“Life goes on, and me with it,” Pinkie said to herself. Canterlot Mountain was in sight, framed against the broken tableau of fields and streams that disappeared into the north, a continuous sign of how vast was the damage yet to be undone. Vanilla’s visit, a secret she kept from both her companions, weighed on her mind.

She was alone where she stood, and looked over her shoulder, half expecting Vanilla to be there once more. Since leaving her, she had not fully felt rid of him. In her imaginings, his eye was on her day and night, watching her twist inside a cocoon of guilt, waiting to see whether she would admit her failure or bury it. At times, she saw herself confessing to Octavia and Whooves; at others, admitting only the vaguest action of cowardice and forcing an interrogation upon herself, with its inevitable revelation, by that time so built up and romanticized in her mind, the springboard into a moment of perfect understanding and compassion. Whenever she was with one of them, though, she would pull back from the thought before she could scare herself into even the first hint that she had something to say.

“Besides, it was just fear. Fear isn’t a crime,” she would think. In those moments, for only a moment, it would lift her spirits.

They were to arrive in Canterlot that night, landing on a wide balcony on the palace’s back side, and would be able to spend their last night before the battle in a real bed. The last couple days had seen them over the forest and past Cloudsdale, still churning out its rain clouds in what appeared inexhaustible supply. No matter how Pinkie had tried, she couldn’t spy Ponyville from her height, she being the only one interested in doing so.

“You ready for the performance of a lifetime?” Whooves asked, appearing to her side.

Pinkie took a second before looking at him, bottling a rare impulse of irritation. “Not even close,” she said.

“That makes two of us, then.” He chuckled. “At least we have your beautiful sister.”

“Is she okay?” Octavia hadn’t been on the deck since the night before, when she had played half a faltering song on her warped cello and spoken not a word.

“What passes for ‘okay’ in Octavia-land?” Whooves asked.

“Is she keeping up any of that classical composure?”

“In spades, my dear. In spades.”

“Then she’ll be fine.”

“Fine?”

“She’ll be fine tomorrow,” Pinkie said. “I’ve never known her to buckle under pressure.” “Not like some ponies,” she added in her thoughts.

“Ah, to be so strong.” Whooves sighed dramatically and rested his chin on his hoof, looking into the sky in a deliberate pose. At first, Pinkie thought he was trying to be funny, but his face suggested deep thought.

“I’m sure we’ll be okay,” she offered, forcing a smile.

He looked at her for a time. “I’ve never been directly responsible for lives like I’m about to be. Look.” He held up his spare hoof. “It’s actually shaking. I… I can hardly even believe it myself, Pinkie.” He gestured grandly at the moon, scooting closer as he did so. “Celestia, this plunge I’m about to take!”

“I’m right there with ya, Whoovsies.”

“The paths we take, hm? I’m sure you didn’t plan for any of this when you became a baker in humble little Ponyville.”

“Nope, and not after that either. Even leaving home, right after… well, all of it, even then, I didn’t see this coming.”

“How could you have?”

“Well…” She thought of her Pinkie Sense then, and the last time she had felt it—she couldn’t recall precisely, but it had been a while ago.

“The paths we take,” he repeated quieter, shaking his head. “Of course, I’m a rover, so I at least have a taste for the unexpected.”

“I’m pretty sure we were told to expect this kind of stuff earlier,” Pinkie said. “But you don’t really, not until you’re right on top of it.”

“In other words, how does one expect the unexpected?”

“That’s right.” She sighed. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow.”

He closed the distance, putting a hoof around her. “Let’s see if we can’t dispel this rain cloud chasing us, hm? When I find myself beset with worries for the future, I like to tell myself a little something. It might help you.”

“What’s that?”

“Repeat after me, my dear. No matter what, tomorrow will end. Go on, say it.”

Pinkie smiled again, more out of habit than anything else. “No matter what, tomorrow will end.”

“No matter what, life goes on. Everything is transitory, the night is always darkest before the dawn, and all that good stuff. Pearls of wisdom, each.”

“Even if it does it without us, tomorrow will end,” Pinkie said.

“Ah, yes, well, I like to leave that little caveat out.”

She giggled. “Thanks, doc.”

Hoofsteps behind them made Whooves back away from Pinkie. He needn’t have worried; Octavia looked like she couldn’t even see them. “We are landing,” she said simply, and then went to a different part of the deck to watch them approach the palace balcony, decorated with a single, blue torch.

When they had landed, the angel folded its wings as best it could, and Luna came out to greet them. She ushered them into the palace, down a torch-lit corridor to a dining room, where they ate their first real meal in months. The last days on the angel, they had only dehydrated greens and water, the last of what they were able to scrounge up in Trottingham; only Pinkie had managed to hold onto an appetite that befitted the sumptuous spread that Luna had prepared for them.

Talk was forced and stiff. Everyone’s minds were elsewhere, and Luna was only truly engaged when she told them what to expect for the following day. Her team of precogs had given her a four-hour window in which to expect Discord to arrive, likely jumping his army the last several miles with a teleportation spell to try to catch Canterlot unprepared.

Octavia’s job would be relatively simple, Luna said. She would wait in the palace for the armies to engage, Discord’s rag-tag mixture of the hypnotized, the artificial, and the treasonous; and Canterlot’s dwindling, dispirited, but better trained regiment. Then, they would strike, focusing on any airships Discord had brought. By their scouts’ reports, Luna told them, the options would be many.

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Luna said, giving Octavia a quick look and a smile. “I don’t need to explain how important that is tonight.”

“Why do you need us?” Pinkie blurted. She had remained largely quiet over dinner, preferring to offer benign compliments on her food, which, she felt, was a sorry waste on ponies too stressed to enjoy it. She blushed and looked down as soon as she asked the question. “I mean, you being goddesses and all.”

Luna sighed.

“Might you not want to accidentally overdo it?” Whooves asked. On his plate sat a fat slice of rye bread, buttered and untouched.

“That’s part of it,” Luna said. “The truth is, if either one of us demonstrates too much eagerness to simply crush him, Discord could slip away.” Her horn pulsed softly, and her drink refilled. “Think of it this way. Encased in stone, his magic still had effects in ways we weren’t aware of. Chaos magic, by its very nature, cannot be easily contained, after all. If my sister or I were to strike at his heart, we would buy a little time, but leave you all back where you started. He would go to ground, likely slamming the door on his way out, and we are only two. We cannot monitor him and run a country at the same time, and we are in so precarious a position that any angry parting shot of his might put us past the point of no return.”

“Best to keep him out in the open,” Octavia said. “I understand.”

“I’m glad you do. It seems I have to answer that question ten times a day.”

“Sorry,” Pinkie said.

“No need to apologize.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s been a long couple of months.”

“At least Celestia’s back now,” Whooves said.

“For now, yes.” She looked at them and sighed again. “I can’t express how grateful I am that you’re here, and how sorry I am for being such woeful dinner company.”

“It’s okay, your highness,” Pinkie said.

Luna gave her a tired smile. “I will direct you to your bedchambers, and then… tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

Whooves tapped his glass tentatively. “A toast?”

“To life,” Octavia said abruptly, raising hers in a gray cloud.

“To life,” they echoed.

Morning broke fresh and lovely, and with it, quiet. It was Monday, but the sidewalks were almost bare, the shops almost all closed, the houses’ curtains pushed closed. No sprinklers ran across lawns, no cars hissed in the distance, no music came from the palace or the mansions in its shadow. Most everyone, Colgate knew, had left for Ponyville or farther abroad, and she wished she were one of them.

She lay in bed for ten minutes before getting up and cinching the curtains tighter. It didn’t help her mood. In the muted sun rays, she saw invitations to what might be the last day of her life, matches for the birds’ chirping, jeering valedictions. The flapping of leaves in the wind outside reminded Colgate of scattered applause, as if the world were giving her a final, insincere farewell, and all before she was even out of the bedroom.

The coffee Fleur brewed did not perk her up, nor did it Fleur; the two mares drank quietly over their breakfast, Colgate’s a bagel with cream cheese, Fleur’s a mound of lightly sautéed potatoes.

“So,” Fleur said, finally breaking the morning’s silence. “I know you’ve been feeling like I’m keeping apart from things.”

Colgate only looked at her, her mind elsewhere. Four hours, perhaps fewer, until the moment.

“And I am. I… this was always kind of a chance, Colgate, you understand that, and I wasn’t always sure you would even be needed, okay? Nothing against you, but every Datura needs to be broken in.”

“Of course.”

“You’re not going to be on the battlefield today.”

Elation threatened to color her face and her words, but she held it back. Fleur’s tone suggested that it was not the happy occasion it appeared, at least to her.

“You’re actually not going to be with us at all. I want you out at watchpoint thirty-six with Chilly Clouds.”

“The medic?”

“That’s right. I—”

“I’m one of your battlefield surgeons,” Colgate said. “Right? That’s what you were gonna say.”

“Pages ahead, as usual,” Fleur said. “But there’s more than that.”

There was a moment before Colgate focused, and she looked at Fleur again, more willfully.

“You’ll have a team of four nurses at your disposal as well. They’ll be handling the simple procedures, like bone setting and bandaging and so on. You, I want to be there to coordinate them, but also for anything more complicated. You’ll be working alongside Chilly.”

At the mention of nurses, Colgate’s mind sharpened out of its anxious miasma. Her voice was businesslike. “Was this a last-minute decision, to put me in charge of ponies? I haven’t done something like that in a long time.”

“You ran a successful clinic back in Ponyville.”

“I had one medical assistant and a couple nurses for surgery. This is completely different.” She threw an angry look out the window, silently cursing the beautiful weather. “I don’t know anything about battlefield surgery, for starters, and even if I did, I don’t know these ponies you’re suddenly giving me.”

“They’re all certified nurses, some of the best we have in Canterlot.”

“I would hope so. That’s not the point.” She paused, wondering for a second whether Fleur was testing her. Perhaps she was deliberately trying to annoy Colgate, to see if she might buckle under the impending battle.

“You need to know their relative strengths and weaknesses, and how well they work with one another, and all that,” Fleur said. She shrugged. “I’m sorry, but we didn’t have time. I thought for a while that I was gonna give all ten to Chilly, but then you came along.”

“I came along.” Colgate pushed her bagel aside, wanting more to throw it at the wall, or out the window.

“I chose to put you in charge of these mares because I think you can do it.”

Colgate looked at her for a long time. “This is it,” she suddenly realized.

“You have twice the experience they do, they’ll listen to you. You just need to tell them what to do.”

“It’s been a couple months since I’ve set hoof in a hospital. I’ll be rusty.”

“You know, I hate to say it, but a little rust probably isn’t going to hurt. This is a battlefield, not ER.”

Colgate stared into the dregs of her coffee. It had only been a few months since she had been in the operating room, but it felt longer. As always when she thought of her life in Ponyville, she felt as if she were remembering a dream. It was a peaceful, unfulfilling dream, enough to support an imitation of happiness, and she sometimes missed it.

“Can you do it?” Fleur asked.

Colgate’s mind remained on Ponyville, and, specifically, those final, poisonous days before she was ousted for good. She remembered setting up Noteworthy, and later Spike, then Allie Way, but not the ponies themselves. Each one was a blank, generic face in her mind, not even charged with the emotions she knew had dictated her actions toward them at that time. For her, they were characters in someone else’s story, about whom she had once read.

“Colgate?”

“I’ll do my best,” Colgate replied automatically. Even in the calm and ease of Fleur’s dining room, she saw no hope for her success. She didn’t want Fleur to know.

“I’ve already got your train ticket; it’ll take you right to the watchpoint. Chilly will meet you outside.”

“When am I going?”

“Couple hours. Don’t worry,” she hastened on, seeing Colgate’s face morphing to shock, “everything will be set up already. You don’t have to scrounge up any tools.”

“Good.”

“There’ll be ponies in the floor above yours, running defense.”

“What if they’re not enough?”

“You’ll be miles from the main grounds, but if something tries to breach you, you’ll all teleport out to the next one.”

Colgate’s heart still beat evenly, but her skin tingled. In the moment of anger, already dulled into dread, the battle had lost its fullness; it remained a toothless idea, something that would happen in the indistinct future and that she would weather like any other trial. She had not thought about the moments just before, the conversation that would have to happen, the planning, and the possibility that the planning might go bad. She had ignored the litany of tiny, simple steps that would complete her march into the nightmare, the ordinary things that would deliver her into chaos’ arms.

“You okay?”

“What are you going to do while I’m dealing with patients?”

“I’m going straight into it,” Fleur said with a sigh. “I’ve got a few spells that’ll help ‘em out there. And there’s something else, too, I need to see to.”

“What is it?”

Fleur looked at her.

“We might die today. Go ahead and tell me; I’m hardly listening anyway.” Her own honesty shocked her, but she could do nothing to stem it. Her life seemed already at an end; she just needed to wait for her appointed time.

“There’s a group of ships that are coming out of the suburbs, ships we’ve rigged to explode upon impact with the ground. Decoys, to drop into Discord’s army.”

“Ah.” Colgate nodded, but something clicked in her mind, and she brought her eyes back up to Fleur. Her mane, far from immaculate as she usually had it, was framed by the window, allowing Colgate a look at every stray hair. For the first time, she looked into Fleur’s face, not simply at it, and saw bags under her eyes in place of makeup. Her commander was just as tired as she, and probably just as worried.

“Why the suburbs?” she asked.

“That’s just where they’re coming from,” Fleur said with a shrug.

Colgate mirrored her shrug and thought to herself. A car drove past outside, and neither mare looked up. Each had her own thoughts, her own way of wishing she were elsewhere. Colgate shut her eyes as a headache started to grow behind her horn.

One unfortunate pony stood on the side of the otherwise empty freeway, her car broken down, while Fleur and Colgate shot down the mountain’s slopes into the suburbs, where they had to slow only a little. Most cars they saw were, like them, heading out of town, and a few were stopped in wrecks. Fleur simply drove around them, once dodging onto the wrong side of the road to bypass a tangle of two cars and a carriage. A mob of arguing ponies filled the sidewalk, and there was a single police officer there to sort it all out.

“I know I can ask Chilly,” Colgate said, “but what kind of stuff should I expect? What sorts of injuries am I dealing with, primarily?”

“Shrapnel’s a big one,” Fleur said. “Lots of splintering and things, from when airships crash or get blown up. I’d say burns are gonna be a biggie, too.”

“Is everyone wielding pulse crystals?”

“Not everyone. My understanding—and this is just what I’ve heard—is Discord doesn’t have very many resources for pulse crystals.”

“At least we have that.”

“Broken bones, of course,” Fleur continued. “Ponies are gonna be falling off of things and getting hit with walls of magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have to deal with a lot of fractured ribs and skulls.”

“Tell me more about those burns. Broken bones I can handle, but I’m not so sure about the rest.”

“Mm, you should probably just wait to talk to Chilly. I’m not much experienced in the medical field. I wouldn’t want to give you faulty information.”

They cruised through thinning city, past the familiar and the unfamiliar, until arriving at a small station. In the distance, Colgate could see the steam of her approaching train.

“Are you paying attention? I’m about to tell you something important,” Fleur said.

“You don’t like to give me much notice on things, do you?”

“Sorry.”

“Well, go on, then.”

Fleur looked at her, and they stopped, one of five cars in the wide parking lot. “Chilly has these instructions as well, and I also left a note with them back home. Colgate, after the battle, I don’t want you to wait for me.”

“She’s expecting to die,” Colgate thought, but said nothing.

“Find your own way back to my house. Hopefully you can find a taxi or something, or maybe Chilly can drive you, I don’t know. I know you’re resourceful, so I’m not worried. Once you get home, though, just lay low.”

“Will someone be looking for me?”

“There’s always that possibility, but I don’t think it’s likely. It’ll probably be me they’re after, if there’s anyone to go after one of us. Er, anyway, if I can, I’ll come back, and we can return to normal. If not… like I said, lay low.” She sighed, and the train whistled. “Quick, there might not be another one. If I don’t come back, stay out of sight, keep a low profile. Don’t do anything unnecessary.”

Colgate opened the door. “Okay, Fleur. I can do that.”

“Someone will come for you eventually. It might be my husband, it might be one of my hazard ponies, it might be someone you’ve never met. But Colgate, someone will come.”

The train pulled into the station across the parking lot, and Colgate took a hesitant step away from the car.

“Go get your train. Watchpoint thirty-six. It’s a quarter mile north of the Orbit Station.”

Colgate flourished her tickets and took off.

When she arrived at the watchpoint more than an hour later, Chilly was standing outside, shielding her eyes from the sun. She gave Colgate a wave, not meeting her eyes, and Colgate entered the two-story, defunct windmill without a word. On the second floor, she could see the straight lines of large machines, what she thought might be mechanical guns, but no one was there to operate them that she could tell.

“Welcome,” Chilly said. “So this is our landing zone for all the injured ponies.” She pointed at a pair of sigils on the floor, lying between two semicircular counters stacked with supplies, the spaces underneath dedicated to stretchers and, Colgate noticed without relish or remark, cheap-looking body bags. The windmill itself had been gutted, its gears and cranks laid to the sides, all of its poles cut off at the bottom and top to leave a mostly even, unobstructed floor. Above, the belts and ropes that ordinarily kept the windmill in motion had been locked to the ceiling, either knotted around beams or stapled to panels above.

Even so, Colgate felt cramped inside the watchpoint. The smell of cedar wood was strong, with it the fine grit of dust that tickled her nose. She watched the sunlit door on the other side, through which she could see a field of tents and a couple white-clad nurses, making final preparations.

“We’ve got a dozen or so teleporters out in the field to move casualties,” Chilly continued. “Maybe more. I don’t remember the exact number.”

“Are the other watchpoints doing this too?” Colgate was trying to spot the mechanism that held the mill’s blades in place, but couldn’t. She wondered whether they were secure.

“Most of them, yes. I know it’s been a while since you’ve done this, Colgate. Do you remember the triage system?”

“Red for urgents, yellow for less urgents, green for minor injuries, yes, I remember,” Colgate said. “Tags?”

“They’ll be tagged before you get to them. Come with me, out here.”

Chilly led her through the back door to the wide field of stiff white tents, each one identical, like points of stone in an archaeologist’s grid. Colgate thought it strange that they were arranged in such an orderly fashion, considering what would soon be taking place, but said nothing.

“Looks about right,” Colgate said, entering one behind Chilly. She looked at the bed, the straps hanging from the reinforced tent ceiling, the small plate of surgical implements, and lifted a mask onto her muzzle, thinking of how long it had been since she had worn one.

“They’re not here yet, but there’s going to be a team of triage nurses in the windmill to receive all the injured. You and I are staying out here, with our teams.”

“I’d like to meet my team before the battle starts.”

“In a minute. Gauze, dressing, staples and such on that table there. That’s the sanitary station next to it, and the anesthetics next to that. We’ve got intravenous and intraosseous devices.” She tapped a bright red box. “Sharps go here; we’ve got lots more, so don’t top these off in the interest of saving space.”

“Fleur told me to expect a lot of burning, from pulse crystals.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m in charge of burns and contusions, you’re broken bones and excisions.”

“There’s gonna be ponies with multiple injuries, and we’re both going to need to be able to jump at any second. Tell me about burn treatment, even if it’s just the basics.” Colgate tried to keep her voice calm, but Chilly’s idea rankled. The thought that their duties could be so cleanly split in an emergent situation was, to her, preposterous, and telling. “Have you actually worked in ER before? Or have you been just a medic all this time?”

Chilly looked to the sharps container and fiddled with it, but Colgate wasn’t fooled. “I’ve mostly been on teams, like this one. I don’t have as much emergency experience as you.” She looked up. “But I do know what I’m doing.”

“Then tell me how to treat a burn. I know you elevate it, keep the blisters intact, and use non-adhesive, dry dressing.” She looked at the straps hanging down over the bed. She could remember first learning how to get a pony properly trussed up in the complicated web, how frustrating maneuvering so many limbs could be.

“Watch for shock too.”

“I know. That’s why you don’t use cold water.” She looked at the oxygen mask and the IV stand. The IV stand was a little taller than she would have wanted, and she had to angle her head to see the fluid bag. That, she thought, would become annoying, but she saw no way to lower the stand. It didn’t matter anyway; she wouldn’t be lowering them in every tent she used.

“A typical pulse crystal shot will give you a deep-partial burn, but we’re probably going to be seeing ponies with multiple shots. Taken together, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s mostly third and fourth-degree that we’re seeing today.”

“Aren’t those usually amputations?” Colgate looked over at the table spread with surgical implements.

“Unfortunately, yes. Have you amputated before?”

“I’ve seen it done.”

“Save those for me, then. I know it goes into the orthopedic side, but I don’t like the idea of your first amputation happening out here.”

“Fine.”

Chilly hesitated. “Can you administer your own anesthetic?”

“If I have to. I prefer letting an anesthesiologist handle that.”

“We’ve got none here.”

“Then I can do it myself.” She looked at the sun through the white tent fabric and felt a wave of calm pass over her.

“Fluid resuscitation?”

“What about it?” Chilly’s questions were coming too fast, and, just like that, the calm went behind a flash of anger. She was being tested, and looked at Chilly, who again averted her eyes. “She’s guilty,” Colgate thought. “Someone put her up to it, testing me on the eve of battle. Probably Fleur’s doing.”

“Do you know how to do it?” Chilly asked softly.

“Don’t I just hook them up to the IV?” Colgate asked guardedly.

“Only if their burn’s less than twenty percent. If it’s more than that, or any size fourth-degree, you’ll want to do oral intake. Your solution is already there, hooked up to the IV. You’ll need to switch your tubes for oral. Oh, there’s more in the refrigerator.”

“How much do I give them?”

“Enough to—sorry, hang on.” Chilly raced out of the tent, and Colgate could hear someone else talking at the windmill. She looked back at the IV stand and the face mask, trying to imagine how she would handle her first patient. She had worked in the ER before settling down in Ponyville, but it was a long time ago, and she hadn’t been operating then. The pressure, she knew, would not be easy to handle. She had seen nurses crumble before, and wondered why at the time, but it seemed no mystery to her as she stood in the warm tent.

It was pressure of a sort she had not felt before. She had been pressured to save the lives of others for years, and was accustomed to it, and she had only recently learned of the pressure of keeping her own life. This was neither. She knew she herself was under no direct threat, and the prospect of losing her patients did not particularly bother her, except as a mark of failure in her professional life. Still, the armada of tents, the endless rolling fields in front and the city behind, the nervous medic she had met only days before: all of them combined into a scene she could have never prepared for, where she found herself at once in the middle of action and totally unsupervised. Having left Fleur only hours ago was suddenly all the stranger in her memory; a note of finality rang through her mind. Having no say, she was suddenly alone and responsible, and, should she fail, she would do so quietly, her shame hidden by the grand battle, so that even her accountability to her patients and to the Datura was hollow.

“Doctor?” A burly, young mare entered the tent, a look of friendly confidence on her face as she shook Colgate’s hoof. “I’m Urgent Cross. Happy to meet you.”

Colgate nodded, and, using her doctor’s voice—clipped and precise, with no false happiness or interest—told her to gather the other nurses.

Outside, she had time to introduce herself to the four other unicorns and get their credentials before Chilly returned at a gallop.

“Discord’s at the top of the hill, just outside. Get ready.” She was out of breath, and ran off in search of her own team.

Colgate blinked and looked, trying to get a view around the windmill.

“We won’t see him from here,” Urgent Cross said. “At least, I hope not. Come on, let’s get ready.”

“I am ready,” she lied. “Are the triage nurses here?” She walked to the windmill.

Then, the startling noise of a brass section sliced across the fields. Horns bellowed miles behind her, and she hurt her neck turning around so quickly, thinking that Discord had tricked them and appeared inside the city. Their watchpoint sat atop a small rise in the earth, from which she could see the gentle angle of low-end apartments and tract homes that formed the loose border of Lower Canterlot. Coloring the view, she could see white and purple banners that seemed to hang on their own, their colors brilliant in the sun but not the ponies who carried them. Occasional flecks of gold armor were all she could see of the Canterlot defense.

“If we get attacked, we’ll have to move,” a nurse said. “We’ll use the emergency teleporter in the back of the windmill, behind the two reception sigils. It’s bright red.”

Colgate nodded. Her pulse was up, and her mind was wide awake. The first patient was going to be a shock, she knew; for all the tension that had mounted inside her over the past days, it still had not broken, not even with the brazen sound of the Canterlot Guard’s march as it started out of the city.

Colgate was surprised at how peaceful the countryside was immediately around her. She had imagined, in the pregnant stillness that came just before the unseen clash, that the armies would be meeting only a short distance from her position, but she could barely see the back end of the Canterlot ponies as they moved toward their foe, walking downhill in a resounding lockstep. At one point, a pillar of smoke rose from their formation, but Colgate could not tell what impediment they had set ablaze.

Though she saw little beyond the sea of organized movement, she could hear much. There were the cries, of course, and the shouts of rage and passion, all dulled by distance into an even-toned static of voices. There was the constant tapping of metal on metal, and the purr of thousands of hooves on grass, much of it slower than she had expected. Above that, she could hear the steady whocking of airship propellers, the swish of magic in the air, and the higher shrieks that came before deep explosions. Occasionally, a furious fizzling or whirring sound tore out of the air, but even that was so distant that she didn’t feel quite prepared when the first soldier came through the windmill’s back door on a stretcher. Chilly’s team grabbed him before Colgate could move. The entire scene felt premature to her, as if that one soldier had somehow jumped ahead in time to get injured first.

Colgate had only a moment to contemplate her slow response. The teleportation sigil flashed again, and she tried to mentally prepare herself as she listened to the triage nurses’ chatter, picking out too few words. She knew they would tell her the vital information, but wanted to be ahead; and, a smaller part of her mind wanted to be extra sure she was not being lied to.

The stretcher glided like a gondola, bearing a young mare on her side with a twisted pastern and a garish wound on the opposite shoulder. The triage nurse carried her to the nearest tent, where Colgate waited with just one of her nurses—she told the others to wait for more patients—and situated her on the bed. She pulled a cord at the entrance, raising a yellow flag to indicate that the tent was occupied—something Chilly had neglected to show her, but Colgate imagined must surely be there anyway.

She was not surprised at how much came back to her; she was too anxious to be surprised. The pastern was not just twisted, but broken, and a spear tip had broken off just above the skin in her shoulder. Colgate could imagine the scenario as she watched her nurse stabilize the wounded pony, casting her tarnished golden armor to one side carelessly. The Canterlot soldier was young and plain, and her green eyes searched the white tent ceiling as she was anesthetized. She had rushed the enemy, gotten hit with a good shot with the spear, and twisted away on the wrong hoof. Long streaks of mud on only one side of the breastplate and forelegs confirmed Colgate’s suspicion, that the soldier had taken a bad fall.

“Check for internal fractures and prep her for peritoneal lavage,” she said to the nurse, who stepped aside to let Colgate access the spear tip. The fur was caked with blood around the shattered neck of a wooden shaft, and Colgate had to take her eyes away from the wound for a second to locate the shaver. In that second, the soldier tried to roll over, and the nurse put a firm hoof to her back, speaking kindly.

“Patient incoming!” a triage nurse shouted from the windmill.

“When you’re done, shave the wound area and elevate the injured leg,” Colgate said, dodging out of the tent to see what was coming next. She felt awful, first allowing the patient to try to roll over, and then leaving her nurse, who she didn’t know, alone scarcely minutes after stabilizing the soldier.

A pony with no breastplate and a smoldering burn on her chest floated past, attended by two of Chilly’s nurses, and Colgate looked up to see the triage nurse disappear into the claustrophobic windmill. She ran back to her tent.

“No fractures inside,” the nurse said, hastily shaving the fur around the patient’s wound. “She says it hurts to breathe.”

“Probably cracked ribs. Blood pressure?”

“One-fifty over eighty.”

“Good.” Colgate grabbed her scalpel and deftly made an incision down the soldier’s abdomen. She squirmed, but did not complain.

“Doctor, why are we doing a DPL?”

“Her armor’s damaged at the abdomen. Were you trampled?” She looked down at the patient, and lowered her face. “Were you trampled?” Her eyes were wide, an expression she had been told made her appear friendlier.

The patient nodded weakly. “It hurts to breathe,” she repeated.

“We’ll get that taken care of too, but we need to do this first.” She glanced back up at her nurse. “If there’s internal bleeding, we need to worry about that right away. This spear isn’t going anywhere, and neither are the ribs.”

“What do you mean, not going anywhere?” the soldier blurted.

“You’re not bleeding out, I mean. Not from that. Now hold still, please.” Carefully, she divided and pulled back the thick membrane, and inserted her catheter. “Almost there, you’re doing great.”

“Patient incoming!” the triage nurse called.

“Can you remove the spear, if I need to help someone else?” Colgate asked, fixing her nurse with a glare.

“I can, but—”

“Then watch when I do it.” She retracted the catheter slightly and put in her syringe, but no red colored the barrel. “I need saline solution.” While the nurse ducked under a counter for the solution, Colgate studied the patient more closely, noting a few details that had escaped her the first time. The patient’s ears were drooping, but her eyes were alert. Around her wound, the fur was stained green, indicating to Colgate that, at some point, the armor had come loose, and she had been dragged or rolled in the grass.

She slowly infused the saline solution, keeping one hoof up against the soldier’s side to keep her from wiggling. She had never felt what her patient felt, but had had it described, and knew the pony was experiencing an awkward pairing of pain and discomfort. Her mind would be momentarily off the spear wound, Colgate imagined, one good thing.

“Take some of that out in about five minutes and get it on a slider, so I can analyze,” Colgate said, floating her scalpel over and holding it by her head. “Unless one of you can do lab work.”

“I think Evergreen can.”

“I’ll get her in a minute. Now pay attention.” She prodded the spear tip, moving it slightly.

“Is it bad?”

“Think about it,” Colgate said testily. That she should have to explain to the nurse darkened her mood, and she thought the nurse noticed. “First, notice the patient didn’t react. Anesthetic’s kicking in.”

“I saw that.”

“But also, if it moves freely, that means it hasn’t gotten under a bone. We’re gonna try to remove it. Hold her steady.”

“It hurts,” the patient said.

“Don’t worry, sweetie, we’ll have it out in no time,” the nurse said, and Colgate twisted the spear tip slowly. More blood pooled around the wound, and she wiped it away with a corner of blanket. The nurse had at least done a good job shaving her, Colgate saw.

The patient cried out as Colgate pulled at the spear tip. Though it had not been lodged in or under any bones, it was still well into her flesh, too deep to simply pull back out.

“Clippers,” Colgate said. The nurse scrambled back to the table of implements and passed a simple pair of wire clippers to Colgate, who snipped the exposed section of shaft away from the wound. “We’re going in. How badly does it hurt?”

The patient was breathing hard, but hadn’t uttered a sound since her cry out at the spear’s tug. “I’ll be okay.”

Colgate took her scalpel, and, without another word, or a look at her nurse, drew a gentle line down the wound’s side. She hadn’t looked at what kind of anesthetic they had at their disposal, but, from the patient’s reactions, she could tell it was local, and not particularly strong. She made no reaction to the incision, but would begin moving once Colgate began excising the tip.

“Get ready to steady her again. This’ll hurt,” Colgate said, and the nurse put both hooves to the patient’s back. She lifted back the skin, revealing the shrapnel in what resembled a crimson bore hole. Without speaking, she grabbed a tourniquet and tied it around the soldier’s leg.

“Patient incoming!” someone called from outside.

“Doctor?” the nurse asked.

“After this. Watch me.” She traded the scalpel for a small pair of forceps, which she locked over the wound, and then grabbed her tweezers. Never had she had to grab her own surgical tools, and the rapid back-and-forth of her eyes from patient to tool counter was disorienting. Each time, she needed to pause for a second to re-familiarize herself with the wound. Though the foreign body was large and menacing, she was more worried about the wooden shaft; one splinter could cause an infection, and potentially cost the mare her leg if it went unnoticed.

She teased the spear tip, and the mare shook, but said nothing. The metal was dark with blood, a large, strange lump caught inside the rosy shoulder flesh, its shaft a cleaner, bolder affront. Colgate twisted it once more and angled it away from her, and was rewarded as it came looser. Using her tweezers to move a flap of muscle back, she grabbed the shaft with her magic and pulled a barb back past it.

“It missed her subscapular artery by a good portion,” Colgate said, producing a thin line of magic across the pony’s fur where the artery ran. “If it hadn’t, we’d be doing something quite different.”

The mare moaned, and the nurse soothed her.

“Doctor Colgate! We need you!” someone called from outside.

Colgate froze, and the nurse with her. “Take it slow and steady, try not to nick any muscles, and dress the wound when you’re done. Make sure you wrap her against the grain of her fur, otherwise you might get a hair in the wound, and she could become septic. I’ll be back as soon as I can, with Evergreen if I can find her. Get that saline on a slider.”

She ran outside, sweating, and knew right away why they had called her when she saw the stretcher with her next patient. Far off, another awful sound of magic rose and then fell, and she heard her earlier patient shout in pain.

Luna told Octavia to wait until the battle was underway before going out and trying to help. The armies needed a chance to break against each other, and she wanted all of Discord’s airships out in the open, to minimize the threat of Octavia being surprised. It would be risky, sending her out against the airships fully amassed, but the angel was tough; Luna had faith.

So waiting, the angel was poised on a marble balcony off one of the palace’s many secondary towers, its wings hanging menacingly off both sides like black palm leaves. Octavia didn’t know how Luna had gotten it there, for it was not the balcony where they had landed the night before.

“They’re really going to it,” Whooves said, standing at relative ease between Octavia and Pinkie on the angel’s front. They could see the battle, but without detail.

“When do you think we should go?” Pinkie asked.

“Any time now, I’m sure.”

“I will let you know,” Octavia said. She had been beset with nightmares, both waking and somnolent, the night before, but too much adrenaline ran through her to let exhaustion or despair take hold for more than a few seconds at a time: quiet intervals of private self-loathing. She knew fear and anxiety, but she did not often face the more immediate, mortal fear for which she was supposed to prepare on the balcony.

“I’ll be back,” Pinkie said, turning to go down into the angel’s interior.

“She’s scared,” Whooves said when she was gone. “Only natural, I suppose.” He chuckled weakly. “Celestia knows I am.”

Octavia looked at him.

“I know you aren’t, but—”

“I spent all last night trying to think of an excuse not to see this through. I am terrified.”

He pursed his lips. “Oh.”

Octavia forced a smile and leaned to look out, seeing nothing better than before. “We will depart soon.”

“If it makes you feel better, Miss Octavia, fear aside, you’re still ten times the mare I am. Er, that is, well, I’m not a mare, but you are—which is to say—”

“I know what you mean.”

“Er, quite. You and Pinkie both, ten times easily the pony I am. I shouldn’t even be here.”

“But you are.”

“Well… yes, I suppose.”

Octavia rubbed her head with a quiet sigh. “We are nothing special.”

“Not so, my dear!” He put a hoof to her back. “You are everything I could only hope to be, I mean it.” He lowered his eyes. “She saved my life earlier, Pinkie did. Bet you didn’t know that.”

Octavia frowned and took a moment to bring herself back to a listening mindset. She had not expected his praise to cut off after only one sentence. “What happened?”

“Do you, um—I suppose you must—recall how we met?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Yes, I as well. Still, the dark cloud of recognizance hangs over me sometimes, when I’m at my lowest. Of late, I’ve relived those strange moments, on the coastline. On the edge.”

“Are you saying what I think you are saying?”

Whooves hesitated. “Only that your sister has a good ear for these sorts of things. I… let’s simply say I’ve had my share of weakness recently, and leave it at that. Shall we?”

Octavia nodded. “I am happy that she was able to do that for you.”

“You and me both.”

She let a minute of respectful quiet pass, then turned to him. “Go get her, please. I think we should go.”

He sighed. “So it begins. The great war of our age, with a—”

“Now, please.”

“Sorry.” He trotted to the back and vanished from sight, leaving Octavia momentarily alone with her thoughts.

“I’m ready,” Pinkie said, emerging from the back. “Sorry, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything important behind.”

Octavia glanced at her, not sure what she meant, and they went below, where they would not sail off the edge once they started flying. Octavia planted her face in the angel’s port hole, seeing the city and a section of the battle through one of its eyes. “Angel, fly us over the battlefield.”

They rocked and rollicked along a shallow valley, forming a natural flight path from deep within the suburbs and stretching well out into the green wilderness, where it eventually widened and turned into a deep patch of forest, an offshoot from the Everfree. On the east side of the field, across from Discord’s army, a stream glittered, but did not run.

Of the three of them, only Pinkie had seen a full army before, but she gave no sign of familiarity as they sped over the disorganized mass. Pikes and spears stuck into the air, some of them hung with banners, while all around larger constructions moved ponies with smaller weapons, some of them armored and some not. Occasional flashes of magic appeared below, but it was not the maelstrom of lights that any of them had expected. Where their shadow passed, heads turned upwards, and some soldiers turned and ran.

The image was not lost on Octavia, who knew well what they saw, and why they were afraid. She remembered first finding the angel with Twilight, one moonlit night in the mountains. They had thought it was another wrecked airship, a rusted anachronism from the time when the western border was contested and needed defending. That it could move, could govern itself in a limited way, despite its mass and the seeming insufficiency of its scythe-like wings, had been a shock to them all.

Theirs was not the only shadow over the battlefield. Far ahead and above of the army, Discord’s airships moved, big blocks of colored wood arranged in abstract shapes, many of them floating without benefit of balloons and moving without propellers or wings or sails. Through the angel’s fish-eye lens, it appeared to Octavia as if they were flying through a frozen tumble of toys, recently purged from an upended chest. They moved past an umber wheel with what resembled a lampshade hanging from its underside, turned slowly into a spray of magic from the ground—glancing harmlessly off the angel’s armor, but not without a worrying sound of free electricity all around them—toward a large, firetruck-red airship, from which rained a silver spray of thin lights, like sleet. It was magic that Octavia did not recognize, dissipating across the ground where a disorganized team of soldiers brought up the rear.

Octavia watched through the angel’s spotlight eyes as they approached their first quarry, the black tips of their ship’s heavy wings sparking across the eyes’ peripheries. Though she and the others were safely crowded in the angel’s hold, Octavia could not help the fear that spread through her body as the great, red ship took up more and more of their view. Whooves was saying something, but she had no sense of what it was.

“Angel, fly through that airship and destroy it,” Octavia said, and she was conscious of her companion’s sudden silence. She looked at him, and he looked back, face slack.

On the ship’s upper deck sat a bristling crown of black, metal gantries, from which came the stream of silver magic, a downpour of sparkles that looked no more substantive than a heavy mist. From behind the scintillating cataract, Discord’s painted face, animated across the paneled wood, twirled its eyes and blew a raspberry as the angel’s blunt nose rammed its side, splitting it in an avalanche of metal and wood and throwing them forward. A silver firework cascaded over them, accompanied by an internal flash as Octavia’s head struck the port hole’s edge.

Sizzling filled the air outside, soft as rainfall to her covered ears, until Whooves bodily pulled her away from the eye with a shout of alarm. He was pale, his ears on end and his eyes dilated.

“Angel, hover here,” Octavia said, still not hearing him and not caring to. Head throbbing, she raced for the ladder up to the deck and climbed high enough only to pitch the door open. A soft skin of electric magic moved across the surface, and her fur stood up as she poked her head out. As she had commanded, they hovered just behind the tail of dust, and she watched as the red ship hit the ground. One metal beam flew off jauntily, twirling for a second before bouncing off the grass and flipping down into the gentle valley, leaving gouges in its wake and scattering the already scattered soldiers. The rest of the ship, with a heavy thump, landed on its damaged side and threw red splinters of itself across the plains, like crimson bird shot, quickly obscured by dust. Octavia still made out the occasional spitting sound of a pulse crystal, or the wooden twang of a crossbow, amid the distant din.

She stopped for a second, regaining her senses, before reaching out with her magic and closing the hatch behind. She dropped the last few rungs and moved slowly down the corridor, her balance easy and accustomed in the angel; she was used to the heavy, awkward way it bobbed up and down in the air, when holding position, but it was not the angel’s movement that caused her to go more slowly.

She saw no ponies on the ship, nor amid the wreckage, and felt disquieted as she made her way back to the angel’s eyes. In her head, starting a few days after leaving Roan and refusing to stop for longer than an hour or two once it began, a countdown ticked, its exact length unknowable, but its terminus certain: she would soon take life. She had given it no thought earlier, volunteering herself to fly to Canterlot’s aid, and it was too late to turn back when she realized what, exactly, she had consigned herself to. She was bringing her magical juggernaut to battle; of course blood would be spilled, and yet, such a consideration escaped her in the damning moments of her decision.

But she saw no bodies with the ruined airship, just broken boards and a torn landscape below, and the whirl of dust tethering it to an empty patch of sky. The countdown ticked on, and she knew she surely did not have much more time before she was no longer the mare she thought she was. As with most others, she was convinced that it was beyond her to snuff out a life, and deferring the climactic moment was no comfort to her. Thinking, as she walked back to her station, that the fuse inside her was nearing its absolute end, her only comfort was the stressed, stretched anxiety that filled her thoughts and her movements, leaving no room for higher thought.

Pinkie sat quietly in the corner, watching as Whooves flitted between port holes, looking out of different eyes and remarking upon what he saw. To Octavia, her two friends were of little concern. Her ears rang and her eyes burned, and her mind had frozen. Like Colgate, she had not truly imagined the moments of battle. She had not thought of it as a sequence of individual occurrences, only one large event that would later pall upon her memory.

“Angel, move away from the battle and let me see it better,” Octavia said, slotting her face back into her favored port hole. They jerked away for a moment before turning abruptly and halting, a move that sent them all staggering to the side. Only Pinkie was able to keep her balance with a small, joyless jig, accompanied by nervous laughter that Octavia had heard many times before.

Through the machine’s multiple eyes, Octavia could see a piecemeal version of Discord’s opus, and Canterlot’s retort. On one side, boldly colorful airships floated in a loose wave, their sides prickled with cannons and other machines, and some of them resplendent in curtains of magic as well. As she watched, a sea green airship released a bright purple fireball into the air to smear, seconds later, across a translucent forcefield that surrounded the sprawling suburbs of Lower Canterlot. They had been told, that morning, that Celestia had locked herself in the highest room of the tallest tower, blown out the walls and ceiling, and taken it upon herself to shield the entire city. Though Octavia had heard the pride in Luna’s voice as she said it, she had also picked up the fear.

Below, a twinkling of organized magic drew Octavia’s gaze, and a shadow of relief passed over her. She was finally seeing the discharge from the pulse crystals she knew must be there somewhere, spreading out in a panoply of colored light as the wielders moved deeper into the field, their flanks closing the distance with the Canterlot army’s. In the middle, across a flat stretch of grass, unbroken even by a single tree and yet untouched by more than an occasional mote of isolated unicorn magic, the mass was impossible to discern.

“They didn’t have any crystals the first time we did this,” Pinkie said, taking her face out of a port hole beside Octavia’s.

“Takes time to make ‘em all,” Whooves said. “He probably hadn’t a good source of magical crystals at the time.”

“Angel, attack the yellow airship,” Octavia said, and they again fell over at the hard acceleration as their angel threw itself into a prevailing wind and dipped north, toward Canterlot and a wide, leaf-shaped airship of burnished ochre. From its underside hung an elaborate mass of cables and beams, connected through holes in the deck to a forest of catapults on top. As they advanced, a catapult at the very back swung its arm out and up, throwing a white chunk of masonry which, like the purple fireball, splattered harmlessly against Celestia’s shield.

The network of ropes jostled beneath as the ship rotated, a pair of glassy rudders rising from its sides to catch the wind like gigantic moth wings. Another catapult fired off its payload, and the ship rotated again.

“Angel, fly through it.” At her words, Whooves backed up and shook his head, his lips reading the word “no” over and over. Octavia ignored him. She didn’t know what else to tell the machine, or how to better define what she wanted.

They met the ship at one of its rudders, shearing it off against the angel’s hard nose. The ship itself, however, was harder, and did not yield to their force as the first had. Octavia saw the splintering of wood as they crashed into its side, but as the angel tried to push through, the enemy ship only tilted back, bringing its mass of ropes to meet them in a loose caress.

Then, the ship split. Its sides were reinforced, but its bottom was not, and it was through the flat disc of wood that they broke when the angel asserted itself again. Through her eye, Octavia could see the interior, a mirror of the ropes below that reminded her of a walk-in closet, so loosely everything moved in the growing beam of sunlight their collision introduced.

She could feel herself sliding forward, and brought her head out of the port hole to see Whooves and Pinkie doing the same, both of them too tense to wear more than nervous puzzlement on their faces.

Whooves met her eyes and widened his own, forming an O with his mouth, as if to ask whether they were about to be in trouble.

Outside, the angel’s wings beat rapidly, slicing the air and occasionally catching on a piece of dislodged debris or a loop of rope. They were surrounded by a weak, but insistent creaking, and their wings were shaking them where they stood. The angel had stopped moving, and was trying to stay aloft with the weight of the enemy ship pulling it down at the front. Octavia ran again for the hatch to see, afraid of what she might discover.

Ignoring as best she could the tingle of silver electricity that still clung to the angel’s shell, she watched despondently as shreds of the ground rose up to them, visible only scarcely through missing pieces in the enemy ship’s far side. They had lodged themselves at an angle, so that Octavia, at the angel’s back, could turn and see all the way down the ship’s hollow middle, where cables and hooks swung and were caught on broken beams. A thick loop of rope had tangled around one of their wings, and as the angel tried to keep them aloft, the yellow ship would groan and deform.

“Angel, get this ship off our front,” she said, hoping it would be able to figure out how. She herself had no good ideas as she ran back into the viewing room.

No sooner had she rejoined them than she was thrown forwards into the port holes in a flat, final crash. She touched a hoof to her forehead, where a thin line of blood had opened. For a second, they were still, and she was able to get an unhelpful look at their situation. Around its eyes, the yellow ship was still broken, a forest of displaced scaffolding and paneling. There were again no ponies to be seen amid the wreckage.

Then, they tilted again, and Whooves yelped as he hit the wall next to Pinkie. Octavia could hear the wings on one side struggling to dig into the ground, and thought she knew what the angel was doing. After a moment, the floor flew up and swung to the other side, and they with it.

“Octavia!”

“Out, into the hall,” Octavia barked, trying to scramble into the doorway that had been turned on its side in the angel’s flailing. The three of them stopped in the middle of the corridor, and Pinkie screamed when a sickly wail of broken metal filled the air. They lurched into a gentler angle, and the angel turned in a lazy arc, something Octavia had not once felt it do on their flight over.

“What’s going on? Did we crash?” Whooves asked, his voice trembling.

They fell flat as the angel righted itself to another squaw of twisting metal, paired with the quick snap and release as of the sudden breaking of tension. On one side, the wings hammered the ground, scattering pieces of airship.

“Get up to the hatch and prepare to come out,” Octavia said, running for the exit. She took nearly a minute to climb out, having to steady herself as the angel yawed back and forth.

She didn’t immediately see what was the matter, but could tell that her machine was injured. The yellow airship had been largely reduced to debris in front of their face, scattered irreverently across the small stream they had seen earlier. A purple oil slick ran down the stream to coat the grass beside a divot made by a fallen barrel, its sides severely dented.

A bolt of magic hit their side, and Octavia lost her balance once more. She looked to its caster, expecting to see Discord towering over his equine army, but saw only a middle-aged unicorn in glasses with a floral bandana under her horn. She fixed a sphere of magic around one of the angel’s wings and, with a twist and a tug, popped it from its socket, then tossed it behind to join two others, lying in the scarred field like discarded pea pods.

The unicorn saw Octavia at the same time, and brought out a pulse crystal as Octavia galloped to the angel’s front, where she could better jump onto the ground. It did not occur to her to tell it to simply roll over, and crush the attacker; to her thinking, the angel was finished, and her frantic mind was already running out of control to find a solution, finally awake but too late to do any good. Soon, they would be swarmed.

A hot bolt of magic flashed past Octavia to scorch the side of one of the angel’s spotlight eyes, and Octavia brought up her shield, a woeful imitation of Rarity’s that would probably only save her from one good shot with the crystal.

The good shot came swiftly, momentarily blinding Octavia as her magic broke, her concentration with it. For one small moment, hopelessness flooded her thoughts, but she ducked and turned, trying to hide herself behind a wing’s overhang while her senses came back. The mare was shouting something, but Octavia couldn’t hear. Her blood was pounding in her head, heavy from only three hours of sleep the night before.

The mare shot again, and Octavia flinched before conjuring up a more familiar spell. She had practiced her explosions while riding the angel, simply releasing them in the thin air and trying to create a pressure wave strong enough to jostle them on their course.

The pulse crystal sang once more, and Octavia jumped out of cover, eyes wide and searching for the unicorn. She was trotting to where Octavia had hidden, and Octavia saw shock on her face for a moment before she released her spell. Her eyes bloomed white and her ears rang as she flew backwards into cool earth. She thought she had been hit, and frantically turned and felt herself with her hooves, searching for the painful absence of flesh that wound indicate the mortal wound she assumed she had just incurred. Her chest felt fine, her neck, her face, her flanks. She jumped up as the ground vibrated nearby, and, still mostly blinded, she ran a few steps before tripping and falling face-first into the stream.

She snorted and coughed, raising her head and catching a glimpse of the angel as it settled back onto its injured side. A smoking crater was all that remained where the mare had been, and the angel’s side was caked in dirt and mud where the blast had been. As it struggled, she could see the trio of black spiracles where its wings had been plucked. Octavia gasped, finally catching her breath, and climbed out of the freezing water.

Whooves and Pinkie were coming out, the former trying to gingerly step off, the latter simply casting herself over the railing to land in an unhurt pile in the grass. When he saw Octavia returning to them, Whooves ran at her, babbling as he did so. Pinkie’s name appeared, but Octavia wasn’t paying attention. She raced to the angel’s back to see whether anyone was approaching from the other side.

Her blood turned to glue when she saw the galloping mass approaching their crash site. Amidst the contingency of ponies, some shimmering in the dust as if enchanted, there moved a pair of battering rams, rolling sturdily in their harnesses over the grass and bushes. Both had Discord’s face, pulled in an inquisitive expression, painted on their ends.

“The angel, Octavia, it’s still alive!” Pinkie said, coming up beside her sister. She looked almost calm, though ruffled from the fall, and spared a second to brush a piece of wood out of Octavia’s mane.

“Get back to that stream, both of you,” Octavia said, not sure how she would defend them from the approaching ponies. The angel was grounded, and she didn’t have the strength to create explosions for the rest of the day.

“You heard the lady, Pinkie!” Whooves cried, racing for the water.

“Angel, do not let them get close,” Octavia said. They were already close, only a minute away, but she could not think of what else to say. The machine needed simple orders, she knew, but she could not imagine herself escaping unscathed, if she herself could give no better direction than a simple command to a mindless machine. She backed away, fearing more pulse crystals.

The only advantage Octavia could see was that the approaching enemy was on the angel’s uninjured side. It brought up two of its three remaining wings and slammed them into the earth like giant guillotines, raising dust and scattering the ponies, who ran about to search for a safer angle of approach. One wing rose a second time, while the other turned and scraped across the ground, producing a wrenching sound that reminded her of her cello.

She saw with only dim pleasure that one battering ram had come too close, and watched long enough to see Discord’s face pirouette away as the wing smashed its housing. A wheel flew off to crash into a tree trunk nearly fifty feet away, by a pair of circling soldiers.

A single magical stream flew past her, and she ran back behind the angel, wishing she had taken more time to practice her shield magic. She had used it intermittently at best, and could never be consistent, something Twilight had criticized time and again.

“This is where it ends for us,” she thought, looking around and trying to crouch more tightly every time the angel rose to bring a wing down. She could hear the crash and snap of metal in the middle distance, but no magical attacks repeated near her. The wings battered the ground again, but no one cried out. The ponies, naturally, would be coming around the angel’s front, where it could not reach them. She could see them from where she crouched, their hooves moving under the black shelf of metal that protected her.

A dark blue gobbet of magic streaked past, only a foot in front of her face, and she jumped up with a terrified look behind, where a unicorn stood, unarmored. He backed up a step when he saw she had spotted him, but before he could run back, she had reflexively released an explosion, smaller than her first.

Whooves yelped from the stream, and Octavia looked back; he stared at the colt she had just attacked. Her aim had been off by a few feet, and instead of reducing him to a forgettable cloud of smoke, or another crater under the angel’s side, she had tossed him back into a knot of tree roots, his head twisted at a strange angle while blood pooled under his open mouth.

“There,” she thought. Neither pleasure nor sadness moved inside, but she still trembled as she faced the angel’s front, where she saw the first of the advancing group come into view.

In the screeching tug of war that was the surrounding battle, she and her friends hidden from the millions of joules of magic that turned the air into an electric haze, Octavia felt unreal. She felt as if she must wake up when she stumbled, her tail caught on a bush she hadn’t noticed, and she felt as if she absolutely would wake up when she built up her magic for yet another explosion.

Whooves shouted again when the fire leapt out of her mind and out of the ground. Stones and bodies flew up and clattered into the water, and a tree was pushed rudely away. Octavia blinked sweat out of her sleepless eyes.

“Seven on the two, shredder,” the pony in the back said, and Windy Weathervane turned them about to face the small, pink airship, its sides whirring with metal fins.

The morning had been strange for them all. Flitter had woken up in a tent in the Everfree, bathed in a stream, and boarded the lotus, where they waited at the back of the caravan for an hour before moving. Just behind them had rolled a small machine that reminded Flitter of a ballista, its sole purpose to launch their ship into the air with a sound like a bull whip and enough force to split the final, large airship as it tried to unfold a rack of cannons from its underside. The rain of metal cylinders and ammunition had torn a circle of large holes in the field below, as if it had been smacked with a giant, spiked mallet.

They shared the sky with a small team of other airships, many of which were beyond Flitter’s recognition, though she had helped with their construction. A trio of large, charcoal-gray spheres floated like weather balloons, around them faint, blue cloaks of electricity. Flitter had helped build one, setting a thick, wooden division between the helium bladder in the sphere’s top chamber and the electrical generator in the bottom. Swinging around the field of battle, she supposed the machines’ potential to explode might not have been an accident. In a pinch, they would make excellent bombs.

By the time they had finally gotten within range of Canterlot, the air was largely clear. The angel had done a little, but the Canterlot Guard had done the rest, either plucking airships out of the sky with their own catapults or taking them apart with highly trained pegasi. Discord was learning the folly of making his armaments into a collage of color, and their job, far from the harrowing bob-and-weave through hostilities that Flitter had been told to expect, was to corral the occasional smaller projectile when it rose up to meet them.

Windy pulled a lever to release, from their bottom, one of the chasers that they had originally used for practice. Their small ship, the lotus, was best able to move when it had something to push off of; in the absence of enemy ships, something they had not expected before entering Canterlot air space, a chaser, quickly unleashed and properly manipulated, would lend them enough force to move with speed.

Flitter had become fascinated with the manner of the lotus’ movement early on, as much as it sickened her sometimes to be victim to it. Never had she seen it move from the outside; to her, every complicated maneuver was the same maneuver, twisting and twirling in air as panels snapped and sparks flew, too fast for her to follow and understand at the same time. All that she could see clearly was the chaser’s parabolic fall and rise, before it was slammed away again as the lotus’ bottom fin batted it down, sending them flipping upwards. At the same time, before she could announce its coordinates, the enemy ship turned like a saucer flipping off a table, spinning down to the ground. They had hit it in their hectic upward movement, but Flitter had no idea when or how.

It was very much a ship that thrived under physical duress, not magical. Though the enchantments that powered it enabled a certain amount of quick movement, they were also subject to unbinding, if tested too much. Windy Weathervane had told them only after the stunt, that, during their free-fall practice to the planet, he had done nothing except shut off the levitation enchantment until it was time to rise back up. The knowledge had made Flitter’s skin crawl.

Even above the battle and with relatively little to do, Windy Weathervane was never still. His seat was surrounded on all sides, above as well as beside, with levers and switches, each controlling a discrete fin or an enchanted piece on their ship. He adjusted them always, keeping the ship in a constant state of minor, subtle movement that Flitter found mesmerizing, but disconcerting when her mind was free. It was like sitting inside a living creature, and knowing the power that lurked inside the tiny, interior hinges that held the transparent device together made it all the stranger, and all the more worrisome when she thought too much about it. After all, the ship weighed only a few hundred pounds, the wood that held it together only half an inch thick in some places.

How Windy Weathervane knew which adjustments to make, and when, and to what extent made Flitter feel small in her seat, her only job to call out numbers if something approached from her quadrant—which had only happened twice, despite them being a part of the battle for nearly two hours.

“Can’t we go down?” one of the spotters asked.

“No, honey, we can’t,” Windy said, regret in his voice. “This is our place. We can only go down if I get the orders.”

Flitter looked to the palace, where waited both princesses, one holding a shield around the city and the other holding operations in the palace together. Even in times of war, Windy had said, someone had to take care of the home.

“You can tell we’re winning,” Windy said mildly. “If we weren’t, I don’t think we’d be able to simply hang out up here.”

Flitter silently agreed. Though she had never seen a battle in her life—the very first one being something she only heard about from others the day after—she thought that their chances for repelling Discord looked good. He himself had not been seen on the battlefield, and his ponies were appearing fewer and fewer each minute. The Canterlot Guard, easily picked out for their golden armor, filled the lands below like sand, while the disorderly mass of Discord’s invaders spread like oil, and seemed to seep away each time the gold began to overtake an area. She could see some shrinking in retreat into the arm of trees that followed the stream, where she had seen the angel crash.

For all his magic and all that they had heard, from their vantage in the sky, things simply did not look so bad.

“Whoa, Windy, we’ve got five ships coming up from the city,” Flitter called out, jumping in her seat when she saw them.

Windy turned them slowly, the ships far off. “Oh, not to worry, those are ours.”

“Reinforcements?”

“Not quite.” He pulled a lever and lowered them a few feet, allowing a better angle by which to see the ships. They floated in a cluster, decorated all white and with red crosses on their sides.

“Holy crap, are they evacuating the city?”

“It’s not as serious as you think, I promise,” Windy said. “You remember what I said about a nasty little surprise for Discord? This is it.”

“I thought we were the surprise.”

“Well, that too. Oh, look alive girls! We’ve got something approaching, twelve on the one.”

They craned their necks to see what Windy had spotted as he backed them off. Flitter could see what looked like a golden splinter, at first seemingly telescoping from the ground, but then rising up at them slowly. It looked nothing like a ship, nor a spell.

“Is that a crystal?” one of the spotters asked.

“Crystals don’t fly,” Flitter said. “Do they? Can they?”

“One minute, Flitter,” Windy Weathervane said, working a crank to bring them closer to the wind.

As the splinter rose, it elongated, its golden frame stretching like taffy in the afternoon sun.

“Preparing for impact,” Windy said, hoof steady over a switch. “Get ready to call orientation, girls.”

There were no gasps of fear inside the lotus, the only thing that kept Flitter silent, her own fear not voiced. She liked to believe that she was used to riding in the strange ship, and comfortable with bouncing around in the air like a pinball, but the truth was that every time she had to ride with Windy, she was a little unnerved. Her head still sometimes spun after particularly vigorous practice sessions, and she still felt shame for needing to stop once to throw up.

There was something different about being hit, than hitting. In the latter, Windy was in control. The collision was part of a plan, something that they could measure and predict. The other way around, though, she had only experienced from the ultimately harmless chasers. As she watched the golden beam curve and bend in on itself, forming the beginnings of a gold ring, she knew it would hit them harder than the chasers, and it would be Windy’s reaction time that might mean the difference between staying aloft and crashing to the ground in pieces.

She gripped what she could of her seat moments before the ring smashed into them. The sound was a weak snap, as of a branch breaking, but they spun rapidly away with force enough to whip Flitter’s head back. Sparks moved across her field of vision, bathed in golden afterglow, and for a moment it seemed Canterlot had been lost in a sunset. The thing had been nearly bright enough to blind.

“Still approaching, five on the two,” a spotter said. “Impact in two,” she added, just before they spun again. Flitter’s head was thrown back against her seat, but her body felt less pressure. They had been knocked off their center of gravity.

“Three on the two,” the other spotter cried, and Windy grabbed for another switch. Flitter had just enough time to see a panel flip outward to catch their attacker before an amber explosion of light scorched her eyes. Concurrently, Windy cried out, and for one dazed second she thought it an oddly severe reaction to her looking away from her quadrant. When she opened her eyes, she saw with a drop of dread in her stomach what had happened. He rubbed his eyes vigorously, and when his hooves moved away, they stared stupidly out at the world.

“It’s moved off, don’t worry,” a spotter said, seeing, as Flitter did, what had happened to their driver.

“Oh crud, that’s him,” Flitter said, excitement filling her. Inside the gold casing of magic, she recognized his wings, folded tightly like tent cloth; his horns, conductors for a bluish, electric light; his goofy, drawn face, poised in a look of assiduous interest.

“Discord?” Windy asked, turning them.

“I’m pretty sure.”

He breathed quietly, trying to marshal his thoughts, and Flitter watched him nervously. Inside the pause, Discord wheeled away with a brilliant catch of sunlight on his magical shield, and whipped off toward the city, where he, like so many projectiles before, clanged inoffensively off Celestia’s shield.

Unlike the other projectiles, though, he did not vanish or scrape down the side to rest at the city limits. Discord wobbled slightly, swooped down and out, then swung back as if on a wire to slam into the shield a second time. In the momentary flash during which the shield was visible, Flitter could see ripples along its surface.

“He’s gonna break that shield,” the other spotter said. “Windy!”

“Girls, I’m gonna land us,” Windy said, one hoof over his eyes.

“Don’t,” Flitter said, an idea suddenly coming. In her various studies, she had touched on the magic of forcefields, and the magic used in dispelling them. Though the specifics and the subtleties had always been lost on her, she had remembered the one basic rule that it all boiled down to: the best shields were of an orderly form of magic, the best manner to dispel them chaotic. She could not assume that they had time to land and regroup.

“What do you expect me to do, Flitter?” Windy snapped.

“I know you can’t see,” Flitter said rapidly, trying to think ahead of her mouth. “Just trust me. Drop a—oh, geez, uh…” Another set of ripples, larger, moved over Canterlot. “Drop a chaser to seven on the one and get ready to punch it.”

“Flitter.”

“He’s ramming that shield bad,” a spotter said.

“Chaser, seven on the one!” Flitter said again. “We’re gonna knock him out of the air.”

“You can get us there?” Windy asked, putting his blind eyes on her.

“I know it.” She licked her lips, regretting her promise immediately.

Windy didn’t give her the time to regret for long. With muscle memory, he grasped the crank to release a chaser, waited a second, and slapped it backwards, sending them forward several feet. In the distance, the shield was sparking where Discord kept striking.

“Okay, uh, drop at five on the two,” Flitter said.

As the first chaser raced to rejoin them, the second looped out, around, and then shot away again, and Flitter, ready, called out the next coordinate before they had stopped. So far so good; the two chasers moved opposite and away from each other in a see-saw motion, one flying back and the first one closing in at the end of its fast curve. Another spotter called its position, and, just below Flitter’s seat, a fin flew out to propel them, hitting the chaser a little wide and spinning them with a clang right into the path of the second. Flitter tried to turn to see, her own cramped compartment slowing her, and saw it whipping up to their aft side just as a different spotter called it.

She put her eyes back on her own quadrant, cheeks aflame. In her haste to take control, she had forgotten the other two spotters.

“Drop, six on the two,” Flitter said, watching feverishly as two chasers now hurtled toward them. The third dropped, momentarily completing a triangle of shadows, which then broke apart when Windy struck with a sharp downward slap. In the corner of Flitter’s eye, she could see him writhing in his seat, both hooves moving blindly to feel for his switches. That he was able to control their ship at all, Flitter thought, was remarkable.

“We’ve got three chasers out and behind, six-five on the one,” a spotter said.

“What’s the plan?” Windy asked, but before Flitter could answer, the other spotter called a position, and they were flung once more, leaving behind a wake of sparks.

“C’mon,” Flitter mumbled, studying the chasers’ paths intently. Except for the first jolt forward, each chaser had come at them concurrently, and Flitter needed them staggered; otherwise, every time they introduced another into the air, it would bump into the others, and her task would become truly impossible. She would not be able to keep up with so many trajectories once they got four or more chasers bursting apart at each movement. Three, as it was, had her turning around too fast, though she knew to place more trust in her companions.

Two swung out and up while the other, flung too far to catch the lotus as it sped past, had to double back in a hairpin turn, and each was again set to converge upon their back side.

“Approaching,” a spotter said.

“Windy, I need a short hit and then a long one right after, same positions,” Flitter said, wiping sweat out of her eyes. “Okay, three on the one… now!”

Windy flailed in his seat and the levers clunked in their housings, and two panels shot around at Flitter’s back, the first slapping a chaser away in one direction and the second, longer one flapping out to hit a second one right at its tip. The force was unseen, but enough to pound the seat back into Flitter’s wings as they jerked forward once, then to the side almost immediately after in a sickening stutter step that broke the pair of chasers apart like popcorn kernels. In her mind, Flitter tried to envision the different angles and vectors, just as she had in college, trying to learn billiards.

She didn’t want to blink. They were moving too quickly through the air, the chasers behind moving faster still, and still below the battle pulsed on with its own unstable magic, itself a distraction. She could hear Discord bludgeoning the shield like a moth on a lantern’s glass, could see the other ships approaching him much more slowly.

“Okay, strike four on the two,” she said, and they shot wide of the invisible line Flitter was trying to keep them to. One more chaser flew away to swing back and join the others at a distance, and Flitter realized that they would need to add more anyway. She hadn’t angled the first few well initially, and, as a result, was moving them in the beginnings of a circle.

“How much farther?” Windy asked. “And what’s the plan?”

Flitter turned, mind racing, trying to work out how the fourth chaser would behave. “Celestia, drop a chaser, seven on the one, and prepare for my call after,” she rambled, and off they went, spinning their partial spin into the rushing air. Two of the coming chasers were too close, and would shoot past, but the one lagging behind would catch them on their back-swing, and Flitter watched it curve suddenly in their direction with an isolated sense of satisfaction. “Nine on the two, second quadrant call after.”

Without slowing, they shot back into line, and the spotter called the second chaser’s position, it just before the third and a good ten feet from the fourth.

Flitter had to close her eyes to avoid losing her perspective, and, in that brief moment when she was opening them, feared the chasers were not as far off as she thought, and her plan would fall apart. They needed speed when they reached Discord, and were finally beginning to build it; one mistake, however, would ruin their chances, and the other airships might not be any help. They were larger and slower, and could simply be kicked out of the sky, if he put his mind to it.

The chasers behind had been beaten into a more staggered helix, but it was still not quite right. For one horrifying moment, Flitter saw no solution. She saw them going as they had, letting the chasers batter them forward at a consistent pace but with jagged angles, until they ended up colliding with Celestia’s shield like another ineffectual weapon. She had gotten them moving steadily, but not smoothly.

“Uh, seven on the three, and drift on nine until next call.”

“We’re gonna miss the closest chasers if we do that,” a spotter said.

“Do it. I want a drift.” She winced. It wasn’t her place to be giving orders, and she could feel Windy’s reluctance as he appeared to dance in his cockpit. If she were too assertive, they might simply land until the real leader’s vision came back, by which time it could be too late.

She had no more time to contemplate; they slapped off again, and Flitter ignored the queasy feeling in her stomach as they listed to one side. One wing was angled outwards right in front of her face, its long plane stretching the light into a concentrated, obscure splinter through which she could not see. Behind, the nearest chaser, as predicted, moved past and into a tight turn. Another spotter called for the fourth.

“And drift on two,” Flitter added, glad that her back was to the other spotters.

Discord was only a few impulses away, and Flitter saw, in the second between looking back at the chasers and losing her view in the spin, the strange intensity in his magic. She had seen plenty of magic before, but not that of anyone so powerful. Colgate’s, when they were friends, and Allie’s, she was used to. The light was dim, the sparkles few, the charge in the air around them negligible.

As they entered into Discord’s golden haze, hung with a canopy of slow sparkles, she could feel her fur standing on end, her ears ringing. He himself glowed like gilt treasure, rotating and wobbling like a dislodged cartwheel as he popped off the shield, stirring his own mist of magic into spirals and vortices that completed themselves independently after he had moved. Flitter caught herself staring at it when they came to their next momentary rest, before the other spotter called the next chaser’s position, and they were off again.

On the other side of his attack, Celestia’s shield, once invisible, had become a faint outline, a magical palimpsest of ribs and concentric circles, artifacts of the magic whose significance was beyond Flitter’s ken. Whether it had always been there or had only been rendered because of Discord’s assault, she didn’t know.

“Oh!” Windy cried. He swiveled in his seat, and as Flitter gave her next coordinates, their ship bobbed up suddenly, a pair of wings flying above like a transparent umbrella to catch an updraft. The nearest chaser came up too fast for Flitter to correct, and they hit off of it, flying straight into the golden ring.

Flitter’s words died in the shock as they collided, their clear, thin lotus splitting along nearly all its seams and turning, before Flitter’s surprised eyes, into a pancake of large glass shards, at the same time whirring and striking against the form of pure magic, a hammer hitting an anvil.

Fireworks exploded all around them while a sound burst out and into their ship, a furious, fast clang and clatter, like a piano hitting the ground. Shattered magic flaked away like gold leaves while a larger, more solid band of light swerved across the sky before leaving only a sunset afterglow on Flitter’s eyes. In the brilliant morass, the chasers streaked, ignoring the lotus and pursuing, instead, what at first appeared a random spot in the small nebula they had created.

Flitter stared for a second before remembering the entire purpose of her plan. “Drop the rest of the chasers!” she shouted. In the magic, her voice sounded thin to her.

Windy was nodding as he pulled the crank to release them, and she saw in his smiling face that he had caught on with her plan. His eyes were clear—he did not need to feel for the appropriate switches anymore—and he shot her a toothy grin as the small, black balls poured out of their underside. Breaking apart on one another, they swarmed out and up to join their fellows, harassing the slowly reforming shape of Discord. His noodle-like limbs, not yet returned to their original proportions, flailed to hit the chasers away, but he hadn’t the physical strength to hit them as far as the lotus. They bounced off and around him like flies, and he wiggled and turned violently, not noticing their slower approach. What Flitter had not realized, in her plan, was that they would move more slowly at the end, without their chasers to propel them. She blushed again, feeling foolish, but no one’s eyes were on her when the lotus struck out again, a wide slat of wood coming out like a saw blade to catch Discord across the middle where he struggled.

Another, smaller explosion blotted their eyes as the chasers flew apart and Discord flashed with more golden magic. On his face, they could see shock and frustration, not the smugness that had leered at them from all his depictions in the media. One spotter yelled excitedly as they were shot backwards, pulling some of the chasers back with them. Discord, halting his movement several meters away, vanished in a faint, golden shock wave that disintegrated the chasers that had remained in his orbit. The others simply came to rest on the lotus’ surface with heavy clunks, ignored in the chorus of cheers in the ship’s cramped cockpits.

Back in the middle of the battlefield, beside a tall, scorched finger of stone, the five airships from earlier shuddered and sank to the ground, where they were engulfed in a wicked, black curtain of magical fire.

On the day of the battle, beacon glowing behind like a second sun over the displaced dam, the Elements passed an airship heading toward Trottingham. Both paused and glided near enough for words to cross the gap, but little was said save for introductions and pleasantries. The Elements needed no help the strangers could give, and the strangers made no supplication for anything. They parted.

It was sunset when Vanilla Cream appeared, freezing all ship activity as he walked up and down their deck, looking out at the endless fields and forests that separated them from Snowdrift, and put a hoof on the wheel, beside which Applejack watched distrustfully. The last time they had seen him had been in Roan, and so much had gone wrong since then; she took no care to hide it in her expression.

“You can trust me, or you cannot,” he finally said. Gone was the geniality in his voice, the edged courtesy that they had come to associate with his visits. “What you seek is not to be found in Snowdrift. With that in mind, you might consider this next move a favor.”

“They so often are,” Applejack said, not once taking her green eyes off him.

He nodded to her, turned the wheel gently, and let himself be carried off, kite-like, as they slid over the country, not quite teleporting, to come to rest inside a cloud bank over a river. How many thousands of miles they covered in mere seconds of movement, was not immediately evident, but the change in the air suggested he had moved them north.

“At least it wasn’t a thunder cloud,” Applejack grumbled, clearing them of the vapor and bringing them over a familiar sight. “Well Ah’ll be.”

He had shot them over to Ponyville, low enough to see each small building and high enough to see the entire village at once. In the middle distance, they could see the farm, its orchards tea stained in the dusk, its barn repaired from The Crumbling. They could see Cloudsdale far off, casting its oblate shadow over the gentle dale that led away from the farms, and which hugged the stream over which they hung, before it curved back up and around to skirt the school, the library, and a few fringe houses. There was no rubble and no disorder, not even from the destroyed windmill from their most recent visit, and where Rarity’s boutique had once stood, there instead flapped a small collective of pennants where someone had set up a series of tents.

On rooftops, some under umbrellas and some on beach towels, ponies waited and watched, each head pointing the Elements to the true object of Vanilla’s intent. Not raging, but simmering, the battle for Canterlot moved inexorably toward its conclusion under a smoldering sky. A pillar of smoke rose up far away, completely obfuscating a section of Canterlot Mountain, and they could see the flicker of black fire at its base.

Airships drifted above like toys on a mobile, none of them attacking, while a giant shield glistened unhealthily over the whole city. No one needed to ask Twilight whose shield it was.

What struck them the most, and Twilight the hardest as she stood on the prow with Applejack and Rarity, was the quiet. In their own battle, on the first evening of what would blossom into their most arduous quest, the sounds of war had been deafening. Magic had shrieked, voices had bellowed and pleaded, metal and armor had been struck and rent, but none of it filtered over to them as they sat over their home town. On the ground, too, movement had been diminished.

“I think it’s almost over,” Rarity said.

“Looks that way,” Applejack said.

Twilight kept her eyes on the mountain, where no signs of battle had appeared. The palace stood as pristine and dignified as ever, and the city around it as well. The forested mountainside did not burn or smoke, and the river was un-dammed, though still it would not flow.

Her memories of that night stirred once more, as she knew they would as soon as she realized where they were, but she still chose to look out at the battle, and chose to keep her eyes fixed as her friends’ voices faded from conscious notice. That she had missed the battle at its peak was no source of relief, nor was her physical distance from it.

“It’s freezing out here,” Rarity said suddenly, putting a hoof to Twilight’s shoulder. “Come, let’s get you below, where it’s warmer.”

Twilight let herself be led away.