Seeing the dawn from the inside of a cloud was something I hadn't experienced before. It was interesting and pretty and didn't take my mind off of the coming battle for an instant. I was blind to what was going on with the rest of the fleet and had to trust that everypony else was doing their jobs according to plan. I was also figuratively blind to what, exactly, we were going to be facing. I had made some educated guesses based on my knowledge and experience, and my commanders and Luna had all agreed that my assumptions were logical, but not knowing for sure made me a bit nervous.

For a few moments, I wished that the Rainbow Power could have made it all go away. But I'd learned from hard experience what sort of situations the Power worked best in, and fighting through an army of monsters to eliminate an area of dark magic contamination was fraught with too many variables. There was way too much that could go wrong. Even my relatively simple rescue of Csharreee had turned into a diplomatic nightmare. No, it worked best on friendship problems, most particularly problems that it had pointed out itself in Ponyville Castle at the map. The simple and easy solution was not an option.

I won't say that I was unreasonably keyed up, but when Luna teleported to my side, I might have jumped and gasped just a little bit.

"Now, my love!" Luna said, and then kissed me and teleported away with my pilot and engineer in tow, leaving me alone on board.

I grabbed the vent line and pulled hard, opening the big flap at the top of Hazina's envelope that spilled hot air out into the cold morning sky.

The deck dropped beneath my hooves, and the wooden hull creaked in an alarming way as I released the line and pulled back on the levers that controlled power to the propulsive fins. I had to ramp up speed slowly because the old vanes were delicate and throwing them into full ahead might snap one or more of them, if it didn't break some other part of the linkage mechanism first. Or, I might stall one of the engines and, without an engineer to restart it, I would be in big trouble. I couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

I throttled up slowly, and Hazina began to move forward. As she dropped out of the cloud, I got my first view of the battlefield. The ruined city was off the port beam, and the black pit was clearly visible. I turned the wheel to the left, chanting "Don't over-steer, don't over-steer" to myself. The weather pegasi had gotten me pretty close to the target, considering that they had to stop adjusting the course of the clouds an hour or so before dawn.

The plan had been for Solar Flare to begin a long straight run at the city from several miles out, lit by the rising sun and flying her parade banners just to make herself as obvious as possible. If they reacted as they had before, the monsters capable of flight would go charging at her as soon as they were aware of her presence, leaving the way clear for me to drop Hazina into the cavern of the dark crystal.

I could hear the roar of Solar Flare's engines somewhere behind me but didn't have time to look around to see what was happening to her, because I was almost immediately attacked by a force of fliers that had remained over the city.

They looked like pegasi drenched in tar.

I threw bolts of magic through them as quickly as possible, but there were too many for me to down them all before they reached me, and there were undoubtedly many more hidden from my view by the hull of the ship. The dark, magic-soaked pit was the closest thing they had to a home or a base, and protecting the point of their creation seemed like a logical thing to do.

The blast of a horn from above me signaled that Evenstar had dropped out of her cloud and was moving into position, and I cast a shield around Hazina as I pulled down my dark goggles.

The ship slowed and her turn softened as the airflow around her got sluggish from pushing through my shield. Then the magical bolts from Evenstar began to streak by me, picking off my attackers. The flashes of light made keeping on target even more difficult, but I had held off on the counter-measures long enough to get roughly on course for the pit. I squinted into the glare and eased off on the wheel a bit.

Two long and one short blast from the horn: the signal that the monsters had mostly given up on Hazina and were turning their attention to Evenstar. I waited a few seconds, then dropped my shield and vented more hot air. The sky between Hazina and the pit was clear of fliers, and I had managed to straighten out on a good line to take me directly over the hole.

Soon, I was close enough to make out the shattered remnants of the enchanted dome that Celestia and Luna had created to contain my little mistake. Too bad I'm better at messing up than they are at cleaning up, I thought grimly. I also caught sight of several huge, lumpen creatures that surrounded the pit and the swarms of crawling things that circled them, but they were all obviously incapable of flight, and the big ones didn't look like they were preparing to generate more flyers, so I felt it was safe to ignore them for the moment.

And a moment was all I needed.

The little brass dials that indicated my speed and altitude came to the readings that were perfect for my estimated distance from the pit, and I took hold of the two lines marked with big red flags and pulled hard. My stomach tried to jump up into my throat as a full third of the top of Hazina's envelope tore away, and she plummeted downward.

As the deflating envelope shook and flapped loudly above me, I reached out with my magic and turned the valves on the iron tank at the center of my device to start mixing the alchemical reagents. I waited until I felt the surge of magic build before I threw myself over the stern rail and caught air with my wings, following in Hazina's wake just long enough to make sure she was on target before banking sharply away.

I really didn't want to be anywhere near the pit when the detonation happened.

I streaked over the desert, looking around for Evenstar. I spotted her, still engaged with the dark fliers, and I began to call up a teleport spell. Suddenly, I sensed danger from my left. Air pressure, some unusual sound, or motion caught out of the corner of my eye; I couldn't be sure what had alerted me, but I began to turn to face whatever it was... and everything went dark

I came back to consciousness, lying on a pile of rubble and sand.

I tried to get up, screamed, and lay still again. I clenched my teeth and tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. The first thing I needed to do was dull the pain; I was helpless until I was mobile again. I called up my magic and cast the simplest palliative spell I knew. Fortunately, it seemed that I still had plenty of power to work with. With my head a bit clearer, I cast a second, more comprehensive spell and felt my armor resonate in sympathy, adding to the effect.

I moved again and tested my legs. Nothing broken that I could detect. Good. I got to my hooves and staggered as a wave of nausea hit me. Rather than resist, I dropped my head and expelled the remnants of my breakfast of oatcakes.

When my nausea passed, I cast a simple shield around myself that wavered and flickered but held, then looked around to assess my situation. I was somewhere in the city. The pile of stones I had landed on was a collapsed wall. For all I knew, it might have been my impact that had collapsed it. Poor old town, I thought. I sure am rough on you.

I took several deep breaths, trying to get more oxygen to my brain and hoped that lack of same, rather than brain damage, was why I felt like giggling. It seemed to work, because my next thoughts were a little more sensible. Where were the airships? Had the device detonated yet? If it had, why was there no gigantic column of smoke and ash in the sky? And, oh yeah, what the flippin' hay had happened to me?

Engines. I could hear engines. That was a good sign. I stretched out my wings and gave a few tentative flaps. Unsurprisingly, they hurt. But it wasn't too bad, and nothing seemed to be broken. I wasn't going to trust them to full-out flight, but I could at least get up high enough to see over the walls.

I wobbled up and perched on the most stable structure I could see, a tall columnar pedestal that must have once supported a statue. In the distance, to the west, I could see Solar Flare blasting away at the cloud of monsters around her. If Luna had thought the ship was in any danger, she would have ordered Shining Armor to raise a shield, so I felt safe in assuming that her part of the battle was going well. The airship had cupolas set all over her that, between them, were able to fire on any point on her surface. Except under the heaviest of attacks, she could stay buttoned up and pick off her enemies at her leisure.

I turned around carefully on the small surface of the pedestal and saw Evenstar headed straight for me about three hundred feet up and five furlongs away. That explained why the engine sound was so loud. They must have seen me fall and were coming after me. That meant I couldn't have been unconscious for all that long. There was a cloud of skirmishing pegasi and monsters swirling around her, and no shield. Bolts of magic from her firing ports were knocking black creatures out of the sky at a rapid rate. All good signs.

I was trying to assess whether I was focused enough to attempt a short teleport spell when a large spinning black mass rose from somewhere beyond the buildings at high speed and hit Evenstar amidships, just above her gondola. I only got a brief glimpse of whatever it was, because it tore straight through her envelope and fell out the other side, carrying a tangle of wires and shredded fabric along with it.

Evenstar slewed around wildly, pitched her nose up, and began to fall.

I didn't think, I just reacted. I threw myself off the wall and flapped hard for altitude, ignoring the shooting pains in my left wing and shoulder. All of Evenstar's skirmishers who could do so without fatally turning their backs on their enemies broke away and darted for the crippled airship. Hatches along her sides slammed open at the same time as tons of water dropped from her ballast tanks, and her engines roared in a frantic effort to keep herself level. If she went further down by the stern, she'd lose all lift from her control surfaces and drop like an anvil.

The pegasi snatched ponies from the hatches and dove for the ground as smoothly and perfectly as if they were merely practicing an abandon ship drill instead of frantically trying to save their shipmates. But Evenstar had begun her fall at almost exactly the worst altitude and speed for a crash: high enough to kill, but low enough that parachutes wouldn't work. There was too little time to evacuate all her non-pegasi crew.

I dropped my shield and quickly shot down a dozen or so of the monsters, freeing up the pegasi who had been fighting them for the evacuation effort, but I could see that it wasn't going to be anywhere near enough. Evenstar had slowed her fall after the first ballast dump, but her number four gas cell was completely destroyed, number three was rapidly deflating, and she was already beginning to fall faster.

I quickly ran through a number of possibilities and came up with only one that had any hope of working. It wasn't a good plan. In fact, it was outright crazy. I swooped down to the ground, skidded to a stop, lit my horn, and tried to catch the airship.

In the first instant I took up the weight, I nearly passed out. Stabbing pain shot through my head, and I gasped and staggered, but I kept on pouring as much power into my telekinesis as possible in the faint hope that I might slow the crash enough to do some good.

Evenstar slowed and leveled, bits of wreckage falling away from her to crash into the dry dirt many precious seconds before the gondola itself slammed into the ground. It made an awful cacophony as it hit. Support girders shrieked and groaned as they bent and twisted, and shattering glass added a high counterpoint to the percussive crackle of hull plates warping and crumpling. The ruined envelope deformed, sagging to one side as a huge cloud of fine dust was thrown into the air.

But I had done some good. It was a crash landing, but not a fatal one: As the dust began to settle, I could make out ponies helping others down from the hatches. I staggered forward on my hooves, not trusting my wings enough to fly, desperately searching the crowd for my friends. Pinkie Pie's bright color caught my eye as she and the rest came trotting around the smoking pile of wreckage that used to be the port engine nacelle.

But we were still under attack. I didn't have time for tearful reunions. As soon as the unicorns got clear of the ship, they began to fire upwards at the remaining dark fliers. That was a good idea. I sat and raised my head, then waited for the blurry, multiple images of monsters to come into focus before I began throwing bursts of my own. It was only a minute or two before we'd cleared the skies.

And that's when the groundlings came for us.

The unicorns turned their horns on the insect-like scuttling horrors that swarmed out of the ruins, but there were so many that they had no chance to form a decent line of defense before they were in among us and slashing away with their claws and fangs. The pegasi hovered and lashed out with their couteaus, but the long, stinger-tipped tails of some of the monsters could reach them in the air as they came close enough to strike.

I belatedly cast a shield around our general area, trying to exclude as many monsters as possible without trapping any of my ponies outside. Then I shouted, "Fall back to Evenstar! Get your backs to her hull!"

I grabbed a couple of ponies that had fallen under their attackers with my telekinesis and shoved them back through the open hatches as I backed away from the creatures. I'm sure my rough transport would have horrified a doctor or medic, but leaving them under the claws of the creatures would have been worse.

We began to get into some semblance of good order, and I was considering changing tactics when suddenly, as if they had been given a signal, the biggest and fastest ones all came at me at once.

I burned down a half-dozen before a snake-like creature whipped its coils around my forelegs and threw me to the ground. I killed it, but the one behind it was already striking, its dripping stinger arrowing at my face.

That's when Pinkie Pie cut it in half. "Yarr, ye scurvy dogs! You'll not be touchin' me friend Twilight!" she growled around the hilt of the cutlass in her mouth. She lifted her eye patch to give me a wink and piled into another knot of charging monsters on my right. If it had been anypony but Pinkie, I would have assumed I was hallucinating.

As I got to my hooves, Rarity and Applejack ran by me, breaking up the creatures on my left. Applejack slammed into them, rearing and bucking, using pure brute force to send them flying. Rarity looked like she was dancing, first on four legs, then on two, her hooves landing with precision and power, each strike sending a creature to the ground.

We were turning the tide, but I could see another wave of creatures slamming against my hasty shield from the outside. I poured more power into it, then began blasting monsters again. If we could get rid of the creatures inside with us, I would have enough strength to be able to hold the rest at bay until Solar Flare arrived and rescued us.

That was the plan, anyway. Yeah... me and my plans.

I downed another couple of opponents when I heard a pony scream, "Look out!"

The warning hadn't been directed at me, and it took me a second to locate the threat. A pegasus was pointing up at an angle into the sky beyond my shield, and when I followed the line of her foreleg I saw a large, tumbling black shape headed right for us. I frantically reinforced my shield only a second before it hit. The shield held, but it was a close thing, and I felt a powerful wave of nausea.

The black shape rebounded and fell into the ruins with a loud crash. I could clearly see it then, after it stopped moving: a black pyramidal shape. To be specific, a tetrahedron.

Some of the creatures must have survived the battle at Ironwood Pass and returned to the main group. The pegasus shapes, and now the attempt to physically imitate my buzz-saw shield attack, made it a certainty. We had to finish them off. If we didn't, what would we be facing next? Airships made of living dark magic?

Beyond the mass of creatures piled up outside the shield, I could see a huge black form rising into the air. It was a long, thick limb of black flesh, cradling another tetrahedron: a living catapult. Astoundingly quick for its size, it arched upward and flung its payload at us.

I flew up and passed through the shield in order to be able cast spells beyond it. I could have simply put more power into it, but that would be wasteful. It took a lot more strength to directly oppose an impact than it did to deflect one. I cast another shield, this time in tetrahedral form, slightly off center of the black pyramid's path. When it hit the angled surface of my shield, the spinning mass jerked slightly to one side. I dispelled the little shield, watching to see if I would need to repeat the process.

Luckily, the shot went wide enough that it missed the main shield and plowed into the desert to one side. The giant arm sank down again, another tetrahedron starting to grow on its end. More nausea twisted in my head, throat and chest, and I wondered how long I would be able to keep blocking the catapult shots, particularly if any more fliers showed up.

Then I suddenly realized that the catapult creature was one of the huge black shapes I had seen at the edge of the pit. I was certain that, even if my thaumic structures for focusing the blast upward had been near perfect, the detonation of the device aboard Hazina should have collapsed the edges of the crater at the very least. Something had gone wrong: the device hadn't activated. But if I could force an explosion to happen, it might get rid of the biggest immediate danger we faced. At that point, it was a gamble I was willing to take.

I couldn't feel the device from where I was, but I had designed and assembled it all myself and knew every piece of it very well, indeed. So I knew if I removed the plate dividing the central iron tank, the two reagents mixing together a few drops at a time would flow together all at once. The resulting power surge would overwhelm the waveguides; the cancellation wouldn't be perfect, but I wasn't in a position to be picky.

I dove down into the big shield again and used the Royal Voice. "BIG EXPLOSION IN FIVE SECONDS! LOOK AWAY FROM THE CRATER!" Then I loudly counted down from five and cast an object-specific teleport spell. The separator plate appeared on the sand at my hooves.

The sky lit up like the sun had come to earth. The flare must have incinerated everything near the pit, even before the shock wave hit. Considering how near we were, it was probably a good thing that the blast wasn't nearly as big as I had expected. As it was, the ground shock tossed everypony off their hooves and the forward end of Evenstar's envelope crumpled and caved in on itself. But there was no big air blast, and no directed energy blazing up into the sky. That meant that, somewhere along the way in my chain of assumptions, something wasn't right.

Then all the dark creatures began an eerie wailing, turned and tried to claw their way out through my shield.

I started to get nervous again.

At least we weren't under attack any longer. With their backs turned, we made short work of the remaining monsters.

Captain Zephyr got the crew organized to care for the wounded, and Lieutenant Stormfeather began damage assessment for Evenstar. Captain Lightning Lance sent up flares of magic light just under the apex of the shield to signal Solar Flare that we were no longer under attack, but still needed assistance, and I...

I thought seriously about having a little lie-down for a week or so.

"Woo-ee!" Applejack's voice came from somewhere off to my left. "Wasn't that a fine dust-up!"

"Indeed it was! I only wish it wasn't so horridly dirty and hot here. I'm sure I am a frightful mess."

"Rarity, I just cannot figure how a mare as prissy as you can swing such a mean hoof. Seriously, gal, y'all musta got nearly as many of them as I did."

"Exercise is boring, dear, so years ago I took up martial arts to keep my figure trim and found I rather enjoyed it. And, I don't mean to be contentious, but I'm sure I actually defeated several more of these unfortunate creatures than you did."

"Huh. Well I reckon y'all ain't as good at countin' as you are at fightin'."

"Oh? Well, maybe we should look over the field, hmn? There. Those three are mine, and there are two more over there."

"Scrawny little things. Not like the big one over here that I took out."

"Sorry, darling, but I believe that's one of mine, too."

"Ain't neither! Lookit the way its head is caved in! That's a classic tree-shakin' buck if I ever—"

"Avast, me hearties! Whar be these lubbers' booty?"

"Pinkie, dear, whatever are you talking about? And where did you get that ridiculous outfit?"

I suppose they all stopped their genial bickering because they were a bit concerned by my painfully ragged laughter.

A moment later, Fluttershy was at my side trying to support me and waving something blurry and yellow in front of my face. "How many feathers am I holding up?"

"Stop moving your wing around and let me count!" I grinned. "Square root of thirty six or three factorial, take your pick," I told her.

"Yep," Applejack drawled. "She's normal."

"Well, normal for Twilight," Rarity amended.

Fluttershy frowned. "That is six, isn't it?"

Just then, Lieutenant Stormfeather came trotting up. "Your Highness, Solar Flare is approaching. They have flown signals asking for you to come aboard."

I sighed. "We don't have a series of flares for 'I'm too tired to fly or teleport,' do we?"

He thought for a second. "The closest I can get to that is 'unable to comply,' or 'unable to maneuver.'"

"Those might be misinterpreted. I wouldn't want to worry Luna."

"If you'll drop the shield, ma'am, I'll send a messenger, but they'll be here in another five or six minutes, anyway."

I did so. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

About two minutes later, Luna appeared next to Evenstar's bridge, looking around.

"Over here!" I called out to her. "I'm okay, and so are... oof!"

Luna teleported to my side and grabbed me in a big hug. I wheezed a bit and gritted my teeth against the pain, but there was no way I was going to tell her to let go.

"Do you know what is happening in the pit?" she asked, loosening her hold on me just enough to be able to look me in the face.

"I had to detonate the device manually," I told her. "I don't know if it absorbed all the dark magic or not, but the monsters seemed to be pretty upset about it."

"Yes, they all fled right after the explosion. As for the crater, seen from Solar Flare, there is still activity inside. Magical activity, and not a little, as far as I can sense."

I nodded. I was the expert, so I'd have to go see for myself. My nice lie-down receded into the uncertain future. "Take me up, will you? I'm pretty exhausted. And send down the medical staff; we've got lots of wounded that need attention."

We appeared a second later on Solar Flare's bridge. Luna left me there while she went about shuttling medics down to Evenstar's landing site, and I asked Captain Falcon Heart to fill me in.

He led me to one of the big pivoted telescopes and let me look for myself.

"The explosion didn't happen as you predicted, but at least it took out those catapult creatures. There were several smaller eruptions down in the pit afterward, and the monsters all headed toward the hole and began throwing themselves in," he said.

I grunted acknowledgement as I peered through the scope. I couldn't see any of the dark creatures at all, but the glowing aurorae of magical discharges still flickered in the crater. They didn't look much like dark magic, which was puzzling. My alchemical engine should have expended all of its energy within seconds of the reagents mixing. Something was very wrong.

"Don't fly over the pit," I said, not looking up from the telescope. "In fact, don't get closer than a couple of furlongs, and take us up another thousand feet." I wasn't going to take any chances with the last vessel that could get us all home.

"Yes, Your Highness."

Luna popped back onto the bridge, and I heard hooffalls on the deck as the other crew moved away from me.

"Twilight," she said in almost a whisper, "are you well enough to do this? Your young lieutenant told me that you were struck by one of those catapult shots."

I looked up from the scope. "Is that what it was? I never saw what got me. That was one heck of a good shot to hit a target as small as me."

Despite my light tone, Luna looked horrified. "Do you not wish to have the doctor examine you? Do you not have pains you would fain be eased of?"

"It's okay, really. I'm mostly just exhausted." I hesitated, not wanting to worry her. "But I wouldn't say no to some painkillers, and if I can get me something that will give me some temporary energy, that would be great."

Luna brought a medic to me, who took one look at me and insisted I immediately go to bed and be sedated. She was very young and very earnest. I did not laugh at her and I did not snap at her, though I felt conflicting urges to do both.

I pointed out the forward ports with a wingtip. "Out there is an unknown, uncontrolled magical reaction that has to be treated as an imminent threat of possibly horrific magnitude. I am the only pony aboard who has a chance of understanding what's happening and putting a stop to it. Do you still want me to go take a nap?"

"I... I'm sorry, princess."

"Don't be. You're undoubtedly correct in your recommendations. I just can't afford to follow them right now."

She nodded, turned and nosed open the flap of her saddle bags, then held out a tiny flask to me. "This is the best stimulant I have. Drink half of it now. If you need more after two hours, drink half of what's left, but no more than that. It's dangerous in larger quantities. And be very careful; you'll feel wonderful, but you'll still be injured and tired. When it wears off, no power in Equestria will keep you awake."

I drank the first half right away, tucking the flask inside my breastplate. "So, I've got about three hours before lights out?"

"About that, yes, Your Highness."

"Hah! I'll have this sorted out in ten minutes, flat!" I blinked. "Hey, this stuff works fast!"

It was odd I should have picked that amount of time, because that was almost exactly how much I had left.

Author's Notes:

Thanks, once again, to AcademicPony and statoose for the editing and critique.

And a special thanks to 0utcast9851 for advice on military protocol and operations.

Some readers have expressed doubts that Rarity is as good a fighter as I've depicted her here. My answer:

She has shown the will and ability to seriously kick ass several times in the show. She is not just a simple girly-girl!