The Citadel thrust into the sky over the Everfree Forest like a platinum spear. Light blazed along its edges in complex sigils, and a beam of white energy shot forth from its point. A massive thunderhead had begun to gather above, lit from within by the shaft of light. Somewhere within that fortress of metal and magic, Celestia knew Titan waited.

All along, The Citadel had been buried beneath the Heart. The very place of Titan’s imprisonment was the place he had hidden his queen’s greatest creation, and Celestia had never known. Why not raise it before now? Had Terra’s failure prompted him to wield even Harmony’s magic?

Even as Celestia watched Ponyville from on high, she felt her power burn within her. She’d shed Titan’s affliction in mere minutes, presumably at the same time Titan had shed his. Divinity had returned to her in force. The invigorating surge of might was accompanied by something else, too—a kind of thrill. The fear of defeat, the prospect of victory, and the inevitability of the coming conflict combined within her to create a keen anticipation.

No intermediaries, now. No insulation to prevent the gods themselves from striking against one another. The moves that had brought them here were irrelevant, and now all that mattered was the pure and simple truth that this was the end. Celestia had played the immortal game for long enough, and now, gods would die.

Three waves of Titan’s magic had coursed outward over the landscape after the Citadel had appeared, and each of them had served to drag Celestia further out of her reverie and towards clarity. The time for idle moping about, for self-pity and regret, was done. Now was the time for action. Now was the time for Princess Celestia, Ruler of Equestria.

Celestia scattered the clouds beneath her with a thought and tucked in her wings. Wind rushed past her face, but did nothing to disturb her ethereal mane as she dove toward Ponyville.

The town went from the tranquil slumber of a village in the late hours of the night to a panicked hive of activity within minutes. Celestia could make out pegasi moving from house to house, awakening occupants and carrying hasty messages. On the ground, earthponies and unicorns ran to and fro: a throng with no real directive. More ponies were moving towards the center of the town from the outskirts, travelling inward on the beaten paths and gravel roads that led to Ponyville’s outlying farms and cottages. It was clear that nopony had taken charge.

They had all migrated towards the town square. Fragments of the shattered buildings had been swept into their respective foundations to keep the clearing free of debris, and now the citizens stood between the walls of wreckage.

Celestia wreathed herself in fire just before striking the pedestal that had once held a statue in her own likeness. Her impact drew every eye that could see her as it shattered stone. She stood, towering above her little ponies as the flames intensified until they bathed the square in the light of the dawn.

The townsponies drew away, and when they looked back, Celestia was clad in an incandescent set of golden earthpony warplate. A wreath of burning flames sat atop her head. Fire licked at the edges of her wings and blazed from the depths of her eyes. Celestia spoke, for once letting loose her full alicorn voice so as to reach the ears of every pony from the square to Sweet Apple Acres.

“Prepare for battle!”

They didn’t wear the faces of children.

Twilight’s friends stood in the impromptu command center that was Sugar Cube Corner. They didn’t look nearly as young as the day Celestia had met them at the Gala. The set of their jaws, the subdued way they glanced to one another—these ponies were soldiers. They were ponies out of another time, now.

And that change was embodied in Twilight, stony faced, the only pony wearing their battle gear. Twilight never took her uniform off. She couldn’t even if she wanted to.

“So...” Applejack said, “I’m guessin’ this is about the giant doom fortress?”

“Indeed,” Celestia said. "Titan has regained his full strength and is making his move. He has already raised The Citadel, sent out a call to rally the forest denizens, and now summons a magical storm over the center of the Everfree"

“Will the creatures fight for him?” Fluttershy asked.

“Perhaps not all of them,” Celestia said, “but the inhabitants of the Everfree are not known for their love of ponykind, and Titan’s will is not something to be withstood. He has most certainly told them to stop us from doing what we are about to do.” Celestia met Twilight’s eyes. They both nodded.

Rainbow Dash looked from Celestia to Twilight. “Uh... what are we about to do?” she asked.

Twilight took a deep breath, then began to talk at a brisk pace. “The first and second waves that Titan sent out from The Citadel were easy enough to decipher. The first called the animals; that’s why it was so weak when it came to us. The second was pegasus magic. It’s drawing together a storm big enough and strong enough to tear apart a city. The third....”

Celestia picked up where Twilight left off. “The third was unicorn magic, but it didn’t do anything. It felt like Titan was dipping his hoof into the water, so to speak. A precursor to something big.”

Twilight nodded. “Something that Titan needs time to accomplish. Something he can’t do by himself.”

“He needs The Citadel,” Celestia said. “Not only as a method of delivery, but because it carries Harmony’s designs.”

“He has the delivery system,” Twilight said as she began to pace around the weathered table. “He has the instructions. And he, of all ponies, has the power.” Twilight nodded to herself, then looked up at Celestia. “He’s going to put us down. All of ponykind dies. Is that right, Princess?”

Everypony except them fell into silent awe as Twilight looked to Celestia. Had they truly not understood the severity of the situation? Celestia realized that they had barely met Titan. How could they have known that he was capable of genocide, even against the race created in his own image?

Capable, yes, but Titan would see other options. Options that to his mind would seem even more merciful than mass murder. And more convenient.

Twilight studied Celestia’s face and seemed to confirm her fears. “Empty sky,” she whispered, “but I only have one night of this left in me.” She closed her eyes. “Go ahead, Princess.”

“Luna and I will meet Titan in combat,” she said, “as planned.”

A shadow stepped out of the corner of the room. It resolved itself into Princess Luna, mane flowing, clad in an ethereal robe of pure black. “This should be an interesting fight,” Luna said.

Interesting. Optimism from Luna was still a little jarring.

“Which leaves you with the army,” Celestia said to Twilight. “Sir... Unimpressive and Buttercup are organizing them now. You will take them through the Everfree to The Citadel while Luna and I hold Titan’s attention. And then you will need to find a way to enter The Citadel.”

“From there,” Twilight said, “I can unravel whatever counter-enchantments Titan has established, as well as whatever Harmony has in store for us. Then we can use the Elements to stop whatever Titan is brewing. They can’t hurt him, but if anything can pack enough punch to break his spell, it’s them.”

Rainbow Dash’s gaze was moving between Twilight and Celestia. She finally settled on Twilight with a look of abject disbelief. “Wait wait wait,” Dash said. “We’re just going to go under the storm? You can’t put a pony under that storm.”

Twilight turned to her. “No?”

Dash shook her head. “That system will tear trees out of the ground, Twilight. We have to stop it!”

“That storm is huge, Dash! You couldn’t break it up even without Titan’s enchantments turning it feral.”

“I can do it,” Dash said.

Twilight shook her head. “Dash...”

“I can do it, Twilight. But I’ll need all our pegasi.”

Celestia watched the two of them, wondering if Twilight’s ignorance had been feigned. Had the mare learned that well? “If that’s what it takes,” Celestia said. “We don’t have much of a choice either way. Even without the storm, getting to the Citadel will be hard. The Everfree is home to some vicious creatures.”

“Not some,” Fluttershy said, her eyes distant and unfocused. She looked up at Celestia. “Too many. If Titan has even a little bit of them it will be too many.” Fluttershy nodded to herself. “It will be too many,” she whispered. She nodded again. “I have to go.”

Fluttershy looked up at the ponies collected in the room. “I have to go,” she said loudly. “I’m going to speak to Exakktus and convince him not to attack us.”

Celestia looked at her as if she’d suggested suing Titan for peace. Applejack spoke first.

“Uh... what?”

“Exakktus,” Luna said, moving to stand beside Fluttershy. “The largest dragon in the world. If he defies Titan then many of the other monsters will have second thoughts. Or at least, that’s the plan.”

Twilight looked at Fluttershy. “The plan? You two planned this?”

Twilight raised an interesting point; Celestia had thought Luna would share all her plans with her sister. Apparently not, although it wasn’t as if Celestia had been entirely honest lately.

“We did,” Luna said.

“Fluttershy, darling, didn’t you just say that Exakktus was a...” Rarity cringed as an uncertain noise escaped her lips. “A dragon?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Mhmm.”

“But you’re scared of dragons,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Mhmm.”

“Exakktus is cruel and proud,” Celestia said. “He won’t listen to whatever you have to say. He’ll swallow you whole.”

“He’ll listen,” Fluttershy said. “We have Carsomyr.”

The name rang a bell, but Celestia couldn’t quite place it. “...Slayer,” she said at last. “Valiant’s blade.”

Rarity frowned. “Esteem’s blade.”

“Both, actually,” Twilight said. “Valiant killed Exakktus’s brother with that blade.” She looked up at Celestia. “Would a dragon care enough to risk its life over a weapon?”

Celestia weighed the likelihood in her mind. “Hoard instinct. It’s possible. Play on the dragon’s natural tendency toward defiance and his desire for reknown, and be careful.”

“Be careful?” Twilight shouted. “You want to let her go?”

“It’s a good plan, Twilight.”

Twilight shook her head. “You can’t be serious!”

“I am. This is Fluttershy’s decision, in any case.”

“Twilight,” Fluttershy said, placing a hoof on Twilight’s back. “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not!” Twilight cried. “If you’re off on your own, none of us can protect you.”

“The chances of success make this worthwhile, Twilight,” Celestia said.

Twilight’s hoof cracked against the table. “Chances? You’re asking her to die!”

Celestia stomped a foreleg, and the floorboards shattered beneath the force of the blow. Every mare in the room drew away. “I am asking all of you to die!” Celestia shouted.

No one spoke. Had none of them understood that that’s what they were doing? That risking their lives was what they’d been doing since the night Titan returned? Or maybe they just didn’t care. Even at their young age, each of them was closer to death than Celestia had ever been. What could dying mean to these mares, in the face of a world ruled by King Titan?

Twilight broke the silence. “Fluttershy... always comes through when you need her. Good luck, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy blinked, then set her shoulders. “Oh, thank you, Twilight! I won’t let you down.”

“If we’ve accounted for Exakktus and the storm, then it’s time,” Celestia said. “Twilight will lead the forces we have left into the Everfree.” She remembered the dozens of ruined buildings surrounding the square. “They’re in need of an inspiring speech, I think.”

Twilight swallowed. “A speech? But I can’t speak without notes, or cue-cards, or...”

“It’s fine, Twilight. I will speak through you.”

“Through me?” Twilight asked. “Why not just speak yourself?”

“Because I am not leading them into battle, Twilight. They’re your soldiers.”

“But—” Twilight worked her mouth. “If I just say what you tell me to, that’s dishonest.”

Celestia sighed. “It is,” she said. “But we won’t tell them anything that isn’t true by itself, we’ll just make sure they hear it from somepony that they’ll listen to.”

“Not lying to them,” Twilight said. “Just making them listen. Is that it?”

Celestia drew a deep breath through her nostrils. “I know you hate me, Twilight.”

At this, Twilight’s friends made a collective sound of puzzlement and looked at each other, as if searching for an explanation. Celestia guessed they’d known nothing about the fight. Why would Twilight hide something like that from them? They were her friends.

“I know you hate me,” Celestia repeat. “I know you think I’m selfish and manipulative, and you’re right. But even you must see that the world can’t be all truth, Twilight. At least not tonight.”

Twilight regarded Celestia. Could she have figured it out? Certainly, she was smart enough, but still, Celestia found it unlikely. What was Twilight thinking, with her face a mask of cool dislike and her eyes so intent on Celestia?

“Alright,” Twilight said at last. She nodded, then turned to her friends. “Suit up and meet me outside,” she said to them. Twilight took a deep breath. “Let’s go kill our elder god.”

The army was almost ready.

Or rather, what was left of the army. Between the dead and wounded from the Battle of Canterlot, not many ponies had made it to Ponyville. Less than eight hundred. At that point the army probably had less fighting strength than Twilight and her friends working in concert. It was a harrowing thought.

They gathered on the edge of town, forming ranks in their respective units as Unimpressive and Celestia shouted orders. Twilight would be leading every one of them into the Everfree. Twilight would be asking each of them to die, if need be. How could Astor Coruscare have ever enjoyed this?

“What happened to Astor?” Twilight asked.

Luna stood next to her, clad in a simple robe of shifting magic so black it devoured light. Even looking at it made Twilight’s peripheral vision dim. Luna looked down at Twilight. “Do you really want to know, Twilight Sparkle?” she asked.

Twilight looked off into the distance, at the looming metal structure that lit the sky with a beam of focused energy. “Yes.”

Luna sighed. “Astor had a son with Valiant after they left Celestia. And Astor loved him like she had loved nothing else. She decided that he would grow up in a better world than the one she had left him. So, when Celestia and I overthrew our father and crowned ourselves rulers of Equestria....”

“She came for you,” Twilight said.

“Me, specifically,” Luna said. “Astor believed that it was ponykind’s nature to make war, and that Celestia and I were no different. If both of us ruled, we would eventually come to a disagreement so great we’d go to war over it, and ponykind would suffer through another dark age. But if both of us died, ponykind would be trapped in an endless cycle of kings and queens, reigning, then dying and leaving an empty throne to be fought over. But one alicorn could rule forever, undisputed.”

“She picked Celestia.”

“She did. Astor told Celestia that she would rule alone forever, and then she fought us to the death.”

“But there were two of you,” Twilight said. “And you were both—”

“Nothing. Compared to her we were nothing. Astor invented our perceptions of warfare, Twilight. You know exactly how she fought. Add twenty years of experience to that. She made sure to point out that we couldn’t even defend ourselves, let alone a kingdom.”

“So how’d you survive?” Twilight asked.

Luna sighed again. “I suppose I can’t make things any worse between you and Celestia, can I?”

Twilight felt a chill. “Why?” she asked. “What did she do?”

“She lied to Astor in order to take her will away. Sangrophile went out.”

Twilight considered this for a moment. “She took Astor’s will away? How? Astor was the best bladecaster in the world.”

“And would thus have her mind closed to any ideas that could break her resolve, yes. But I suspect Celestia played on their prior relationship in order to undermine her stance. Regardless, Astor was no longer fighting just to kill, and so Celestia was able to put her blade out for several seconds and subdue her. Despite all her ability, Astor was still just a unicorn, and so without her blade she was easy to overcome.”

“Her blade only went out for several seconds? She got it back so soon?”

Luna looked at Twilight an arched an eyebrow. “Of course. Have you never been wrong before?”

Was Luna serious? “Of course I have,” Twilight said.

“And when you realized you were wrong, did you do so in an instant? Did you suddenly see the error of your ways and turn on what you thought before? Or did it take time?”

“Time, obviously. It took time.”

“Precisely,” Luna said. “A pony cannot change what they believe in an instant, Twilight Sparkle. In fact, the most common reaction to evidence that contradicts them is to strengthen their defenses. When I commanded Terra’s armies, I lost faith for the first time when I looked down at a dead colt who had no cutie mark. It wasn’t enough to change who I was, but it was enough to make me feel the faintest shadow of doubt, if even for a moment. And that, Twilight Sparkle, was the first step. Celestia made Astor take that first step.”

“And then she killed her?”

At this, Luna seemed perplexed. “Of course not. She merely subdued her. I wanted to kill her, but Celestia insisted we let her live, a decision that would end up saving many lives when Discord returned. But let us not talk of Discord when a greater foe is at hoof. Here are your friends.”

Or at least, four of her friends. Fluttershy had left as soon as possible—Exakktus wouldn’t be in his lair for long. Rarity looked pristine as ever in her white robe, Knight-Commander of the Order Nocturnus. Applejack wore her titanic warplate under a hat that Twilight couldn’t believe was still in one piece. A tight-fitting set of skypony barding hugged Rainbow Dash’s lithe form, sky blue with prismatic trim. Pinkie Pie bounced along beside her wearing—whatever it was that Pinkie Pie wore.

“Twilight, darling,” Rarity said as soon as they were within earshot. “You can’t give a speech with your mane looking like a... well, er... whatever that is. Come here, dear.”

Twilight grudgingly obliged, allowing Rarity to pick at her mane. “The army is almost ready,” she said. “Which means that we’re about to go. We’ll be at the front. Except for Dash, who will be in the air handling the storm.”

“Speaking of,” Dash said, her voice trembling. Twilight followed her gaze toward the Everfree forest, where a wave of wind and water was shooting towards them.

“Incoming!” Dash shouted.

Hundreds of ponies hit the ground simultaneously. Twilight sensed nothing magical about the rain, so she just put up a simple forcefield. The water hit them travelling almost horizontally, and the wind was strong enough to topple an unprepared pony. It passed in moments, leaving only a thin coating of moisture in its wake.

“That storm’s hitting phase two,” Dash said as soon as the spray was over. “Not awesome. We’ve gotta move, Twi.”

“Ponykind.”

Titan’s voice hit them harder than the storm. It was smooth and deep as always, but it still had that sinister undercurrent, that sound that made Twilight feel like she was chewing glass.

“Habitable worlds are not simply forged by cosmic circumstance. I forged it for you. Your base components do not grant you life. I gave it to you. I kept you safe from Discord, from the empty dark, and from yourselves. I gave you everything.”

If Titan was at the center of the Everfree Forest, then he was vocalizing over kilometers. Was he using the Citadel for that, too? Or did he simply not care that the spell he was using had a cubic power to distance ratio?

“This is how you repay me. You killed my son. You killed my wife. You throw the world into chaos. I am your god, and I will hold you accountable for these actions. I will take from you that which makes you such worthless, dissident creatures: your free will.”

On the ground, almost everypony in the army was covering their ears. Twilight resisted the urge to do the same only because she knew it wouldn’t help. She wondered if Titan’s plan was just to keep talking, and pin them all down at the edge of the forest until his spell reached completion.

“There is no mercy within me, ponykind, but there is reason. Prove to me that you can act in tandem and in service to a greater ideal and I will let you keep your ability to comprehend. If you submit, if not a single pony enters the Everfree on this night, then your capacity to understand will be granted to you.”

A pause, almost as if Titan was thinking. “Except for you, Twilight Sparkle. You will come to me, with Luna and Celestia, and you will answer for your transgressions.”

Twilight waited, but no further words came. Eventually the members of the army began to get to their hooves, looking around as if having woken from a dream—or in this case, a nightmare. She let Titan’s words sink in. Surrender herself and ponykind could live within the natural order.

She cast herself through space to the forefront of the army, a space reserved just for her in front of and alongside Princess Celestia and Luna. Twilight looked out at the ponies who they’d rallied to help them save the world.

They were a sad looking, scared lot. Wet from the miniature rainfall and shivering against the chill end-summer’s night, they looked up at Twilight, eyes full of expectation. She was supposed to inspire them. She was supposed to give them their happy ending.

She stood there, a deep blue suit covering her body up to her neck. A cloak of starlight draped over her shoulders to bunch and fall off to one side. A violet halo of protective magic sitting in the air around her ears.

Titan’s words had been spoken to divide them, that much was obvious. But why? Was it that he didn’t want to rule a race of mindless husks? Or was it something else? Slowly, as Twilight considered his message, a smile broke out on her face.

“He’s afraid.” Her words were quiet, just loud enough that most of the crowd would be able to hear them, but not understand. They leaned in a little, just as Twilight intended.

“He’s afraid!” she said again, this time loud enough that everypony could hear. “Two days ago Queen Terra attacked Ponyville and was defeated. Titan doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know how we’ve fought this long, how we’ve made it this far, despite all of his supposed power.” Twilight allowed herself a little laugh. “He thinks it’s because of me. Because of Luna. Because of Celestia. It isn’t.”

Twilight looked out at the crowd, meeting the eyes of several ponies before continuing. “It’s something greater. Something inside all of us. It’s nothing that can be taken, or killed. It’s where we get our hope. Our love. Our cutie marks. And it’s magic.”

Her voice softened. “Titan can break our houses and burn our towns. He can kill our loved ones and shatter our world. And he has. He’s done all of these things. But he cannot break the bonds that tie. He cannot take away what makes us ponies unless we let him. And that terrifies him. It fills him with a fear so profound it’s enough to make him ask for peace, because he knows that our magic is enough to bring him to his knees.

“Our magic!” Twilight shouted. “Real magic, is what brings gods low! I have seen it, felt it, beheld the majesty of miracles worked by its accord! And I see it now, in the eyes of each of you. So I ask now:

“Ponykind!” Twilight’s voice echoed through all of Ponyville, reverberating off of every structure still standing. “Is Titan your king?”

Hundreds of voices cried out, “No!”

They could have been louder.

Twilight looked over her shoulder at the entrance to the Everfree. Twisted branches clawed towards them out of pitch darkness, almost inviting them to their death. She turned back to the army. “Beyond those trees,” she said, “is every creature out of nightmare that has haunted the darkest corners of your mind. Every horrible monster that would see Titan king!

“We will feel fear!” Twilight cried. “But we are not Titan. We will feel fear so that we can show courage!”

Twilight paused, and her army cheered, beating hooves against the ground as the sound reached Twilight’s ears.

“We will die!” she shouted. “But we are not one being; we are a race of individuals unto ourselves. Alone we will die so that together we may live!”

The roar of the army was loud: so loud that it had not died down by the time Twilight spoke again. That was fine; this next part was going to be loud regardless.

“Ponies!” Twilight bellowed. Her mane broke into a nebulous cloud of energy and swirled about her face as a wind carried her cloak to blow about her shoulders. “Make war! Make war not to kill our enemies, but to put an end to the darkness that has befallen our world! Titan made us in his image and gave us only pain and death and violence, and that is all we will unmake him with in kind!”

The wall of sound that hit Twilight was enough to disturb her ethereal mane. She drew Equinox out of thin air, channeling power to make it burn bright as a newborn star. Celestia and Luna both drew the air around them against their bodies and shot away into the night sky, leaving in their wake trails of frost and fire.

“Go now!” Twilight shouted. “To The Citadel!”

Cheering and screaming, the last of ponykind’s army overtook Twilight and galloped off into the Everfree Forest. Somewhere in there, Twilight knew her father ran with them. The pegasi stayed behind, held at bay by Rainbow Dash’s outstretched hoof. They formed a ring around her on the ground.

“Listen up!” Dash shouted. “That storm will tear the whole forest apart, and our army with it, unless we do something about it!”

Spitfire half-flew, half-leapt to Dash’s side. Twilight noted that she was wearing her Wonderbolts outfit, something she’d never done in the field before. Maybe she felt like dying a Wonderbolt, tonight. “You’d need five thousand pegasi to break up that storm, Rainbow Dash,” Spitfire said.

“Yeah,” Dash said. “Which is why we aren’t going to break it up.” Her face lit up in an arrogant grin. “We’re going to move it.”

Spitfire cocked her head. “Can we move it? I... don’t know very much more than the basics when it comes to weather.”

Dash nodded, as if she had expected this. “Moving this storm is going to be dangerous!” she shouted to the assembled pegasi. “But danger is my middle name.

“What about you, pegasi? What are your middle names?”

Dash was immediately answered with a chorus of: “Danger!”

“Well ain’t that a mighty coincidence,” Dash said. “We split into two groups and a vanguard! I take front with units three, five, sixteen! We’re going to counterspin...”

Dash gave orders that Twilight didn’t quite understand in full. She had a basic working knowledge of meteorology, but not full-on weather pony training. She did manage to gather one thing, however, from Dash’s plan.

Rainbow Dash was moving Titan’s storm to the one place where there were no members of ponykind. She was moving it to Canterlot, which Twilight had ordered evacuated almost three days ago. There wasn’t a kilometre of space between Canterlot and Ponyville not occupied by refugees except for the city itself. Dash intended to break the storm against Mount Avalon and lay the capitol to waste rather than put any of them in danger.

Twilight approved.

When she was done, Dash moved to stand before Twilight. “Hey, Twi? That speech you gave was... pretty awesome.” Hey, we might die.

“I’ll see you again, Rainbow Dash.”

Dash swallowed, her back to the pegasi. “Yeah?” she asked.

Twilight nodded. “Yeah. Unless you somehow transcend the speed of light and freeze yourself in time. Now fly.”

Dash jerked her head once in agreement, then pulled her blade from her back and assumed a takeoff position. She threw her head back.

“Thunder and lightning!” she cried.

A hundred pegasi answered her. “Wings and steel!”

Twilight was buffeted by the winds of their takeoff. Her eyes followed a rainbow trail as it arced toward the Heart of the Everfree. She had to admit: Dash had a pretty cool battle cry.

The Everfree Forest was dripping wet and near pitch black as Fluttershy made her way to Exakktus’s cave. Each fall of her hooves squelched in the newborn mud, and it wasn’t long before pushing through the vines and branches had her soaked. High above, Titan’s storm rumbled, threatening to unleash the wrath of the heavens at any time.

It was difficult for Fluttershy to move quickly. Every time her hooves sucked against the mud of the forest floor, she cringed at the noise, but she knew that flying would be more dangerous, given the dense tangle of brush that was barely visible above her head. She saw shadows flicking between the trees, heard the occasional sound of a branch bending toward the ground to release a torrent of water. Each disturbance made her want to stop, to creep forward even more slowly, but she couldn’t. Time was running out, and so Fluttershy moved through the Everfree as fast as she could—which meant on her hooves, in a straight line, and with her eyes focused on the path directly in front of her.

There were things watching her, she knew. Things that ate meat, things that ate bones. Creatures of the night that would happily kill her just for stepping into their territory. Savage animals that would tear out her throat and pull her to pieces and feed them to their young...

Fluttershy whimpered as she lost her grip on a branch and it swung forward to hit her on the nose. Her muzzle stung as she drew back, but she pressed on nonetheless. It was a branch, just a branch. She couldn’t afford to get scared by a little branch.

She had to keep going, because she had to reach Exakktus’s lair. She had to convince the world’s biggest dragon not to kill them using nothing but the saddlebags she wore on her back. She had to do it, because... because...

Because they couldn’t. Or maybe they could, but they all had better things to do anyway. What would Fluttershy do in the Battle of the Everfree? She couldn’t kill a creature, not even if it was bearing down on the ponies she loved. It just wasn’t in her, the kind of strength that the others had. Fluttershy had another kind of strength.

The only creature she’d ever wanted to kill was Titan. At the time, it had been so easy to say it. We’re going to kill him. She remembered the lightness of Empyrean’s form as she held it against her body. How wrong his neck felt, bending away from his collar at such an odd angle. Titan had killed his own little boy. Did that mean he deserved to die? Fluttershy couldn’t make that decision. She’d been hysterical at the time.

Was she going to become hysteric now? Would she break down in fear, submitting to the creatures of the Everfree, long before she ever reached Exakktus’s cave? Fighting her own fear was easier when she thought of her friends, but thinking of her friends made Fluttershy even more aware of the fact that she was alone.

A low, sinuous hiss drifted out from behind a nearby bush. Fluttershy wasn’t alone. Not nearly.

Whatever silence she had gathered to herself vanished as she began to run. Her hooves set muck splattering, and branches began to snap against her chest and face. She could barely see the ground ahead of her, but that didn’t stop her from charging on. True, she could trip, but that was a small risk to take compared to being swallowed whole.

A wet, slithering sound reached Fluttershy’s ears as she ran across the underbrush. She didn’t turn around to see what it was. From the noise of snapping branches that followed from its pursuit, it was bigger than her. Definitely big enough to swallow her whole.

It never got the chance. It caught up to Fluttershy, but just as she felt the brush of fangs against her flank, a cacophonous explosion of wood and soil knocked Fluttershy to the ground. The heavy thud of the earth against her side sent dull pain coursing through her body, and several moments passed before Fluttershy regained her senses and scrambled to her hooves.

The giant snake that had been chasing her—for that was what it was—had been pinned to the ground, a manticore’s scorpion-like tail through its neck. The beast hunched over the snake, maw dripping blood, as it shook a hunk of flesh it held between its teeth. It looked at Fluttershy as the dying snake thrashed against the ground, pinned by a lion paw.

Its eyes simmered with more than just predator instinct when it saw Fluttershy. The manticore loathed her, she could see the wretched emotion written on its face. The hunk of snake meat fell from its mouth, forgotten.

Fluttershy realized that she was shivering. “Please...”

The manticore released a feral roar as it flared its wings, and flecks of blood spattered Fluttershy’s face. She stumbled back, caught her footing, then turned and ran. This wasn’t another manticore with a thorn in its paw. Had Titan done something to the creatures, or did they just hate her that much?

Fluttershy pumped her wings as she galloped over the forest floor, doing everything she could to move as fast as possible. Was the manticore faster than she was? Could it tire her out? She heard its paws pounding against the forest floor as she went. Was it just her, or was the sound getting louder? Closer.

What was worse, it was soon joined by more pursuers. Shadows slid against shadows in the darkness of the Everfree, and soon a host of noises joined the manticore’s fevered rush. Paw beats echoed dully through the wood, louder and deeper than the sound of Fluttershy’s hooves. The scratch of claws against timber came from above her, accompanied by eerie, howling wails. More slithering whispered against the underbrush, and the beat of wings heralded a shrill, raucous caw.

“Please,” Fluttershy said to herself as her blood pounded in her ears. “Please please please...”

She was beginning to tire, the taste of metallic bile on her tongue and the muscles in her hindquarters growing tight, threatening to seize up at any moment. She tripped over a branch and almost went to the forest floor, but barely recovered in time to hear the branch into a dozen pieces with a loud snap.

She could turn and fight, but how? All the others were so good at war now, but Fluttershy had never learned to do anything. She’d never wanted to hurt another living creature. Applejack would spin in place and kick them away with her titanic strength. Rarity would cut them to ribbons with her glittering blade. What could Fluttershy do?

Nothing. Because even if Fluttershy could have killed every creature that screamed through the forest on the back of her hooves, hungry for her blood, flesh, or just the thrill of killing, she wouldn’t have. It wasn’t in her, and that was something she’d be proud of even as she died.

No sooner than had she made that decision, her hooves left the muddy forest floor to sink into cool, damp ash. Fluttershy’s forelegs collided with something hard—another branch?—and she was thrown to the ground headfirst. Her face hit the ash, kicking up a cloud of it and causing her to sneeze violently as she scrambled back up to her hooves.

It was then that she noticed that every sound in the forest had stopped.

Tentatively, Fluttershy looked over her shoulder. They were all still there. The manticore, with its dripping red maw and hateful eyes. Harpies, with their scaled skin and their slitted eyes and their lips pulled grotesquely over a set of pointed teeth. Teeth for tearing. Timberwolves, their gnarled wooden bodies tense and rigid, their eyes gleaming. A snake as thick around as a pony, uncoiled and poised to strike. None of them moved an inch as they watched her. None of them stepped onto the ash. It was as though rather than a change in topography, they stood upon the edge of a great precipice, and to take a single step further was certain death. Which, Fluttershy supposed, it probably was, considering what she had tripped over was a bone.

Ash. Bones. The monsters of the Everfree too afraid to continue. None of the tense fear Fluttershy had built up was released, and her heart beat even faster as she turned, panting, to behold the entrance to lair of Exakktus the Black. The mouth of a cave loomed before her, a maw that was dark and lifeless compared to the Manticore’s gore-slick teeth. Above-ground, Exakktus’s lair was little more than a giant mound of overgrown rock, but Fluttershy knew the cave went deep down into the earth.

With no way to turn back and a terror fueled by the thought that she might fail her friends, Fluttershy took a step forward. She trod across the ash, her hooves kicking up the dry layer that sat beneath the damp surface. Her hooves struck bones that rested beneath the soft particles, and she shuddered.

The thoughts struck her just as Fluttershy reached the massive maw of the cave. What had the ashes been? What was it that she was tasting on her tongue, wiping from her eyes, feeling stuck to her fur? And with a striking clarity, Fluttershy knew with a certainty that it wasn’t trees.

She staggered to the edge of the cave mouth coughing and spitting and doing whatever she could just to get them off of her. She tasted bile once again, and didn’t even try to stop herself from vomiting into the pooling ash, holding herself steady against the stone with a hoof as she retched. You can’t do this. You can’t do this. Oh, empty sky!

Tears carved paths through the ashes that clung to her face and spattered against the dead dust below. “I can’t do this,” Fluttershy sobbed. “It’s all dead, and it’s a dragon, and I can’t even hurt anything. It’s everything I can’t do and I’ll fail all my friends...”

Fluttershy sniffed. “I’ll fail all my friends. I can’t. I can’t do that.” She swallowed. You have to go in. Because being afraid is part of being a pony and it’s a part of you. And the only time you can be courageous is when you’re terrified.

Fluttershy still felt the bone-chilling, body-numbing fear of dying, of failure, of her friends never seeing her again while she blew as ashes around a cold dark cavern. She still heard every instinct screaming at her to run away. But she took a step inside the cave, because she knew that those things weren’t going to go away or get easier to handle. Of course she was afraid. There was a dragon. But while dragons might have been her greatest fear, they were also something of a specialty.

The ash thinned as she descended, but it never gave way. Soon enough, almost all the light went out of the world, and Fluttershy was left to wander alone through the pitch darkness, with nothing but the sound of her hooves sifting through the dust of the dead to accompany her.

Down, down, down she went, stumbling through the darkness and sliding on the fractured stones beneath her. If she lost her footing and didn’t recover, how far would she fall before getting her bearings and taking flight? How far to the end of Exakktus’s cave? Was there an end?

What there was was a dragon, the largest and oldest in the world. Would he listen to a word she had to say, or would he simply turn her into ash? How long until Fluttershy found him? Was he watching her now?

The ground beneath her began to level out, and it wasn’t long until Fluttershy set a hoof down not on ashes, but on what felt like coins. The dragon’s hoard. He had to be nearby. She closed her eyes, though it didn’t make any difference in the pitch darkness. “Exakktus,” she said.

She strode further onto the pile of treasure, wings ready to steady her should she lose her footing. “Exakktus!” she said, louder now.

What if the dragon had already left? What if Fluttershy hadn’t been fast enough, and they were already at war? “Exakktus!” she shouted. No, this couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be too late. She wouldn’t fail her friends. “Exakktus!”

He moved.

Fluttershy couldn’t see a thing, but she could feel him. Sense his massive scales sliding over the stone around her as the oldest dragon in the world became aware of her presence. She heard him, a booming sound that set her teeth on edge.

Fluttershy swallowed. Exakktus was big. She was small. What was she going to say?

If his movements were like stones sliding against one another, his voice was like a mountain being ground into dust. “You are new, pony.”

An eye opened not ten feet from Fluttershy, as big around as she was. It glowed red with an inner light, illuminating the ridges around it. It was Exakktus. He saw her.

Run! Fluttershy’s instincts screamed. This was a predator who would crunch her bones under his teeth as easily as she might bite into a stalk of celery.

His voice rolled out through the cavern, sharp consonants that were cracking boulders and vowels that boomed like thunder. “You are not Titan,” Exakktus said. “You are not Celestia. No godhood. Food.”

Food. It echoed around the cavern, lodging itself somewhere deep inside Fluttershy’s mind, right next the voice that was screaming run. Fluttershy trembled.

“Wait. I’m here to... t-t-to talk.”

“I know why you are here, little pony,” Exakktus said. It was like the cave itself had been given a voice, his words were so deep and guttural. “You would have me refuse to fight. This I will not do. Die now.”

Fluttershy felt air rushing past her, over her, and realized that Exakktus was inhaling. She saw a glow ahead, a dim pinpoint of angry red light that could only be the fire gathering in his throat...

“Wait!” she screamed. The light disappeared to be replaced by his eye once more. “You aren’t even going to tell me why?”

Exakktus’s words had an edge of impatience. “Why. What.”

Fluttershy clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. “Why you hate us,” she said. “Why you want to kill us.”

Exakktus grumbled, and it was the sound of a millstone bigger than a house. “I am a dragon,” he said. “I burn. I eat. I kill. Destruction is my way, and you are in my territory. I once sat atop a black reign of fire that spanned the whole of the Everfree Verge, a terror to all ponykind. Then came your sun princess, a foe that cannot be fought. She confined me to this forest, where I have reigned from ever since. It will please me to once again lay ruin to living ponies. So seldom do knights come to slay me here.”

“I don’t want you to stay out of the fight,” Fluttershy said. “I want you to fight with us.”

“Heh.” The short laugh sent a tremor through the ground. “But if Titan wins, then we will return to the old ways. I will be allowed to roam over my old territory.”

“If Titan wins,” Fluttershy said, “there won’t be a ponykind anymore. He’s going to turn us all into puppets. What will be the point of killing us then? You won’t be stalking prey, you’ll be harvesting crops.” If Titan wins. Don’t think about that, Fluttershy. Think about anything else. Even the... Fluttershy swallowed. Even the dragon.

Exakktus grumbled again. “This is true,” he said. “I have felt his quelling spell building. Ponies were not the greatest prey in any case. I long to hunt again the colossal beasts of the northern mountains. The dragons of the borderlands. I wish to set the world on fire, pony, and you would confine me to this pitiful forest.

“It used to be vast,” he rumbled. “We once had more. But your sun princess is shrewd and wicked and cares only for her people. A respectable being, as it were. We have dwindled, and my glory has dwindled with us.”

“But... b-but you kill each other!”

“It is our way!” Exakktus cried. The cave seemed to shake. “Do you think that any of this forest’s inhabitants have not pondered civilization? They could cross the threshold and live in your world if they so chose, but they stay. It is who they are. You think I am a monster, pony, but you do not see the wisdom that has come with my age. We have been stifled, suffocated by the rule of your sun princess. There was once another princess.”

Fluttershy’s breath caught. “Another princess?”

“Yes. She did not try to rule us. She embraced our way, and the creatures of the Everfree loved her. She treated all denizens as she would her own young, and defended us from the idiot, Empyrean. But she was not soft. Her enemies met a savage goddess when they came upon her, and she would tear them limb from limb.”

“Terra,” Fluttershy whispered. “She’s still alive! You can have your princess back!”

“No,” Exakktus said. “She is... different, now. A dog gone rabid. Then leashed.”

“Because of Titan,” Fluttershy said. “Titan made her that way. Titan took away your princess.”

“Celestia took away our territory.”

“What if...” Fluttershy swallowed. “What if I could give you some back? The tundras to the north aren’t very populated. W-w-we could move. And then you’d be be able to get to the mountains. And the borderlands aren’t too far from there...”

“No,” Exakktus growled, his eye narrowing. “A dragon is not given his spoils. He takes them!”

“Then t-take them from Titan, with us!” Fluttershy said. “The world is his right now. Take it back with us, and we’ll divide the spoils.”

“An interesting viewpoint,” Exakktus said. “I would have territory once again, even if we can never have another princess.”

“There’s more,” Fluttershy said, turning around to fumble at her saddlebags in the dark. She reached in and grabbed their only contents—a single, chevron-shaped piece of sharpened platinum-iridium. “Carsomyr,” Fluttershy said as she tossed the blade shard to land with a light chink against the treasure pile. “It’s yours if you help us.”

The eye continued to regard her as the sound of claws scraping against treasure resounded throughout the cave. Exakktus raised the shard, so tiny compared to his digits, and examined it with his eye. “The blade that killed my brother,” he said at last. “I have sought this for a long time, but dragons do not bargain for treasure, pony. We take it.”

“I didn’t bring the other thirteen pieces,” Fluttershy said.

“Clever.” The shard, as well as Exakktus’s claw, vanished. “You seek to bargain with me. You offer me things that I long for in exchange for my aid against Titan. You do not ask for much, only that I change sides and kill an altogether different army. You have done more than I expected you would, being food.”

Fluttershy swallowed. “So... you’ll help us?”

Another grumble, like a granite thunderstorm threatening to break. Exakktus seemed to ponder her question for a moment, and then:

“No.”

No, no, he said no. Run, run, run for your life. He’ll reach out and pick you up in claws as big as a wagon and break you apart with teeth longer than kitchen knives. “No,” Fluttershy said. “B-b-but...”

More stirring around her, more grinding of scale against stone. Exakktus was moving, unfurling a body as big as a mountain.

“You made an interesting case, pony, but you forgot something. I am not a dragon who values only treasure and territory.”

They eye shifted before her, and again Fluttershy found herself looking into the hellish glow of his maw. She caught the silhouette of a row of teeth. To Exakktus, she was barely larger than a kernel of popped corn.

“I have lived for many years, and it is a life that I value. I am no fool. You will lose, pony, and Titan will win. Not all of you together have the power to defy Titan. I alone would not change this. Allying with you would only serve to doom me to Titan’s wrath. That you are here in the first place only shows that you are desperate.”

Fluttershy took a step back. “N-n-no!”

“You are prey, struggling under the claw, and I am the predator. Food.” The air around her stirred as Exakktus began to inhale.

Fluttershy was already in the air, beating her wings furiously toward where she thought the exit lay. She couldn’t remember how far she was underground. She had no idea how long it would take her to get out of the cave.

The suction against her wings increased as Exakktus drew more and more air into his lungs, and the glow intensified until Fluttershy could even make out a few nearby cave walls. She struggled to fly upwards, knowing that as soon as the dragon exhaled, she was dead. She felt ash beneath her drifting back towards the dragon’s maw.

She saw the faintest bit of light ahead, the dark of the night breaking the pitch black of the lair. Fluttershy beat her wings harder, but barely moved an inch, such was the force of Exakktus’s lungs.

He stopped breathing in, and Fluttershy shot forward, confused but nonetheless relieved at the release. Why would Exakktus stop breathing in?

To breathe out, Fluttershy realized.

The fire roared behind her, and Fluttershy pushed against the air with all her might, trying desperately to reach the mouth of the cave. It was getting close. The roar was getting louder. She was nearly there. The sound of death screamed in her ear. Just a little farther...

She failed. The first wave of heat struck her before she got free.

It came over her first like the heat from standing to close to an open oven, unbearably hot. Then it got hotter, like holding her face against a stovetop. Then it got hotter, and Fluttershy felt her hair burning away as she was thrown free of the cave, her flesh sizzling and popping.

The ash of a thousand dead things helped to break her fall, but stuck to her blistered skin. Fluttershy knew she was quite possibly dead, or at least dying, but she had to get up. She had to get away. She coughed up ash, but couldn’t do anything else through the unbearable pain.

The ground shook and heaved beneath her. Fluttershy was supposed to have earthpony magic, but how did she use it? How could she use it when the whole world was fire? Every touch against her skin made her want to scream, but her throat felt raw. What must she look like, hairless and broken and lying in ash?

Again, the ground heaved, and Fluttershy realized that Exakktus was far too big to exit his lair via the door. He was coming up from below. Coming up to eat her. Food.

She’d practiced finding her magic before, but now it was unreachable, buried under a thousand smarting sores on her skin, cracked and broken. Applejack could do it, though. Applejack was strong. Fluttershy needed to be strong like Applejack.

Fire’s the worst, Applejack had said. The heat gets inside me. Fluttershy grabbed her earthpony magic with a mind that cried out in agony and screamed. It was a piteous moan, working its way out of two charred lungs and through a throat choked with ashes. But it did what it needed to.

The ground beneath her cracked and was pushed upwards. Fluttershy needed to get away soon, or she’d die. She screamed again, feeling her flesh writhe under the power of her earthpony magic. How long would it take her to heal the burns? Could she even heal the burns? Applejack could die ten times over, but Applejack was also the strongest earthpony they’d ever met by an order of magnitude.

The world beneath her exploded into a colossal fountain of stone and ash, and Fluttershy was once again thrown back to the ground. She spat out a mouthful of ash, preparing to scream through the pain and heal her injuries again, but what she saw when she looked up took her breath away.

A pair of great black wings rose out of the broken earth, rock and ash and dirt sheeting off of them in waves as they unfurled to reveal Exakktus the Black. His scales were like sheets of pitch dark hammered steel, thick and unyielding. His eyes burned with inner fire, and his chest heaved. He pulled himself out of the opening pit with two massive claws, then took a step forward, a tail longer than a Ponyville street sinuously stretching out behind him.

Fluttershy hobbled to her legs, then stumbled. Run. He’ll kill you. He’ll swallow you whole and cook you alive. Run!

She turned to face Exakktus.

He lowered his head and roared, opening his maw with a crack of thunder and baring the hellish flames that resided deep within his throat. The force of the sound was almost enough to knock Fluttershy back to the ground. It would have blown her mane back, if she still had one.

When he stopped, Fluttershy screamed back.

She dug deep, found every vestige of magic within herself that she understood, and every vestige that she didn’t, clutching at them with her mind. She held it all as she teetered in front of the dragon, her life hanging by a thread, and then she screamed.

Her scream was carried over the whole of the forest around her, echoing with unbridled power. She felt some strength returning to her limbs as her magic healed her, felt flesh fill in around her hooves as blackened meat sloughed off her wings. Exakktus tilted his head.

Fluttershy poured everything she had into her next scream as she met Exakktus’s eyes and gave him the stare. Into her roar, into Exakktus’s mind, she poured her fury, raw and hot. Her rage against the heavens and the destruction wrought by their monstrous game. She screamed Applejack shouldn’t have to feel the pain, Rarity needs a home, and Pinkie Pie doesn’t laugh anymore.

She felt the ground wiggle beneath her feet as she stared down the dragon, and a tiny bit of green sprouted up through the dead ash. Fluttershy took a step forward.

“Pony,” Exakktus rumbled.

Fluttershy screamed again, forcing him to see what she knew to be true, making him understand her rage. Empyrean dead in her arms, just a colt. Terra broken by Titan’s spell. The dead, the dead, the dead that would never come back and never stop coming unless they did something.

And she felt more life answer her, grasses and flowers and plants pushing their way out of the ash, growing in the space of heartbeats. Her magic was old magic, the magic of life, and life she would defend.

Her final scream was her rage at Exakktus. She gave him Nightmare Moon being broken and defeated, Discord being encased in stone, Nihilus overwhelmed by a rainbow wave of light, Empyrean scared of six mares. She gave him their victories, each one impossible, each one against a foe far stronger than they were.

Vines wrapped their way around each of her legs, twisting and pulling themselves over her body even as her hair grew back. A wisp of soft pink drifted over her eyes.

Exakktus drew away. Fluttershy took a step forward.

“Coward!” she screamed, her voice ringing with magical might. “You want to see the world a better place but you’re too scared to make it a better place!” The vines twisted and whipped over her chest and around the Element of Kindness. Fluttershy kept moving. “You’d rather live in fear of the King for eternity than defy him and prove yourself worthy! There are hundreds of ponies fighting him tonight, each of them weak and small, in your eyes!”

They had covered her body and lashed across the back of her head, up and around the curve of her ears as she spoke. “But each and every one of them is braver than you, Exakktus! We’ve beaten foes great and terrible before because of that strength! And you... you won’t ever know what that feels like.”

Fluttershy felt pricks as the vines spread under her ethereal mane and joined themselves over her brow. Thorns. They’d made her an ever-growing, ever-changing crown of thorns. She looked at the oldest dragon in the world.

“Unless you come with me, now, and show Titan that we aren’t afraid.”

There was never any question as to where they’d find their father.

Titan’s storm stood poised over The Citadel, a single titanic cloud filled with every ounce of elemental energy from leagues in each direction. It appeared solid on the outside—almost like a vast anvil. A vast anvil, on which a new world was about to be forged.

The air thinned as they made their ascent, but only the empty dark was unbreathable to a pony with a thousand years of pegasus magic.

Celestia and Luna flew well ahead of the army, as was needed. Their duel with the King would distract him from the counterstorm the pegasi brewed until it was too late. They would also prevent him from descending to the ground below and obliterating the resistance as easily as one might swat an errant fly.

They dove in tandem, their wings skimming the surface of a cloud as large as a city. Above the storm there was no wind, no ponies, no thunder. The world was vast, cold, and empty, save for the focused shaft of light that broke from the center of the nimbus, lighting it from within like a candle in a jack-o-lantern.

And for the being who stood in front of it. He was as vast, cold, and empty as the world around them. Impassive as the stars that burned above them, as powerful and contained as the storm that raged below. Older than the world they fought for, and every creature on it. As compassionate and alien as the empty dark high above them.

But for all that, he could die. Celestia and Luna believed this with an intensity that rivalled the burning of all their stars combined. They had to believe it. Because they were going to kill him.

He faced away from them, into the beam of light that would strip ponykind of their souls. He did not flinch from the incandescent glow, or turn to look at the daughters he no doubt knew were there. The light put the edges of his silhouette into sharp, colorless relief, like the night lit by a flash of lightning.

They landed on the tighty formed surface of the thunderstorm apart from one another, putting Titan and his beam between them. He stared on, heedless of their superior position. What was Titan waiting for? It was obvious they were here to kill him.

“You do not know.” Titan’s voice rolled over the aerial vista, powerful, cool, and emotionless. “You do not know of the care and effort involved in having children, as an alicorn. The secret was lost to you, locked safely within The Citadel.”

He paused. Celestia had always wondered and never known: how did alicorns have children? Not through mammalian means, that was all they had been told. That they were not common beasts, to roll about and leave the act of creation to nature. They were gods, and they were designed.

“It takes years,” Titan said. “Years, and two alicorns. The spark of immortality is not something that can be hastened. Terra didn’t want children. She had to be forced, but it was no matter. Her intellect was not required, only her presence. I made you both myself.”

He turned to face Celestia, his features burned away by the radiant light and the shadow it cast. “And this is how you repay me. By attempting to play me in the immortal game. You will fail.” He turned back to the beam. “And you, Luna, will be my new wife.”

Across the storm, Luna spat, a thin gob of saliva falling away to be swept up by the storm below. “Never.”

“Your defiance is understandable,” Titan said. “I will make you live a nightmare. But continuity of our species must be ensured, and Celestia has proven herself far too unstable. You are stupid and weak by comparison.”

Nadir lit the night like a second moon. “We shall see, Father,” Luna said, falling back into a bladecasting stance. Her robe of night fluttered around her, making her mane shine all the brighter.

Zenith seared its way through the air before Celestia, and its light glinted orange on her warplate and mimicked the crown of flames. She ground a hoof against the storm cloud, sensing the energy it contained, energy eager to be used. The four strains of color in her mane split from one another and curled about her face. “Look at me,” she said to her father.

Titan turned to regard her, his face not showing the least amount of curiosity or worry.

“Do you know the first rule of immortality?” Celestia asked him. The faintest expression of anger passed over Titan’s face as the muscles beneath his eyes constricted. “You will die.”

“You will die,” Luna echoed, taking a step towards him. “In the grand unravelling of time, this must come to pass.”

Celestia moved closer to her father as well, each step of her hooves creating a small discharge of electrical energy, a burst of light. “This must come to pass,” she said.

Titan turned his gaze from Celestia to Luna. His horn glowed, and he was encased by his black armor, plates echoing with a hollow sound as they closed around his body. “There is only one rule,” he said, looking back again upon the beam of light that pierced the heavens.

Like the dust being blown away from a buried treasure, the stream of light before him parted and flowed off of an object hidden within. It dwindled and thinned, until at last it was only a thread of energy bisecting a long, slender shaft of darkness. The light ran through the center of Singularity, and the blade split into two lengths and came to rest at Titan’s sides. The shaft of energy resumed its regular ascension.

Sheet lightning ripped its way across the sky, crossing from one horizon to another in three strokes, arcing around The Citadel’s beam. The sound of thunder layered atop itself was nothing to Titan’s voice.

“Mine,” he said.

Celestia sent a single thought to her sister. Now.

They converged on Titan simultaneously, coming at him from both sides to bring their blades down upon his head. A shower of incandescent white sparks erupted from Zenith’s edge as it met Singularity. Titan held Luna’s and Celestia’s blades still, parallel to one another. It seemed that even in combat, he was meticulous.

At half its strength, Titan’s weapon was stronger than Celestia’s, but it was not a tremendous difference. This was a winnable fight.

Still, Titan’s advantage meant that he had command of their blades. He threw them back with a contemptuous flick of Singularity’s halves, then rounded on Luna as Celestia was sent staggering.

Luna ducked under a swipe with her measureless grace, then caught another on Nadir, her blade ringing like a bell and throwing out a corona of wraithlike wisps as she pivoted it back into position. She had always been the better fighter. It had made her Terra’s favorite.

It didn’t matter. In the second that it took for Celestia to throw herself back at her father, Titan’s blades buffeted against Luna’s defenses like the storm beneath, crashing against Nadir again and again. Each impact put Luna another inch out of her hoofwork, another step off her guard. At last he batted Nadir away and drove a spell into Luna’s chest so hard it tore at the clouds beneath them as it catapulted her through the air.

Then he rounded on Celestia, and it was all she could do to hold her ground. She rolled out of the way of deadly swipes, blocked his blades with barriers of pure magic, stalled his approach with Zenith, and threw herself away from unarmed strikes that could shatter boulders.

We can’t fight him with just our blades, Luna. Use everything you have.

Luna burst from the thunderhead beneath them, trailing a crackling stream of harvested elemental energy. She threw her hooves forward and an angry red bolt of lightning shot forward to smite the king.

He caught it on an armored hoof, and the lightning vanished without a trace. Titan beat his wings once, crossing the distance between himself and Luna to stab at her with his black blades.

Luna melted into a swarm of bats that threw themselves past Titan just as Celestia shattered Zenith and sent it at the King. The incorporeal swarm pulled itself together beside Celestia, and they met Titan’s next onslaught together, catching the halves of Singularity on the weapons of night and day.

As soon as they did, Celestia encased an armored hoof in telekinetic energy and drove it into the King’s chest. The strike met armor as hard as Titan’s mind over skin that could shatter a diamond, but it threw her father back, sending him spinning away into the storm like a stone. It also shattered Celestia’s foreleg into a hundred fragments, each no larger than a pebble. She reformed her leg with a thought, and they plunged back into the fight.

Above the raging storm and their battling armies, the gods dueled. Celestia and Luna had the advantage of numbers, but they struggled to maintain the advantage of position. They ducked under and flipped over Titan’s blades, used shields and moment fields as they worked in tandem to keep him between them.

It was difficult. Titan whirled and stepped out of every one of their assaults, using the momentum from one strike to carry him into the next. He was the center of a shower of magical power, and he forsook grace and subtlety for pure technique and power. His blows hammered against Celestia’s defenses. His maneuvers broke her martial composure.

He struck with speed, power, and precision; he never seemed to be out of position or caught off guard by Celestia’s or Luna’s spells; he never resorted to misdirection. Titan’s apparent plan was simple: he would wear them down. He’d simply fight them until they ran out of power and then claim another victory in the game.

Titan moved with absolution, fought with the knowledge that he was unstoppable. The more Celestia found herself beaten back by the terrifying strength and will behind Singularity, the more she felt her sense of Titan’s arrogance ebb and her own feeling of hubris rise. As he threw them away again and again, like a school bully playing king-of-the-castle, the more it became apparent that Titan was very, very good at this.

That didn’t make things hopeless, though. It just made the game they were playing a difficult one.

Celestia sent a solemn thought to her sister. It is time, I think, to push our divinity to its limits.

Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Applejack were in the front of the army, which meant that they got to see the enemy first.

They’d run through the still-damp forest, a thunderous stampede of ponies. Branches had whipped at their faces and underbrush had been flattened under their hooves, but further into the Everfree, the smaller plants began to clear and give way to the larger, ancient trees. It was there that they met the first host of monsters.

They broke into the clearing of sentinel trees, their way lit by a hundred hovering magelights— and in Pinkie Pie’s case, a pair of goggles that let her see in the dark. It was important, they had decided, to keep running at the enemy no matter what they saw. To keep up the charge. It wouldn’t do to have the army see them falter.

Which was why, when they saw what the forces of darkness had mustered and every ounce of their instincts screamed at them to run away, they ran on. And an army of ponies followed them.

The first thing they saw were the snakes: each as long as a house, with horn-like crests atop their heads and slitted yellow eyes. They coiled around the trees of the forest, watching and waiting for their prey.

Between the trees, gathered in packs, were timberwolves, warped wood and sinew poised, their backs arched and bristling. Standing apart from the wolves were spiders larger than wagons, their dripping pincers clearly visible against the multicolored glow of the magelights.

Manticores. Giant scorpions. Ethereal bears. They stretched back into the forest, numberless as their eyes were pitiless. A group of trees moved, far in the distance, and Pinkie Pie realized that it was probably a hydra. How many creatures were there, compared to the amount of ponies behind them?

Pinkie Pie did a mental inventory. Eight razor-edged magic hoof blades, two of which were loaded and the other six of which magnetized to her back. Two harpoons, each with a coil of near-invincible cord forty-four feet long and two millimetres thick, hanging from her flank. Six Pinkie Fireballs. Four Pinkie Smokers. Four Pinkie Boomers. Four Pink Field Entanglement Devices. Four legs, each ending in a hoof. Forty three teeth—hopefully her lack of a second left-side molar wouldn’t put her at a severe disadvantage.

They kept running, forward toward Titan’s army. What would it be like to kill a living creature, Pinkie Pie wondered. It would feel just like the puppets, it just wouldn’t disappear after it stopped breathing. Whatever blood they spilled wouldn’t wash away. Not tonight.

Astor Coruscare had written in Ponies Make War that a pony needed to be trained to kill. She’d outlined a regimen for the sole purpose of stripping away a pony’s equinity in the face of the enemy.

How did Pinkie Pie know that? Twilight Sparkle knew it, that was how. And Twilight was at the head of the other half of the army, far out of sight, but not out of reach.

None of them had training, but that was okay: the less a monster looked like a pony, the less they’d hesitate. And two months of Titan’s world had taught them all to kill or be killed anyway.

In the dark of the night, more details resolved themselves as Pinkie Pie drew closer to the enemy. The spittle, sticky and shining in the mouth of a manticore. The sheen of venom at the points of a spider’s pincers. The scattered magelight reflecting off of a scorpion's chitin. The smell of mouldering wood emanating from the timberwolves to mix with the scent of the damp earth beneath her hooves.

But all of her senses were mere background noise to the sound of thundering hooves and screaming ponies that roared through the normally silent Everfree Forest. As the two forces drew to a close, their enemies hissed and clacked and growled. In the chaos, a single name was whispered, barely even heard by the pony who uttered it.

A slither of enchanted steel against a tight sheath, and Pinkie Pie spoke her first name. “Blue Moon.”

A scorpion loomed ahead of her, its tail arcing out over its back to stand almost ten feet in the air. As Pinkie closed, it brought the envenomed weapon down in a strike that would crush her to death before it would have poisoned her.

Pinkie threw herself forward, and the point of the tail crashed into the ground behind her, sending up a spray of dirt. She came out of her roll carrying her momentum to fire a blade into what she figured was its mouth, and was rewarded with a spray of ichor.

A pincer the size of Pinkie’s torso came at her from the left, and she cleared it in one gravity-defying leap. Pinkie’s hooves touched down on carapace thicker than Applejack’s warplate as she landed on the scorpion’s back.

Twilight’s magical redesign of Pinkie Pie’s armor had mostly been to cut down on weight. She’d removed most of the straps and made everything attach via magical magnetic fields, and taken out the compressed gas in favor of a propulsion system that gathered energy from the air around Pinkie Pie and turned it into kinetic force.

But she’d also made other improvements. She’d made Pinkie Pie’s blades, for one; she’d also worked in the Element of Laughter for its protective enchantments. Finally, Twilight had taken Pinkie Pie’s request and incorporated a blade retrieval system.

They’d decided magnets weren’t strong enough and looked for alternatives. Pinkie Pie had offered one: Why not just rewind all the moving it does going out to bring it back in, like a yoyo? Twilight had laughed at the suggestion and explained that that was not how physics worked. Then she’d made it work anyhow.

So when Pinkie Pie, using every shred of her balance to remain atop the back of a giant scorpion, called the blade she’d lodged somewhere in its insectile mouth, it came back to her. The scorpion lurched and shuddered as the blade tore its way through where Pinkie assumed its brain was and punctured the beast’s armor from the inside. It clicked into its holster with a light snakt as the monster collapsed to the ground, eight legs spasming.

Pinkie Pie was already moving. She scrambled across the shaking corpse’s back and sprang into the air, throwing herself toward the rest of Titan’s army.

The closest creature to her, the one she would land right on top of, was a spider twice as tall as she was. It reared up on six back legs, brandishing its pincers as she came down. Pinkie didn’t scream in fear, or let out a battle cry, as she fell toward the monster. Instead, she brought her blades to bear and said, in a voice that was gaining volume:

“Slim Chance.”

Twin slices from her blades relieved the spider of its two front legs, and its pincers closed on thin air as Pinkie Pie rolled beneath it. When she came up of the other side, the spider was already collapsing to the ground, a half-dozen holes spewing insect ichor onto the ground as it twitched spasmodically in the throes of death.

A timberwolf pounced on her, its teeth of glistening sapwood dripping. Pinkie Pie was faster, catching it midair and throwing it to the ground. She stabbed a blade through its neck, then levered its head off to the sound of splintering wood. “Fat Chance too.” A snake tried to swallow her whole, only to have Vorpal snicker-snack it into segments. A bear collided with a nearby tree and collapsed, dead. Applejack appeared in Pinkie Pie’s field of vision a moment later, snapping a broken jaw back into place.

A strange, almost pony-shaped beast made of vines had to be cut into almost twenty parts before it stopped moving. “Tough Luck.”

Pinkie Pie turned to see the rest of the army. The other ponies were not faring nearly as well as the three of them had. They’d formed a rough approximation of a line, but in the time it had taken Pinkie to down four creatures, over a dozen ponies had been killed.

She watched a manticore impale a unicorn with its tail, then toss her away like she was a doll. She saw a pack of timberwolves tear an earthpony apart before they were set upon by a unicorn bladecaster.

Another earthpony ran by, half his skin burnt away by a glistening coat of something slick. Pinkie Pie winced as he screamed then tripped over a dying chimera and hit the ground. He didn’t get back up.

They were dying, and that was bad. They didn’t just need to survive; they needed to win. If they didn’t get to The Citadel before it was finished doing whatever it was doing, they lost.

Silently, Pinkie Pie rolled back into Applejack’s waiting hooves and Applejack threw her into the air. Pinkie Pie went up, her lightweight pegasus-like form propelled by Applejack’s titanic strength. As she spun about, she uncoupled her blades and sheathed them on her back, then slotted two Pinkie Fireballs into her launchers.

At the apex of her ascension, just beneath the canopy line, she spun to face the battling armies. Yes, the ponies were losing; their line was wavering in the places it hadn’t already been broken, and the beasts of the Everfree stretched back as far as they could see.

“Tangerine.”

She shot her fireballs at the monsters to the left and right of Applejack and was rewarded with twin blossoms of incandescent pink fire and the unequine shrieks of their burning enemies. The fires would continue to burn, funneling the creatures into Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Applejack, and drawing some of them away from the rest of the army. That was the best she could do.

But that also meant that when Pinkie Pie landed and took her place by her friends, she found herself facing down a veritable horde of enemies. That was fine with her. Applejack was invincible, Rarity could kill anything, and Pinkie Pie still had plenty of names left to go.

And so they fought on, against a teeming horde of living creatures that seemed to never end. Pinkie cleaved her way through monsters covered in fur, in scales, in feathers, in nothing but bare skin. She killed spiders and manticores, she slew creatures that were made more of wind than of flesh.

She danced with Vorpal, weaving in and out of its diamonds with supernatural coordination. It flitted through the air around her, beside her, in front of her. Whenever a monster avoided one of Pinkie Pie’s blades, Vorpal was there to slice it to ribbons. A scorpion reared at her from one side, and Applejack kicked it in the face. It was soon replaced by a massive spider, and Applejack kicked that one in the face, too.

The Citadel pulsed.

The light emanating from the highest point of the metal fortress intensified and then burst, sending a ripple of magic out and over the entire Everfree. It washed over Pinkie Pie, and she was overcome with a feeling of lethargy.

She just wanted to stop fighting. Because what was she fighting for, really? Did any of it matter? Just sit down, she felt herself thinking. Just sit down and die. She had no name. No friends. All of the worry in her chest, all that tight ball of anxiety that had built itself over two months, fled her in an instant. Why spend so much time worrying about whether they would win or lose? It was like all the bad parts, all the parts of her that made her hurt, vanished in the blink of an eye.

It only lasted for an instant, but that was long enough. Pinkie Pie came out of... whatever that had been to find that while she’d idled, a timberwolf had pinned her to the ground.

Pinkie felt a sharp, crunching pain as teeth of splinters tore through her armor and into one of her forelegs. Its eyes gleamed like emeralds as it bore down on her, its breath rank with the smell of sawdust. She tried to wrench her foreleg away, but the timberwolf bit harder.

Her free foreleg met its own as she struggled to get her blade into a stabbing position, but try as she might, Pinkie Pie couldn’t level her hoof with the timberwolf’s chest. It wrenched its jaw again, tearing at her flesh, but Pinkie Pie was far more concerned with the shadow looming behind it, a massive creature, taller than the ancient trees, with three heads. The hydra.

Pinkie Pie tried to figure a way out of the wolf’s grip. Applejack and Rarity were too engaged with a manticore to help her, and Twilight...

Twilight Sparkle was there.

A lightning flash of violet light, and Twilight stood over Pinkie Pie as two halves of the timberwolf fell away. She looked immaculate, untouched by the conflict that raged around them. The stars in her cape still burned, her halo still sang around her head in a perfect circle, and her face was devoid of any expression whatsoever.

She turned her head to face the manticore and it was flattened to the ground by a hammer blow of telekinesis. Rarity put it down with her blade as she stared at Twilight.

Twilight barely acknowledged their presence, instead turning and taking two steps away from them to face the oncoming horde. As Pinkie Pie’s eyes followed the mare into battle, it became apparent that the timberwolf that had taken advantage of her incapacitation was merely the fastest wolf in its pack. The rest of them were arriving now, lunging at Twilight with feral abandon.

What happened next was like watching a pony move through a crowd in fast motion: a push here, a nudge there as Twilight shifted her way forward. It took the better part of two seconds, and when Twilight stopped moving, blades held aloft, every timberwolf was dead.

The hydra loomed, easily ten times the size of anything they’d fought. Three heads, each of them a uniform grey against the black thunder clouds that swirled above them. One of the heads bent over, swooping down at Twilight, then roared. Flecks of saliva were thrown out of its maw by the force of the sound.

Twilight looked up at the hydra, frowned in the same manner a pony might frown upon seeing a raincloud, then sent twenty seven shards imbued with kinetic energy down its throat. The mouth snapped shut, and the monster’s eyes shot up in surprise just as its neck was blown into a fountain of gore. A well-aimed, hair-thin beam of violet light separated the other heads from the body.

The Godslayer’s face showed no disgust as she was covered in the creature’s blood. Nor did it show pleasure. Twilight’s face was an expressionless mask devoid of anything but resolution.

A manticore was constricted to death by a set of purple, glowing chains. A hissing snake was reduced to a bubbling puddle of muck by another slung spell. A small ursa was diced like a tomato as Twilight teleported over half a dozen times in the space of a second whilst working her blades.

They saw her, they prepared for a fight, and then they died. Was this how a regular pony felt watching Pinkie Pie? How was anything in the forest supposed to measure up to power like that? No wonder they were such an inspiration.

The monsters began to pull away from Twilight, receding into the shadows between the ancient trees. Twilight appeared at Pinkie Pie’s side as she stood.

“Rarity,” Twilight called out, “I need a bandage.”

Pinkie Pie heard the sound of tearing cloth as Rarity ripped a part of her robe away. She felt a gentle prod against her bleeding foreleg, and lifted it up so that Twilight could wrap it.

“Gee, Twi.” Pinkie’s voice was strained. “Where did you learn all... that.”

“I can know everything you know, remember?” Twilight said, tugging on the cloth with her magic to make sure it was tight. “Including muscle memory. But most of that was Astor Coruscare. A little Terra, and some bits of Nihilus. I don’t come up with much of it myself. And despite all of it, I don’t know anything useful about medicine. All I can do is wrap this up.”

“It’s okay, Twi,” Pinkie Pie said. “I can fight on three legs.”

“Good, because that spell is almost complete, but we’re almost there. Stay at the front and make sure the line holds.”

“Twilight, darling,” Rarity said. “You’re not staying here?”

Twilight shook her head. “That storm isn’t moving nearly fast enough, and it’s too low. It’s going to spill any second now and we’re right under it. There’s something else, too. Something’s up there with them. Rainbow Dash needs my help.”

Applejack stepped over the shattered fragments of a timberwolf. “You do what you gotta do, Twilight.”

“The final approach to The Citadel is clear ground,” Twilight said. “If all goes well with the storm, we’ll meet you there. Stay safe.” Her blades exploded into dozens of tiny fragments that reformed into razorlike wings. She took off, her cape of stars catching the air.

They watched her go. “Well then,” Rarity said. “Back to it, I suppose.”

Applejack grunted. “How’s that battle cry go again?” she asked. She looked back over her shoulder. “Hey!” she shouted.

The ponies in the army looked up from their respite. “We ain’t done yet!” Applejack shouted. She pounded a hoof on the fragment of a timberwolf, and it made a cracking sound that was felt more than it was heard. “I’ve still got blood in my veins and fury in my heart, and Titan still thinks he’s a king! I say that means there’s work to be done! So ponies! Make war!”

And they did. Another thunder of hooves, and Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rarity took the lead. Another battle would lie ahead. How many more after that one? How many until they ran out of soldiers?

“Applejack,” Rarity said. “Your hat is askew.”

Applejack frowned. “And?”

“So,” Rarity puffed. “Straighten you hat.”

Applejack looked at Rarity. “Does it really matter?”

“Ugh,” Rarity said. “Carrying an argument whilst running. When did I get so... so fit?”

“Uh, guys?” Pinkie Pie asked.

The enemy had regrouped, with all the nightmarish severity they’d had before and not even a hint of diminished numbers. New monsters now, too: bats made out of fog, strange, hovering lights that glowed eerily, and here and there amongst the trees, a cockatrice.

An earsplitting, reptilian shriek cut through the night air. Each of the three ponies looked up to see a familiar green form set against Titan’s storm.

“Well damn,” Applejack said. “They’ve got a dragon.”

“It must be like, their leader!” Pinkie Pie shouted. “Like the hydra. We kill it and they scram!”

The dragon dipped along its course, diving low toward the pony army. It bore down on them with a terrifying speed.

“Move!” Applejack shouted.

Its path was clear. The dragon unfolded its wings just before it hit the ground, and they caught enough air to halt its fall and bring it into a sweeping line.

Ponies were thrown to the ground by the passing beast’s undercurrent, and Rarity and Pinkie Pie were pushed back by the wave of wind it made when it landed.

Applejack stood her ground. “Well, Rarity? You’re the knight.”

Rarity picked herself up off the ground, then frowned at the scattered fragments of Vorpal. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The dragon fixed its eyes upon them, then picked up an enormous claw and began to walk towards them. Thump.

“Knights kill dragons,” Pinkie Pie said. She thought that one was obvious.

“You’re always sayin’ it,” Applejack said. “Titles are important.”

Thump. Pinkie Pie could hear its breathing: heavy and rasping. She could almost smell the smoke pouring from its nostrils. Actually, Pinkie Pie realized with a sniff, she could smell the smoke.

“Applejack!” Rarity said her name in that petulant way she’d said it a thousand times before. “When have I ever said that?”

Applejack didn’t deign to give the green dragon a wayward glance as it roared at them, instead focusing all her attention on glaring at Rarity.

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “So there was that one time. But you’re helping me with this dragon.”

Applejack fixed her stetson. “Always, Rarity.”

“I’m helping too!” Pinkie Pie shouted as she loaded some explosives onto her foreleg.

“And please,” Rarity said. Fourteen diamonds tessellated into one of the world’s most famous unicorn blades. She turned on the dragon. “The proper form of address is Knight Commander.”