I

The thing she had always found the oddest about dreams was that they always seemed real. No matter how illogical the dream was, no matter how odd the situation, no matter how out of character she herself was acting or somepony else was, the dream always seemed to make sense. Even when she was aware that she was dreaming and that none of it was real, she still felt as if it really was.

Luna was sobbing at her older sister to do something. Twilight didn’t know what it was that the darker alicorn wanted, but it seemed urgent. The cold wind was blowing hard, throwing her mane about and muffling her speech.

“…Sister…. We can….Discord!” Luna’s mouth moved, but Twilight found that she could only hear some of what came out.

Celestia’s appearance was much changed. Twilight noticed what was different, but in the fuzzy logic of the dream state, she couldn’t grasp the significance. Her pearly mane was torn in some places, her wings missing a few feathers. Twilight could tell that at some point, the Princess had been burnt by something right under her wing. The cold wind blowing from behind Luna now became a scorching updraft from directly below them all, and Celestia cringed slightly.

“Ponyville….Discord…” It was even harder for her to hear Celestia than it had been to hear Luna.

Twilight recognized the mountains in the background now. That’s the mountain where that dragon tried to take a nap. There’s the dam above Ponyville… But there was no dam above Ponyville in this dream, she realized. There was only the raging river which poured down unhindered. She could hear the water loud and clear as it rushed on its way. She thought that it was pity she couldn’t hear the conversation between the royal Alicorn sisters quite as well.

Celestia focused on something ahead, something Twilight couldn’t see at all. Perhaps, the dark clouds that were swirling around over the mountaintops were concealing? Perhaps her brain simply hadn’t come up with something. Twilight didn’t know. Luna was looking down at the cascading falls and back towards something Twilight couldn’t see. Twilight could make out the fear on her face from here.

The dream ended unexpectedly. Somepony—a mare—began screaming. There was no sound of water or wind to muffle this scream: Twilight could hear it clearly. It dragged on and on, a wordless, endless, terrified screaming that went on an on and on and on and—

Twilight awoke with a start as her face hit the hard floor. She gasped, partially from the shock of impact and partially from the horrible screaming. She could almost feel it in her ears, bouncing around. She shivered.

“What a dream,” she muttered and climbed back onto the bed, thoughtful. She took stock of her surroundings: it was bright outside and strangely quiet. Perhaps Ponyville was off to a slow start today? Was there some event elsewhere she didn’t know of? She was about to set off to check her thoroughly organized calendar when she noticed her hoof was shaking.

This stopped her from making that leap out of bed. Now that she saw it happening, she could feel it happening in her whole body: her legs all shook and felt weak. Was she sick? Surely she wasn’t sick! She had just been fine yesterday, absolutely fine. In fact, she had spent most of the day inside working through a particularly lengthy section in 1001 Years: Livery’s History of Equestria. Nothing involving danger or even the outdoors, except for lunch with Rarity. So why am I shaking?

Unsure of what to do, she decided to stay as still as she could and wait for the shaking to subside. It did, but slowly, and she was puzzled. Perhaps it was because of my dream.

Her dream. Mouth involuntarily opening in a small “O” shape, the strange, terrible dream came back to her in force. She could almost feel the wind again and see the raging waters. Twilight had no idea where the dam had gone, but the whole thing had indeed been a dream. Dreams aren’t real after all. They don’t follow reality.

She shook her head and sat up, frowning at this early morning strangeness. No dream had ever thrown her off this badly. It was time to get back to normal, and fast, and she would start by checking her schedule. She found her calendar beside her bed and found the date, pondering. Nothing planned outside of writing to the Princess today— no, a note. Applejack, lunch, Sweet Apple Acres. She glanced at the clock, realizing suddenly that it was already lunchtime.

She swiftly descended the stairs, past a still sleeping Spike. Rolling her eyes, she used her magic to stand him up and nudge him. “Spike—“

“Ah!” the dragon, now awake and confused, fell face first on the library floor and looked about in every direction for whatever had tossed him out of bed.

“Spike! It’s just me. We slept in.”

This was something her draconic friend had not expected to hear. “You. Slept… in? As in, woke up late? As in, you weren’t on ti—“

“Yes, Spike.” She cut him off with a severe look. “I was late. I have a note to see Applejack today about now, so I’m going to head out. I want you to look after the library while I’m gone, as always—“

“Of course, but Twi—“

“—and perhaps clean a bit while I’m away? Don’t bother with reshelving the books from last night, just stack the ones that were scattered and do not lose my place in the biggest one, Livery’s Histories—“

The small dragon impatiently tried to cut off the bookish filly’s speech once more. “Twiligh—“

“It’s very important that I finish his account of the Long Winters before the day is up! And—“

“Twilight!”

Blinking, she looked at Spike with sudden interest. “Oh. Were you saying something?”

“Why is it so quiet?”

Twilight opened her mouth and then promptly closed it. Now that he mentioned it, the quiet was rather oddly complete. Twilight suddenly felt a strange foreboding and—

Spike opened the door. Rarity was there— What a surprise! I wander what she’s doing outside of the boutique. Aren’t the hours around lunchtime when she gets most of her shoppers in? Twilight trotted up to the door and called out a greeting to her fashionista friend. The white unicorn opened her mouth and seemed trying to speak, but Twilight couldn’t hear her.

“Rarity?” The white unicorn looked as if she was yelling, sitting a few yards away from the door. “Rarity, why are you—“ Twilight stopped in midsentence. She couldn’t hear anything. It wasn’t just Rarity who moved with no sound: behind her friend, she saw Lyra running fast down the street, mouth open and looking about for something or somepony.

Looking behind Rarity also brought the buildings of Ponyville into focus, leaving Twilight speechless. Few houses were spared; everywhere, buildings were missing bits and pieces if they were lucky, and almost everything if they weren’t. There was no sign of fire or devastation, things were simply missing. Parts of the street were simply gone— a black void in their place. It traveled down the street, dark tendrils reaching out as if searching for somepony it hadn’t seemed to find yet. Where sections of houses and shops were gone, the black tendrils of void space—what looked an awful lot like a void to her— were there.

Rarity, while Twilight was gaping, had been moving along the edge of the black void tendril Twilight was just now noticing. Carefully, carefully, the white unicorn crept along the edge, looking somewhere between disgusted and terrified as she finally reached the end of this particular branch and ran straight for Twilight, bowling her over and back into the library. The two ponies rolled right over Spoke and landed in a heap.

Rarity was on her hooves in a flash, words spilling out as if they were alive and wanted freedom. “Twilight, darling! You simply must come! It’s terrible, absolutely horrendous! I tried to find another way out for her! It’s a miracle she wasn’t swallowed up herself— simply miraculous, dear— but I just cannot find a way to extract her from her predi—“

“Rarity!” Twilight cut her off. “Please, take a deep breath and start from the beginning. What is a miracle and why is it also terrible?”

“It’s Pinkie Pie! The hole, the one that’s everywhere, swallowed up most of Sugarcube Corner! Pinkie Pie was at work early, baking, when the holes ripped open all around her. I don’t know how they missed taking her too, but they swallowed up all of the ground around her tiny section of the kitchen!”

Twilight shook her head, and did her best regain her composure. “It shouldn’t be that hard. I can just lift her. No,” she tried to picture that. “I wouldn’t want to risk it on an empty stomach and this soon after waking up. Teleporting is faster…”

When Rarity said this was miraculous… Twilight facehooved. Sugarcube corner was simply gone. All of it except a tiny bit of kitchen in the middle of a inky puddle of… nothing, Twilight supposed, not wanting to get any nearer. Her pink friend sat, bewildered but otherwise fine.

“Hi Twilight! Want a muffin?”

“Pinkie! No, I wouldn’t. I’m sure you Ditzy will want one later, but there are more important things to do first. Rarity said you were awake when this happened?”

Pinkie, who had produced a muffin from… somewhere, (Twilight had no idea where from) began eating it and thinking to herself. “Welll….. I was! You see, I remembered I forgot something and came over here to get it and then BAM. Well, it wasn’t a BAM noise, really. More like a RIIIIIPPPPPP sorta noise. I turned around and then…” When she’d started her story, Pinkie Pie was cheerful just as she had been since the day Twilight met her. But now, muffin eaten, she paused and looked down. “Sugarcube Corner…”

Twilight didn’t know what to say. She knew how much her energetic friend loved Sugarcube Corner. But she tried to fill the sudden renewed silence, unable to bear the way Pinkie was starting to look: the way she had when they’d given her a surprise party when she was mad at them.

“Pinkie! Do me a favor?”

“Hm? Oh, of course, Twilight! Anything!” This seem to distract her enough to lift her head.

“Be sad after we rescue you, okay? There can be a new shop, but there can never be another Pinkie Pie.”

“There might be one if there’s another universe! Like, one where the grass is greener! Or one where we’re all colts and my double is named—“

Twilight groaned, but at least Pinkie wasn’t about to start being depressed. That was just… disturbing. Which means I need to keep her focused until I can find something to really distract her….

Before Twilight could say another word, she heard the familiar sound of incoming mail and turned to see a momentary flash of fire from Spike, who was behind her. She was about to lift it with her magic, but something was off about it. “Spike, something’s written on the outside. Read it for me, please? It’s small.”

Spike did so, and then looked up. “The Princess says that I should open this one up myself. She says to not use magic.”

Twilight blinked. “Come again?” Spike began to repeat himself, but Twilight cut him off halfway through. “Never mind that, Spike. Open up and hold it so I can read it.” The little dragon did so and she scanned the message quickly.

To my beloved student, Twilight Sparkle

(Or Spike. Spike, if she can’t tell the townspeople this, you must.)

Do not let any of the townspeople use magic near the Voids! I’ve been dealing with the effects of magic use near these things all morning. We’re not sure what is happening, but as soon as a threshold of magical use is crossed, the magic just rebounds, implodes.

I am exhausted from healing unicorns, Twilight Sparkle, and I knew you would probably try to use magic at some point in the near future. I can only pray that you haven’t yet.

Canterlot has been devastated. The road between here and Ponyville is mostly missing, and the railway is a mess. Its too late to send chariots for you now, as the going is slow and dangerous and I don’t want you in the sky when it begins to darken.

Gather your friends.

Your Teacher,

Princess Celestia

Twilight thought over this. The news that the disaster was widespread was decidedly unwelcome. She had hoped, though she hadn’t had time to give it much thought, that this phenomenon was local. The unicorn was lucky that she hadn’t yet tried to rescue Pinkie by magical means.

“Rarity! We’ll need to find somepony who can fly if we’re going to reach her. Have you seen Rainbow Dash?”

But the other unicorn was already shaking her head. “No, I’m so sorry dear. I’ve seen not a single Pegasus all day, since I woke up to this… travesty! Can’t you just use your magic?”

“No, that’s what Princess Celestia’s letter was about. Magic near these ‘Voids’ is a bad idea. Anything beyond the simplest of levitations may be a bad idea for awhile. Don’t do any near the edge of the blackness, okay?”

“Why, of course!”

“Rarity, I can only think of three pegasi who would be able to do this who live in Ponyville proper and not in Cloudsdale. Scootaloo’s parents and Fluttershy. Have you seen Scootaloo’s mother or father?”

“I… no,” the white unicorn answered, unsure. “I don’t believe I have. But I wasn’t really looking for either of them, you know. Why, I could have simply overlooked them in all of the excitement!”

Twilight thought over the letter again while Pinkie called to Spike. The purple unicorn ignored their conversation completely, engrossed. Gather your friends. Fluttershy and Applejack lived in two different directions, and she’d need to go out to where they lived to collect them, probably soon. The Elements should be together. Rainbow Dash would be the hardest to find...

Pinkie’s voice drew her back to the problem at hand. The earth pony was calling, “Twilight! Can you lift me out of here now? This place is so boring and small!”

“Oh, Pinkie, I would, but…” she explained the contents of her letter, and turned to Rarity. “Can you find Scootaloo’s parents? I’ll stay here with Pinkie and keep her company.” Rarity nodded, and was about to respond when somepony else answered.

“Twilight?”

The purple unicorn mare turned to find a rather wide eyed Cheerilee behind her. The schoolmare spoke again. “Twilight, you aren’t going to find them. I… I’ve looked. Scootaloo’s house is over there.”

Twilight didn’t speak at first, not understanding. The usually cheery schoolmare was pointing to an empty lot that— Oh. It’s not an empty lot. She shuddered, and for the first time, realized that Mr. and Mrs. Cake were absent with the rest of Sugarcube Corner. Houses were half-gone. Ponies were gone, completely gone. I’m shaking again.

“Ch—Cheerilee, is Scootaloo…?” she tried to ask her friend the obvious. The earth pony looked down and said nothing and Twilight had nothing to say. She didn’t think there was much she could say.

“Twilight? What are you two talking about? Did you find me a way off my island?” Pinkie’s high-pitched, inquistive voice suddenly seemed so out of place.

“It’s nothing, Pinkie,” she responded woodenly. I have to focus on saving Pinkie right now. Fluttershy was not the best flier around, or even a terribly good flier, but she was certainly not the worst. She’d managed to mostly keep up with Rainbow during the whole Discord debacle, and since then Rainbow Dash had been working with her one-on-one during stretches when the weather was clear. She could do this, Twilight knew she could, and this nascent confidence is what she called upon when she addressed Pinkie again.

“Pinkie Pie, I know how to get you out of there. I’ll be right back, okay? Talk to Rarity and Spike and Cheerilee for a while and I’ll return.” She turned to Rarity, and they exchanged a look. Rarity didn’t have to voice her concerns, because Twilight shared them.

But Twilight trusted that her friend would come through. When they’d been in that balloon and needed her to keep up with fastest young flier in all of Equestria, she had done it. Fluttershy wouldn’t fail her friends.

The road to Fluttershy’s cottage and the Everfree forest was rife with the ever-present tendrils of dark running through the ground. The Voids, as the Princess had referred to them, were not as closely bunched together as they had been in Ponyville, but they had still managed to do plenty of damage to the landscape.

Twilight was apprehensive. Cheerilee’s revelation had stayed with her. She couldn’t banish that terrible instant of realization from her mind. It almost would’ve been better if it had been on fire or burned down before she woke up or collapsed.

Anything would have been better than what she had seen. The house was simply gone, replaced by a swirling black nothing as if it had never existed, without even a trace that a family of pegasi had lived there. Not even a trace that a little filly named Scootaloo who wowed the ponies of Ponyville with her reckless scootering. There would be no more misadventures.

Twilight went back to thinking about the Voids themselves. It was easier to focus on the mystery, and avoid the past. Or the future. Fluttershy’s house could be gone as well.

The Voids. The unicorn forced her thoughts back onto the right track. What did she know so far about this entire event? First: These holes opened up sometime early in the morning. Dispersal of the vile, dark stuff was chaotic and random. They appeared quite similar to cracks, and they responded negatively somehow to magic. Or, the innate magic in unicorns reacts negatively to them. Touching them was bad.

Now that she thought about it, the timing of the Princess's letter was mysterious. Was it just luck, the way Pinkie's surival was? Princess Celestia's power was vast, and Twilight was sure she had ways of knowing things that would escape her student. Perhaps she had been tracking Twilight? But she didn't say, did she, Twilight? So you're in the dark there, just like with everything else. It was frustrating.

She had almost nothing to go on as she shifted to the left to avoid a crack of Void which had ventured into the road. One of the words that had lodged itself in her brain, however, bothered her. Chaotically. She didn’t want to think that Discord was behind this, but it would fit well with how he operated. There wasn’t much in the way of rhyme or reason to the path of the destruction that she could see.

But there were problems with that hypothesis. He was stone, after all. What magic could be worked while one was stone? But he did manage to get out once. That still confused her, months later. How? Weakening magical bonds? Perhaps over time the magic just… deteriorated?

Another root-like void to jump over. Fluttershy’s cottage couldn’t be that far now. Despite the missing landscape, she still recognized her surroundings. There, in the distance, she could see the little bridge and the cottage before the imposing wall of trees. Fluttershy. Was she okay? Twilight told herself that the lack of Void concentration here was surely a good sign as to her friend’s health. Pinkie’s survival was a miracle, so perhaps today was a day of miracles.

The cottage, and the bridge over the creek were in sight- but seeing them only made her heart pound even faster. At first glance, the house looked fine and intact, but as she neared and the road curved slightly to go over the little bridge, she realized that the damage had been done from the side and that now the house stood divided.

“Fluttershy!” she called out worriedly as she stood before the door. Part of her was afraid to go in, the rest of her desperate to see her quiet friend.

There was no response, and the unicorn felt a sense of panic she’d been trying to suppress erupt forth in more calling. “Fluttershy! Fluttershy! Where are you?”

She came through the door and sat in mute horror.

It was as if she was seeing Scootaloo’s house frozen in the midst of being devoured by the Void. The center of the house was gone, a great jagged tear replacing it. Twilight was fascinated by it, unable to tear her eyes away from the den’s ruined state. The black fault line was an awful maw, and she felt as if it was sucking the rest of the building that had escaped it down into itself. The ceiling directly above the rip was missing. It eats everything above it, then. In the midst of her horror, the unicorn couldn't banish the inner scholar completely.

Twilight tried to remember where her pegasus friend slept in the house. Did the Void cut through her room? She looked up, but from this vantage point, she simply couldn’t tell how much of the bedroom or any other room was still around. She called out again, but there was no response. The unicorn groaned softly. If Fluttershy hadn’t answered by now, she was never going to. The silence told Twilight what she needed to know.

Or perhaps it didn’t. It occurred to Twilight that Rarity’s voice hadn’t reached her at first back at the library. The Princess had already warned her of the effect the Voids had on magic, but maybe they could change other things as well, block the passage of sound? It explained, she hoped, why the shy Pegasus hadn’t answered. If she’s here. She could be in Cloudsdale, scared and looking for Rainbow Dash. Twilight didn’t put the other possibility into words.

She walked to where the Void ended and gave way to wholesome grass and then simply walked around the edge. For something that had caused so much damage, this stuff was surprisingly easy to bypass. Nervous now, but still fearfully hopeful, she called out again. “Fluttershy?”

She heard a loud thud, and jumped. Then, an answer finally came.

“Twilight? Is that you?”

It was so soft that if she hadn’t been desperate to hear it, she wouldn’t have. She trotted back into the house through the back door. “It’s me, Fluttershy! Where are you?”

More shuffling, and then the yellow Pegasus appeared, flustered and wide-eyed. “Oh! Twilight! I was so worried! I woke up and-“

“Your house was missing. Well, part of it.” The Pegasus nodded and trotted to Twilight and sat before her.

“And my animal friends! Most of them had run away or weren’t in their homes… I found angel,”— the bunny was with her, Twilight had just noticed—“but the birds… the other bunnies…” the longer she spoke, the quieter she became until her voice was just a squeak of renewed, remembered panic. The unicorn tried to calm her friend, nuzzling her.

“Sh. It’s alright, it’s alright! I’m sure they were afraid and just moved away from the rifts.” Fluttershy nodded. Twilight didn’t know whether that was true or not, but it would do little good to say differently. Besides, why couldn’t it be true? . Animals could sense things like earthquakes before they happened, so she had read. Why not sensing something like these Voids? Twilight told the shy pegasus as much, and Fluttershy cheered up immensely.

“Oh, I knew they did that! But I had totally forgotten about it!”

Twilight smiled. “Now, I need you to come back with me. Pinkie is stranded and we need someone who can fly. You’ll just need to fly with her a short ways and set her down outside the hole.”

Fluttershy already looked worried again. “But I can’t fly with Pinkie Pie! What if I drop her? Can’t you use your magic?”

Twilight sighed and tried again, explaining that there was simply no other option, except for Rainbow Dash, and Twilight nor any other pony had seen her in Ponyville and she didn’t know how to summon her high-flying friend without the aid of magic, which she was loathe to use after Celestia’s warning. "Fluttershy, we need to get her away from the void. The way Celestia talks about it has me on edge. Every moment we leave her there is another moment that that void can grow and she has nowhere to run!"

Fluttershy thought about it as well. “I could go get her…”

“Oh, excellent! Pinkie’s island doesn’t seem to be in any danger! Why hadn’t I thought of that?”

“… Well, except that I don’t think I’ll be able to make it all the way. The hole things… they’re different, in the air, and I’m not sure how far-spread they are… and I… I tried after I woke up, but it... it was different and I got scared, and..."she shrugged and trailed off, leaving Twilight puzzled. But there wasn’t anything to be done. Fluttershy seemed convinced that Rainbow couldn’t be summoned by herself, so Twilight’s original plan would have to do. Together, the two ponies headed back towards town.

And Twilight, made curious, would mine Fluttershy for information about the sky and the Voids on the way.

[A/N I'm sorry to have an author's note here, but just as fair warning. There will be editing after this when I finally get feedback from Ponychan/EqD, and there's a small chance that substantial changes will happen, but I don't think they will. But! It's been sitting here long enough on my computer. Here you go! If I can't get on EqD this time around, I think I'm going to go ahead and give up on getting this story in and write/post without watiing on them. As always, comment, comment, comment!]

Ponyville was calm when they returned, seemed a little strange to Twilight at first. As she and Fluttershy entered town, she began to see why, however: ponies were together in clumps, three or four usually, mostly in the center of town. They held their heads together, fearfully whispering. Those few who were on the roads wandering aimlessly as Twilight passed shuffled by as if they hadn’t even seen her, making no effort to avoid collision at all.

The two ponies were back at what remained of Sugarcube in a moment. At the edge of the hole, but at a respectable distance away, sat Rarity, Spike, and Cheerilee. Pinkie came to life as she caught sight of them. “Oh, Twilight, Fluttershy! Does this mean I can leave? It’s so boring here! I only have enough room to turn around if I’m really careful and there’s certainly no room to run or throw parties or lie down well.” She began jumping as she spoke, but the pink pony stumbled slightly. Twilight’s warning stuck in her throat as Pinkie righted herself and stopped her excited bouncing.

“Pinkie,” she began, “I’m going to send Fluttershy over in a few minutes. When she’s carrying you, try to be as still as possible.” That Pinkie should be still when being carried went without saying, but Twilight’s pedagogical nature was beginning to show. Nervous explanations and mini-lectures were better than nervous silence.

“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie called, perhaps louder than was necessary, and carefully sat down.

Twilight turned back to Fluttershy, who was staring into the blackness before her with wide eyes, her wings clamped to her sides. “So…wide…”

Twilight sighed. “I know it is. I don’t know how to find Rainbow Dash on my own, and if the sky is how you describe it, I’m not sure it would be much safer for you to look for her.” The shy Pegasus didn’t respond right away, simply staring on into the Void.

Fluttershy had tried flying at one point, trying to see how far the damage was spread, when she’d narrowly avoided a trap in the clouds. In the sky, many of the voids attracted clouds slowly to them, and these clouds made it difficult to locate where a Void was lying in wait. Fluttershy had been about to land on the cloud in question when she saw the tell-tale blackness dimly underneath the thin veneer and pulled up.

Which meant that Rainbow was probably having to navigate between clouds herself. The summer storm two days ago had left plenty of scattered clouds. How would the reckless Pegasus know where traps were waiting for an unsuspecting pony? Fluttershy had watched, horrified, as a bird was sucked into such a cloud before she could warn it.

“Fluttershy, the pull of the voids isn’t as strong down here, on solid ground. We need your help. Pinkie needs her friend’s help.” Twilight grimaced at her obviously terrified friend. Perhaps if she wrote the Princess, asked her to send some of her royal guard out to find their fast-flying friend…

“How long? To get across, I mean,” Fluttershy suddenly asked softly.

Surprised by the question, Twilight had to think about it. As she was calculating, Rarity answered for her. “Darling, if you go fast, it shan’t be faster than three breaths’ time. Count to ten perhaps, and that’s all it will take!” Twilight was about to interject that it would no doubt take slightly longer than this, considering the seconds required to secure a good hold on Pinkie Pie, but at the new light in Fluttershy’s eyes, she let her comment die.

Fluttershy took a deep breath. I wish I knew what was going on behind those eyes. It was the same steely determination that she’d seen in action once before when Rarity and Pinkie were dangling from a rope attached to Rainbow Dash. [i[]But she’s still scared, I can tell. I can see it in her eyes and in how she stands. Her wings are still clamped to her sides like she glued them there. Twilight began second-guessing herself. Was this really the right choice? The Princess had been very clear that she must gather her friends, but she’d been so vague. I’m assuming that we’re needed urgently, and that it’s best if we are all together and in the same place as soon as physically possible. If I waited on Rainbow… Fluttershy wouldn’t be going anywhere, after all. She could write the Princess a letter asking for help and then they could wait for Rainbow to appear or not appear. Even if they waited for hours, that would still leave plenty of time to rescue Pinkie Pie from her island and collect Applejack from her farm. But what if these Voids did grow? She had no way of knowing they wouldn’t swallow up Pinkie before Rainbow Dash could arrive.

The suction of the cloud-hidden Voids bothered her. She hadn’t sensed anything like that on the ground, but her hooves were also on terra firma. Perhaps the solid ground beneath her made it easier to resist the effects and the pull was so tiny she hadn’t noticed…

So lost in thought, she didn’t hear a thing before turning to Fluttershy to ask her opinion on whether they should wait or not. Her friend was gone, and a surprised Twilight looked all around for Fluttershy. Rarity was calling to the Pegasus, who was now poised with wings open and trembling legs a bit behind Twilight. “Oh, do be careful!”

Before Twilight could say a word, Fluttershy had ten a few steps and was in the air. Her progress across the gap was good, if perhaps too fast. Twilight could detect a slight nervous, excited shiver in the flying pony’s legs. Pinkie, beyond ready to escape, sat up and eagerly waved and held two hooves up.

“Oh, oh, almost here!” she cried.

Fluttershy was above Pinkie and Twilight noticed she was holding her breath. Her heart beat furiously as if it was about to beat its way right through the walls of her chest. Time suddenly seemed strange. How long had Fluttershy been flying? It felt like forever, but she was sure it had only been a matter of seconds. As her friend hovered over Pinkie and tried to secure a good hold on her, Twilight fidgeted. Fluttershy can do this, Twilight. She’s gotten so much better at flying since you first met her! She’ll be fine. She’ll be fine and Pinkie will be fine.

Up into the air the two ponies at the center of the Void rose, and Twilight felt rooted, unable to move from her spot beside Cheerilee. “Y-You’re doing great, Fluttershy! Just a bit more!” she called.

Rarity let out a short, shrill scream as Pinkie slipped halfway over the Void, Fluttershy’s grip weakening. “I can’t… I can’t!” the Pegasus cried, panicking. Twilight’s mind raced: she couldn’t use magic this close or through the void and Fluttershy was losing her grip on their friend. How to fix this?

Fluttershy slowed, and Twilight began to shout, hoping the noise would snap her out of her panicking. “Fluttershy! Keep going!” The Pegasus obeyed, but she was losing Pinkie fast. Pinkie tried to hold on as best she could, but her efforts just caused Fluttershy to sink slightly and the two stalled over the abyss. Despite all of her frantic fluttering, Fluttershy made no forward progress at all. Cheerilee groaned and Rarity began to chatter, begging Fluttershy to try harder.

“Fluttershy, boost Pinkie towards us. You’re close enough, I promise! Pinkie, push off!”

The two ponies in question looked at each other as they slowly began to sink down and nodded. Fluttershy and Pinkie moved as one, sending the Earth Pony sailing through the air towards the green grass. She landed and laid there for a moment, breathing heavily. Fluttershy landed beside her and then their friends were there, weeping and hugging and relieved.

The pegasus looked miserable. “I’m so sorry. I thought if I moved quickly, it would be over before I got scared…” She hid behind her long mane. Pinkie was quick to hug her. “If I hadn’t moved, you might’ve been able to make it. I messed you up too, you know!”

“Besides,” Cheerilee interjected, “You were so brave! Pinkie Pie is safe and sound.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Twilight added, letting the breath she’d been holding go at last.

The ponies and Spike, who walked alongside Rarity, headed back to the library to rest and wait. As they walked, Twilight spoke to her friends to help herself think and bounce ideas off of them. “I’m in way over my head here. I’ve never read of anything remotely like this. The Princess wants me to gather the Elements of Harmony, so I assume she has a plan. But she hasn’t told me.”

“Why not ask?” Pinkie asked. While not quite sad, her voice wasn’t quite as exuberant as usual. Twilight supposed it was to be expected, with the narrowly avoided disaster and the state of her home and favorite place in the world.

“I suppose I will, Pinkie. It couldn’t hurt. I was thinking more about Rainbow Dash, and how to get her to us.” She explained quickly about the void-filled skies. “She’s not that far away from Ponyville, so her absence worries me.” No pony had an answer as they entered the library. Cheerilee stayed slightly apart, thinking. Rarity and Spike followed Twilight to her writing stand and sat behind her as she set her magic to writing a letter to the Princess. Pinkie Pie, still possessed of her boundless energy and unable to sit still, wandered around the main room.

Twilight thought through her letter, relating everything that had happened since she woke up and asking if perhaps Celestia knew how she might locate the curiously absent Rainbow Dash. When she came to asking what the Princess knew about the nature of the threat, she stopped writing and looked at the wall as she pondered how to word the next sentence.

When it was ready, she sighed and rolled the scroll up and sealed it with her magic. Spike rose and held out his hand for it. “The Princess will know what to do, won’t she, Twilight?”

“I hope so, Spike.”

Cheerilee left after a while, and Twilight watched her go with sadness. The schoolmare was still haunted by Scootaloo’s disappearance, she knew. She could see that strange, distant look in her eye, as if she was really elsewhere. A student, especially one as memorable as Scootaloo, simply gone in an instant? That would hit anypony hard.

While she’d wanted to go and find Applejack immediately, something told her that it might be wiser to wait on a reply from Princess Celestia. Twilight was determined to learn something about this mess before she left her home again. She was tired of dealing with unknown variables.

The letter itself took some time to come, but it did eventually arrive. Twilight grinned despite herself. Princess Celestia would explain everything! She was sure the letter would be informative and thorough and reassuring. No sooner had it touched the floor than her magic had scooped it up and unfurled it. Twilight read eagerly.

Twilight,

I’m glad to hear you’re safe. As the shadows grow smaller with the coming of noon, I’ve found reprieve to write you a quick response.

Rainbow Dash is safe. After some difficulty, I’ve discovered that she is with your friend Applejack. I suggest you bring them and the other farming ponies in as quickly as possible. Ponyville has been lucky so far, but as noontime becomes more distant, I have no doubt the Nightmares will be on you. Keep everyone inside and make sure people are in groups. Don’t all stay together. Spread their forces across the town, but make sure you all have ample company.
Be safe. They’re coming.

Twilight was not only confused, but even more worried than before. This letter was not at all what she’d been expecting. That her teacher had completely ignored her question about the nature and origin of the cracks in reality’s very fabric worried Twilight. Not even a, “I’m not sure yet”. Princess Celestia had completely dodged the question. That either means that she doesn’t know, or that she doesn’t want to tell me or worry me. It was, of course, possible that she’d been more concerned with her warning and simply forgotten to answer the question, but Twilight doubted that.

She quickly enlightened her friends as to the missive’s contents and levitated the scroll over to Spike, who caught it and held it firmly. “I’m going to get Applejack and Dash and be right back. Could you ponies try to tell the rest of town about this? See if you can find the mayor, because she should be able to help get people organized.”

The others agreed tacitly, and Twilight sighed. “I’ll be back. It’s going to be okay.” She left, feeling the melancholy she knew they were feeling. How in Celestia’s name were they supposed to be safe if they didn’t know what was coming? Nightmares were all that Celestia had mentioned. Nightmares of what?

Twilight made as good time as she could, galloping towards Applejack and Sweet Apple Acres. Here, as had been the case on the road towards the Evergreen forest, the Void branched out randomly as if it was searching for something. Like roots looking for water.
 

She was glad that Applejack and Rainbow Dash were safe. Though she’d never said so, she had begun to worry that perhaps Dash’s cloud house had been swallowed up as she slept. Like Scoo- She didn’t want to think about the other house that had been swallowed up. She wasn’t going to think about it.

It would be good to have Applejack back. She could handle adversity better than Twilight, Rarity, and Fluttershy could. Applejack’s rugged honesty and Dash’s energy and brashness would be a welcome change of pace. Anything besides the quiet gloom that had settled over the three ponies and Spike in the library would help morale immensely.

As she got closer, apple trees flanked her on either side. The outlying orchards and fields belonging to the Apple family and their fellow farmers and their tenants stretched far, all radiating out from the Apple family’s home. She picked up her pace, eager to see her friends again and know without a doubt that they were safe and sound.

There was the gate up ahead, the one she’d walked through what seemed like ages ago under happier circumstances. Twilight wanted her friends badly, suddenly feeling awfully alone. She picked up the pace, thankful that the stretch of road between her and the gate was free of the Void.

No one greeted her at the gate. She slowed and stood right inside the fence, looking around for signs of life. The house itself seemed to be in one piece, which was promising, but didn’t completely calm her. The Apple family were farmers, and so she knew that when the disaster began they would’ve been out working. Twilight trotted forwards, still looking in every direction for her friends or Applejack’s family. “Is anypony here?” she called out, hoping there was no Void between her and her quarries.

She was at the front door of the house after a moment of strange silence. Apprehensive, she knocked on the door. “Hello? Anypony?”

“Twi?”

Her heart leapt. Excitedly, she called back. “Applejack, is that you?” the voice was quiet and muffled, as if her friend was upstairs.

“No, it’s Applebloom,” called the now identified voice. She heard the filly behind the door working the locks as best she could and then the way was open to reveal Applebloom and… Scootaloo.

“…And yah say we all gotta head in tah town, then? Why, I’m not quite sure I like you’re proposition there, sugarcube,” Applejack said after taking it all in, stretching the word “proposition” farther than Twilight had thought possible.
“I know you don’t want to abandon your farm, Applejack, but the Princess was very specific that the farmers wouldn’t be safe outside of Ponyville. If it helps, you can return in the morning.” She chuckled, trying to lighten the mood, “It’s not like it’s going anywhere.”

“Now, yah know I didn’t mean tah say I was gonna dig in my hooves when I ain’t got a good reason to, Twi. I just don’t like it, leavin’. It’s my home… but, we might as well get a move on if we’re gonna get there.” She turned and spoke to her sister who sat on the other side of the living room with a curiously on-looking Scootaloo and to Big Macintosh, who had just walked back in. “Y’all saddle up, get together some supplies, everythin’ y’all are gonna need for a stay with the ponyfolks in town.”

Twilight watched Applebloom take Scootaloo along with her as the fillies headed out of the room. The shock of seeing the little Pegasus alive had almost given her a heart attack. She’d almost forgotten to be happy, and… She was ashamed to admit it, but she blamed Spike for her first words on registering the filly’s identity. “Zom-pony!”

The story had come out after a little bit of prompting, the two fillies interrupting each other to tell it. The Cutie Mark Crusaders had all planned to stay the night on the farm, looking for things to try in their attempts to gain their ever elusive cutie marks, but Sweetie Bell had taken sick, leaving the CMC one member short. Scootaloo… today has been a day of luck, at least as far as the people I know and love are concerned. Absent at exactly the right time and parents away visiting a sick relative in Manehatten, both exactly at the same time. She looked forward to giving Cheerilee the good news.

“Now, Twi, we ain’t gonna be but a moment. Rainbow was doin’ me a favor, flyin’ low over the far fields to get a good luck at the damage. She’ll be back any minute now and we can head out. From what ya tell me, sugar, you could use some rest. Just wait here, I’ll be back before you can blink twice!”

With that, she left Twilight sitting on the couch, sighing. Applejack was right: she was tired. She had galloped hard. It was more than just the ache in her legs that weighed on her. Ponyville, the place she called home, was wounded. The ground had been swallowed up, the buildings had been swallowed up, some of the ponies had been swallowed up. In the blink of an eye, before she had even been awake, a disaster had come for the little hamlet she loved. The summery, rustic peace of Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres and the outlying country had never seemed fragile to her before now. She closed her eyes and laid on the couch, thinking, wondering. Will things ever go back to how they were?

Celestia will know what’s wrong. She can fix this, or she can show me how to, I know she can.

3

Applejack’s vigil was what kept Twilight from panicking. She knew, up on her tree-library’s balcony, her rustic friend was watching the goings on outside closely. If something new or dangerous happened, Applejack would know. If there was anything that could be done about it, Twilight would be called for and then she’d handle it. If her head wasn’t buried under a pillow, somepony may have heard her whisper to herself that “Everything is fine, everything is fine.”

The situation had deteriorated as the day had died. The eerie, empty silence of noon had given away to the mists and strange noises that none of the townponies had found any source for despite much searching. Hours had passed like, with the sun in full retreat. The sounds of hoofsteps had sounded from nowhere when nopony was moving and then fallen silent.

Twilight found the off-and-on again noise too much to handle by itself, but the mist had been what finally drove her inside along with most of the other ponies in town. As the light grew weaker, mist had formed around the wounds in the earth, bubbling out of the eldritch Voids and pooling in the streets. The mist was cold, and everything it touched was cold. Carefully, worriedly, she and Rarity had used their magic to board up the windows of the library as other ponies did their best to block up the space under the doors. So far, none of the mist had gotten in, but Twilight couldn’t help but feel as if it would just keep boiling out of those awful holes in reality until it smothered everything.

She couldn’t look out the window, couldn’t lift her head to look down from her loft. She didn’t want to be proven right and see mist pooling below her on the floor, or look outside and see nothing but the vile cold stuff outside.

Hiding in here was awful. Twilight hated it so much that she had a hard time putting words to her feelings, but being outside was worse. She couldn’t go back out to the main room and have the eyes of almost thirty ponies, including her best friends, all on her from the moment she set hoof into their presence. She knew it was only natural of them: she’d always been the organizer, the direct line to the Princesses. It was only natural they ask her for advice and help, and before today that had never been a problem. In fact, before today, she had delighted in being the pony other ponies came to for help, from the Mayor to schoolfillies with book reports.

But always before she either knew the answer, or it was within her grasp. Never before had so many ponies needed her knowledge about something she knew absolutely nothing about at all. She had nothing in her head, nothing in her books. As far as she could tell, nothing like this had ever happened before in a thousand years of Equestrian history.

“Twilight? Are you still in here…? If you know, if you want to, we thought maybe you could come back in here. Applejack said that she wanted to see you, if you have time of course! If you’re reading something important or doing magi-“

Twilight had already lifted her head out from under the pillow to answer before her shy friend had finished. “Fluttershy, I’ll come. Go ahead and tell Applejack I’m coming. I’ll… be a moment.”

The yellow Pegasus accepted this with a little nod and she retreated back through the door that led to the main chamber. Twilight looked down from her loft at the floor below and groaned. She didn’t want to face them, because she knew as soon as she did, they’d all expect her to know the answers to this quandary. She didn’t have any to give them.

She shook herself and after a few seconds of brushing to look presentable and not like she’d just spent the last hour hiding from the world, she slowly made her way down the stairs and back into the well-lit library’s main room and into the company of other ponies.

As she had predicted, everyone turned to look at her. Despite all of her wishes and inclinations to the contrary, she tried to smile and look back at them. She saw familiar faces all around her: Cheerilee, much relieved by the discovery that none of the fillies and colts in her class were gone; Rainbow Dash, fidgeting and impatient besides the main door; Rarity and her little sister Sweetie Bell, in the corner with Pinkie, talking quietly. The fact that Pinkie was not only quiet but relatively still almost made her pause in surprise, but somehow she managed to keep walking the seemingly endless walk all the way to the stairwell.

Applejack heard her coming- Twilight could tell from the way her ears flicked at the sound of the unicorn’s hooves trotting up the stairs. The earth pony didn’t turn or greet her at all, and Twilight felt the apprehension she’d tried running from all evening. Applejack wasn’t the kind of pony to…

The streets of Ponyville stole her breath away as they shut down her thoughts. She gaped at what the mists and the Voids had done to her home. Strange, silvery light shone out of the now thick mist which blanketed the streets over where Twilight remembered there being Voids. She could hear her heart hammering as she tried to speak, failing once before managing a soft whisper.

“Applejack… exactly when did the… glowing…?”

“A few minutes before I sent ya Fluttershy. I’m sorry, Twi, but I’ll be honest with ya and say I was distracted by ‘em so bad, I plum near forgot ‘bout ya for a minute.”

“I… can see why.”

“So, I’d reckon this is why the Princess wanted us all inside and together. Makes sense, I guess. What don’t make a lick of sense, Twilight, is why she let the sun go down at all if this was so bad. I don’t understand it.” Applejack was perturbed, and it showed. Her mane was a little frayed and her eyes seemed locked into a hard, alert stare running over everything before her.

“When Princess Celestia raises the sun, Applejack, it takes a lot of energy. A unicorn trades energy for magic power- like you trade energy for force every time you buck apples out of a tree.”

“But once it’s in the air, couldn’t she just, ya know, leave it there? Lettin’ it be night seems like more and more of a bad idea.”

Twilight shook her head, calmer than before now that she was explaining something. “No- it’s not something that would be wise or really possible. She doesn’t have to expend that much energy throughout the day, but the movement of the sun does put some strain on her. Her affinity for the sun offsets this, because the cost of maintaining the sun’s path is countered by the restored strength she derives from it. The sun moves on its own accord naturally, but not very fast. It tends to move in the direction we see it move day after day. Celestia simply keeps it going at a relatively brisk pace and regularly, as well as starting it on time. If she were to stop it, she’d be working against the momentum of an object the size of the sun, and after healing so many ponies and working nonstop to help keep Canterlot safe…” she let her voice trail off. Applejack seemed satisfied.

“I think I can understand that. Least ah think ah do. Still don’- Twilight, look, down the main street, three houses down. Quickly.” Her voice was lower suddenly, urgent. Twilight obeyed.

There, she saw it- movement in the mists. It was almost too fast and too small a thing to catch, but somehow she managed to, if only for a moment. “Applejack, I lost it. What is it?” her voice was tight, and she concentrated, looking wildly about.

“It kept goin’, into an alley. I don’t know what it is, but I have a feeling that we’ll know soon enough. Ponyfeathers, there’s another one. Ah have no- yes I do. They’re ponies, Twi. Ponies in the mist.”

Twilight shivered. “Nightmares?” she whispered, suddenly making a connection in her mind. “Oh Celestia help us, I know what’s out there now, Applejack!” she backed away from the rail, horrified, and began babbling.

“Celestia, Celestia… Nightmares, an old mare’s tale of horrors spawned from the nightmares of ponies, ghostly shapes that would look like ponies until you got too close or met one from your own nightmares. They come from the night and they bring mist and attack from all sides and… Oh Celestia…” she had trouble breathing now, and coughed. Applejack shook her.

“Calm down, Twi. Tell me slower this time. Ah need to know how to fight these things!”

Twilight tried to repeat what she had said, but movement from below stole both ponies’ attention away and what was down below made any explanation Twilight might have given irrelevant.

They were everything Twilight had imagined, long ago, alone in the Canterlot Grand Library after dark. It was a lone unicorn pony, eyes shining white, form strange and only partially defined, as if it were a painting or a drawing that had been smudged. The unicorn whinnied and reared up, and both the ponies on the balcony jumped back, frightened. From below them, Twilight could hear her friends and the others and knew the Nightmare’s cry had been heard.

“Twilight… I’ma go tell the others. Just… hold that thing away from us, ya hear? Use that horn of yours!” Applejack galloped down the stairs and Twilight was alone on the balcony, facing more pairs of eyes looking up at her, waiting as she was.

The difference was that while Twilight waited for the dawn, these things waited for the night to come in force.

Keeping Rainbow grounded was the hardest part the ordeal in some respects. The other pegasi holed up in the library wouldn’t have left it for all the bits in Canterlot, but Rainbow Dash needed air and space badly. With a threat (and a challenge!) just outside the door, inactivity was driving her mad. Twilight had made her Pinkie Pie promise to stay grounded. Under Pinkie’s watchful eye, a grounded Dash had looked out over streets and arrived at an opinion in about ten seconds.

“If we don’t try to scare them off or something, they’ll just surround us. They have all night and we have nowhere to go.”

Twilight nodded. “Yes, we’d come to that conclusion ourselves, though not as quickly as you did. I suppose we could find things to use as projectiles. From what I read when I was much, much younger, Nightmares are somewhat fragile. They can hurt a pony greatly, but great force, preferably a large blunt object, will dissipate them. Sharp things just go right through usually, so they’re not much help.”

“We got a whole library full of books, we could… Oh. Bad idea?” Rainbow retreated before the baleful glare the unicorn gave her.

“I have some junk in the closet downstairs, and I think there’s a broken chair we could use. If we can destroy one, perhaps the others will overestimate our ability to fight back and scatter.”

“Wishful thinkin’, Twi, but ah don’t have nothin’ better to try. Might as well.” The orange pony sat and sighed. “Just be quick, ya hear? All them walkin’ around down there makes a pony nervous.”

Twilight left her two friends and headed back downstairs. With the news of the new arrivals in Ponyville, the townponies hiding in the library were more fearful than ever, and much louder. Several asked in a confused rush what Twilight was planning.

“I have read about these creatures, everypony!” she told them, and they took the news gladly. She continued, “We’ll try scaring them off first. Nopony should be worried quite yet, we’ve not been attacked yet!”

“Yet?” more rumbling, more frightened than before.

“Calm down everypony, I promise you… just let me by, please, excuse me… I’ll be just a moment…” Twilight succeeded in reaching the closet and opened the door with a light touch of magic. Still, she feared the Voids outside and what they might do if they reacted to her use of magic. She took quick stock of what was inside: the broken chair (a small one, made for Spike by the town’s carpenter pony), a box that was empty but quite large, and a broom.

“Twilight, darling? Would you care to explain what it is you’re doing? We’d love to help,” Rarity spoke from behind her, and she turned to face her. Fluttershy and Pinkie flanked her on either side, and Twilight thought quickly what they could do.

“I know that the Nightmares can be fragile, like the mist they’re borne on. I’m looking for large blunt objects (that hopefully won’t break!) to magically throw. If I can cause one to dissipate, perhaps the others will retreat.”

Rarity nodded, considering this. “A marvelous plan, I say. I could help! I’m no magician or protégé, but I can lift things and move them!”

Pinkie, thinking, broke into a smile. “I don’t suppose assaulting them with cake would help?” The idea was rewarded with chuckles from her friends. Twilight was glad to see the pink party pony smiling and joking again.

“I don’t know, really,” she said when the laughter subsided. “But could you keep the ponies here calm? Cheerilee can help you, I’m sure her experience with fillies and colts in the classroom will be invaluable. There will probably be some scary noises outside, and you were the one who always told us to giggle at the ghosties.” Twilight smiled, wider than before, and knew that this was what Pinkie needed.

“I’m not sure you can laugh at these… but I understand, Twilight! Pinkie will do her best, and Fluttershy can help me! Come on, Fluttershy, you and Aunt Pinkimena have work to do!”

As the two ponies left, Fluttershy muttering something about being older with narrowed eyes, Rarity and Twilight collected some of the assorted nick-nacks from the library and headed back up the stairs to where Applejack and Rainbow Dash waited.

“Y’all’re in luck, Twi,” she said and gestured down towards the mist-devoured town. “See that one, middle of the road? He’s the brave one, nickerin’ at us and pacin’ every now and then. Think you can hit him from here?” Twilight thought about it, looking down at the Void which had almost surrounded her library tree nervously. She was still cautious about doing any magic outside of the relatively safe confines of her library, but she convinced herself that minor levitation wouldn’t be the end of Equestria. More than that, to be safe, she could give it a quick punch with her magic and let it fly unaided the rest of the way.

“Yes,” she answered finally, “I think I can. “

Twilight took a deep, nervously excited breath. She wasn’t used to throwing things in this way with her magic— most of her schooling had been in intricacies and detail work, more advanced things. She could do all sorts of different spells. Levitation itself wasn’t hard at all; all unicorns had levitation not long after birth, even if it was hard to control. She’d just not had much experience… fighting with it.

She lifted the broken chair, removing the slightly dangling, damaged leg. Idly, she wondered when she’d be able to get Spike a new one for him to use when she needed his help at night. Swallowing, she positioned it over her head and drew it back slightly, as a pony would when it threw a ball or something else with its mouth or hooves. It wasn’t necessary at all, but she found that it seemed natural.

Then, startling herself, she let it loose quickly. The chair sailed through the air, and the Nightmare seemed startled, and by the time it had recovered and moved, its time was up. As the wooden chair made contact with the shadowy form, it collapsed into chalky smoke and nothingness. From all corners, there came braying and noise of hoofsteps. Twilight had no time to breathe a sigh of relief before two more had replaced the first in the center of the street, uncovered, brazen.

“Twi, you’d better have more tah be throwin’, now!” Applejack said, her voice breaking slightly. Her businesslike matter was gone now, replaced by fear. She’d been sure, deep down, that the fate of their companion would scatter the monsters. Twilight had been sure, too.

Rarity coughed slightly. “I believe it’s my turn, girls,” she said in a tone of voice that Twilight couldn’t read at all. Either the white unicorn was truly unperturbed by the rallying Nightmares below, or she was a good actor. As Rarity’s weapon of choice, a small, empty crate that had once held a shipment of books, rose, Twilight remembered that Rarity had always claimed to be an excellent actress.

Rarity’s aim was surprisingly good, and the wood met the misty head of another Nightmare who had just joined its fellows in the street. This Nightmare, too, was instantly reduced to nothing, but the Nightmares still didn’t seem taken aback.

But now they were more cautious. They were moving up the street, sticking to the edges of the street with the houses and alleys to their sides, ready for a quick escape from a flying object. Twilight found a rather ludicrously large paper weight (where had this thing come from?) and tried again. It hit another Nightmare, but only barely, catching the leg but still dispersing the moving monstrosity. Applejack’s voice was tight as she spoke. “Y’all better keep throwin’, Twilight. I don’t like them getting’ this close.”

They were getting closer, and Twilight didn’t like it either. Now that they were closer, she could see them more clearly. They were unicorns, all of the ones she could see. They moved on four hooves like any pony, but something about their movements were simply wrong. She felt colder, and not from the mist or the night.

Rarity’s next projectile missed as her target seemed to melt down into the mist, only to reappear a few feet ahead, continuing towards them undaunted.

Rainbow Dash simply couldn’t take it anymore. Her wings flared out and she snorted, determined. “Twilight, I gotta do somethin-“

“Don’t get so close!” a voice screamed from downstairs accompanied by a horrible breaking sound as wood was torn and glass was shattered. “No, no, no, no, no, no!”

Rainbow Dash was gone back down the stairs before any of them could react, Applejack swiftly following her without a word. Twilight’s attention was stolen away as the march of the Nightmares continued, and she readied her magic to throw again. “Stay back!”

Below, one of the windows had given way and mist was pouring into the center chamber. In the new entrance there was a horrible, twisting visage, a unicorn snarling with jagged and sharp teeth. The pony who’d been close to the door, a certain Bon Bon, had fainted dead away as above her the monster struggled to gain entrance.

Applejack was on it in a heartbeat, bucking it full in the face. She staggered as it simply gave way before her strength with no resistance and the earth pony fell flat on her face. “Oh…” she groaned, stunned.

Above her, a new Nightmare appeared. This one’s face began to twist and change. Its face grew long and its teeth grew longer as it gained horns which erupted from the horrifying head. A long, ghostly tentacle reached below the thing’s chin and grabbed Bon Bon tightly. The sweetsmaker awoke suddenly and began screaming and flailing. “Lyra! Berry!”

Rainbow was on the tentacle in a moment, disrupting it with her strong wings and hooves. Bon Bon dropped to the ground and scurried off, crying. Applejack, who had recovered and now stood beside her, called out, “Somepony! We need a unicorn to help us block up this here hole!”

From somewhere behind her, magic enveloped a small shelf and it flew to the window, blocking it. Another joined the first, and soon three or four magical auras kept the shelf secure.

Panting, Rainbow and Applejack backed away and waited for another breach.

Outside, the partially defined shapes were still coming in fast. The two unicorns were quickly running out of offensive options, down to a small globe and a stone bookend. Twilight’s panic had left and been replaced with a sort of frantic battle rage— she was simply angry. This was her tree, and she was going to be safe in it and keep it safe!

She took aim with the globe carefully. There had been too much missing, now that the creatures below were used to this method of attack. Yelling, she used up her last weapon, crowing as it hit a Nightmare and sent it back to where it had come. Rarity, too, found luck with her last attempt.

Her anger simply vanished, and the now lost librarian pony looked around. She had nothing else to throw, really. She couldn’t cast magic past the barrier safely… There was nothing she could do. She just stared out, watching the figures below. There were significantly less than before, which was encouraging, but there were still three or four in the street and she knew there was at least one or two circling the tree beneath them. She asked Rarity to look below on her side while she looked down, hoping to catch sight of one of those things—

“NO!”

She turned to find a frightened Rarity, horn flaring, trying to push away a Nightmare that had transformed into something far worse. It was becoming an awful sort of mixture of pony and dragon, forked tongue and claws and bladelike teeth. It opened its mouth as if it were preparing to spew forth flame, and Twilight wasn’t about to see if it could. She turned and bucked it in square in the chest with her hind legs. The monster was smoke as soon as her kick landed, and she stumbled slightly. Scared and knowing the same thing could happen again, the two ponies backed up from the edges.

“It was a dragon, a dragon…drag….” Rarity shivered. Twilight said nothing, but was confused. Hadn’t it been Fluttershy who was afraid of dragons? The thought was so pointless to entertain at that moment, but she almost couldn’t help it. Her brain sped ahead of her, oblivious to the need for focus.

Despite what Twilight feared, nothing came up the side of the tree. The noise of hooves had stilled and there was nothing now but the breathing of the two unicorns sitting back to back on the balcony. Neither of them dared to move, lest they disrupt the stillness and the things be upon them again.

But nothing came.

4

Twilight hadn’t been happy, leaving Ponyville behind in the morning light. The presence of newly stationed Royal Guard in the town had eased her mind as to its safety, and she knew Spike would be safer in the library… But she didn’t like it. Watching the hamlet grow ever smaller behind her, she couldn’t help but run over the events of the morning in her mind as Rarity and Fluttershy spoke quietly beside her.

The guards had come with two gold encrusted royal chariots, ready to fly the Elements to Canterlot swiftly. From these had come the seven royal guards who’d made short work of inspecting the town and beginning defensive preparations. A slightly bruised Applejack and an exhausted Rainbow had watched from the balcony as Twilight spoke to the captain of the Guard detachment assigned to defend Ponyville from the Nightmares. The captain, a white-colored Unicorn with a flaming red mane, had tried to be as plain and helpful as he could be, but in the end he had known very little about the overall situation in Canterlot, or Equestria at large. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but they had me in the lower markets all night long. I haven’t seen High Town or the Middle rings since before those things opened up. All I know is that the things are everywhere. Princess Luna’s master of arms, Night Rose, sent a full company of the Lunar guard to Manehattan: two flights of pegasi, thirty earth ponies, and five unicorn mages for support.”

Being a member of the Solar Guard, he’d known nothing about the inner workings or goings on with the Princess of the Moon’s soldiers beyond that. Twilight was frustrated, but in the end not surprised. It wasn’t as if she would’ve been very helpful in his place. In all the excitement of the night, she had lost bits and pieces of what had happened, and had little clue about some of it even now. It was all one huge dark blur of noise and magic now. She clearly remembered Rarity’s encounter with the dragon-Nightmare, and somepony screaming and a window breaking. She remembered that she had destroyed some of the creatures, but couldn’t remember actually having done so very clearly.

“…yes, dearest, but I don’t wish to talk about it. It was ghastly.”

As often happened, Twilight found her train of thought interrupted by somepony’s voice. She blinked, shook her head slightly, and looked down at the summery expanse of Equestria below. The chariots were flying far lower to the ground than was normal, hoping to avoid any of the Void-traps in the air, so she couldn’t see quite as far as she usually did, but the view was decent enough for her.

The Void hadn’t gone with the morning. The dark tendrils were present in all directions, though not as concentrated as they were in Ponyville. They crisscrossed the road occasionally, swallowing up land and tree in their progress. It hurt Twilight’s heart to see it.

It seemed to hurt Fluttershy’s as well, from what she said in the now still quiet. “Twilight, do you think the Princess will be able to fix this, really?” her voice was soft as always.

“I do,” the unicorn said back with much more conviction then she felt. “I don’t know how, but she will.”

Rarity, at this point, seemed to remember something and spoke up. “Twilight, last night, when those things… Well, you spoke as if you knew something about them. What exactly are they?”

Twilight paused, trying to remember the night she had read of them the best she could. It had been so long ago that it seemed a lifetime in the past. “It was when I was just a filly, a year or two after I had begun studying under the tutelage of Princess Celestia. I’d found a large volume of stories and such from all over the place, and from many different eras of Equestrian history. My assignment was simple, and I’m sure the princess had hoped it would be something much less stressful. You may not believe it, but I was… enthusiastic past my abilities back then.” She chuckled sheepishly before continuing on with her story.

“Well, I couldn’t decide. There were so many stories to choose from and write about! I just couldn’t narrow it down to one story that the Princess would like a report on the most. I did eventually find one that I could write about, but despite myself, I kept reading. I had become enthralled. I found the tale a few pages after the one I decided to write my report on. Everything but finding it is hard to remember, but that I remember clearly…”

The little filly was exhausted, but she simply had to continue. As much as any book of magic or history, Story pulled at her soul too strongly and sang in her blood too loudly for her to ignore it. As she grew up, she’d spend many nights like this, finishing a beautiful book despite exhaustion with tears in her eyes or a weary smile as she surrendered at last to sleep. Tonight would be different from all those nights.

The next page called her eyes to it, and she began reading. “Nightmares,” she whispered to herself, reading aloud for a moment. She inhaled the words on the page, reading the strange tale. Unlike the others, told like fairy tales or like drier biographical sketches of brave or clever ponies, this entry was a small story. It was about a filly named Gold Star who hadn’t gotten her cutie mark yet. The little filly, embarrassed at being the only Unicorn she knew in the castled city of Canterlot to be without one, had a nightmare where other fillies and colts laughed at her wherever she went.

The next day, nervous noble ponies informed the King of Unicornia that mocking laughter had been heard in the streets the night before. That night, the filly dreamed that she had finally gotten her cutie mark, only for it to be taken away from her by an older colt who said it was stupid and who laughed at her. Outside of her house, conjured from her fitful magic, a young ghostly unicorn stallion appeared, his eyes blank with no cutie mark. He roamed the streets, and found ponies heading home or on business and attacked them, killing or hurting them and ripping off their cutie marks until at last it found again the place of its twisted birth and waited for weeks until at last the filly found her talent, painting-

And then it ripped the new, beautiful picture from her flank and killed her.

Twilight’s face flushed a darker shade of purple as she finished. “It was a short, terrifying story for a young filly. I found it silly when I grew up- there was no explanation for the appearance of the ‘Nightmare’ at all, except that somehow while sleeping the unicorn gave it shape unwittingly, and overall the writing was poor and simplistic. I ran all the way up to Celestia’s bedroom, crying the whole way. I still remember the bewildered guard bringing me to the Princess and how she sat with me in her private chamber while I had water and told her what had frightened me so.”

Fluttershy did smile a little at this. The story had obviously been unsettling for her. “ Oh, but Celestia was so nice to do that!”

Twilight smiled and looked down at her hooves. “Yes, yes she was. I’ve always been grateful for how kind she’s been to me all these years. She’s… not my mother. My mother has always loved me and been there for me- she taught me how to read herself, when I was a filly, you know that? Celestia will never replace my mother, but in a way, she became… Maybe it’s a lot like she’s my aunt, if that makes sense. One I’m really close to? I wouldn’t say Grandmother, she doesn’t seem quite that old when you talk to her!”

Rarity laughed at this. “Darling, I think we understand what you mean.”

The conversation died after a while and Twilight looked out over the passing landscape once more. This time, her mind was on other things. Specifically, her mind was on her teacher and mentor back in Canterlot. What she’d written had been strange and cryptic, as well as rather unhelpful. Why hadn’t she just come out and told Twilight what she knew?

Celestia obviously knew something. She simply had to! She was Princess-Goddess of Equestria, powerful and immortal and seemingly without end or beginning. As far as Twilight knew, there wasn’t anything that the Princess didn’t know.

“Without end or beginning…” she tasted those words, felt them roll over her tongue. Were they true? It was a strange thing to think of, now, but it was a thought she had considered several times of the years in Celestia’s tutelage. Where did the royal sisters come from? Every little filly and colt asked at some point how Celestia could be a unicorn and a Pegasus as well as an Earth Pony, and where she came from. Usually, the question was met with the polite sort of chuckles that adults gave when foals asked nonsense questions.

How much could she know?

Just because the chariots had landed down right in the courtyard of the royal palace didn’t mean that the devastation below in the city went unnoticed. Twilight had held back tears at the sight of her now scarred hometown only with great effort. But the sight before her was somehow worse, more wrong.

A wide swatch of the castle was gone, right down the middle, Void replacing the reception room and Main hall. Twilight tried to take it all in, her mouth gaping. This place should’ve been safe! Celestia’s home, the home of an immortal, all powerful Goddess should’ve been safe of all places on Earth, in all of Equestria.

An imposing, gray-coated guardspony beside her coughed, and she glanced over at him. He took this as his chance to speak, and began, “Miss Sparkle, I am Guard Captain Iron Hooves, and this is Guardpony Silver Corner.” He gestured to a unicorn mare with a wild, brown mane poking out from under her golden solar guard helmet. “The Princess has asked us to take you straight to her chambers.”

“Oh… I… Of course. Girls?” She looked around, knowing the others had heard. She didn’t want to stay here, looking at this.

They followed in silence as their two escorts led them inside, sidestepping the Void that had replaced much of the main section of the palace. The hole ended right in front of the grand staircase, and so with some initial difficulty, they found the way up to the dormitories and royal chambers were surprisingly intact. Twilight, having spent much of her childhood in this building, wandering its halls, noticed something that her friends didn’t. “Captain? This isn’t the way to Princess Celestia’s quarters.”

Confused, the Elements stopped. The guardponies stopped as well and turned around. “I apologize, miss Sparkle, to have misled you. No— I was instructed by Princess Luna to bring you to her quarters. Is this a problem?”

“I… no, I suppose it’s not. I’m just surprised. Please, continue. We shouldn’t keep the Princess waiting.” The Captain nodded and continued on silently. His companion seemed to want to speak, but decided against it. Twilight noticed this, and decided to be the one who initiated that conversation.

“Guardspony… Corner, was it? How faired Canterlot in the night? Was it able to prepare for the Nightmares?”

The mare seemed nervous, and lowered her ears. “We were, but it was still bad. So many frightened ponies…” her voice trailed off, but before Twilight could say anything else she began again. “It wasn’t that they were hard to defeat, because that was the easy part. The hard part was that they outnumbered us four to one even at the best times. The city is just so large… I’m worried about my older brother, Poets Corner.” Silver glanced over at the Captain, who continued to look ahead silently. Taking this as tacit acceptance, she continued.

“He runs a book store on the middle ring— it’s what our whole family does at some point. I helped out for a while, but it was too boring for me. I had duties defending the innocent ponies holed up in the top ring, so I’m worried about him.”

Applejack, who hadn’t said anything since they’d touched down, smiled softly. “Aw, sugarcube, I betcha he’s fit as a fiddle. Your fellow guardsponies were there too, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Silver Corner admitted, slowing down to come alongside Applejack.

“Didn’t you work your hardest to protect those good ponies? I’d bet mah farm your brothers an’ sisters in the guard were doin’ the same. Your big brother is fine, Ah am sure of it.”

“Thank you,” the young mare said, her voice soft. “It means a lot, ma’am. When this is all over, I think I’ll go and visit him again. I… I’d forgotten how much I missed a cup of tea with him and his wife Star Singer in the book storage. I’ve been so worried about him.”

The Earth Pony shook her head. “No need for thanks, Miss Corner. I’m just as worried about mah own brother and sister.”

Twilight smiled for the first time since she’d been able to see Canterlot well enough to realize the extent of the damage. Fluttershy might be the Element of Kindness and Rainbow Dash the Element of Loyalty, but no pony she had ever met was quite as attached and loyal to their family as Applejack.

Finally, they arrived before the ornate door that led in to the Princess of the Moon’s private suite of rooms. The two guardsponies took up positions on either side and the Captain spoke. “She was waiting inside when we left, but the situation in Canterlot’s lower rings is fragile right now. A lot of ponies are frightened or hurt. If she’s not there to meet you, simply wait.”

Twilight lit her magic to open the door, and the six friends trotted inside. Behind them, Silver Corner the Guardspony closed the door quietly.

Inside, it was dark, the walls and ceiling painted like the night sky in rich blues and blacks and purples and encrusted with jewels. It was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful— and minus one moon controlling princess.

Rainbow couldn’t take it anymore. “What the hay is goin’ on around here, Twilight? I mean, Princess Luna is great and all, but why her?”

Applejack nodded. “Ain’t Celestia still in charge and all?”

Twilight, not entirely sure herself, had no good answers. “I don’t know. Perhaps Celestia is too tired, she’s been healing ponies left and right and driving away the dark by all accounts. Or maybe she’s down in the city right now and left Luna to fill us in while she was busy…?” They were weak excuses and she knew it.

Pinkie offered a theory. “Maybe Luna knows more about it! She’s all dark princess of the night and stuff and nightmares are dreams and dreams come at night, so you know…”

Rambling as it was, there was a good kernel of logic at the heart of Pinkie’s idea. It made sense, and Twilight said so, which pleased the pink party pony. What she didn’t say aloud was how this explanation troubled her. She’d so relied on talking to Princess Celestia, and now to hear that perhaps the younger sister trumped the older in this… She needed answers. Lots of clear, non-confusing, simple answers. The nasty part of Twilight commented that she’d prefer they not be delivered in an archaic way pattern of speech.

Twilight grimaced. That was hardly fair to the Princess. Luna had really improved a lot and done her best to adapt to the changed Equ—

“I am sorry, Rainbow Dash and Applejack, that you do not seem pleased to see us again.” Luna came in through the wide window and landed softly. Her face betrayed little emotion, but Twilight heard some hurt in her voice.

“Aw, Princess, it ain’t like that, now—“ Applejack began hastily, but Luna cut her off.

“I understand thine confusion, Element of Honesty. It is a simple matter to relate, and perhaps it will in time convince you that talking with us was the best of choices: Celestia is asleep.”

The six ponies looked at her blankly for a moment, and then looked at each other. The way in which the Princess had delivered this news seemed to suggest that it was more important than simply being a strange time to be sleeping. When Luna didn’t go on, obviously waiting for the meaning behind her strange statement to sink in, Twilight spoke for them and said, “Princess? What do you mean?”

Confusion reigned in Luna’s features. The regal queen of the night seemed much closer to the way she’d been in Ponyville on Nightmare Night. “But… she’s asleep, dreaming.”

“Princess Luna, do you not normally dream, then?” Fluttershy spoke this time. She was trying to understand, wanting Luna to feel a little more at ease.

Happily, it seemed to work. “We…I forget, as I often do nowadays. It is an unfortunate legacy of my long exile. It was less of a secret, though we still did not talk of it much when Celestia and I were younger. We, the royal sisters, only sleep one night in the week, and we never dream. Neither of us has dreamed in over a thousand years.”

“Never… dream?” Rainbow asked, bewildered.

“Why, Princess Luna, that sounds simply awful. No dreams, ever, not even good ones?”

“No, never,” the Princess affirmed. “That Celestia is now dreaming is both a sign of the dire nature of our situation, and of her own condition. My sister is exhausted, and not just from healing more than a hundred ponies in a matter of hours. No, there is much more that weighs on my sister’s strength, sapping her of power and will. Twilight, I’m afraid that we live and die on the outcomes of dreams today.”

Nopony said a word. They simply stared in shock. Twilight, most of all, knew she was gaping. She’d never heard any of this, and she said so. “Why hasn’t something that wasn’t a secret of this magnitude been found in some book somewhere? I’ve never heard of anything like this and I’ve read a significant portion of the royal library’s collection of historical writings.”

“We never spoke of it, my sister and I, and nopony else ever did. At least, they did not speak it aloud to us or to each other in our presence. It was something nopony wished to discuss at length. It brought up unpleasant things. We have much to explain to thee, Twilight Sparkle, and very little time to explain it. We-I must ‘catch you up’ on your history before Celestia awakes so that when she does you are ready to say what must be said and do what must be done.”

“I don’t unde-“

“And that will not change, not until it is seen. If I told you, it would never be real for thee, not as it should. So I will show thee through means of a recitative memory spell. It is familiar?” At Twilight’s confused, almost frightened nod, she continued. “Then we will begin, thou and myself.” She looked away from Twilight to her friends, her authoritative voice suddenly seeming less powerful when talking to more than one pony. “We-I wish you to remain here, Elements… and friends. We wish you to be here for us. This spell is tiring and requires us, Twilight and I, to be asleep while she is in my memory.”

“Anything! You’ll be safe in our hands, Princess!” This was something Rainbow could hold onto, and she seemed relieved to have a tangible responsibility at last. “We’ll make sure no one disturbs you!”

“Princess, how long will this be? I admit, I’m no unicorn of great magics…” Rarity said, suddenly curious, “ but will you have plenty of time before Princess Celestia awakes, or should we wake you up early if she rises?”

Luna had no quick answer. “We are unsure, Element o- Rarity. If you must, wake Twilight first. We, Twilight and I, must speak to her before she leaves to do anything in the city.” Rarity nodded, accepting this as Twilight stepped forward. Unicron prodigy and alicorn princess separated themselves from the others in the room, who formed a semi-circle around the two, watching. Both Luna and Twilight seemed unsure and ill at ease.

“Twilight… what you see may… disturb you. My sister is a good pony, a wise, powerful, loving pony who has done only the smallest modicum of wrong in her long, long life. The drops of… wrongness in her life are swallowe- Twilight, just… We are unsure of what to say to thee.” The Princess ended her statement lamely, jaw working to no avail.

“Princess, Luna— if I need to see these things to help Equestria and help my teacher, then it doesn’t matter. I have to see it, and see it all.”

“I am glad that you feel ready, Element of Magic. It will serve you well, and you will need all of your will and conviction for what will come. Thou and I can restore our fair land, Twilight Sparkle, but it will mean much pain for my sister, myself, and perhaps even you. Are you ready?” They were close now, sitting face to face, and Twilight gulped.

“Yes.”

Songs: The Going Price for Home, The Fight of Moses Early & Sir Arthur McCloud, Our Darling Daughter You Are, Little Cecilia Marie, A Death in the Family, The Margetville Dance, “Run, Gunner Recall, Run! The Town Wants You Dead!”, Who Watches the Watchmen?, My Brother’s Blood Machine, ~ Prize Fighter Inferno

A/N- Ignore if you wish. At the risk of seeming indulgent, this is what I listened to while writing. If you’re one of those people who like to read or write with music, I suggest the songs in this list as you read the story. :) I don’t normally do this, but I think I may do this occasionally in EV.

Twilight was alone in the darkness, standing on nothing that she could see, but not floating. There something beneath her… but she had no idea about any other barriers.

“Princess, it’s so… dark.” Her voice echoed through… wherever this was, seeming to linger on forever in the quiet void. She’d read once, when assigned a report on this particular spell, that entering into another’s mind was usually overwhelming to the unprepared. The books had described whirlwinds of thoughts and images and powerful emotions, but never something like this.

[I can feel the thoughts that swirl in thy head, Twilight. It is not what thou anticipated of my mind. Perhaps the Element of Laughter was in the right to refer to me in terms of night and dark. Maybe all my mind is such.] Her quiet voice in Twilight’s ear was deafening. It was everywhere, but still soft, filling everything that existed in this environment. Twilight could feel it in her bones and she grimaced at this strange invasion. [We- I am sorry, my friend. I jest and I know this is unpleasant for th-you. I am trying to hold back my memories from you. There is so much in my mind, and I fear for you if it was all released due to my in inexperience. I will try to begin… I will be unable to talk to you or answer any questions unless I take you out of my memory.]

There was light ahead of her now, bright and white and growing quickly. Wind from the darkness pushed at her, blowing her mane back and making her eyes tear up. The blowing wind grew harsh, wild, sharp. As she opened her mouth to cry out in pain, the light swallowed her up and—

She was Starry Skies, a Pegasus, and she bucking loved the sky.

She loved it, loved the feel of the wind against her blue mane and the rush of energy that flooded her as she dove or climbed. Order and Chaos, the view of the mountains! She could almost see home from here, back down the long road.

If it were up to this filly, she would never leave the sky, day or night. Her father, Cloudy Skies, had been teaching her to manipulate the clouds recently, and when he was back home on the ground she would sometimes try to make blocks and shapes out of cloudstuff. She never had to leave, not really-

“Starry, will thou not wait for me? I am not quite as fast as thou are!” cried a voice from below and behind. The Pegasus filly turned around and raced back towards the source of the voice.

Her sister, Sunny Skies, had not made good progress on the ground below. At least, Starry reflected sheepishly, the unicorn had not made good progress by Starry’s standards. She landed in front of her, folded her wings up, and grinned sheepishly. “Forgive me, sister, I forget myself in the skies.”

“It is nothing between us, Starry. Come, sister, fly beside me and we’ll away—“

She was Twilight again and looking out the eyes of what she realized was a much younger Luna. Shock flooded her, and if she had anything besides just her consciousness, she would’ve been gaping. Luna— or Starry Skies— had no horn. Sunny… Celestia had no wings. What was going on here?

Starry (she’d managed to divorce her thoughts from the younger Luna’s enough to hear both trains of thought.) and her sister continued to make their way on the mountain road towards their eventual destination of… somewhere. Starry wasn’t focused on it, nor named the place, so Twilight had no idea where the sisters were headed.

Time passed faster now, the two sisters making better progress as the road led them into a valley that Twilight recognized. This was the valley Ponyville inhabited, she was sure of it! There, far off in the distance, she could see evidence of cloudhomes in what must have been the beginnings of Cloudsdale and on the side of the mountains on the other end of the valley she could see the much smaller and far uglier Canterlot Fortress, mountain stronghold of the Unicorn monarchs of ancient Equestria.

Twilight watched through Starry’s eyes as she and Sunny came down from the mountains to visit the town below, as they would do again over the years. This town held a special place in their hearts: she saw how they met the first ponies outside of their family here. She felt the quiet delight of a shared treat after a long day of walking and shopping, shared warm cider in the winter, inquiring adults who treated them kindly. It was a town of Earth ponies who found the presence of both a Unicorn and a Pegasus together to be a diverting oddity, and the two young mares were always welcome. Oftentimes, Sunny changed their appearances, using illusion magic to change their manes and coloring and cutie marks, hiding her own sun and Starry’s moon. Even though the town didn’t truly know them, they felt like they knew the town, and they loved it.

The town was named Ponyville.

Twilight was shocked to discover this. Ponyville, she knew, was by no means an ancient town. It was only a few generations old, with the Apple family’s business attracting other settlers during the Royal Settlement Act. Faintly, she could almost hear the knowledge worming its way into her head, supplied by Luna’s mind. The original Ponyville had been destroyed during the long fight with Discord, swept away when the dam above the town was destroyed.

The scholar in Twilight loved it, and the young mare took in and committed as much to memory as she could. Starry loved it as well, and when she and her sister returned to their parents and their cottage up in the mountains, she dreamed of living in Ponyville below, helping control the wild, Chaos-torn weather and making new friends of the fillies and colts she had only been able to speak with for a short time or see from a distance. If Sunny was attached to the hamlet to such a degree, she didn’t show it. Starry simply couldn’t understand her older sibling’s preference for study and contemplation. They had all the time in the world, didn’t they?

—Twilight stumbled out of the light, gasping. Once again, she was in the void, this time accompanied by Luna, who sat quietly before her. In the darkness, it was hard to make her out, and Twilight focused on those soulful, watchful eyes. “Twilight Sparkle, you have seen us as we once were.”

“So the theories that you became Alicorns later are true… I saw, yes. You were different then, Princess.” It was perhaps not her most polite moment, but the difference was shocking. In the time she’d shared the younger mind’s thoughts and feelings, it had been like living inside of Rainbow Dash’s head.

“We changed, Element of Magic. Our trials began when I finally reached true marehood, and my sister and I set off south to find the Blasted Peak. When we found a week later, my wings were bruised and half useless, we’d lost most of our food, and my sister’s magic was becoming strained. Discord ruled firmly then, establishing himself in areas for a year or more to hold his vile court, spreading chaos as Equestria’s legitimate monarch. Through his devilish trickery he secured that throne… our throne. My sister and I were the true heirs to the throne, last minute additions to the dying King’s will as he forgave a wayward daughter who’d run off with a dashing Pegasus buck. His change of heart was too late for Equestria in some ways, but the good he wished for came to pass regardless. Without us there, the loose but still obscure Discord became regent as the unicorn Evanescent Image.”

“What trials, Princess?” Twilight sat before her, enthralled. This is more than she had ever dared to hear about her mentor and her mentor’s beloved sister. She felt a warm happiness inside, despite the grim news of the day and the somewhat unhappy subject matter: Luna trusted her enough to tell her things which she had told no other pony in a long time.

Twilight was suddenly Starry again as white light swallowed up her sight and feeling—

Every part of her ached. Her stomach was empty and complaining bitterly. The wings folded against her side had cramped up and been useless the last few times she’d tried to fly up to get a better perspective. Everything, generally, was terrible.

But that all began to fade away as they came at last to the long stairway carved into the rough stone of the mountain. Sunny stopped before them, her breath catching as she looked up the long winding stairs that would lead up to the sanctuary. “Sister… at last. Soon this shall all be over. Are you not excited, my bestarréd sky?” The light pink mare grinned wide and laughed. Her voice was a little ragged, and the fatigue of travel had obviously taken its toll on her. Fleeing a Snow troll two days before and fighting off a young dragon hadn’t helped either.

“I am… I suppose. Not as ready for this, surely, as thou seem to be.” Starry’s reply was delivered with a smile, but it was nonetheless guarded. She didn’t look forward to this, not at all. She hadn’t prepared, she wasn’t ready! She knew little about the magic that her older sister commanded with such finesse. Age had mellowed her, but not given her the propensity for study and contemplation she wished for so fervently. Only in hindsight had the inattention of her fillyhood seemed a bad decision. Years later, a young court bard would tell her with sad smile that that was how things always seemed to be going. He had been such a nice young stallion…

Twilight would’ve said something if she could have, but she no mouth in this dreamlike memory. If she had been able to, she would’ve called out that the princess needed to focus and stay in the present…er, the past-present.

Stair by stair, they closed the gap between themselves and the ancient Sanctuary of Order. Starry could feel every pulse of her heart in her throat, hear every tiny noise of hooves tapping against stone like it was right against her ear. Her wings itched to fly, almost begging her to fly off and leave this place.

But she didn’t leave. Her sister going ahead, the two young mares entered the sanctuary. The large chamber inside was dimly lit by four torches, with two on either wall. Sunny whispered something about magic and stepped further into the completely empty chamber. Starry held back, apprehensive still. She’d been expecting… ruins, perhaps? Artifacts? The room was too empty, too simple. At the other end was a large wooden door and between the sets of torches on either side of the large square room were two smaller doors. It made her nervous, the lack of, well, anything, and she said so bluntly.

“Sister, be not frightened. Verily, if thou will be for me brave just another moment, I’ll show thee—“ The light pink unicorn had trotted ahead, helping the dim magical torches with a new light of her own. Something snapped and the floor between them gave way. The walls faded and were replaced by intense light. From the new void between them shone more light. Both mares screamed and called for each other, but it was to no avail. Starry spread her wings and jumped.

And Twilight was curled up on her side, aching. “Princess… what was that?”

“The trials. I cannot show you exactly what took place. It is not only private, but also not completely mine to share. Higher powers refuse me permission to speak of it except to a sister.” Something in that word made her pause and she sighed. “But I can tell you what I learned. The sanctuary or temple, whichever, has only one purpose: to imbue ponies with the Elements of Harmony. That is exactly what it did for us: I received the elements of Magic, Honesty, and Kindness. My sister was entrusted with Laughter, Loyalty, and Generosity. We both received exactly what we needed, I think.” The darkly colored alicorn didn’t seem to want to elaborate any further and she fidgeted. Finally, she spoke again.

“Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic, I have a story to tell you. It is… long, but I think I can shorten it to fit the constraints of time upon us. If it is not told you, then the next few months and years will be very confusing. I fear that the only good time to tell you is now, when thou and I are here where there is no time to be used up or wasted. Do you understand?”

“Not really, no.” Twilight stretched, feeling the phantom pains of cramped wings. She shook herself and tried to contain her irritation and listen calmly. “Look, Princess Luna, I would love to hear this, but I’m worried about my friends and Equestria. Can’t you simply tell me what needs to be done, or boil all this down to a quick point? I promise, I’ll come back and—“

“Equestria isn’t in any danger at all, Twilight. Not yet.”

The unicorn simply stopped, confused. She stared at the younger of the two royal alicorns and tried to piece together a sentence. “No danger at all.” Her voice was flat.

“None. Twilight, what are my duties as Princess? What am I patroness of, specifically?”

“I… well, the night. The moon, the stars… I’ve got nothing, Princess. I don’t understand where you’re going with this, exactly. I mean, the problems seem to mostly be happening on the ground and I would hope you would know about the Nightmares, because they came out at night and that was decidedly dangerous,” Twilight babbled on.

“Dreams,” Luna answered simply. “Twilight, have you not felt bewildered by how all this happened seemingly out of nowhere? I know what’s wrong, Twilight, because the source of all of our problems is a single dream. Did you have a strange dream last night?” the Princess’s voice was soft, but Twilight lost any attitude she may have had as she heard the rough edge underneath that quiet exterior.

“Yes.”

The single syllable hung on the nothingness between and around them. It reverberated, wandered, twisted in ways that Twilight could not explain.

“So did my sister. When a God has a dream, Twilight, things are… different. So I am going to tell th-you a story, and I will be brief and when we awake thou and I will have a conversation with an emotional, distressed, and grieving Goddess.” Twilight nodded, suddenly more aware than ever before that Luna was just as much of a Goddess figure as her sister. The darkness they inhabited together here swirled as the Patronness of the Night began her tale.

“I had to tell most of my tale to my sister after we awoke with the Elements, for my affinity with the moon was what gave me the right to hear and see it all.” The lunar surface appeared all around them, but Twilight noticed that it was different. It was closer to desert, with small shrubs and dry trees dotting the landscape. In the distance, she could almost catch the telltale signs of cooking fires’ smoke against the star-filled night.

“Ponies originally inhabited the moon above us, Twilight Sparkle. Thy research will have not told ye-you of it, but it is the truth. In those ancient days, Order and Chaos strove against each other in the background, but not with the force of later confrontations. Think of it as… if you put your hoof up against mine and we just leaned against each other, lazily...”

The moon’s surface was not barren, but it provided only after much work. The ponies who lived here and farmed these rocky lands were alicorns, colored grey and white and black, darker combinations of colors but not unlovely ones. They thanked Order for their prosperity when it came and when it didn’t they were slow to blame Chaos, the tiny niggling fear of the dreaded force lying in the core of their hearts. But there was little to fear.

As time went on, the struggle of Order and Chaos became more intense. Gradually, it evolved away from the pull of tides and forming of the swirling planet below into a more personal form: battle by champion. For Order, a stallion would be born with a destiny mark on either flank, the image of a white cross. The village of his birth would know his destiny immediately: no others were born with such pictures adorning them. When he was old enough, his foe would once again rise from long sleep and Discord, the avatar of Chaos, would begin his assault.

Well, perhaps assault was too harsh a word.

Always, it was the struggle of Stallion and foal. The Champion of Order would be fully grown and brave and filled with righteousness and knowledge and the child-avatar of Chaos, Discord, would be simply a pony or other animal given voice who was ignorant of the world. His games and tricks were rarely disastrous at first, and often in those early ages vanquishing him was similar to punishing a child, albeit one with extraordinary wild magic.

But the child grew up and with every incarnation he changed from the alicorn colt he had been in the beginning, almost treated with amusement. Finally, Chaos dumped him into the world as a mixed up monster, gangly and mismatched as he would later be, and the duel of the champions began again. Discord was excited, wanting this competition to be the best yet, to be the one that would make inevitably losing worth it. Winning was never something he contemplated. He assumed he would always lose, and he only cared that he had fun in the meantime.

So when the Champion of Order entered Discord’s rough-hewn mountain temple only to die in one of the many traps, the Chaotic being had no idea what to do. He stared, he tried to rouse his adversary, he even cried at one point. He didn’t understand what happened now. He had no purpose, nothing to strive for, his only goal taken away… until he heard the frightened whispers of the ponies below. He heard and felt and smelt their fear and something in him loved it. He grinned a wide, predatory grin and he flew out of the cave cackling madly, telling them all what had happened. There was chaos as ponies scattered in tears in all directions.

Dark times came, and Discord made the Moon’s rough landscape even harsher. Creatures, twisted from the natural livestock, spread and devoured. Ponies prayed for another Champion and looked up at Earth, hoping beyond hope for something in that planet they could hardly name. All of their prayers were answered.

Six friends came to the temple where lay the body of Champion, his body preserved on a whim by the magic of Discord, and they fell into a deep mystic sleep, sharing the same dream. They were told by a quiet voice that the Moon was to be no longer their home, and that they had a terrible task to take up that would cost them all. When they awoke, the body of Champion, that brave pony, glowed and broke down into light, dividing into six parts. These six parts were the Elements of Harmony, the six characteristics that shone most brightly in that last of Champions. The cost extracted was that each of them lost something. They were the first earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns.

“You can guess the rest. From there, they imprisoned Discord in the Lunar Aether, the sea of mystic mist underneath the moon’s surface. It is the land of dreams, as it were, Twilight Sparkle, and it is where all of the missing are, sleeping and safe. But before they locked him away, they stole much of his power and used it to escape their dying world to come here. Each pony who left the moon became one of the three modern tribes of ponies and gained a cutie mark in time. What they failed to realize was that using Discord’s power had given him a way out, if only a chancy way. The magic was still personalized, still connected to him, and he used it like one might use a rope or a bridge.

“Celestia and I were several generations later, the new bearers of the Elements, prophesied to save the new land of Equestria from the fifty year reign of Discord. We defeated him, but his magic was still in the air. It never leaves, not completely, though it is usually harmless. Even now, with Discord in stone, his power lingers on the land. It attached itself to the great Net my sister and I weaved in the first year of our reign.”

“The Net?” Twilight was almost numb with shock. What she’d heard— what she had seen— No pony in a thousand years had any idea about any of this except for two immortal sisters. Twilight was learning things that she could never, ever have imagined and despite herself her heart beat fast with the excitement of the moment.

“She will explain that part. It is the last piece of the large puzzle. You need only know, now, that Discord’s magic is everywhere, lying dormant and useless in the mountains and plains and orchards of Equestria. It is also deep in the core of the elements, though we never speak of that. Recall you that the body was preserved through the magic of Discord? In the heart of your Element, Twilight Sparkle, is a tiny seed of Chaos. The true secret of Harmony is… well, you’ll learn it one day. Just know that the magic is widespread.”

Twilight and Luna sat alone on the now empty lunar plain. There was no wind to blow over the empty surface, and no sound of hoof or speech. The atmosphere had given way to the cold of space months after the great Exodus, and she’d watched it all in fast motion around her. A question formed on Twilight’s tongue, and she spoke it aloud. “Princess, this is where you lived out your… sentence?”

Luna shook her head. “No, I slept and dreamed in the aether. My pool was deep below the great Temple of Order. Do you see it?” she gestured to a crumbling stone ruin on the face of one of the mountains. “Most of it I spent asleep. When I awoke, little had changed in me. The wild magic emanating from those tiny seeds of chaos that I had twisted to outright evil still had control over my mind. It was… terribly lonely.”

“I’ve always been glad that we were able to free you completely, Pr… Luna. Celestia told me later that she had thought freeing you that way would be beyond us.”

“I am glad as well, Twilight Sparkle.” Luna smiled softly and trotted closer, nuzzling the smaller unicorn shyly. “Thank you.” The alicorn coughed, embarrassed, and moved to stand beside Twilight. “When this is over, I would like to get to know you better. I suspect that thou and I will be seeing much of each other in the coming months. Few have seen what true isolation in a place such as this is like. Are you ready to see my sister? Your friend Fluttershy is trying to wake us.”

Twilight nodded, and the moon disappeared.

EV 6

Twilight woke up in stages.

The first stage was the Blind Stage, when her eyes would not cooperate. They simply refused to open, staying shut despite her frustrated commands to the contrary. The next stage was the Stupid Stage, where she finally regained her sight only to find the world swam before her and hurt her eyes. It all felt so wrong and twisted up and she felt like vomiting.

“It is disorienting. The Element of Magic is strong and will recover. How long did you say my sister has been awake for, Fluttershy?”

“Oh, well, your highness, it’s been only ten minutes or so. It took me a moment to wake you and a few more to get here and…” Twilight could almost imagine the words sinking into the ground as the Pegasus grew more timid as the sentence went on.

“It is good that you came as you did. You have done well, Element of Kindness.”

Twilight felt a muzzle against her mane. “Oh, Twilight, you look like you feel simply awful!” It was Fluttershy’s voice still, soft and in her ear. She groaned and it felt strange.

The Princess of the Night left after a kind word for Twilight and instructions for Fluttershy to bring her friend along to Celestia’s chambers when the unicorn was up to it. As her head cleared, Twilight’s question poured forth: where were the others, how long had she been out, and what had happened while she’d been absent?

“It’s been a few hours. Pinkie went to the kitchens on a suggestion from Rarity. I think Rarity was trying to distract her. Dash has been patrolling outside this room almost the whole time. I’ve never seen her this dedicated to something so boring before! Applejack and Rarity just left to get some fresh air.” She chuckled softly. “I’m surprised that they went anywhere together, just the two of them, but I think worrying about their families has pulled down some of the walls between them.”

Twilight smiled at this, glad for something good to come out of today. “I think I’m feeling well enough to walk, Fluttershy. Help keep me steady?” The Pegasus was quick to assent to this and on unsteady legs Twilight rose to her hooves. They felt a little like those jello concoctions Pinkie had on display in Sugarcube Corner, she noticed wryly.

Her progress on the still familiar way to the Princess’s chambers was slow as she slowly recovered. The strangeness of the magic involved was so beyond her experience, and she was beginning to see that Luna was wiser than Twilight had ever thought. Feeling silly for not thinking her Celestia’s equal as Princess, she realized that Luna had been trying to acclimate her strange magics on purpose…. She was beginning to suspect that the cure for Equestria’s troubles would come from within another dream, a particular dream that she’d already visited.

She was a little afraid of it, honestly.

Rainbow had been just outside the door, and had joined them wordlessly. Pinkie seemed in a good mood when she caught up to the others, but Twilight saw the sadness there buried deeply over her home and the place most sacred to her heart. Rarity and Applejack were still together when the rest of the elements found them right outside the Royal Suite, talking together quietly and civilly (much to Twilight’s surprise and secret delight.)

The Elements of Harmony stood before the great door and a shared dread fell over them all at the same time. Twilight could feel the uncertain air around herself and her friends, though she could only guess at what they were thinking. On impulse, she turned to Pinkie.

“Pinkie? I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this yet, but I think you need to hear it: The things carried away by the voids are all safe.”

Pinkie was stunned. “It’s all safe?” the emotion in that small statement almost broke her heart. Twilight nodded.

Before either pony could say anything else, the door opened and Luna stood in the new space. “Come, Elements,” she said shortly, and they followed without a word in response.

“She is awake and ready for what must be done. It is… strange in some ways, but she will be asleep again shortly.”

“Asleep again? So we are visiting her dreams?” Twilight said, and her friends looked to her in absolute confusion.

“Yes. Did I not say so? I meant to. Yes, I needed you—“

“Acclimated to the conditions of the magic. I figured that out,” she said, a little proud. Luna rewarded her with a smile.

“Yes, clever Twilight. Now, Elements, my sister is waiting.”

They followed the dark alicorn princess back deeper into the chambers of the elder sister…

If somepony had asked Twilight, she would’ve probably confessed that she was worried about the actual moment of seeing Celestia since Luna had suggested that not all was well with her beloved mentor. All of her fears were right here in front of her, the fears she had kept deep down in her mind.

Celestia was a wreck. Her eyes were weary and bloodshot, reminding Twilight of herself after too much time spent amongst her books. She lay on her couch before the fire looking none the better for her well-earned sleep. She greeted Twilight and her friends with a weary smile.

“My Little Ponies! Welcome,” she said, raising her head and trying to straighten her posture, but Twilight and she both knew that the damage had been done.

“Princess, what in tarnation is goin’ on?” Applejack asked first, bluntly. “We’ve been gettin’ the run-around and ah just want some answers here.”

“And you will have them, Element of Honesty. Luna, I… I need your help.”

Luna was at her side instantly, nuzzling her older sister. “Start at the nightmares and the Net.”

Celestia sighed and began. “Nightmares. All ponies have nightmares. Unicorns are no exceptions, but for the longest time we wished that they would never dream. Their magic does strange things sometimes, things they can’t always explain. Their nightmares manifested sometimes, and many ponies were hurt over the years.”

“So that story I read that scared me as a filly…” Twilight murmured softly.

“Is probably based off of a true story, yes. They never attacked in such large numbers as they have now, because they would come and burn themselves out in a night or so. Ponies burned lanterns and held watch for them. There was a lot of strain between the Earth Ponies and the Unicorns over it, a lot of bad blood.

“When my sister and I defeated Discord, one of our first actions was to try and fix this problem which had only gotten worse under his rule. So my sister and I created the Net, a magical matrix which caught the nightmares as they were spawned and deposited them into the realm of dreams— the Lunar Aether. It took years of experimentation, but we were able to finish it. But in making it, I fear we were not careful enough. Discord’s magic is a part of Equestria in a way I can’t explain right now—“

“The Exodus,” Twilight said reflexively.

This took Celestia by surprise, but to her credit, she recovered fairly quickly. “Yes, Twilight, the Exodus and the Bridge, the first rainbow. When we made the Net, we didn’t truly understand the nature of that primeval magical influence. Only later did we understand that Discord’s useless passive magic had bonded with our own.

“Then Luna… I lost her,” Celestia said, her voice going soft and her eyes looking down at the floor. The Elements of Harmony stood still as statues out in the gardens.

“I lost her,” she continued as Luna looked away, troubled. “I had to do it all alone, and it was hard beyond what I think even she could understand. It took decades to learn how the moon worked in every detail, and even then it wasn’t the same. The night sky wouldn’t answer to me in the same way it had for her. But I tried, for her, to make it beautiful… The Elements left Luna and came to me in our last confrontation, but as soon as it was all over they left me and would have nothing to do with me. I hadn’t controlled them at all in those last moments. I may have decided to sentence my sister, but they set the terms of her imprisonment. At first, I thought my loneliness was my punishment.

“But that wasn’t my only suffering. The true price extracted by Order was this: that I wane and diminish as my power drained. As time went on, things began to slip away from me. I could hardly tell how strong some of the old bonds were anymore, and to be honest I had forgotten about some of them. Even after Luna returned to me, the damage had been done. I had lost much of my sensitivity. I suppose it is similar to magical burn out, Twilight.”

Rarity and Twilight both shivered at the same time, prompting confused glances from the others. Twilight explained shortly. “Magical burnout is an unpleasant condition. It’s not just that you lose your magic, which in of itself is like losing a hoof, but it leaves you feeling weak and sort of sick.”

“I couldn’t feel the cracks in the magical bonds of Discord’s prison, and he escaped. I couldn’t feel the cracks that had been forming in the most important bonds besides his I had ever created and finally, two nights ago, my carefully constructed spell shattered. I dreamed.”

“Do you not normally, Princess? I mean, everypony dreams!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “Surely not…”

The Princess was shaking her head. “Not since before Discord. I am an Alicorn, Pinkie Pie. If a regular nightmare by a regular unicorn produces something capable of the things a Nightmare is capable of, imagine what one produced by a nightmare of mine would create.”

“Golly,” Applejack breathed, imaging it.

“Exactly. And, predictably, the first time I dream in over a millennia, and it was a terrible, terrible nightmare. I knew it would come if I dreamed again— I think I’ve been waiting for that nightmare a thousand years.”

“What happened Princess? What would you remember that long? Is it Discord?” Fluttershy managed, her quiet voice sounding a little frightened, as it should be, Twilight reflected. Things that haunted the nightmares of essentially eternal beings were things one feared.

“Oh, my little ponies,” the princess said in a heartbroken voice that left them all bewildered and a little frightened. “The day we defeated Discord is one of the worst I have ever seen. The only other thing that compares to it was my confrontation with Luna when she was Nightmare Moon. I… a terrible thing happened that day.”

“So when such a terrible, vivid dream caught her, her raw pain and grief sent tidal waves in the aether. Celestia and I prepared for such a possibility and the Net was designed to destroy itself to destroy any Alicorn-Nightmare. The plan was that the Nightmare would be caught “in-between” , never managing to manifest as it burned along with the now spent Net in thaumaturgic fire. But Discord, whose mind wanders mostly unaware of himself in the Aether, felt that tidal wave and he acted on it. Maybe he thought it would bring him back, and perhaps he only wanted to see Celestia in pain. Regardless, he tried to call on the anchors which bound him to our world…”

“Which were tied to the Net,” Twilight finished. She was beginning to see what had happened.

The others weren’t so lucky. “So how does that translate intah holes in the ground, Princesses?”

“Discord… broke it,” Celestia said with a weak chuckle. “Twilight will understand this: The Magical Conflagration became something entirely different.”

“It blew up,” Twilight said breathlessly, and suddenly she was animated and trying to form words properly. It all made sense, all of it! For the first time since she’d woken up two mornings ago, she knew exactly what was going on.

“It blew up, the magic and the Nightmare,” she explained to her confused friends. “But Discord’s magic sort of ‘caught fire’ as it were. The ‘fire’ spread back along the trail of his magic, which is sort of everywhere in Equestria. It didn’t get all of his passive magic, but it did get a lot of it. Where it burned, it created Void, and the buildings and ponies fell through the ‘gaps’ into the Aether!”

“Where they sleep.”

“Sugarcube Corner is inside the moon?” Pinkie said weakly, somewhere between supremely happy and relieved and totally, absolutely… something. The look on her face was too hard for Twilight to read well when distracted.

“Yes, essentially. It’s… strange, I know, but the Aether has been strange since the Beginning. A lot of things about it honestly don’t make sense, my ponies. It’s chaotic, unknowable, perhaps the perfect home for Discord.”

“So the Voids are tears, in the ‘fabric’ of the world, then?” Rarity spoke up suddenly. “Where it’s been ripped open by some power. How do we sew the two sides back together again and close these holes?”

“… And get back what was taken from us!” said a still not completely appeased Applejack.

“I have to go in to her dreams,” Twilight answered them both, eyes locked on Celestia’s.

Her heart was a storm. Part of her was terrified of knowing the singular horror in Celestia’s past. She felt hot and cold all at once as her ever-present desire for knowledge began to howl for this deepest of secrets, this most hidden of lore. She didn’t want to do this.

“Yes, Twilight, I think now that you must. Luna and I… talked. Things we planned— things I planned, must be put into motion sooner than I had anticipated. They must start in the way I intended, but not under the circumstances I intended.

“We need the Elements. Twilight must enter, but you must all be here by her side to aid her when she calls on you, her friends. Will you accompany her, Luna?”

There was no answer, only a silent nod. Celestia sighed.

“Waiting will only make you more frightened of what you’ll see, Twilight.” Her voice was kind, and it burned in Twilight’s heart and she felt shame for that fear. She stepped forward.

“How long will it take, Princess?” Dash asked from behind her. Probably not wanting to be stuck pacing in front of my door for hours again, Twilight thought to herself, a little wryly. A little humor to make the bitter pill go down… she took the last step to be behind her mentor. That she had to try to be closer to Celestia was more shocking to her than the fear she had felt. Her whole time as Celestia’s student, she had always wanted Celestia all to herself. What way was there to be more closer than to share her mentor’s mind?

But she hadn’t wanted closeness like this.

Luna’s and Celestia’s horns both glowed with magic energy and the aura surrounded both them and Twilight. It was a tingling feeling, spreading from her hooves to her horn. She couldn’t decide if it was unpleasant or not, honestly, but it was definitely not something she was used to. Unicorns didn’t normally use magic directly on another pony’s whole body like this, for a lot of reasons.

A deep breath, and all three closed their eyes as the Elements came close.

“What do we do?” Applejack sounded so lost in all this talk of magic, and Twilight felt a pang of sympathy.

“Just be here, wait. When I call, you’ll know, and the Elements will…respond… just…st—“ Talking became strange and her mouth heavy and she was sleepy and then suddenly—

It was awful, entering her mind.

EV 7

The first time she’d been here it had been different, despite how everything looked the same. The dark, ominous cloud hung over the mountains and

Luna was sobbing at her older sister to do something. Twilight didn’t know what it was that the dark alicorn wanted, but it seemed—

But it was still the same and Twilight felt a strange echoing that bothered her. It was similar to the kind of illness Pinkie had suffered after letting Applebloom help her bake. Had it not been a dream, she would’ve vomited.

It was all so very wrong.

[You are doubled. The aether is not linear, Twilight Sparkle. You are here, and you are here again, both at the same time. The feeling will pass.] Luna’s voice came from the roaring wind, calm and focused. She tried to speak but the wind overcame her words. She thought, wandering if this was the way to talk to the goddess.

—I don’t have the entire picture, Princess. I know that the only way to fix this breach is to go to the source, but I’m not sure what else to do from here.

There was no answer except for a strange compulsion to guess. She couldn’t be sure if it was Luna (the real Luna) or her own mind’s dissatisfaction. As the dream preceded slowly as it had the first time, and the terrible feeling of doubleness persisted, she tried to piece things together, starting chronologically.

The Princess had dreamed, not realizing that the magic keeping her from doing so had faded. Shortly after, she had come here, to this dream constructed from her memories. Somehow, Discord had been able to take advantage of this, and all Hell had broken loose.

[Twilight Sparkle, we are almost to the time you left this dream. Please pay attention. I will be there with thee shortly and my sister comes also.]

She looked, really looked, at the two alicorns now. As the sick feeling in her stomach and the pain in her body vanished, they looked straight back at her. Celestia spoke first.

“He’s waiting, somewhere,” she whispered.

“Sister, please, I know this is difficult, but you have to do this. He’ll only come if you do!” she suddenly grimaced, and looked down at herself. “I had forgotten… our wounds. The day returns to us, sister.”

“Thou- you and I, after a whole month. Yes, I feel it all returning to me. I feel as if I shall have no choice but to act as I did. I will make the mistake that ends the war and plants the seed for the next one.”

The two alicorns seemed different and Twilight couldn’t quite put her hoof on what had changed. Their voices, yes, were different: Luna spoke with perhaps more energy, and Celestia’s voice was higher in pitch now. In the back of her head, some tiny logical pony decided that they had taken on their old mannerisms with their old forms.

“Princesses, what are we doing exactly?” she managed to yell.

The wind stopped absolutely. Everything around them froze, and the dream simply stopped. The sisters flew to be before her so that all three ponies floated over the landscape together. There, they hung as a trinity of tiny forms over an awfully still valley. Nothing breathed in all creation but them.

“We’ve… gone back. The three of us,” Celestia began, her voice betraying her. “To this day. The dreams of a Goddess are so very powerful, Twilight. You have no idea how powerful they are…. The terrible winged, tentacled things that have been born because Luna had nightmares. That last one that we… Twilight, you must try to understand that this is both a dream and not a dream.”

Twilight felt a growing horror. In the still air, she could afford to whisper. “Princess, when is this? The day you defeated Discord, right? Why would this be a nightmare if you won?”

“Twilight, my faithful student, you must know what comes before this day. When we emerged from the temple, my sister and I had been changed. She was no longer the same energetic filly and I had lost some of my bookish, introverted character. The emotional pain of that place is so great that it dogged our every step back home.

“The war with Discord that we waged lasted three months. Every few days, we would catch up to him and a great conflict would break out in the skies. Fire and lightning would fill the vision for miles around. It simply lingered on and on, Twilight, and we were winning— but at a pace that was far too slow for me. I was exhausted both physically and mentally and every moment I spent alive was spent in a firestorm of rage that couldn’t be quenched.”

“And so,” Luna said, her voice as quiet as Twilight’s, “we caught up to Discord over the skies of Ponyville, that town that I loved so dearly. The town I made my first friends, though I was always a little bit of a stranger to them. We fought him, and we came closer to his defeat than we ever had before—“

“AND HE WAS ABOUT TO GET AWAY AGAIN!” Suddenly, Celestia was screaming, throwing herself back and flailing in the air, overcome as she was caught up in the past. “I have to stop him! So long, so long, so long, so long…” she began to grind her teeth, drifting back and forth as if pacing the air.

Luna grimaced and then the passions which had overcome her older sister began to war in her. She shook Twilight, her eyes wide and her younger voice urgent. “Twilight, this is how it happens. The dreams of a Goddess are different from the dreams of a normal pony! The nightmares of Goddess alter the fabric of reality… I can feel my wounds again,” she was breathing hard. “I… it’s as if I’d not had the time to prepare…” she backed away, and Twilight could feel the world around them almost pushing her away, pushing her back towards her sister so that the drama could continue.

Celestia looked back towards the cloud. “DISCORD!”

Everything began again, the wind howling and the storm ahead swirling above the purple mountaintops. But this time, Twilight spotted something fleeing towards those clouds and she knew the shape well.

The tiny, far-off shape paused, turned, and Twilight sensed that the avatar of chaos knew what was coming. The violence in her princess’s voice frightened her, and she could only imagine what it would be like to have such murderous fury pointed in her direction. She shuddered.

“Celestia, please! Please, for the love of Order and your blasted Sun, don’t do this!”

“It has to end! It has to end and thou knowest it!” the older alicorn responded angrily.

Below, Twilight realized that the dam was gone— no, not gone. Rather, it had been destroyed, ruins of it still present here and there. Water flowed freely heading towards the town below. She could see ponies fleeing in all directions, scrambling around the town and outlying farms. With horror, she recalled the debacle with Mare-Do-Well and how when fixing the dam herself she’d realized just how much water it held back.

There was enough water to destroy the town below, so close to the mountain.

“Please, it’s Ponyville! We love Ponyville! I love Ponyville. DON’T YOU DARE DO THIS!”

“This can’t go on! He’s faster than before! What if we don’t catch him this time, my sister? What shall we do then?” Celestia glowed with fearsome energy and around her three lights began to glow and circle. “You know that you have no choice. Join your power with mine, Luna. I command thee, as thine older sister!”

“WE KNOW THEM! WE CAN’T JUST LET THEM DIE!”

“If we don’t stop him now, and we lose him like we did a month ago, another town will die. We can stop him right now, today. You can’t hold back the flood on your own!”

Twilight stood in mute horror. She remembered the darkly colored filly and her ignorance of magic and knew it was true.

“No! No!” Luna, younger but still so very similar, brought her three lights to bear. Now, the six lights took on colors and Twilight recognized them, her heart sinking even further. The Elements of Harmony charged and their power built as a frantic Discord tried to find safety in the clouds he had created that were swiftly abandoning him, chaos magic backfiring as it often would.

Below, the waters rushed down towards this old Ponyville that Twilight had only seen in memories. She could hear the screams of terrified, innocent ponies from where she floated.

Suddenly, Discord was right in front of the two alicorn sisters, and Twilight knew that Discord himself had come, pulled in like a moth to the light. He had taken his place in the play, taking over for himself. “Oh, dears, it looks like you’ve had to relive it all over again… such a shame. I mean, really, Celestia, did you honestly think you wouldn’t find me eventually? You know you would’ve… why didn’t you try to blow my cloud cover and follow behind, hm?”

The Elements were almost prepared. There would be no escape for Discord. Twilight could feel their magical auras and felt the familiar taste of her own Element. Luna’s plan was suddenly before her, as if the Princess had told her straight out what to do.

But she felt so alone, in that moment. The ponies who had brought her here, to this terrible dream, no longer seemed aware of her. Below, the water rushed on and Luna was always looking down at it, in agony. Twilight felt the compulsion to do likewise, despite the nearing discharge of magical energy. She felt that it wouldn’t come while she looked. Dream logic would work that way, that it would only work after I’d seen what haunted the Princess.

Of all the possible courses of action Twilight could take, looking down towards old Ponyville was the least desirable of them all. Though she didn’t speak it aloud or think of it in so many words, she knew what would greet her eyes if she glanced down. Logic fed her a constant stream of argument: she couldn’t afford to be distracted, if she looked down and became involved she may slip into the dream herself and become someone else, the timing had to be perfectly in line with the Princesses…

She just didn’t want to look down.

Ahead of her, the Princesses circled the avatar of chaos to prevent his escape. Discord did little to break free, only laughing triumphantly, experiencing this moment in the future and knowing that his enemies were forced to relive it. Twilight looked into his eyes and he looked back and she knew he could see her. His eyes danced with demented mirth and seemed to speak to her across the divide.

Celestia’s grand mistake, the one that founded her land of peace and plenty and love on such a foundation, was made because she didn’t look down either.

Twilight took a deep breath and glanced at the town below. Instantly, she was trapped, the dream compulsion taking over. In the warped world of pure thought, she could see all of what happened as if she hovered just above it.

The water came on, a great wave swallowing up green life into a deep blue nothing that faded to black as she felt every simulacrum of life in the false world that was swallowed up close its eyes. In town, terrified earth ponies tried to flee to higher ground, towards the hills. Some had foals on their backs, others with possessions or saddle bags. Here and there, she saw a unicorn mixed in, trying to flee. She could feel the pounding of their hooves and the air was full of their voices and in a moment of mute horror she knew that Celestia had felt all of this too, flush with the power of the Elements drawing on the energy from nature itself.

She didn’t let it seem real. She didn’t look.

An earth pony mare climbed onto the roof the town hall with much effort, and Twilght was surprised to note that she was heavy with foal. Gasping, she looked up at the far off figures in the sky and she screamed a wordless, knowing scream. Somehow, she knew exactly what was going on. Twilight had no idea how she had deciphered it all so quickly, but she felt like that mare with her frazzled red mane and light red coat, knew everything. That pregnant mare cursed the two alicorns, and as the water poured into the town and snuffed it out, she was still screaming the truth.

The air crackled with magical energy.

Twilight focused on the image of the crown which bore her element, and it appeared before her. She ran on autopilot, adrenaline blocking out thought.

Discord, before her, suddenly seemed more concerned than he had seemed before.

She called on the Element as it came to rest on her head, moving of its own accord and propelled by its own innate seas of magic. From outside of the dream, she could feel the others reacting, their elements pooling into hers and strengthening it, awaking its potential.

She just wanted to go home.

The magic filled her body with the pleasant burn that it had brought on the last two times, and the Elements, as they had before, chose their own punishment. Twilight could feel them working, hear something shouted in alarm, hear drums beating in her ears and voices which sounded like her friends.

She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open when she could think clearly again. Everything was dark and she felt numb and tired in the aftermath of using the Elements of Harmony.

“Twilight?” It was Celestia’s voice, calling from the black.

“Yes, Princess? I’m here,” she said, and coughed.

“I’m sorry they didn’t come. Do you see now why I didn’t want them to?” Twilight knew the Princess meant her friends, and she nodded. Remembering it was dark, she answered again for her mentor’s convenience.

“Yes, I understand.”

Twilight was surprised at how calm she was. The horror of the destruction of Ponyville was simply gone. Any anger or betrayal or heartsickness she may have felt over Celestia’s past was absent. She had nothing.

“There was another reason, Twilight, though it’s going to be very hard for you to accept.”

Twilight lifted her head from off her hooves— she noticed now that she was lying down, and could feel that her hooves were crossed for some reason. It was a strange sensation, to be numb and feel still an outline of oneself.

“Twilight,” the princess began, hesitant, “the dreams of a Goddess are… different. I believe you’ve been told that a few times now, haven’t you? Well, they are. They have long reaching effects. My first dream tore up magic that was ancient and strong. My second… my second undid it all. All of it. You see, my faithful student, the Aether doesn’t work like Equestria. Time is not a line there like it is here, it is all together in a great undifferentiated mass. When you and I and Luna went back to my dream, we were going back to the first time I dreamed. Do you recall the doubling you felt? I felt it as well, because we went back to the same dream. I fell into the old pattern because I hadn’t been aware the first time I was dreaming, and had acted as I did on that day so many years ago.”

“What do you mean that you ‘undid it all’? All of what?” Twilight was finally becoming interested.

“The void, the missing ponies and land, it’s all back the way it was because it never changed. Effectively, you went back to the past and in that moment, you sealed Discord and ended my dream prematurely. That’s something for my sister to explain, because the Aether always gave me headaches when we were younger.” Celestia’s voice chuckled in the dark.

“Why do I feel strange?” Twilight said. She felt as if she were waking up, warmth spreading along her body. She tried to move her hooves, and they responded, if a little weakly.

“Changing time sent everyone back but the three of us. Luna is here too, Twilight. She simply doesn’t wish to talk. You’re both in mind, with me, and we are all sleeping the empty sleep my sister and I bear. It’s unpleasant, isn’t it? But I don’t think you were referring to the physical sensation of being asleep.”

“I feel so calm. I saw that mare on the roof screaming at us and the water and all of it and I simply feel… calm.”

“Because it never happened. It is so very hard to explain, Twilight, and I’m not sure how. Luna and I feel the pain you are missing, but we feel it as we always have, as an old, old wound. We have no aftereffects of the dream, though I know what happened. None of it happened. In fact,” she paused here, and the calm broke as she finished, “I would say it perhaps never did. Tonight is the night I dreamed first, Twilight. There was only one dream, really. One river leading onto another, with the second and the intervening periods all as tributaries.”

“That’s impossible,” Twilight didn’t know what else to say.

“Few things are really impossible, Twilight.”

“Sister,” Luna’s voice rose up from somewhere else beside Twilight. “We are not sure that you have fully explained. Twilight Sparkle, do you remember what happened before you woke up to find the world in chaos?”

There was no response.

“We- I know many things about dreams. It was I who first laid those magical seals that took my beautiful domain from my sister. I imagine them a prison, and I was the architect who designed that prison. An hour ago, I felt my sister come back at long last into the bosom of the blessed Aether and I knew that she would go to that place, because I knew it still tortured her.

“So I was in her chambers in a moment and fell beside her bed, at her side in the air over the old Ponyville in a moment. Unfortunately, Discord was there as well and doubled, as in the future he was going to be there for you to spring our trap. I knew instantly that I would be unable to stop him for two reasons: because he was doubled, able to return to that moment, and because the Elements were created to stop one Discord, not two.”

“So you called for me?”

“No, I… how do we explain this? In a panic, I stole you. I reached out into the Aether and found you and I simply ripped as much of you away as I could. I thought I had all of you… but it didn’t work. I only got part of you: your intellect, your skill, your calm. You stayed strong throughout all of the dream my sister created by herself to escape into, stronger than perhaps you would’ve been in reality. I feared for your sanity because of my mistake, but my sister’s love for you maintained the shadow of you I had created foolishly.”

“You were so brave, my little Twilight. I… wanted someone to be trusting me,” Celestia said softly from her left. Luna, she could tell now, was at her right.

“Am I the real Twilight at all?” she asked quietly, finally feeling something outright: fear.

“Yes, but not all of her. We… have to put you back. You’re different from what Twilight was. You are her, but you’ve changed and become something a little different from her in the separation,” Luna admitted.

“It has to be done, Twilight. I’m so sorry.”

“You only exist in the Aether, and she is an empty shell without you. So we must return you. I’m sorry, but this will all have been a dream.”

Celestia sighed, long and low. “Oh, Twilight… you’ve grown, here in my dream. Maybe this all could’ve been avoided, but when I retreated nothing could be undone. Both of us, Luna and myself, have failed you tonight. My will, my… I’m not sure what to call it, but it kept you alive. You aren’t a puppet, but you were being held up by my mind. But you’ve gorwn, your mind reacting to losing parts of itself by copying my mind and Luna’s. You won’t realize it yet, but you would if we let you stay this way. You’d have our memories soon, our mannerisms. You would begin speaking archaically, perhaps, or start taking your tea like I take mine, or… I don’t know.”

Luna spoke. “The hole I bored in your mind in my stupid, blind haste is like a circle, Twilight, and you are a square. A crude analogy, but I think an effective one. When we return you to your body, the parts of you that are of us will be removed. I will not lie to you, Twilight. The cut will not be clean. Though you will no longer have the two of us polluting your mind with our own, you will feel that you have indeed lost something. I don’t know how it will affect you completely.”

Twilight felt a different kind of numbness now. It was a lot to take in, and to be perfectly honest, she didn’t understand the implications of a lot of it. That everything had been a dream… she shook her head, though it seemed foolish to move at all here for some reason. Her mentor (or had it been Luna?) had mentioned something about the feeling of being asleep. Was this it, then? Was she moving while asleep?

Distraction didn’t provide escape from the matter at hand for long. “I… I just think this is a lot to take in. Princess Celestia, Princess Luna— will I just wake up, then? When you do this? Wake up and feel a sense of loss or something along those lines?”

Luna answered, being the sister more experienced with dreams. “Yes. A great, great sense of having lost something. It will be profound, I would think, because your mind took much from my sister that you aren’t aware of yet. You will remember this all, because all of what you learned was true. We would’ve waited to tell you, but I feared as Celestia retreated inward briefly, you would recall much on your own and not be able to understand it. We have much to discuss when you awake.”

“My faithful student,” Celestia began, her voice now firm in the manner one takes on at the beginning of an arduous task, “it is time. When you wake up, you will be in your own bed in Ponyville. I think you need the day or longer to rest, but when you are ready, write me. Go see your friends, talk to everyone and enjoy the sun. Tell none of them what you know, at least not yet. When you are up to it, there is much to learn, much to explain. Goodbye, my faithful, wonderful student.”

Twilight opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. She could feel her cheeks dampen with tears that came from seemingly nowhere. Outside, the first light of day greeted the waking world. Twilight cried and pondered the nature of things in her heart.

A/N: Yes, there was a reference to Luke in a Pony story. Sue me. Haha. :3

Hurray, it is accomplished! I’m so relieved to have finished this… I like the story, but it could have been a lot better. This story was really a writing exercise for me, mostly, and because of it I think my fiction muscles have been stretched adequately to get down to business! For those who are dissatisfied, I think I will return to this storyline more than once, and absolutely at least once. The things that Celestia and Twilight have to talk about are gonna be fairly interesting.

The pregnant mare survived, the only survivor. Her child was a colt named Livery... remember what Twilight was reading in chapter one? He alone knew the truth when his mother died shortly afterward. But he forgave Celestia. For those unsatisfied, consider that and the passing years. I REALLY wanted to tell his story, but there wasn't a good way to do it. He was the first Royal historian. :3

Keep a look out for a FoE oneshot and a Conversion Bureau story on the horizon, both of which I think will be way more awesome then any of this. Also, if you are on DA, please stop by my profile at http://juliusscipio.deviantart.com/ and chat me up ‘bout ponies/read a bit/ comment! That is of course if you wish!

ALLONSY