbow Dash.

The pegasus had sustained more than a few stings herself in her frantic attempt to extricate Applejack from the rising tide of death, and her flying was growing increasingly sloppy as she tried to shake loose the half a dozen brown bodies currently pincered to her blood-stained wings.

“I’ll get help!” Rainbow said, as she narrowly avoiding face-planting into the writhing mass. “I-I’ll come back…I promise!”

Evening Star watched with growing horror as Rainbow attempted to fly in the direction of Ponyville, instead making it only a few yards over the orchards before she crashed into a branch and collapsed in the dirt.

“Sis? Sis ya gotta wake up!" Apple Bloom shrieked, as Applejack’s spasms slowed, and her eyes rolled back in her finally still head. Apple Bloom looked up at Evening Star. "Ah don't understand! What’s wrong with her?!"

Evening Star stared at Applejack and then Rainbow Dash who despite her best efforts to take off, was unable to do anything more than lie on the ground and twitch weakly. One arm of the scorpion legion had already extended out in Rainbow Dash's direction and was making quick work of the journey.

Evening Star turned away and looked at the faces of the Apple Family. Granny Smith, having likely seen a venomous sting before, was already wracked with grief at what had befallen her granddaughter. Big Mac, on the other hand, was wrought with panic at the increasingly claustrophobic interior of the dome and his own inability to alleviate the situation as even more the scorpions encased the surface of the force field.

And then there was Apple Bloom. She was sobbing and shaking her Applejack, begging Evening Star to use her magic to save her comatose sister.

Evening Star knew two things. The first was that she had never teleported five ponies before, let alone teleported them the distance needed to reach Rainbow Dash right now. The second thing was the weight of the scorpions atop her force field was only growing and that while for the moment it was still manageable, in less than five minutes, it would exceed the strength of her spell.

Closing her eyes, she reached deep down and ran through every spell she’d ever learned. There had to be something she could do to help. Perhaps some kind of magical burst? But then the profusion of offensive thauma diffuse the shield spell, and the scorpions would close on them before she could bring up another.

This was it, she realized, panic overcome by the numbing realization. There were just too many of the scorpions and she was not powerful enough to stop them all. Maybe if they were willing to leave Applejack behind...she shook her head, refusing to entertain the grim possibilities. None of them would be able to live with their cowardice and she very much doubted that Granny or Apple Bloom would have been able to summon the speed required to evade the swarm even unburdened.

She opened her eyes and stared at Apple Bloom. She was the youngest, if anyone deserved to be saved, it would be her.

Just as she was considering teleporting Apple Bloom and Big Mac away, she heard it. The tell-tale whistle of something streaking through the air at incredible speed. It was followed by a wave of heat and a flash barely seen through the thousands of scorpions pressed against the shell of her force field.

The bodies that crowded the dome and made up the top layer of the storm were turned to ash, and she could see Her. Princess Celestia had landed right next to Rainbow Dash, creating a tiny impact crater with her landing. The scorpions which had just reached Rainbow had been similarly incinerated, while the trees surrounding Celestia's landing had been turned to charcoal. Most of the farm's structures, having been flooded with heat in too short a time to allow the creation of a proper fire, now smoldered, in various states of destruction.

Evening Star very purposefully did not look in the direction of the chicken coop and focused instead on the hope rising in her stomach, rather than the disgusting smell which had entered her nostrils.

As cinders rained down on the scorpions which had pooled around the force field, and which were only still alive because the scorpions above them shielded them from the blast, there was a second high pitch shriek and then a thunderous flash of blue, as Princess Luna landed right next to the front yard gate. The resulting explosion of magical energy very nearly broke Evening Star's concentration on the force field, something that Evening suspected would have resulted in her and everypony else within being killed in a fraction of a second. Instead, the brumal blast parted around the force field and re-assembled behind it. The sudden added moisture drowned all embers remaining from Celestia's entrance, as well as imprisoning the remaining scorpions in spikes of blackened, starry ice.

While her sister bent to inspect Rainbow Dash’s still writhing form, Luna narrowed her eyes at Evening Star and trotted toward her with purpose. Shivering at the princess’ regal presence, Evening Star dropped the force field and used her telekinesis to levitate Applejack’s mutilated body over to her.

“She's poisoned your majesty!” Evening Star said as she bowed.

Luna looked at Applejack and then at Apple Bloom, whose state of distress had only been slightly mollified by the fact they weren't all about to die horribly. Finally, she said “I will do what I can."

With that, her horn began to pulsate with light and her eyes glowed with the same impenetrable white light that Evening Star had seen take over Starlight and the others when they’d used their elements. As she did, wisps of silvery light wrapped around Applejack’s form, slowly teleporting every ounce of poison out of her system.

It wasn’t enough. The poison had thrown Applejack gone into cardiac arrest and her body remained unbreathing even as the sting marks on her legs healed over. Luna let out a breath and then lowered her horn to the levitated Applejack’s chest. There was a spark of electricity and Applejack’s body jolted.

Then her muzzle opened, long enough to let out a horrible, rasping cough. Her eyes remained closed, but her chest began to rise and fall again.

Taking control of Applejack’s body from Evening Star, Luna levitated her into the waiting hooves of her family, who almost crushed her still unconscious form in their desperation to hold her and protect her as she had them so many times.

Then Luna turned toward Evening Star and marched toward her, her platinum and silver shoes creating snapping noises against the surface of the ice sheet she’d created, from the sheer cold they radiated.

“Princess Luna…we owe you and your sister our lives.” Evening Star said, continuing to bow.

Luna stopped a few inches in front of Evening Star and sneered in a manner that only the ancient royalty can achieve. “You can drop the act, Twilight Sparkle…my sister and I know full well what you are.”

Evening lifted her head in confusion, as Luna reared up onto her hind legs. As she kicked the air with her forehooves, her horn gleamed again, and the magic she wove curled around Evening. Icy tendrils of energy, identical to the ones which had cured Applejack only a moment ago, now encased Evening’s entire body, trapping her legs together and numbing her horn to impede any attempts at casting magic.

Evening cried out, but her desperate pleas for explanation were smothered quickly as the magic gagged and blinded her, trapping her in a skin blistering prison of pure light. She continued to writhe against her unbreakable bonds, as Luna turned to face the horrified Apple family.

“This is business of the state. My sister will bring you to Starlight's castle. You will be protected there.” Luna said. Then she leaned forward. “Tell anypony who asks that this one…” She gestured to Evening Star. “…has disappeared.”

Big Mac looked like he was about to say something, to form some kind of protest to what had just been done. Luna pre-empted all rebuttal.

“AM I UNDERSTOOD!?” Luna asked, extending her wings and using her “court” voice.

The Apple family, too traumatized to even comprehend what they had just witnessed, nodded, in horror. There was a flash of magic and then Luna and her captive were gone. The conscious members of the Apple family continued to stare at the spot where they'd disappeared from until Celestia approached them.

"I'm sorry to frighten you." Celestia said, as she telekinetically floated Rainbow Dash’s healed but still incapacitated form along with her. "But believe me when I say that my sister and I do not act without reason."

"But why-" Apple Bloom began, as she cradled her unconscious sister's head.

"Of course...yer highness." Granny Smith said, with a little bow.

Celestia nodded and then lifted her head. Her horn swelled with power and as her magic lovingly embraced them all, the ruined farm and the uncountable arachnid corpses disappeared, replaced by the dining area of the Castle of Friendship, now crowded with the displaced citizens of Ponyville.

"Can I trust you to look after Rainbow Dash, until she has fully recovered?" Celestia asked, as she lowered the pegasus down onto the ground, next to where Apple Bloom sat with Applejack.

Big Mac nodded and Celestia turned away and spread her wings. Instantly, the ponies who'd crowed to question her as soon as she'd appeared, recoiled. And as she strode away, the gap in the throng closed behind her as ponies demanded to know why they'd been roused from their beds and forced to evacuate their home on order of The Diarchy.

“This ain’t right!” Apple Bloom said, turning to her brother and grandmother.

“Hush now! If’n the princesses say it is, then it is.” Granny Smith said, as she curled up on the floor next to Apple Bloom and her sister.

“But Evening Star was our friend! She saved me and Big Mac’s life. And if it weren’t for her, Sweetie Belle woulda been crushed!” Apple Bloom said, looking to Big Mac in the hope he might refute Granny’s assertion.

“Ha! Princess Luna did plenty a' nice things before she blocked out the sun…do you think it makes a difference?” Granny asked, as she began re-tying the ribbon in Applejack's mane.

“No…but that don’t mean-”

“Ah don’t care what it means!” Granny snapped, “You are gonna keep quiet about what ya saw…we got enough problems without royalty being mad at us.”

“But Granny…that ain’t right! The princesses are supposed to help ponies…" Apple Bloom said, leaning over Applejack as she dropped her volume. "...not tie them up for no reason!”

“Ah ain’t losing you too!” Granny Smith yelled.

A few ponies who had been hoping that the Apple family, having been teleported in with Princess Celestia, might be able to answer their questions, paused mid-approach at the outburst and quickly thought better of it.

“Ah already lived too long…” Granny admitted. “No pony ought to outlive her grandchildren…Ah almost lost Applejack today and Ah ain’t losin’ you too!” Her wrinkled face hardened. “And if’n that means doin’ what the princesses say is right, then that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Apple Bloom looked up at her older brother, but he just sighed and shook his head. After a few minutes, she lowered her eyes and squeezed her older sister’s hoof for comfort.

“She’s not what I expected…after her dream.” Luna admitted, as she set the traitor down in the center of Starlight's observatory.

“Don’t let her simple appearance deceive you.” Celestia said. “She is more dangerous than any enemy we’ve yet faced.”

“If that’s true…wouldn’t it be best to…eliminate her now?” Luna suggested.

Celestia shook her head. “She still contains the information on how to cease the rising fracture in our existence. Don’t worry…once I wrench the information out of her skull…there won’t be enough left to execute.”

She took a few steps toward the prone form, her horn flaring as she prepared to begin the first of many rituals.

“Wait…” Luna said, stepping forward.

Evening paused her struggles to listen.

“…allow me. I am more accustomed to the dream world; it will be easier for me to pierce the veils of her mind.”

Evening whimpered in defeat.

“Very well, you are the one who provided proof of her treachery. But be careful…Starlight nearly went mad after her attempt.” There was another pause. “I can’t lose you again, sister.”

“You won’t...sister.”

Apple Bloom had waited until her brother and grandmother had begun talking with the other refugees of the town, before she snuck off. She knew she needed to stay with her family, right now. She knew that wandering off, during an emergency, wasn't just stupid. It was selfish.

What she also knew was that she needed to be alone right now. Princess Luna was not the pony she'd thought she was. Neither was her own grandmother. That or Evening Star was not the shy, nervous librarian who she'd been happy to have in her home.

Apple Bloom couldn't believe that. Evening Star had saved her life, twice now. She had used her magic to protect her and her family, when it would have been so much easier to just teleport away.

And how had they repaid her? By ignoring it, the first chance they had, when she'd called for help. And all Apple Bloom could think of was her sister.

"Howdy, sis! ...what's wrong?"

"It's Scootaloo...she's mah friend...but when ponies mention her wings, she gets so sad. I want to make her feel better, but I don't know how..."

"Aw, c'mere...Ah know it's hard...sometimes yer friends don't know how their own worth. But that don't mean you love them any less, right?"

"Yeah..."

"So next time, somepony says something about Scootaloo's wings, what are you and Sweetie Belle gonna say?"

"That...that we don't care about her wings...that we like her for who she is, not what she isn't!"

"That's right. Now, you listen to me, sugarcube. It doesn't matter if it's a classmate or a full-grown stallion with a funny way of thinking...you stick up for yerself and for yer friends. A bully is still a bully."

Apple Bloom paused in the middle of the hallway, staring at nothing. Then she turned and ran in the direction of the nearest staircase. She had to find Princess Starlight and the rest of Applejack's friends. They'd know this was wrong and they'd know what to do about it.

Unfortunately, the wetness in her eyes, combined with the constant mingling of the worried crowd, resulted in her immediately colliding with somepony's foreleg.

As she staggered and shook her head, trying to regain her balance, she looked up and realized she hadn't collided with a pony at all. Zecora now stood above her, looking her over with those deep, green eyes of hers, that could have been jungle lagoons.

"Apple Bloom, I am glad to see you safe, but why are you in such a haste?" Zecora asked, leaning down to inspect Apple Bloom's contorted face.

Apple Bloom looked away. "Ca-can you keep a secret, Zecora?"

Zecora raised an eyebrow. "At first I would have to know, what the secret is and why it can't be shown."

Apple Bloom swallowed and then looked up at the zebra who, for the past few years, had taught her not only how to brew potions, but never to judge a book by its cover.

"E-even if somepony really important told you to keep the secret?" Apple Bloom asked.

Zecora leaned down. "In the kingdom I came from, importance is not who you are but what you've done."

Apple Bloom nodded and then resolved. "Well, it-it's about the princesses..."

Evening Star had been freed of Luna's enchantment, but only so that the magic of her bindings didn't impede the spells about to be cast on her. Now she was in a plush seat, with her legs tied to the chair, a gag stuffed in her mouth and a magic inhibitor resting on her horn.

While the princesses prepared the initial magic, Starlight and a pony who'd she never seen before had entered the room, levitating with them a number of tomes about magic.

“So, can you do it?” Starlight asked, refusing to look Evening Star in her pleading eyes.

“I-I think so…but I don’t know if I want to…” The stallion said. He wore the robes of a wizard. Surely, he must have known that magic was not supposed to be used for these purposes?

“I told you what I felt when I looked inside her mind…what Luna saw when she visited her dream last night. She is black magic user.” Starlight said.

Evening Star summoned the strength to protest the statement, bucking against her binds and pleading through her gag.

It worked. The stallion turned to look at her and his concern deepened. “I know but…I went to the academy because I wanted to help ponies, Starlight…and this…this is wrong.”

Starlight cast a nervous glance at the Princesses, who hadn't seemed to have heard the traitorous statement. “Listen to me, all those ponies downstairs are in danger because of her...unless we figure out how to stop what’s coming. I saw it out there, Sunburst…it won’t just kill us…it’ll make it like we never existed in the first place.”

The pony called Sunburst lowered his head in defeat. “Oh dear…why didn’t I become a city planner like my mother?”

“Relax…remember the breathing exercises that Princess Celestia taught us. You can do this, alright? I believe in you.” Starlight said.

That was when Luna finished her work.

With a voice soft as silk and as terrifying as the night between the stars spoke. “Are we ready?”

Evening Star whimpered, again.

“Apple Bloom, I don’t understand…what you’re saying makes no sense!” Rarity said.

They were on the steps up to Starlight’s observatory. She, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie had been summoned to there to talk to Celestia and had been galloping down to find Applejack and Rainbow Dash, when they’d run into Apple Bloom and Zecora. The former was on the verge of tears. The later looked angrier than Rarity had ever seen her.

“Ah know it don’t make sense, but it's the truth!” Apple Bloom said. “They tied her up like she was a criminal and then they told us not to tell anyone!"

“You don’t think the princesses could have been replaced by Changelings, do you?” Fluttershy asked Rarity.

“Surely not!” Rarity said. “Otherwise, why would they have saved our friends’ lives?”

“Besides, there aren’t any Changelings around anymore, sillyhead!” Pinkie Pie said. “Not since Princess Celestia-”

Rarity clopped a hoof over her friend’s mouth before she could say another word and Pinkie, realizing that she’d been about to spill state secrets grinned uneasily and recoiled.

“Uh…sorry…” She said, as a haunted look overcame Fluttershy's face.

“Regardless of their motivation, we must interrupt their interrogation.” Zecora said, pushing Rarity and Pinkie Pie aside. “Evening Star’s history must not be presumed, or else all of Equestria will surely be doomed.”

“Wait!” Pinkie Pie sped up the staircase past Zecora and barred the way with her outstretched hooves. “Starlight told us she was doing really dangerous magic up there!! We can’t just go barging in!”

Zecora’s eyes narrowed, then she reached out and placed a hoof on Pinkie’s midsection, gently pushing her out of the way. “We’ve no room for distractions, now is a time for action.”

“I will be the judge of that.” Said a voice as the door opened.

All five Ponies looked up, with varying degrees of fear, at Princess Celestia. Needless to say, she did not look happy.

“Your majesty, if I may be so bold, Evening Star is a good soul.” Zecora said, bowing as she continued up the stairs as if approaching a hungry lion. “She will be the one to end this assault,” With that Zecora lifted her head to stare up at Celestia. “Provided that we forgive her faults.”

Celestia narrowed her eyes. Then she lifted a hoof. “Friends of Starlight Glimmer, please make your way downstairs. The townsfolk are liable to panic without the reassurance of your presence.”

Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Rarity all shared a look and then wordlessly began ushering Apple Bloom down the stairs.

Then Celestia turned her attention to Zecora. “I agree, wise Zecora, that the unicorn of which you speak is essential to defeating the force which has overtaken the Evergreen Forest. But I’m afraid that she is nowhere to be found. At the moment Starlight and my sister are attempting to locate her with an advanced tracking spell...you'll understand if I am reluctant to allow them to be interrupted, mid-cast.”

Zecora just stared at Celestia, as if a parent waiting for her child to fess up to a fib.

Celestia coughed. “I appreciate your concern about her, however, and I will be sure to inform you, as soon as she's located.”

Being a zebra, Zecora was a good few inches taller than all but the largest male ponies. What she was not, however, was taller than a fully grown Alicorn, especially one currently attempting to look as intimidating as possible.

Still, she continued to glare at her, any attempt at simulating the pleasantries of court replaced by lip-curling disgust.

Then Zecora turned away, galloping down the staircase and pushing past the descending ponies on her way down. In fact, she did not stop galloping until she had found unoccupied bedroom on the first floor. Once there, she stepped inside, locking the door behind her and turning to face the window by the bed. As she moved to the glass, her trained eyes searched the border of the Everfree Forest for any sign of approaching malignancy. When she was, at least, for the moment satisfied, she turned to the empty room and spoke loudly.

“Now that Discord is not nearby, I can at last become best friends with Fluttershy.” She declared, with a little smirk.

“OVER MY DEAD BODY!” Cried the draconeques who had appeared from nowhere, in, strangely enough, a mummy costume.

“Relax, I lied about my intentions, intending only to attract your attention.” Zecora said, turning to face the second reality warping entity she’d stared down today. “As you no doubt know, we are all in danger. To resolve this problem, requires a simple favor.”

Discord folded his arms and lifted his chin dismissively. “Why should I do anything for you? I take my orders from the Princesses…” He emphasized this by creating finger puppets on his lion’s paw of a white and black alicorn. “And from Fluttershy of course when she needs my help.” A third finger puppet appeared, this one yellow and much more nicely made than the other two.

“Princess Celestia turned you to stone,” Zecora said, strolling past Discord’s midsection without even acknowledging his hysterical antics. “Now is the chance to turn her subjects against the throne.”

“You want me to betray Princess Celestia?” Discord slapped his face in mock surprise and then grinned, putting on a police cap and pulling out a set of hoofcuffs. “You know, I could have you thrown in the jail for that kind of talk.”

Zecora paused by the door. “And miss your only chance, to impress your friend and prove your stance?”

Discord stared at her for a moment. Then the hat and cuffs *poofed* out of existence and he raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize I was in the presence of a fellow anarchist...what, pray-tell, my striped friend, exactly would I be doing?”

Zecora smiled.

“By combining Mink’s Marvelous Mind Bender and Hirsuite’s Mental Projection, you should be able to remove the magic shielding her subconscious.” Sunburst said, as he stared at what he was sure was not about to be a pretty sight.

Princess Luna stood in the center of the tower’s central chamber; eyes fixed on her target. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was for the good of Equestria. For the good of her subjects. Her sister had trusted her to do this.

She opened her eyes and glanced at Starlight. Starlight, who had been responsible for redeeming her, from saving her from the nightmare of Nightmare Moon. Who had taught her how to love herself again, after the Tantabus incident.

Starlight, who this mare had hurt, without even meaning to, with magic more ancient than any pony alive should be capable of unleashing.

Luna turned back toward Evening Star and smoke began to pour from her eyes. Then her horn began to glow, and the spells began to intertwine. Evening Star thrashed, as against her will, she was forced to meld magic with the alicorn princess. Her own warm pink thauma was quickly crushed by the wintry blue onslaught of the goddess of the night.

That was the moment that Twilight Sparkle woke up.