Ciderfest 2023 Mane Story Sunday Morning - "Counterpoint"by NyronusChaptersIf Fizzy is Saved, and Heroes Are In The LeadIf Fizzy Is Saved, and Chaos Is In The Lead [CANON]If Fizzy is Saved, and Villains Are In The LeadIf Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Heroes Are In The LeadIf Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Chaos Is In The LeadIf Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Villains Are In The LeadIf Fizzy is Saved, and Heroes Are In The LeadBarley ducked under an energy beam. “Ahh!!!” Caramel beamed at an energy duck. “Oh! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!” Fizzy energized her duck beam. “Why is my kirin magic so weird today?” And then a deluge of tomatoes, fired from Trixie’s Personal Trauma Artillery, came crashing down on the field in a devastating volley of impolite criticism, sending the three of them and everyone else in the vicinity running. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. And over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And the middle of all of it, Fizzy, Caramel, and Barley found themselves racing through the battlefield. “This has gotten way out of hoof!” Fizzy shouted as she ran, veering to the side to avoid getting caught in another crossfire as various headcanons dueled for supremacy. “The factions all have so many pages!” Her eyes widened in despair as she grimaced. “I really messed this one up.” “Hey, don’t talk like that!” Barley shouted between gasps, pausing to duck as guests, aligned with Heroes and Villains, sent downvotes back and forth overhead. “We’re all here together! We trust each other, and there’s nothing we can’t do together!” Fizzy looked over to Barley, her smile soft and her eyes wide with appreciation, only breaking her expression to jump over a plothole. “Thanks, Bar,” she said. “I dunno, that seems like a really dark cloud.” Caramel interjected, looking up. “I was really going for the silver lining, here.” Barley said, embarrassed. “No, not that! Look!” and Caramel slowed her run to a trot, pointing her hoof heavenward. The other two stopped and followed it with their gaze. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Oh no.” Barley started. “Oh nonononono.” He began looking around, panicked. “What do we do? Whatdowedo? Whatawedooo?!” “Barley, calm down!” Caramel pleaded, shaking him. “Right, right. Together. Unstoppable. Friendship is magic. Okay. Okay!” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. He then looked at Caramel. “What do we do?” “We have to get up there.” Fizzy said, staring at the dark cloud, determined. “There?” Barley asked. “In the horrible monster cloud?!” “Whoever is behind that must have a lot of pages.” Fizzy explained. “If we can take those away, it will at least stop them from making more monsters, and maybe we can edit them to fix this!” She then looked away and frowned. “But how do we get up there? I lost all my pages last night!” “Fizz, we just gotta ask for some help!” Caramel beamed, and pointed. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. The three of them walked over, Fizzy leaning down to the scared child, her face split with a tired but heroic grin. “On behalf of the con staff,” she began, “I, Fizzy Glitch, would like to ask you if you want to help save Ciderfest!” Seated three in a row in a lopsided bi-plane drawn in bright red crayon, Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy took to the embattled skies. “The Red-Crayon Baron flies again!” Caramel whooped. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Barley shouted. He banked the plane to the right as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things, swam through the air towards them. Fizzy turned her lumpy turret towards the monsters, and with a whoop, unleashed a barrage of sketched yellow tear-drops at the beasts. There was a series of orange, spiky explosions, and the nightmares fell from the sky, black Xs crudely drawn where their eyes should be. “Alright, girls.” Barley said, clutching the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” And with that, he pulled up, and the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way to get where we’re going!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” “Are we really the heroes here?” Fizzy hollered. “Self-Insert is a valid form of storytelling!” Barley shouted back. “There!” Caramel pointed. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the three quickly leapt from the plane. Each took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Fizzy said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish that game!” Fizzy bemoaned. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, taking a defensive stance. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Besides, how do you propose to stop me?” “They won’t have to!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “Cavalry’s here!” Caramel whooped and pumped a fist. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended, they began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames, before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy got swept into the ensuing chaos. “Really wish I had some Pony Ranger powers right now!” Barley yelped as he kicked one of the skeletal eel monsters into the path of a silver fireball launched by Starswirl. “We have to figure out how to end this quick!” Caramel shouted, swinging one of the tentacled sorcerers around to shield herself from a barrage of rubber chickens Cheese Sandwich had unleashed. “There!” Fizzy said, pointing. Hovering behind Grogar, wrapped in yellow light, was a thick sheaf of pages. “I’ll cover you!” Caramel shouted, squaring up as she pulled out two mugs, holding them like brass knuckles. “Here we go!” Barley leapt to the air, and grabbed Fizzy. Another arc of demonic fire came at them. “Throw me!” Fizzy shouted. With a wordless howl of defiance, Barley did so with all his might before veering away from the fireblast. Fizzy sailed through the air, hitting the ground running. A monster screeched and lashed at her with a talon. She swung her hind legs forward, sliding under the blow on her flank, right next to Grogar, who too caught up shouting orders and throwing balefire to notice for just a second. Which was all Fizzy needed. “Shor–” Fizzy said, tensing every muscle in her body as she slid under the pages, “–YOUKEN!” And with a great leap, Fizzy launched into the air, her hoof raised in a halo of blue kirin-fire, in a single, devastating uppercut. Grgoar’s telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air, no longer under his control. “YOU–” Grogar wheeled on her, massive hoof raised and wreathed in hellfire, “–WORM!” “Now!” Starswirl shouted. The Pillars, back to back, all linked hooves, and began to glow. Raising into the air, a halo of rainbow light began whirling around them. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The seven ponies rose, a great hum filling the battlefield. Suddenly, the halo stopped spinning, and the humming silenced. And then the world was filled with rainbows. The monsters disappeared with a wave of screams and snarls cut suddenly short, the power of Harmony banishing the misbegotten creations of Grogar’s dark magic. Unfortunately for everyone else, the same could be said of his castle. There was a great crack, and the whole structure began falling apart as it crashed to earth. “Operation Bounce is a go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos quickly followed suit. “Fizzy!” Barley cried out, and pointed. Caramel turned to look. Fizzy stood up precariously at the gate to the crumbling castle. And the chunk of stone beneath her heaved, and cracked, and began to fall away. Barely and Caramel watched as she began to fall. She looked up at them… …and grinned. She snatched a page from the air around her, and shouted something Caramel didn’t hear. The two watched her write something, and then take a leap from the crumbling stone. There was a flash of blue light, and no more. “Gather as many pages as you can!” Starswirl ordered. “We need to evacuate, but this isn’t over!” Barley swooped down and began running towards Caramel. “We have to go!” He shouted, breaking her from her stunned shock. The two ran to the plane, hopping just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “What did she say!?” Caramel asked, panicked. “Did you hear her? What did she say?!” “‘We got this,’” Barley said, letting out a breath. He then turned back to Caramel and gave a small grin. “‘Trust me.’” Caramel sat for a moment, breathing heavily, and then gave a small nod back, her face breaking into a grin. Barley turned, and gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Starswirl was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This isn’t over. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel nodded. “But whatever happens, we got this. You, me,” she put a hoof of Barley’s shoulder, “and Fizzy, together.” Barley looked back to her and grinned. “All of us, together.” If Fizzy Is Saved, and Chaos Is In The Lead [CANON]Barley ducked under an energy beam. “Ahh!!!” Caramel beamed at an energy duck. “Oh! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!” Fizzy energized her duck beam. “Why is my kirin magic so weird today?” And then a deluge of tomatoes, fired from Trixie’s Personal Trauma Artillery, came crashing down on the field in a devastating volley of impolite criticism, sending the three of them and everyone else in the vicinity running. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. And over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And the middle of all of it, Fizzy, Caramel, and Barley found themselves racing through the battlefield. “This has gotten way out of hoof!” Fizzy shouted as she ran, veering to the side to avoid getting caught in another crossfire as various headcanons dueled for supremacy. “The factions all have so many pages!” Her eyes widened in despair as she grimaced. “I really messed this one up.” “Hey, don’t talk like that!” Barley shouted between gasps, pausing to duck as guests, aligned with Heroes and Villains, sent downvotes back and forth overhead. “We’re all here together! We trust each other, and there’s nothing we can’t do together!” Fizzy looked over to Barley, her smile soft and her eyes wide with appreciation, only breaking her expression to jump over a plot hole. “Thanks, Bar,” she said. “I dunno, that seems like a really dark cloud.” Caramel interjected, looking up. “I was really going for the silver lining, here.” Barley said, embarrassed. “No, not that! Look!” and Caramel slowed her run to a trot, pointing her hoof heavenward. The other two stopped and followed it with their gaze. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Oh no.” Barley started. “Oh nonononono.” He began looking around, panicked. “What do we do? Whatdowedo? Whatawedooo?!” “Barley, calm down!” Caramel pleaded, shaking him. “Right, right. Together. Unstoppable. Friendship is magic. Okay. Okay!” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. He then looked at Caramel. “What do we do?” “We have to get up there.” Fizzy said, staring at the dark cloud, determined. “There?” Barley asked. “In the horrible monster cloud?!” “Whoever is behind that must have a lot of pages.” Fizzy explained. “If we can take those away, it will at least stop them from making more monsters, and maybe we can edit them to fix this!” She then looked away and frowned. “But how do we get up there? I lost all my pages last night!” “Fizz, we just gotta ask for some help!” Caramel beamed, and pointed. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. The three of them walked over, Fizzy leaning down to the scared child, her face split with a tired but heroic grin. “On behalf of the con staff,” she began, “I, Fizzy Glitch, would like to ask you if you want to help save Ciderfest!” Seated three in a row in a lopsided bi-plane drawn in bright red crayon, Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy took to the embattled skies. “The Red-Crayon Baron flies again!” Caramel whooped. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Barley shouted. He banked the plane to the right as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things, swam through the air towards them. Fizzy turned her lumpy turret towards the monsters, and with a whoop, unleashed a barrage of sketched yellow tear-drops at the beasts. There was a series of orange, spiky explosions, and the nightmares fell from the sky, black Xs crudely drawn where their eyes should be. “Alright, girls.” Barley said, clutching the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” And with that, he pulled up, and the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way to get where we’re going!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” “Are we really the heroes here?” Fizzy hollered. “Self-Insert is a valid form of storytelling!” Barley shouted back. “There!” Caramel pointed. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the three quickly leapt from the plane. Each took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Fizzy said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish that game!” Fizzy bemoaned. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, taking a defensive stance. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Besides, how do you propose to stop me?” “They won’t have to!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “Cavalry’s here!” Caramel whooped and pumped a fist. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended, they began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames, before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy got swept into the ensuing chaos. “Really wish I had some Pony Ranger powers right now!” Barley yelped as he kicked one of the skeletal eel monsters into the path of a silver fireball launched by Starswirl. “We have to figure out how to end this quick!” Caramel shouted, swinging one of the tentacled sorcerers around to shield herself from a barrage of rubber chickens Cheese Sandwich had unleashed. “There!” Fizzy said, pointing. Hovering behind Grogar, wrapped in yellow light, was a thick sheaf of pages. “I’ll cover you!” Caramel shouted, squaring up as she pulled out two mugs, holding them like brass knuckles. “Here we go!” Barley leapt to the air, and grabbed Fizzy. Another arc of demonic fire came at them. “Throw me!” Fizzy shouted. With a wordless howl of defiance, Barley did so with all his might before veering away from the fireblast. Fizzy sailed through the air, hitting the ground running. A monster screeched and lashed at her with a talon. She swung her hind legs forward, sliding under the blow on her flank, right next to Grogar, who too caught up shouting orders and throwing balefire to notice for just a second. Which was all Fizzy needed. “Shor–” Fizzy said, tensing every muscle in her body as she slid under the pages, “–YOUKEN!” And with a great leap, Fizzy launched into the air, her hoof raised in a halo of blue kirin-fire, in a single, devastating uppercut. Grgoar’s telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air, no longer under his control. “YOU–” Grogar wheeled on her, massive hoof raised and wreathed in hellfire, “–WORM!” “Gotcha!” Pinkie giggled. And then, falling through the air, directly over the battlefield, she proceeded to whip an impossibly large Party Battleship Cannon from inside of her mane, and leveled it directly at Grogar’s face. The entire battlefield hung silent for one, stunned moment. And then Pinkie Pie fired an entire national holiday’s worth of fireworks all at once, cackling like a madmare. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared in rage and pain, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The multicolored, smoking explosions and chaos sent his monstrous minions fleeing in animal panic and scattered the Pillars. Unfortunately, she may have overdone it, just a tad. There was a great crack, and the whole floating castle began crumbling apart as it crashed to earth. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies cleared the panicking nightmares and came together. “We must retreat! This clash is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. “Fizzy!” Barley cried out, and pointed. Caramel turned to look. Fizzy stood up precariously at the gate to the crumbling castle. And the chunk of stone beneath her heaved, and cracked, and began to fall away. Barely and Caramel watched as she began to fall. She looked up at them… …and grinned. She snatched a page from the air around her, and shouted something Caramel didn’t hear. The two watched her write something, and then take a leap from the crumbling stone. There was a flash of blue light, and no more. “Alright everyone, Operation Grab After Smash is a go!” Pinkie laughed, sailing into the crumbling courtyard on an umbrella. “This party is just getting started, and we need all the pages we can get!” Her Commandos saluted with as many rubber duckies, whoopie cushions, and roman candles as they had, and set to work gathering the scattering pages. Barley swooped down and began running towards Caramel. “We have to go!” He shouted, breaking her from her stunned shock. The two ran to the plane, hopping just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “What did she say!?” Caramel asked, panicked. “Did you hear her? What did she say?!” “‘We got this,’” Barley said, letting out a breath. He then turned back to Caramel and gave a small grin. “‘Trust me.’” Caramel sat for a moment, breathing heavily, and then gave a small nod back, her face breaking into a grin. Barley turned, and gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Pinkie was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just beginning. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel nodded. “But whatever happens, we got this. You, me,” she put a hoof of Barley’s shoulder, “and Fizzy, together.” Barley looked back to her and grinned. “All of us, together.” If Fizzy is Saved, and Villains Are In The LeadBarley ducked under an energy beam. “Ahh!!!” Caramel beamed at an energy duck. “Oh! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!” Fizzy energized her duck beam. “Why is my kirin magic so weird today?” And then a deluge of tomatoes, fired from Trixie’s Personal Trauma Artillery, came crashing down on the field in a devastating volley of impolite criticism, sending the three of them and everyone else in the vicinity running. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. And over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And the middle of all of it, Fizzy, Caramel, and Barley found themselves racing through the battlefield. “This has gotten way out of hoof!” Fizzy shouted as she ran, veering to the side to avoid getting caught in another crossfire as various headcanons dueled for supremacy. “The factions all have so many pages!” Her eyes widened in despair as she grimaced. “I really messed this one up.” “Hey, don’t talk like that!” Barley shouted between gasps, pausing to duck as guests, aligned with Heroes and Villains, sent downvotes back and forth overhead. “We’re all here together! We trust each other, and there’s nothing we can’t do together!” Fizzy looked over to Barley, her smile soft and her eyes wide with appreciation, only breaking her expression to jump over a plothole. “Thanks, Bar,” she said. “I dunno, that seems like a really dark cloud.” Caramel interjected, looking up. “I was really going for the silver lining, here.” Barley said, embarrassed. “No, not that! Look!” and Caramel slowed her run to a trot, pointing her hoof heavenward. The other two stopped and followed it with their gaze. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Oh no.” Barley started. “Oh nonononono.” He began looking around, panicked. “What do we do? Whatdowedo? Whatawedooo?!” “Barley, calm down!” Caramel pleaded, shaking him. “Right, right. Together. Unstoppable. Friendship is magic. Okay. Okay!” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. He then looked at Caramel. “What do we do?” “We have to get up there.” Fizzy said, staring at the dark cloud, determined. “There?” Barley asked. “In the horrible monster cloud?!” “Whoever is behind that must have a lot of pages.” Fizzy explained. “If we can take those away, it will at least stop them from making more monsters, and maybe we can edit them to fix this!” She then looked away and frowned. “But how do we get up there? I lost all my pages last night!” “Fizz, we just gotta ask for some help!” Caramel beamed, and pointed. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. The three of them walked over, Fizzy leaning down to the scared child, her face split with a tired but heroic grin. “On behalf of the con staff,” she began, “I, Fizzy Glitch, would like to ask you if you want to help save Ciderfest!” Seated three in a row in a lopsided bi-plane drawn in bright red crayon, Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy took to the embattled skies. “The Red-Crayon Baron flies again!” Caramel whooped. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Barley shouted. He banked the plane to the right as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things, swam through the air towards them. Fizzy turned her lumpy turret towards the monsters, and with a whoop, unleashed a barrage of sketched yellow tear-drops at the beasts. There was a series of orange, spiky explosions, and the nightmares fell from the sky, black Xs crudely drawn where their eyes should be. “Alright, girls.” Barley said, clutching the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” And with that, he pulled up, and the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way to get where we’re going!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” “Are we really the heroes here?” Fizzy hollered. “Self-Insert is a valid form of storytelling!” Barley shouted back. “There!” Caramel pointed. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the three quickly leapt from the plane. Each took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Fizzy said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish that game!” Fizzy bemoaned. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, taking a defensive stance. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Besides, how do you propose to stop me?” “They won’t have to!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “Cavalry’s here!” Caramel whooped and pumped a fist. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended, they began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames, before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy got swept into the ensuing chaos. “Really wish I had some Pony Ranger powers right now!” Barley yelped as he kicked one of the skeletal eel monsters into the path of a silver fireball launched by Starswirl. “We have to figure out how to end this quick!” Caramel shouted, swinging one of the tentacled sorcerers around to shield herself from a barrage of rubber chickens Cheese Sandwich had unleashed. “There!” Fizzy said, pointing. Hovering behind Grogar, wrapped in yellow light, was a thick sheaf of pages. “I’ll cover you!” Caramel shouted, squaring up as she pulled out two mugs, holding them like brass knuckles. “Here we go!” Barley leapt to the air, and grabbed Fizzy. Another arc of demonic fire came at them. “Throw me!” Fizzy shouted. With a wordless howl of defiance, Barley did so with all his might before veering away from the fireblast. Fizzy sailed through the air, hitting the ground running. A monster screeched and lashed at her with a talon. She swung her hind legs forward, sliding under the blow on her flank, right next to Grogar, who too caught up shouting orders and throwing balefire to notice for just a second. Which was all Fizzy needed. “Shor–” Fizzy said, tensing every muscle in her body as she slid under the pages, “–YOUKEN!” And with a great leap, Fizzy launched into the air, her hoof raised in a halo of blue kirin-fire, in a single, devastating uppercut. Grgoar’s telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air, no longer under his control. “YOU–” Grogar wheeled on her, massive hoof raised and wreathed in hellfire, “–WORM!” And with a roar of infernal rage, he brought it slamming down. And the darkness of Tartarus followed with it. “Operation Bounce is go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard ahead of the oncoming destruction. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos rushed to follow suit. Great glowing cracks rent through the entire courtyard, followed by great gouts of that yellow and black fire, which burst up from them and came back crashing down, scattering both the Pillars and the last of Pinkie’s Commandos. Not even given a moment to breathe, the monsters rushed in behind the devastation, giving out shrieks of triumph as the battle became a full on rout. The entire castle began shaking apart under the assault. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies fought a desperate retreat, linking up as the nightmares closed in. “We must retreat! This clash is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. “Fizzy!” Barley cried out, and pointed. Caramel turned to look. Fizzy struggled to pull herself up at the far end of the courtyard, having been thrown clear by the blast. She was injured, but alive. Then the chunk of stone beneath her heaved, cracked, and began to fall away. Barely and Caramel watched as she began to fall. She looked up at them… …and gave a tired, but defiant grin. She snatched a page from the air around her, and shouted something Caramel didn’t hear. The two watched her write something, and then take a leap from the crumbling stone. There was a flash of blue light, and no more. “NOW IS THE FATED HOUR!” Grogar bellowed in triumph. His bell began clanging back and forth as the pages fluttering the air were seized in his magic. His monsters swarmed around him in a wave. “NO MORE SHALL THE DARKNESS BE DENIED! WEEP, EQUESTRIA, FOR THIS IS BUT THE START OF WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE!” Barley swooped down and began running towards Caramel. “We have to go!” He shouted, breaking her from her stunned shock. The two ran to the plane, hopping in just as a group of monsters took notice and wheeled to give chase. “What did she say!?” Caramel asked, panicked. “Did you hear her? What did she say?!” “‘We got this,’” Barley said, letting out a breath. He then turned back to Caramel, exhaustion and fear plain on his face, but still gave a small, determined grin. “‘Trust me.’” Caramel sat for a moment, breathing heavily, and then gave a small nod back, her face breaking into an equally small, but fierce grin. Barley turned, and gunned the engines, taking off as the monsters closed in. “Grogar was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just the start of the battle. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel nodded. “But whatever happens, we got this. You, me,” she put a hoof of Barley’s shoulder, “and Fizzy, together.” Barley looked back to her and grinned. “All of us, together.” If Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Heroes Are In The LeadFizzy slowly came to, and as she did, the warmth of sleep was replaced with a horrible numbness. They didn’t care. She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position. I did all this, for them, and they didn’t care. So that was it, then. She’d opened the book. Created the greatest convention in Ciderfest’s history with its magic. And what happened? When they finally met her, all they could do was complain and tell her to stop. What did I expect? Fizzy snorted. Here you are yet again, Fizzy. You can literally change the world, and no one will care. The tears came again. After a time, Fizzy slowly dragged herself from bed, and went to wash up. She didn’t notice the warning lights on the instruments flashing as she did so. “Duck!” Barley shouted and pointed. “Duck!” Caramel shouted in response. “Yeah!” Barley began. “Someone made a giant du-wahhh!” Caramel managed to yank him back into the trench just in time to avoid another volley of rotten tomatoes. “AND THIS IS FOR THE TIME THE CANTERLOTER GAVE MY SHOW A ONE STAR REVIEW!” Trixie’s voice echoed across the battlefield as she loaded another batch of spoiled vegetables into her Personal Trauma Artillery. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages, all vying for control of the book. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. Over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And Caramel and Barley found themselves alone in the middle of this battlefield of ideas. “This has really gotten out of hoof!” Barley wailed as another blast of vegetables rained down. “We gotta move! If we can find a calm spot, we can think about what to do.” Caramel nudged him forward. “Come on, crawl!” The two of them set off, crawling through the literal-metaphorical writing trenches. On the fields above, guests working with different factions sent malicious downvotes after one another. Barley came to halt, curling up to avoid dueling headcanons whose brawl nearly spilled into the trench. He did not move even after they passed. Caramel crawled alongside him to find him crying. “It’s too much,” he gasped. “It’s too much, and we messed it up. We messed it all up.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. Fizzy. “It’s okay, Bar,” she said, patting his back. “We just gotta keep moving. Keep moving, and…” Not able to finish the thought, the two of them continued on. Fizzy’s chair lowered from the ceiling into her battlestation. Despite sleep and shower, she looked exhausted, her nirik flame barely flickering. With a press of a button, her monitors came to life. And across them were dozens and dozens of warnings. “I… what—” Fizzy began furiously cycling through logs and feeds and saw utter chaos. The convention has descended into an all-out brawl, and the pages were both the prizes and the blows traded. She shook her head and frowned. “I just have to fix thi—” Her hoof reached down to where her stash of pages was, and she felt… nothing. Panicking. She searched around, seeing nothing. Then she furiously began typing away on her keyboard, looking through her own security recordings only to see… Chrysalis?! In silent, stuttering frames, she watched as “Twilight Sparkle” waited, forgotten in the argument, until Barley and Caramel left, only to turn into the Changeling queen and steal her pages! No. Nonononononono! Fizzy collapsed, her head a mess of white noise as she watched her grand, magical convention fall apart before her eyes, helpless to stop it. And alone. She might have sat there forever, but something caught her eye. Something that was rapidly becoming visible on every one of her feeds. Something that looked bad. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. “That can’t be good.” Barley whispered. “I dunno,” Caramel said, softly, staring up helplessly. “Maybe someone just wanted to fight in the shade?” And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Car,” Barley said, shaking, helpless. “What do we do?” “I just–” Caramel’s eyes screwed close in concentration. “Whoever is doing this has to have a lot of pages. If we can just get them–” “From inside the monster cloud?!” Barley’s voice cracked. “It’s the only idea I have!” Caramel said back, panic clear in her voice. She then collapsed on her haunches and moaned. “Oh, we don’t even have a way to get there.” The two stood alone on the hill as doom came raining down from above. Caramel stared at the ground and Barley… Barley was taking deep breaths, counting backwards from ten, and most importantly, staring at something, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Maybe,” he began. “Maybe, if we can’t get there alone… we can ask for help.” Caramel looked up, and then followed his gaze. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. Barely trotted towards the child, and Caramel quickly followed. “Hey kid,” he said with a nervous, tired grin. “Wanna help save Ciderfest?” Fizzy was watching it all fall apart. The con was a battleground, and now a hoard of living nightmares was descending on it. And there was nothing she could do about it. Fizzy screamed. Over and over again, wordlessly, her fiery mane a swirling inferno. She screamed again and again, until there was nothing left inside of her. Eventually she looked back at the screen. And she saw something. Something wildly out of place in the grim scene. A flicker of life coming back to her, she zoomed in, and, without a sound, her face began steaming as tears tried to roll down her face. Flying alone into the cloud of monsters was a bright red bi-plane, scribbled in crayon. And flying it was none other than Barley and Caramel. Fizzy laughed. There was still hope. They could save the day. They could fix the problems she’d caus– Fizzy stomped down on the surge of bitterness that welled up inside of her with a grimace. Now wasn’t the time for that. There was hope. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Caramel shouted. She pointed to the left as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things swam through the air towards them. “Rodger!” Barley called in reply. “Hold on!” He dipped the nose of the plane down and gunned the engines. Caramel shrieked as massive, misshapen claws scythed overhead. Barley then pulled up, pushing the crayon engine for all it was worth. “We can lose them in the storm!” he barked, pulling back on the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” With one final press on the gas, the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way forward!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” There was a moment of silence. “Are we really the heroes, here?” Barley said, barely audible over the din. Caramel frowned, and set her pen back down. “‘And then our… our fearless protagonists, who made many mistakes, but who nonetheless wanted to do right and fixed this problem… this problem that they helped cause… saw what they were looking for.” “I think it worked, look!” Barley said, nodding forward. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the two of them quickly leapt from the plane. They took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Caramel said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish watching Fizzy play that game.” Barley said, a note of regret in his voice. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, his face pale. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Not to mention, you speak it with such confidence.” “Good thing we’re here with enough confidence for everypony!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “I’ll take anything at this point,” Barley uttered in disbelief. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended. They began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. “Look!” Barley called out, ducking as one the skeletal eyeless monsters was sent flying overhead by Rockhoof. Caramel rolled out of the way and kicked one of the purple tentacle-faced beasts into the path of a unicycle hurled with great force by Cheese Sandwich. She snapped her head to follow Barley’s shout. Floating behind Grogar, sheathed in sickly yellow light, was a stack of pages. “We have to get them!” She said, leaping into a sprint. Barley fell in behind her, galloping as hard as he could. Several monsters saw the burst of movement and gave chase. The two ran, the creatures hot on their heels. Their chests burned as they gulped down air. Close. So close! And then another, even larger group of monsters leapt into their path. Barley leapt into the air and grabbed Caramel, hauling her airborne. He managed three flaps, almost clearing the blockade– –only for a claw to clamp down on his tail. With a shout of despair and surprise, he did the only thing he could think of, and threw Caramel into the air as he was dragged back down. Caramel hung suspended in the air.. Not gonna make it. She thought, distantly, as her arc began to descend down. She looked up, time slowing. Grogar was watching her, conjuring up more fire. She couldn’t dodge. Too far, she thought. But she had to try. As she fell into the waiting hoard beneath, she pulled a mug from inside her dress, and pulled back, and letting out a wordless yell that carried all the fear, defiance, regret, and despair inside of her, she threw the mug as hard as she could. Fizzy’s entire world crawled to a halt, consisting only of the image of Caramel suspended in the air, making a last, desperate stand, and an empty room that mocked all her ambitions. She’d watched it all happen, and no matter how often she looked, she saw no way to affect the outcome. Until something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. In a flash, the page, forgotten and wedged under a cabinet, covered in all her plans and ideas, appeared on her desk, and her pen came down, as she too gave out a desperate yell. Two miracles happened at once. First, an over-eager monster leapt up for Caramel as she let the shot fly, both knocking her clear of the crowd of monsters, and inadvertently taking the fireblast Grogar had intended for her. Second, Grogar, too distracted from disbelief at that sight, failed to see the mug fly past him and strike true. His telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air. He snapped back to see the mug clatter against the cobblestone behind him, and wheel back around, death in his glowing red eyes. “YOU–” He reared back as a vortex of balefire roared to life between his horns “-WORMS!” “Now!” Starswirl shouted. The Pillars, back to back, all linked hooves and began to glow. Raising into the air, a halo of rainbow light began whirling around them. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The seven ponies rose, a great hum filling the battlefield. Suddenly, the halo stopped spinning, and the humming silenced. And then the world was filled with rainbows. The monsters disappeared with a wave of screams and snarls cut suddenly short, the power of Harmony banishing the misbegotten creations of Grogar’s dark magic. Unfortunately for everyone else, the same could be said of his castle. There was a great crack, and the whole structure began falling apart as it crashed to earth. “Operation Bounce is a go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos quickly followed suit. Barley scrambled to his hooves as the monsters disintegrated. With a look he turned to Caramel. “We gotta go!” He shouted, and scrambled for the plane. “Gather as many pages as you can!” Starswirl ordered. “We need to evacuate, but this isn’t over!” The two ran as fast as they could, hopping into the plane just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “That was insane,” Caramel said, scrambling into her seat. “I’m not gonna question getting out of this in one piece!” Barley retorted as he took the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get out of here!” He gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Starswirl was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This isn’t over. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel said, the weight of exhaustion slamming down on her. “We’ll do what we can, but they’re the ones with the pages.” After a moment of silence, Barley spoke. “Maybe not.” He said. “Fizzy’s still out there, and… maybe we should put our faith in her.” He grimaced. “For once.” Fizzy was laughing hysterically. Tears were turning into a sauna’s worth of steam as they ran down her face, but she was laughing nonetheless. She’d done it. She’d managed to help Barley and Caramel save Ciderfest. Her laughter was cut short as she was blindsided by a wave of shame and anger, her mane flaring. She looked up at the monitor. This wasn’t over. Looking down at the page, she scribbled something quick. She looked to see a portal open. Even if this was all her fault, she was going to fix it. One way or another. With determination, she strode through the portal. If Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Chaos Is In The LeadFizzy slowly came to, and as she did, the warmth of sleep was replaced with a horrible numbness. They didn’t care. She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position. I did all this, for them, and they didn’t care. So that was it, then. She’d opened the book. Created the greatest convention in Ciderfest’s history with its magic. And what happened? When they finally met her, all they could do was complain and tell her to stop. What did I expect? Fizzy snorted. Here you are yet again, Fizzy. You can literally change the world, and no one will care. The tears came again. After a time, Fizzy slowly dragged herself from bed, and went to wash up. She didn’t notice the warning lights on the instruments flashing as she did so. “Duck!” Barley shouted and pointed. “Duck!” Caramel shouted in response. “Yeah!” Barley began. “Someone made a giant du-wahhh!” Caramel managed to yank him back into the trench just in time to avoid another volley of rotten tomatoes. “AND THIS IS FOR THE TIME THE CANTERLOTER GAVE MY SHOW A ONE STAR REVIEW!” Trixie’s voice echoed across the battlefield as she loaded another batch of spoiled vegetables into her Personal Trauma Artillery. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages, all vying for control of the book. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. Over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And Caramel and Barley found themselves alone in the middle of this battlefield of ideas. “This has really gotten out of hoof!” Barley wailed as another blast of vegetables rained down. “We gotta move! If we can find a calm spot, we can think about what to do.” Caramel nudged him forward. “Come on, crawl!” The two of them set off, crawling through the literal-metaphorical writing trenches. On the fields above, guests working with different factions sent malicious downvotes after one another. Barley came to halt, curling up to avoid dueling headcanons whose brawl nearly spilled into the trench. He did not move even after they passed. Caramel crawled alongside him to find him crying. “It’s too much,” he gasped. “It’s too much, and we messed it up. We messed it all up.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. Fizzy. “It’s okay, Bar,” she said, patting his back. “We just gotta keep moving. Keep moving, and…” Not able to finish the thought, the two of them continued on. Fizzy’s chair lowered from the ceiling into her battlestation. Despite sleep and shower, she looked exhausted, her nirik flame barely flickering. With a press of a button, her monitors came to life. And across them were dozens and dozens of warnings. “I… what—” Fizzy began furiously cycling through logs and feeds and saw utter chaos. The convention has descended into an all-out brawl, and the pages were both the prizes and the blows traded. She shook her head and frowned. “I just have to fix thi—” Her hoof reached down to where her stash of pages was, and she felt… nothing. Panicking. She searched around, seeing nothing. Then she furiously began typing away on her keyboard, looking through her own security recordings only to see… Chrysalis?! In silent, stuttering frames, she watched as “Twilight Sparkle” waited, forgotten in the argument, until Barley and Caramel left, only to turn into the Changeling queen and steal her pages! No. Nonononononono! Fizzy collapsed, her head a mess of white noise as she watched her grand, magical convention fall apart before her eyes, helpless to stop it. And alone. She might have sat there forever, but something caught her eye. Something that was rapidly becoming visible on every one of her feeds. Something that looked bad. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. “That can’t be good.” Barley whispered. “I dunno,” Caramel said, softly, staring up helplessly. “Maybe someone just wanted to fight in the shade?” And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Car,” Barley said, shaking, helpless. “What do we do?” “I just–” Caramel’s eyes screwed close in concentration. “Whoever is doing this has to have a lot of pages. If we can just get them–” “From inside the monster cloud?!” Barley’s voice cracked. “It’s the only idea I have!” Caramel said back, panic clear in her voice. She then collapsed on her haunches and moaned. “Oh, we don’t even have a way to get there.” The two stood alone on the hill as doom came raining down from above. Caramel stared at the ground and Barley… Barley was taking deep breaths, counting backwards from ten, and most importantly, staring at something, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Maybe,” he began. “Maybe, if we can’t get there alone… we can ask for help.” Caramel looked up, and then followed his gaze. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. Barely trotted towards the child, and Caramel quickly followed. “Hey kid,” he said with a nervous, tired grin. “Wanna help save Ciderfest?” Fizzy was watching it all fall apart. The con was a battleground, and now a hoard of living nightmares was descending on it. And there was nothing she could do about it. Fizzy screamed. Over and over again, wordlessly, her fiery mane a swirling inferno. She screamed again and again, until there was nothing left inside of her. Eventually she looked back at the screen. And she saw something. Something wildly out of place in the grim scene. A flicker of life coming back to her, she zoomed in, and, without a sound, her face began steaming as tears tried to roll down her face. Flying alone into the cloud of monsters was a bright red bi-plane, scribbled in crayon. And flying it was none other than Barley and Caramel. Fizzy laughed. There was still hope. They could save the day. They could fix the problems she’d caus– Fizzy stomped down on the surge of bitterness that welled up inside of her with a grimace. Now wasn’t the time for that. There was hope. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Caramel shouted. She pointed to the left as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things swam through the air towards them. “Rodger!” Barley called in reply. “Hold on!” He dipped the nose of the plane down and gunned the engines. Caramel shrieked as massive, misshapen claws scythed overhead. Barley then pulled up, pushing the crayon engine for all it was worth. “We can lose them in the storm!” he barked, pulling back on the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” With one final press on the gas, the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way forward!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” There was a moment of silence. “Are we really the heroes, here?” Barley said, barely audible over the din. Caramel frowned, and set her pen back down. “‘And then our… our fearless protagonists, who made many mistakes, but who nonetheless wanted to do right and fixed this problem… this problem that they helped cause… saw what they were looking for.” “I think it worked, look!” Barley said, nodding forward. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the two of them quickly leapt from the plane. They took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Caramel said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish watching Fizzy play that game.” Barley said, a note of regret in his voice. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, his face pale. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Not to mention, you speak it with such confidence.” “Good thing we’re here with enough confidence for everypony!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “I’ll take anything at this point,” Barley uttered in disbelief. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended. They began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. “Look!” Barley called out, ducking as one the skeletal eyeless monsters was sent flying overhead by Rockhoof. Caramel rolled out of the way and kicked one of the purple tentacle-faced beasts into the path of a unicycle hurled with great force by Cheese Sandwich. She snapped her head to follow Barley’s shout. Floating behind Grogar, sheathed in sickly yellow light, was a stack of pages. “We have to get them!” She said, leaping into a sprint. Barley fell in behind her, galloping as hard as he could. Several monsters saw the burst of movement and gave chase. The two ran, the creatures hot on their heels. Their chests burned as they gulped down air. Close. So close! And then another, even larger group of monsters leapt into their path. Barley leapt into the air and grabbed Caramel, hauling her airborne. He managed three flaps, almost clearing the blockade– –only for a claw to clamp down on his tail. With a shout of despair and surprise, he did the only thing he could think of, and threw Caramel into the air as he was dragged back down. Caramel hung suspended in the air.. Not gonna make it. She thought, distantly, as her arc began to descend down. She looked up, time slowing. Grogar was watching her, conjuring up more fire. She couldn’t dodge. Too far, she thought. But she had to try. As she fell into the waiting hoard beneath, she pulled a mug from inside her dress, and pulled back, and letting out a wordless yell that carried all the fear, defiance, regret, and despair inside of her, she threw the mug as hard as she could. Fizzy’s entire world crawled to a halt, consisting only of the image of Caramel suspended in the air, making a last, desperate stand, and an empty room that mocked all her ambitions. She’d watched it all happen, and no matter how often she looked, she saw no way to affect the outcome. Until something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. In a flash, the page, forgotten and wedged under a cabinet, covered in all her plans and ideas, appeared on her desk, and her pen came down, as she too gave out a desperate yell. Two miracles happened at once. First, an over-eager monster leapt up for Caramel as she let the shot fly, both knocking her clear of the crowd of monsters, and inadvertently taking the fireblast Grogar had intended for her. Second, Grogar, too distracted from disbelief at that sight, failed to see the mug fly past him and strike true. His telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air. He snapped back to see the mug clatter against the cobblestone behind him, and wheel back around, death in his glowing red eyes. “YOU–” He reared back as a vortex of balefire roared to life between his horns “-WORMS!” “Gotcha!” Pinkie giggled. And then, falling through the air, directly over the battlefield, she proceeded to whip an impossibly large Party Battleship Cannon from inside of her mane, and she leveled it directly at Grogar’s face. The entire battlefield hung silent for one, stunned moment. And then Pinkie Pie fired an entire national holiday’s worth of fireworks all at once, cackling like a madmare. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared in rage and pain, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The multicolored, smoking explosions and chaos sent his monstrous minions fleeing in animal panic and scattered the Pillars. Unfortunately, she may have overdone it, just a tad. There was a great crack, and the whole floating castle began crumbling apart as it crashed to earth. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies cleared the panicking nightmares and came together. “We must retreat! This clash is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. Barley scrambled to his hooves as the monsters scattered. With a look he turned to Caramel. “We gotta go!” He shouted, and scrambled for the plane. “Alright everyone, Operation Grab After Smash is a go!” Pinkie laughed, sailing into the crumbling courtyard on an umbrella. “This party is just getting started, and we need all the pages we can get!” Her Commandos saluted with as many rubber duckies, whoopie cushions, and roman candles as they had, and set to work gathering the scattering pages. The two ran as fast as they could, hopping into the plane just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “That was insane.” Caramel said, scrambling into her seat. “I’m not gonna question getting out of this in one piece!” Barley retorted as he took the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get out of here!” He gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Pinkie was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just getting started. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel said, the weight of exhaustion slamming down on her. “We’ll do what we can, but they’re the ones with the pages.” After a moment of silence, Barley spoke. “Maybe not.” He said. “Fizzy’s still out there, and… maybe we should put our faith in her.” He grimaced. “For once.” Fizzy was laughing hysterically. Tears were turning into a sauna’s worth of steam as they ran down her face, but she was laughing nonetheless. She’d done it. She’d managed to help Barley and Caramel save Ciderfest. Her laughter was cut short as she was blindsided by a wave of shame and anger, her mane flaring. She looked up at the monitor. This wasn’t over. Looking down at the page, she scribbled something quick. She looked to see a portal open. Even if this was all her fault, she was going to fix it. One way or another. With determination, she strode through the portal. If Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Villains Are In The LeadFizzy slowly came to, and as she did, the warmth of sleep was replaced with a horrible numbness. They didn’t care. She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position. I did all this, for them, and they didn’t care. So that was it, then. She’d opened the book. Created the greatest convention in Ciderfest’s history with its magic. And what happened? When they finally met her, all they could do was complain and tell her to stop. What did I expect? Fizzy snorted. Here you are yet again, Fizzy. You can literally change the world, and no one will care. The tears came again. After a time, Fizzy slowly dragged herself from bed, and went to wash up. She didn’t notice the warning lights on the instruments flashing as she did so. “Duck!” Barley shouted and pointed. “Duck!” Caramel shouted in response. “Yeah!” Barley began. “Someone made a giant du-wahhh!” Caramel managed to yank him back into the trench just in time to avoid another volley of rotten tomatoes. “AND THIS IS FOR THE TIME THE CANTERLOTER GAVE MY SHOW A ONE STAR REVIEW!” Trixie’s voice echoed across the battlefield as she loaded another batch of spoiled vegetables into her Personal Trauma Artillery. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages, all vying for control of the book. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. Over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And Caramel and Barley found themselves alone in the middle of this battlefield of ideas. “This has really gotten out of hoof!” Barley wailed as another blast of vegetables rained down. “We gotta move! If we can find a calm spot, we can think about what to do.” Caramel nudged him forward. “Come on, crawl!” The two of them set off, crawling through the literal-metaphorical writing trenches. On the fields above, guests working with different factions sent malicious downvotes after one another. Barley came to halt, curling up to avoid dueling headcanons whose brawl nearly spilled into the trench. He did not move even after they passed. Caramel crawled alongside him to find him crying. “It’s too much,” he gasped. “It’s too much, and we messed it up. We messed it all up.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. Fizzy. “It’s okay, Bar,” she said, patting his back. “We just gotta keep moving. Keep moving, and…” Not able to finish the thought, the two of them continued on. Fizzy’s chair lowered from the ceiling into her battlestation. Despite sleep and shower, she looked exhausted, her nirik flame barely flickering. With a press of a button, her monitors came to life. And across them were dozens and dozens of warnings. “I… what—” Fizzy began furiously cycling through logs and feeds and saw utter chaos. The convention has descended into an all-out brawl, and the pages were both the prizes and the blows traded. She shook her head and frowned. “I just have to fix thi—” Her hoof reached down to where her stash of pages was, and she felt… nothing. Panicking. She searched around, seeing nothing. Then she furiously began typing away on her keyboard, looking through her own security recordings only to see… Chrysalis?! In silent, stuttering frames, she watched as “Twilight Sparkle” waited, forgotten in the argument, until Barley and Caramel left, only to turn into the Changeling queen and steal her pages! No. Nonononononono! Fizzy collapsed, her head a mess of white noise as she watched her grand, magical convention fall apart before her eyes, helpless to stop it. And alone. She might have sat there forever, but something caught her eye. Something that was rapidly becoming visible on every one of her feeds. Something that looked bad. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. “That can’t be good.” Barley whispered. “I dunno,” Caramel said, softly, staring up helplessly. “Maybe someone just wanted to fight in the shade?” And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Car,” Barley said, shaking, helpless. “What do we do?” “I just–” Caramel’s eyes screwed close in concentration. “Whoever is doing this has to have a lot of pages. If we can just get them–” “From inside the monster cloud?!” Barley’s voice cracked. “It’s the only idea I have!” Caramel said back, panic clear in her voice. She then collapsed on her haunches and moaned. “Oh, we don’t even have a way to get there.” The two stood alone on the hill as doom came raining down from above. Caramel stared at the ground and Barley… Barley was taking deep breaths, counting backwards from ten, and most importantly, staring at something, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Maybe,” he began. “Maybe, if we can’t get there alone… we can ask for help.” Caramel looked up, and then followed his gaze. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. Barely trotted towards the child, and Caramel quickly followed. “Hey kid,” he said with a nervous, tired grin. “Wanna help save Ciderfest?” Fizzy was watching it all fall apart. The con was a battleground, and now a hoard of living nightmares was descending on it. And there was nothing she could do about it. Fizzy screamed. Over and over again, wordlessly, her fiery mane a swirling inferno. She screamed again and again, until there was nothing left inside of her. Eventually she looked back at the screen. And she saw something. Something wildly out of place in the grim scene. A flicker of life coming back to her, she zoomed in, and, without a sound, her face began steaming as tears tried to roll down her face. Flying alone into the cloud of monsters was a bright red bi-plane, scribbled in crayon. And flying it was none other than Barley and Caramel. Fizzy laughed. There was still hope. They could save the day. They could fix the problems she’d caus– Fizzy stomped down on the surge of bitterness that welled up inside of her with a grimace. Now wasn’t the time for that. There was hope. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Caramel shouted. She pointed to the left as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things swam through the air towards them. “Rodger!” Barley called in reply. “Hold on!” He dipped the nose of the plane down and gunned the engines. Caramel shrieked as massive, misshapen claws scythed overhead. Barley then pulled up, pushing the crayon engine for all it was worth. “We can lose them in the storm!” he barked, pulling back on the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” With one final press on the gas, the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way forward!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” There was a moment of silence. “Are we really the heroes, here?” Barley said, barely audible over the din. Caramel frowned, and set her pen back down. “‘And then our… our fearless protagonists, who made many mistakes, but who nonetheless wanted to do right and fixed this problem… this problem that they helped cause… saw what they were looking for.” “I think it worked, look!” Barley said, nodding forward. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the two of them quickly leapt from the plane. They took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Caramel said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish watching Fizzy play that game.” Barley said, a note of regret in his voice. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, his face pale. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Not to mention, you speak it with such confidence.” “Good thing we’re here with enough confidence for everypony!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “I’ll take anything at this point,” Barley uttered in disbelief. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended. They began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. “Look!” Barley called out, ducking as one the skeletal eyeless monsters was sent flying overhead by Rockhoof. Caramel rolled out of the way and kicked one of the purple tentacle-faced beasts into the path of a unicycle hurled with great force by Cheese Sandwich. She snapped her head to follow Barley’s shout. Floating behind Grogar, sheathed in sickly yellow light, was a stack of pages. “We have to get them!” She said, leaping into a sprint. Barley fell in behind her, galloping as hard as he could. Several monsters saw the burst of movement and gave chase. The two ran, the creatures hot on their heels. Their chests burned as they gulped down air. Close. So close! And then another, even larger group of monsters leapt into their path. Barley leapt into the air and grabbed Caramel, hauling her airborne. He managed three flaps, almost clearing the blockade– –only for a claw to clamp down on his tail. With a shout of despair and surprise, he did the only thing he could think of, and threw Caramel into the air as he was dragged back down. Caramel hung suspended in the air.. Not gonna make it. She thought, distantly, as her arc began to descend down. She looked up, time slowing. Grogar was watching her, conjuring up more fire. She couldn’t dodge. Too far, she thought. But she had to try. As she fell into the waiting hoard beneath, she pulled a mug from inside her dress, and pulled back, and letting out a wordless yell that carried all the fear, defiance, regret, and despair inside of her, she threw the mug as hard as she could. Fizzy’s entire world crawled to a halt, consisting only of the image of Caramel suspended in the air, making a last, desperate stand, and an empty room that mocked all her ambitions. She’d watched it all happen, and no matter how often she looked, she saw no way to affect the outcome. Until something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. In a flash, the page, forgotten and wedged under a cabinet, covered in all her plans and ideas, appeared on her desk, and her pen came down, as she too gave out a desperate yell. Two miracles happened at once. First, an over-eager monster leapt up for Caramel as she let the shot fly, both knocking her clear of the crowd of monsters, and inadvertently taking the fireblast Grogar had intended for her. Second, Grogar, too distracted from disbelief at that sight, failed to see the mug fly past him and strike true. His telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air. He snapped back to see the mug clatter against the cobblestone behind him, and wheel back around, death in his glowing red eyes. “YOU–” He reared back as a vortex of balefire roared to life between his horns “-WORMS!” And with a roar of infernal rage, he let loose his fury into the ground directly in front of him. And the darkness of Tartarus followed with it. “Operation Bounce is go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard ahead of the oncoming destruction. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos rushed to follow suit. Great glowing cracks rent through the entire courtyard, followed by great gouts of that yellow and black fire, which burst up from them and came back crashing down, scattering both the Pillars and the last of Pinkie’s Commandos. Not even given a moment to breathe, the monsters rushed in behind the devastation, giving out shrieks of triumph as the battle became a full on rout. The entire castle began shaking apart under the assault. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies fought a desperate retreat, linking up as the nightmares closed in. “We must retreat! The battle is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. Barley scrambled to his hooves. By yet another miracle, the blasts had sent him and Caramel flying, but they were otherwise unhurt. With a look he turned to Caramel. “We gotta go!” He shouted, and scrambled for the plane. “NOW IS THE FATED HOUR!” Grogar bellowed in triumph. His bell began clanging back and forth as the pages fluttering the air were seized in his magic. His monsters swarmed around him in a wave. “NO MORE SHALL THE DARKNESS BE DENIED! WEEP, EQUESTRIA, FOR THIS IS BUT THE START OF WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE!” The two ran as fast as they could, hopping into the plane just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “That was insane.” Caramel said, scrambling into her seat. “I’m not gonna question getting out of this in one piece!” Barley retorted as he took the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get out of here!” He gunned the engines, taking off as the monsters closed in. “Grogar was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just the start of the battle. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel said, the weight of exhaustion slamming down on her. “We’ll do what we can, but they’re the ones with the pages.” After a moment of silence, Barley spoke. “Maybe not.” He said. “Fizzy’s still out there, and… maybe we should put our faith in her.” He grimaced. “For once.” Fizzy stared listlessly. She’d saved Barley and Caramel. Just barely, but she’d done it. They hadn’t been able to stop Grogar, or any of the other problems she’d caused- Fizzy winced, stamping down on the surge of anger and shame. Now was not the time for self pity. This wasn’t over. Looking down at the page, she scribbled something quick. She looked to see a portal open. Even if this was all her fault, she was going to fix it. One way or another. With determination, she strode through the portal.
If Fizzy is Saved, and Heroes Are In The LeadBarley ducked under an energy beam. “Ahh!!!” Caramel beamed at an energy duck. “Oh! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!” Fizzy energized her duck beam. “Why is my kirin magic so weird today?” And then a deluge of tomatoes, fired from Trixie’s Personal Trauma Artillery, came crashing down on the field in a devastating volley of impolite criticism, sending the three of them and everyone else in the vicinity running. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. And over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And the middle of all of it, Fizzy, Caramel, and Barley found themselves racing through the battlefield. “This has gotten way out of hoof!” Fizzy shouted as she ran, veering to the side to avoid getting caught in another crossfire as various headcanons dueled for supremacy. “The factions all have so many pages!” Her eyes widened in despair as she grimaced. “I really messed this one up.” “Hey, don’t talk like that!” Barley shouted between gasps, pausing to duck as guests, aligned with Heroes and Villains, sent downvotes back and forth overhead. “We’re all here together! We trust each other, and there’s nothing we can’t do together!” Fizzy looked over to Barley, her smile soft and her eyes wide with appreciation, only breaking her expression to jump over a plothole. “Thanks, Bar,” she said. “I dunno, that seems like a really dark cloud.” Caramel interjected, looking up. “I was really going for the silver lining, here.” Barley said, embarrassed. “No, not that! Look!” and Caramel slowed her run to a trot, pointing her hoof heavenward. The other two stopped and followed it with their gaze. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Oh no.” Barley started. “Oh nonononono.” He began looking around, panicked. “What do we do? Whatdowedo? Whatawedooo?!” “Barley, calm down!” Caramel pleaded, shaking him. “Right, right. Together. Unstoppable. Friendship is magic. Okay. Okay!” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. He then looked at Caramel. “What do we do?” “We have to get up there.” Fizzy said, staring at the dark cloud, determined. “There?” Barley asked. “In the horrible monster cloud?!” “Whoever is behind that must have a lot of pages.” Fizzy explained. “If we can take those away, it will at least stop them from making more monsters, and maybe we can edit them to fix this!” She then looked away and frowned. “But how do we get up there? I lost all my pages last night!” “Fizz, we just gotta ask for some help!” Caramel beamed, and pointed. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. The three of them walked over, Fizzy leaning down to the scared child, her face split with a tired but heroic grin. “On behalf of the con staff,” she began, “I, Fizzy Glitch, would like to ask you if you want to help save Ciderfest!” Seated three in a row in a lopsided bi-plane drawn in bright red crayon, Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy took to the embattled skies. “The Red-Crayon Baron flies again!” Caramel whooped. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Barley shouted. He banked the plane to the right as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things, swam through the air towards them. Fizzy turned her lumpy turret towards the monsters, and with a whoop, unleashed a barrage of sketched yellow tear-drops at the beasts. There was a series of orange, spiky explosions, and the nightmares fell from the sky, black Xs crudely drawn where their eyes should be. “Alright, girls.” Barley said, clutching the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” And with that, he pulled up, and the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way to get where we’re going!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” “Are we really the heroes here?” Fizzy hollered. “Self-Insert is a valid form of storytelling!” Barley shouted back. “There!” Caramel pointed. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the three quickly leapt from the plane. Each took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Fizzy said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish that game!” Fizzy bemoaned. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, taking a defensive stance. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Besides, how do you propose to stop me?” “They won’t have to!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “Cavalry’s here!” Caramel whooped and pumped a fist. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended, they began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames, before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy got swept into the ensuing chaos. “Really wish I had some Pony Ranger powers right now!” Barley yelped as he kicked one of the skeletal eel monsters into the path of a silver fireball launched by Starswirl. “We have to figure out how to end this quick!” Caramel shouted, swinging one of the tentacled sorcerers around to shield herself from a barrage of rubber chickens Cheese Sandwich had unleashed. “There!” Fizzy said, pointing. Hovering behind Grogar, wrapped in yellow light, was a thick sheaf of pages. “I’ll cover you!” Caramel shouted, squaring up as she pulled out two mugs, holding them like brass knuckles. “Here we go!” Barley leapt to the air, and grabbed Fizzy. Another arc of demonic fire came at them. “Throw me!” Fizzy shouted. With a wordless howl of defiance, Barley did so with all his might before veering away from the fireblast. Fizzy sailed through the air, hitting the ground running. A monster screeched and lashed at her with a talon. She swung her hind legs forward, sliding under the blow on her flank, right next to Grogar, who too caught up shouting orders and throwing balefire to notice for just a second. Which was all Fizzy needed. “Shor–” Fizzy said, tensing every muscle in her body as she slid under the pages, “–YOUKEN!” And with a great leap, Fizzy launched into the air, her hoof raised in a halo of blue kirin-fire, in a single, devastating uppercut. Grgoar’s telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air, no longer under his control. “YOU–” Grogar wheeled on her, massive hoof raised and wreathed in hellfire, “–WORM!” “Now!” Starswirl shouted. The Pillars, back to back, all linked hooves, and began to glow. Raising into the air, a halo of rainbow light began whirling around them. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The seven ponies rose, a great hum filling the battlefield. Suddenly, the halo stopped spinning, and the humming silenced. And then the world was filled with rainbows. The monsters disappeared with a wave of screams and snarls cut suddenly short, the power of Harmony banishing the misbegotten creations of Grogar’s dark magic. Unfortunately for everyone else, the same could be said of his castle. There was a great crack, and the whole structure began falling apart as it crashed to earth. “Operation Bounce is a go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos quickly followed suit. “Fizzy!” Barley cried out, and pointed. Caramel turned to look. Fizzy stood up precariously at the gate to the crumbling castle. And the chunk of stone beneath her heaved, and cracked, and began to fall away. Barely and Caramel watched as she began to fall. She looked up at them… …and grinned. She snatched a page from the air around her, and shouted something Caramel didn’t hear. The two watched her write something, and then take a leap from the crumbling stone. There was a flash of blue light, and no more. “Gather as many pages as you can!” Starswirl ordered. “We need to evacuate, but this isn’t over!” Barley swooped down and began running towards Caramel. “We have to go!” He shouted, breaking her from her stunned shock. The two ran to the plane, hopping just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “What did she say!?” Caramel asked, panicked. “Did you hear her? What did she say?!” “‘We got this,’” Barley said, letting out a breath. He then turned back to Caramel and gave a small grin. “‘Trust me.’” Caramel sat for a moment, breathing heavily, and then gave a small nod back, her face breaking into a grin. Barley turned, and gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Starswirl was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This isn’t over. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel nodded. “But whatever happens, we got this. You, me,” she put a hoof of Barley’s shoulder, “and Fizzy, together.” Barley looked back to her and grinned. “All of us, together.”
If Fizzy Is Saved, and Chaos Is In The Lead [CANON]Barley ducked under an energy beam. “Ahh!!!” Caramel beamed at an energy duck. “Oh! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!” Fizzy energized her duck beam. “Why is my kirin magic so weird today?” And then a deluge of tomatoes, fired from Trixie’s Personal Trauma Artillery, came crashing down on the field in a devastating volley of impolite criticism, sending the three of them and everyone else in the vicinity running. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. And over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And the middle of all of it, Fizzy, Caramel, and Barley found themselves racing through the battlefield. “This has gotten way out of hoof!” Fizzy shouted as she ran, veering to the side to avoid getting caught in another crossfire as various headcanons dueled for supremacy. “The factions all have so many pages!” Her eyes widened in despair as she grimaced. “I really messed this one up.” “Hey, don’t talk like that!” Barley shouted between gasps, pausing to duck as guests, aligned with Heroes and Villains, sent downvotes back and forth overhead. “We’re all here together! We trust each other, and there’s nothing we can’t do together!” Fizzy looked over to Barley, her smile soft and her eyes wide with appreciation, only breaking her expression to jump over a plot hole. “Thanks, Bar,” she said. “I dunno, that seems like a really dark cloud.” Caramel interjected, looking up. “I was really going for the silver lining, here.” Barley said, embarrassed. “No, not that! Look!” and Caramel slowed her run to a trot, pointing her hoof heavenward. The other two stopped and followed it with their gaze. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Oh no.” Barley started. “Oh nonononono.” He began looking around, panicked. “What do we do? Whatdowedo? Whatawedooo?!” “Barley, calm down!” Caramel pleaded, shaking him. “Right, right. Together. Unstoppable. Friendship is magic. Okay. Okay!” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. He then looked at Caramel. “What do we do?” “We have to get up there.” Fizzy said, staring at the dark cloud, determined. “There?” Barley asked. “In the horrible monster cloud?!” “Whoever is behind that must have a lot of pages.” Fizzy explained. “If we can take those away, it will at least stop them from making more monsters, and maybe we can edit them to fix this!” She then looked away and frowned. “But how do we get up there? I lost all my pages last night!” “Fizz, we just gotta ask for some help!” Caramel beamed, and pointed. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. The three of them walked over, Fizzy leaning down to the scared child, her face split with a tired but heroic grin. “On behalf of the con staff,” she began, “I, Fizzy Glitch, would like to ask you if you want to help save Ciderfest!” Seated three in a row in a lopsided bi-plane drawn in bright red crayon, Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy took to the embattled skies. “The Red-Crayon Baron flies again!” Caramel whooped. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Barley shouted. He banked the plane to the right as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things, swam through the air towards them. Fizzy turned her lumpy turret towards the monsters, and with a whoop, unleashed a barrage of sketched yellow tear-drops at the beasts. There was a series of orange, spiky explosions, and the nightmares fell from the sky, black Xs crudely drawn where their eyes should be. “Alright, girls.” Barley said, clutching the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” And with that, he pulled up, and the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way to get where we’re going!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” “Are we really the heroes here?” Fizzy hollered. “Self-Insert is a valid form of storytelling!” Barley shouted back. “There!” Caramel pointed. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the three quickly leapt from the plane. Each took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Fizzy said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish that game!” Fizzy bemoaned. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, taking a defensive stance. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Besides, how do you propose to stop me?” “They won’t have to!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “Cavalry’s here!” Caramel whooped and pumped a fist. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended, they began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames, before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy got swept into the ensuing chaos. “Really wish I had some Pony Ranger powers right now!” Barley yelped as he kicked one of the skeletal eel monsters into the path of a silver fireball launched by Starswirl. “We have to figure out how to end this quick!” Caramel shouted, swinging one of the tentacled sorcerers around to shield herself from a barrage of rubber chickens Cheese Sandwich had unleashed. “There!” Fizzy said, pointing. Hovering behind Grogar, wrapped in yellow light, was a thick sheaf of pages. “I’ll cover you!” Caramel shouted, squaring up as she pulled out two mugs, holding them like brass knuckles. “Here we go!” Barley leapt to the air, and grabbed Fizzy. Another arc of demonic fire came at them. “Throw me!” Fizzy shouted. With a wordless howl of defiance, Barley did so with all his might before veering away from the fireblast. Fizzy sailed through the air, hitting the ground running. A monster screeched and lashed at her with a talon. She swung her hind legs forward, sliding under the blow on her flank, right next to Grogar, who too caught up shouting orders and throwing balefire to notice for just a second. Which was all Fizzy needed. “Shor–” Fizzy said, tensing every muscle in her body as she slid under the pages, “–YOUKEN!” And with a great leap, Fizzy launched into the air, her hoof raised in a halo of blue kirin-fire, in a single, devastating uppercut. Grgoar’s telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air, no longer under his control. “YOU–” Grogar wheeled on her, massive hoof raised and wreathed in hellfire, “–WORM!” “Gotcha!” Pinkie giggled. And then, falling through the air, directly over the battlefield, she proceeded to whip an impossibly large Party Battleship Cannon from inside of her mane, and leveled it directly at Grogar’s face. The entire battlefield hung silent for one, stunned moment. And then Pinkie Pie fired an entire national holiday’s worth of fireworks all at once, cackling like a madmare. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared in rage and pain, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The multicolored, smoking explosions and chaos sent his monstrous minions fleeing in animal panic and scattered the Pillars. Unfortunately, she may have overdone it, just a tad. There was a great crack, and the whole floating castle began crumbling apart as it crashed to earth. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies cleared the panicking nightmares and came together. “We must retreat! This clash is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. “Fizzy!” Barley cried out, and pointed. Caramel turned to look. Fizzy stood up precariously at the gate to the crumbling castle. And the chunk of stone beneath her heaved, and cracked, and began to fall away. Barely and Caramel watched as she began to fall. She looked up at them… …and grinned. She snatched a page from the air around her, and shouted something Caramel didn’t hear. The two watched her write something, and then take a leap from the crumbling stone. There was a flash of blue light, and no more. “Alright everyone, Operation Grab After Smash is a go!” Pinkie laughed, sailing into the crumbling courtyard on an umbrella. “This party is just getting started, and we need all the pages we can get!” Her Commandos saluted with as many rubber duckies, whoopie cushions, and roman candles as they had, and set to work gathering the scattering pages. Barley swooped down and began running towards Caramel. “We have to go!” He shouted, breaking her from her stunned shock. The two ran to the plane, hopping just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “What did she say!?” Caramel asked, panicked. “Did you hear her? What did she say?!” “‘We got this,’” Barley said, letting out a breath. He then turned back to Caramel and gave a small grin. “‘Trust me.’” Caramel sat for a moment, breathing heavily, and then gave a small nod back, her face breaking into a grin. Barley turned, and gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Pinkie was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just beginning. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel nodded. “But whatever happens, we got this. You, me,” she put a hoof of Barley’s shoulder, “and Fizzy, together.” Barley looked back to her and grinned. “All of us, together.”
If Fizzy is Saved, and Villains Are In The LeadBarley ducked under an energy beam. “Ahh!!!” Caramel beamed at an energy duck. “Oh! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!” Fizzy energized her duck beam. “Why is my kirin magic so weird today?” And then a deluge of tomatoes, fired from Trixie’s Personal Trauma Artillery, came crashing down on the field in a devastating volley of impolite criticism, sending the three of them and everyone else in the vicinity running. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. And over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And the middle of all of it, Fizzy, Caramel, and Barley found themselves racing through the battlefield. “This has gotten way out of hoof!” Fizzy shouted as she ran, veering to the side to avoid getting caught in another crossfire as various headcanons dueled for supremacy. “The factions all have so many pages!” Her eyes widened in despair as she grimaced. “I really messed this one up.” “Hey, don’t talk like that!” Barley shouted between gasps, pausing to duck as guests, aligned with Heroes and Villains, sent downvotes back and forth overhead. “We’re all here together! We trust each other, and there’s nothing we can’t do together!” Fizzy looked over to Barley, her smile soft and her eyes wide with appreciation, only breaking her expression to jump over a plothole. “Thanks, Bar,” she said. “I dunno, that seems like a really dark cloud.” Caramel interjected, looking up. “I was really going for the silver lining, here.” Barley said, embarrassed. “No, not that! Look!” and Caramel slowed her run to a trot, pointing her hoof heavenward. The other two stopped and followed it with their gaze. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Oh no.” Barley started. “Oh nonononono.” He began looking around, panicked. “What do we do? Whatdowedo? Whatawedooo?!” “Barley, calm down!” Caramel pleaded, shaking him. “Right, right. Together. Unstoppable. Friendship is magic. Okay. Okay!” He shook his head, taking deep breaths. He then looked at Caramel. “What do we do?” “We have to get up there.” Fizzy said, staring at the dark cloud, determined. “There?” Barley asked. “In the horrible monster cloud?!” “Whoever is behind that must have a lot of pages.” Fizzy explained. “If we can take those away, it will at least stop them from making more monsters, and maybe we can edit them to fix this!” She then looked away and frowned. “But how do we get up there? I lost all my pages last night!” “Fizz, we just gotta ask for some help!” Caramel beamed, and pointed. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. The three of them walked over, Fizzy leaning down to the scared child, her face split with a tired but heroic grin. “On behalf of the con staff,” she began, “I, Fizzy Glitch, would like to ask you if you want to help save Ciderfest!” Seated three in a row in a lopsided bi-plane drawn in bright red crayon, Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy took to the embattled skies. “The Red-Crayon Baron flies again!” Caramel whooped. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Barley shouted. He banked the plane to the right as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things, swam through the air towards them. Fizzy turned her lumpy turret towards the monsters, and with a whoop, unleashed a barrage of sketched yellow tear-drops at the beasts. There was a series of orange, spiky explosions, and the nightmares fell from the sky, black Xs crudely drawn where their eyes should be. “Alright, girls.” Barley said, clutching the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” And with that, he pulled up, and the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way to get where we’re going!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” “Are we really the heroes here?” Fizzy hollered. “Self-Insert is a valid form of storytelling!” Barley shouted back. “There!” Caramel pointed. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the three quickly leapt from the plane. Each took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Fizzy said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish that game!” Fizzy bemoaned. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, taking a defensive stance. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Besides, how do you propose to stop me?” “They won’t have to!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “Cavalry’s here!” Caramel whooped and pumped a fist. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended, they began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames, before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. Barley, Caramel, and Fizzy got swept into the ensuing chaos. “Really wish I had some Pony Ranger powers right now!” Barley yelped as he kicked one of the skeletal eel monsters into the path of a silver fireball launched by Starswirl. “We have to figure out how to end this quick!” Caramel shouted, swinging one of the tentacled sorcerers around to shield herself from a barrage of rubber chickens Cheese Sandwich had unleashed. “There!” Fizzy said, pointing. Hovering behind Grogar, wrapped in yellow light, was a thick sheaf of pages. “I’ll cover you!” Caramel shouted, squaring up as she pulled out two mugs, holding them like brass knuckles. “Here we go!” Barley leapt to the air, and grabbed Fizzy. Another arc of demonic fire came at them. “Throw me!” Fizzy shouted. With a wordless howl of defiance, Barley did so with all his might before veering away from the fireblast. Fizzy sailed through the air, hitting the ground running. A monster screeched and lashed at her with a talon. She swung her hind legs forward, sliding under the blow on her flank, right next to Grogar, who too caught up shouting orders and throwing balefire to notice for just a second. Which was all Fizzy needed. “Shor–” Fizzy said, tensing every muscle in her body as she slid under the pages, “–YOUKEN!” And with a great leap, Fizzy launched into the air, her hoof raised in a halo of blue kirin-fire, in a single, devastating uppercut. Grgoar’s telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air, no longer under his control. “YOU–” Grogar wheeled on her, massive hoof raised and wreathed in hellfire, “–WORM!” And with a roar of infernal rage, he brought it slamming down. And the darkness of Tartarus followed with it. “Operation Bounce is go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard ahead of the oncoming destruction. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos rushed to follow suit. Great glowing cracks rent through the entire courtyard, followed by great gouts of that yellow and black fire, which burst up from them and came back crashing down, scattering both the Pillars and the last of Pinkie’s Commandos. Not even given a moment to breathe, the monsters rushed in behind the devastation, giving out shrieks of triumph as the battle became a full on rout. The entire castle began shaking apart under the assault. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies fought a desperate retreat, linking up as the nightmares closed in. “We must retreat! This clash is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. “Fizzy!” Barley cried out, and pointed. Caramel turned to look. Fizzy struggled to pull herself up at the far end of the courtyard, having been thrown clear by the blast. She was injured, but alive. Then the chunk of stone beneath her heaved, cracked, and began to fall away. Barely and Caramel watched as she began to fall. She looked up at them… …and gave a tired, but defiant grin. She snatched a page from the air around her, and shouted something Caramel didn’t hear. The two watched her write something, and then take a leap from the crumbling stone. There was a flash of blue light, and no more. “NOW IS THE FATED HOUR!” Grogar bellowed in triumph. His bell began clanging back and forth as the pages fluttering the air were seized in his magic. His monsters swarmed around him in a wave. “NO MORE SHALL THE DARKNESS BE DENIED! WEEP, EQUESTRIA, FOR THIS IS BUT THE START OF WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE!” Barley swooped down and began running towards Caramel. “We have to go!” He shouted, breaking her from her stunned shock. The two ran to the plane, hopping in just as a group of monsters took notice and wheeled to give chase. “What did she say!?” Caramel asked, panicked. “Did you hear her? What did she say?!” “‘We got this,’” Barley said, letting out a breath. He then turned back to Caramel, exhaustion and fear plain on his face, but still gave a small, determined grin. “‘Trust me.’” Caramel sat for a moment, breathing heavily, and then gave a small nod back, her face breaking into an equally small, but fierce grin. Barley turned, and gunned the engines, taking off as the monsters closed in. “Grogar was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just the start of the battle. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel nodded. “But whatever happens, we got this. You, me,” she put a hoof of Barley’s shoulder, “and Fizzy, together.” Barley looked back to her and grinned. “All of us, together.”
If Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Heroes Are In The LeadFizzy slowly came to, and as she did, the warmth of sleep was replaced with a horrible numbness. They didn’t care. She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position. I did all this, for them, and they didn’t care. So that was it, then. She’d opened the book. Created the greatest convention in Ciderfest’s history with its magic. And what happened? When they finally met her, all they could do was complain and tell her to stop. What did I expect? Fizzy snorted. Here you are yet again, Fizzy. You can literally change the world, and no one will care. The tears came again. After a time, Fizzy slowly dragged herself from bed, and went to wash up. She didn’t notice the warning lights on the instruments flashing as she did so. “Duck!” Barley shouted and pointed. “Duck!” Caramel shouted in response. “Yeah!” Barley began. “Someone made a giant du-wahhh!” Caramel managed to yank him back into the trench just in time to avoid another volley of rotten tomatoes. “AND THIS IS FOR THE TIME THE CANTERLOTER GAVE MY SHOW A ONE STAR REVIEW!” Trixie’s voice echoed across the battlefield as she loaded another batch of spoiled vegetables into her Personal Trauma Artillery. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages, all vying for control of the book. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. Over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And Caramel and Barley found themselves alone in the middle of this battlefield of ideas. “This has really gotten out of hoof!” Barley wailed as another blast of vegetables rained down. “We gotta move! If we can find a calm spot, we can think about what to do.” Caramel nudged him forward. “Come on, crawl!” The two of them set off, crawling through the literal-metaphorical writing trenches. On the fields above, guests working with different factions sent malicious downvotes after one another. Barley came to halt, curling up to avoid dueling headcanons whose brawl nearly spilled into the trench. He did not move even after they passed. Caramel crawled alongside him to find him crying. “It’s too much,” he gasped. “It’s too much, and we messed it up. We messed it all up.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. Fizzy. “It’s okay, Bar,” she said, patting his back. “We just gotta keep moving. Keep moving, and…” Not able to finish the thought, the two of them continued on. Fizzy’s chair lowered from the ceiling into her battlestation. Despite sleep and shower, she looked exhausted, her nirik flame barely flickering. With a press of a button, her monitors came to life. And across them were dozens and dozens of warnings. “I… what—” Fizzy began furiously cycling through logs and feeds and saw utter chaos. The convention has descended into an all-out brawl, and the pages were both the prizes and the blows traded. She shook her head and frowned. “I just have to fix thi—” Her hoof reached down to where her stash of pages was, and she felt… nothing. Panicking. She searched around, seeing nothing. Then she furiously began typing away on her keyboard, looking through her own security recordings only to see… Chrysalis?! In silent, stuttering frames, she watched as “Twilight Sparkle” waited, forgotten in the argument, until Barley and Caramel left, only to turn into the Changeling queen and steal her pages! No. Nonononononono! Fizzy collapsed, her head a mess of white noise as she watched her grand, magical convention fall apart before her eyes, helpless to stop it. And alone. She might have sat there forever, but something caught her eye. Something that was rapidly becoming visible on every one of her feeds. Something that looked bad. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. “That can’t be good.” Barley whispered. “I dunno,” Caramel said, softly, staring up helplessly. “Maybe someone just wanted to fight in the shade?” And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Car,” Barley said, shaking, helpless. “What do we do?” “I just–” Caramel’s eyes screwed close in concentration. “Whoever is doing this has to have a lot of pages. If we can just get them–” “From inside the monster cloud?!” Barley’s voice cracked. “It’s the only idea I have!” Caramel said back, panic clear in her voice. She then collapsed on her haunches and moaned. “Oh, we don’t even have a way to get there.” The two stood alone on the hill as doom came raining down from above. Caramel stared at the ground and Barley… Barley was taking deep breaths, counting backwards from ten, and most importantly, staring at something, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Maybe,” he began. “Maybe, if we can’t get there alone… we can ask for help.” Caramel looked up, and then followed his gaze. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. Barely trotted towards the child, and Caramel quickly followed. “Hey kid,” he said with a nervous, tired grin. “Wanna help save Ciderfest?” Fizzy was watching it all fall apart. The con was a battleground, and now a hoard of living nightmares was descending on it. And there was nothing she could do about it. Fizzy screamed. Over and over again, wordlessly, her fiery mane a swirling inferno. She screamed again and again, until there was nothing left inside of her. Eventually she looked back at the screen. And she saw something. Something wildly out of place in the grim scene. A flicker of life coming back to her, she zoomed in, and, without a sound, her face began steaming as tears tried to roll down her face. Flying alone into the cloud of monsters was a bright red bi-plane, scribbled in crayon. And flying it was none other than Barley and Caramel. Fizzy laughed. There was still hope. They could save the day. They could fix the problems she’d caus– Fizzy stomped down on the surge of bitterness that welled up inside of her with a grimace. Now wasn’t the time for that. There was hope. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Caramel shouted. She pointed to the left as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things swam through the air towards them. “Rodger!” Barley called in reply. “Hold on!” He dipped the nose of the plane down and gunned the engines. Caramel shrieked as massive, misshapen claws scythed overhead. Barley then pulled up, pushing the crayon engine for all it was worth. “We can lose them in the storm!” he barked, pulling back on the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” With one final press on the gas, the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way forward!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” There was a moment of silence. “Are we really the heroes, here?” Barley said, barely audible over the din. Caramel frowned, and set her pen back down. “‘And then our… our fearless protagonists, who made many mistakes, but who nonetheless wanted to do right and fixed this problem… this problem that they helped cause… saw what they were looking for.” “I think it worked, look!” Barley said, nodding forward. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the two of them quickly leapt from the plane. They took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Caramel said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish watching Fizzy play that game.” Barley said, a note of regret in his voice. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, his face pale. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Not to mention, you speak it with such confidence.” “Good thing we’re here with enough confidence for everypony!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “I’ll take anything at this point,” Barley uttered in disbelief. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended. They began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. “Look!” Barley called out, ducking as one the skeletal eyeless monsters was sent flying overhead by Rockhoof. Caramel rolled out of the way and kicked one of the purple tentacle-faced beasts into the path of a unicycle hurled with great force by Cheese Sandwich. She snapped her head to follow Barley’s shout. Floating behind Grogar, sheathed in sickly yellow light, was a stack of pages. “We have to get them!” She said, leaping into a sprint. Barley fell in behind her, galloping as hard as he could. Several monsters saw the burst of movement and gave chase. The two ran, the creatures hot on their heels. Their chests burned as they gulped down air. Close. So close! And then another, even larger group of monsters leapt into their path. Barley leapt into the air and grabbed Caramel, hauling her airborne. He managed three flaps, almost clearing the blockade– –only for a claw to clamp down on his tail. With a shout of despair and surprise, he did the only thing he could think of, and threw Caramel into the air as he was dragged back down. Caramel hung suspended in the air.. Not gonna make it. She thought, distantly, as her arc began to descend down. She looked up, time slowing. Grogar was watching her, conjuring up more fire. She couldn’t dodge. Too far, she thought. But she had to try. As she fell into the waiting hoard beneath, she pulled a mug from inside her dress, and pulled back, and letting out a wordless yell that carried all the fear, defiance, regret, and despair inside of her, she threw the mug as hard as she could. Fizzy’s entire world crawled to a halt, consisting only of the image of Caramel suspended in the air, making a last, desperate stand, and an empty room that mocked all her ambitions. She’d watched it all happen, and no matter how often she looked, she saw no way to affect the outcome. Until something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. In a flash, the page, forgotten and wedged under a cabinet, covered in all her plans and ideas, appeared on her desk, and her pen came down, as she too gave out a desperate yell. Two miracles happened at once. First, an over-eager monster leapt up for Caramel as she let the shot fly, both knocking her clear of the crowd of monsters, and inadvertently taking the fireblast Grogar had intended for her. Second, Grogar, too distracted from disbelief at that sight, failed to see the mug fly past him and strike true. His telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air. He snapped back to see the mug clatter against the cobblestone behind him, and wheel back around, death in his glowing red eyes. “YOU–” He reared back as a vortex of balefire roared to life between his horns “-WORMS!” “Now!” Starswirl shouted. The Pillars, back to back, all linked hooves and began to glow. Raising into the air, a halo of rainbow light began whirling around them. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The seven ponies rose, a great hum filling the battlefield. Suddenly, the halo stopped spinning, and the humming silenced. And then the world was filled with rainbows. The monsters disappeared with a wave of screams and snarls cut suddenly short, the power of Harmony banishing the misbegotten creations of Grogar’s dark magic. Unfortunately for everyone else, the same could be said of his castle. There was a great crack, and the whole structure began falling apart as it crashed to earth. “Operation Bounce is a go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos quickly followed suit. Barley scrambled to his hooves as the monsters disintegrated. With a look he turned to Caramel. “We gotta go!” He shouted, and scrambled for the plane. “Gather as many pages as you can!” Starswirl ordered. “We need to evacuate, but this isn’t over!” The two ran as fast as they could, hopping into the plane just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “That was insane,” Caramel said, scrambling into her seat. “I’m not gonna question getting out of this in one piece!” Barley retorted as he took the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get out of here!” He gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Starswirl was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This isn’t over. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel said, the weight of exhaustion slamming down on her. “We’ll do what we can, but they’re the ones with the pages.” After a moment of silence, Barley spoke. “Maybe not.” He said. “Fizzy’s still out there, and… maybe we should put our faith in her.” He grimaced. “For once.” Fizzy was laughing hysterically. Tears were turning into a sauna’s worth of steam as they ran down her face, but she was laughing nonetheless. She’d done it. She’d managed to help Barley and Caramel save Ciderfest. Her laughter was cut short as she was blindsided by a wave of shame and anger, her mane flaring. She looked up at the monitor. This wasn’t over. Looking down at the page, she scribbled something quick. She looked to see a portal open. Even if this was all her fault, she was going to fix it. One way or another. With determination, she strode through the portal.
If Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Chaos Is In The LeadFizzy slowly came to, and as she did, the warmth of sleep was replaced with a horrible numbness. They didn’t care. She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position. I did all this, for them, and they didn’t care. So that was it, then. She’d opened the book. Created the greatest convention in Ciderfest’s history with its magic. And what happened? When they finally met her, all they could do was complain and tell her to stop. What did I expect? Fizzy snorted. Here you are yet again, Fizzy. You can literally change the world, and no one will care. The tears came again. After a time, Fizzy slowly dragged herself from bed, and went to wash up. She didn’t notice the warning lights on the instruments flashing as she did so. “Duck!” Barley shouted and pointed. “Duck!” Caramel shouted in response. “Yeah!” Barley began. “Someone made a giant du-wahhh!” Caramel managed to yank him back into the trench just in time to avoid another volley of rotten tomatoes. “AND THIS IS FOR THE TIME THE CANTERLOTER GAVE MY SHOW A ONE STAR REVIEW!” Trixie’s voice echoed across the battlefield as she loaded another batch of spoiled vegetables into her Personal Trauma Artillery. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages, all vying for control of the book. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. Over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And Caramel and Barley found themselves alone in the middle of this battlefield of ideas. “This has really gotten out of hoof!” Barley wailed as another blast of vegetables rained down. “We gotta move! If we can find a calm spot, we can think about what to do.” Caramel nudged him forward. “Come on, crawl!” The two of them set off, crawling through the literal-metaphorical writing trenches. On the fields above, guests working with different factions sent malicious downvotes after one another. Barley came to halt, curling up to avoid dueling headcanons whose brawl nearly spilled into the trench. He did not move even after they passed. Caramel crawled alongside him to find him crying. “It’s too much,” he gasped. “It’s too much, and we messed it up. We messed it all up.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. Fizzy. “It’s okay, Bar,” she said, patting his back. “We just gotta keep moving. Keep moving, and…” Not able to finish the thought, the two of them continued on. Fizzy’s chair lowered from the ceiling into her battlestation. Despite sleep and shower, she looked exhausted, her nirik flame barely flickering. With a press of a button, her monitors came to life. And across them were dozens and dozens of warnings. “I… what—” Fizzy began furiously cycling through logs and feeds and saw utter chaos. The convention has descended into an all-out brawl, and the pages were both the prizes and the blows traded. She shook her head and frowned. “I just have to fix thi—” Her hoof reached down to where her stash of pages was, and she felt… nothing. Panicking. She searched around, seeing nothing. Then she furiously began typing away on her keyboard, looking through her own security recordings only to see… Chrysalis?! In silent, stuttering frames, she watched as “Twilight Sparkle” waited, forgotten in the argument, until Barley and Caramel left, only to turn into the Changeling queen and steal her pages! No. Nonononononono! Fizzy collapsed, her head a mess of white noise as she watched her grand, magical convention fall apart before her eyes, helpless to stop it. And alone. She might have sat there forever, but something caught her eye. Something that was rapidly becoming visible on every one of her feeds. Something that looked bad. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. “That can’t be good.” Barley whispered. “I dunno,” Caramel said, softly, staring up helplessly. “Maybe someone just wanted to fight in the shade?” And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Car,” Barley said, shaking, helpless. “What do we do?” “I just–” Caramel’s eyes screwed close in concentration. “Whoever is doing this has to have a lot of pages. If we can just get them–” “From inside the monster cloud?!” Barley’s voice cracked. “It’s the only idea I have!” Caramel said back, panic clear in her voice. She then collapsed on her haunches and moaned. “Oh, we don’t even have a way to get there.” The two stood alone on the hill as doom came raining down from above. Caramel stared at the ground and Barley… Barley was taking deep breaths, counting backwards from ten, and most importantly, staring at something, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Maybe,” he began. “Maybe, if we can’t get there alone… we can ask for help.” Caramel looked up, and then followed his gaze. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. Barely trotted towards the child, and Caramel quickly followed. “Hey kid,” he said with a nervous, tired grin. “Wanna help save Ciderfest?” Fizzy was watching it all fall apart. The con was a battleground, and now a hoard of living nightmares was descending on it. And there was nothing she could do about it. Fizzy screamed. Over and over again, wordlessly, her fiery mane a swirling inferno. She screamed again and again, until there was nothing left inside of her. Eventually she looked back at the screen. And she saw something. Something wildly out of place in the grim scene. A flicker of life coming back to her, she zoomed in, and, without a sound, her face began steaming as tears tried to roll down her face. Flying alone into the cloud of monsters was a bright red bi-plane, scribbled in crayon. And flying it was none other than Barley and Caramel. Fizzy laughed. There was still hope. They could save the day. They could fix the problems she’d caus– Fizzy stomped down on the surge of bitterness that welled up inside of her with a grimace. Now wasn’t the time for that. There was hope. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Caramel shouted. She pointed to the left as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things swam through the air towards them. “Rodger!” Barley called in reply. “Hold on!” He dipped the nose of the plane down and gunned the engines. Caramel shrieked as massive, misshapen claws scythed overhead. Barley then pulled up, pushing the crayon engine for all it was worth. “We can lose them in the storm!” he barked, pulling back on the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” With one final press on the gas, the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way forward!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” There was a moment of silence. “Are we really the heroes, here?” Barley said, barely audible over the din. Caramel frowned, and set her pen back down. “‘And then our… our fearless protagonists, who made many mistakes, but who nonetheless wanted to do right and fixed this problem… this problem that they helped cause… saw what they were looking for.” “I think it worked, look!” Barley said, nodding forward. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the two of them quickly leapt from the plane. They took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Caramel said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish watching Fizzy play that game.” Barley said, a note of regret in his voice. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, his face pale. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Not to mention, you speak it with such confidence.” “Good thing we’re here with enough confidence for everypony!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “I’ll take anything at this point,” Barley uttered in disbelief. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended. They began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. “Look!” Barley called out, ducking as one the skeletal eyeless monsters was sent flying overhead by Rockhoof. Caramel rolled out of the way and kicked one of the purple tentacle-faced beasts into the path of a unicycle hurled with great force by Cheese Sandwich. She snapped her head to follow Barley’s shout. Floating behind Grogar, sheathed in sickly yellow light, was a stack of pages. “We have to get them!” She said, leaping into a sprint. Barley fell in behind her, galloping as hard as he could. Several monsters saw the burst of movement and gave chase. The two ran, the creatures hot on their heels. Their chests burned as they gulped down air. Close. So close! And then another, even larger group of monsters leapt into their path. Barley leapt into the air and grabbed Caramel, hauling her airborne. He managed three flaps, almost clearing the blockade– –only for a claw to clamp down on his tail. With a shout of despair and surprise, he did the only thing he could think of, and threw Caramel into the air as he was dragged back down. Caramel hung suspended in the air.. Not gonna make it. She thought, distantly, as her arc began to descend down. She looked up, time slowing. Grogar was watching her, conjuring up more fire. She couldn’t dodge. Too far, she thought. But she had to try. As she fell into the waiting hoard beneath, she pulled a mug from inside her dress, and pulled back, and letting out a wordless yell that carried all the fear, defiance, regret, and despair inside of her, she threw the mug as hard as she could. Fizzy’s entire world crawled to a halt, consisting only of the image of Caramel suspended in the air, making a last, desperate stand, and an empty room that mocked all her ambitions. She’d watched it all happen, and no matter how often she looked, she saw no way to affect the outcome. Until something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. In a flash, the page, forgotten and wedged under a cabinet, covered in all her plans and ideas, appeared on her desk, and her pen came down, as she too gave out a desperate yell. Two miracles happened at once. First, an over-eager monster leapt up for Caramel as she let the shot fly, both knocking her clear of the crowd of monsters, and inadvertently taking the fireblast Grogar had intended for her. Second, Grogar, too distracted from disbelief at that sight, failed to see the mug fly past him and strike true. His telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air. He snapped back to see the mug clatter against the cobblestone behind him, and wheel back around, death in his glowing red eyes. “YOU–” He reared back as a vortex of balefire roared to life between his horns “-WORMS!” “Gotcha!” Pinkie giggled. And then, falling through the air, directly over the battlefield, she proceeded to whip an impossibly large Party Battleship Cannon from inside of her mane, and she leveled it directly at Grogar’s face. The entire battlefield hung silent for one, stunned moment. And then Pinkie Pie fired an entire national holiday’s worth of fireworks all at once, cackling like a madmare. “FOOLS!” Grogar roared in rage and pain, and then was swallowed up by the dark, vanishing. The multicolored, smoking explosions and chaos sent his monstrous minions fleeing in animal panic and scattered the Pillars. Unfortunately, she may have overdone it, just a tad. There was a great crack, and the whole floating castle began crumbling apart as it crashed to earth. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies cleared the panicking nightmares and came together. “We must retreat! This clash is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. Barley scrambled to his hooves as the monsters scattered. With a look he turned to Caramel. “We gotta go!” He shouted, and scrambled for the plane. “Alright everyone, Operation Grab After Smash is a go!” Pinkie laughed, sailing into the crumbling courtyard on an umbrella. “This party is just getting started, and we need all the pages we can get!” Her Commandos saluted with as many rubber duckies, whoopie cushions, and roman candles as they had, and set to work gathering the scattering pages. The two ran as fast as they could, hopping into the plane just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “That was insane.” Caramel said, scrambling into her seat. “I’m not gonna question getting out of this in one piece!” Barley retorted as he took the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get out of here!” He gunned the engines, taking off as the castle ripped itself apart beneath them. “Pinkie was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just getting started. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel said, the weight of exhaustion slamming down on her. “We’ll do what we can, but they’re the ones with the pages.” After a moment of silence, Barley spoke. “Maybe not.” He said. “Fizzy’s still out there, and… maybe we should put our faith in her.” He grimaced. “For once.” Fizzy was laughing hysterically. Tears were turning into a sauna’s worth of steam as they ran down her face, but she was laughing nonetheless. She’d done it. She’d managed to help Barley and Caramel save Ciderfest. Her laughter was cut short as she was blindsided by a wave of shame and anger, her mane flaring. She looked up at the monitor. This wasn’t over. Looking down at the page, she scribbled something quick. She looked to see a portal open. Even if this was all her fault, she was going to fix it. One way or another. With determination, she strode through the portal.
If Fizzy Isn't Saved, And Villains Are In The LeadFizzy slowly came to, and as she did, the warmth of sleep was replaced with a horrible numbness. They didn’t care. She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position. I did all this, for them, and they didn’t care. So that was it, then. She’d opened the book. Created the greatest convention in Ciderfest’s history with its magic. And what happened? When they finally met her, all they could do was complain and tell her to stop. What did I expect? Fizzy snorted. Here you are yet again, Fizzy. You can literally change the world, and no one will care. The tears came again. After a time, Fizzy slowly dragged herself from bed, and went to wash up. She didn’t notice the warning lights on the instruments flashing as she did so. “Duck!” Barley shouted and pointed. “Duck!” Caramel shouted in response. “Yeah!” Barley began. “Someone made a giant du-wahhh!” Caramel managed to yank him back into the trench just in time to avoid another volley of rotten tomatoes. “AND THIS IS FOR THE TIME THE CANTERLOTER GAVE MY SHOW A ONE STAR REVIEW!” Trixie’s voice echoed across the battlefield as she loaded another batch of spoiled vegetables into her Personal Trauma Artillery. Ciderfest had become a battlefield of ideas, edits, plot threads, tropes, text, and paratext. The world inside the Book of All Stories was filled to the brim with creativity, and every creature in Equestria past, present, and future was furiously writing on their collected Pages, all vying for control of the book. On top of a mountain of skulls and ice cream, Tirek faced off against Sheriff Hitch in a 10,000-word write-off. Dark magic and adorable critters warred back and forth across the battlefield as pens flew. In a valley, Cozy Glow sipped tea with Scorpan, discussing their plans for their upcoming Villain/Chaos collab, each trying to subtly undermine the other’s plot points. Over in the Shipping Sea, there was just… just so much hoof-holding and cuddling. It was actually pretty great, except for the constant, droning “Aww…” coming from anyone that beheld it. And Caramel and Barley found themselves alone in the middle of this battlefield of ideas. “This has really gotten out of hoof!” Barley wailed as another blast of vegetables rained down. “We gotta move! If we can find a calm spot, we can think about what to do.” Caramel nudged him forward. “Come on, crawl!” The two of them set off, crawling through the literal-metaphorical writing trenches. On the fields above, guests working with different factions sent malicious downvotes after one another. Barley came to halt, curling up to avoid dueling headcanons whose brawl nearly spilled into the trench. He did not move even after they passed. Caramel crawled alongside him to find him crying. “It’s too much,” he gasped. “It’s too much, and we messed it up. We messed it all up.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. Fizzy. “It’s okay, Bar,” she said, patting his back. “We just gotta keep moving. Keep moving, and…” Not able to finish the thought, the two of them continued on. Fizzy’s chair lowered from the ceiling into her battlestation. Despite sleep and shower, she looked exhausted, her nirik flame barely flickering. With a press of a button, her monitors came to life. And across them were dozens and dozens of warnings. “I… what—” Fizzy began furiously cycling through logs and feeds and saw utter chaos. The convention has descended into an all-out brawl, and the pages were both the prizes and the blows traded. She shook her head and frowned. “I just have to fix thi—” Her hoof reached down to where her stash of pages was, and she felt… nothing. Panicking. She searched around, seeing nothing. Then she furiously began typing away on her keyboard, looking through her own security recordings only to see… Chrysalis?! In silent, stuttering frames, she watched as “Twilight Sparkle” waited, forgotten in the argument, until Barley and Caramel left, only to turn into the Changeling queen and steal her pages! No. Nonononononono! Fizzy collapsed, her head a mess of white noise as she watched her grand, magical convention fall apart before her eyes, helpless to stop it. And alone. She might have sat there forever, but something caught her eye. Something that was rapidly becoming visible on every one of her feeds. Something that looked bad. Looming overhead, dwarfing all the air ships, hot air balloons, cloud houses, and rainbow factories, was a great, writhing, shape of darkness that settled into looming over the entire battlefield. “That can’t be good.” Barley whispered. “I dunno,” Caramel said, softly, staring up helplessly. “Maybe someone just wanted to fight in the shade?” And then it started screaming. Pouring forth from the darkness was a great host of living nightmares. Dragons, chimeras, manticores, and hosts of terrible, nameless things of teeth and hunger, and all of it was coming for all of them. “Car,” Barley said, shaking, helpless. “What do we do?” “I just–” Caramel’s eyes screwed close in concentration. “Whoever is doing this has to have a lot of pages. If we can just get them–” “From inside the monster cloud?!” Barley’s voice cracked. “It’s the only idea I have!” Caramel said back, panic clear in her voice. She then collapsed on her haunches and moaned. “Oh, we don’t even have a way to get there.” The two stood alone on the hill as doom came raining down from above. Caramel stared at the ground and Barley… Barley was taking deep breaths, counting backwards from ten, and most importantly, staring at something, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Maybe,” he began. “Maybe, if we can’t get there alone… we can ask for help.” Caramel looked up, and then followed his gaze. Standing not twenty feet away, was a young con guest, clutching a blank page to their chest. Barely trotted towards the child, and Caramel quickly followed. “Hey kid,” he said with a nervous, tired grin. “Wanna help save Ciderfest?” Fizzy was watching it all fall apart. The con was a battleground, and now a hoard of living nightmares was descending on it. And there was nothing she could do about it. Fizzy screamed. Over and over again, wordlessly, her fiery mane a swirling inferno. She screamed again and again, until there was nothing left inside of her. Eventually she looked back at the screen. And she saw something. Something wildly out of place in the grim scene. A flicker of life coming back to her, she zoomed in, and, without a sound, her face began steaming as tears tried to roll down her face. Flying alone into the cloud of monsters was a bright red bi-plane, scribbled in crayon. And flying it was none other than Barley and Caramel. Fizzy laughed. There was still hope. They could save the day. They could fix the problems she’d caus– Fizzy stomped down on the surge of bitterness that welled up inside of her with a grimace. Now wasn’t the time for that. There was hope. “Bogies, nine o’ clock!” Caramel shouted. She pointed to the left as a trio of eyeless, snake-like things swam through the air towards them. “Rodger!” Barley called in reply. “Hold on!” He dipped the nose of the plane down and gunned the engines. Caramel shrieked as massive, misshapen claws scythed overhead. Barley then pulled up, pushing the crayon engine for all it was worth. “We can lose them in the storm!” he barked, pulling back on the steering wheel. “Turbulence incoming!” With one final press on the gas, the craft plunged into the dark. The plane rocked in the vortex of shadows. The darkness howled, and menacing shapes swam in the murky distance. “We need to find a way forward!” Barley shouted over the din. “I got it!” Caramel shouted, and began writing on their borrowed page. “‘And then our heroes quickly saw what they were looking for!’” There was a moment of silence. “Are we really the heroes, here?” Barley said, barely audible over the din. Caramel frowned, and set her pen back down. “‘And then our… our fearless protagonists, who made many mistakes, but who nonetheless wanted to do right and fixed this problem… this problem that they helped cause… saw what they were looking for.” “I think it worked, look!” Barley said, nodding forward. Ahead, the darkness was starting to thin. Barley gunned the engine, and with one final burst of speed, they charged through, into the eye of the storm. In the center floated a decrepit and menacing castle. Barley banked the plane and touched down in the ruined courtyard. The howl of the shadow storm was distant as the two of them quickly leapt from the plane. They took a second to catch their breath and looked at the edifice before them. It seemed to loom over them, each entryway and window shrouded in darkness despite the stark sunlight overhead. “Whoever’s behind this is here,” Caramel said. “Unfortunately, they sent a welcoming committee!” Barley pointed as shapes began to filter from the entryway. Loping out came something looking like a cross between a skeletal ape and eyeless eel, cobbled together out of industrial piping. Flanking them were bipedal monsters with be-tentacled faces, wet, soft purple skin, and dead, white eyes. “I never liked that movie!” Caramel blanched. “And I never got to finish watching Fizzy play that game.” Barley said, a note of regret in his voice. “I admit.” A gravelly voice echoed from the gloom. “For all its faults, your world has provided so much… inspiration for new creations.” And then from the shadows, Grogar, Dark Emperor of Old Equestria, Father of Monsters, strode forth and took the field. “You won’t get away with this, Grogar!” Barley said, his face pale. The great demonic goat rolled his eyes. “That line was old when the world was young, child.” Grogar then gave a small grin. “Not to mention, you speak it with such confidence.” “Good thing we’re here with enough confidence for everypony!” a high pitched voice called out. Rising from the dark cloud was a great contraption of bike pedals and propellers, numerous creatives, outcasts, and dreamers furiously pumping their legs to keep the massive flying machine airborne, and sitting at its head was none other than Pinkie Pie. “The Party Police are here, Grogar, and we’re charging you with being the Father of all Poopers!” “I’ll take anything at this point,” Barley uttered in disbelief. “Really?” Grogar said. “AND THEY SHALL NOT BE ALONE!” There was a flash of silver light, and appearing in the Courtyard was none other than Starswirl the Bearded. Fanning out behind him was Mage Meadowbrook, Flash Magnus, Somnambula, Mistmane, Rockhoof, and Stygian. “The Pillars of Equestria have arrived!” The four groups eyed each other. “Very well.” Grogar said, raising to his full height. “A battle it is, then!” His bell began glowing a pale yellow color, and with no further warning, waves of sickly yellow and black fire burst forth, sweeping the field, and Grogar’s conjured horrors followed, screaming in its wake. Pinkie and her Chaotic Party Commandos leapt from the Flycycle as the fire blasted it apart, pulling parachutes as they descended. They began raining down glitter bombs, sowing chaos among the ranks. Starswirl’s horn flared, and a great silver shield deflected the flames before shattering into spears of silver light which lanced out, breaking the monstrous charge. The rest of the Pillars flooded in after the barrage, taking the fight to the monsters. “Look!” Barley called out, ducking as one the skeletal eyeless monsters was sent flying overhead by Rockhoof. Caramel rolled out of the way and kicked one of the purple tentacle-faced beasts into the path of a unicycle hurled with great force by Cheese Sandwich. She snapped her head to follow Barley’s shout. Floating behind Grogar, sheathed in sickly yellow light, was a stack of pages. “We have to get them!” She said, leaping into a sprint. Barley fell in behind her, galloping as hard as he could. Several monsters saw the burst of movement and gave chase. The two ran, the creatures hot on their heels. Their chests burned as they gulped down air. Close. So close! And then another, even larger group of monsters leapt into their path. Barley leapt into the air and grabbed Caramel, hauling her airborne. He managed three flaps, almost clearing the blockade– –only for a claw to clamp down on his tail. With a shout of despair and surprise, he did the only thing he could think of, and threw Caramel into the air as he was dragged back down. Caramel hung suspended in the air.. Not gonna make it. She thought, distantly, as her arc began to descend down. She looked up, time slowing. Grogar was watching her, conjuring up more fire. She couldn’t dodge. Too far, she thought. But she had to try. As she fell into the waiting hoard beneath, she pulled a mug from inside her dress, and pulled back, and letting out a wordless yell that carried all the fear, defiance, regret, and despair inside of her, she threw the mug as hard as she could. Fizzy’s entire world crawled to a halt, consisting only of the image of Caramel suspended in the air, making a last, desperate stand, and an empty room that mocked all her ambitions. She’d watched it all happen, and no matter how often she looked, she saw no way to affect the outcome. Until something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. In a flash, the page, forgotten and wedged under a cabinet, covered in all her plans and ideas, appeared on her desk, and her pen came down, as she too gave out a desperate yell. Two miracles happened at once. First, an over-eager monster leapt up for Caramel as she let the shot fly, both knocking her clear of the crowd of monsters, and inadvertently taking the fireblast Grogar had intended for her. Second, Grogar, too distracted from disbelief at that sight, failed to see the mug fly past him and strike true. His telekinetic grip shattered, and the pages exploded into the air. He snapped back to see the mug clatter against the cobblestone behind him, and wheel back around, death in his glowing red eyes. “YOU–” He reared back as a vortex of balefire roared to life between his horns “-WORMS!” And with a roar of infernal rage, he let loose his fury into the ground directly in front of him. And the darkness of Tartarus followed with it. “Operation Bounce is go!” Pinkie shouted, rushing to the edge of the courtyard ahead of the oncoming destruction. “Umbrellas away!” Pinkie took a flying leap from the platform and, with a giggle, pulled an umbrella from her mane. She flicked it open with a WHOOMP, catching an updraft and sailing away. The rest of her Party Commandos rushed to follow suit. Great glowing cracks rent through the entire courtyard, followed by great gouts of that yellow and black fire, which burst up from them and came back crashing down, scattering both the Pillars and the last of Pinkie’s Commandos. Not even given a moment to breathe, the monsters rushed in behind the devastation, giving out shrieks of triumph as the battle became a full on rout. The entire castle began shaking apart under the assault. “Pillars!” Starswirl shouted, desperation clear in his voice. “To me!” Quickly, the seven ponies fought a desperate retreat, linking up as the nightmares closed in. “We must retreat! The battle is lost!” The others nodded their dismayed assent, and with a flash of silver magic, they were gone. Barley scrambled to his hooves. By yet another miracle, the blasts had sent him and Caramel flying, but they were otherwise unhurt. With a look he turned to Caramel. “We gotta go!” He shouted, and scrambled for the plane. “NOW IS THE FATED HOUR!” Grogar bellowed in triumph. His bell began clanging back and forth as the pages fluttering the air were seized in his magic. His monsters swarmed around him in a wave. “NO MORE SHALL THE DARKNESS BE DENIED! WEEP, EQUESTRIA, FOR THIS IS BUT THE START OF WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE!” The two ran as fast as they could, hopping into the plane just as one of the castle’s towers collapsed with a roar. “That was insane.” Caramel said, scrambling into her seat. “I’m not gonna question getting out of this in one piece!” Barley retorted as he took the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get out of here!” He gunned the engines, taking off as the monsters closed in. “Grogar was right,” Barley said, sailing the crayon plane out into the open sky. “This is just the start of the battle. The Book is going to close in just a few hours, and everyone is gonna get as many pages as they can to ensure their faction wins.” “It’s all up to the guests, now.” Caramel said, the weight of exhaustion slamming down on her. “We’ll do what we can, but they’re the ones with the pages.” After a moment of silence, Barley spoke. “Maybe not.” He said. “Fizzy’s still out there, and… maybe we should put our faith in her.” He grimaced. “For once.” Fizzy stared listlessly. She’d saved Barley and Caramel. Just barely, but she’d done it. They hadn’t been able to stop Grogar, or any of the other problems she’d caused- Fizzy winced, stamping down on the surge of anger and shame. Now was not the time for self pity. This wasn’t over. Looking down at the page, she scribbled something quick. She looked to see a portal open. Even if this was all her fault, she was going to fix it. One way or another. With determination, she strode through the portal.
