I'm not sure how long we were traveling through the forest, but I hadn't bothered to say anything else to the two stallions and kept to myself. I preoccupied myself with finding a way out of this mess with Starlight, but as of now there was nothing I could do.

Not helping matters were the memories that kept worming their way into my head.

With no plans forthcoming and nothing else to distract me, the memories of the other Twilight pushed themselves to the surface from where I'd been desperately trying to push them down. I'd seen everything through her eyes as though they were mine, and the effect was vivid and felt all too real.

It was like I'd lived a second life I hadn't even known about.

The only thing that kept me from breaking down was the knowledge that I had friends waiting for me to come back home. I felt terrible for my other self, but that didn't mean I wanted to walk a mile in her horseshoes. I had my own life to live, and I wanted to live it with my friends.

Still, there were certain revelations the other Twilight had been told of that raised more than a few questions about certain events, as well as a certain Solar Princess and her sister.

Then there was the matter of ambient magic and how it worked, particularly in regards to the current bearer of the Element of Magic. When I'd first arrived in that post apocalyptic wasteland, I'd felt the magic all around me, and it was an atmosphere unlike anything I'd ever experienced.

The Equestria in my timeline had its own thaumic field, but it hadn't been nearly so powerful as it was back in that wasteland. I wondered just what could've caused such a spike in external mana, but even that mystery paled in comparison to what I'd discovered about the Element of Magic.

Celestia had never mentioned anything about being able to tap into the power of Equestria's thaumic field, and based on what I saw and heard of its effects, I didn't blame her for not telling me about it. It was honestly an ability I would've been content to do without now that I had time to think on it, and even if I could use it, I certainly wouldn't have made the attempt.

The other Twilight had been desperate, and had no reason to hold back, but I had far more to lose, and I wasn't willing to risk the consequences. There were more problems than these I could've been dwelling on, but I decided to push the thoughts aside for the moment and refocus on my current predicament.

I could ask the other Twilight more about it later when we were all together again, but for now, I had to find a way to escape with Starlight. Looking around me, I could see that we'd passed out of the forest at some point and were now traveling alongside a large, and familiar gorge to our left.

My eyes widened in realization of where we were and where we'd most likely come from. I did some quick mental mapping of our location relative to how far Ponyville was from Ghastly Gorge and discovered that the forest we'd just passed through must've been part of a smaller forest south of the Everfree.

That meant that on our current course, we were most likely headed southwest towards Las Pegasus and the San Palomino Desert. I doubted the two stallions had planned to head into the desert, which meant they were probably planning to sell Starlight and I off to somepony in Las Pegasus.

I threw another glare towards the stallion at the front of the wagon before turning a worried gaze towards Starlight. The other mare still hadn't stirred in the slightest, and I was beginning to think whatever had happened to her might've been fatal, but quickly tried to dismiss the thought.

I'll find a way to get us out of here, Starlight, then we'll get you the help you need...

Unfortunately I didn't currently have a plan to back up my claims, and time was running out. I frowned down at my chained hooves and tried to flex my bound wings, to no avail. There was no longer any kind of pain in my horn, but my magic was still securely locked behind the anti-magic horn ring affixed to it.

As much as I hated to admit it, there wasn't anything I could really do in this situation, not physically at any rate. I may have had the strength of an earth pony, but I'd found out quickly that brute forcing my way through my bindings had little to no effect. Whatever metal they were using in these chains and manacles, it wasn't cheap.

This all left me with only one other option, and I was far from confident it would work. In the end, the only thing left to me was trying to talk my way out of the situation, and given how stubborn Sandpit seemed to be, I doubted I'd get anywhere. Still, it was better than doing nothing at all.

"Do you really think this is going to go down like you plan?" I asked the stallion, "wouldn't ponies have questions if they saw a Princess being dragged around in chains? Wouldn't there be an investigation? Wouldn't somepony tell somepony else? What about Celestia, wouldn't she—"

"Queen Daybreaker, is far too busy negotiating some kind of deal with the Crystal Empire to bother looking into such matters, Princess, and besides..." he chuckled darkly before turning around slightly and giving me a malicious grin, "...where you're going, ain't nopony gonna see you except for who we want to see you."

He turned back around to face the front, but I could still hear the malevolent smirk in his voice as he spoke.

"And let me tell you, Princess," he barked out another laugh, "the client ain't somepony who cares about status or tribe. We could bring them our glorious Queen all trussed up in chains and they'd treat her just the same as they would any other pony."

That gave me some considerable pause, and I swallowed nervously at the thought. Another thing that gave me pause was the fact that I was evidently not dealing with the same Celestia from my timeline.

It was then that I remembered Sandpit had said something about a Queen earlier, but Princess Celestia proclaiming herself as a Queen, and calling herself Daybreaker? This all smelled too much of a Nightmare Moon scenario with Celestia as the new 'Nightmare Moon', and the thought wasn't comforting in the slightest.

It also explained why the sun hadn't moved an inch since I'd woken up, and begged the question of what had actually happened to Nightmare Moon. Without my friends and I to stop her, I had no idea what would've become of her.

Did the me of this timeline actually band together with the others to stop her, only for Celestia to suddenly turn evil? Did Celestia herself defeat Nightmare Moon? Did Nightmare Moon somehow manage to revert back to Luna, and if so, where was she?

...Was she still alive?

I blinked and furrowed my brow, unsure of where that thought had come from, but unable to quite shake it. That wouldn't have been a question I would've entertained normally, but something made it come to my mind, and what was worse, was that there was a possibility that may very well have been killed in this timeline.

I was about to ask the Stallion as much when something in the distance near the edge of the gorge caught my attention. I whipped around to fully face the edge of the cliff just in time to spot two shapes ducking out of sight just below the edge. I blinked and narrowed my eyes, trying to see if the shapes would appear again.

"Have you ever been to Las Pegasus, princess?"

The sound of Sandpit's voice pulled me away from my observation. With an inward growl of frustration, I turned back to see that the stallion wasn't even looking in my direction as he spoke.

"I myself haven't been there, no," I answered, seeing no reason to lie, "that's where you're taking us though, isn't it? To sell us off to somepony, make your ill-gotten bits and do... whatever it is ponies like you do with the money?"

I winced, not satisfied at all with how I was handling the situation. Neither Sandpit nor Ghost Pepper were too impressed either it seemed, as their only response was mocking laughter.

"Yes, princess, you got me," Sandpit chuckled, shaking his head, "were all headed to Las Pegasus for our little rendezvous, but don't worry, I'm sure, that even as somepony's pet, you'll find plenty of wonderful things in Las Pegasus to keep you and your owner occupied," he turned to Starlight with a frown, "...though I don't know about the other one."

"Why do this?" I practically shouted in my aggravation and slight desperation. I reared up as best i could and leaned against the bars of my cage, "why put yourselves at risk trafficking ponies across the country? I know for a fact Equestria wasn't always like this! We didn't have ponies like you and Ghost Pepper doing these terrible things!"

I shook my head in disappointment and glared at both stallions, gritting my teeth in anger when all they did was look back with impassive, dismissive expressions. I snorted and slammed my hooves against the bars, my chains jangling wildly.

"Equestria is a better place than this, and I can't and won't believe for a minute that Pr... that Queen Daybreaker would allow something like this to go on if she knew!"

"Equestria was a better place than this."

The deep, yet quiet and gentle tone of Ghost Peppers voice caught me off guard and my righteous fury petered out in favor of surprise. Ghost Pepper, for his part, stared back at me, his eyes neither malicious, nor mocking, but serious, and somewhat sad.

"I don't know where you've been, lady, but times have changed. Drastically," he turned to cast a side glance back towards his partner, who simply sighed and turned towards the road ahead of him. Getting no help from Sandpit, Ghost Pepper returned his gaze to me, "when the Princess announced her new reign as Queen, she made some changes."

"Changes?" I asked, frowning deeply, "what kind of changes?"

"I don't know all the details, but I do know that Queen Daybreaker got rid of both the nobles and the council that supported her," Ghost Pepper replied grimly, "now she makes all the decisions herself."

"What... what has she done?" I asked, afraid of the answer, "Princess Celestia's been ruling Equestria for literal ages. Even if she's changed, she's still a wise leader with millennia's worth of experience."

"You wouldn't think that given the state she's reduced Equestria to, princess," came Sandpit's voice, "ever since she killed Nightmare Moon, I don't think she's been right in the head."

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I felt my skin go cold as my fear was confirmed.

"She... she what?" I muttered in a near whisper, "Princess Celestia... she..."

"Yeah, and I don't blame her none either," Sandpit continued, unaware of the horror I was feeling at the moment, "crazy nag showed up out of nowhere one day during a Summer Sun Celebration several years ago. Didn't see it myself, but apparently there was some kinda battle."

"From what I heard, neither one could get one up on the other," Ghost Pepper continued. He snorted and glared at nothing in particular, "the way it goes from ponies who there, Celestia didn't want to finish Nightmare Moon off so they fought to a standstill, and then the Moon Nag started going for the citizens."

"She what?!" I cried, the yellow stallion's words knocking me out of my shocked stupor, "no, that can't be right, that wasn't... I knew she was under the influence of dark magic, but she'd never... I mean, I didn't think she'd... she'd actually..."

"She'd actually start killing off innocent ponies?" Sandpit finished, turning back to me with an incredulous raise of his brow, "of course she would, she was insane. Seriously, princess, where the buck have you been that you don't know this? Everypony knows at least that much."

I didn't respond, too stunned to speak and too distraught to make any sense of what I was hearing. Sandpit eyed me suspiciously for a moment before shaking his head and pressing on.

"Anyway, the Princess and Nightmare Moon somehow wound up fighting over Vanhoover, and I guess Nightmare Moon must've had enough, because she blew up the whole Tartarus damned city. Wiped it off the map, and not a one of the ponies living there made it out of the blast zone."

I leaned back against the cage, and stared out at the scenery without really seeing any of it. Tears began to blur my vision as I pictured what might've happened next, and Ghost Pepper's next words told me I wasn't too far off.

"After that... well..." the stallion shivered, "the Princess wasn't the Princess anymore. She was more like a demon than Nightmare Moon. Folks say you could hear her scream clear across every corner of Equestria. I know I did."

"She changed, princess," Sandpit said, his tone just as quiet as Ghost Pepper's had been, "turned herself into something like Nightmare Moon, but it was more like she grabbed a piece of the sun and wrapped herself in it. Reduced the Moon Nag to ashes in an instant after that, some say."

"And she hasn't been the same since," Ghost Pepper finished, "called herself Queen Daybreaker and made some announcement about how things were gonna change, and that she'd never let anything threaten 'her little ponies' like that ever again. Started building up Equestria's military, spending an insane amount of bits on that and developing new weapons."

"The other nations wouldn't like that," I muttered numbly, "especially Griffonia. Equestria is already a hegemony, and many of the other countries around Equestria might see this as an attempt to gain even more of a dominion over the weaker nations. Not to mention the damage this could do to the economy, and if she's drafting ponies into military service that would make it all the worse. Ponies aren't meant to go to war, not like what this could lead to."

I continued to ramble on in this manner, my mind reeling with the implications of what I was hearing. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I didn't hear the two stallions bemused, questioning voices. It wasn't until one of them cried out in alarm that I finally snapped out of it and looked up.

My eyes widened and I gave a startled cry of my own as I saw two incoming boulders falling from the sky and right towards us. One of them smashed into the ground right next to the wagon, missing it by mere inches, the other went wide, but the first was enough to cause Sandpit to lose control of the wagon.

The stallion cursed and the mauve colored aura around his horn brightened as he tried to regain control of the spell moving the wagon forward. The wagon turned sharply, and came to a halt, the forward momentum we'd been maintaining enough to cause the whole thing to tilt dangerously.

The empty cages slid across the floor of the wagon, tipping over and out of the back onto the road below. I screamed again as my own cage threatened to do the same, and a panicked glance over to where Starlight was confirmed that her cage had already been tossed over the side.

"Star—oof!" before I could get anything else out, the wagon slammed back onto all fours, and I slammed into the bars of my cage, my back exploding in pain from the impact, "nngh... w-what's..." I grunted, struggling to my hooves, "Sandpit, what the hay is going on?!"

The wagon jerked forward and I nearly fell again, and when it came to another sudden stop, I did fall. Through the pain and confusion the familiar, almost electrical sounding pop of a horn shorting out reached my ears, quickly followed by another, pain filled curse.

I lifted my head to see Sandpit hunched over with his hooves covering his horn, his eyes squeezed shut and his teeth grit in agony. Ghost Pepper was nowhere to be seen, and I wondered why, until I heard his voice crying out in pain somewhere to my left.

I looked over to see him pinned down on the ground by another pony that definitely hadn't been there a moment ago. He was on his stomach with a grey coated mare atop him, one of her hooves pressed down into the back of his neck. The mare looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't see her face, as her back was turned to me.

I heard Ghost Pepper cry out again as the mare wrapped the hoof around his neck and yanked his head upward so that he was facing the sky. The stallion grit his teeth and groaned in pain, the mare didn't say a word in response. She seemed content to simply hold him in that position for the time being.

Another shout pulled my attention away and I turned back to Sandpit, just as he was yanked from his seat and thrown to the ground by another mare, this one a very familiar shade of pink. I moved closer to the front of my cage to get a better look, and my mouth dropped open in disbelief as my suspicions were confirmed.

Sandpit tried to rise to his hooves, but a pink hoof kicked him over onto his back and smashed into his chest, apparently with enough force to knock the wind out of him. The mare stood atop Sandpit and glared down at him, her raspberry colored mane falling around her face in a flat curtain.

The deep hatred I saw in those familiar cerulean eyes was enough to make me shiver. I remembered then that Rockville had been around this area, and if that was close, the Pie Family Rock Farm couldn't have been too far either.

In all honesty, I hadn't given any kind of thought to what the girls might be going through in this timeline, and had I known this is how I'd find Pinkie Pie, I would've been far more worried.

I may not update as often as I used to, but I've begun to notice that I can put a lot more into a chapter than I could before, which I'm very pleased about. Hopefully I can work my way up to an average of at least 4k words per chapter in the future.