Prologue 1: Divergence.

***

In all things there is a moment, a moment where fate moves from one path to another. These are the defining moments of our history - Adolf Hitler surviving a shell in the trenches of World War I, or John F Kennedy being assassinated in November 1963. These moments, if they had not happened or had happened differently, can decide the fates of millions.

The arrival of the portal to Equestria was one such moment for the planet Earth. The portal, at first thought of as a herald of good tidings, soon became the source of an expanding Barrier that annihilated almost the entirety of human civilisation - those who were not incinerated by the deceptively friendly looking pink energy field chose instead to be Converted, to shed their human forms and instead become more ponies. Eventually, only one island remained, the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. They, however, survived - the magic of Earth, long underused, finally reacted against the magic of Equestria, and protected the last humans. For a moment, there was respite.

Then the war began.

It was a brutal, bloody conflict: countless millions of lives, ponies and humans alike fell in brutal conflict, as the last humans - aided by ponies who had seen the insanity that had gripped Equestria - fought desperately to survive the onslaught of the forces of Astra Solamina Maxima, the Alicorn who had once been the benevolent Celestia.

At first, the war was a battle of half-measures and retreats. The human race fell back again and again… until one day, years into the conflict, hope was born in the form of David Elliot, the Avatar of Albion - a man who had already become a hero, now host to the power of Britain herself, chosen to fight for humanity in this, it’s darkest hour, just when we needed him most…

In one world, he succeeded.

In others… we were not so fortunate.

***

London, January 25th, 2030.

David Elliot grimaced slightly at the twinge of pain that ran through his side. He pulled the shrapnel out of his rib, the enhanced healing that Albion's power afforded him already closing the wound. He laughed at the irony - in so many respects, he was stronger, faster and harder than he had been, and yet the power that gave him these edges was also killing him, slowly but surely. He was sure True Grit would have had something to say but... no.

No, that wasn't a good train of thought at all. He had lost enough people, and he was going to lose more before the end. No sense dwelling on those he had failed to save. If he did that, he might never move again for dwelling.

"Elliot," the voice of Hell Blazer said, bringing Elliot's attention back to the here and now. "You nearly done?"

Elliot moved his arm, testing the movement of the side. The pain was still there, sort of, but the twinges were definitely dying down.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I'm done. What's the situation?"

"Pinkie Pie and Shining Armour's deaths don't seem to have slowed them down," the Earth Pony said softly. "If anything, I think they're more pissed off than they were."

"Typical," Elliot sighed. He unsheathed his lucky dagger - the one that had killed Rainbow Dash, 'speed killer' emblazoned into its hilt - and walked to the exit of the small "command centre" (a fancy name for a hastily appropriated corner shop).

As he stepped outside, a soldier fell across the doorway, a spear lodged in his chest. Snarling, Elliot drew his hand cannon and fired at the offending Pegasus, knocking it from the sky. More fire drove the attacking Pegasi back, but that wasn't good enough for Elliot. He charged after them, dagger spinning. Behind him, Hell Blazer and Lyra charged, Lyra's horn flashing with offensive spells.

They turned a corner, only to find themselves facing what must have been forty or fifty Earth Ponies.

"Bollocks," Hell Blazer swore. "Might be an idea to retreat?"

Elliot didn't answer, only taking time to reload his hand cannon. Hell Blazer sighed.

"Should have guessed," he said tiredly. "You want the twenty on the left or the twenty on the right?"

Elliot charged, firing as he went. Lyra stayed put, firing her spells off. Hell Blazer started muttering a series of ancient attack spells, fire forming and shooting off at his words.

The first pony went down with a bullet lodged in his skull. Vaulting over the falling corpse, Elliot stabbed a second pony in the spinal column, before kicking out, sending another sprawling into his comrades. Firing his cannon again, Elliot took out three more ponies, before holstering the weapon and drawing his other dagger. He lashed out, taking down a handful at a time with sliced throats and stabs to the heart. He span around, stabbing another pony in the neck, before pushing the corpse off of his dagger and kicking it into two more ponies. Before the stunned ponies could stand, he stabbed them in their throats, pinning them to the ground. Leaving his daggers in their necks for the moment, he drew his hand cannon and his shotgun, switching the latter to semi-automatic fire: he span around, firing indiscriminately, taking out pony after pony...

"David!" a small voice called out. Elliot span, to find himself facing off against a Unicorn, who fired a spell at him. Elliot blocked the spell with his arm, but the kinetic force drove him to the ground.

The Unicorn gave a feral grin, and moved to send another spell at Elliot -

But then the spell impacted Lyra, who was suddenly stood between them. She yelled in pain as the energy enveloped her, and then she fell to the ground, eyes closed as she fell unconscious from the pain. Angrily, Elliot fired the last round from his hand cannon at the pony, blowing the top of his skull out, before grabbing Lyra and sprinting down the street. Around twenty of the Earth Pony squadron were still active, but they were being pinned down by a combination of Hell Blazer's continued fire spells and several soldiers firing their weapons in a suppressive pattern. Fortunately, these ponies were Royal Guard trained, not human soldier converts, and so their tactics were piss poor by comparison.

"Hell Blazer!" Elliot yelled. "Back to base, now!"

"Right!" the pony said, calling out instructions to the soldiers. With a final blast of hellfire, the yellow Earth Pony ran after his friend.

In the base, Elliot was examining Lyra's wounds. They didn't seem to be serious on the outside, but as far as Elliot was concerned, that was a bad sign - it just meant that her injuries were bad on the inside. Magic tended to be like that.

"Where's the Doctor?!" he bellowed at Hell Blazer as the pony entered the room.

"In a different part of the city," his friend replied, eyes fixed on the injured Lyra. "Oh ponyfeathers... this a magic injury?!"

"Yeah," Elliot said, not commenting on the pony oath Hell Blazer used.

"Horse shit!" Hell Blazer swore, hitting the wall with his hoof. "Horse shit and motherbucking bastarding fucking wankers!"

"Can you help her?!" Elliot asked, ignoring the outburst.

"No idea," Hell Blazer said honestly, looking frustrated and upset. "Maybe if I..."

There was an explosion outside, and the sound of hurried yelling and panicked orders. From the sounds of it, things were getting desperate.

"They're getting closer," Elliot said quietly. "Shit."

"That's a word," Hell Blazer said angrily. "These bastards are tougher than I thought."

Elliot knew that if they moved, the sheer number of ponies out there might overwhelm them all - even the Avatar of Albion couldn't kill an entire army. Then again, if they waited here without trying to escape, they'd be trapped and killed anyway. There seemed to be no way out...

Before he could think of anything else, Lyra let out a cry of pain.

“Shit!” Hell Blazer yelled. “Dave!”

David Elliot cursed under his breath. He didn’t know what to do - how he would be able to reconcile the obvious desperation of their situation with the fact that right here, right now, his friend was dying. Part of him wanted to speak to Hell Blazer about his plan to teleport him to Equestria via a sort of magical portal he would conjure… but that would leave his friends high and dry. Lyra had stood by him through everything, since before Sam had died… he couldn’t just let her die now. Not after all this.

“Hell Blazer, we need a medivac,” Elliot said quickly. He closed his eyes, and a moment later the blade Excalibur was in his hand.

“What are you doing?” his friend asked, narrowing his eyes at Elliot suspiciously.

“Clearing a landing zone,” Elliot said grimly.

***

Breathing heavily, Elliot leaned against a wall as Lyra Heartstrings was loaded onto the medivac helicopter. Standing next to it was the brown winged form of Errant Flight, once a member of the illustrious Grey Squadron founded by Ditzy Doo, and now the leader of Red Squadron, another squadron of the Equestrian Resistance’s Air Force. Flight was alone - the rest of his squadron had fallen trying to get to London.

“It’s heavy up there,” Flight said grimly. “I don’t like it.”

“Can you get this helicopter out of here safely?” Elliot asked, coughing as he spoke - the power of Albion took a heavy toll on his body.

“Yeah, I can get it out of here,” Flight said, “but I’ll need Blue and Green Squadrons to do it and that leaves London undermanned.”

“You let me and the others worry about that,” Elliot said. He sighed. “We need to evacuate the city. I’ll hold a rearguard action at St Paul’s, that should get Commander Sentry’s attention.”

“Yeah, he always did like going for the ‘glorious battles’,” Flight said, smirking derisively. “He’s a bit of a romantic like that.”

“Rule One - use your enemy’s weaknesses against them,” Hell Blazer said sagely, coming up to the two of them. “Lyra’s stowed. Once she gets to better medical facilities up North, she’ll be fine… I hope.”

“More likely to survive there than here,” Flight said grimly.

Elliot blinked, thinking it through, and then walked over to the prone form of Lyra, strapped to a medical gurney.

“I’m not going to be around much longer anyway,” he muttered to her with a finite certainty in his voice. “So you need this more than I do.”

He placed a hand on her temple, and it glowed softly. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and looked right at him, though she didn't seem to be able to properly register what it was she was looking at. He smiled at her: he had just given her a dose of healing magic - the effort involved made him feel sick to his stomach (though he did a good job at hiding it) but it would help stabilise her. The fact that it probably took five months or or so out of him didn’t matter so much to him. Like he had said - he didn’t expect to be around much longer anyway.

Errant Flight flapped his wings once, readying himself to take off. “I’ll drop in on St Paul’s while we're on the way out, tell Redmond to start moving. He’s not gonna like this.”

“He can fuck off,” Elliot said angrily. “We’ve lost the city. We need out.”

Flight didn’t reply to that, instead flapping his wings some more and then took off, following the helicopter as it began to lazily ascend into the air with Lyra, Hell Blazer and whoever else it had picked up onboard.

Elliot sighed. “Good luck, guys. You’re gonna need it.”