Celestia's letter to Twilight Sparkle...

"Twilight Sparkle, you have made five wonderful friends in this past year, as well as coming very far in yourself. I am not one to show favoritism, but I hold you in high regard in my heart. You have served me well, as well as your fellow Equestrians. You are the Element of Magic, and as such, have a natural thirst for knowledge and, in effect, power. Your understanding and natural absorption of all things arcane astound me each and every day.

"To put it lightly, you are an eager learner. Everypony knows that. I'm sure you've spent every spare moment with your nose in the Tome of Umbri... You must have some grasp of the Umbri Uprising that took place five hundred years ago today. If so, then this should be as horrifying for you as myself: It is happening again, and I am powerless to stop it. You have to act fast; So long as the Obex surrounding my throne room and the Sanctum beneath it still stands, I and Princess Luna cannot help you directly. An Obex is a barrier that imprisons anypony with royal blood. The Umbri came close to overpowering me during the Eclipse, and I was not able to rid Equestria of their existence permenantly.

"The Umbri are a hateful, empty race that seek to fulfill that internal emptiness by consuming all life around it... They are very intelligent and very old. Keep in mind that the Umbri are not physically strong; Instead, they use their morbid spells and rituals to combine different creatures who have passed away, creating monstrosities who's gruesome appearance is unmatched. To put it simply, they gather the limbs of dead things of all kinds, sew them together with magic, and then breathe life into them. The Umbri then use their power to bind these creatures to their will. It is an abhorrent art, this Necromancy. Equestria has seen nothing else like it.

"At the peak of their might, the Umbri were able to accumulate an entire legion of horrors to lay siege to Equestria. It was with great aid and even greater loss that the Umbri were sealed... I was exhausted entirely of my own magic from the battle, and was forced to lock myself in stasis for an entire month to regain my strength. Indeed, the Umbri are a threat to everything we hold dear.

"I have complete faith in you, Twilight Sparkle. You are my star pupil today, the best I have ever had, and Equestria's only hope before the next full moon. Time is of the essence; This is what you must do:

"Read further into the Tome of Umbri and find a way to the Curandus. They are a hidden order of ponies who's sole purpose is to defend Equestria in its darkest hour. It will not be easy to gain their trust; Initially, the Curandus were quick to lend their power to those who needed it, but during the Eclipse, one Umbri deceived them into bestowing the Umbri Legion with unspeakable power... This can not happen again.

"I wont hide the truth from you or your friends; There will be losses in the days to come. While I am confident that you will succeed, we will lose many lives, even if fate is on our side. Hard times are upon us; I don't want to scare you, I truly don't... But the harmony and peace that has been so prevalent in Equestria is going to be shattered.

"You need to do your best to teach the tenants of Ponyville the magic held in the pages of the Tome. I would never permit this under any other circumstances, but even the youngest ponies must be tought to defend themselves. The Umbri are relentless and will kill without mercy. We cannot take any chances, and we have to take all the help we can get.

"The Curandus will know what to do. Once you win their favor, listen to them and do as they instruct you, and Equestria will remain the prosperous world it has always been."

"Be expectant of a visitor to your doorstep at any moment; Perhaps two. You will need them both.

"I wish you well, Twilight Sparkle. Stay strong, and keep your wits about you. Please tell the Curandus about my Obex problem; I hope to be by your side in our darkest hour."

In all sincerity, Princess Celestia

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Chapter 1: Calm before the Storm (Part 3)

Spike finished reading the letter aloud. Trixie, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Spike stood frozen in place for an entire minute.

"Trixie, Dash..." Spike spoke quietly, terror in his voice. "What do we do?"

Rainbow Dash was pacing back and forth between the Tome and the front door. Pinkie Pie didn't seem to know what to do with herself, and Trixie looked with a blank expression at the crimson book. She had never seen anything quite like it; It was a bright shade of red, yet seemed to become darker as she gazed upon it... An illusion... And the symbol on the cover physically hurt her eyes to look directly at it. It was an insignia of golden leaf pressed into the leather, the lower half of a circle with a water drop falling into it.

"Trixie thinks that several minutes have passed since Twilight cast the Canti... If the nature of the Backflash stays true to my knowledge, she will be unconscious until the next full moon."

Rainbow Dash stopped pacing. "Trixie, that's when the Umbri are supposed to be at full strength! Princess Celestia wrote that even Twilight would need all the time she could get. How can we find the Curandus without her?"

Trixie shut her eyes, confusion and fear contorting her blue visage. Wiping away all signs of fear, she turned to face the other ponies and took charge. "We have thirty days...  Trixie will try and fill in for Twilight as best she can, and perhaps find a way to stop the Backflash early. In the meantime, we need everypony to know what's coming; Rainbow Dash, get to Cloudsdale as fast as you can, and let them know that they are to be ready for evacuation as soon as possible, and to send their fastest Pegasi to the adjoining kingdoms. We need help; The Umbri may not wait as long as we hope. Come back as soon as you can." With her signature salute of confidence, this time sprinkled with apprehension, Rainbow Dash was out the door in a heartbeat.

"Pinkie Pie, alert Mayor Mare about the trouble to come. Don't be gone long!" Her command was answered with an imitation of Rainbow Dash's salute. "Aye aye, cap'n!" With that, Pinkie was out the door. Trixie was taken aback; As lighthearted as that bubblegum pink mare was, she could still bring a smile to Trixie's face.

Two voices spoke: "What do we do?" Trixie turned to see Snips and snails as lively as ever.

"I want to help!"

"Snails, no you don't! I do."

"I just said-"

"COLTS!" The slow-witted ponies snapped to attention in front of the open doorway outside of which was just starting to rain. "I'm going to assume that you're not going to go back into the forest into that purple cloud..." They nodded. "Good. I need you two to wake Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack and bring them to me as soon as possible."

After a brief confrontation about who would exit Twilight's home first, they too were gone. Finally, Trixie turned to Spike.

"Spike, get what little rest you can. We will need you, too, if-" Spike was already asleep.

Looking to the tome once more, Trixie began rifling through the pages, occasionally looking up to Twilight. Her sleep was troubled...

--------------------

Twilight couldn't control any part of her body, or for that matter, her thoughts. There was just this awkward sense of awareness that she couldn't control herself, and this was because she was not herself; She was a purple unicorn still, but now a stallion, clad in equally purple armor that seemed to be made entirely of magic. She was galloping at full speed through what could have been an older version of Ponyville... But it was different; The air was practically violet, but smelled of wood smoke. And something else... Something rising out of the flames of the shops and homes around her...

Twilight remembered then: This was a flashback... She was experiencing a segment of a life of a stallion who lived hundreds of years ago... Doing, feeling, and seeing just as he did. Looking through the stallion's eyes, she could no longer fight back the realization: Mingling with the wood smoke was burning flesh.

She jumped over the rubble of houses and smashed vendors, looking frantically for something... Some one... Somebody important that may or may not still be alive.

The stallion tripped over a charred block of wood and slid several feet in the dirt of the town square and stopped. His limbs were tired as well as his mind, and he wanted so badly to sleep. He shut his eyes to rest, just for a moment; Surely his sister, Linu, could wait just a minute...

No, he couldn't wait; She needed him.

Still not getting up, but ready to give up, he opened one eye to see a another set of lifeless eyes looking back into his own; The stallion knew this mare. Her name was Thesta. She had sheltered him when his parents were taken by a dragon when he was young. His childhood hero, Thesta, had been impaled with a spear of bone through her lower back and out of her chest, piercing through her filly's left flank and out of the poor thing's neck. Even in death, her lifeless foreleg was wrapped protectively around the child's eyes.

A shriek tore through the air in Ponyville, and he shut his eye once more. He wanted so badly to lay down and die... The atrocities he had witnessed in this last hour alone were too great... Then he remembered the Canti:

"Keep a mind as strong as stone 

and keep your own heart even stronger, 

for even if you stand alone, 

you'll stay awake for even longer. 

The Somnum song will try to break you, 

the Mort song try to take you, 

but neither one will your soul heed 

if you truly are a steadfast steed." 

Calling upon a reserve of strength he forgot he had, he pulled himself up and shook the dust from his glowing hauberk, taking one last look down into the eyes of the one who had truly been his mother...

He then looked about him and soaked in the sheer morbid gravity of the war he was fighting. There was a scorched tree growing in the center of the square, and nailed to it with splinters of bone were children; Colts and fillies of all colors were nailed by their tendons and sternums at random across the bark of the tree they once climbed and played games underneath. The ground was littered with corpses of ponies as far as he could see, either maimed or decapitated.

Then he noticed something: One filly at the base of the tree was moving weakly, whimpering almost silently. He stepped over to the child as fast as he could and turned it over with its nose, hoping to save it...

...And he jumped back immediately. The solid orange filly, regardless of the hole through its chest, smiled back at him with milky purple eyes and laughed, cackling away with the voice of the millions of ponies who died before it. It rose to its feet unnaturally, as though it had levitated to its feet.

Twilight felt just as the stallion did; Enraged. He began shouting at the filly:

"HALASTER!" His voice cracked. He was as angry as he was hurt inside, hurt for all the lives he was unable to save.

"Halaster, you BASTARD! You tricked all of us! Why did so many have to die? Why was this Necromancy power so important to you? We trusted you!"

The filly blinked twice and smiled once more, this time with razor-sharp fangs. And it laughed again... But it wasn't a laugh; The bastard had posessed the filly's body and was manipulating it from somewhere else. The laugh wasn't his own; It was the rhythmic moan of the tortured souls who's power were used to animate it.

"Enserric, we both knew from the start that the Umbri were too powerful... Why would you stay with a race who's children are as pitiful as this? Look!" The posessed filly jumped up and down until its right foreleg broke. "They're useless as corpses, unable to take the abuse of the games they love to play while they're alive... Their bodies are weak just a day after death. You really should-"

"HALASTER! They didn't have to die! We could have fought back! The Legion was practically at our doorstep... And you were on our side..."

"I was."

"And you started killing... Just... Killing... Why?"

"My end motivations are none of your concern, Enserric. However, you seem so keen on defending these ponies... Perhaps you would want to know what it feels like to kill one yourself?"

Before Enserric the Stallion could answer, the sound of crackling wood and his own breathing was entirely gone; There was nothing to be heard, no matter how loud he screamed. The filly was now levitating off of the ground, ribbons of dark purple light leaving the corpses surrounding it and entering the child's body. Enserric's stomach churned as the hole in its chest and leg were repaired. It then dropped to the ground gracefully, and spoke once more with that same choir of miserable voices: "How can you defeat the Umbri if you cannot even kill a child, Enserric?"

Without warning, Halaster lunged for Enserric's throat, only to be impaled upside down on his horn. The filly's eyes looked back into Enserric's.  Seeing through the stallion's eyes, it was like it was looking at Twilight.

"You are a strong one... There may be hope for you yet!"

Enserric was emotionally drained as it was. He flung the filly back to the ground it came from as the milky violet disappeared from the filly's eyes. It lay still.

He then stood over Thesta, the mare who had always looked after him and nudged her nose with his own one last time, tears falling onto her lifeless face. Twilight would have been speechless, even if she could have spoken; This Backflash could only have been a few minutes, but she had already seen so many horrors... She wanted it to stop so badly. How long had she been unconscious in the real world? She couldn't tell, but she wanted out more than anything.

The stallion began searching the ruins of a burning, fogged over Ponyville for his sister, already knowing it was too late.

He looked up into the sky, up at the moon; It wasn't there. This was the night of the Eclipse.

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Part 4 coming out hopefully faster than part 3 did... Input is needed. Thank you.

I repeat: I need comments for motivation... So whatever you have to do. Tell me how the story makes you feel... Tell me what it isn't doing that you'd like it to do... Tell me what parts were written a bit awkwardly, and what could be done better... Just tell me something!

The cover page for this story is epic, isn't it?

References made in this chapter...

The name "Enserric" is from a video game (produced by Hasbro, ironically) that was in a mildly similar setting to my book... Enserric the Grey was a wizard who was killed by another wizard and entrapped in a sword and left to rust in a hall of dead monarchs for 80 years. When you rescue the talking sword, he is rather crazy, but he's fun to have around. I would forget about Fluttershy before I forgot about Enserric the Longsword. (That will never happen.)

It was always so heart warming to me... When I would strike a goblin with him, and the he would yell "Foul tasting thing! HIT IT AGAIN!"

"Thesta" is based on a healer from that same video game who followed a goddess of beauty. She was an important character in the storyline, but was never elaborated on. I intend to keep it that way in this story, but whatever goes.

"Halaster" is my favorite character from ANYTHING, and I identify with him very well. He was an insanely powerful arch mage (yes, from that same video game) who was equally insane himself, and he ALWAYS spoke in rhyme (just like Zecora... I'm just now realizing this.) He will be the antagonist. Next Chapter: Chapter 1: Calm before the Storm (Part 4) Estimated time remaining: 8 Minutes