“The battle magi are reporting direct hits!” The coordinator projected an illusion over the planning table, displaying a simplified map of the city with geometric shapes spinning in place as points of interest. One huge red triangle loomed overhead, and Cadance didn't need to be told what that was. “No effect on the target!”

"How can they have no effect?" Lieutenant Raker muttered, half-wearing a set of headphones and listening to the radio.

“All we have left are the damn recruits from the Princess' school. Get somepony down there to whip them into shape!” General Nickel Plated ordered. “Even if they’re not hurting it, they might distract it. We need to get the civilians time to get to shelter.”

“Any word from Doctor Sparkle?” Cadance asked.

“When I got through to the lab she wasn't in. According to her assistant, she’s in the city. She suggests checking the observatory,” replied Lt. Raker. "I don't know if we'll get through again. That monster is throwing out a ton of interference."

“Her father works there,” Cadance muttered. “Get a unit over there to secure her. Can her assistant give us anything?”

“She said they can get one agent ready for combat.”

“That’s better than nothing. Ensign Alias!"

"Ma'am!" The pale unicorn saluted Cadance.

"Is Sunset Shimmer still in the castle?"

“We have guards on her, Ma’am. Should we take her into custody?”

“Take her to the battle magi to assist with their efforts,” Cadance said. “She’s better at pyrokinesis than anypony else alive. Maybe she can do something.”

The Linnorm opened its maw, and fire poured onto the city shield, dirty and thick. The focus tightened, the sputtering greasy flame turning into a lance of plasma, and the raspberry field of magic collapsed like a soap bubble, the Linnorm’s breath slashing into the city like a swift and terrible sword, clipping the observatory before swinging down into the lower city.

Ancient foundations melted like butter, and thousands screamed as parts of Canterlot started tumbling down to the valley below.

“We lost everything west of Diamond Street!” Lieutenant Raker yelled.

“Get radio contact back with them!” General Nickel ordered.

“No, I mean… we lost it. The city is starting to lose structural integrity!”

“We need a miracle,” Cadance whispered.

“Activate interlock.” Starlight said, going through the armor checklist in her head. She sealed the leyline guide wires.

“Dynatherms connected.” Reported one of the assistants, screwing conduits into place. A few quick taps on the peytral confirmed the armor’s internal systems were feeding from the Orichalcum heart beating in her chest.

“Infracells up!” Yelled the crew chief, magical energy pouring into the armor to jump-start the systems.

“Megathrusters are go!” Golden wings of magical force extended from Starlight’s sides. “Let’s do this!”

“Wake up!”

Twilight groaned. Somepony was shaking her. Her whole body was sore. It was a struggle just to open her eyes. When she did, her father was looking at her, blood dripping from a cut above his eyebrow.

“Can you walk?” he asked. “We need to get to the shelter.”

“What happened?” she asked, getting to her hooves with his help.

“The ceiling came down. I got us away from the fire but we need to make it a few more blocks.”

Everything was coming back now. Doctor Sparkle steadied herself and took control. “Right. And I need a radio. I have to get in contact with my lab. They couldn’t have missed this disaster. Even without Lightning Dust, Sunset Shimmer should be able to--”

“Sunset Shimmer?” Night Light looked shocked.

“I’ll explain later,” Doctor Sparkle said. “Which way is the civilian shelter?”

Night Light led her outside, and into hell. The city was collapsing, buildings centuries old folding in on themselves as the foundations under them crumbled. Ponies were running in panic, stampeding away from danger.

“The shelter is--” Night Light looked down the street, and at the sheer cliff that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago, the stone burning red and molten at the edges, smoke and screams pouring from along the edge. He bit his lip.

“What’s wrong?” Sparkle asked.

“This way,” Night Light said, pulling her another direction, stumbling as another shockwave from above hit them like a fist. “We might be able to get to the small one under the post office.”

A golden light flashed across the sky, hitting the crystalline dragon with a sound like a ringing bell.

“Princess Celestia?” Night Light asked, looking up.

“No,” Sparkle said, narrowing her eyes. “Somepony else.”

“This really does feel good. I can see why Doctor Sparkle has everypony so worked up,” Starlight said, flexing the magical constructs that served as wings. She could feel them like they were a part of her body, but unlike mere flesh and blood, they were limited only by her imagination.

Ahead of her, the Linnorm emerged from the smoke, dark crystal gleaming. From this distance, she could see the tell-tale light of a magical barrier.

“No wonder the EUP was totally useless,” she scoffed. “Now it's up to me or Canterlot is toast!”

She launched a magical bolt at it, the spell rebounding from the barrier, making the shield visible for a moment as a distortion in the air, the monster not even blinking.

“Come on, at least pay attention!” Starlight scoffed. She flipped in the air, vertigo and excitement warring to outdo each other. Feathers peeled from her wings of light, folding over themselves into simple geometric shapes. “Try this on for size!”

The shapes shot away in all directions, surrounding the Linnorm before firing their own energy bolts, expending the energy inside them in a rapid-fire blitz, popping like soap bubbles and reappearing on the planes of light that served Starlight as wings.

Every single one impacted a plane of hardened magic.

“That’s one heck of a strong ward,” Starlight muttered. “I’m never going to get anywhere like this.”

Princess Celestia and Doctor Sparkle had one thing in common -- neither believed that overkill was anything but a word. When they were designing and equipping their chosen champions, they had spared no expense. The difference here was that while Doctor Sparkle had a few more months to prepare things, Princess Celestia had effectively unlimited resources and more than a thousand years of experience.

Starlight held out her hoof, and the feathers that had turned into mobile weapons fell into place like panes of stained glass.
Rather than spend effort forging a dozen weapons for Starlight, Celestia had made a weapon that would take a dozen shapes.

She charged with speed impossible for a mortal pony, and drove the blade of hardened sunlight, slamming into the magical shields with a sound like a silver bell the size of a city ringing, the sound alone enough to kill a normal pony too close to its source.

Canterlot shook to its foundations, and the monster fell, Starlight pressing along with it, driving it into the side of the mountain, the rock shattering.

“Hah! That’s--” Starlight’s expression fell. The point of her blade skittered along the monster’s magical shield, the point boiling and roiling with energy inches away from its armored flesh.

“What in Tartarus-- how tough did they make you?!” She snarled. “Let’s try it at point-blank range, you motherbucker!”

The sword shone with the light of its own unmaking, the stored magical energy discharging all at once in a torrent of magical bolts focused on a single point. The shield shattered, and the bolts impacted on the crystal armor, shearing off a thin layer of adamant plating before dissipating.

Enraged, the Linnorm opened its maw, and Starlight had just barely enough time to bring her wings in front of her as a shield before it breathed out, fire focusing into a lance of plasma and launching her backwards into the ruined city.

“I should have known Celestia’s work would be first-rate,” Sunset said, watching the distant golden mote get completely bodied and end up disappearing into a smoking crater. “Too bad she wasted it on an idiot.”

The castle battlements were more ceremonial than practical. Fortress design had been perfected by minotaurs and then immediately rendered obsolete the moment they faced an enemy that could fly over walls and teleport past moats. In the modern era the most important factors for defense were clear sight lines and integrated magical warding.

The castle's highest tower had been retrofitted into something like the spell battery of a combat airship, with silver circles hammered into the floor to reduce interference between closely-packed spellcasters and only the barest suggestion of walls, one-way magical barriers running from floor to ceiling instead of stone or glass to provide the widest possible firing arcs for the casters.

Not that Sunset had much hope for them.

She turned to the ranks of pyromancers. Or at least volunteers. Half of them were students from the school instead of real trained battlemages. Either Celestia had taken the best and brightest with her when she left or else standards had really fallen since the last time she’d been in Equestria.

"Okay, so I'm supposed to give you a motivational speech or something," Sunset said. "That's not something I'm good at. Frankly, none of you are doing any good casting fireballs. What I saw on the way up was a pretty poor effort."

The assembled mages started muttering, half angry at her and the other half starting to panic.

"So here's the plan. You can't hurt it, but you can probably annoy it. I want you to cast smokescreens, large illusion effects, flashing lights, whatever you've got that will keep it from being able to pick a target in the city."

The crowd didn't look excited. Sunset scowled.

"If you're not going to cooperate, leave!" She snapped. "If you're not useless, get to your circles and start casting! I want enough cover that it's not going to see my barrage incoming!"

Sunset stormed over to the edge of the tower, bracing her hooves and spreading metal wings, green sparks arcing from the feathers.

Starlight gasped and sputtered as what had to be ten gallons of the coldest water in the world splashed across her face, snapping her to full wakefulness. What she saw made her wish she hadn’t woken up in the first place.

“Hey Doctor Sparkle,” Starlight said, weakly. “I don’t think we’ve actually been formally introduced. My name is--”

“It doesn’t matter what your name is,” Sparkle said. She threw the bucket she was holding aside. “Get up.”

Starlight groaned and wiggled, then looked down at her body. She’d managed to come down right through a wall and the bricks had helpfully tried to bury her and got all the way up to her neck. It would have been polite if she’d actually been dead. She focused her will and levitated the mass off of herself without disturbing it too much, lifting it as a single unit while she slipped out to avoid causing more of the building to come down around her.

“Hmph. She criticizes my work and then copies it anyway,” Sparkle noted, looking over Starlight’s armor. “And gold? How pointlessly gaudy.”

“Well, it’s supposed to be some kind of anti-spell coating…” Starlight looked at her chest, where the blast from the creature had worn the gold down to the bare metal. “And I guess that it works since I don’t have a big hole through me.”

“Bah.” Sparkle huffed. She hadn’t thought of a coating like that. Maybe she could adapt something from the anti-magic field generator they’d found...

“Stand back,” Starlight said. “Thanks for the wake-up call but I have to get back to work. If I don’t kill at least one monster today I won’t get a Hearth’s Warming bonus this year.” She tried to spread her wings, and the left one came out fine, planes of light and magic appearing and flapping. A shower of sparks was all that emerged from her right side.

“It’s overloaded,” Sparkle said, narrowing her eyes. “If I had some tools I might be able to repair the leylines.”

“What kind of tools? Like a hammer?” Starlight asked.

“Mm. I’d need a thaumometer and a gemstone rectifier.”

“Going to have to wait until I can get it back into the shop then,” Starlight said.

The sky overhead erupted in flames.

“Twilight, we need to get to the shelter!” Night Light yelled.

“Go on ahead,” Doctor Sparkle said. “That looked like one of Sunset Shimmer's spells. If she has a radio--”

Sparkle didn’t get to expand on her plans. The Linnorm above shook off the barrage of pyromancy spells and spotted Starlight, her magic output shining like a beacon in the wreckage. The fact she was painted shiny gold chrome only helped.
With a terrifying roar, it breathed again, the beam of energy slicing across the street, the monster correcting its aim and bringing the death ray to bear on Starlight.

Starlight saw it in time, the shards of her remaining wing flying ahead and up, becoming the focal points of a warding shield as she tried to protect Doctor Sparkle and Night Light from the blast. And herself, of course. She wasn’t totally selfless.

“Run!” Starlight screamed. It was too late. The initial sweep had done some kind of structural damage, and the street tilted, crumbling as gravity took hold. Sparkle saw the beam sweep through her father as he reached for her, and he vanished into blinding light.

Sunset shielded her eyes against the sudden glare of the plasma beam. The energy swept across the city and cut through the illusion spells the students were casting, disrupting them with enough backlash some of the unicorns around her were thrown back by the resonance.

"What's it doing?" she muttered. The beam swept apparently at random, touching one spell, then another, ignoring some of the simpler ones even when they were a bigger, brighter target.

Sunset threw a fireball at the monster and it cut the evocation out of the air.

"It's targeting magical energy!" She gasped. "Just like the Linnorm that was attacking from extreme range!"

Sunset spun on the students and volunteers.

"Everypony evacuate! Scatter! It's targeting magical emissions!"

The air turned hot, and the castle warding collapsed around her. Sunset reflexively cast a shield, trying to make it as wide as possible to shield the foals.

"Get moving!" She roared. Just beyond the reach of her shield, the stone was growing soft and glowing red. Sunset launched magical flares straight up, trying to get some of the terrible pressure off her defenses. "I'll buy you as much time as I can!"

“Where’s that Sparkle when you need her,” huffed General Nickel. “Her brother was ten times the pony she is. If he was still here, the shield would never have fallen. We could have waited this out until we could get word to Princess Celestia!”

“The Linnorm is changing course,” Lieutenant Pile reported. “It’s coming here!”

“Here?!” Cadance gasped. “Evacuate the castle! Get everypony to the shelters!”

The floor shook, and cracks formed on the walls.

“Move!” Cadance screamed. Ponies fled as the wall crumbled, rubble flying in as the monster smashed its way into the most secure room in Equestria. Cadance couldn’t move. She couldn’t cast a spell. She froze, and the monster opened its mouth, a baleful glow forming in the back of its throat.

A white shape slammed into the black crystal armor, the maw snapping shut hard enough to crack around the edges, light flaring as it contained its own blast of energy.

“Celestia?” Cadance asked. Then she got a better look at who it was. The white was armor. The wings were bronze. “Sunset?!”

“Your pyromancers were useless!” Sunset yelled. “I’m gonna have to take care of this myself!”

Sparkle started to wake up, and part of her mind forced her to remember about the correlation between repeated concussions and permanent brain damage. She’d have to make sure she took care of that once she became immortal. She put it on a checklist in her mind that vanished as soon as it appeared, her thoughts having trouble keeping any shape at all in her confused state.

“How the mighty have fallen,” purred a pleased voice from not very far away, but at least further than the confines of her own head.

Sparkle opened her eyes, as much as she could, and saw Marble Pie standing over her, her pupils slits in a sinister gaze.

Sunset had one advantage, and only one. She knew the castle. She’d been raised there.

The two smashed through the far wall, Sunset riding the dragon like a surfer on a wave, balancing herself with her wings as they plunged down a set of stairs, rubble and dust turning the air opaque around them.

Royal guards fled before the tide of destruction, but even the monster’s own attack wasn’t going to keep it stunned for long.

Sunset formed her Star Saber and slashed across the monster’s chest, the blade of pure will tearing at the dark crystal armor. Stunned, its wardings were down, the armor breaking like countless layers of glass. A second slash formed an X, and Sunset could see into the creature now, to the crystal core nestled in the bones of the dragon Sombra had killed in the egg to become his monster.

She raised the blade in her left hoof, and a beam of ultraviolet magic tore her limb free at the elbow, the Star Saber spiraling away, still attached to the hoof, sputtering and dying as it vanished among the debris.

Sunset screamed.

Doctor Sparkle recoiled in fear from Marble, and then a more mature terror took over from her primal fear. “Dad? Where’s my--”

She remembered him, vanishing in the light.

“Gone,” Marble said, her voice as cold as stone. “You nearly died too. When I said you’d fallen I meant it quite literally.” She looked up, and Sparkle followed her gaze.

They were in the valley below Canterlot. It was a fall longer and harder than from a skyscraper. Above them, the city burned.

“I saved you, of course,” Marble said. “There wasn’t anything I could do for your father.”

“...” Doctor Sparkle felt her chest tighten. “We need to get back. The destructive power of this Linnorm is beyond anything we could have imagined.”

“There’s no need,” Marble said, smiling. “Sunset has everything… well in hoof. More or less.”

An ancient stained glass window shattered as Sunset Shimmer and the Linnorm fell out of it. It had once depicted some grand battle between light and dark, but Celestia had never bothered explaining the details. She never explained anything. Not until it was too late to matter and you were being punished for something you never had a chance to understand.

Sunset grabbed the monster’s head with her magic and slammed it into the castle wall as they fell, the creature’s own weight scraping the armor away from the left side of its face in a shower of sparks and broken crystal as they fell, landing in what had been a sculpture garden.

The pain came now. Horrible and sickening, the shock making her knees - only three of them now - wobble as she tried to keep herself steady. If she hadn’t had so much practice as a biped and developed the instincts she needed, she’d already have fallen.

“Don’t-- don’t have time to bleed,” Sunset gasped, closing her eyes and centering herself, trying to block out the agony. When she opened them again the world swam, turning black around the edges. She limped towards the fallen monster, getting onto its chest. The core pulsed with magic.

Sunset tried to form another Star Saber, her focus wavering as much as her vision. It took precious seconds to form a blade as long as her hoof.

Seconds that the Linnorm had to recover.

The monster tried to grab her, talons as long and sharp as scimtars closing on Sunset. If she’d been in better shape, with a little less blood loss and shock, she would have laughed at the clumsy attack.

She tried to get out of the way, and a swipe caught her across the face, ripping through her helmet. The vision on her right side went black. A talon tore into her side, and she went flying, smashing into a fountain, her blood mixing with the cold water.

“Move!” Cadance yelled, shoving the guards ahead of her. Her hooves splashed as she pushed past the soldiers, freezing water running like a river past the broken cobblestones and leaking into the cracked ground.

“The noncombatants are evacuating the other way, Ma’am,” advised one of the guards. “I strongly suggest you go with them. We’ll try to hold the creature off.”

“I can fight,” Cadance said. “Celestia taught me that you have to be willing to lead, not manage.” She spread her wings and flapped, blowing away some of the dust and smoke. The hedgerows were on fire, trees and topiary centuries-old turning into ashes as she watched. That wasn’t nearly as terrible as what was in the fountain.

Propped up like she was sitting against the cracked marble, Sunset was bleeding out into the water, the ice-cold water under Cadance’s hooves now matching the chill in her veins.

“We need to get her out of there!” Cadance gasped. A soldier grabbed her before she could run out into the open, a shadow falling over them as the Linnorm stood, armor cracked and broken but otherwise whole.

Behind it, the sky turned red.

The water turned red.

The sun turned red.

Cadance looked straight up, at the sun. Crimson crept over its surface, vermillion replacing half of the yellow until it looked familiar. Too familiar. Just like--

Sunset’s eye opened, burning from within with the same light. The linnorm turned to face her, feeling the same terrible pressure that pushed on Cadance’s horn, the feeling of her own magic being shoved out of the way by something too big for the world to contain it properly.

Shaking, clearly moving purely on willpower instead of some reserve of strength, Sunset forced herself up, the water boiling around her remaining hooves. The magic around her horn burned with the red of hot iron.

“I won’t lose,” Sunset gasped. “I won’t lose!” The aura around her horn redoubled, a corona of energy forming around her metallic wings as well.

The linnorm breathed, the bar of light and death blasting at Sunset from point-blank range. The stone under its path cracked and melted, water turning into steam and then vanishing, the air cracking with the heat of its passage.

Sunset stood in the torrent, head lowered, and took a step forward, pushing against it like she was just walking against a stiff wind.

She flapped her glowing wings, and the force of the wind caught the linnorm, the beam faltering as the beast pitched back into the castle, bodily hitting a tower and sending it crashing down like a felled tree.

“By the stars, how can she have that kind of power?” One of the guards whispered, as Sunset limped towards it, untouched by the tainted dragon’s breath.

Light boiled from the stump where Sunset had lost her left foreleg, the blood evaporating. A limb of pure, crimson magic touched the ground with her next step, her limp evening out.

The linnorm tried to stand, shaking, something broken inside it. The air shimmered as it erected wardings, trying to protect itself.

Sunset’s horn flashed, and a pencil-thin beam of balefire slashed through the air, ripping through the magical shields and cutting them like they were physical things, tearing at the linnorm’s chest and exposing its magical core.

“She can do it!” Cadance gasped. “She’s going to beat it!”

“But then what’s she going to do to us?” asked one of the soldiers.

“I believe in you!” Cadance yelled.

Sunset stepped over the ailing beast, the thing twitching like broken clockwork. It tried to raise a claw, and the limb was bent back with a twist of magical force, the crystal armor outside shattering at the same time as the bones within.

The core, exposed, was halfway between a tumor and an inverted geode. Pulses of violet light flashed through it like a heartbeat, one that sped up as Sunset tore it free, trailing veins still attached.

Sunset’s magic pressed at it from all directions, and it crumpled, magic flooding out of it in a surge of dark light.

A pinpoint of light appeared above Sunset, glowing with every color of the rainbow at once, expanding slowly into a ring.

“That light,” Twilight said, watching the display from afar. “That’s it! That’s the light of the Astral Plane! We’ve done it!”

“Done what?” Marble asked. “Ruined most of the city?”

“This is what I wanted to see all along! She’s going to ascend! The Unity is enough to push them to the next level. The plan is almost complete.”

“You must be joking. The old mare won’t take this lying down.”

“It’s the birth of a divine life form. Just like when Cadance ascended. Weaving together heavens and earth, casting aside mortality to become a being of magical energy. This is only the beginning.”

“That light…” Cadance said, quietly. “Oh, Sunset…”

“It’s like the end of the world,” the soldier at her side said.

Sunset rose up, glowing from within, the joints of her armor shining. The ring of light above her kept expanding, and somehow there was more space within it than outside, a place of gently glowing mist and stars.

Cadance had seen it before. Just once. Just for a few moments, or maybe they’d been years, or both at the same time.

A star descended from above.

The vision of the other side vanished, shattered like a breaking mirror as something broke through it from above, piercing Sunset and sending her back down to the earth. The crimson glow sputtered out, and she lay as still as a pinned butterfly, impaled on a slender length of gold.

“It appears I arrived just in time,” Princess Celestia said, as she touched down lightly.

Moondancer walked in just as the nurse rushed out, chased by a thrown steel tray and lurid cursing.

“I don’t think I know what half those words even mean,” Moondancer said, as she looked over Doctor Sparkle. The mare had bandages around most of her body, looking more like a mummy than a scientist.

“What they mean is that I don’t need to be sedated,” Sparkle growled. “Trying to slip me Thorazine and telling me it’s to help me heal!”

“Bed rest might not be a terrible idea,” Moondancer countered, gently. “You’ve had a rough day.”

“I can rest when I’m dead!” Doctor Sparkle spat. “How’s Sunset?”

“I haven’t checked on her yet. She’s still in surgery--”

“In surgery?” Sparkle frowned. “For what?”

Sparkle kicked in the door to find a ring of doctors surrounding Sunset, all of them in scrubs and looking both surprised and befuddled.

“What in Tartarus is this?” Sparkle demanded. “Get away from her!”

“Who are you?” the head surgeon stepped between Sparkle and Sunset. “This is an active operating theatre! You can’t just barge in here! This patient is in a delicate state!”

“You aren’t qualified to operate,” Doctor Sparkle said. “You don’t even know what she is!”

“I know exactly what she is,” the surgeon said, pushing her back. “She’s a unicorn who has had multiple experimental and unethical surgeries, is suffering from wounds that should have killed her three times over, and has the worst case of thaumatic contamination I’ve ever seen!”

“Unethical?!” Sparkle reared up and was about to slap the stupid out of his mouth when Moondancer pulled her to the side.

“Don’t,” Moondancer said. “There are bigger issues.”

“Bigger than letting these idiots poke around inside Sunset?” Sparkle demanded. “I need to see her with my own eyes!”

“Twilight,” Kevin said, walking into the room with a stack of paperwork. “Calm down. I swear I can taste the frustration on you from halfway down the hallway. I’m having her transferred to the lab.”

“Right,” Sparkle sighed. “Thank you, Kevin. I should have known somepony sane would be handling this mess.”

“Speaking of which, the transfer is immediate and all of you are going to need to back away,” Kevin noted. “I’m not sure what the right term is. Close her up? Put down your tools? I’ve never had to try and order a doctor around.”

“And you never will,” Sparkle snorted.

“Untrue,” Kevin said. “A certain member of royalty has rather pointedly told me to tell you that you need to get some sleep before you get sloppy. She's already in the city and taking care of things.”

“She can’t--” Sparkle started.

“Please, Doctor Sparkle,” Moondancer sighed. “We’re worried about you.”

“Does she know how close I am to finishing the work?” Sparkle hissed.

“It can wait,” Kevin said. “There was interference at the end. Sunset needs help, and you need to be in shape to help her.”

“How can she need help?” Sparkle asked. She glared at Kevin and bullied her way to the surgical table. She froze when she saw Sunset. “Oh my stars…”

“She’ll live,” the surgeon said. “I don’t know how. She should be dead already. The cranial wound alone should be fatal. Severe skull fracture extending all the way from the base of the horn to the eye socket and back across the parietal bone and occiptal, along with the damage to the eye and face. Her forehoof is gone, and the thaumatic contamination at the edge is going to totally prevent any attempt at reconstructive surgery even if we had the limb here and on ice. Then there are the two wounds to the torso, one here to the right side of the chest, and a puncture wound here--”

“It just barely missed her heart,” Doctor Sparkle muttered. “If it had hit dead-on her magic would fail and her biology would realize that it shouldn’t still be working.”

She stepped away, her manic excitement falling away.

“What happened?” Sparkle asked, quietly, looking at Kevin.

“That’s the first thing you ask?” Starlight groaned, as she struggled free of the damaged and twisted armor. Celestia bent some of the metal away, helping her escape. Starlight didn't even notice the healing spells the Princess wove around her, mending aches and scratches the armor hadn't protected against.

“I can be more specific,” Princess Celestia offered. “I can ask what happened to my city, or what happened to you, or what happened that almost caused the end of the world, but I left it open so you could tell me at your own pace.”

“The linnorm was way stronger than we expected,” Starlight admitted. “It really kicked my flank out there. If Sombra has another one of those in his back pocket, I don’t think we’ve got it in us to stop it.”

“You weren’t able to handle it?”

“I’m not a miracle worker,” Starlight huffed. “What was that light show at the end?”

“Another threat to Equestria,” Celestia said. “I arrived barely in time to stop it. I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been if I hadn’t gotten here as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible from the time you heard about the linnorm, or about--”

Celestia gave her a look.

“Right, I’m not getting a straight answer to that one.” Starlight sighed. “Did you find Sombra?”

“No. We were able to get a strike team into the palace itself and… his throne is vacant. He hasn’t been ruling from the Empire. We’re trying to find him, but the war might be moving to a new phase.” Celestia sighed. “As long as he lives, he can command the crystal slave soldiers. They’re going to ground. This might turn into a protracted guerilla war if we can’t find him soon.”

“I should have known you’d still be awake,” Moondancer sighed. Sparkle looked up from what she was doing, drawing rough diagrams on scrap paper in her office, the only light a single dim lamp.

“I was working out some ideas on how to help Sunset,” Sparkle said. “The enchantments are relatively straightforward for prostethic limbs, and we can get some of the baseline work done before she even wakes up--”

“If she ever does,” Moondancer said, gently. “We don’t know if she’ll come out of that coma.”

“She’ll be up and about soon enough,” Sparkle said, firmly. “I can feel it. And once she is, I need to know what she saw. What she felt. She touched the astral plane, Moondancer! We’ve only got inches to go before--”

“You need rest,” Moondancer said, trotting around the desk and helping Sparkle out of her chair. “I heard about your father.”

“...It was instant,” Sparkle said. “I saw it myself. He didn’t suffer.”

“That doesn’t make it easy,” Moondancer whispered. “You’re just pushing yourself and working to distract yourself.” Half of the designs she’d seen on the paper didn’t even make sense. Claws like a minotaur, a drill instead of a hoof, bizarre shapes and ideas that a sane mare wouldn’t even consider.

“I…” Sparkle swallowed. “I didn’t think it could hurt more, Moondancer. When Shining Armor--” Sparkle stumbled over her words, suppressing a sob. “You don’t know how hard it’s been. I need to keep going forward.”

“It’s your father, Twilight.” Moondancer started leading her towards the couch in the office.

“He said he was proud of me,” Sparkle muttered. “He never-- I never told him the truth about what happened with Shiny.” She stopped and almost collapsed. Moondancer helped her up and onto the couch.

“It’s not your fault,” Moondancer said, quietly.

“It is!” Sparkle sobbed, suddenly tearing up. “If I hadn’t asked him to meet me, if I hadn’t had Shiny guarding me--”

“You didn’t know what would happen.” Moondancer hugged her, and Sparkle sobbed into her shoulder.

“Please, just… stay tonight,” Sparkle said, her voice trembling and vulnerable. “I don’t want to be alone anymore…”

Once upon a time, two sisters lived together in a garden.

They labored, because they had to labor. They were given every comfort for their work, though in truth even those comforts were merely symbolic, offerings to beings that didn't truly need them.

In the morning, the elder sister raised the sun and sent the light of growth and life across the land for her subjects to enjoy.

In the evening, the younger sister raised the moon and in its gentle night, ushered her subjects to rest under her safe watch.

The day was brighter then, and the night was full of monsters. Fairies buzzed between the flowers, and great beasts nested in the shadows where the sun couldn't find them. It was the world all the storybooks and fantasies took place in, a world full of places still to be explored.

And in time, the younger sister became vexed.

"Isn't it wonderful?" the elder asked. "We are adored and the world is at peace."

The world is at peace because we work to make it so, I said. I watched them place laurels at her hooves. None were placed at mine. It was not my time. I guarded by night, and it was the middle of the day. We had our assigned domains and always would.

"Just because it has to be maintained doesn't mean it isn't real," the elder said. "They're worth it."

I thought about what I saw in the places she couldn't touch. The monsters she didn't know existed. Some of them were in the crowd praising her, horrible in ways she couldn't understand because she could only see the surface.

Are they? I asked, looking at the offerings at her hooves, and the empty space in front of mine.