“Moonbow…” a soft, almost gentle moan of a voice murmured through the murky depths of darkness which composed my unconsciousness. For a moment, I tried to ignore the calls to leave that peaceful limbo, that ray of light slicing through my blissfully dark state of slumbering unbeing, a time outside of time when I didn’t have to worry about reality and all it demanded of me. “Moonbow Dash, wake up already!”

I mumbled something myself, not quite sure what I was saying, but judging from the wet, clammy, and downright squishy slap I received, it wasn’t anything courteous.

“Hey!” I all but shrieked, my high-pitched voice unable to convey speech in any other fashion. I bolted upright, my large, bat-like ears angled flat against my head as I reached up a foreleg clad in a dark blue coat to rub the place where I’d been struck. My hoof came away with a faint smear of blood, but judging from the smell of age and dark magic, it wasn’t my own. At least it served as a sort of morning snack, as much as I didn’t like lich blood.

The lich in question, a mare named Elegy who managed to hide her decay a little better than most of her kind, was already walking back towards the campfire, all of which was upside-down. Sighing and deciding I’d have to get her back later for that, I swung off the gnarled old tree branch from which I’d been hanging and spread my leathery wings to allow me a soft landing. The ashen ground was littered with hoof-prints, a mixture of neat, even rows and more haphazard indentations bearing the signs of claw marks. Despite the obvious source of the former in my rotting friend, who was now warming herself by the campfire, the source of the latter was nowhere to be found.

Keeping a fair distance from the crackling flame, I took to the air and did a short circle around our campsite. The scent of the final member of our party was strong, in some places more than others when she felt like marking her territory (much to Elegy’s disgust), but the lycanthrope herself was absent.

“Where’s Poison Apple?” I asked, alighting on a different dead tree and hanging upside down once more, wrapping my wings tight around me. As much as I would have enjoyed the greater warmth of the fire, being a vampire meant that I had more abhorrence to the light than either of my friends, and so my wings would have to do.

“She said something about sniffing a rabbit’s burrow and went off to investigate,” Elegy replied, gently prodding the firewood with a twig held aloft by the ethereal glow of her magic. It always amazed me how a lich’s horn could produce a glow that was somehow light and darkness at the same time; I supposed that’s why they called it dark magic, though I had to admit I’d never really known any other kind. Well, scratch that; any other kind of which I was at least somewhat tolerable. “If you ask me we should make do with what provisions we have, but you know she won’t listen to anything I say when she catches whiff of something.”

I chuckled, knowing all too well what Elegy meant. Nopony could pry Poison Apple’s nose off of a scent, even if it was just her own wagging tail.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We are running a bit low, and you know you and Poison Apple are the only ones who can stomach that centuries-old canned gunk.”

“It’s not my first choice in nutrition either,” Elegy huffed, the mere mention of the fungal soup and toadstool jam she had to eat causing her to wrinkle her nose. She was lucky it didn’t fall off when she did that. “But it’s better than wasting time we could be spending reaching Canterlot. We’re so close…I simply couldn’t bear it if we came all this way just to be cut short at the very end.”

I peered up over the skeletal canopy of grasping dead tree branches, catching sight of our destination against the light of the Trinity. The Holy City of Darkness, or Canterlot for short, was likely just a day’s gallop away from where we were now. I likely could have easily flown there myself, but I didn’t want to risk going it alone. I could scout ahead, sure, but my friends needed me just as much as I needed them. We had better odds of surviving if we tackled this thing together.

“Any updates on the signal?” I asked.

“I haven’t checked since we made camp yesternight,” Elegy said. Remedying the situation, she levitated a small, portable radio out of her saddlebags and set it on the ground. The antique was dented, rusted, and much of the paint had chipped away long ago, but Elegy had kept it working as best she could. Poison Apple and I were indebted to her for that alone; neither of us had the head for ancient technology like that. It was a wonder the radio had survived the War of Chaos and Darkness at all, let alone the intervening centuries since the Armageddon.

With a bit of magical fiddling, Elegy had the radio springing to life, electronic whispers attempting to sound slightly-less muffled through a haze of static feedback. Elegy messed with the knobs a bit and got the sound quality as clear as she could, a single voice making its way out the aged speakers.

“…can hear this, I’m Princess Eventide, royal apprentice to Her Departed Majesty Nightmare Moon, broadcasting from the palace in Canterlot,” the voice said, I’d heard this same message more times than I cared to count, but I listened raptly all the same. Sometimes the message changed, and we needed all the information we could get. “Please, if anypony is still out there, if anypony at all can hear me, come to the palace. The Trinity grows nearer to the planet every day, and if we don’t act soon, it’ll collide and destroy us all. The apocalypse will have just been the beginning—nopony will survive the Moondrop. I can stop it, but I need your help! I need all the help I can get! Please, if anypony can hear this, I’m Princess Eventide…”

Elegy switched the radio off. We shared a strained look. No updates, then. There hadn’t been any all week. Eventide usually broadcasted more updates than that…if it was even Eventide, as a lot of ponies sincerely doubted she’d survived the blasting of Canterlot if even Nightmare Moon hadn’t been able to do so.

To be perfectly honest, we weren’t even sure if this was a legitimate broadcast ourselves. Sometimes I sincerely doubted it was, but I had to do something. All you had to do was look up and see the Trinity and know we wouldn’t last another century if they kept descending like that. Even the older liches could remember them being higher up, and records further back placed them higher still. Of course, before that, they hadn’t been the Trinity at all.

Back then, of course, it had been very different indeed. Back before chaos magic rained from the sky in pillars of mad, horrific light and turned the Lunar Empire into an infinite asylum, before Lord Discord sent his warped, freakish ponies to invade our homelands, before Nightmare Moon Herself was assassinated—but not before She paid that demonic draconequus back in full—the Trinity had been whole.

Back then...it had been the Moon.

“Moonbow!” howled a voice. My ears perked up—er, down—as I heard clawed hooves racing through the undergrowth. “Elegy! Come quickly!”

Poison Apple suddenly burst out of the woods, her chest heaving, leaves and mud spattered across her shaggy fur. Her black Stetson hat had flown back in her mad dash and was now hanging on to her neck only by its string, and there was a wild, frenzied look in her eyes.

“What is it?” I asked, suddenly very nervous as I dropped from my branch and flew over to hover around her, scanning for any signs of spell-marks, wounds, or other form of injury. She seemed unhurt, if incredibly dirty—something Elegy would have moaned about endlessly if Poison Apple hadn’t looked so deadly urgent.

“Monsters, somepony in danger, no time!” she barked before turning tail and rushing back into the forest. Elegy and I spared a quick glance before I took to the air, tracking Poison Apple with my echo-sight while Elegy put out the fire before speeding after us. She wouldn’t be able to keep up with us given her decay (one of the perils of dark magic, she had once explained, even if it didn’t’ actually kill the spellcaster), but hopefully we wouldn’t be going that far. Poison Apple couldn’t have been hunting too far, could she have been?

Poison Apple was headed nearer to the base of the mountain on which Canterlot remained precariously situated. However, long before we reached the foothills, I caught sight of the collapsed thatched roofs and burnt plaster of what must have once been a suburb of the dark metropolis. An old wooden sign, already overgrown with the sort of mushrooms that thrived in the darkness and had grown unhindered for ages, proclaimed that this little burg had once been Ponyville.

An odd name, but I quickly became more concerned with the pony galloping towards us through the derelict houses and shops. At first I was afraid she was charging us, and I prepared to let loose a sonic shriek that would hopefully at least stun her long enough to let Poison Apple use those claws and lycanthropic strength of hers. However, the truth of what was happening made itself all-too-apparent when the monsters the pony was fleeing came roaring out of the ruins.

They were almost as big as the buildings which still stood, their flesh—if you could even call it that—a swirl of amorphous shadow-stuff and shimmering starlight. Miniature galactic spirals formed their eyes, and when they snapped and slobbered with maws toothed with tiny comet-tails I glimpsed what could only be described as the deep heart of a black hole. Some were ursine, others goat-like or even akin to giant scorpions. One thing was for sure, though—the mere sight of them sent shivers down my spine. There was a sense that they simply didn’t belong here, not on earth, not anywhere this far from the inky voids behind the furthest stars.

“Astrals!” Poison Apple howled, loping forward with her teeth bared, growling. I could see her fur gaining silvery glints in the light of the Trinity, her muscles bulging as her snout became more pronounced, filling up with fangs that would put even mine to shame. She was giving into the moonlight, giving herself over to her lupine side.

Shaking my head, I grinned as my eyes narrowed. I wasn’t going to let her have all the fun! Letting out that sonic shriek I had been holding back, I sped down towards the constellation monsters, allowing the bloodlust deep in my soul out of its coffin. The shadows began to move with me, swaying as if somehow affected by a breeze as I zoomed by, before they left the ground entirely and wrapped around me like a cloak. The tangible darkness snapped out into razor-sharp blades at the end of each of my hooves, my wingtips, and my tail.

I flew under and over the astrals, letting my swords slice through their flesh and spilling out hot blood that might as well have been liquid starlight for all it stung my weak eyes. Despite the painful light, though, I couldn’t resist flying back a second time, narrowly avoiding the swiping claws and biting teeth of the astrals to sink my fangs into one such monstrosity and taking my fill of its lifeblood.

The creature howled in agony, visibly shrinking and withering as I consumed its very essence. By the time one of the other creatures batted my off, slicing into my own hide and sending me tumbling into the ashen dirt, my prey was already crumbling into stardust.

I winced at my own wounds, but my thirst had been, for the moment, sated. Engorged on the blood, I concentrated and my wounds sealed themselves before I launched back into the air.

We have them beat! I thought.

I thought too soon.

An eerie blue glow shot past me, nearly clipping a wing but tearing a hole in the solidified darkness of my shadow-shield. I cried out in pain, feeling the magic as if it had penetrated my flesh.

Zooming up high, I was suddenly in the midst of a storm of the spectral glows.

“Kill the heretics!” shouted a voice I’d never heard, quickly followed by the battle cries of several others. I dodged the ghostly bullets as best I could, finally darting behind the chimney of a roof that was mostly intact. Peering out from my cover, I spied several ponies firing weapons of some kind from the windows of other buildings. My echo-sigh told me they were mostly liches, levitating their firearms as they unloaded their barrage onto Poison Apple and I. I realized they were avoiding harming the astrals, and the pony which had been fleeing them all seemed to have vanished. “Kill the traitors! Kill those who would dare betray the Holy Darkness!”

Betray the Holy Darkness?! They were the ones consorting with monsters woven of starlight! I was glad that at least none of them were necromancers. All they seemed to be able to do was shoot those odd-looking firearms...wait. No. Firearms shot tiny pieces of metal. Those were...oh, no!

“Poison Apple!” I shouted. “Take cover! Those are soulblasters!”

I didn’t know where my lupine friend was, though, which terrified me. I couldn’t sense her with my echo-sight, which meant she was either doing the smart thing and hiding, or she had been...no. Not thinking that!

Flying over the other side of the house, I slipped into a window, drawing the shadows of the dusty old room further about me to conceal myself from whoever might be inside. Monsters, I could handle. But soulblasters?! Soulblasters were the darkest of dark magics. Necromancers could bind the souls of the dead, tethering them to the earth to do their bidding, but even in the days before the War of Chaos and Darkness the practice of necromancy had at least been a respectable profession—at least in the Lunar Empire. Soulblasters were quite the opposite. Soulblasters did just as their name implied—destroy the soul so that there was nothing to summon back in the first place.

Thank the Holy Dark nopony seemed to be in the room. I slunk over to a window and peered out, keeping the darkness close to me so that anypony looking in would see an empty window. The astrals had either retreated back to the further ruins or were licking their wounds. Poison Apple and the fleeing pony were nowhere in sight, but those crazy gunner ponies were beginning to exit their ruined shelters, their weapons still at the ready.

Why were they coming out into the open? That didn’t make any sense—

“We know there’s one of you left,” a voice shouted, and I looked out to see a lich standing apart from the others. He was less decayed than most, though not quite as whole as Elegy, and he was also better dressed. Most of the others wore rags, but he had what looked like an old set of ancient mechanical Night Guard armor. “Come out and surrender or your friends will be given the punishment they deserve.”

My blood ran colder than usual as I saw other liches drag out Poison Apple and the cloaked pony from earlier. The latter was shivering in fear, hanging their head so as not to stare the end of a soulblaster directly in the eye. Poison Apple, however, was being held down by a number of liches with silver ropes. The silver had sapped her wolfish strength and she was back to her slightly-less-hairy self, though thrashing and trying her best to break free of the bindings. I knew Poison Apple would rather go down in a blaze of glory than willingly surrender, so that was no surprise. I only wished I could save her before her pride got the best of her.

“Where are you, Elegy?” I whispered worriedly.

“Now, everywhere,” whispered a ghostly wisp of a voice in my ear. Turning, I saw nothing, but there was the sense of a presence in the room with me, eerie yet not menacing. I grinned despite myself. It seemed Elegy had finally caught up to us. “The Mistress asks that you stay hidden whilst she goes about her noble work.”

I nodded, getting ready to spring out the window the instant that ‘noble work’ was done.

“Well?!” called out the armored lich in streets below. “Are you coming out or not? My companions’ are a bit trigger-happy, so I wouldn’t—”

FLASH!

A blast of light rocketed into the armored lich, passing right through his suit and sending out beams of radiance from his mouth and eyes. He crumpled to the ground, lifeless, and judging by the way in which he had died, now soulless. The smoking barrel of a soulblaster from one of the other liches turned and began firing on others of their number, the gunner bearing a vacant expression despite methodically murdering their compatriots. Before the others could stop them, others began turning on each other, each adopting that empty look.

The killing went on until only the blank-eyed gunners were left, finally setting down their weapons, taking out knives, and slitting their throats.

To call it unnerving to watch was far more than an understatement, and not for the first time I was glad that Elegy was on our side. Having a necromancer for a friend did indeed have its benefits, however disturbing they may be.

“The Mistress’ noble work is, for now, complete,” whispered that ghostly voice once more. “She bids you to join her on the ground.”

The feeling of somepony else in the room faded. I launched myself out of the window, leaving my cloak of shadows behind as my echo-sight didn’t pick up any other enemies in the immediate vicinity.

Landing beside Poison Apple, I began helping her slide free of the silver restraints, wincing as I saw the burn marks where the silver thread had seared her flesh. She didn’t so much as look at the scorches, merely thanking me for my assistance before congratulating Elegy for a job well done.

Elegy herself was trotting briskly out of the forest at the edge of the town, looking rather pleased with herself. I congratulated her as well, not for the first time, and a little mock-begrudgingly because of that. We’d all saved each other’s hides plenty of times, to the point where we’d started keeping score. This put Elegy one point ahead of me, and she knew it.

Smirking at me, Elegy walked over to the still-shivering pony in the cloak, holding out a hoof that looked like it was on the verge of sloughing off. The other pony flinched back, huddling deeper into their cloak.

“Don’t be afraid,” Elegy said softly, trying her hardest to convey warmth in her dead eyes. “We don’t mean you any harm, dear.”

“Sure don’t,” agreed Poison Apple. “After all, why would we go through all the trouble of savin’ ya’ if we was just gonna rough ya’ up like them others?”

“Stay back!” squeaked out a high-pitched mare’s voice as the cloaked pony’s head jerked back, her hood falling off. A slick curtain of pink mane fell out, no longer hidden by the shabby cloth, and the mare’s wild eyes flicked from one of us to the next with a frenzied energy. Her eyes were unlike anything I’d ever seen outside of a tattered, faded propaganda poster left over from the war, a poster depicting the enemy of Princess and Empire and all creatures of the night. The pupils swirled in a hypnotic spiral, radiating all sorts of random colors in almost dizzying kaleidoscopic configurations.

Elegy’s widened as she hastily backed up, her horn flaring warningly. Poison Apple dropped into a pouncing stance, letting out a low growl, and I bared my fangs, wings flared as the darkness rose all around me into menacing semi-equine shapes.

“Don’t attack!” the mare begged, hastily backing away as well. It was only now that I heard the faintest hints of accent on the edges of her voice. No one whose ancestors had lived in the Lunar Empire sounded like that. “I’m warning you!”

“Give us one reason why we shouldn’t add you to Elegy’s list of thralls?” I demanded.

“Because I can help you,” the mare said. She pulled some sort of small device out of her cloak, holding it closely to her, her other hoof poised above it. “And I want to help you. But if you make me, I’ll end each and every one of us, right here, right now!”

“And how in tarnation do you intend to do that?” Poison Apple huffed.

“This is a remote target signaler,” the pink mare said. “All I have to do is press one button and every last military satellite still left in the sky fires down on this spot.”

“…You’re bluffing,” I said. There was no way that was possible…right? “Those satellites were destroyed by gravity storms when the Moon shattered into the Trinity, and none of that would have happened in the first place if you hadn’t fired chaos lasers on our cities and killed Princess Nightmare Moon! It’s because of chaos ponies like you that the Trinity might kill everypony left!”

“We wouldn’t have fired on you if you hadn’t assassinated Lord Discord!” the mare spat.

“We wouldn’t have needed to if you hadn’t tried to bring back the Sun!”

“Everywhere else in the world was dying without the Sun!”

“We’d die with the Sun!”

“Enough!” Elegy shouted, stomping a hoof. The effect wasn’t quite as impressive as she may have hoped, what with her hoof making a squelching noise upon its impact with the ashy dirt. “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not, draconequus spawn, but if you leave us now we won’t pursue you.”

I shot an incredulous look at my lich friend, but she merely nodded at me.

“Pray that you don’t cross paths with us again,” Elegy finished. “Or there will be trouble.”

The chaos pony nodded, continuing to back away before turning to gallop off. She stopped, however, looking uncertain, before turning back and saying “Thank you for saving me. A word of advice—if you’re following that radio broadcast, don’t. Stay away from Canterlot.”

Huh?

“How did you know we’re seeking Princess Eventide?” I asked, earning a glare from Elegy which made me realize that if the chaos pony hadn’t known already, I’d just confirmed it.

“Everypony in the Afterlands of the Lunar Empire who isn’t tied to a settlement seems to be chasing that signal,” the chaos pony said. “But you all need to stop. Nopony ever comes back, and it just makes everything worse!”

“What a load of malarkey,” Poison Apple spat. “Just like a chaos pony ta’ spread lies.”

“I’m telling the truth!” she insisted. “Princess Eventide isn’t who you think she is. She’s been sacrificing everypony who seeks out her broadcast as part of some giant dark spell to keep the Trinity from falling, but it’s the fact that she’s still alive that keeps the Trinity existing at all. Nightmare Moon’s death broke the Moon because her spirit was tied to it, but with her gone Eventide has taken her place, whether she wanted to or not. If Eventide died, though, the Trinity would shatter completely, and there wouldn’t be a threat anymore!”

I shared a look with my friends. Neither of them seemed to believe the chaos pony either, but there were glimmers of uncertainty in their eyes that mirrored my own.

“Why should we believe you?” Poison Apple wanted to know.

“Here,” the chaos pony said, touching one of the many buttons on her odd device. We flinched for a moment, each looking skyward, but the twinkling stars remained the same as ever, no pillars of chaos magic raining down from the dark heavens. Instead, a holographic display popped up from the end of the device. It was heavily pixelated, but what it showed looked to be an aerial view of Canterlot and the mountain to which it was attached. I could even see the small cluster of buildings on the edge of the display that must have been these ruins of Ponyville.

“This is a live feed from one of the military satellites overhead,” the chaos pony told us. “But this is a scan of magic in the area.”

She hit another button, and the display shifted. The area was suddenly awash with myriad bright colors, the looks of which stung my eyes a little. Elegy, however, looked intently at the colors immediately around the Canterlot mountain, namely at an oddly geometric design radiating out from the center amidst the otherwise haphazardly amorphous smear of colors.

“Those symbols…” she murmured. “That’s impossible…”

“What is it?” Poison Apple asked, and I had to admit that though I could recognize the glyphs as dark magic runes, I couldn’t guess their meaning. That was a lich’s area of expertise, not a vampire’s.

“Those are very, very ancient sigils of power, but very simple ones at that,” Elegy said, sounding unnerved. “Every lich with a grasp of dark magic knows them. Nopony could ever create sigils that large, though, not successfully. The power required to do so would be more than anything even an army of liches could accomplish, and that doesn’t even take into account controlling the spell when it becomes fully active…”

“Could a Princess pull that off?” I said, voicing what was on all of our minds.

Elegy reluctantly nodded, adding “But only by drawing power from somewhere…and there’s only one surefire way of gaining that much power.”

She didn’t have to say what that method was. We all had known even before crossing paths with this odd pink pony that nopony had ever returned from seeking Eventide’s broadcast. It just kept playing, drawing more and more ponies each year.

“Wait a gosh-darn minute,” Poison Apple spoke up. “How do we know this doohickey o’ yours is showin’ us the truth?”

My large ears flicked up at that. My lupine friend had a point—this was all coming from a computer graphic shown to us by a chaos pony, one of the enemies. How were we to know she hadn’t just made the image to fool travelers like us?

“I…can’t prove it’s real,” she replied. “But your lich friend will be able to tell if you get too close to the runes. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m only saying this to try and spare you all from adding to those runes’ power. If I’m lucky, soon they won’t be a problem anymore anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I asked suspiciously.

She looked a little sheepish before saying, quietly, “I’m going to destroy Canterlot.”

All of our eyes widened.

“I can only call down a strike directly where this device is located,” she explained. “If I can make it into the city, I can blow the whole thing to smithereens, and with any luck, Princess Eventide too.”

I wasn’t sure what to think. I knew what I should have been thinking—she was planning on assassinating the last Princess the Lunar Empire had, even if there wasn’t much of a Lunar Empire left, so I should have drained her of blood right then and there in a fit of righteous fury. But try as I might, I just couldn’t work up the urge to feel that way. If anything, I simply felt unsure. After all, what if she was right?

“I don’t care what ya’ say,” Poison Apple huffed, stomping a clawed hoof on the dirt. “We’re goin’ to Canterlot one way or another. If you’re lyin’ like I think ya’ are, then we’ll help Princess Eventide with keeping the Trinity up in the sky, however we can. But if ya’ are tellin’ the truth, then we’ll put a stop to whatever’s really goin’ on up there.”

I shared a look with Elegy and then Poison Apple, nodding my head in turn. As odd as this sudden encounter had been, I wasn’t giving up my quest just yet either. After all, we’d already come so far, and I wasn’t about to let it all be for nothing.

The chaos pony looked conflicted for a moment before finally asking “If you’re sure…could you take me with you?” Seeing the surprise in our eyes, she added “I have to get to Canterlot too, and if you’re going anyway, maybe we could help each other. I’m not much of a fighter, but I know how to use all sorts of technology, and I can help you in other ways too.”

“How do we know you won’t stab us in the back?” Poison Apple demanded. I sighed; my wolfish friend was anything if not blunt.

The chaos pony merely extended her strikingly pink hoof, offering the odd device to us.

“I’m the only one who knows how to use it,” she said. “But I can’t use it if you have it. If you’re right about Princess Eventide, you can keep it—but if you’re not, well…then maybe you can give it back.”

As much as I hated to admit it, I couldn’t see a downside, so I nodded affirmation to my friends. Elegy levitated the device and stuffed it in her saddlebags.

“So…friends?” the chaos pony asked, smiling hopefully. She had an unnaturally wide, toothy grin.

“…Let’s save that bit for later,” I said “For now, how about ‘allies’?”

It seemed good enough for her, as her grin grew even wider and her mane sprung up into a curly mass of fluff with a loud poof sound. Without another word she turned on her hoof and began bouncing in the direction of Canterlot.

Sharing one last uncertain look with my friends, we set off after her, the silhouette of Canterlot towering over us against the light of the Trinity.