1056 AD, January 11th

Celestia had to say that this was perhaps the strangest start to speaking with any other species she had ever had.

Knight Enforcer Caed was enamoured with the grass beneath his feet, and ran his bare hands across the field with an expression of wonderment. One of his knights had joined him while she and the others were discussing their plan of action.

It was more than a little strange to see fully-armored bipeds crouching on their knees and expressing fascination over grass of all things. They were so distracted that she was able to come within a few yards before the one other knight – the one Caed called ‘Esther’ – cleared her throat.

“Sir, please stop playing in the dirt.” She moaned in exasperation, as if this sort of occurrence wasn’t new.

Caed glanced at her, then at Celestia; he seemed so surprised that she believed he had genuinely forgotten about her.

“Ah, right!” He stood, as did the other knight.

Now that she was closer, Celestia saw that he was a little shorter than her; the top of his head would only come up to her jaw.

“Once again, I am Knight Enforcer Caed, leader of the Rouge Knight Order,” He did that odd bow again with his arm across his chest. His glaive was in his other hand, but the blade was pointed up and the pommel anchored in the dirt. “The proud knights that are with me are Knight Markus and Knight Paladin Esther. The one that is retrieving the remnants of… of the Irregular is Knight Arthur.”

In response, Arthur, in the midst of picking up a gauntlet, gave a lacklustre wave. “Hey…”

“Hello…” Celestia waved uncertainly. “Well, first off…” She turned back to Caed. “I would like to extend my gratitude for your assistance in dealing with the ‘Irregular’. Although, I must admit… I thought that they were allied with you.”

“Whatever alliances they might have had are long gone…” Caed sighed sadly, though his amicable disposition returned quickly enough. “Truthfully, we only arrived because we picked up the Irregular’s signal as it teleported and planned to deal with it anyway, but you are welcome nonetheless.”

Celestia nodded once. “That being said, I must know some things…”

“You wish to know why we are attacking, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Celestia paused as she carefully selected her words. Caed was being friendly enough, but she had dealt with enough diplomats from enough species to know that even the smallest of slights could be considered a major offense. “When I first heard of your attack on Canterlot, I was confused: as far as I am aware, we did not initiate any form of hostile intent towards you.”

“We were not even aware your kind existed.” Luna added.

“So why?” Celestia continued. “Why do you attack us?”

Caed seemed… taken aback by her question. For a brief instant, unease and discomfort flashed across his face.

“To answer that…” He began, clasping his hands behind his back. “I will need to tell you about our Order and how we came to stumble upon your world. It is… a long tale. Do you wish to get some snacks and drinks first?”

“…” Celestia blinked and exchanged a perplexed look with Luna and Aldo. “Uh, n-no. No, we are fine, Knight Enforcer. Please proceed.”

“As you wish...” Caed bowed his head in affirmation. “It all started with the QC-Spectrum Shifter, a powerful machine manufactured some fifty or so years ago as an experiment in teleportation. Records and files are sparse on what exactly they were attempting to teleport, but our scribes tell us that, as far as they can figure out, it was meant to transport us off our planet and to another.”

“I’m sorry?” Celestia interjected with a surprised blink. “Off your ‘planet’?”

“To another planet that was allegedly the origin of humanity, our race…” Caed furrowed his brow and turned his head to the side. “Um… Esther, what was it called?”

The female knight didn’t answer for a moment. “… Earth, I think.”

“Earth?” Luna frowned. “That… is the name of our planet.”

“Two different universes, two different dominant species… or at least that’s what the scribes tell me,” Caed shrugged. “I am not intellectually gifted; the scribes tell me what I am able to follow and understand, but alas…” He chuckled. “The only literature I seem capable of reading without error are the Old Tales.”

Celestia filed ‘Old Tales’ away and made a mental note to ask about it later; this information about other planets – habitable, apparently – and a teleportation machine was too interesting to wait.

“So if you do not live on Earth, where do you come from?”

“We’re still deciding on what the name of the planet is,” Caed replied with another shrug. “Some of the records and print we find in abandoned settlements say ‘Olympus’ while others say ‘Manna-45’. There are a few old paintings on walls that even say ‘Hellhole’, though you can imagine that no one really wishes to think of our home like that.”

“… How do you not know?” Luna asked in disbelief.

“We don’t know much of anything that happened more than sixty years ago,” Here, Caed paused with a frustrated expression. “I was born during a time of war and it is all that I have ever known. Personally, I have not met a single person that wasn’t born into strife.”

‘That’s… so sad,’ Celestia felt a pang of sympathy for these ‘humans’, even though she was completely aware of the lives being lost because of them. ‘It’s like when Luna and I were born during Discord’s reign…’

“But those times are over,” Caed visibly perked upon saying that. “The war that once enveloped our home – whatever it may be called – ended three years ago, and we have all united underneath the same banner! Behold the heraldry of the Rouge Knight Order – the Golden Oak!”

He half-turned and gestured to one of his knights – Markus – or more specifically, the tabard that covered the human’s front. Sure enough, it bore a picture of a solid gold tree in full bloom.

“Isn’t it cool?” He suddenly asked, turning back and clasping his hands together with wide, sparkling eyes. “It was a team effort, but I was the one that suggested using an oak instead of a… a ‘pine’ tree… whatever they’re supposed to look like.”

Celestia mustered a smile, too soft-hearted to tell him that didn’t look like an oak tree. “It’s beautiful.”

Caed was visibly moved and continued speaking, riding high on her praise. “The Golden Oak represents the Order’s goals to pave the way for a better future and preserve humanity’s culture! The war may be over, but its effects still remain: much of our land is barren and incapable of sustaining life; we have lived on synthesized food for the most part, but even those are running low.”

He suddenly clenched his hand into a fist and held it up, eyes hard as steel and full of solid determination.

“But… perhaps the worst impact the war has had on us is the erasure of our history. Books, documents, computer files – you would be appalled at how completely and thoroughly the war ravaged such knowledge.”

“The erasure of culture and history…”

Startled by the sudden voice, all eyes settled on Marquees Aldo. The ageing griffon was shaking his head grimly.

“In my flock’s history, there were tyrants that sought to do the same thing to their own subjects. They sought to replace it with propaganda that cast them in a positive light. It was a means of subjugation, albeit a more subtle approach. For what it’s worth, you have my sympathies.”

“I… Thank you, griffon,” Caed seemed surprised but not displeased by Aldo’s words. “It is kind of you to say that, but I’m afraid that there were no tyrants wishing to deify themselves. Our culture was destroyed not through spite and manipulation, but sheer ignorance. Our enemy, cruel as they were, were as lost and in the dark about what they were fighting for in the first place. The truth is… even now, we are not sure what could have caused our forefathers to devote themselves and their children to such devastation.”

Caed made a disgruntled noise and waved his hand dismissively.

“Hmph – but that is information we can live without for the time being. Right now, the Order and its scribes are more interested in finding information that can help us: agriculture, algebra, calculus – words that I have no understanding of but I just know are important nonetheless.”

“You… you have no idea what ‘agriculture’ is?” Luna repeated. “‘Tis farming; the plantation of seeds and the harvesting of their end results.”

“We don’t know how to do that.” Caed admitted, oddly nonchalant about the whole thing.

“Our land is literally barren,” Esther chimed in from the back. Her voice echoed inside her helm and resonated with an otherworldly note. “I think we planted some seeds once, but nothing grew. The only dirt that had some promise was in the Obelisk Sector, and that…”

She trailed off, suddenly bowing her head and giving off an air of melancholy.

Celestia noticed this, and the way the Knight Enforcer’s jaw set, and realized that this was a highly sensitive subject. She swallowed, hoping Luna and Aldo picked it up as well, and wetted her lips nervously.

“Knight Enforcer Caed… may I ask what happened?”

“… The QC-Spectrum Shifter has a limited supply of power and the means to power it has been… woefully inefficient since we ran out of the materials usually used to power it. We have only activated it a few times to try and set up a connection with ‘Earth’. The times we did activate it seemingly resulted in no effect, so we left it for the time being and instead focused on keeping ourselves fed and watered and sheltered. It was only when an Irregular – a different one, long since destroyed – sent out a signal upon its destruction and we received it.”

“You said they had no alliances.”

“None, but they were once able to be controlled, at least until the souls trapped inside were driven mad from isolation and what they were forced to do.”

“…”

“We traced the signal and discovered that, every time the Spectrum Shifter was activated, it weakened the bonds that held our world together.”

“So you’re the ones that made the Fractures appear in our world…” Luna said quietly.

Celestia winced. “Luna…”

“We were ignorant of your world’s existence,” Caed replied, seemingly unmoved by her accusing tone. “We had no idea of the effects we were causing until one of the Fractures appeared close enough to our location for us to monitor it. From then, it was a simple matter of sending drones through the anomaly to record your world. And what we found…”

Celestia and the others grimaced at the thought of being spied on for who knows how long, but Caed didn’t notice; he was too busy turning in a circle, arms spread out towards the sky and speaking in a tone bordering on reverence and awe.

“Do you realize the significance of finding this place, Celestia?”

“I-”

“Lands that are ripe with magic, greenery, and mythological creatures – it is exactly as described in the Old Tales, where the knights that existed long before our ancestors set foot on our planet defended their homes and undertook grand quests that brought them renown and glory! This… is…!”

He clenched his hands and laughed.

“This is everything we have dreamed of!”

“Sister…” Luna murmured out of the corner of her mouth. Her muscles had tensed, and there was a muted rustle from behind as the griffons flexed their wings. “He is starting a monologue.”

“I see that, Luna.”

“It is not a good sign when they monologue.”

“I know that, Luna.”

Caed spun around to face them, beaming a smile as bright as the sun.

“Ponies… griffons – surely, you understand the beauty and significance of your home, do you not? It is rich and bountiful and beautiful. In my most imaginative dreams, I could not conjure a sight as lovely as the field we are standing in right now. Even your more… ah, what’s the word? Are… Arid! Even in your more arid areas, there is still so much life and energy. There is no soil contaminated by the alchemy used by our enemies in the war, there are no craters formed by exploding shells, and there are no husks of war machinery.

“Griffon, you say your people have had tyrants, but we have seen your home as well through our drones, and it is still a majestic sight: mountain ranges with clear skies and extraordinary creatures. There is so much to see…”

He took a breath and his voice softened as he gained a faraway look.

“I want us all to experience it.”

Celestia paled. “What?”

“Are you…?” Marquees Aldo swallowed, much more successful in tempering his expression. “Do you mean to tell us that you wish for your Order to… live here?”

“Not here, exactly,” Caed waved dismissively, slightly flushed from both his speech and excitement. “We managed to open a Fracture on an immense land mass that you appear to have not yet colonized. Several dozen miles to the south of an island filled with oddly large butterflies.”

“…” Luna paused in thought, and then turned to her sister, whispering, “I was not aware of another mass anywhere near the Milliaun Island.”

“Neither was I.” Celestia murmured, staring at Caed in a new light.

The Knight Enforcer continued, half-turning to gesture to his knights. “We’ve talked it over with everyone: the knights, the scribes, the civilians – we all like the look of this place. Esther, in particular, seems to enjoy the, er… ‘beaches’.”

Esther’s helmet gave a small clank as she nodded. “There is so much water…”

“Indeed there is, Knight Paladin.”

“I’m sorry, but could we backtrack just a tiny bit?” Celestia asked with a forced chuckle. “To about the part where you said you and your Order wished to stay here?”

“Yes, I suppose that is a rather large surprise, isn’t it?” Caed said calmly. “Our… actions towards your kind seem counter-intuitive to our goal.”

“… What are you playing at, human?!”

Celestia winced as Luna took a step forwards, seething. “Luna, please just-”

“No! No, I want to understand this human’s motivation!” Luna growled and stomped the ground hard enough to make a gouge several inches deep. “First, they launch an unprovoked assault on Canterlot, doing Faust only knows what sort of damage to the city and the populace, and for the past three months they’ve been attacking our settlements and foalnapping innocent civilians! And they expect to just colonize an island in our world while we stand by? What sort of fools do you take us for, Knight Enforcer?!”

“…” Caed didn’t react to her outburst aside from a slow, methodical nod. “What you say is true: we are taking your people. However, our first attack was far from unprovoked,” He clasped his hands behind his back and drew in a breath, briefly looking off to the side, and then back. “Luna, is it? Luna, do you remember a Fracture above your city of Canterlot? Roughly a mile across, hard to miss?”

“We were…” Luna grimaced like she had ingested something putrid. “‘Occupied’ during its initial appearance, but yes.”

“In our world, the Fracture connecting to that appeared in the Obelisk Sector: a district that is not too far from the Rouge Knight base. There are other districts surrounding our base as well; they act as settlements for those that survived the war – civilians, mostly; those that choose not to fight. The Obelisk Sector was built on fertile soil, and was our most successful attempt at agriculture until… until the day Empress Nightmare Moon launched some form of energy beam at your side of the Fracture.”

Caed’s empty hand clenched into a fist again. It wasn’t as dramatic as the last time.

“You must realize… we were still discovering how the Spectrum Shifter worked back then. We had no idea how to control where the Fractures appeared, only when. If we knew how, we wouldn’t have opened them on your side in such dreadful locations. Honestly, the size of the Fracture in your world was surprising when we commandeered one of our drones to look at it – it was only about the size of a man on our side.

“Believe me – I wished only to make peaceful negotiations when that Fracture opened up, but seeing as it was up in the sky and, ah… humans are not particularly fond of heights, we needed to come up with a way to safely go through without immediately falling and dying. To make matters worse, an Irregular managed to get into the Sector when we were preparing safety measures around the Fracture. It managed to destroy some of our equipment before we were able to force it into retreating. Unfortunately… it did so through the Fracture. Our drones showed us that Nightmare Moon and her knights destroyed it, but we knew that we had to try and make contact as soon as possible so they did not think we wished for war.

“But… we were too late.”

“They sent a beam at the Fracture and closed it,” This time, it was Esther that spoke, her voice cold as a blizzard. “But whatever energy they used, it caused the Fracture on our side to explode.”

“The Obelisk Sector was wiped out.” Markus added.

Arthur straightened from where he had bent at the waist to pick up the last piece of the Wisp Knight. “Every civilian – man, woman, child – they all died. There’s no one left there anymore.”

“And the explosion caused long-term damage,” Caed picked up with a sigh. “The soil and any organic food that was growing were also destroyed. The explosion… It wasn’t just fire and smoke; it was some sort of…” He gave a small shiver. “Invisible wave of heat – people, plants, animals were cooked from the inside out. It travelled through stone and metal as if it weren’t there. Imagine this field, where we stand, had been turned to ash. Imagine the charred corpses of those you once knew frozen in the streets in the exact moment they had died.”

Celestia swallowed thickly. In the corner of her eye, she watched as Luna lowered her head and stared blankly at the ground.

“And of course…” Caed’s voice became thick with scorn. “Of course it would be civilians, wouldn’t it? Their data is not in the cultivation tanks, so it is not as if they can be reborn; if it had only been knights or… or… if I had only evacuated everyone, but I didn’t know… I didn’t think.”

“Knight Enforc-”

Caed held up his hand and Esther cut herself off. “… Our technology can do wonders… but it cannot create life from nothing. Even our cultivation tanks are running low on synth-gel, and God knows we can’t eat that. The rations won’t last for very long either. The truth… the truth is my people are going to die living on that planet. In just a few months more, the last of our reserves – water, food – will run out and we will perish.”

“… But what about now?” Celestia asked, gesturing to the anomaly hovering behind them. “Clearly you must have figured out how to choose the location where your… your machine opens up Fractures, so why didn’t you just go to that island when you could? What do you need us for?”

“Why do you think only three of us arrived?” Caed retorted. “Why did the Fractures from before our arrival abruptly close? Because things go through it.”

“I don’t understand…”

“There is… ah…” He grunted in annoyance. “What did the scribes say? Mass Imbalance? Well, I do not remember the term, but there is a ‘strength’ factor to each Fracture that determines how much substance may pass through it before it closes on its own. The one behind me is not all that strong; it can handle myself, my knights, the remains of the Irregular, and perhaps something as large as, say… a tree before it closes.

“The Fracture that opened above your city? That was a fluke: a rarity that we will likely never receive again; such a Fracture could transport an entire city and still have enough strength to re-transport it. We need a Fracture like that, and we can replicate it… but the Spectrum Shifter would need more power than we could ever manage on our own, especially with the time limit we have.

“And so, Celestia, we come to the reason why we need your kind.”

He seemed to be preparing himself for her reaction, like he knew she wouldn’t like what he had to say.

She also had that same feeling; a heavy lump of lead settled in her belly, and her skin crawled as she imagined what sort of possible fates had come to those that the Rouge Knights had taken over the past few months.

She wanted to sympathize with the Knight Enforcer and his people, she truly did, but what they were doing was deplorable.

A part of her didn’t want to sympathize; it’d make it so much easier to hate them.

‘It must be so easy for you, isn’t it, Nightmare Moon?’ She found herself thinking of her enemy, laughing maliciously as she broke Celestia’s horn with joyous sadism. ‘To not have the ‘burden’ of empathy clouding your judgement and influencing your decisions.’

“Do not sugar-coat it,” She said tonelessly. “Tell me what you are doing with those unicorns.”

Caed nodded solemnly.

“… You’ve probably realized that anything from our world is more or less immune to magical energy. Perhaps it is effective when it is transformed into fire, or ice, or lightning, but on its own it does nothing to anything with physicality. It’s too… ‘dense’. However, that does not mean it is entirely useless to us.”

He looked up.

Celestia followed his gaze and realized he was staring at the sun. It was a warm day, perfect for going outside and having a game of catch.
Even with her sensitive hearing, she couldn’t pick up anything coming from Ponyville.

“The scribes say that the sun’s rays can be converted into power for the Spectrum Shifter, but we do not have the resources to build the equipment needed for that, and we would not be able to gather enough power in time anyway,” He looked back at them, blinking. “But we possess another device – a reactor that was built long ago by our forefathers and used to convert heat energy from the planet’s core into useable power for their machines. Err… don’t ask me how it works – I am just repeating what the scribes tell me when I ask.

“That energy isn’t enough either, but through the readings of our drones – amongst other scanning equipment – we discovered that ‘magic’ functions as a form of radiation. Magic cannot interact with anything that has physicality from our world, but it can interact with our energies – they are more or less identical, except for, um… magnetic energy. An interesting thing happened this one time actually; see, one of the knights walked near the reactor while in full armor and it-”

“Knight Enforcer.”

“Sorry. Yes, our reactor can convert magical energy into power that is useable by the Spectrum Shifter, and the amount it receives dwarfs any other form of energy that could be converted. Your kind has magic, but none more so than your unicorns.”

“So that’s why you’ve taken them…” Celestia said. “To power your machine. But…” She shook her head as her brow furrowed. “But no… if that’s the case, why didn’t you just… ask for help? We would have-”

“Celestia…” Caed cut in with a sigh. “Do you truly believe that Empress Nightmare Moon would have actually helped us? After the closing of the Fracture in Canterlot, our drones monitored her and scouted out information about her. Our understanding is that she is not a very altruistic horse- er, pony. Am I wrong in that assessment?”

“… No, you are not. But even so, if you are as informed about our relationship with Nightmare Moon as you appear, then why didn’t you come to us? We would have helped.”

“…” Caed gave a small grin. “You would have… wouldn’t you?”

“Of course!” Celestia insisted with a firm nod. “We will! To help your people and to prevent your foalnapping of ours. This… this war can be avoided!”

Caed kept smiling, but his eyes wandered off to the side and looked… sad. Like something about her offer to help rubbed him the wrong way.

“You remind me of someone that was close to my heart, Celestia. Your offer is appreciated… but I cannot accept it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t know the whole story,” He shook his head and his smile went away. “You must think that you can help by simply charging our reactor with magic, hm? Well, we thought the same thing – we were only going to keep the unicorns we took for as long as they were needed to charge the Spectrum Shifter enough to create a Fracture that would be able to remain open long enough for my people to go through. After that, we would have released them back into your world.”

Luna narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “So why didn’t you?”

“It took some time to calm the first unicorns we took, but eventually they agreed to cooperate, and we activated the reactor while they channelled magic. It worked as our scribes said it would, but… it was still inefficient.”

“You said a unicorn could provide enough power for a Fracture.”

“I did. But that’s from all the magic in their body, not just what they can channel. The amount they were able to consciously put out was very little, and then they were too exhausted to do it again.”

“It’s Mana Exhaustion,” Celestia answered, gesturing to her own horn. “Ponies cannot survive without magic; Mana Exhaustion is when the body shuts down to prevent the unicorn from using up too much magic and literally drain themselves of life,” She put her hoof back down and nodded again. “And you’re correct – compared to the cache of magic in our bodies, that which we put out by using spells is miniscule by comparison.”

Caed gave a short chuckle. “I would be fooled considering how many spells I’ve seen your unicorns can cast. But at any rate, the fact that the output is very little makes it inefficient to charge our machine; even if we brought through seventy unicorns and had them channel through the reactor at the same time, it would still take a while. More time than we have.”

“And you can’t do that because of the ‘mass imbalance’ factor of the Fractures,” Celestia frowned deeply. “I see your problem.”

Caed matched her frown, adding in a sigh. “We tried bringing more unicorns in, but again, it didn’t result in enough power, and by doing that we wasted more. We had to do something…”

Both his hands went around the hilt of his glaive, twisting around it idly. He looked off into the distance and then back again.

“… I killed one of them.”

Celestia blinked, the words hitting her like a train. Still, she tempered her expression; she had anticipated hearing something like this, after all – ever since she heard of the Rouge Knights kidnapping unicorns.

Luna was quiet, as were the griffons, but at least Celestia could see Luna’s face without turning around. Predictably, she was trembling with rage; one step away from shouting, or maybe even attacking.

‘Not even sure I’d try and stop her if she did…’

Celestia inhaled deeply and swallowed a bad taste in her mouth. She watched the Knight Enforcer carefully, seeing that he was waiting for her response. Unfortunately, she didn’t really have one.

Seeing this, he continued.

“Death causes the magic within your kind’s bodies to release into the world – all of it. I killed one of them and the reactor processed and converted all of the magic into power for the machine. But we were still a ways from collecting the necessary power that would send my people here… so I killed the rest of the unicorns. That still wasn’t enough. And that’s why we’re doing this.”

He paused, seemed to remember something, and shook his head, eyes darkening.

“No. No, that’s not the only reason. We’re also doing this for revenge. Empress Nightmare Moon tells me that she had no idea that closing the Fracture would cause an explosion on our side, but it is clear to me that she is not truly sympathetic. Why would she be? We are from another plane of existence and alien creatures to her – what reason does she have to care? So of course we want her head on a pike, and it would be delicious irony if we were able to use her magic to power our machine – she would be worth ten unicorns or more. But she is strong, stronger than any other foe I’ve faced, and heavily guarded. The most we can do as of now is go after those that march under her banner.”

Luna inhaled and closed her eyes. “I believe I have heard enough. There is only so much I can stomach.”

Celestia didn’t say anything, merely watching as her sister took a step forwards.

The three knights following Caed shifted into stances, prepping their weapons and shields.

The Knight Enforcer made no move; he stared straight at Luna with a calm expression.

“You take our ponies…” Luna began, stopping when she was mere yards away and opening her eyes. The whites were beginning to glow. “And you harvest them for their magic.”

“Yes.”

“It is disgusting, deplorable. Even if it is to save your people, it is a despicable act.”

“I know.”

“But what really vexes me…!” Luna bared her teeth and snorted as her mane churned like blue fire. “Is what you plan to do with all that harvested magic! Do you expect us to turn a blind eye to what you’ve done just because you’re on some far away island?! I hope – I really hope you do not believe that you will go unpunished for your crimes.”

Caed said nothing.

“We may share a common enemy in Nightmare Moon, but we are not allies!”

“We try to avoid taking ponies affiliated with you; we know you’re-”

“Oh, and that makes what you’re doing more noble in your eyes, does it?” Luna rolled her eyes in revulsion.

Caed said nothing, but the knight at the back – Esther – did. She stomped forwards, growling out, “We’re doing this to save our people! The amount of unicorns we need is nothing compared to the number of our own that need help!”

“And how many do you need, hm?” Luna scowled darkly. “How many of our unicorns do you need to harvest? Hundreds? Thousands?”

“Forty-seven,” Caed answered immediately. “We’ve taken nineteen so far.”

“And that’s all we are to you, hm? Numbers?”

“Cursive Flaunt,” Caed retorted. “Glidewatcher, Rubygaze, Floran, Abra Lens… Dew – should I continue?”

“…” Luna blinked, surprised. “You know their…?”

“Of course, that doesn’t excuse what I’m doing… but what choice do I have?” Caed’s eyebrows drew together and his grip on his glaive tightened. “You care for your people? I care for mine, and as the Knight Enforcer, it is my duty to make sure that they are safe, healthy, and surviving. If there were any other way than this, I’d take it in a heartbeat, but there isn’t.”

“You-”

“What else can I do?!”

Caed lifted his weapon and slammed it into the dirt.

The grass around him bent backwards from a gust of wind that seemed to emanate from his body. Celestia broke out of her thoughts and flinched as the gust slapped her in the face. It wasn’t particularly strong, but it stirred up dust that irritated her eyes.

She noted through her squinted vision that Caed’s hair was moving in the breeze and his single red eye was glowing brightly.

“You can bring food, but it won’t last forever, and we can only make so many Fractures before the Spectrum Shifter runs out of power! We cannot grow anything in our soil and without the Obelisk Sector’s greenhouses anything you may bring over will die anyway! It will take time and resources we don’t have to rebuild those from scratch! There is also the threat of roaming Irregulars and the wildlife, not to mention the environmental hazards that our forefathers inflicted upon us in a war that we still have no idea what was about in the first place!”

The wind died down and his eye dimmed, but he was far from done. He snorted humourlessly and held his weapon in front of himself. Celestia tensed, prepared to leap to her sister’s defense, but Caed merely stared at his glaive, an odd mix of disgust and fondness flashing across his face.

“Pathetic, isn’t it? We can forge weapons that can summon great winds, armor that can deflect bullets, machines that can convert energy and rip open holes to other worlds and even transfer our hearts and minds into new bodies when we die… but anything to do with preserving life instead of taking it? It’s beyond us. All the knowledge we have is to do with fighting. The Obelisk Sector was our last chance to try and rebuild the planet, start a new life… and now it’s gone.”

He lowered his arm and closed his eyes, releasing a sigh. When he opened them, his eye had dimmed entirely.

“You care for your people… right? If you were in my place, what would you do?”

“…”

“Heh…” Caed smiled tiredly. “The Old Tales say that a knight must be honourable… chivalrous… valiant… They must not harm the innocent or those that cannot fend for themselves. But how honourable is it to let your people die because of pride? When everyone is dead, who will remember the ‘valiant knight’? Who will record the tale of he who let his people die?”

He shook his head.

“Nightmare Moon is the only one I have any qualms with, but her death alone will do nothing for my people. I do not want to kill your kind… I do not want my knights to fight you… I do not want my people to enter their new home based on the blood of another race that we could have possibly been friends with… but if it means that they survive… then I will gladly bear the weight of my actions.”

“…” Luna looked down at her hooves then turned to her sister. “‘Tia?”

Celestia met her sibling’s gaze, smiled fondly…

… then glared at Caed with a deep frown.

“I am truly, very sorry for your plight, Knight Enforcer. But as you said, I care about my ponies, and I will do anything to protect them. They say that… small sacrifices must be made for the greater good, but to tell the truth, I’ve always had a hard time believing that. Maybe…” She wetted her lips. “… Maybe if it was just Nightmare Moon… then I’d help, but you’ve taken more than that, and I cannot abide by it.”

Celestia drew herself up and her hard eyes locked with Caed’s.

“Knight Enforcer Caed, you and your people are our enemies; I cannot consciously side with someone that kills and harvests the magic from the corpses of unicorns, no matter their intentions.”

“That goes for me as well.” Luna nodded.

Marquees Aldo let out a quiet sigh and brushed at the feathers of his brow before saying, “I stand with the princesses.”

The clatter of his guards prepping their weapons behind him reinforced his statement.

Caed gave a low hum and nodded, unsurprised. “Very well. Then the next time we meet, it will be as adversaries,” He flicked his arm to the side, made some strange gesture, and the knights behind him held their shields in front, forming a protective wall. “I will not look for you on the battlefield, but if we should meet, then please… bring everything you can muster.”

Quicker than the eye could process, Caed slashed at the ground before him, gouging out great clumps of dirt and sending it surging forwards with a gust of wind.

Celestia blinked in shock and the next moment, her vision was impaired as the dust cloud enveloped her. Particles filtered into her nostrils and she reflexively coughed wetly, one wing fanning out to protect her eyes. She could hear the others coughing and crying out in surprise as well.

‘Damn it!’

Channelling magic into her wings, she gave a savage flap and dispersed the cloud in one swift movement.

But not swift enough to retaliate – the Fracture winked out of existence with a flash of light, leaving them as the only ones standing in a battle-scarred field.

Celestia sighed and folded her wings before pressing a hoof to her forehead. She felt the signs of an approaching headache. “Faust… damn it.”

“Sister?” Luna looked at her worriedly. “Are you alright?”

“Not really,” She admitted. “Luna? Aldo? Let’s head back to Ponyville; there are… many things to go over, to say the least.

Author's Notes:

Note 1: "Knight Enforcer Caed, this is the fifth time you've inquired about this line of topic, and the answer is still 'no'. Each cultivation tank is tailored to a single knight and to try and implement another's information would override the existing one - you'd gain a life at the cost of another. I understand that you want to do more for the civilians, but you must understand that you and the rest of the knights are our defenders. You are the ones that protect us and, I'm going to just come out and say it, it'll be better in the long-run for you and your troops to have the ability to come back from death than it would be for a civilian.

"Synth-gel is limited as it is, we do not need to waste it on non-combatants. Please understand and please stop asking." - Letter from Scribe Anderson, Head of the Scribe Division.

Note 2: Muramas (Moo-rah-mus) - a glaive with a long, black hilt decorated with golden etchings and a dark red, single-edged blade.

Much like the weapons of the Wisp Knights, this glaive can create cyclonic gusts of wind through means known only to those who manufactured the arms.

Within the treasured fables that Caed’s people hold are tales of legendary knights wielding powerful weapons which befit their strength and unwavering resolve. On the first anniversary of Caed’s rule, his people created this weapon for him as a representation of their loyalty, respect, and faith in his leadership.