Only once in her life had Amaryllis had the pleasure of witnessing the sea with her own eyes, and that was through the window of a giant metal bird flying hundreds of kilometres per hour. Here, from the battlements of Hoovegorod, she could experience the salty air, the gentle rush of the waves, and the sand under her hooves.

Hoovegorod itself was an enormous fortress that stretched across the entire seascape and controlled the entrance and exit into the interior of the country with a gigantic lattice. The fortress was constructed from sandstone, making it almost indistinguishable from the beach and cliffs. In the western section of the fortress, considered to be the main part of the structure, were the soldiers’ accommodations, the cafeteria, and the practice fields. The eastern side, which could be reached over several bridges or even through the lattice itself, was smaller and accommodated, beside the largest cannon installed in the fortress, only the device to raise or lower the lattice. Half-worked into the cliffs as it was, Hoovegorod posed an obstacle for anyone who would dare to invade Equestria or its neighbouring countries.

That raised the question of how the monsters had made it into the fortress, let alone take it. Amaryllis didn't want to call them changelings, even if technically they were. Changelings who had fed on the suffering and flesh of the captured soldiers. They had been monsters, and Amaryllis knew that changelings weren’t monsters in reality, despite what many would believe.

"Better?" her aunt asked, sitting next to her on the battlements.

"My throat still hurts," the younger princess whimpered. The sight of the prisoners, along with the smell, had triggered something within her. It was a searing pain that seemed to fight its way up her chest and into her throat. "It hurts so much. But not in my body. I can’t describe it. All the pain, the fear and the screams." Despite her words, she felt a surge of bile burning her throat. However, nothing came out as she retched except air.

Twilight, older but not much larger than Amaryllis, placed a wing over her niece's back and began to massage it. It was all she could do for Amaryllis at the moment.

"Captain, how are the soldiers?" Twilight asked as she saw the mare coming out from the interior of the fortress into the yard. Here they had set up tents as an improvised camp after they had recaptured Hoovegorod.

The thestral shook her head. "Not good," Nighthawk began. "There are a lot of cases with inflamed wounds and fever. Together with the trauma... Ironheart and the other paramedics believe that if only half of them make it, it’ll be a miracle." She looked back briefly over her shoulder to the entrance, or what was left of it. The heavy iron door had been squeezed in and barely hung onto its hinges, crushed by magic during the first assault on the fortress. "We need to get help from Canterlot. We need airships that can take those who were held prisoner to a real hospital. Please, Princess, I’ve known half the ponies down there most of my life."

Twilight remembered the last time Night Hawk had travelled with them. She had been a capable fighter and a competent leader, confident and professional. Now she just seemed tired. "I’ve already sent my mother a message, but our fleet is widely stretched. We must wait until the promised ship arrives from the Empire. A few days, maybe more." Twilight's gaze wandered to the camp where soldiers had gathered everything from the fortress that would prove to be useful: canned supplies, bedding, blankets, as well as weapons. She pretended not to hear Night Hawk’s cursing, as she could understand how the mare felt. This had been her fortress, her soldiers, and her friends. Twilight knew she'd be more than just swearing if anypony had done this to Ponyville. Those thoughts inevitably led back to her brother, the pain still like a thorn in her heart. It would probably be there for a long time, never truly fading.

Her scrutiny of the camp finally came to a stop at the tents where they had taken the dead. "I know, Captain," she finally said, the undertone of anger evident in her voice. "Look for volunteers to dig graves for the dead, then rest a bit. We will hold a ceremony tomorrow. It will do us all good. Come on."

Night Hawk nodded and was about to turn away, but she paused. "Princess? Do you know what’s strange? We’ve killed at least ten of those strange things, but not one human was among them, and not a ship was near the fortress. So where did the humans who helped those in the Empire come from? The one with the magic weapons?" Twilight was silent. "I know only four beings that are capable of transporting so many people over such a long distance. I also know that none of them would. Which means that there must be a fifth being with such strength." Night Hawk looked into her eyes. "What are we fighting here?"

Twilight sighed and reduced the distance between them to a minimum. "You are not the first to notice that. It was Thiemo who first brought it up." Nighthawk's eyes widened. "He met an angel, the human equivalent of an alicorn. He believes that there is another alicorn who’s supporting the forces on Ti, together with a changeling queen." Night Hawk swallowed and her wings twitched, but she said nothing and continued on her way.

However, the princess did not have time to give the captain her undivided attention. There was still so much to do. She herself had been on the way down into the interior of the fortress when the captain had intercepted her. Twilight was no different from Amaryllis, after what she'd seen down there. She had merely learned from her mother how to maintain an impassive mask, as the ponies around her now needed a strong princess to lead them. What she had done was what she was best at: she organized. After she had Estoc's company secure the available resources and ordered Night Hawk’s unit to care for the wounded, there was only one thing left for her to do. To do that, she had to descend into the fortress again.

Twilight walked toward the open doorway and looked down into the shadows, interrupted only occasionally by the glow of a torch. At the thought of what she had seen, she shook her head briefly and wished her friends were here, a wish she immediately revoked. No one should see this. With a deep breath, she finally descended the stairs. With each step, it became a warmer and stuffier, the air old and spent. The stench of misery, a mixture of excrement, ponies who hadn’t bathed for weeks, and blood was still very dominant. It would probably linger on a long time. All places had an aura, and Hoovegorod was no exception. She had been a foal her last visit here, but Twilight remembered the feeling well. If the fortress were a pony, it would be a massive earth pony, dressed in reinforced steel, and wielding a shield larger than himself. A defender who filled its enemies with awe. This no longer existed. The protector was infested with an illness and was being devoured by something evil from within. Hoovegorod was no more than a decaying corpse, a cold tomb that threatened to swallow those who entered it. Over time, evil would gather here, making it the home of malicious spirits and other beings of darkness. Twilight hoped that the rear guard from the Crystal Empire would soon arrive.

She reached the end of the first staircase and took a look into the hallway leading to the lounges and the mess hall. The torches on the walls were unlit, though it wasn’t that they had not tried to light them. It was as if the darkness would just devour the flames after a few seconds. Staring down the hallway, she could almost feel the shadows returning her gaze. With a shudder, the princess turned away and took the stairs down another floor, the path only lit by her horn.

She had not yet reached the bottom when she heard the voices and the hooves of the ponies who had dared to remain and care for the prisoners. Two guards stood before the entrance to the quarters, their horns brightly lit and their swords at the ready, no matter what came out of the dark.

"Princess," one of the guards said as he recognized Twilight. "You should not be here." There was a shriek and the clatter of hooves as the medics hurriedly searched for the appropriate tool. "It's not safe here."

"No," agreed Twilight. "It's not." She stepped past the duo and looked into the passage behind. The doors to the individual rooms were open, paramedics hurrying back and forth amidst the groaning and screaming. Blood glittered in the pale light of her horn and from what came out of the rooms. Twilight turned her head back to the guard. "How is the situation?"

"Three more have succumbed to their wounds and the paramedics are still not sure if they’ll be able to get anybody stable enough to transport. We’re running out of blood for transfusions quickly, as well as bandages and morphine."

"Maybe I can take a look at them?" Twilight heart stopped for a moment and she, as well as the two guards, spun around to source of the gentle voice. Fluttershy stood on the stairs that Twilight had just come down, her coat bright and her mane shining, as if the shadows refused to touch her. However, she did not have that small, serene smile she usually wore that Twilight remembered. Instead, her eyes seemed tired, and her wings drooped like weights on her sides as she passed them.

Twilight took a moment to collect herself, but then she followed the pegasus, who had simply passed her by and disappeared into one of the rooms. "Fluttershy?" The paramedic there seemed to be just as surprised. Fluttershy pushed him aside and looked down at the camp bed with a downcast expression.

"Shhhh," she softly whispered to the wounded soldier and laid one of her wings on the open wound on his flank. One of the monsters had tried to eat him alive and had started with his cutie mark. The earth pony’s eyes widened as Fluttershy stroked the wound, before his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep. "Everything will be all right," the pegasus murmured reassuringly, pulling back her wing. Blood stuck to her feathers, but the flank of the poor pony was restored, and the image of a shield graced his fur again.

The paramedics raced past Fluttershy and examined the former wound with wide eyes, mirroring Twilight’s own reaction. "Fluttershy? How did you…" Her voice trailed off, finding herself unable to complete the barrage of questions that fought for prominence.

Her friend looked up at her and fixed her with a hard look, one that seemed totally uncharacteristic of the mare Twilight once knew. "Twilight, please bring me to the others. We can talk when I've completed my work." The princess nodded mutely, turning around and leading her to the next room.

"Thank you, Twilight," Fluttershy murmured, placing her glass of water back on the small table between them. "The air was quite dry down there." The princess was still a bit shocked, and she still grappled with the questions that buzzed around in her mind, incapable of taming them. Where had Fluttershy come from, and where had she disappeared to? How had she healed the injured soldiers? How had she done so to those who had even been on the verge of death?

There was only one response she could give. "No problem."

For the first time, Fluttershy smiled in her typical, slightly embarrassed way, averting her gaze. The gesture caused Twilight’s heart to flutter painfully, and once more her mind cast back to her brother, to happier, simpler times. "I know you have a lot of questions, but I can’t stay much longer."

"What?! Why?” If she had the strength, Twilight would have jumped up, but all she could do was stare at one of her oldest friends in horror.

"It just hurts to be here, Twilight. I don’t mean this place, but Albion, this plane of existence almost. I can’t really explain it well. But... I want to help. I have something to tell you something, and please, please believe me, Twilight."

Twilight sagged in her seat. "Why should not I believe you, Fluttershy?"

"Because what I tell you will be unbelievable. Some things will contradict everything you believe in. For a long time, I did not want to believe it myself. But Eris... Eris... She never lied to me. I believe her, and I’m asking you to believe me." Twilight nodded, though she didn’t quite know what to think. "So... Umm, imagine a scale. Peace and harmony are on one side; in the other is chaos, change. They may be absolute opposites, but they belong together, because without one, the other cannot be. If there was no harmony, its counterpart couldn’t exist. Chaos wouldn’t be recognized. The same is true for chaos. How would you recognize a state of harmony if there was no chaos?" Twilight nodded slowly. What Fluttershy said made sense in a logical aspect of philosophy.

"That's a nice theory," she carefully said. "But one would have to assume that two equal forces of harmony and chaos would not neutralize themselves and one would achieve a state of nothingness, right?" Fluttershy shook his head and stretched out her hoof as if she wanted to show Twilight something. However, there was nothing there, just her hoof. Hard keratin that surrounded the soft flesh of the sole, made up of cells that worked together in harmony, growing and eventually dying to make room for new ones. They each took on a different form and changed. Cells consisted of atoms, which were in constant motion, attracting and repelling at the same time. And then Twilight understood. "Life."

"Exactly." Fluttershy nodded. "The state between harmony and chaos is life. We all are a product of this balance." Twilight, who had collected entire lifetimes of books, who knew more about magic than others could accumulate in centuries, was speechless. Why hadn’t anyone realized that? It was so simple that an outstretched hoof was enough to understand the concept. Life was a constant change of harmony and chaos. Fluttershy, however, did not wait until Twilight could gather her thoughts. "However, every being tends to one of the two, but they also always have a part of the other in themselves. We ponies, we are beings of harmony. We strive more for unity, peace, and equality than many others. Draconequus, like Eris, are beings of chaos. They are our counterpart. They have the same problems in understanding us as we do to them. I would not even presume to try to understand them. We just can’t. Their perspective on the world is quite different from us, but it doesn’t make them inherently bad or evil. The love that Eris felt and expressed to others showed that she could be harmonious as well, even if it lay a little dormant.”

"Fluttershy, I'm so sorry," whispered Twilight as tears flowed down the cheeks of the pegasus. She went around to her made to pull her into a winged embrace, but Fluttershy pushed her away.

"Please let me finish." Twilight nodded, stung by her friend’s rejection. "We all need this balance between harmony and chaos. The draconequus are guardians who ensure that harmony does not prevail, neither chaos. That wasn’t always the case. Long ago, Harmony had its own guardians too. They followed their nature, the sense of fellowship and unity, and created more of their kind. They brought the mortal creatures into existence and spread their values. They brought nature out of balance. The draconequus did what they were best and stopped the guardians of harmony. They fell and all that remained was their legend. Your legacy. It took a long time, but the scales began to settle again, but someone or something has disrupted them again. Whoever it is, they’re the one who took my Eris. This person was also the one who took Luna’s beloved from her, and this being is to blame for what happened here." Fluttershy sighed and took a sip of water. "I asked Discord for help. Eris’ father. He’s the one who told me all this. He’s also helping me with my pregnancy." Twilight blinked at that. "But even he can’t take on this being, which in his opinion means only one thing. We're dealing with an outsider, a being that is not subject to the laws of this world, this reality." Fluttershy blinked and then suddenly stood up. "I have to go, Twilight. As I said earlier, this entity is trying to disturb the balance of this world. It is about more than just Equestria. It wants to end our very reality, this world in eternal harmony. Everything alike, everything one, all together. There’s no change, only unity. Albion is being smothered by harmony. You, as the Alicorn of Magic, should feel it. You are magic, harmony and chaos. After all, magic is simply manipulating harmony with chaos or the other way around. You're life, Twilight. Protect it."

Fluttershy took a step towards the exit from her tent, but before Twilight could protest, she simply disappeared.

Author's Notes:

Happy new year everypony!

Special thanks to JBL for translating & editing.

Also, shameless advertising sponsored by JBL: The Guardian Angel