Chapter Twenty-Three: Phase

November 1

Canterlot, Diamond Quarter

Twilight Sparkle had owned a set of wooden blocks when she was a filly. Her father, Night Light, had bought them from a specialty toy workshop in Manehatten, packed in a brightly painted metal tin that was easy for small hooves to open and close. The tin was a work of art and the blocks were hand-painted as well, vivid reds, blues, greens: a riot of color, and all in large smooth pieces that fit together solidly.

No piece was smaller than hoof-size. Twilight Velvet, Twilight's namesake, had been worried about her daughter choking on the tiniest ones.

But the elder Twilight's fears were not needed. Even at two, young Twilight Sparkle took to books and reading with gusto; physical toys failed to catch her fancy like adventure stories did, and what parent would be worried about their filly choking to death on books bigger than she was? Still, Twilight loved the blocks more than her other toys, and built entire worlds with them.

She created castles and gardens and multicolor towers that mimicked the high-rises seen from her bedroom window, and loved to invent stories to accompany them. Most of the plots were so elaborate that her parents could never keep up. She loved to build a two-foot-tall replica of the Goldmane Sachs tower, the glass and steel monstrosity in Canterlot's Diamond Quarter, and the centerpiece at the heart of Equestrian money and commerce. Night Light would often joke that his only offspring was destined for a career in investment banking.

Aside from encouraging a love of clean Modernist architecture- the tower was one of several buildings raised in the early 1320s that clashed with Canterlot's classical styles- the blocks were invaluable tools when her prodigious magical talents began to manifest. All unicorns' magic displayed at very early ages. By three, she was levitating the blocks with magic; by four, she was levitating the furniture.

By five, she was deemed the most promising young unicorn in her primary school, and Princess Celestia took her under her wing three months after her sixth birthday. The rest was history.

"WATCH OUT, TWILIGHT!"

The real Goldmane Sachs tower shuddered. A fireball, roughly the size of a Ponyville house, struck near its base. Glass and gigantic chunks of masonry rained down, as if she was back in her foalhood home and her clumsy hoof had knocked over some blocks. Very large blocks.

High above, the Princess of the Day fought an eighty-foot black dragon. The dragon had laid claim to Canterlot. It swooped low over the buildings, vomiting fireballs, and several buildings had already went up in flames or buckled from the impact of claw and fang, for the dragon used all of its weaponry on the City. Underneath the dragon's roars and the distant popping flashes of Celestia's spells, Twilight could hear screams and falling debris.

Princess… I want to help more than anything in the world. But she was stuck on the ground. She would have given anything for a pair of wings.

Princess Celestia evidently couldn't turn the dragon away from its flight pattern or deflect its devastation. The dragon was enormous, like a spiked black cloud blotting out the sunlight every time it passed by. And it was furious. The air vibrated with magic and death.

The stench of dragon- sulfur, smoke and a faintly reptilian funk- clogged the ponies' nostrils. It lay over Canterlot as a dense miasma.

Twilight stared trancelike at the sky, her heart breaking. She couldn't help her Princess, her teacher, her friend, her lover, when she needed it most.

"Twi', for the last time, it ain't safe out here!" said Applejack.

"She's right," Rarity put in. "We should stay indoors where it's safe and let Princess Celestia take care of it."

"Ah mean, Ah'm not stayin' inside with that Nebula Streak, but- Rarity's right. An' it's only gettin' worse!"

As pieces of the Goldmane Sachs tower continued to meet the street with great force, Rainbow Dash was the only one who stood with Twilight. "I should help! Look- there's Spitfire and Fleetfoot! They're up there fighting, I'm a better flier than they are-"

She was right about the Wonderbolts' presence, although Spitfire would have probably fought her over that second statement. Two of the Wonderbolts had joined the battle. Even nearsighted Twilight could see them keeping close to Celestia, darting around the dragon and dodging its attacks, and trying with mixed success to divert it away from the buildings.

"This ain't the time ta boast, Rainbow-" said Applejack.

"Are you jealous because you can't help take down the dragon and I can?" said Rainbow Dash.

The farm pony had her lasso clutched between her teeth. Moments ago, she had used it to drag a piece of the tower out of the road so the carts laden with water, pulled by police to fight the spreading fires, could pass by; voice muffled by the rope, she growled, "Ah swear, Rainbow, ya wouldn't know common sense if it reached out and bit ya."

"That doesn't even make sense, Applejack," said Rarity.

"I'm going to help her!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

"Didn't you listen to Nebula Streak?" Rarity argued, shouting over Rainbow Dash. "If one of us is killed, how are we supposed to use the Elements to stop the Ravana?"

Rainbow Dash uttered a wordless snarl. "How much more TALKING are we going to do before we actually DO something?"And before anypony could stop her, the Pegasus was airborne in a flash of multicolored light, soaring into the smoky skies and heading straight for the dragon.

"RAINBOW DASH!" Rarity cried. It was too late.

"For the love of Luna, citizen, get indoors! And stay out of the lower districts, it's a bloody riot!"

The gruff voice scared the hide right off Twilight. She had been staring at the sky through the argument; the police officer, a stout and bearded Earth pony in a blue uniform, looked at her like she had lost her marbles.

She jumped. "A- riot? What about the dragon?"

"If I hear one more thing about that bloody dragon-" growled the police pony, stamping his hoof. "Listen, everypony should stay indoors until all this is sorted out. These mobs are spilling all over the city! As if the dragon wasn't enough to worry about!"

As if to add an exclamation mark to his sentence, a group of well-dressed ponies galloped swiftly past them, toward the heart of the Diamond Quarter and its embattled towers, toward the choking smoke and rubble. Both Twilight and Bryn watched them go.

If they were fleeing the dragon, why would they head straight for the dragon's devastation? The beast was concentrating its attacks on the literal summit of the city, at the Palace and its surrounding districts. Celestia and the Wonderbolts were the sole reason why the Palace was unharmed. The lower slopes of the mountain were, for the most part, safe, although the choking smoke was drifting south. If I were trying to get away from a city under siege and a rampaging dragon, I would go for the gates, for the trains or the secret tunnels, thought Twilight. Not here.

Unless they weren't running from the dragon.

This was the first Twilight, or any of the others, had heard about mobs, although it most definitely would not be the last. If all these poor Canterlot ponies get caught between the mob and the dragon-

We have to help them.

---

Five hours earlier

Canterlot Undercity, Level Ten, Dark Sector

"And it's time for things to change!" roared the griffon, his neck feathers puffed up with rage. He punctuated each outburst with a violent downward chop of his leg. His amber eyes, like those of a malevolent eagle, stared daggers at the crowd.

There was a crack as his talon, restlessly flexing, gripped the bottom of the podium too tightly. The board creaked and snapped.

If the ponies gathered in a loose semicircle around his impromptu soapbox noticed, they didn't show it. Perhaps fifty or sixty had stopped in the square to listen to this griffon. He, or somepony working with him, had set up a wooden box upon which he could stand, as well as a platform for a large chunk of glowing crystal, the same crystals naturally found in the mountain that gave so much of the Undercity its unique, otherworldly greenish tinge. Down on Level Ten, the lowest habitable rung of Lower Canterlot, no other lights shone.

"We have to prove to those preening, stuckup, filthy PRINCESSES that commonponies like us can't be ignored!" He stomped his right front talon on the creaking platform. Another board cracked.

"You're not even a bloody pony!" one of the audience members shouted.

"And they ignore us," the griffin continued in a strident voice, as if the pony hadn't spoken, "because they're too busy with their fancy galas and celebrations to care!"

The same pony spoke up, louder this time, loud enough that the griffin could not feign deafness. "Bloody shut up already!"

"Just as they ignore us, you are ignoring the truth-"

"And just because we lost our jobs because of the accident, we're supposed to… what? Overthrow the Princesses?" said a mare. "What good would that do?"

"Overthrow them because they turn a blind eye to horrors like this! They LET it happen! How can they call themselves rulers if they don't care about those they rule?!"

A deep-voiced stallion in the rear of the throng, dressed in soot-stained coveralls and a cap pulled over his eyes, stepped forward. His voice was low and gravelly, like a log being dragged along the bottom of a ditch. "I used ta have a job at that factory. Five o' my friends died when the roof caved in an' the boilers blew, and nopony would've died if some buckin' griffons hadn't been runnin' the place too hard. Griffons like you."

There was a murmur of assent. It was common knowledge that the Canterlot Ironworks had been bought out by a mysterious offshore corporation in 1395. Not everypony knew, though, that the new owners were griffons- or that working conditions steadily worsened after the buyout, or that virtually all of the profits went overseas. Still, the workers were not stupid. More often than not the bosses were griffons or stallions reporting to a griffon, and harsh taskmasters all.

Realizing that the mood of the crowd was volatile, the griffon backpedaled. "I am NOT one of them! I am one of you… like you, I worked the forges and the bellows, a coal hauler for the Ironworks for six years. Before that, Manehatten Allied Steel. All the injustices you've seen, I have seen them too." Which was true. More or less. So what if he had never actually worked the forges? He managed them. In his mind they were the same thing.

"Like fourteen-hour days in a freezing cold warehouse with no time to rest my poor hooves?" said one of the several zebras clustered around the speaker.

"Yeah!"

"It's not fair!"

The zebra's name was Zafrina. She stepped up and looked the griffon in the eye. "But I wouldn't even be here in the Undercity, I wouldn't have had to leave home, leave Hoofrica, if my homeland wasn't under attack by griffon slave traders! I'd die before I would let a filthy barbaric griffon make me do anything! And my foals at home… stuck in a drafty apartment, nopony to provide for them but me, and now I lost my JOB!"

It was wise of the griffon to place his podium on the main road through Ten, east of the docks, where workers riding the lift home would trudge, sore-hoofed, to their apartments. Undercity housing worsened with each level closer to the mountain's core; Eight was almost luxurious compared to the slums and dive bars of Ten, full of the most unfortunate, the drunks and addicts and cutthroats and whorses. By preaching at this spot, he was ensuring his message reached the proper ears, the ears of the most downtrodden and misfortunate. It was a calculated risk but one with a huge potential payoff. The crowd was growing restless. More ponies, zebras, and even one or two of his own species joined the rest.

The crowd was growing restless toward him, though.

"Who can we trust?" Zafrina shouted.

"My mom died in the factory!" screamed a young donkey in the crowd, her voice rising above the din. A stallion scooped the foal up and perched her upon his broad back.

"I say we march on the upper city and let them know that we can't just be crushed underhoof!" one of the zebras said. "Who is with me?"

Zafrina and the other zebras were with her, at least. Their herd instinct was even stronger than ponies' in times of discord. And, like their distant cousins the earth ponies, their rage was difficult to ignite, but terrible once kindled. They stomped their back hooves and roared.

The griffon permitted himself a small smile. The crowd was becoming focused in exactly the way he had hoped, but it was yet to truly become an instrument of change.

It had potential, though.

With just the right push…

"And how do you expect to reach the upper city? The puppet police, just another one of the Princesses' hooves crushing us to the dirt, they will stop you. But if we recruit others… workers from the docks, the lower levels, we can overwhelm them!"

The entire platform buckled.

"Spread the word! Let all of us stand together! We are for the WORKERS! The WORKERS should be responsible for THEMSELVES! Either you are with us, or AGAINST US!"

The crowd roared and he knew that his job was done. His superiors had ordered him to inflame the anger of the common folk. It was simpler than even he had expected. The anger was already there; all he had to do was focus it and provide a target. Others would join. Many already had, filled with something like courage, something found at the bottom of liquor bottles.

"WE MARCH ON THE PALACE!"

And even if the target was the wrong one, even if these downtrodden and furious citizens completely missed the true villains at work- the seeds were already sown, and Canterlot would reap the bitter harvest. Truly, it did not matter whether the fledgling uprising succeeded or failed. His orders were to create division and mistrust and violence. The other griffon operatives spread across the Undercity were doing the same. Soon, the flood of revolt would reach the heights of the mountain, and by then he and any evidence of his presence would be long gone.

The griffon smiled. He had a report to write, and he had to deliver it personally. His contact in Vanhoover would be expecting him. Intelligence officers of the Griffon King didn't like to be kept waiting.

---

Present time

Canterlot, Market District

Bryn's breathing was ragged. The frantic sprint from the Diamond Quarter had left him with a nagging stitch in his chest. The smoke, somehow worse here than higher on the mountain where the devastation was most concentrated, made his eyes water and his throat itch and seize. Snot dribbled down his face.

The chill winds rapidly froze it in place. In the twenty minutes he, Rarity, Applejack, and Twilight had braved the burning streets, he had cracked away frozen snot and ice from his breaths at least twice. Was it ten below? Twenty?

It felt more like twenty. He steadied Rarity as she slipped on hidden ice. She ran just ahead of him, trailing behind several Canterlot police officers in woolen hats and smart blue uniforms. Applejack galloped at his side and Twilight brought up the rear. Rarity's hooves broke through caked ice between the cobblestones with tiny crackling sounds; in the distance, glass windows made similar sounds as they were destroyed by hurled bricks and stones.

"It's madness, I tell you!" the police officer said. "I'll be blowed if I know where these hooligans are coming from…"

"Why-?" said Rarity.

"Looters," Bryn answered. "Waiting until the police are distracted." As they stopped in the center of the lane, a jewelry store on the corner was quickly attacked by four stallions. Glass shattered and the thieves slipped through the windows to return moments later, laden with gems and gold.

"Where's your commander?" Twilight asked the policepony. "Have him fall back and set up a perimeter starting at-"

Another storefront shattered under the assault of hooves and rocks. All along East Emerald Boulevard, from the Market District to the Lower Canterlot gate, angry ponies milled about, bellowing and waving signs and destroying property. Parked carriages were set ablaze not from errant dragonfire, but from blasting spells and torches.

"I haven't seen the lieutenant since this started, Madam! It's bloody chaos, and we're overwhelmed out here! They're coming from the Undercity by the hundreds!"

Indeed, police tried to halt or detain the miscreants, but it was like fighting a tidal wave with bare hooves. One officer was bludgeoned mercilessly by sticks and sign handles; he fell and did not get up again. More poured from the gate; many carried signs upon which crude messages were scrawled in chalk or red ink: DOWN WITH THE PRINCESSES. IMPERIALIST PARASITES. OVERTHROW THE ROYALS. Others bore only curse words or symbols. War raged across sky and ground. Fireballs and crackling bursts of magic mixed pell-mell with the gruff shouts of police. Yard by yard, the outmatched police gave ground against the advancing mob.

"Why are you doing this? Stop at once, in the name of the Princess!"

Twilight's voice rang out. Several of the rioters- mainly grubby and ill-dressed stallions, although plenty of mares as well as zebras, donkeys, mules, and even griffons filled their ranks- looked at her and jeered.

"BUCK THE ROYALS!" "Death to 'em all!" "Torch the bloody palace!" Others flashed vulgar gestures or brayed oaths, explicitly indicating where she could shove her Princess.

"What in the hay's happenin'?" said Applejack. "Is this even real?"

"I guess things work the same way here as they do in my world. There's people that only want to ruin stuff or cause chaos. Once there's no one around to stop them…" Bryn balled his hands into fists. "But what are we going to do? We can't fight them all off."

"We've gotta stop 'em, Twi." Applejack's lasso hissed through the air. "See here, that's private property an' ya ruffians've got no business trashin' it!"

The only response from the advancing crowd were hideous curses.

Bryn, watching the action unfold, wondered why they had left the Palace in the first place. Were not the walls and defenses thickest there? He couldn't know Twilight's mind. Twilight herself did not know it.

Whatever plans she had of warning the city of the danger, or escorting all of Canterlot to the train station, or reinforcing the Guard or the police against the dragon's onslaught, melted away before her desire to see Celestia. It overrode all other obligations. Twilight suddenly felt very foalish. Nebula Streak's warning seemed to taunt her. I should have stayed in the Palace like a good little student, waiting for her salvation to come. Waiting for Celestia to save the day.

The city, for the most part, had already been warned when they heard the Bells ring. The train station was overloaded with desperate ponies fleeing the dragon or the oncoming mobs. For the most part, Canterlot's population was as safe as they could reasonably be, but there was still an entire metropolis to safeguard, empty or otherwise. But how to do it? What remained of the Guard was either in the sky with the Princess or standing at the Palace gates. Twilight was only one mare, small and unnecessary and useless. The City was too large and the chaos too thick for one mare to handle.

Applejack waded into the throng of rioters, her Stetson perched back on her head and her lasso swinging like a halo of light.

Several things happened at once. Two burly zebras, bricks and clubs in hoof, charged at Applejack; the farmer flicked her rope and trussed them in a flash. Rarity, seeing Applejack vanish into a haze of punches and kicks and swinging hooves, cried a dignified battle cry and rushed to the aid of her friend. Above them, the dragon uttered a terrible shriek. The sky shone with fire.

Bryn stood in the street for one more instant as chaos reigned supreme, as Equestria's jewel, its city of light, fell to violence and a dragon's wroth. Then he followed his marefriend into hell.

You're wrong, Nebula Streak. And Twilight, at last seeing her friends in peril, stepped in. Her stunning spell sent a griffon flying just before his spiked club would have smashed into Rarity's face. The two unicorns fought with strategically aimed spells against a mob on which the Princess's name had acted as a potent stimulant; to them, she was an agent of the corrupt Princesses, a mortal enemy.

Bryn and Applejack fought with fist and hoof. This was a fight. An all-out brawl. Punch, dodge, kick, block, counterpunch. Bryn was beset on all sides by angry ponies, some outweighing him by a hundred pounds and some wielding clubs, knives, bricks or even pieces of glass. Bryn was not used to fighting. True, he had various feuds in high school with bullies, but this was the real thing.

The policemen on the street bound together and formed a barricade. So far, the rioters had spread out in a concentrated wave from the Undercity gate, taking over eight or so city blocks. If they could be brought to a standstill, or turned back, the upper levels of Canterlot might still be saved. East Emerald Boulevard led straight up the mountain. If the police's cordon failed, if Twilight and her friends were overrun, they could wreak havoc across the city; the officers, bolstered by a very powerful unicorn and her friends, knew this, and battled all the harder.

Twilight flicked her horn and a screeching machete-wielding griffon was blown off his talons. She ducked a flying brick and cast a Shield Spell on Rarity, just as one of the attacking unicorns sent a blasting curse at her. Knocked off course, the spell ricocheted and blew a storefront to rubble; Bryn leaped into the opening and brought the unicorn low with a single uppercut.

He struck and blocked and dodged. Applejack's sledgehammer back hooves rose and fell in time with his fists. The mob began to give way before Twilight and the tag-team brutality of the human and the Earth pony. They fought on, inch by bloody inch. Bryn took a hoof to the nose. A blade slipped too close and slashed through his cloak, reaching his thigh... He struggled forward. His knuckles were bruised and he spat out blood.

I'm doing something useful, Twilight thought. Channeling such prodigious amounts of magic left her weary, but euphoria burned it away. With a shout, she immobilized six fighters at once, and caused a taxicarriage to go bouncing pell-mell down the street, knocking down ponies like bowling pins. We're doing something useful. We're defending the City.

Given another half-hour, they would have succeeded in driving back the riot. But the dragon put a premature end to it.

They first heard it as an ear-rending shriek. It was as if an express train had lost its brakes at terminal velocity. Then came a burst of color, and a sound like ten thousand cannons being fired at once. Rainbows blew away the clouds and smoke. The black dragon, weary and wounded by arrows and the alicorns' magic, met its match in Rainbow Dash's Sonic Rainboom-powered strike. It fell ignominiously to earth and struck the Market District with the force of a meteor.

Applejack was far enough away to escape the monster's fall, its bulk flattening building and pony alike. Twilight shielded herself. Rarity was directly in its path…

Bryn glimpsed the reptile, flame issuing from its ruined jaws, in her wide blue eyes.

Rarity screamed.

"RARITY!"

The dragon crashed down onto them both. Bryn grasped Rarity around the middle and tossed her out of the way…

…a flash of orange light…

…Like the wave on that fateful day when he was eight… like the fists of a bully… like the howl of bullets… like the sound of a life being snuffed out…

The dragon fell. But he was not under it. He was in the middle of the street, shining like a human-shaped sun. He was light.

"Bryn…" Rarity began.

Dragonfire and ruin and death. All the sounds blurred together. He looked from one confused and terrified and angry pony face to the next. The fighting had stopped; the dragon, thrashing feebly in its death throes, laid its shattered head on the cobblestones and was still.

"That day in the forest-" Rarity began again. "Applejack wasn't seeing things, was she?"

But only Rarity had seen it. None of her friends had. The dragon was much more eye-catching than a momentary flash of auburn light; when the street was full of yells and crashes, one more went unnoticed. He took a deep breath and phased, and was solid again.

He couldn't hear any of it: the cries of the mob as it began to scatter, or the dying beast, or Rarity as she began to cry. Nothing but his own heartbeat.

Princess Celestia touched down. Behind her landed two Wonderbolts, Princess Cadance, and Rainbow Dash.

Magically amplifying her voice, the Princess cried, "CEASE THIS MADNESS!"

After seeing the majesty and power of the alicorn for themselves, much of the mob- some of whom knew the Princess in name only and had never seen her in the flesh- began to reconsider destroying every shop and storefront within range. Others pressed the attack but found themselves frozen; their weapons fell from limp hooves and a magical will much stronger than their own forced them to their knees.

"Princess!" Twilight called. She trotted across the street to join her. Overcome with emotion, Twilight could only speak in disjointed bursts of words. "I was so worried- the dragon- the mob- I can't believe- are you-"

"Later," said Celestia in a firm but comforting tone. Twilight's face fell. "There will be much to discuss, after this is over." This was meant for Twilight's ears alone, as was the hint of a weary smile on Celestia's muzzle.

"Officers, contain the violence as best as you can. Anypony injured may receive treatment at the Palace infirmary. If you require aid rebuilding, or food and shelter while the devastation is healed, I and my sister shall make every possible effort."

A curious thing happened, as Celestia spoke to the assembled crowds, who had stopped rioting; not a single brick or punch was thrown. They listened to her. Old or young, pony or donkey or zebra, they stood enraptured.

"Citizens of Canterlot… You have been deceived. Agents working towards the fall of Equestria have stirred you into pointless conflict. The Crown has and shall always be concerned with the well-being of everypony beneath its influence."

So great was the benevolence of their ruler that many of them forgot why they had brought a fight to Upper Canterlot in the first place, and indeed were firmly on her side after her next words. "The plight of the Undercity has not been forgotten. From this day, the Crown shall personally improve conditions for everypony. Safe working conditions and no foreign taskmasters! Not a single colt or filly in this great Empire should go to bed feeling the pangs of hunger!"

With word and deed the Princess calmed the multitudes. In the following hours, the city was made safe, the injured were welcomed into the Palace, and any hope of a revolution against the alicorns fizzled out nearly as soon as it was birthed.

Several griffons in the audience slunk quietly away, seething. Nopony saw them go.