It had been a mere four months since the apocalyptic invasion of the Separatist Droid Army, but everything had changed for the land of Equestria.

Princess Twilight Sparkle sat in her new chambers, staring out at the full moon rising gently over the bustling city outside. As it always did in those moments that she found herself idle these days, the lavender alicorn’s mind began to drift to what had happened to her beloved nation. It was hard to believe, even now, that this wasn’t all some terrible nightmare conjured by a malicious demon. But it was no dream. Everything since the day General Grievous had arrived in her backyard had been all too real.

The droid army had devastated Equestria in its vengeful rampage, leaving many hundreds of thousands of ponies dead, and even more left homeless and desolate. Entire cities had been overrun and their inhabitants pitilessly executed. To make matters worse, their opening orbital bombardment had sparked catastrophic fires that had raged throughout the nation’s grasslands, forests, and villages alike with nopony available to control them. Even after the Galactic Republic’s intervention had managed to turn the tide against the mechanical army, these firestorms had continued to spread for days afterwards. Pegasi weather teams and Republic firefighting crews had managed to contain the many blazes with great effort, but even then much of the nation’s carefully-tended natural environment had been razed to the ground. The forested heartlands in particular had been devastated, with such famous sites as the Everfree Forest simply wiped out of existence. Many priceless works of natural art were gone forever, never to be enjoyed by future generations.

But lost beauty was hardly the country’s greatest concern. Such was the number of dead that even now nopony was entirely sure exactly how many had been lost, the preservation of census records having been a very low priority in the immediate aftermath. Many of those that had survived had done so by fleeing into the wilds, leaving their homes behind to be burned by droids. Now these ponies needed homes and food and productive work, none of which Equestria now had in great abundance. Housing prices in those few cities that had endured mostly intact soared to almost unimaginable levels. In a truly sickening display, more than one cruel or greedy or simply desperate pony had taken advantage of homeless refugees, stripping them of what little they had before abandoning them, counting on the general breakdown of the government to let them slip away into the faceless masses. Even sadder was the fact that this worked more often than not, what was left of the state apparatus having little time left to pursue petty con artists, and no jails to place them in any way.

It was the Galactic Republic that had come to the rescue once again, their men descending on the ashen plains of Equestria to set up prefabricated refugee camps. These were neither especially comfortable nor designed with ponies in mind, but they represented food and some manner of shelter for millions, which was far better than nothing at all. The Clone Wars had given the Republic considerable experience in accommodating refugees on war-torn planets, and it was thanks to them that many more equines had not perished alone and starving in the ruined wilds.

Just because some god seemed to hate them, so many ponies had been slain that the civil order in some of the attacked cities had collapsed completely even after their rescue. Looting, arson, riots, and even murder of some of the remaining civil servants had broken out in numerous spots throughout the country. The Royal Guard, reduced to a pale shadow of its former self by the fighting, had not been able to effectively intervene in the many trouble sites that had popped up across the land. Even direct appeals for calm from those princesses capable of standing long enough to deliver them had not been enough on more than one occasion. Ponies were angry, hungry, and scared – a dangerous combination.

It was then that Equestria’s rulers had, once again, been forced to turn to the Republic for help. In effect, they had invited foreign troops to occupy their own land in a bid to restore order. Though the white-armored clone troopers had ultimately done the job, and efficiently at that, it had added substantial fuel to the whispers that the alicorns were at best no longer fit to rule, at worst active collaborators in the alien invasion of the planet. Such beliefs would have been unthinkable before the invasion, but now many ponies were questioning the old order, wondering if perhaps different leadership might have been able to steer Equestria away from the catastrophe that had engulfed it.

All of this and more had been dumped in Twilight’s inexperienced lap. Previously she had felt underused in her royal capacity, almost redundant when compared to the other three alicorns and her brother. Now she knew to be careful what she wished for – with Celestia, Luna, and Shining all wounded in battle and Cadence spending three weeks in a Star Destroyer recovering from her own, far more serious injuries, she had been the most active authority figure in the nation for some weeks. It had been a nightmarish hellstorm of frantic activity and momentous decisions that she had felt thoroughly unqualified to make. It was she, not Celestia or Luna or anypony else, who had made the judgment call to abandon the ruins of Canterlot. It was she who had opted to move the center of government to Los Pegasus, the largest and wealthiest city to remain mostly intact. And it was she who had sent out the call for the Elements of Harmony to officially join the Royal Army.

Effectively forcing her inexperienced friends into the role of a military auxiliary was not something Twilight had done lightly. But what else was she to have done? With the military all but wiped out, they needed every weapon they could get in their arsenal, for the Separatists might return at any time. Their miserable failure to acquire the chest containing the Rainbow Power in the midst of the burning Everfree had proven to the alicorn’s mind that more formal provisions for its use had to be made. Once the fires had burnt themselves out, the chest had been removed from its resting place with the Tree of Harmony and transferred to Los Pegasus under heavy guard. It had to be ready next time. They could not afford to be caught with their collective pants down once again.

Needless to say, this heavy imposition on friends that had already lost their homes and many ponies dear to them had not been particularly appreciated. Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie had seen their town burned to the ground, and all save Rarity had lost family members from elsewhere in the country. Discord’s apparent death had been a further punch to Fluttershy’s gut, and they had all argued fiercely for their right to spread out through the ruined country to seek their remaining loved ones as well as properly deal with the dead. Twilight, though sympathetic, had denied them. She reasoned that if the Elements were spread out when a second attack came, the rest of the nation would be destroyed. The Rainbow Power might make all the difference – its integrity could not be risked. The screaming matches had worn out more than one throat, but in the end her friends had agreed provided that she make special arrangements for government assets to seek out their families and bring them to the nation’s new capital. Twilight had complied as best she could.

To add to the lavender alicorn’s already immense burden, her own family had been the victim of great tragedy. Her big brother had lost his horn in the fight against General Grievous, leaving him effectively crippled for life. Their parents, in addition to their aunt and uncle as well as their children, had been among the dead littering the streets of Canterlot. Twilight had been so consumed with her duties as princess that she had not even had the time to attend their funeral, for which she felt immensely guilty.

When the other royalty had been able to resume their roles in governing Equestria, it was very clear that what they had been through had left its mark. Princess Celestia, on the surface, had seemed least effected. Her physical body shed its injuries as a snake sheds its old skin, and she walked among ponies as a towering symbol of hope and living demigoddess once more. Her voice was gentle yet commanding, her posture firm, and her eyes alight with determination. To most, she had seemed to pass through the fires of war relatively unscathed. Twilight, from her privileged viewpoint and deep personal knowledge of her teacher’s behavior, could tell that they were wrong. It was when Celestia was interacting with the off-worlders that she saw the differences: downcast eyes here, a quiet tone of voice there, bows a little too deep to be entirely in the realm of pure politeness – all subtle changes, but they were there. The solar alicorn was obviously deeply frightened of the outsiders and what they could do, and extremely anxious about offending them in any way. It was a completely understandable viewpoint given what had happened, but the idea that even her seemingly-irrepressible mentor was vulnerable to such base emotions was one Twilight Sparkle found deeply disturbing.

Princess Luna, ever the night to her sister’s day, had changed in almost the opposite manner. Whereas before she had been learning to reach out to and connect to other ponies of the modern era, now she had become something of a recluse. She said little unless directly spoken to, and even then her answers were most often short and perfunctory. When not attempting to manage Equestria, she spent almost all her time in her own study, her nose in various books and scrolls of often ancient or dubious nature. She had even borrowed several books on magic and the nature of a unicorn’s horn from Twilight’s much-reduced collection. When interrupted, she acted sullen and irritable. It was understandable: while the dark alicorn still wielded the political power of a princess, with her horn’s removal her vast magical power had simply dissolved away into nothing. She could not lift so much as a teaspoon in her current state, much less the moon, so to her infinite chagrin her sister had had to retake that duty. She was frustrated and desperate for some miracle cure, and Twilight pitied her for it.

Her brother, Prince Shining Armor, had likewise suffered the loss of his horn to the monstrous cyborg general. Contrary to Luna’s approach, once he was able Shining had thrown himself back into the task of governing with insane, almost inhuman vigor. The unicorn clearly blamed himself for both the fall of Canterlot and the crippling of Princess Luna and simultaneously for not being with his wife in the north. In his mind, the defense of both Equestria and the Crystal Empire was ultimately his responsibility. Twilight’s brother had spent the time since his recovery trying to be everywhere, do everything, and especially rebuild the military along far more exacting standards than before. One of his first orders of business had been to acquire a not-insubstantial amount of outdated but serviceable blaster equipment from Republic surplus and immediately set about retraining old veterans and new soldiers alike in its use. To the unicorn, he had failed grievously and the only atonement that could be made was to run himself ragged until he dropped of exhaustion in order to protect the nation.

And then there was Princess Cadence, who in many respects had gotten the worst of it. Cut off from Equestria proper and Shining Armor during the initial bombardments, the pink alicorn had bravely stayed to fight against the droid army that had moved against the Crystal Empire. With the freezing winter weather preventing the massive fires that had been seen in the south from taking hold, large numbers of the civilian population had managed to use the time offered to flee into the wilderness. Nonetheless, the Crystal Guard was in the end routed, and the city burned. Princess Cadence herself had been virtually shot to pieces and then buried under a pile of her own dead subjects. She had endured many long, freezing hours under the morbid shelter, her agonizing wounds preventing even the mercy of unconsciousness. By the time Republic soldiers had stumbled on the alicorn, she was half-dead and thoroughly traumatized by the whole experience. Her body had been healed in a bacta tank onboard a Star Destroyer, but her mental state had never been able to recover. Twilight’s sister-in-law had in effect become a weak shell of the mare she had once been. While Cadence had always been a devoted and loving wife, she now was virtually never seen outside her chambers without her husband and clung to him in the presence of any aliens like a terrified filly to her father’s leg. In the presence of anypony she did know well and trust deeply, her eyes were downcast, her voice weak, and her demeanor fearful and meek.

With both its rulers incapacitated and its primary city burned to the ground and trampled beneath droid heels, the Crystal Empire had had little choice but to dissolve its existence as an independent state. Its refugee population had come south to Equestria, further swelling the Republic’s already-overstretched camps. From elsewhere around the planet, the news was equally if not more grim. Zebrica’s fragile unity had collapsed following the destruction of its entire capital city in random Separatist bombardment, with dozens of smaller tribal and warlord states vying with each other in often brutal warfare. Canida, home of the Diamond Dogs, had lost a third of its population to devastating earthquakes triggered by orbital bombardment, with starvation threatening many who remained. The Griffon Empire had been shattered by the death of its emperor and much of his court, several would-be heirs competing with one another to claim the throne. Everywhere the news was bad and sapients were dying, but Twilight couldn’t even begin to think about lending aid – there was far too much to do at home. As to the Republic, they seemed to be treating the Equestrians as the de-facto leaders of the planet and concentrating most of their own efforts on them.

To be perfectly frank, while she saw that policy as enormously unfair, Twilight wasn’t about to try and persuade the Galactic Republic to give her own subjects less. If she did, she would most likely have been tarred and feathered, princess or not. Too many ponies were already homeless and dependent on charity to eat for any ideals about fairness to take precedence.

As Twilight looked out at the stars, feeling overstretched, sad, guilty, and somewhat depressed all at once, she started to wonder if-

“Princess Twilight Sparkle?” a familiar voice interrupted her train of thought.

The lavender alicorn turned her head from the window of her borrowed room, looking back across the way to where another pony had slipped part of the way into the door.

“Princess Luna,” she acknowledged the elder alicorn.

Princess Luna’s face was, as it often had been since the invasion, heavy and lined with repressed irritation. Her starry mane was slowly but surely losing its ethereal state, no longer seeming to blow in a breeze only it could feel. Atop the ruined stub on her forehead was an intricately-crafted ornamental horn made of exquisitely polished enchanted silver. Shimmering sapphires dangled from short chains of the same material, adding further accent to the decoration concealing the princess’ crippling injury. Some had attacked the expensive ornamental horn as waste in these times of strife – though never to Luna’s face, of course.

“Come, young princess,” Luna beckoned with a wave of her hoof. “There is something that we think that thou shouldst see.”

With a tired sigh, Twilight roused herself from the sofa on which she sat and stretched her limbs until they popped. She had already spent her entire day, since the wee hours of the morning, in the business of the state, but if Princess Luna had found something important enough to come see her in person, she supposed it must be vital.

Suppressing a yawn, Twilight followed the dark princess of the night out the door and through the long hallways of the villa where the royalty now stayed. Once a large but somewhat-neglected vacation home gifted to Celestia, it had effectively become the new center of administration following the move of capital to Los Pegasus. As such, their new Republic friends had gifted it with all manner of their technological marvels in a show of goodwill. The large room where Luna led Twilight hosted one such device, an enormous projecting table that the aliens had identified as a holonet transceiver.

When she entered the room, Twilight found Celestia, Cadence, and Shining already gathered ‘round the transceiver, staring up an enormous hologram of a hooded man. With a start, Twilight recognized the Republic’s Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, though he looked… different than previous images she had seen. He now appeared far less handsome and distinguished-looking, for instance. He was speaking to what appeared to be the full Republic Senate, and Twilight listened in.

“…In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first!” his voice suddenly boomed out. “Galactic! EMPIRE!”

The Senate erupted into applause.

“For a safe and securer society!”

The applause in the background became truly thunderous in scale. Palpatine raised both crimson-robed arms high into the air, and all around him Senators and their aides were cheering wildly. Many got to their feet, the better to applaud the Republic’s leader.

For reasons she did not entirely understand, Twilight got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.