The Final Battle

Twilight Sparkle was trotting back and forth in the throne room, having requested an audience with Princess Celestia. She had to speak with her urgently about strange matters that, although seemed irrelevant with each other, needed to be discussed. Twilight kept looking at the clock, swinging her head back and forth every second or two. Celestia was supposed to be there one whole minute ago!

Suddenly the door opened and Celestia came in looking as regal as ever, her celestial mane flowing as it normally did. She walked to her throne before sitting in it, guards on both sides of her as Twilight bowed. "Oh Twilight, my faithful student, you should know by now that bowing is not neccessary," she said, humbled by her show of appreciation, "anyway, what is it that you needed to discuss so urgently?"

Twilight raised her head, looking up at her teacher and monarch, using her magic to pull out a marker board, the biggest she could find. She looked at the two guards and then back at her princess, "Before I begin, I would like this to be private," she said.

Celestia nodded and issued the guards outside, just out of earshot for indoor voices, but close enough that they can hear her scream if she was in trouble. Twilight nodded before getting a marker to write on the board. "I know that this may seem trivial and irrelevant, but it's just too weird to be coincidence," she said, testing the marker.

She drew a timeline of everything that had happened in the last couple of years, such as the Nightmare Moon situation, the Hydra, the dragon in the mountain, everything bad or strange. "I'm sure we've all been aware of these situations and issues that have come up in the last year and although they seem irrelevant, I have a feeling they were all a precursor to something... Bigger," she said, circling the Cerberus attack on Ponyville, "as you know, Cerberus, the guard of Tartarus, had attacked Ponyville and Fluttershy calmed him down. That's fine, but what if there is a correlation with the Cerberus attack, where it comes from, and every thing else?" she said, writing out the term "Tartarus".

"Now, we all know that Tartarus is the impure, banished land and it is large, no one knows how large it is or how many species of creatures there are in that land. We do however know that the Changelings did come out from Tartarus to attack us, however... Doesn't it seem strange that a species living in a secluded location would know that the Elements of Harmony were still around and that they were the only things that could defeat us. I realize that they could have overheard you talk about it to us, but how would the message get around so fast and even if it did, how come there were hundreds of changelings there?

"What if the reason they knew is because of this..." she circled the parasprite attack on Ponyville, "the parasprites were giving recon? They live in the Everfree forest and they are plentiful. However, they are also small and hard to see. What if they got past Cerberus every day to give the message on what's happening in Ponyville or observing everything that happened? Such as when we defeated Nightmare Moon..."

"I can understand this Twilight, however, I don't get your point. The Changelings attacked and we defeated them and sent them back to where they belong. That doesn't mean the parasprites are allying with the Changelings or sending messages to them."

"Yes, I get that there will be things that are hard to believe, however again, there seems to be something going on and the changelings by themselves would be incapable of enraging the Cerberus, it's too smart for that. Something had to rile it, something had to get it angry. Princess, I believe that Equestria may be in danger and at the very least, I think we should send a small group to Tartarus and just check it out, see if something, anything is wrong. The Cerberus normally won't harm a pony like us, not that I would think anyway."

Celestia thought about it for a moment before she nodded, "I trust that you feel there is something wrong, so I will adhear to your request," she said, calling in a few guards, "rally a group of five military ponies! We are sending a group to Tartarus to check out the situation!" she said. The soldiers saluted in understanding and marched off, going to do her order. "In the meantime Twilight, you need to get some rest," she said.

Twilight nodded before walking out of the throne room and getting on her way back to Ponyville, hoping that nothing will go wrong. She got home a few hours later and climbed into her bed, sleeping and hoping for good news in the morning.