Author's Notes:

My suggestion is to adjust your formatting so that the header lines are closer together (less line spacing), also Aerial shows the bolded characters better. If you can't tell it's a wolf's head, the number 7, and a unicorn head.

This is an interlude, an extra story that will be used, hopefully, to help you readers to understand some portions of the story, in this case I plan to have a few chapters to show some of the History of the struggle the world went through before the current era. And maybe to clarify some of the actions of the few who remember this time (the Princesses, Discord, any "immortal" character for example).

Since this is here now, I'll write my little cap off note here: If I'm not very obvious about the importance of these characters please let me know, I'm trying a bit of an experiment here with this. I want to know your opinions on my writing and the little text art things I made (is it hard to tell what they are? The numbers especially.) Anyway, I hope this can add a small amount of depth to the Princesses, especially since in the show they basically have about a twenty minute backstory (but I haven't watched the new season ...).

“They’ve reached the inner wall!” an earth pony bellowed, her ear cropped to the base by a previous battle. Smoke and ash rose above the Gatehouse she mounted, more earth ponies poured cauldrons of boiling oil over the edge of the wall and were rewarded with screams from their invaders. The stars were hidden by the white phosphorus that bloomed all over the city.

“Fire-mages to the square, now!” Necessaria screamed, her broken horn glinted in the firelight with her wing blades. Her short cropped, purple of the dawn mane smoked with the embers that fell into it. She was an alicorn; one of the six new gods on the earth, her demesne was thought, cooperation, and the joining of the disparate. “Bring forth the artillery, post haste!” she bellowed as ponies rushed around her. Muscle bulged under her lustrous coat and, despite the fires, stars danced in her eyes.

“Mages approaching the wall!” the mare with the missing ear called again. “Fall back!”

Unicorns dressed in red tinted, boiled leather armor gathered around Necessaria. Their horns glowed, carved magical runes stood out in stark relief. The process to create them was painful, and it robbed the unicorns of the ability to use many other high powered spells, but the spell carved into the bone of their horns was amplified to a deadly level. These unicorns were prepared to launch a wall of fire toward the gate.

Voices filled the air from the other side of the wall, glorious and harmonious they rose in song. Magic built in the air, palpable and visible as the enemy’s mages shaped it. In an instant the gatehouse imploded, its own mass used against it to compress it into a momentary singularity.

“Fire!” Necessaria bellowed, and her fire-mages let loose with their deadly attacks. The circle of mages that had meant to enter immediately were burned to ashes and their supporting forces were pressured into a short retreat.

“Your Majesty! Princess Gracia is under heavy attack in front of the Southern Gate!” a pegasus mare shouted to Necessaria. Her pink emblazoned tunic looked red in the fire and smoke.

“Don’t let them break the line! Get those ballistae ready to fire on the double! The fire-mages can only keep the heat on for so long!” Necessaria bellowed to her troops as she spun around and took to the air. Her powerful wings whisked her away toward the South Gate, she had to fight off a cough in the ash of collapsing city and burning flesh.

From up here the battle took on a whole new light. Orange and red fire spread in a spiderweb out across the once great oceanside city. Once the greatest trade center of pony kind, now a deadly pot of horror and suffering. The Enemy had come by land, the white phosphorous had set half the city aflame before anypony was able to react. Everything but the inner walls burned now, and she could see the metallic glint of the enemies’ armour as they marched through the once proud streets.

And something else darted through the shadows between the fires.

Necessaria cursed under her breath in fear and anger, her wings beat double time to speed her toward the South Gate. Ponies were locked in combat there with the enemy, spears and swords flashed, shields rang, ponies screamed in pain and fear.

But there was her Sister: Gracia, all her pink and golden glory aimed toward the battle. She fought not with the rage or fear or determination that anypony else fought with, instead she fought with words. Her voice rang out over the battle, a light in the darkness for her power was Hope, a hope that drove the battle into the hearts of her ponies but endeavored to ask for peace. And yet her words could Dash the enemies' legs out from under them and rob them of the will to stand and fight again.

The shadows around her boiled.

“Gracia!” Necessaria tried to call to the other alicorn, magic enough in her shadow of a horn to make her voice loud enough to crack the armor of anyone who was too nearby, ally or enemy.

But it came too late. A flash of black and brown fur, claws and teeth alight in the fires of the war, and dressed in armour as hard as diamond but liquid like water. They slammed into Gracia’s side and cut off her voice, teeth dug into her beautiful neck. Gracia did not scream, she hardly had the time to. One giant wolf was joined by another and then three more, in less than an instant pink turned to gore splattered red.

Necessaria let out a vicious battle cry as she divebombed, magic lances impaled the gruesome beasts and killed them instantly. Necessaria slammed into the ground, a spiderweb of cracks exploded from the cobbled street below her. Somepony screamed out “Blood-Borns!” in warning to their comrades, but what they should have screamed was “RUN!” Too late again, a pack had descended on this district. Quickly they allied with the marching enemy, their masters, and decimated the tight formations and battle lines of the ponies.

Necessaria saw none of that, she saw only the dead body of a god. Gracia had been a god of hope and grace, now her body lay empty of life, hope, her ever present optimism and most of her blood. This was not a god anymore, it was only a body that should have lived a thousand thousand more years without any marring to her beautiful coat. Necessaria dropped to her knees beside Gracia’s body despite her mind screaming to her to move, that Gracia wasn’t there anymore, and she embraced her dead sister. She closed the blank, fearful stare that haunted her.

Bones cracked and shifted, one of the Blood-Borns was still alive despite Necessaria’s devastating attack. His limbs snapped back into place even as they shifted into a new shape. Forepaws turned to hands, the chest broadened and the shoulders squared, the head shifted and flattened out. The liquid armor shifted around it, never for a moment was it left unprotected. It pulled a shard of stone out from its leg and stood to its full height, impossibly tall on two legs.

A flat face stared back at her, much like their masters’, predator’s eyes shone back at her. It didn’t say anything, it had bitten off its own tongue when it was hit. But she saw the hate in that flat scowl, the immobile ears constantly against its head. The man swung its mangled arm at her, impossibly back in its proper shape with deadly sharp and heavy blades swung at the end of its wrist.

Necessaria’s wing blade cut it in half groin to jaw faster than the blink of an eye. The blades sparked and dented against its armor, ruined, but their task done with the wet splat of the dead impossible creature.

When Celestia and Luna arrived with their reinforcements, the city was already dead. Its keep was no more than a smoldering pile of rubble. They found Necessaria in the bay belly up amongst the shells of merchant ships and fished her out; perhaps the enemy had mistaken her for a simple pegasus and left her for dead. The wound in her neck was hardly mortal to an alicorn, but the light had left her eyes. Necessaria was not dead, but she was well and truly defeated.

It took all of Luna’s skills amongst the dreaming to pull their sister from her self imposed exile within her mind. But when she returned to the waking world all she had to say was: “Dead … she’s dead,” her voice echoed, it questioned itself. Necessaria barely believed the words herself, but she knew it was true. “Gracia is dead,” she confirmed, "What are we if we can be so easily destroyed?"

Nopony knew the answer.

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