The Last Light of the Evening Star

It had started with a party.

Pinkie Pie had wanted to celebrate three years since the successful imprisonment of the Tirek, Cozy Glow and Chrysalis. Twilight had wanted to hold the party at the palace, so it could accommodate all their friends from across Equestria.

Then the letters had started coming in. Rainbow Dash was up for the position of Team Captain and so, she didn't want to take time off the Wonderbolt circuit for "yet another party." Fluttershy's sanctuary was in the process of expanding, and so she was unable to leave her position. And Applejack had to look after her grandmother and the farm. There was a time when that information would have sent Twilight flying in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres. This time she just sent a get-well basket.

Rarity had come, of course, because it gave her a chance to rub elbows with the rich, spoiled fools who Twilight had to deal with on a daily basis. But the three of them barely talked through the whole thing. It felt wrong to talk about the others behind their backs and Twilight had been busy catching up on events with Thorax and Ember and Princess Skystar. She'd put on a smile for Pinkie of course, who had not taken the news that not everypony could come well, and it had been nice, seeing her and Rarity again.

But it had felt wrong.

After that, she'd reached out to her old friends, asking if there was a better date, someday in the future that they could meet instead. There wasn't, as it turned out. She'd visited each of them. She'd thought, that if she helped Applejack through her family crisis, if she helped get Rainbow Dash to focus on something other than work, that maybe they'd come back to her. They'd want to be around her again and everything would be the way it was supposed to be.

It had worked, for a time.

But then Granny Smith had passed away. They'd all come to give their condolences and to support Applejack, but afterwards, it had been difficult to know what to do or what to say, without making the grief worse.

Then Rainbow Dash had gotten her injury. And Angel had gotten sick. And Twilight had kept trying to be there for her friends and kept finding that she couldn't, not as much as she wanted to. She had too much responsibility, too many other ponies who needed her.

So, by the time that the next anniversary party rolled around, Rarity had gotten engaged and was "too busy" preparing for the wedding to attend. And it had just been her and Pinkie Pie.

It became painful, just being around her friends, after that. Painful because of the silence where neither knew quite what to say. Painful because she wanted to help them, with all their problems, even the ones that couldn't be fixed. Painful because she couldn't and because, she discovered, they maybe didn't need her as much as she'd thought. Painful because all the good memories were tinged with bad but painful most of all, because none of them were foals anymore. They were adults, with careers and relationships and in one case, children.

They were adults and that meant they didn't have as much time for friendship as they once had. And it wasn't like they all didn't have other friends, other family members to lean on.

She had remained friends with Pinkie (because it was more difficult to not be friends with Pinkie than the opposite). Rainbow had moved in with Applejack, to help her keep the farm going and to give her some company after Big Mac got hitched. And Fluttershy and Rarity still had their spa day, only it had moved from weekly to bi-weekly, then to monthly, and finally, to once a year.

And she still had Spike.

Spike...

...

Where was Spike?! Why wasn't he here? Every creature else was here...why not him?

Oh, no...oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...

"But we have to do something!" Apple Bloom demanded.

"I know, darling...and we will...just as soon as Starlight is done with her spell." Rarity said.

Fluttershy watched as the increasingly distressed Apple Bloom turned away and galloped off into the crowd, likely to find the other members of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

"Should we follow her?" Fluttershy asked. She was starting to get serious anxiety from Rainbow Dash, Applejack AND Starlight not being around during such a stressful time.

"I'll get her!" Pinkie Pie declared, zooming off into the crowd and weaving between the clusters of frightened and angry ponies at an impossible speed.

"Oh, Fluttershy, what are we going to do? I mean, we can't just disobey the princesses." Rarity said, gnawing on her hoof. "But what if Apple Bloom and Zecora are right? What if something is wrong with Luna and Celestia?"

Fluttershy imagined the possibility for a moment, then she shivered. It would be like that one time that with the Tantabus. Except worse, because it wouldn't just be Princess Luna who'd gone bad.

"I don't know! Starlight usually makes these kinds of decisions...but we can't contact her!" Fluttershy said, turning to Rarity and shaking her by the shoulders.

"Ahem~!"

They both turned to look at Discord, who had appeared behind them and was pretending to be inspecting the claws of his lion's paw.

"Oh, Discord...did you get all the animals to safety?" Fluttershy asked.

He glanced down at her and smiled. "Yes, yes, just as you asked...but, I couldn't help overhearing you say you wanted to contact Starlight Glimmer...I was wondering if I could be of some assistance?"

Rarity shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Discord. Starlight and the other princesses are in the middle of a very important spell."

"Oh, really?" Discord asked, pulling out a pair of binoculars from nowhere. "Because I just happened to fly past the tower window on my way over and little soiree upstairs and...well...it didn't look like she was performing a spell."

Fluttershy frowned. "Wha-what do you mean?"

Discord smiled and extended his talon. "Want to take a look?"

She had tried. She had tried so hard and so many times. First with Starlight, then by herself after Starlight had refused to take part in it again.

She had seen those moments again and again, those times she'd intervened. Over and over, she had saved her friends' loved ones. Over and over, she'd fixed their problems before they even came to exist.

And over and over she'd returned to find that the world was worse for it.

The implications, that whatever Friendship issue had risen between them all, it could not be prevented or subverted or even fixed, began to terrify her. Equestria's defense plan required the power of the Elements. Without the friendship that bound the six of them together, the Elements might not be able to be awoken as before. What if there was another invasion? What if Sombra came back yet again? The whole nation would be doomed. Worse than that, she, an alicorn, might have her powers stripped from her. If some other creature gained control of the sun and the moon, it proved an existential threat to the entire planet.

Even if nothing went wrong, even if she were able to find some other ponies to become Bearers of the Elements (unlikely, Celestia had been forced to wait 1000 years before that happened), without her friends, she might lose her way as queen. The thing which had driven Luna to become Nightmare Moon, was her emotional instability and magical power. Twilight was now more powerful than Celestia and Luna combined. What if she went mad and her friends weren't there to save her?
Everything she had worked for would fall apart.

So, she continued, ignoring the increasingly disturbing changes to reality caused by her increasingly desperate trips. And yet, every time she traveled through time, every time she attempted, through a new angle of attack, to stop herself from losing the ponies who meant the most to her, she failed. Each loop she'd return to find her friends more embittered and hateful than ever. Every time she tried to fix things, they only got worse.

Twilight had wanted to stop. She had wanted to go back to the way things were. She had wanted to listen to Starlight and Spike. She wanted to go back to being queen of Equestria. She wanted to plead with her friends, to tell them all she had done and all she worried might someday happen.

But she couldn't.

She had always been...fastidious. Her mother and father had tried to get her to..."kick" her habits when she was young, afraid that she would grow up to be overly reliant on them. She supposed they had been right. But her compulsions had always been managable. After meeting the other girls, she was even able to forget them, for a time.

But stress had always worsened the symptoms of Twilight's affliction. On a particularly rough day, she'd find herself washing her hooves till they were sore or checking she'd remembered to lock a door, even though she knew, deep down, that she had. And the stress of her failure, to maintain her friendships, to keep the others in her life, not to mention of seeing the direct consequences of her actions each time she returned from the past, was too much.

Princess Luna had been right to restrain her. To treat her like a monster, worthy of Tartarus. She hadn't perverted time and space just because she was lonely. She hadn't nearly destroyed the universe because she'd missed her friends.

She had done it, because not doing was too hard.

"We...we should stop..." Sunburst said, his eyes on the tears streaming down Evening Star's twitching, unblinking face.

Luna didn't answer. The spell which had allowed her to enter Evening Star's repressed memories required a level of focus that more or less drowned out the rest of the world. She and Evening Star were now magically locked together and probably couldn't hear anything he or the others were saying.

"Luna will stop when she has the information we require." Celestia answered, from where she guarded the door.

"Please, stop it!"

It was Evening Star, her teeth gritted in agony, her face wrinkled with concern.

"Please! I don't want to see anymore! I KNOW WHAT I DID! I'M SORRY! Please...TAKE THEM AWAY!"

Sunburst moved to intrude but Celestia lifted a hoof to stay his hand and trotted up to the chair that Evening Star had been tied into. He watched as she inspected the unicorn like she was something she'd accidentally stepped on.

He couldn't take it anymore. He turned back to Starlight. "We have to stop this!"

She was staring at Evening Star, still with a look of fear...and sympathy? Her eyes moved to his.

"This is torture!" He said, pointing a hoof at the crying and squirming unicorn. "If...if this is what doing the right thing with our magic means...then...then I never want to cast a spell again!"

Starlight opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted as Evening Star cries grew louder and she began to thrash against her restraints.

"I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! PLEASE! I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN! JUST MAKE IT STOP!!!"

Starlight rushed forward to put a hoof on Luna's shoulder but was stopped when a yellow barrier of magic appeared over both the princess and Evening Star. She turned to look at Celestia, whose horn was now glowing.

"Luna will end the spell when she finds what she's looking for." Celestia said, stepping closer to Starlight.

Starlight looked at Sunburst and then at Evening Star. "Your majesty, this is wrong!" She said, after a few more moments of listening to Evening Star's now incoherent pleas.

"It was your idea, young one..." Celestia said, moving between her and Sunburst so she could keep an eye on both of them. She had not called Starlight "young one" since Starlight had become a princess.

"I know...and...I was wrong! I was scared after...what I'd seen, okay?! But please, nopony deserves this!" Starlight said.

Celestia paused in her circling trot. "You don't know what Luna saw in her dream last night..."

Starlight swallowed. "M-maybe so...but there has to be a better way than this!"

Celestia narrowed her eyes and turned to scowl at her protégé. "There isn't TIME, Princess! Remember your duty is to your subjects...they are depending on us to find the answer to remove this blight, before it consumes all that we love."

"But no pony in their right mind would want us to do this!" Sunburst said, rushing up to the princess.

She glanced, briefly at him. "Sometimes, Sunburst, things must be done, regardless of popular consensus, for the good of all."

"No!" Starlight said, as forcefully as she could to the mare twice her size. "She-she's had enough...we can find a way to stop The Dullness without hurting her like this!"

Celestia glanced at Evening Star, who was currently babbling and shaking against the chair on which she was perched. Then she hung her head and the glow around her horn faded, causing the barrier around her sister and their captive to disappear.

Starlight exhaled and trotted forward. That was when she and Sunburst were lifted into the air and thrown against a nearby bookshelf. They both grunted in pain, and although the force of the shove had not been lethal, their struggling quickly revealed that the searing yellow glow was completely immobilizing.

"Don't waste your energy struggling." Celestia advised, stepping closer to them. "I can move the sun with my telekinesis, I'll remind you."

Sunburst and Starlight shared a look of terror, but neither one slowed in their attempts to repel the magic force that was pressing down on them.

"I expected this kind of thing from Sunburst..." She said, turning away from them and trotting up to Evening Star's chair. "But you, Starlight? Well, I'm more than a little disappointed, to be honest."

"Princess! You know this is wrong!" Starlight called, as her own horn strained to dispel the telekinesis. It was no use, magical energy flowed out of Celestia like light from a star. The only thing Starlight could compare its strength to was that of the incantation which had prevented her from gaining access to Evening Star's mind.

"Yes." Celestia admitted. "But after I wipe your minds of the incident, you won't." Her eyes lowered and her pale, perfect face darkened. "And that is all that matters."

She reached out, using one gilded foreleg to brush a tear from Evening Star's agonized face. "This creature is not even a pony...do you know that? When my sister and I read her magical aura, we realized that she only *looks* like one." Celestia shook her hoof, using her magic to evaporate any remaining salty moisture from her hoof. "No, she is an aberration, from beyond time and space...she is a nightmare that persists after waking. She cannot be allowed to leave this tower...her very existence is tearing this universe apart at the seams."

This statement caused both Starlight and Sunburst to pause and again look at each other in surprise.

"That doesn't mean she doesn't have rights!" Starlight demanded.

Celestia snarled and whipped her head back toward her. "Just because I rely on you to assist in matters of state, does not mean I require your support to fulfill my duties, Princess Starlight. When you failed against King Sombra's curse and Princess Cadence was enslaved by the dark magic because of your incompetence, did I cast you aside?"

Starlight paled at the fact which Celestia had so casually revealed in front of Sunburst. The terrible truth which she had carried with them since their ill-fated trip north. But the force of Celestia's telekinesis made it impossible to turn away from either of them, so all she did was stare at the floor, as she contemplated what she and the princesses had become.

"And when I shattered the Crystal Heart and left an army of brainwashed ponies to freeze, did you protest it was wrong?" Celestia asked, stamping a hoof down for emphasis. "Did you demand that the crystal ponies, already fallen to the dark, be freed from their glacial prison?" Celestia smirked, nastily. "No, as I seem to remember, you asked me to alter your freinds' memories, so they wouldn't be haunted by the guilt of your failure. You weren't against me taking matters into my hooves when it benefited you, Starlight."

Sunburst looked between both of them, hoping to see some indication from Starlight's face that these accusations were false. He, like everypony, had been told that Cadence sacrificed herself to prevent Sombra's return, and that the Crystal Empire had disappeared yet again after the pyrrhic victory. But now he saw the deep well of guilt which Starlight had hidden so well.

"And when the Changelings, unable to co-exist alongside my little ponies, threatened to you and your friends, did you demand they be given a fair trial?" Celestia asked, stomping closer to Starlight's pinned position. "When I executed their self-imposed queen and shattered their so-called crown, did you spare a moment for the sanctity of their sovereignty?"

Celestia let out a barking sound that could be mistaken for a laugh.

"As I recall, you let your friends held a party to celebrate the defeat of the Changelings!" Celestia said. "You knew full well that my eradication of their filth was final, Starlight, and you let your closest friends think otherwise, because you were just happy to finally be safe for their abominable threat!"

Starlight just stared at the floor of the chamber in shame, as Celestia turned away with a look of disgust. "I thought that you understood the burdens which authority demands, child...but clearly I was wrong. My sister and I will have to do some major re-arrangements with your mind if you are going to impede the interrogation of one, pathetic prisoner."

That was when the window shattered and Celestia, taken aback at the sound, lost focus on her telekinesis just long enough for Starlight and Sunburst to fall to their hooves. Starlight had to stand still, however, to hold the older alicorn's magic at bay, and she cast a glance at Sunburst, begging him to intercede on her behalf. Sunburst ran for Evening Star, to interrupt the spell, but Celestia kicked out a hoof without even looking, sending him tumbling over his own hooves and breaking his glasses in the process.

Celestia didn't spare him or the increasingly drained looking Starlight. She was too busy staring at the broken window, where Discord was hovering, carefully supporting Fluttershy with his lion's paw and carrying a less than enthusiastic Rarity with his dragon's foot.

All three were staring at Celestia, although Discord was doing it with more smugness than shock. He lifted his talon and pressed the button on a cassette player, which began to replay all it had recorded.

"And when I shattered the Crystal Heart and left an army of brainwashed ponies to freeze, did you protest it was wrong?" Came a haughty, remorseless voice.

The recording was slightly muffled, because of the sounds Evening Star's had been making while Celestia gave her big speech. But owing to his manipulation of reality, he'd been able to pick up the sound even outside the room.

"I have to say, Celestia..." Discord said, as he clicked the "pause" button. "You're going to be dealing with quite the PR nightmare after this...in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if nopony wanted to be your friend."

With that he smirked.

Celestia was too enraged to care who was watching, her horn swelled with energy as she prepared to release a blast of pure energy into the draconeques. She was interrupted when a book smacked into her horn.

"Ah!" She turned and glared at Sunburst, as he continued to pull books from Starlight's nearby collection and fling them at her with the same gusto as the first.

She easily deflected them and was about to rebuke with a bolt of magic which would have put Sunburst in the infirmary for the next eleven weeks, when a yellow pegasus tackled her round the neck.

"You told us that you sent the Changelings to the moon!" Fluttershy yelled, as she kicked Celestia's throat and belly. "How could you do that!? How could you kill them?!!"

Celestia snarled and a surge of magic erupted from her, holding Sunburst, Starlight and Fluttershy in place. Then she turned to face Discord and the sobbing Rarity, her eyes smoldering with the bright orange magic of an alicorn lost to the throes of boundless supernatural power.

"Discord...give me that tape recorder..." She said, as she flexed her magic, causing all three of the ponies in her telekinetic grasp to flinch and wheeze. "Or I make it that you never get invited to a tea party again."

Discord's eyes turned into cartoon flames, and he snorted smoke out of his nostrils. Then he cast a glance at the still enraged and still resisting Fluttershy. He straightened a tie which had no reason to have appeared on his neck and smiled.

"I would just like to remind you, 'Princess', that neither you nor your sister can defeat me without the Elements of Harmony...and you can't use them if you don't have the bearers on your side...all of them. So just remember..." His aspect changed, his claws sharpening, his horns enlongating as the cartoonish appearence which barely contained his unrivaled potential began to grow in monstrous aspect. "Anything you do to Fluttershy, you better be prepared to experience it, multiple times, over the next several millennia..." He said, ducking his head to float through the window and widening midway to create a hole in the side of the tower as he slithered inside.

Finally, as he lowered onto the floor, he cracked his knuckles, ominously.

Celestia laughed and spread her wings, the tips of her feathers gleaming with golden fire, her eyes now completely overtaken by the glow of an alicorn channeling far too much magic for any one creature. "No, Discord...I couldn't imprison you without the Elements of Harmony...but all I'd need to do is drag you into The Dullness...from what I understand, it would be like you'd never even existed."

Discord sneered then glanced at the still struggling Starlight, the paralyzed Sunburst, and then again at Fluttershy. His Fluttershy. Who was crying now. Not because she was about to die, but because she was staring at Evening Star, the unicorn who'd started all of this (Discord would have to buy her a bouquet when this was all over). Fluttershy was crying because Evening Star was being mentally tormented by what? Her guilt over all she'd done?

He knew all about that.

He was about to cast his first spell (reversing gravity and thereby slamming Celestia and her incapacitated sister into the floor/ceiling) when another cry wrung out.

"No! No...that's not possible...no! TAKE IT AWAY! TAKE IT AWAY!"

But it wasn't Evening Star crying out this time. It was Luna.

Pinkie had been looking for Apple Bloom for a while now. Okay, probably not that long, but it FELT like a while. She had gotten sidetracked, once or twice, just because everypony was panicking and Princess Celestia had wanted her to calm them down.

She was about to pull out her Fluttershy disguise, in hopes that might lure Apple Bloom out of hiding. But she stopped when she saw her. Standing next to the other two members of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, staring at something on the floor.

"HA! I found you!" Pinkie said, pointing with a hoof for emphasis.

They all looked up at her, sniffing and rubbing their eyes and noses. That's when she realized what they were staring at.

Dashie and Applejack were lying on the floor, unconscious. Princess Celestia had said they were fine! This wasn't fine, this was not even remotely fine! This was so far from fine, it might as well have been on the opposite side of the planet from fine!

Pinkie dove over top the fillies and began checking the vital signs of her closest friends, pressing her ear to their chests and checking their pulses through their wrists. Having been raised on a rock farm, she knew the signs of a concussion when she saw them and was quickly relieved to discover that neither showed any of the tell-tale signs of bruising on their skulls, which would indicate they'd suffered brain damage.

"Are-are they gonna be alright?" Scootaloo asked.

Pinkie was about to answer when something bad happened. Her tail twitched. If that had just, been it, it would have been bad enough. But the tail twitch was followed by a numbness in her forehead, a feeling of cold on her ears, a sudden pain in her left back knee, a sensation of sudden displacement in her stomach, and then a high-pitched sneeze and a deafening burp.

As she shook herself, trying to determine what her body was trying to tell her, she heard a shriek and looked up to see that Derpy Hooves was flying in front of one of the windows and pointing outside with her hoof.

"Something is happening!" Derpy cried out.

The ponies throughout the chamber rushed to stare out the window and quickly the castle interior was filled with the sounds of panicked whinnies and neighs. Pinkie Pie looked back down at Rainbow Dash and then turned to the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

"Gummy's in charge until I get back!" Pinkie said, plopping her gator down atop Rainbow Dash's muzzle and sprinting to the nearby table.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders stared at Gummy and then at Pinkie.

"Did she not know you guys were here?" Scootaloo asked Big Mac and Granny Smith, who had been standing about five feet away during the entire interaction.

Big Mac shook his head. "Nope!"

Pinkie caught none of the exchange. She bounced through the crowd, until she made it close enough to vault up onto the table in the center of the room. Crushing a few plates and disturbing the royal silverware, she turned to stare out the window at whatever it was Derpy had spotted.

The Everfree Forest. She'd forgotten you could see it from the castle. After a while, it had become nothing more than a nice backdrop to look at.

Now it was obscured, however, by a mass of claws, teeth and very unhappy expressions (at least, on the monsters who had faces). The ponies all around her began to scream and trample each other in their rush to escape. Pinkie Pie didn't notice.

She was too busy staring at the congregation of displaced monsters currently stampeding in the direction of the castle.

A few things happened in a very short amount of time.

The first was that Luna broke the connection between herself and Evening Star, snapping both of them awake. The second was that Celestia was momentarily distracted (again), giving Rarity the opportunity to disrupt her telekinesis and allowing Starlight to break the hold of the spell on her.

The third was Discord splattering the dazed Luna and confused Celestia with a firehose of glue. The two alicorns collided and skidded across the ground, slamming into a now empty bookshelf, which promptly fell atop the heap of tangled limbs and quickly solidifying yellow paste.

"That won't hold them for long!" Discord said, as Starlight raced over to Evening Star's chair and began undoing the straps on her.

"Yeah, no kidding!" Sunburst complained, adjusting his now bent frame and peering through the less cracked of the two lenses, as he helped remove the magic inhibitor from Evening Star's horn (which, had he not been short-sighted, he would have noticed was now coated in an almost transparent layer of ice.

"Is she alright?" Rarity asked, as she galloped over to help Starlight pull Evening Star off the chair.

"I don't know...right now we need to get out of here before the Princesses decide we'd all be better off on the moon." Starlight said, with a shiver.

She paused as she realized that both Rarity was not looking at her, but at Sunburst. Realizing all they had just heard, Starlight's spirits plummeted, and she stared at the ground. She deserved to be shunned by them. And worse. She wouldn't blame them if they never spoke to her again.

Discord turned to Fluttershy, who was staring out the hole he'd made in the tower. He turned to follow her gaze and saw the hundreds of enraged residents of the Everfree Forest, approaching the castle at a lethal speed. But it wasn't the legion of monsters which troubled him.

It was the view of the Everfree Forest, which was growing grayer and more indistinct by the moment.

"Oh...that can't be good."

Right then a singed bookshelf launched itself at Discord at around 80 miles an hour. It slammed into him, sending him flying back through the hole he had created. The group as one turned to watch as Princess Celestia clambered out of the pile, her natural warmth causing the glue to melt off her and blacken on the floorboards. Still a few book pages and splinters from the fallen shelf stuck to her coat, as she trotted toward them, her horn now longer glow yellow, but now a blood red.

The golden horseshoes which signaled her regality melted off her hooves as she walked and slid off her burning skin, the liquid metal burning holes in the floor and solidifying halfway somewhere in the stairwell below. As she trotted towards them, her perfect pearly teeth sharpened and her eyes began to glow so brightly, they were now painful just to stare at. She snorted, causing the water in the air in front of her to evaporate with a dull hiss.

Rarity gulped and pressed into Fluttershy and Evening Star as Starlight prepared to defend them in what was sure to be the greatest magical duel since Luna's corruption.

Then a beam of purple energy slammed into Celestia, sending her crashing through the wall of the tower and disappearing on the horizon.

Rarity, Sunburst, Fluttershy and Starlight all turned to stare at the unicorn who had done this, and whose cutie mark was now glowing brightly and...sparking? It seemed like little bits of magic were flying off Evening Star's hide. She still looked exhausted, leaning on both Rarity and Starlight to stay upright. But now there was a determination in her eyes, something like the determination that Celestia had shown a moment earlier.

But even stronger.

"The Dullness...is coming." Twilight said. "We haven't much time...Sunburst...you need to list for me every spell might help repair the fissure in time. Starlight, you, Rarity and the rest of the unicorns down below need to conjure up a force field to surround the castle. It doesn't have to last forever, just until I can fix the problem."

"Evening Star, it doesn't matter how little time you need; we can't create a shield spell that big! Only the princesses could have-" Starlight began.

Twilight lifted up a hoof. "First things first. My name isn't Evening Star. It's Twilight. Second thing, you are the most talented mage this kingdom has ever seen, and you are the Bearer of the Element of Magic..." With that she reached out and pressed a hoof to Starlight's chest. "...if anyone can do this, it's you."

She turned to look at Rarity. "Besides...I think you're underestimating just how much help your friends will be able to give you."

Rarity looked away and Starlight felt all the hope that had been in her a moment before vanish.

"I know you're all scared, and angry..." Twilight said, looking between the four ponies. "But you are the only ones who can fix this, right now, alright?"

Then she turned toward the pegasus by the window. "Fluttershy, the creatures in the Everfree Forest want to kill me...they believe that if they do, it will stop the Dullness destroying their home. It won't. Once the dome is up, you need to convince them to run away instead of attacking the castle, otherwise they'll be killed by the Dullness."

"I'm sorry, darling...are you saying that all this time, they've been after you?" Rarity asked, pointing a hoof at Twilight.

"Alright, Miss Sunshine! You want to fight dirty, that's what we'll do!" Discord said, appearing back in the room in a puff of teleportation, and rolling up his fur as if it was sleeves. When he realized that his foe was nowhere to be seen, he paused in what he was doing.

"Discord...I need you to take me to your home. The Chaos Dimension." Twilight said, stepping out of the grip of Starlight and Rarity and stumbling in his direction.

"What? No way Jose...I am staying right here and protecting Fluttershy." Discord said, one arm enlengthening impossibly to wrap around the yellow pegasus and pull her close. "Besides, I was in the middle of battling Celestia, and I have a giant kazoo that I was really looking forward to using on her..."

Fluttershy flew in front of him and put her hooves together. "Please, Discord, I don't know what's going on anymore, but we need to do what she says, before it's too late!"

Discord stared at her most adorable, pleading look. Then he waved a claw and rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine...I'll take the librarian to my old stomping grounds...but I warn you, it isn't going to be pretty...'

Twilight turned away. "I guarantee you...I've seen worse."

"Wait a moment...what about the Princesses?" Starlight asked.

"By the time either of them recovers it will be too late to stop us." Twilight said. She paused when she saw the look of guilt on Starlight's face. "They will be fine, I promise. But if waste time trying to save them, they will most assuredly die, along with every other living thing on this planet. Understand?"

Starlight nodded, slowly. "I'm sorry..." She said, as Twilight turned back toward Discord.

"It's fine...none of this is your fault." Twilight said, as she stepped closed to the draconeques. She stopped to glance back at Fluttershy and Rarity. "You two aren't going to understand this...but I'm sorry...for everything."

They frowned and glanced between each other. But when they looked back the unicorn had already disappeared into a massive purple and black portal, alongside Discord.