Twilight skidded to a halt as she barely made it into the building without being noticed by the guards patrolling the walls outside. She ducked behind a nearby pillar and hid in the shadows. She stood speechless as she looked at the sight ahead of her. Twilight would have gladly taken the few dozen guards outside compared to what had to be at least two-hundred fifty more soldiers on the inside.

The unicorn scanned the massive room for a place to start trying to help her friends. She knew that she would only have one shot at... at whatever it was she was going to do. She had to find the most important part of the whole operation. If she could make that key part fail, then the rest would certainly fall apart around it. At least that was what she had hoped, if not then they had already lost.

Twilight couldn't find anything that seemed to fit what she needed. What she really needed was her friends, she needed help. She almost wished that Gates and Briggs had come with her, they would know what to do. They would know how to win.

She shook her head and purged the negative thought form her mind. She would save her friends, nothing cold stop her from doing that. Twilight turned around the pillar and moved quickly and quietly inside the shadows of the ancient stone walls. Twilight was amazed that nopony had noticed her yet. There were hundreds of guards in that room alone. She couldn't imagine what was waiting for her in the dozens of hallways and other floors of the once forgotten castle. Twilight figured that there was so much going on in there that nopony would notice something was out of place until she tried something, considering they thought all of their threats were either locked away in cells or still trying to get in from outside. Twilight knew she had to use this to her advantage.

As she skulked around the large, central room of the fortress, she noticed that there was a large statue-like structure in the center. Twilight tried to find a place to hide to get a closer look. Her eyes fell upon a small, crumbling statue that would keep her concealed so long as nopony got to close and started scrutinizing it too much.

Twilight didn't have a great view of the structure, but it appeared to be glowing. There were more ponies around it than anywhere else in the room. Twilight leaned over to try to get a better angle on the strange object. "Oh, Celestia..." Twilight muttered when she realized what she was looking at. It was a large shining metal arch-like structure that had a small ball of magical energy glowing within it's framework. Every few minutes, the ball of energy would widen and Twilight would finally see where the mysterious portals lead. Here. This was it. This was what she was looking for. It was the source of many of the Triumvirate soldiers magical power, which Twilight still couldn't figure out how they acquired. But that part didn't matter, the only thing that mattered at the moment was the arch-way standing not far from where she hid. Her goal was perfectly clear now. She had to destroy it, and if she was lucky, it would do exactly what she had needed it to do. Pass the torch.

Twilight scanned the area around the arch, she saw Hazel, still grimacing from the kick Briggs had landed on him. Hazel stood barking orders, as a few ponies left the circle gathered around him. It seemed odd to Twilight that Hazel was just giving his orders of retaliation; he must have been knocked out cold by Briggs' kick. He was much larger than most pegasi, so being completely blindsided like he was must have knocked him out cold. Twilight figured that this was another thing that played to her advantage, if Hazel didn't know she was already inside, then security inside was certain to lessen.

The purple unicorn stopped herself, keeping her mind from over-analyzing the situation and wasting valuable time. Twilight didn't know exactly how she was going to destroy the powerful structure, but if there was a time for her years of dedicated study to come together, it was now.

She waited until it seemed like there were as few guards as possible surrounding the arch: just after a small wave of now imprisoned ponies came through the portal and were escorted to their cells by about half a dozen guards. Twilight didn't want to miss a somewhat-decent opportunity like this one. She had accepted that she wouldn't be able to get close without being detected, she just had to buy have enough time to cast one spell. What spell? She hadn't figured that out yet, she wasn't sure if she even knew a spell that had that much offensive power behind it. She figured she would go off of raw magic ability as opposed to a set spell.

Twilight gulped as she rushed around the corner, almost immediately drawing the attention of many guards. They yelled at her and threatened her with raised weapons, she payed them no heed as she bolted forward towards her goal.

She screeched to a halt as she now stood directly in front of the imposing structure. Her horn glowed a brilliant purple as she tried to muster up enough energy to destroy the arch with one spell. Her eyes glowed with magical energy as she levitated into the air. She was in the same magical state she had been when she had her try-out at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. She was hardly in control of her magic, as she was showered in a rain of magical energy from what seemed like the weapons of a hundred guards. Many of them did nothing, merely bouncing off of the magical barrier that had formed around Twilight.

A second orb of magical power formed next to the one that had been in the arch to start with, only the new one, fueled by Twilight's unharnessed magic grew rapidly and began to converge with the other. The original seemed to almost attempt to fight to fight Twilight's untamed spell of before breaking into the still growing orb of magic. The two energies broke and sent off a massive discharge of magic, destroying the arch and filling the room with an explosion of magical power. Twilight's magical state was broken as she was sent crashing tot he ground and knocked out cold on the ancient floor.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Gates emerged from the thick vegetation of the Everfree Forest. He wasn't sure how long he had been knocked out in the darkness of the forest. He hadn't even remembered waking up and making the journey out of the forest towards Canterlot. All Gates knew was that he had made up his mind about Spark and defeating the Triumvirate, what was left of it at least. He would keep fighting. He would fight the way Rampart and Lucy had. He would keep fighting until they could be together again. For real this time. "When all of this is over, we can be together again, one way or another...we'll all be together again." Gates' eyes were cold and determined, he knew his goal now. He knew exactly what he had to do to actually win this time. Win the way he never had before.

Gates picked up his pace as he ran up the winding mountain trail to Canterlot that was used mainly by the Elite Guard to get in and out of Canterlot without attracting too much attention before the war. Gates figured that Briggs would have let him know if the path wasn't clear, it was basically assumed between the elites when talking about entering or leaving Canterlot that this would be the path used. Gates knew that he would be safe traveling here for at least the time being.

He came to a small collection of large rocks not far after reaching the apex of the path and now merged with a more common path used by ponies traveling in Canterlot. Gates stepped between the rocks and found Briggs sitting on a small log, concealed in the tight space between the rocks, just where they had planned to meet up.

"I was starting to wonder if you were gonna show up," Briggs greeted Gates, standing up as Gates walked into the small shelter," I've never known you to show up late. What kept ya?"

"Ran into a little traffic," Gates said smoothly, not willing to express what had actually kept him from arriving at their planned time," don't worry about it though, I've got it all taken care of." He wasn't lying this time. He actually did have everything taken care of, even if he didn't have all of to completely taken care of just yet. 'Soon enough' Gates thought to himself.

"Well, I'm glad I won 't be going this one alone," Briggs said reluctantly," security's tight, especially with the execution in the morning. or...a few hours; I'm not sure if you can call it 'morning' if the flanking sun never sets anymore..."

"That's why we're here right?" Gates replied," win this fight so the sun can rise and fall the same as before."

"I suppose it is," Briggs said thoughtfully," this is gonna be one heck of a fight though. even if we make it to Spark, who's been holed up in the throne room during most of the time he's here from what I can gather. We'll be pushed right to the edge already, having to fight him after all of that makes me wish we had just a few more ponies... just a few."

"Wish all you want," Gates said wryly," you'd be a foal not to wish for more help in something like this, but we don't exactly have that luxury, now do we?"

"No we don't..." Briggs replied grimly as his attention shifted to the task directly in front of them," first things first, we have to get into the castle. Getting close shouldn't be much of an issue, considering we should be able to blend in pretty well with the civilians. We're flanking lucky they haven't turned the whole city into a prison, they're letting life go 'just as it did before.' It's a flanking joke that they call it freedom." Briggs went on to explain all of the new laws Spark had put in place in order to maintain "Peace and Order."

It was completely ridiculous, Gates thought, that Spark had explicitly used the term "Peace and Order." If he wanted to maintain peace and order, then he wouldn't have started a flanking war. "And I thought Spark was smart..." Gates said under his breath as Briggs went on explaining the plan.

"Bottom line is, getting there is the easy part. Once we're inside... that's another story. Security inside is ten times worse than we could have expected with the execution in a few hours. They know somepony's coming, hopefully they don't know about our concealed routes through the castle." The guard had an elaborate series of hidden passages running throughout the castle that made it much easier for them to move about withing the palace. They started a few rooms into the building and didn't run too close to the throne room or the princesses' quarters so that anypony who may have stumbled upon the pathways wouldn't be able to get too close to the royal princesses. In hindsight, those precautions did them little good when the entire castle was overrun by the enemy, but Gates thought little of it. There was no way they could have seen the sucker that was the Triumvirate coming in from out of nowhere.

"My guess is we head for the...dining hall once we're inside?" Gates asked, already knowing that he was right. All of the elites knew the castle inside and out, while it would take some ponies up to an hour just to get from one end of the castle to another, it could take an elite no more than twenty minutes to go through every room in the castle," then after that we could just head to the exit from the tunnels closest to the throne room, not far from Canterlot Tower."

"Not bad, rookie," Briggs said as he stood up and turned towards the opening in the stone pillars they were concealed in," the rest of the plan seems pretty self-explanatory from there on out." Gates nodded as the two ponies began to head out. "Good, let's go."

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

There was a sound of thunder as Twilight lay on the ground, barely grasping with consciousness after the explosion. She was finally coming around when she she saw yet another magical blast above her head. Small rocks and other pieces of debris fell from the ceiling, stinging her her slightly as some hit her weak body. Twilight tried to get back to her hooves, and began to fall before being grabbed by a set of hooves, holding her up. "This is it," twilight thought," they caught me, this is the end for me."

"She's up! She's finally up!" shouted a voice that Twilight would know anywhere. Pinkie Pie. "Fiery come quick!" Twilight could hardly keep up with what was going on around her. Magical bolts of energy whizzed through the, air coming from the same kind of staff Gates had used. Twilight found herself surrounded by several ponies, some she recognized, and others she didn't. The dazed unicorn wasn't given much chance to look at anything else around her except from the two pink ponies standing over her.

"Twilight!" Pinkie shouted happily," are you okay? We were super-duper worried about when we found you like that! When we saw you we just knew it was you who saved us!"

"I'm- I'm fine," Twilight said half-lying, " what's going on? How did you get here?" Twilight couldn't figure out what had happened to cause the chaos around her, the last thing she remembered was being blown back into a ruined pillar behind and then hitting the ground. Hard.

"You don't know?" Pinkie asked whimsically," how could you NOT know what happened silly filly! You're the one who started all of this. I swear Twilight, for somepony who studies so much you sure are a big Forgetty Forgetterson."

"Pinkie," Firefly interjected," she was knocked out. As in, she won't remember anything that happened since the explosion."

"What happened?" Twilight demanded," the last thing I remember was being knocked out, how did all of this happen?" The fight around them continued to rage on. Ponies were hiding in the cells that had kept them in captivity for weeks to stay clear of the fighting. Groups of freed soldiers gathered and charged at the castle guards. Twilight looked at the ponies surrounding her, forming a perimeter around where Twilight was lying. She saw her friends, everypony including spike. It was a huge relief for Twilight to see all of them together again, even if they were caught in a massive military battle. Then, there were a few other ponies around her, a few of Celestia's guards who hadn't even had their armor removed when they were thrown into their cells, along with another purple unicorn, his horn glowing luminously as small bolts of lightning shot out of it at the Triumvirate soldiers.

"We don't exactly have time to talk," Firefly said quickly," basically, when you did... whatever you did, to destroy that arc, all of the spells on those magic blocking harnesses sort of died out. And when ponies like Leo and Vinh got their chance, they didn't blow it. They got almost everypony out of their cells and rioting."

"How did destroying that arch cause those spells to wear off?" Twilight asked, seemingly ignoring the bedlam around her.

"My guess is it was channeling the magic through somepony else or something like that," Firefly responded, ducking to avoid being hit by a ball of fire that was lobbed through the air by one of the guards. Twilight looked around her,she was surprised she hadn't noticed it before, even amongst the chaos of the fighting. Although it was hard to tell if either side was winning the fight, one thing was now painfully obvious to Twilight. There were no portals, which meant somehow Firefly was right.

"Look, Leo can explain it better than I can, but we can deal with that later," Firefly continued quickly as she stood back up," right now, we have to win this thing. Where's Gates?"

"Gates?" Twilight was caught off guard by the question," he and Briggs went to Canterlot to save Princess Luna, they should have gotten to Canterlot hours ago."

"Canterlot?" Firefly remarked," hay, I was hoping he would be here. This changes a lot, they're gonna need some help. Leo!" Firefly called as the pink pegasus flew over to where Leo stood fighting. "Leo, Gates and Briggs are in Canterlot trying to stop Luna's execution."

"They went alone?" Leo asked ducking behind the same pillar Twilight had crashed into after the explosion," there's no way that they're gonna make it out of there alive if they don't get some help fast. We've gotta round up the elites and get there, and fast."

"And just abandon the fight here?" Firefly responded," if we just leave, what in the hay is gonna happen here?"

"We'll go," Twilight said motioning to herself and her friends, but she could tell by the look on Leo's face that he wasn't going to leave the lives of Gates and Briggs in the hands of six civilians he hardly knew.

"There's no way that I can-" Leo began to say before Firefly cut him off.

"Leo, I think you should consider this one," firefly interrupted," they've already proven that they can handle themselves, and they managed to make it this far and save our flanks on more than one occasion."

"I don't know..." Leo said warily," they'll be going up aginast an entire army, possibly even more soldiers than there are here."

"You can't stop us," Rainbowdash added as the other five friends nodded along," Goldie is our friend and we're gonna help him, whether you tell us we can or not." Leo looked at the six friends, eyes blazing, determined. He knew he wouldn't be able to talk them out of it. He had seen the looks in their eyes before in his own soldiers, he knew that he couldn't talk them down.

"Fine..." Leo said reluctantly as he turned to Firefly," but you're going with them. I need somepony I know can get things done." Firefly nodded and saluted Leo as he continued giving out orders," you need to find something you pegasi can fly your grounded friends to Canterlot with. We don't have time for you to walk. When you get there, you need to find Luna, whether she's still alive or not. My guess is if Spark is holding her anywhere, it's in Canterlot Tower; you should know how to get in Firefly. We don't have much time so you need to go now."

"Yes sir," Firefly replied sharply before the seven ponies turned to leave," but what about you?"

"Just go, and don't worry about me Firefly," Leo said as he looked off and saw Dauphin standing and fighting near the main entrance of the palace," I've got a score to settle."

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Two hours later...

The first part of the plan had went perfectly. Gates and Briggs had gotten all the way to the secret tunnels without being detected; it was the kind of stealthy operation even Vinh couldn't have pulled off. But at this point, they weren't just going to sneak by the guards patrolling the halls outside the throne room. The area around the throne room had intentionally been designed to have very few places to hide in without being easily seen.

Briggs and Gates stood behind the legs of two statues on either side of the corridor, providing feeble cover, but just enough to get a drop on the four guards heading there way, scouring the area for any potential threats.

Briggs gave a signal as they walked between where the two ponies hid, a she streaked out of cover and into the side of the guard in front of the pack an began grappling with him on the floor. Gates hopped down and deftly swung his swept the legs out from one guard, spinning and hitting the next in the chest, knocking the wind out of the surprised guard. The third rose a staff and began to swing at Gates, but he parried the attack and spun his staff on it's brace, lashing it out at his adversary's jaw, knocking the guard out cold. The gray pony turned to face the first guard he had faced, as he swung at the underside of it's belly, knocking it a few feet in the air. Gates ran underneath the flailing soldier and held his staff vertically underneath him, shocking him badly as he fell on top of his and stayed hanging from it as he fell. Gates looked behind him and saw the last guard starting to stand back up; Gates quickly kicked him in the jaw with one his hind legs, knocking him unconscious.

Briggs motioned to Gates to follow as he ran towards the throne room, leaving the four guards unconscious behind them. They came to the massive doors leading into the throne room where Spark waited, preparing for his execution of the moon princess. Briggs shot towards it, flying through the air and kicking the door open in the same fashion he had kicked Hazel into the portal just a day before.

The two ponies rushed in, ready for the fight of their lives, but found only spark, standing alone hunched over a table looking at a few papers. The unicorn turned and faced the two elites, now approaching cautiously.

"I knew you would show up here eventually," Spark said as he faced the two ponies," I told Gyro repeatedly that he would so much more to stop you. Sure enough, he didn't listen, too flanking headstrong."

"Save the speech, spark," Gates said, his staff ready to strike if necessary," we had a heck of a time getting here, I don't feel like listening to you ramble on for ten minutes about nothing."

"You can't even humor me?" Spark said smoothly," I can tell you two don't plan on letting me walk out of here and letting me sit in a prison for the rest of my life. The least you can do is understand my point of view in all of this."

"Right," Briggs replied," you sure gave everypony else a chance to talk, I'm sure you had every intention of hearing Luna's story before you killed her."

"I assure you that-"

"Gates, shut him up," Briggs cut spark off as Gates leveled his staff and fired a bolt of energy at Spark's hooves," Spark, you've been doing a lot of talking about a 'better Equestria.' Good news is, it's about to be one hay of a lot better. Bad news... well, I think you can figure that one out."

"You think you're doing Equestria some greats service by killing me, don't you?" Spark asked, unwearied by Briggs' threats," have you ever stopped and considered that maybe you're on the wrong side? Considered that maybe what I'm doing actually is what's best for the ponies of Equestria?"

"You're completely right," Gates scoffed," the people have been clamoring for a civil war for years. Great flanking job." The two ponies slowly stepped towards Spark, who continued his speech.

"Think about it," Spark went on," yes, Celestia and Luna were powerful, but they were too afraid to use that power. They relied on ponies like you to fight off the dangers of Equestria, and chose to act like they weren't there,sitting on their thrones in their perfect little world. Look what happened when they had to sue their power when we attacked? They couldn't even stop three ponies who weren't even close to as strong as them. You're all-powerful rulers turned out to be weaker than anypony, letting their feelings get in the way of saving their people." Gates and Briggs kept backing Spark up towards to the broken throne before Briggs stopped and stared at Spark in anger.

"They let you down," Spark continued," but that won't happen with me. It's a flanking shame that you have to do this. Of course, I understand completely. You have to do what you think is right." Spark turned and looked out the shattered window next to him at the red sun, burning in the western sky. Gates noticed Briggs wasn't next to him anymore, and now stood a few steps behind him staring at the ground.

"Briggs?" Gates asked, stopping as well," Briggs?"

"He's... he's right," Briggs said in disbelief," He's been right all along..." Briggs started to walk towards Gates, his eyes cold and his expression solemn," This is the only way we can be together...”

“What? Briggs?”

“I’m so sorry Gates.”

"Briggs..." Gates aid as he leveled his staff and began backing away from his friend. Briggs charged at Gates as the gray pony tried to back away," Briggs!"

Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty Five - Friendship in Flames Estimated time remaining: 26 Minutes