Chapter 1: Arrival

“Is it just me, or are we falling?”

Sunny Days looked across the strange metal room to the brown archaeologist pony Hieroglyph glancing out the window. Now that he brought her attention to it, she did feel that odd squirming sensation in her stomach that she got when riding the big drop towers at an amusement park. A mild sensation of panic settled in as she ran past peculiar white alien consoles to the massive window that encircled three-fourths of the giant circular room. Indeed, the clouds were moving past them as the rust-colored bits of fluff sped up through Sunny’s view.

“Storm Drive,” she called to an white colt with a cartoon rocket on his flank sitting in front of one of the consoles. “Can you fly this thing?”

Storm Drive looked at her as if he had just been asked to jump out an airlock. “This is a 5000 year old city-sized ship built by an ancient long-dead civilization, with technology so advanced it may as well have been magic, that conquered the stars while our ancestors were banging rocks together. Do YOU think I can pilot this?”

Sunny Days’s bright yellow face flushed pink upon realizing how stupid a question that had been. Trying to change the subject, she looked back out the window. “That mountain is getting awfully close...”

As if in response to her statement, another explosion rocked the ship. The floor was now noticeably slanted as they plummeted through the atmosphere towards the big gray mountain, billowing smoke behind them. Lines of worry creased Sunny’s face as she looked closely at their impending doom, then smoothed into an expression of surprise.

“It’s that black pony!” she cried, pointing a hoof at the small dot on the face of the mountain.

Well, black wasn’t really the right word; it was more of a very dark red. Hieroglyph rushed over to see what she was pointing at. “What pony?” he asked, squinting.

“There!” Sunny adamantly pointed at the same dark dot, just barely discernible as a pony. “It’s that thing that ate- that ate-”

For a moment, Sunny swore she could see the blood-red eyes of the dark pony stare right at her. The distant screams of Dig-Dug’s last moments echoed in the back of her mind, and she shook her head, pushing them down.

“What the hay? How did he get there so fast?” Hieroglyph’s weaselly voice asked.

“Guys, I don’t think now is the best time,” Storm commented as he started hitting the colored shapes on the console in front of him randomly in hopes something might happen. Sunny and Hieroglyph glanced back at the white pony, nervousness now turning into full-blown panic. The entire ship was shaking violently now, and wisps of cloud were racing past the window at breakneck pace. The feeling of acceleration was visceral.

“Ah, who am I kidding?” Storm threw his hooves up in the air, shaking his head. He gazed upon his two compatriots, eyes filled with trepidation. “Sunny Days. Hieroglyph. It was a pleasure working with you.”

Hieroglyph sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. Sunny heard a small whimper escape from her throat. I really, really don’t want to die, she thought. My friends, my family, what are they going to do? What’s going to happen to them? What’s going to happen to me? Oh gosh, is there an afterlife? She felt her eyes begin to water and clamped them shut. I really really hope there’s a pony heaven...

“Hey- hey, he’s gone!” Hieroglyph shouted, then appeared to realize he was supposed to be hyperventilating and quickly resumed breathing loudly in rapid gasps. Sunny’s eyes snapped back open. Hieroglyph was looking out at the mountain again. Sunny followed his gaze. Sure enough, the dark red blotch on the mountaintop was gone. At the same time, she noticed the mountain itself was getting awfully close...

At that moment a calm, cool, feminine voice piped up out of nowhere. “Secondary control bridge active. Transferring control from primary bridge to secondary bridge.”

Sunny looked around in alarm. That voice! It was coming from everywhere. The other two ponies in the room were looking around with similar expressions. “Who was that?” she asked.

“Transfer complete,” the bodiless voice replied, stubbornly refusing to answer her question. There was a slight pause. “Order accepted. Engaging Infinite Probability Engine.”

Sunny Days had just enough time to exchange faces of bewilderment with the other two ponies before the voice spoke again. “Infinite Probability Engine engaging in three... two... one.”

Everything broke. A tremendous force picked up Sunny Days and tore her into trillions of tiny shattered fragments that were scattered across the universe, each piece aware of its own existence, screaming in a high-pitched chorus that echoed inside the confines of the mind of Sunny Days, now having stretched to encompass all of creation. Existence had been broken. Sunny neither saw, nor heard, nor felt; she was only aware, aware of her own awareness, aware of her own existence, aware of the existence of everything, twisted into shapes that were so mind-numbingly wrong that they should have lacerated the fabric of reality simply by the possibility of their own existence. Straight lines twisted together as colors incomprehensible flashed ahead and a burning wheel rolled backwards through time towards the origin of it all.

“We have passed through the probability singularity,” the voice announced. “Beginning descent through probability space... one in a trillion... one in a billion...” The voice continued to rattle off the odds. “One in ten... one in five... one in three... one to one.”

And then it was over. Reality fixed itself. Sunny Days collapsed like a heap of sticks, her head bouncing off the cold metal floor, eyes staring at the foot of the console in front of her face, wide open in terror.

“Ugh.” Storm Driver was the first to recover from the experience. Picking himself off the floor, he noticed first that the floor was still slanted downwards. He then observed that they clouds were still racing past the windows, and from those two bits of information deduced that they were still falling out of the sky.

Except now there was no mountain in their way. The ground was no longer a barren landscape of rocks, but rolling hills of green. The sky was not the color of old rust, but a bright, vivid blue, with a dazzling yellow sun in the sky.

The ground was racing up towards them. The disembodied voice spoke again, impossibly calm and polite in a situation that prescribed panic. “Please prepare for impact.”

It was almost noon in Ponyville, the sun blazing hot overhead, the sky sparsely filled with wispy clouds that occasionally provided cover from the heat. Twilight Sparkle’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she shifted her gaze from the book lying in the grass to the small purple dragon smiling in front of her. “Alright Spike, let’s do this.” She closed her eyes and began to channel magic into her horn.

And then it happened. Twilight felt it resonating within her magic before she heard Spike’s gasp. A fragment of the reality of the skies above Equestria had broken. It was as if someone had taken the normal, flat plane of existence, crumpled it up into a tight wad, opened it back up, then tore it to pieces. Beyond the hole this left, Twilight felt a vast emptiness, devoid of thought or feeling or life, an all-consuming void all of Equestria could fall into and not fill.

Then it was gone. There was a tremendous rumbling in the heavens. Twilight opened her eyes and craned her neck around. Those glassy spheres almost popped out of their sockets at what they saw: a gargantuan... thing falling out of the sky, leaving trails of smoke behind it.

It was huge, filling the sky past Canterlot, dwarfing the distant mountains that held the Equestrian capital, vaguely rectangular in shape, the end pointed towards the ground ending in a smooth cylinderical curve that tapered off into a single point on the bottom side of the object--that curved surface glowing a brilliant white as the light of Celestia’s sun danced off of it, emblazoned with giant symbolized golden sun. The rest of the... thing was light purplish in color and expanded outwards into two small wings towards the rear--small only compared to the rest of the entity, for one could have fit Applejack’s entire farm inside them. The side facing Twilight was covered in all manner of golden rectangles and small black dots, the entire surface looking like a view of Manehattan from as high as a pegasus pony had ever flown. And on the top of the object were steps that led up to a series of blocks and towers ending in tapering cones that looked not unlike the spires and turrets of the Equestrian capital. But there were vast, irregular holes in what Twilight now decided was some sort of ship, belching flames that must have been several stories high, smoke billowing into the atmosphere forming vast contrails of gray clouds that scarred the sky.

The ship continued to fall, seemingly so very slow because of its titanic scale, until the tip finally touched the ground. But that wasn’t near enough to stop such enormous momentum, and the ship plowed through the earth, bulldozing entire hills as it tore through everything in its way, leaving behind a gigantic brown wound in Equestria.

Then the tremors began, the ground beneath Twilight’s feet shaking with enormous force. She heard screams from the direction of Ponyville as the sudden earthquake achieved its full force, pieces of buildings falling from the structures as they shook themselves apart. It was a terrifying feeling, to have the ground beneath one’s feet give away like that, the sudden failure of something that Twilight had taken for granted as an eternal constant for her entire life. But that fear barely registered on the pure, unadulterated awe from what Twilight had just seen.

“Spike...?” Twilight said when the shaking finally stopped, her voice a weak groan, smaller than even Fluttershy’s.

It took a while for the purple dragon to realize he was being spoken to. “Yeah?” he responded, unable to take his eyes off the massive structure that had planted itself in the distant hills past Canterlot.

“Am I dreaming?”

“And that’s how I got my cutie mark!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed cheerfully.

Sweetie Belle tilted her head in confusion. Rarity raised an eyebrow. She already wasn’t sure how a trip to Sugarcube Corner to buy some pastries had turned into a story about how Equestria was made, but Pinkie Pie’s random ending only served to confuse her more.

“Well, anyways...” Rarity began, levitating the bag of muffins she had just bought into her saddlebag. “We’d better get going, I have to finish six more dresses by the end of the day or I won’t be able to go to the spa tomorrow!”

“Have fun!” Pinkie waved cheerfully from behind the counter.

“Rarity, can I have a muffin now?” Sweetie Belle asked as Rarity opened the front door of Sugarcube Corner.

“Wait till we’re back at the boutique, dear,” Rarity huffed. “You might trip and fall if you try to eat and trot at the same time. Besides, you’ll get your hooves all sticky without a napkin, and that would be un-ladylike~!” She practically sang this last word, and Sweetie Belle’s ears flattened against her head at the reminder.

“Ooo, I have a napkin!” Pinkie interjected, quickly diving under the counter to retrieve several small paper doilies. She hopped out from behind the table and pranced over to the two unicorns, napkins in mouth.

“That’s ok, darling,” Rarity said. “I have plenty of napkins back at the boutique. And Sweetie Belle,” she looked intently at the filly upon saying her name, “is not going to be eating while walking anyways.”

“Oh, alright!” Pinkie Pie bounced back over to the counter and placed the napkins where she found them.

“Now then, see you la-” Rarity began, but was rudely interrupted when Pinkie’s tail started thrashing violently back and forth. “Pinkie Pie, what in Celestia’s name are you doing?”

“Ooo, ooo!” Pinkie cried, her head turned around to watch her tail as though it were some strange animal. “Twitchy tail, twitchy tail! Ooo, and it’s a doozy!” She looked around the room, the corners of her eyes and mouth bent downwards in a worried expression as she scanned for anything that might fall. “Where did I put my umbrella hat?” she asked as she started tossing things around the room into the air, searching for her go-to defense when her tail started twitching.

“Twitchy? Tail?” Rarity’s pupils shrank into points. “Quick, Sweetie Belle! Get under that table!”

The little white filly immediately did as told; everypony in Ponyville knew about the dreaded Pinkie Sense, after all. Tossing her muffins aside, Rarity grabbed a pillow from a couch and hunkered down next to her sister, holding the fluffy shield against the top of her head with her front hooves as she cowered underneath the table.

Nothing happened. Rarity waited, her eyes scanning the room for anything that could possibly detach from the ceiling. Still, nothing happened. She waited some more. Still nothing. Finally, feeling slightly ridiculous, she crawled out from under the tablet and tossed the pillow aside. “Well,” she said tentatively, for she knew the Pinkie Sense was never wrong and had a tendency to strike just when one thought it was safe, “perhaps if we get going, we can avoid-”

Sugarcube Corner started vibrating intensely. Rarity gasped; was it a stampede? As baked confectioneries started falling off the shelves, she quickly dived under the table again, although this time without a pillow.

“M-m-m-my v-v-v-oi-oi-oi-ce-ce s-s-o-ou-ou-ds s-so s-s-i-i-l-l-l-y,” Pinkie chirped happily, bouncing rapidly on the floor as her high-pitched voice oscillated, having completely forgotten about her search for the umbrella hat.

Applebuck Season had just started, so Applejack had been up bright and early to start kicking the apples off trees. This year’s harvest wasn’t as good as last year’s--Applejack doubted that any harvest would ever top that one--but there was still a lot of work ahead. Big Macintosh hadn’t gone and hurt his back this time around, so they were back to the standard of them two harvesting apples together as family.

And this year there might be a new addition to the team. “Apple Bloom,” Applejack called to the cute little yellow filly kicking pathetically at one of the biggest trees on Sweet Apple Acres. “Stop buckin’ there Bloomberg the Second and get over here!”

“But Aaaaapplejack!” Apple Bloom whined. “You promised ah could help ya’ll buck apples this year!”

“Ah did promise you could help us buck apples, and ah never go back on mah word.” Applejack lifted her head proudly. “But that there Bloomberg the Second is just too darn big for ya to buck, so git’ over here and buck these here lil’ trees.”

“Aw, alright.” Apple Bloom walked over to her big sister, head hung low in dejection.

Applejack chuckled. “Dun’ worry about it too much now, ya hear? Why, when ah started buckin’, ah had to start with the small trees too. Even Big Macintosh didn’t start off bein’ able to buck big ol’ trees like Bloomberg the Second.”

Feeling somewhat more cheerful at the knowledge, Apple Bloom ran up to the smallest apple-bearing tree she could find and thrust her hind legs against the trunk as hard as she could. The trunk vibrated, the branches shook, and one large, shiny red apple landed on the ground. Apple Bloom stared at the fallen fruit, disappointed, while Applejack chortled merrily nearby.

“Keep at it, sis, ya just need some practice is all,” the orange cowpony encouraged.

After watching Apple Bloom for a little more, Applejack decided it was time to start doing her share of the work. Getting into position by another tree trunk, Applejack compressed her hind legs, getting ready for a powerful buck that would send all the apples falling into the buckets at the base of the tree. But she hadn’t yet unleashed the mighty kick when an apple fell and hit her on the head.

“Brblrr.” Applejack shook her head, clearing her consciousness of the hazy soup that the falling apple had caused. Another apple struck her back. “What in tar-” she began, when she realized that all of Sweet Apple Acres was shaking.

The apples were falling from the trees like rain, bouncing and rolling on the grass. Applejack was reminded of that time in the Princess’s hedge maze, when Discord had used apples to trick her into lying, but these apples weren’t being propelled by an unseen force to gather up into so-called ‘Keepers of the Grove’.

“Is it ‘nother stampede?” Apple Bloom yelled, hanging onto the tree she had just been bucking for dear life.

“Big Mac!” Applejack called out to her brother, who had been working the trees up a hill. “What the hay is goin’ on?”

Despite her best efforts, Fluttershy had been unable to get Angel to take his medicine. The poor little bunny was sick with a cold, but his stubborn nature meant he refused to take orders from the kind yellow pegasus, even though they were for his own good. Fluttershy had tried everything; asking politely, begging, pleading, even beseeching, but all to no avail. The only thing left in her arsenal was the Stare.

Unfortunately, the Stare wasn’t something that Fluttershy could call up whenever she wanted, so she pushed the bowl of soup towards Angel again. “Come on now,” she said soothingly, “Here comes the choo-choo train!”

The little white rabbit crossed his front paws and turned his back to Fluttershy, nose stuck up high in the air. He then gave a wheezing cough. Fluttershy sighed and gave her best reprimanding-mother voice. “I’m going to go out to tend to the other animals. I expect to see all this soup gone by the time I get back. It’s for your own good, you know.”

She left her cottage and flew out towards the meadow. Here was her usual spot where she met and played with all the animals from the wild--the pretty birds, the adorable porcupines, and the cute little bunnies. This had also been where Fluttershy had first laid eyes on a parasprite, but she wasn’t thinking about that at the moment.

She had only been making her rounds for about fifteen minutes or so when she sensed a disturbance in the behavior of the animals. There were some birds flying away from something high in the sky. Curious, Fluttershy flapped her wings harder, ascending into the air to get past the treetops.

What she saw left her in a daze. Fluttershy watched in horror as the metal mountain descended towards the horizon. I- I must be seeing things, she thought to herself.

But no. The reaction of all the animals she had been playing with out in the meadow told her that what she was seeing was indeed real. They too, were gazing off in the distance at the unearthly sight. The fires spurting out from the mountain’s sides were enormous, the black smoke scorching the sky terrifying. Oh... what if it lands on somepony?

Then the earthquake began. Fluttershy was surrounded by squawks and squeals as all the animals dashed away into hiding. Birds took to the air, fish dove deep into the waters, the little bunnies and porcupines and snakes crawled into their burrows. “Eeep!” Fluttershy cried, and dropped back to the ground, sinking down on her knees, head low as leaves rained down from the trees in droves.

It was a while after the earthquake was over before Fluttershy gathered the courage to stand up again. Gingerly she looked around at the deserted meadow. Not a single critter in sight. Although she was still a little scared from the incident, she summoned strength into her throat and called out, her voice resonating sweetly in the air. “Come out little animals... it’s alright. It’s over... there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore...”

Chapter 2: Contact

When did Equestria’s tax code get so long? Princess Celestia thought to herself as she perused the drawer that took up most of the wall, whose sole purpose was to contain what was likely the single largest document in the entire world. That, of course, was a silly question, for Celestia remembered the long procession of years in which the tax code had grown from a thin stack of papers into the monstrosity it was today. Civilization in those early days had been simple and elegant as everypony adjusted to a life not ruled by chaos, but one where they could be the arbiters of their own fates.

A long sigh escaped Celestia’s mouth as she found the relevant section. The discussion about altering the tax policy on traveling merchants that had taken place in the morning had left her feeling embarrassed as references and citations flew over her head, even if nopony else had noticed her lack of knowledge about the topic at hand. Well, if there was one thing Celestia had perfected over the years, it was making everypony else think that she knew more than she did.

“Celestia, dear sister!”

The commanding voice that boomed out from the end of the row made Celestia look up from a fascinating definition on what exactly constituted a “purchase”. “Yes, Luna?”

“I hath returned from my meeting with the nobility.”

Uh oh. Celestia did not like Luna’s tone of voice.

“It was thither that I had the... pleasure of meeting the one who calls himself ‘Prince Blueblood’.”

Celestia winced and quickly stuffed the bit of tax code she had been levitating in the air back into the drawer. She had been dreading this conversation ever since Luna got back.

“Beyond the fact that this pony dares to presume himself a Prince, he also claims to be thy niece.”

Slowly Celestia turned her gaze upwards to meet Luna’s glaring eyes. The dark blue alicorn was a head shorter than Celestia, but at the moment Celestia felt the opposite was true. Luna’s stance was confrontational, her hooves planted firmly on the ground, legs straight, wings spread, nose tilted slightly in the air.

“Being that I am the only sister thee hath ever had, and that I hath certainly borne no foal within this past millennium, I beseech thou to explain to me how that it is thee hath a... ‘niece’.”

Celestia smiled weakly. “Luna! I think your grammar is starting to adjust! You’re not saying ‘we’ anymore!” When Luna’s expression did not falter, she sighed. “It’s a long story. You see, about eight hundred years ago, I decided that Equestria needed a-”

A powerful shockwave of magic resonated through the fibers of Celestia’s being, sending her train of thought flying right into the sky. In the distance, there was a hole in reality, as though an aperture had been punched through the canvas on which Equestria was painted. Ripples raced out from the epicenter across the land, disrupting the senses of every magically-inclined pony. For a fraction of a second, Celestia saw beyond the hole; a vast, empty darkness, immensely old--so old that, for the first time in thousands of years, Celestia felt... young.

Then it was over. Slowly Celestia became aware of her surroundings again. Where was she? Ah yes, in the library, looking at tax code, before Luna came in to ask about Blueblood-

She stared at Luna. Luna stared back. Both compressed their lips, minds deep in thought. The two sets of eyes perceived the machinations behind each other, as the sisters came to the same conclusion-

“The balcony,” two voices rang out at once, and Celestia turned around and bolted down the row, weaving between shelves until she had bounded out of the library with only a cursory glance to the receptionist, racing down the hall until she reached the closet balcony from which she could view the outside of the castle.

Luna was already there, having simply teleported instead of running the entire way, staring into the distance. A tremendous rumbling filled the air, and Celestia’s gaze followed the Princess of the Night’s as her eyes fell upon the incredible sight.

Celestia thought she had seen nearly everything Equestria had to offer in all her long years of life. Yet here was something so utterly alien, so inexplicable, that it defied all explanation her intellect attempted to invent. Her mind first turned to Discord, the draconequus being the only creature she knew of that could conjure something so... massive. But the spirit of disharmony couldn’t possibly break out of the prison created by the Elements of Harmony alone. Unless...

“Luna,” Celestia spoke to the dark alicorn.

Luna tore her gaze from the metal mountain, now plowing through the fields beyond Canterlot, and turned to her sister. “Yes?”

“Assemble the Guard. Take a detachment and secure that... thing.” The Princess of the Sun spun around.

“And where shalt thee go?” Luna asked.

Celestia’s tone was dark. “I’m going to check on Discord.”

The crash was the most terrifying thing Sunny Days had ever been through. The tremendous vibrations that shook the ship seemed like they would never end. The ghostly echoes of screeching metal protesting the gigantic forces they were forced to endure rebounded throughout the ship, making it sound like the entire vessel was screaming in torment. Sunny Days slid along the floor, smashing into the window, desperately trying to dodge flying consoles and machinery and the two other ponies as they too were swept off their hooves by the impact. After what felt like an eternity, the ship finally came to a stop.

Silence. Cautiously Sunny Days climbed back onto her hooves and looked around. Storm Drive and Hieroglyph were dusting themselves off as well.

The bodiless voice sounded again. “Warning. Governing Intelligence Containment Fields breached. Essence dissipating. System failure imminent. Beginning system failure protocols. Shutting down central power core. Engaging failsafes in Walluvianacht Engines. Ejecting hazardous byproducts into waste disposal chamber. Sealing waste disposal chamber. Releasing C3A-151 from secondary power core. Disengaging stasis field. Protocols complete.”

Then the voice shifted, its emotionless tone falling away, turning into the heartbroken sound of a scared, little filly. “Captain...?” the voice cried softly, “I don’t know if you’re still there, but... I’m sorry. For everything.”

The voice vanished, never to speak again. The reams of arcane symbols that fluttered across the screens of all the monitors in the room, so lively before, were now replaced by two big, bold words, flashing bright red against a black background. SYSTEM FAILURE. SYSTEM FAILURE. SYSTEM FAILURE. Soon, they too faded into nothingness.

By the time Twilight and her friends had gotten to the mysterious ship an enormous crowd had formed in what had just this morning been an empty field near it. Black smoke was still billowing out from the gargantuan fissures in the vessel’s sides, though several pegasus ponies had gathered some rain clouds to try and put out the fires.

“Hey, you guys!” Twilight heard a familiar voice call out from above. Turning her head skyward, she saw Rainbow Dash coast in for a landing. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“We were looking for you,” Twilight replied, eyebrows knitted as she inspected the blue pegasus.

“Eh,” Rainbow replied, then glanced over at the ship. “So where did this thing come from?”

“It fell out of the sky, silly!” Pinkie said, bouncing.

Rainbow Dash examined Pinkie with a quizzical expression. “And did you see it fall out of the sky?”

Pinkie’s eyes and mouth turned upwards as she thought about the question. “Well, no. But I felt my tail started twitching, and you know what happens when my tail starts twitching, and I was like, ‘I’ve never felt my tail twitch so much before,’ and then I knew that something REALLY BIG was about to fall, and then the ground started shaking and my voice was all silly and then Rarity told me I was being silly and then when we walked out of Sugarcube Corner everyone was looking at this thing way over here!”

“Uh-huh,” Dash nodded, clearly not convinced by Pinkie’s story.

“She’s telling the truth, Rainbow,” Twilight said, hoping to convince the blue pegasus. “I saw it with my own eyes. And where have you been all this time? The earthquake should have told you that something was up!”

“Uh, I live in a cloud home,” Rainbow Dash reminded Twilight, making vague poofy motions with her hooves that were supposed to represent her house. “Of course I can’t feel an earthquake.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Well, you should have at least noticed all the noise outside.”

“I, uh...” Rainbow Dash meekly scratched the back of her head. “I was sleeping.”

“Well that just about explains everything, doesn’t it darling?” Rarity cut in, her voice carrying her usual refined tone.

“Except, ya know, this thing here,” Applejack pointed out, hoof gesturing at the massive metal wall in front of them.

The blaring of trumpets drew everypony’s attention to the largest army of royal guards Twilight had ever seen. They descended from the sky and swarmed the mysterious ship, setting down on the ground between it and the crowds, forming a cordon that separated the two. This was followed by an enormous booming voice that blew Twilight’s mane in her face and made her cheeks flap as the wind blasted them. “CITIZENS OF EQUESTRIA,” Princess Luna thundered from a flying chariot, “FOR THY OWN SAFETY, PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THE OBJECT BEFORE THEE. THE ROYAL GUARDS OF EQUESTRIA SHALL HANDLE THIS AFFAIR.”

Well, at least she didn’t summon the lightning and thunder this time, Twilight thought. As Luna’s chariot landed, Twilight pushed her way through the crowd, a feat made easier by the tremendous amounts of bowing going on. “Princess Luna!”

“AH, TWILIGHT SPA-” Realizing that she was still using the Royal Canterlot Voice, Luna raised a hoof to her mouth and coughed. “Twilight Sparkle, wielder of the Element of Magic. Hath thee something to say?”

Twilight came to a stop next to the chariot. “Princess, I-” She looked around. There was something missing from this scene. “Where’s Princess Celestia?”

“My sister hath gone to inspect the chamber of the statue of Discord, the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony,” Luna replied. “She should be here any moment now.”

Right on cue, there was a blinding flash of light, as though a miniature sun had manifested a few meters above Twilight’s head. When the light faded, there stood Princess Celestia, lord of the sun.

All the ponies quickly sank to their front knees again, Twilight included this time. “Princess!” she greeted, smiling, once she was finished bowing.

Celestia’s stern expression broke out into a smile. “Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful student. It is a pleasure to see you again.” Her stern expression returned and she regarded the titanic vessel that dominated the skyline. The side of the ship stretched up into the sky like a massive wall, covered in thousands of purple and gold geometric shapes, giving an impression of a city-scape turned perpendicular to the ground. “Guards!” she called out, and a group of white pegasus guards flew in to stand at attention. “Fly around the vessel,” she ordered, her voice ringing with authority, “See if you can find any way in.”

-----

“Guys, I think we’re on a Forerunner world.”

Sunny Days glanced over to Hieroglyph, who was staring out the window. Far below the three ponies, past the spires and turrets and blocks that covered the top of the Forerunner vessel, a small crowd had gathered. Well, it was probably a fairly large crowd that merely looked like it was small due to being so far away; Sunny Days couldn’t make out any more than colored splotches of the beings who made up the crowd.

“What makes you say that?” Storm Driver asked, trotting up next to the brown archaeologist.

“Look at that city over there,” Hieroglyph responded, pointing a hoof at a city of spires and turrets mounted on the side of a tall bluish-gray mountain. “The architecture of that city resembles this ship far too much to be a mere coincidence.” His eyes suddenly widened, realizing the significance of what he had just said. “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh.”

“What?” Storm Driver’s eyebrows were furrowed in annoyance.

“Think about it!” Hieroglyph exclaimed, grabbing Storm Driver by the shoulders. “We’re on a Forerunner planet! In a Forerunner ship! What would you think if you saw a bunch of strange aliens in a badly damaged pony ship crash on our planet?”

“Umm-”

“That they hijacked it, of course!” Hieroglyph released Storm Driver’s shoulders and shuddered. “They’re gonna kill us. No, wait. They might want to torture us first. Oh gosh, who knows what the Forerunners think is justified punishment? What are they going to do?” He curled up into a ball, cowering at the thought of the vast arcane tortures that an advanced space-faring civilization might have developed.

“Calm down, Hiero,” Storm said, shaking his head. “We don’t know for sure that this is a Forerunner-” His sentence broke off at seeing a white pony with a blue mane and tail outside the window, wearing golden armor that glittered in the sunshine. A normal pony shouldn’t possibly have been able to be out there, standing on nothing hundreds of meters above any solid platform, but this pony had wings. “Holy.”

Sunny Days peered past the winged pony. There were other flying ponies as well, that were somehow grabbing clouds with their bare hooves and squeezing water out of them onto the fires that blazed from holes in the ship. “Well, I think that confirms Hieroglyph’s theory.” They looked like ponies, but no pony could possibly have wings, fly, and squeeze water out of clouds... Just imagining the mechanisms required to be able to physically grab hold of condensed water droplets suspended in the air and move them about was making Sunny’s head hurt.

The flying pony outside their window was moving his mouth, but the three ponies inside couldn’t hear a thing. Hieroglyph had taken to making wild gestures with his hooves that Sunny Days presumed meant something, but for the love of all that was good she had no idea what.

The winged white pony dove downwards to the crowd, disappearing out of sight. It wasn’t long before he returned, holding up a sign with the words, “WHO ARE YOU?”

“Hieroglyph, where’s your pencil and clipboard?” Sunny asked. The brown pony looked around in alarm before spotting his saddlebag on the far side of the room. Dashing over, he retrieved a thick notepad, grabbed a pencil in his mouth, and scribbled something onto it before tearing the paper off and pasting it against the window in front of the flying white pony.

“How can we have the same language?” Storm Driver asked.

Hieroglyph pursed his lips, hoof still holding the piece of paper against the window. “They may have seeded life or civilization on our world. That would explain why we look so similar too.”

The white pony dived back towards the ground again. Sunny Days couldn’t help but smile. Here they were, making first contact with an alien civilization! If they ever got back home, they’d be going down in history for sure!

“We... are... ponies,” Celestia repeated.

The guard saluted. “Yes, your majesty.”

“And you’re sure that’s what they wrote?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Pray tell, was that not completely obvious?” Luna asked.

“I’m sure there’s a good reason they felt they needed to make that clear,” Twilight said, leaning with her front hooves against the floor of Luna’s chariot.

Celestia turned back to the guard. “Ask them where they are from.” The guard saluted once more, then flew off to have another sign made.

“Is it just me, or do these ponies sound a little... stupid?” Rainbow Dash muttered from behind Twilight.

“Come now, RD,” Applejack replied softly, “We’ve only asked these folk one question. Give ‘em a chance, now.” Rainbow Dash sighed exasperatedly.

While the rest of Twilight’s friends conjectured about the nature of these ponies, Twilight and the Princesses simply stood in stolid silence, staring upwards at the tiny white dot that was the guard upon whom fate had chosen to be their messenger. Soon enough, the dot descended back down towards them.

“Typhanis,” the guard said.

“Typhanis?” Celestia echoed. She shook her head. “Where in the world is- We need a better way to talk to them. Ask them to come out.”

When the guard returned several minutes later, the response this time was “We can’t. The door’s broken.”

It had been a long time since Celestia had wanted to facehoof so badly, but that would have been unprincess-like. “Well then, we need a way in, don’t we?”

“We could teleport,” Twilight suggested, smiling eagerly for her teacher’s approval.

Celestia replied with a similar expression. “Very well, Twilight Sparkle. I hereby request that you teleport inside that tower and make contact with these ponies.”

Twilight’s irises shrank into points. “What? Me?”

“What? Her?” her friends echoed in chorus.

Celestia nodded. “Twilight Sparkle, as my best student,I have complete faith in your ability to carry out this mission. Good lucky, my little pony.” As she motioned with her hoof, with nary another word a pair of guard ponies swept Twilight up onto a chariot and took her up into the sky.

“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash called. “Wait!” She blasted off the ground, leaving a rainbow trail in her wake.

There was a flash of purple light in the middle of the room, and what had just a second ago been empty space now stood a purple pony with a dark, pink-streaked mane and a strange horn on her head.

It was a few seconds before Sunny Days could pick her jaw off the ground and close her mouth. “H- wha- how did you do that?”

The purple pony smiled awkwardly. “It’s just a teleportation spell,” she explained. She looked around the room at the three strange ponies. “Well hello. My name is Twilight Sparkle. Who are you?” She glanced eagerly from pony to pony, nervousness rising in her blood. Here she was, an ordinary pony from Canterlot, and she was making first contact with ponies from Celestia-knew-where! Regardless of how her life turned out, she was going down in history! Wait no, there was already those nice windows in Canterlot of her... ok, going down in history for a third thing.

“Umm...” Sunny Days still trying to comprehend the fact that this horned purple pony had just brushed off teleportation as something ordinary. She felt a shiver of awe run down her spine. Any doubt in her mind that these were the Forerunners vanished. Just what were these creatures?

“I’m Storm Driver,” the white colt said, first to recover from this latest shock of the day. “This is Sunny Days, and this is Hieroglyph,” he added, gesturing to each pony in turn with a hoof. “We’re explorers from Typhanis.”

“Typhanis,” Twilight repeated, her awkwardly polite smile still pasted onto her face. “I’ve never heard of that place before. Is it far away?”

There was a pause before Storm Driver’s reply. “Yes,” he finally responded. “Well actually, we don’t know where ‘here’ is, so it might not be very far away. But it probably is.”

Twilight lifted her eyebrows. “Wait, so, how did you guys get here if you don’t know where here is?”

“Um, we found this ship here,” Storm Driver replied slowly, then realized something and hastily added, “abandoned, of course. We were exploring the inside when we came up into this room. Then the ship started falling, and then there was this voice talking and then, suddenly, we were here.”

“Uh-huh,” Twilight nodded, then blinked twice and shook her head. “Wait, what?” She then decided that perhaps she didn’t want to shoulder the responsibility of interrogating these three ponies alone. “You know what, just forget it. Let’s get out of here first, then we can talk all about where you three came from. Now where’s that door?”

“Here,” Sunny Days said, pointing at a circular aperture on the near wall. As Twilight approached it, she added, “But it doesn’t work...”

Twilight closely inspected the door. It was made of two pieces of white metal split down the middle, nestled within the structure of the wall itself, featureless except for a gray button on the wall next to it. She pressed the button with a hoof. Nothing happened. Closing her eyes, Twilight channeled magical power into her horn and reached out with a sensory spell. There were gasps behind her as the other ponies saw her glowing horn, but she paid them no attention.

The mechanisms within the door were more complex than anything Twilight had ever seen. Trying to follow the minute details of the tiny wheels and slides was making her dizzy. But strangely, the door seemed aware of her magic; or at least, she felt a small, inquisitive response from the mechanisms, a magic of its own that seemed to be grasping for hers. Curious, Twilight let her magic make contact with the door’s magic, and felt it accept a small portion of her power. There was a quiet humming, then the two metal plates that closed off the aperture slid apart.

Shocked gasps followed this development. Twilight felt slightly embarrassed at all the attention, but she opened her eyes and saw that the door lead to... a tiny room. Confused, she walked through the door and did a 360 before tilting her head to a side and looking back at the other ponies. “How did you come in through this door?”

“Well, the elevator’s broken, I guess...” Sunny Days was looking at Twilight expectantly as the other three ponies joined Twilight in the lift. Realizing what she had to do, the purple unicorn reached out with the sensory spell again and fed a bit of power into the mechanisms that governed the lift. There was a buzz, then a sensation of falling in her gut as the lift hummed merrily downwards. Well, this is interesting.

But the lift wasn’t the only thing Twilight sensed. Stretching out with the sensory spell, she could feel thousands- no, millions- no, billions- no, uncountable devices that were thirsting for magical energy. So great was the array of machines that Twilight felt light-headed just trying to see them all. To focus her attention, she found the magical presences of the ponies outside; the energies of the two Princesses were plainly visible, Celestia’s glowing like the blazing sun, Luna’s like a black orb that emanated dark power.

Then Twilight noticed a third presence, inside the ship; indeed, almost at its very heart. It too, glowed with a sensation not unlike that of Celestia’s, though far weaker, and with a different... Twilight struggled for a while to describe the feeling, then decided texture was the right word.

It was below them at the moment, but they were swiftly approaching its level. Curious, Twilight stopped the lift once they had reached the same floor. She then powered on the elevator door, and emerged into a pitch black hallway.

“Is this the way out?” Sunny Days asked.

“I don’t know,” Twilight responded honestly. “But there’s something here, and I want to find out what it is.” She channeled more magic into her horn, causing a bright light to erupt from the end, brightening the hallway enough that she could see. “Come on.” She cantered down the hallway.

No... no... no... Twilight could get a vague impression of what was behind each of the doors they passed, but all of them only contained strange objects. She turned her attention ahead, towards the presence. It was in a vast room at the center of the hall. The group of ponies soon came across a much larger door, one that Twilight’s library could have passed through without even brushing the edges.

She channeled her power into the doorway; as one might expect, this larger door took a lot more energy, but it was still not much of a strain for Twilight’s prodigious magical potential. With a deep rumbling the metal plates slid open, revealing a gigantic, spherical room with a central pillar rising from bottommost point reaching towards the center, where it flattened out into a tall platform of smaller circular platforms stacked on top of ever larger circular platforms, connected to a series of thick, heavy cables that stretched from the central platform to all points on the inner surface of the spherical chamber.

Twilight’s ears stretched straight. Her eyes widened, her pupils shrank, her jaw hit the floor. For standing in atop the central platform was none other than...

“Princess Celestia?!”

Chapter 3: The Star Consumed

“Princess who?”

As the white alicorn spoke Twilight realized her mistake. Of course this wasn’t Princess Celestia. It couldn’t be Princess Celestia. The Princess was still outside; Twilight could had felt her outside. This pony might be tall and white and have long thin legs and an elongated horn that tapered off into a point as oppose to the rounded end of most unicorns and a pair of huge white wings, but she was most certainly not Princess Celestia. For one thing, she was much... grayer. Her coat was ragged and dull and had none of the Princess’s illustrious shine, her hair was a dull gray-yellow and hung from her head in straight lines, her wings were unkempt and crude. And she was thin. Very thin. As the strange alicorn approached her, Twilight could almost count her ribs.

But she was an alicorn, an alicorn who bore a striking resemblance to the mare Twilight knew as her mentor, if Celestia had been locked in a dungeon and left to starve for a month. Twilight wasn’t much one for stating the obvious, but... this was no ordinary pony.

“I asked you a question.” The mare’s voice was a hoarse whisper, devoid of any tone, conjuring up the image of wind rasping through a rusty pipe.

It took a few moments for Twilight to relearn how her mouth worked. “S- sorry,” she said, and smiled politely. “I mistook you for somepony else.” She gave a teethy, awkward grin. “I’m sorry, but... who-”

“Where am I?” the mare asked, cutting off Twilight’s attempted question.

“Umm...” Twilight’s eyes were wide at the alicorn’s rudeness. “You’re a couple miles outside of Canterlot. In Equestria.”

The white mare raised one ragged eyebrow at Twilight, who got the impression that this strange visitor had no idea what the purple unicorn was talking about. “What happened?”

Twilight glanced back at the ponies behind her and gestured at the white alicorn with her head. It took a moment for Sunny Days to understand what she was trying to convey.

“Oh! Umm, well...” Sunny’s eyes turned back and forth from what she understood to be two Forerunners. She had no idea what was going on, but it seemed as though the larger Forerunner held some kind of authority over the lesser one and was wondering what had happened to her ship. “Well, we, um, we found your ship floating in the sky on Eau, and um, well, we boarded it, and, um-”

The alicorn’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe later,” came the hoarse whisper. And with that she trotted through the smaller ponies and headed into the hallway.

“Um, miss?” Twilight called after following her out the door. “Do you know how to get out of here?”

“Of course.” The mare’s reply was barely audible. Uncertain and nervous, Twilight decided that they might as well follow the creature. Her sensory spell had deactivated sometime during the whole meeting, probably due to her surprise. Summoning the light from her horn again (for some reason the alicorn was simply trudging along in the dark), she trotted off after the pony, coming up to her side. As she did so her eyes fell upon the alicorn’s cutie mark. For some reason, she had expected some kind of sun to be there, styled like her greatest mentor’s cutie mark, but instead there was just a number, printed in big, black, bold font: 151.

151? What kind of cutie mark was that? What the hay could a pony’s talent be that could be represented by a number? Was she really good at math? Counting? No, that was silly. Was there something special about the number, then? Twilight dove into the recesses of her brain where she kept all that information about obscure pony history; did the number 151 have any special significance?

Nothing came to mind, and eventually Twilight gave up. As they made their way through the hallway, her gaze kept being drawn to the white alicorn’s face. She really does look like the Princess, Twilight thought, recalling somewhat defensively her initial words upon seeing the mare. The alicorn’s was squinting, as though unused to the dark, her eyes scanning the various halls and doors they passed, wandering up, down, and all around as they weaved through the nooks and crannies of the massive ship, but never did they turn to Twilight Sparkle.

“So,” Twilight said after an uncomfortably long period of time where no sound except that of hooves on metal echoed within their confines. “I didn’t really introduce myself, did I?” She looked up hopefully at the alicorn’s face while putting on her best ‘official’ voice. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. I’m sorry for mistaking you for somepony else. Princess Celestia is my mentor and the ruler of all of Equestria, and you look an awful lot like her.”

The alicorn didn’t so much as twitch at Twilight’s efforts. “So... umm... what’s your name?”

There was again no response. Twilight felt a drop of sweat drip down the side of her head. Why wasn’t this mare talking? Had she been rude somehow? Twilight had never met anypony that was this... antisocial. Considering who she had been and would still be if Princess Celestia hadn’t forced her to Ponyville, Twilight felt bad thinking that about anypony, but it was the truth. She glanced back at the three Earth ponies tailing them. They had been quietly murmuring amongst each other for a while now, their voices too low for Twilight to make out what they were saying.

“Cephei.”

So unexpected was the response that Twilight didn’t even realize who had said it for several seconds. “Oh.” She blinked. “Is that your name? That’s...” What was she supposed to say to that? “That’s a nice name,” she finally said lamely.

“It isn’t.”

Huh? Another long, awkward silence followed. This time though, it was broken by one of the Earth ponies. “Excuse me.” Sunny’s voice was small and meek. “I don’t mean to question you, but... are we walking in circles?”

Twilight blinked a few times. She had been so engrossed with the strange alicorn that she had been completely unaware of their surroundings. What had been the last few turns they had made? As she racked her head trying to conjure up the memory, Cephei answered with calm assurance, “Of course not.”

Cephei then proceeded to look around uncertainly, leaving Twilight with the sneaking suspicion that she didn’t, in fact, know where she was going. A long, interminable silence followed, no longer broken by any conversation. Twilight’s legs were starting to get tired. How long had they been walking around? How long had she been in here? Minutes? Hours? Without any kind of change in their situation to mark the passage of time, Twilight found herself utterly unaware of how much had passed. Were the princesses and her friends getting worried outside?

If only they could actually see their surroundings. The ponies had zig-zagged through countless hallways and passed through innumerable doors. The walls were always colorless and blank. Occasionally they passed into vast chambers where there were only thin walkways to walk on, but due to the suffocating darkness it was impossible to see what was beyond the small reach of Twilight’s light. This darkness seemed unnatural, more like a black fog than the mere absence of light. Twilight had considered making her horn glow brighter at several points, but there was way of knowing how long they were going to be in here, so it was wiser to conserve energy. And there was no chance of stopping to look around; Cephei’s pace never faltered, and Twilight doubted the austere pony would pause to look at the scenery.

“Aha,” came Cephei’s hoarse whisper after Celestia-knew how long. Twilight looked around in alarm. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but apparently Cephei did. Pressing her hooves up against the wall, the white alicorn murmured something unintelligible and pointed her horn at it. There was a flash of light, and for a brief moment Twilight could see vast gears and wires swing into motion. The wall suddenly melted away as though made of liquid, replaced by the starry night sky.

After recovering from her surprise, Twilight rushed past Cephei and peered out the hole. They were just a short jump away from ground level. The moon was well into its nightly journey across the star-filled heavens. The crowd had gotten much, much smaller; only a few ponies were left now, and they were all were sleeping on the grass. Amongst them were her friends, always faithful and waiting (albeit snoring lightly), and two sleepy princesses.

Fluttershy, the lightest sleeper, was the first to notice. Instantly she snapped upright, all weariness gone. “Twilight!” she called out in that small, cute voice of hers, and flew up into the air, smiling. But the smile vanished upon seeing who was behind her unicorn friend.

Fluttershy’s cry had awakened all the other ponies. Twilight watched as her friends woke up one by one and had the same reaction as Fluttershy. She hopped down, happy to finally have her hooves meet soft grass at last, but worried all the same at what she was afraid would be a tumultuous introduction.

The last time Twilight had ever seen Princess Celestia with the expression like she had now was when the box that held the Elements of Harmony had been opened up empty of the powerful implements of magic they were supposed to protect. Her head was arched back, rainbow mane flowing gently in the breeze, jaw dropped, eyes larger than Twilight had ever seen them. Twilight glanced up at the other white alicorn. She was wearing the exact same expression.

It would have been comical if it weren’t so serious. The crickets seemed to be chirping more loudly than Twilight knew crickets could chirp. Finally, the silence was broken by Pinkie Pie’s delayed gasp: “GHUUUUAAAAAHH!”

Of all the things Luna had imagined would emerge from the giant ship, a look-a-like of her sister had never even come across her mind. The three alicorns were now sitting at the dining table reserved for the Princesses in Canterlot Castle. The table was meant for two, but being meant for royalty could have sat an entire family, so it was little trouble to bring up another chair.

They were alone, just the three of them. Celestia had demanded it so. Twilight and her friends had been sent back to Ponyville, while Celestia had called up one of her aides to question the three Earth ponies in a separate room. Luna could only guess at what her sister was thinking; if Luna was shocked, Celestia must be overwhelmed with astonishment.

Well, this... ‘Cephei’ might have looked like Celestia, but she certainly acted nothing like Luna’s beloved sibling. Hungrily she devoured the meal set in front of them, summoned forth by Celestia at Cephei’s request (the mysterious alicorn hadn’t said a single thing other than her request for food). Luna couldn’t exactly blame her; the poor pony looked as though she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Yet she completely lacked any of Celestia’s poise and grace--and it wasn’t just the dirty gray of her coat and the way the feathers of her wings stuck out at odd angles. Celestia might not be eating at the moment, but when she did she always did so daintily, as befitting a beautiful, intelligent mare, using magic to bring her food up to her mouth as she sat with a straight back, hooves together, wings tucked away. This alicorn, she ate like an Earth pony without a shred of self-respect, face buried in her salad as she hungrily scooped up leaves into her mouth, without a single thought to dignity or grace.

Luna sighed mentally. She knew it wasn’t proper--after all, Luna knew nothing about who this mare was. Her mind just couldn’t help but compare her to her sister. She looked so much like Celestia. Celestia at her worst.

Roughly half the food on the table was gone before Cephei finally put a hoof to her stomach and licked her lips, no small feat considering the two Princesses put together rarely ate more than a quarter of what the royal chefs provided. For her own part, Luna had attempted no more than a few spoonfuls of soup and one or two bites of salad. Celestia hadn’t eaten at all.

“Who are you?” Celestia asked after a short silence. She was staring her untouched plate.

“Cephei.” The mysterious alicorn was nonchalantly trying to use a toothpick with her hooves, and failing.

“I know your name,” Celestia responded, her eyes not leaving the plate. “Who are you?”

Cephei gave up on the toothpick. “That’s a simple question with a difficult answer. I could ask the same of you. Who are you?”

Celestia looked up from her plate. Keeping her gaze perfectly straight forward, she glared at the far wall. “I am Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria alongside my sister, Princess Luna, Lord of the Sun and bringer of light to the ponies of this land. And I ask again, who are you?”

Cephei ground her teeth for a few moments, staring at her plate. “I’m just your average, run-of-the-mill alicorn.”

“Alicorns are not ‘average’,” Celestia snapped. Luna looked at her sister in surprise; she hadn’t heard her sister angry in a long time. “I don’t know who you are or why you look like me, but I know that you are not ‘run-of-the-mill’. I have questions to ask, and I will have them answered.”

Hoping to defuse a potentially explosive situation, Luna butted in with a question that had been bugging her since she saw Cephei eating. “Can thou use magic?”

Three sets of eyes glanced towards Cephei’s horn. It looked perfectly healthy. “Yes,” the newcomer replied. “But, uh, it’s not very strong...” Her voice trailed off, then she added hastily, “at the moment, I mean.”

“Why not?” Luna pressed.

“You’re asking an awful lot of questions.” Luna raised her eyebrows at that. What was she expected to do? Upon seeing her confusion, Cephei elaborated. “What I mean is, I know as little about you as you do about me. Why don’t we take turns asking questions?”

Luna glanced at her sister, who nodded in approval. “Very well,” she said, turning back to Cephei. “Thou may ask thy question.”

“Why do you talk like that?”

Luna gave a deep sigh. “We- I hath been... gone. For a very long time. The language of Equestria hath changed much while I was gone.”

Cephei’s eyebrows knitted together and her eyes narrowed. Sensing that this was a sensitive subject, she wisely decided not to press the issue. Celestia took the opportunity to return to the conversation. “Where did you come from?”

Cephei pointed with her right hoof out the windows of the north wall, where the hulk of the vessel she had arrived in was still lightly smoking. Upon seeing Celestia’s annoyed glare, she smirked. “Oh, it’s not what you think,” she quickly explained, eager to not make the princess even more annoyed at her for being a smart-ass than she already was. “I was born on that ship, and I’ve lived my whole life on it. So I’m being completely honest when I’m saying that I came from there.”

Luna leaned forward. “Where... did thither vessel come from?”

“Uh-uh-uh,” Cephei said, shaking her head. “My turn.” She took a deep breath. “Have you ever... left... this world?” Upon seeing the confused expression of the other two alicorns, she elaborated. “I mean, been off of it? Been to a completely different world, out amongst the stars?”

Luna raised her eyebrows. “There art other worlds amongst the stars?”

“Is that your question? You still have to answer mine,” Cephei smiled.

“No,” Celestia interjected. “To both questions. We haven’t. This world is all we’ve ever known. And that’s not our question.” Finally she turned to gaze upon her look-a-like. “When were you born?”

Cephei closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know. Before the ship arrived here, I was asleep for a very long time. I don’t know how long it’s been.” She opened her eyes again, her gaze distant. “You said you were the Lord of the Sun. What does that mean?”

Celestia looked surprised at the question. “I move the sun across the sky every day,” she explained. “I raise it from below the horizon at dawn, and set it below at dusk. My sister,” she said, gesturing to Luna, “does the same for the moon.”

The look of abject bewilderment on Cephei’s face was identical to the one she had been wearing upon first exiting the giant craft. “You- you move the sun?” Her voice resounded with a clear tone not present in her earlier, hoarse whispers.

Celestia and Luna exchanged glances of confusion. “Um... yes?” the princess of the day replied.

Cephei’s face twisted in consternation as she glanced out the window to the full moon outside. “How?”

Celestia blinked a few times. “With magic, of course.” This was the first time she had ever encountered someone that reacted like this to being told that she could move the sun in a long time. Granted, she hadn’t had to tell anyone that in a long time, but still. Was it that amazing?

Cephei raised a hoof and scratched the back of her head, her eyes scattering wildly across the table, looking downwards. Finally she gave a weak chuckle. “‘With magic?’ Oh of course, that’s so obvious.” She seemed to be talking more to herself than any other pony. “Just dandy. Nothing impossible about that at all.” She looked up. “You don’t think there’s anything unusual about that?”

“I think you’re asking an awful lot of questions,” Celestia replied.

Cephei smirked. “I was wondering when you would notice.” Her expression turned dark, eyes turning downwards to glower at her plate as she muttered under her breath, “Great, she moves the sun, I can’t move a toothpick.”

Celestia had opened her mouth and was about to speak when there was a knock on the door. “I thought I asked not to be disturbed,” she said after a pause.

“I know,” came a small squeaky voice from the crack in the door. “But- it’s-”

“There’s an intruder in the castle,” came the deep, resonant voice of a Royal Guard. “And he’s set off the alarm spell inside Discord’s prison.”

Chapter 4: The Flap of a Butterfly

Being stone was like solitary confinement, if solitary confinement meant being bound so tightly you couldn’t move and the room was eternally dark. Actually it was much worse than that; if you were bound tightly you could at least feel the straps against your skin and your own pulse beat, and no matter how quiet a room was there was always the ringing in your own ears that lurked beneath normal volumes of hearing. Being stone meant you couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t touch or taste or do anything at all. Being stone meant that you were your own universe, cut off from all other worlds, alone in an eternal darkness with nothing but your own thoughts. Every moment was indistinguishable from the last; with no way to tell time every second was an eternity and every eternity was a second. They were one and the same. The darkness. The silence. The thoughts. The stone. The draconequus.

So imagine Discord’s surprise when a tiny ray of light fell into his prison. It wasn’t like last time, when there had been a massive cracking noise as the beautiful chaos outside had shattered the confines of his weakened jail. This was just a tiny little crack in the event horizon of his imprisonment, allowing him to send forth a tiny bit of his presence outside.

The shadow cast by Discord’s statue came alive. “Uuuuarrraaawww,” it said, stretching its arms as its mouth opened wide. It was in a tiny, dark room, the walls constructed of huge blocks of stone crafted by the finest pony craftsman. The only light came from a tiny window in the middle of the single metal door that was the only way in or out. The walls and floor were barren and featureless, and the room was empty, save for the statue of Discord... and one dark red pony.

“My my, what have we here?” Discord said. The shadow pulled itself free of the statue and flitted around the room, like a moving mass of dark paint on the walls. “A pony, of all creatures, freeing me? Let’s see... dark red, red eyes, black mane and tail, pretty tall, kind of on the skinny side, a little creepy-looking... hmm, no cutie mark. How interesting.”

The pony’s eyes followed the shadow as it moved from wall to wall, his expression impassive. “Hello, administrator,” the deep voice, devoid of feeling, echoed off the walls.

Discord chortled. “It’s been a long time since anypony’s called me that,” he said with a laugh. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“What do you go by, then?” The pony had asked a question, but his voice had remained completely monotone.

Discord’s shadow settled into a comfortable reclining position, hands behind his head. “They call me... Discord, Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony.”

The dark pony stirred at that line, and Discord smiled, finally having gotten a reaction out of his audience. “I see,” the pony responded. “Then tell me, Discord. What went wrong?”

“Hmm?” The draconequus was honestly intrigued by the question. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” the pony replied. “I don’t know how long it’s been but when I woke up I tried to find a signal in the sky. There was nothing. The Wave has come and gone, Discord. Why then, are the alicorns still here?”

“Oh, that,” Discord replied, humming merrily to himself as his shadow produced the shadow of a piece of paper and started folding it into a bird “I got bored.” He tossed the half-folded paper aside.

“You... got... bored.” It was amazing how much emotion one could put into a completely flat voice. That is to say, none at all. Nevertheless, the dark pony’s eyes seemed to flash. “I see.”

“See what?” Discord asked cheerfully.

“You grew tired of your purpose and decided to do the exact opposite. Being a guiding light that was meant to teach them the ways of magic and harmony was too boring. And so you assumed this form, styling yourself as the spirit of chaos and disharmony. Discord. How quaint.”

“Quaint?!” Discord’s shadow exploded in mock rage, swelling until it covered almost all the surfaces of the room. “How dare you! I take offense to that! I, Discord, may be many things, but I am most certainly not quaint!”

“They’re all dead because of you,” the dark pony replied, unfazed. “Are you happy with yourself?”

“Happy?” The shadow shrank back down to its normal size. “Are you kidding me? I’m ecstatic! I’m free! Free of having to listen to anypony, free to do whatever I want, free to pursue my own dreams and desires! Ah, I wish I could tell you all about what it’s like to be free, but that’d be like preaching to a rock, wouldn’t it?” Discord grinned toothily at the pony.

“You don’t look very free.” Discord chuckled at the pony’s obvious retort. “How are you still alive?”

The draconequus gave a hearty laugh. “Oh come now. Thinking of destroying me? Even the Concordia could do no more than turn me to stone. What could you possibly do?” He fluttered around the room again, surrounding the dark pony like a snake. “And what are you going to do?”

The dark pony blinked; the first real movement Discord had seen him perform since he woke up. “I’m going to finish what you started.”

Discord snorted. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

The dark pony looked downwards. “I don’t know.”

The shadow sent an arm crawling up the pony’s front left leg and rested an elbow on his shoulder. “Well, then, I have a proposition for you-” He was interrupted by the sound of rapidly clopping hooves. “Oh, that must be dear Celestia,” the spirit of chaos sighed. “You better get going before she kills you.”

The dark pony wasted no time. Immediately he spun around and dashed through the door, knocking it open with a headbutt. Discord was surprised by the speed of his reaction. “Hey, I was just kidding, you know!” he called out after him. “She wouldn’t really kill you!”

Celestia raced down the hallways of her castle, a fury in her hooves like none she had felt for a thousand years. An intruder? In her castle? What kind of pony could sneak past her guards? They were the best of the best, highly trained and motivated--Celestia made sure of that. Even more worrying was the fact that this pony wanted something to do with Discord. What kind of twisted creature could possibly want anything to do with that most twisted of all creatures?

In one swift motion she leaped down another flight of stairs, wings outstretched as she glided down to the foot of the steps, then folded her wings and continued racing forward. She was deep in the caverns that ran through the heart of the mountain Canterlot was built upon. This was where the criminals, too dangerous to be allowed out in Equestria yet not evil enough to warrant life-long banishment were kept. Rumor had it that Discord had carved them out during his reign of terror to house his enemies that he had been too merciful to finish off. So perhaps it was poetic justice that the most dangerous criminal of them all was now kept in their depths.

Celestia had learned her lesson from the last time Discord had been released, of course. Prior to that she had had no idea that a small spat between three little fillies could shatter the powerful, but weakened magic that sealed the chaotic spirit in stone. Well, Celestia wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. This time, she had buried Discord in the deepest, darkest cell of her dungeons, where nopony could possibly reach past through the many gates and guards. Or so she had thought. Never breaking stride, channeling magic through her horn as she unlocked and opened the gates as she passed them, Celestia blazed forward like a stream of light, illuminating the caverns otherwise only dimly lit with dull torches, the two pegasus guards following her trailing far behind.

She was just about to round the final corner that would lead to Discord’s cell when a dark blur rushed into her path. Surprised, Celestia flared her wings and barely managed to skid to a stop to avoid crashing. The blur sped past her and flew raced up the stairs so quickly that Celestia only had time to snap her head around before it disappeared out of view.

And then she heard the voice that made her blood freeze. “Hey, I was just kidding, you know! She wouldn’t really kill you!”

A split-second decision. To chase the intruder, or to investigate Discord’s chamber? There was no time to make a reasoned verdict; Celestia opened her mouth and boomed in the Royal Canterlot Voice, “GUARDS! SEIZE THAT PONY!”

She turned and galloped the last few steps into Discord’s prison. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The statue was still there, Discord’s expression of horror frozen on his face. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But then...

“Why hello there!” Discord’s despicable voice rang out in the gloom. “Did you miss me, Celestia? I missed you. It’s quite lonely being imprisoned in stone-”

“Enough!” Celestia thundered, unwilling to listen to Discord repeat his words from the last time he was released. “Who was that pony? What did he do?”

Discord’s shadow disconnected itself from the statue and started moving around. “Come, now, Celestia, there’s no need to be so worried all the time. He was just an old friend that made a tiiiney little chink in my prison, just enough so we could have a quick talk, is all.” Discord held up his claw and brought two fingers close together to accentuate the point.

Celestia snorted. Reaching out with her senses, she probed the statue with a field of magic. Indeed, there was the tiniest of cracks in the spell the Elements of Harmony had woven, from which a minuscule amount of magic was streaming out, allowing Discord to manipulate his own shadow and project his voice. Normally Celestia wouldn’t be concerned about such an insignificant amount of magic escaping, but this was Discord. Furthermore, any pony with enough power to do anything to a seal crafted by the Elements of Harmony was incredibly dangerous.

“What. Did. You. Talk. About?” Every word in Celestia’s sentence was spoken with a commanding finality.

“Tell me, Celestia, do you know where ponies come from?” Discord’s shadow had produced a nail file and was nonchalantly filing the claws on his lion paw.

“What?” Celestia asked, cocking her head to one side.

“You mean you don’t know?!” Discord dropped his file in mock horror, and held out his hands as though to stop Celestia from entering the room. “Ok, ok, let me explain this. When a mare and a colt love each very much, they will-”

“Enough, Discord. What’s your point?” If looks could kill Celestia’s would have bored holes in the wall.

“Celestia, I can’t explain things to you if you don’t even know where ponies come from!” Discord now produced two shadow puppets meant to be a mare and a colt in his hands. “Now, then where was I? Oh yes!” His voice started switching between a feminine high-pitched soprano and a deep, sonorous bass. “‘Oh, you’re so dreamy, honey!’ ‘I know.’ ‘I love you.’ ‘I love you more!’ ‘No, I love you more!’ ‘Oh, you big handsome hunk of a stallion. Kiss me! Make me yours!’ Muah! Muah! Muah!” Discord descended into making kissing noises as the two shadow puppets piled on top of each other.

“Discord...” Waves of intense heat rolled off Celestia’s body as the stone beneath her hooves cracked under the strain of her anger.

Discord tossed the shadow puppets away and gave a big sigh. “Celestia, you’ve got to stop being so grim all the time! Lighten up! Live a little! Smiiiile!” At this last word Discord put two fingers in his mouth and stretched his cheeks out and upwards. When Celestia’s expression didn’t change he sighed again and pulled his fingers out of his mouth. “Fine, fine. The big secret is...! Ponies come from other ponies.”

Celestia took a single step forward, murder in her eyes. Discord snapped his fingers. “The real question is: ponies come from other ponies, so where did you come from?”

That got a reaction. A silly grin spread from ear to ear across the shadow of Discord’s face. The waves of superheated air had stopped streaming from Celestia’s body as a look of astonishment replaced her expression of anger. Discord chuckled.

“Butterflies, Celestia. It’s all about the butterflies.” Discord relished the princess’s confused expression for a few more seconds. It was a work of art, really. “You see, the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one place can cause a huge storm on the other side of the world! That’s the power of chaos.” He grinned, showing his teeth, and started snaking his way around the room in circles.

“A long time ago there was a pony named Joe,

who cheerfully peered into a wormhole.

What he saw there gave him quite the shock.

‘Here is something that just must be stopped!’

Destiny awaits, Celestia, my dear friend,

Sooner or later you will discover your end.

To understand it all, to the beginning you must go.

Remember your past, reveal what you don’t know!

There you will find that it was all part of the plan,

A chain of events goes back to where it all began...”

As the last lines of Discord’s riddle wrapped up, the shadow of the draconoquus snaked its way back to its statue, feet and tail lining up with the base as the rest of his body assumed the frozen position. A deep, cackling laugh resounded within the dungeons, echoing up towards the heavens...

This is ridiculous, Bright Sword thought. The Princess being able to run faster than her pegasus guards could fly, he could understand. But what was with this dark pony? The intruder ran faster than Bright Sword could fly within the confines of the dungeons, since he had to move slow enough to avoid crashing into anything.

They were in the main castle now, the dark pony still rushing through hallways and stairs as he kept running up, up, and up. Where is he going? Didn’t this pony know that there was no way out from the top of Canterlot Tower?

They rounded another corner, just as the dark pony dashed around another one, vanishing from view. “Hah!” Bright Sword’s companion shouted.

“What?”

“That hallway goes out to the balcony! It’s a dead end!” his partner gleefully exclaimed, pouring more strength into his wings.

They rushed after the dark pony, skidding to a halt on the open balcony. Indeed, the dark pony was standing there, staring down at the city below. He glanced at the guards as they arrived.

“Surrender!” Bright Sword yelled. “There’s nowhere left to run!”

Then the dark pony did something Bright Sword thought, in hindsight, he probably should have seen coming. The dark pony leapt right over the railing and off the balcony. Rushing to the side, the two guards stared, mouths agape, as the dark pony soared gracefully, legs stretched, down, down, down...

SPLAT.

… and turned into a thick red paste on the sidewalk. Bright Sword winced. “Well... that’s the last we’ll see of him. Let’s go tell the princess.” And with that, the pegasus guards spun around and trotted off.

Far below, a few frightened little ponies had gathered to view the splattered mess that had moments ago been the pony that had just suicided from the top of Canterlot Tower. One particularly brave filly stood right next to the splash of dark red paste plastered all over the sidewalk and road. He stared into it. It took a few moments before he realized it was staring back.

An eye looked at him, and blinked. Then another eye. Then a hoof reached out from the mush and into the air. Then three more hooves. The eyes gathered together and became a head... out came a spine, that quickly grew sinews and then skin... the onlookers watched in horror as what had been a moments before nothing more a stain on the ground stitched itself back into a living, breathing pony.

Having finished its reformation, the dark pony cast one last glance at the tower it had just jumped from, and ran off.

-----

Celestia couldn’t sleep. Most of the night had already passed by, and in a few hours she would have to raise the sun. She knew that once the excitement wore off she would be too tired to attend to her royal duties properly. Perhaps she should just cancel all of them; surely there was nothing on her line-up today that could possibly be as important as... whatever this was.

Discord’s words haunted the princess of the day as she paced around her room. For all of her life, Celestia had only known one other alicorn; Luna, her sister. They had never known any alicorn parents. Celestia thought back to her earliest memories, thousands of years ago when she had just been a small, slightly pudgy filly with pink hair. Their ‘parents’ had obviously been adopted, being Earth ponies, though in typical filly ignorance she hadn’t realize it until she was much older. When asked where the two alicorns had come from, her adopted parents had told of how they discovered two points of light descending from the twilight sky on the horizon; when they trotted over to investigate, they had found unusual two foals, sporting both horns and wings.

Her parents had believed with all their heart that Celestia and Luna were divine, a response to their prayers, the prayers of all ponies who had to live under Discord, cosmic angels created by the universe itself to bring an end to his nightmarish reign. A lot of ponies did. And Celestia had believed them. In her private moments, when the times seemed darkest and it looked as though Discord would triumph, she had doubted them, but when the two alicorns finally defeated the hated draconequus she had felt as though she had proven her parents correct. It had been their destiny.

“Discover my end...” she whispered, collapsing into her bed. What could that mean? What does Discord know that I don’t?

Back to the beginning... like any adult, much less one that had lived for millennia, Celestia had difficulty recalling her foalhood. Those times seemed so distant. But... perhaps she didn’t need to. There were books, transcribed and translated tablets in the Canterlot Library of those ancient times. It was strange to think of her own foalhood being the subject of archaeology to modern ponies, but that’s the way things were.

Celestia was no good at book research, but she knew one pony who was. Summoning her parchment and quill from the dresser, she put ink to paper and began to write.

Dear Twilight Sparkle...

The dark pony stood on the peak of a mountain, watching the dawn with dull red eyes. The sky blazed hues of gold and the somber blue of the night gave way to tenebrous purple then blunted oranges and yellows until finally the brilliant disc of the sun itself rose above the horizon, turning everything into hues of gold. It was a beautiful sight to eyes sorely needing one.

So anyways, I was thinking...

The dark pony stirred with a start. His eyes widened a fraction of a centimeter and scanned his surroundings for the source of the voice.

Hey, hey, can you hear me? Is this thing on? Helloooo...

Finally realizing the voice’s identity, the dark pony returned to his neutral state. “Get out of my head.”

Oh good, you can hear me. Excellent. Apparently, when you opened up that crack in my prison you absorbed a bit of my power! So now here I am, talking to you in your head. Isn’t that great? I don’t have to be lonely anymore! So anyways, I was thinking that we should work together!

“Why in the world would I want to work with you?”

Come now, we have so much in common! You want to wreak havoc, I want to wreak havoc! We’d be perfect together!

“I do not want to wreak havoc.”

Oh, but you do! How else are you going to accomplish your goal?

The dark pony’s gaze turned downwards. There was a pause before his reply. “If I had enough time... if I could gain their trust...”

He was met by waves of psychic laughter. Hahahaha, that’s priceless. “Gain their trust?” Look at you! You’re almost black! Your eyes glow red! You’re tall and skinny and creepy-looking, you talk in a monotone and you don’t have any emotions! Everything about you screams “I’m evil, defeat me!” Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, I mean, just look at me! Well you can’t really look at me right now...

The dark pony closed his eyes and did not respond. Look, I can tell you’re not the intellectual type. You’re the “point me at the bad guys and I’ll go beat them up” kind of guy. That’s fine. I respect that. But for something like this you need someone to tell you what to do. A great chessmaster, someone who can make other ponies dance to his tune. Someone like... me.

“I can’t trust you.”

Look, I’m the spirit of chaos and disharmony! I’m a simple guy, who doesn’t want much out of life than just to see some excellent chaos. As long as you cause a lot, I’ll be happy where I am, and I’ll be happy to help you.

There was a long pause before the dark pony’s next response. The sun blazed its way into the sky as the heavens gathered their daytime azure hue. “How can you help me?”

How can’t I help you? This is my world. I know everything there is to know about it. I can play these ponies like strings on a lyre. And you, my friend, know almost nothing. I mean sure, you know that there are two alicorns and that I’m me, but you don’t know how things work around here. You don’t even know what the Elements of Harmony are.

The pony’s eyes narrowed. “The what?”

See, that’s what I’m talking about! The Elements are what sealed me in stone, you know. Six ponies, wearing six pieces of jewelry, wielding the power of the Concordia...

“That’s impossible. Ponies of this world can’t use the Concordia. They’re not...” His words trailed off.

I know, right? I was surprised too. But here I am, trapped in stone, with nobody to talk to but you.

“So... something has happened... that should be impossible...” the dark pony’s mutterings decreased in volume until they were unintelligible whispers. “We have to learn more about these Elements before we proceed...”

Oh, so are we working together now?

He gave a slow nod.

Excellent! That was easier than I expected! Now, since we’re going to be working together and I’m going to be in your head all day, how bout I get a name from you, “partner”?

The dark pony stared off into the rising sun. Finally he spoke a single word.

“Legion.”