Chapter 6: THE THIRD WAY
The Untold Story of the Equestrian Civil War
“Guards! Arrest Princess Celestia and Princess Luna!”
Many years from now, historians, attempting form a definitive historical narrative of the events of 1005 CYP, would never cease to argue over the details over what exactly happened next. They would agree that Twilight’s order ignited heated passions, nationalism, loyalty, and the like, but could never understand precisely who attacked first, the motives, and related.
Luckily, this is no history book.
As Twilight’s order rang out, the guard that brought her to the square moved to obey the command, along with about a half dozen other soldiers. But something happened that caught the guards loyal to Twilight did not expect.
A yell emerged from a difficult-to-see source. The pony rose up onto her hind legs and yelled: “Down with the tyranny! Hail Princess Luna! Hail the New Lunar Re-ack!”
A gold-bearing pony standing near her had cuffed her over the head, and she went down.
With that, the ponies wearing blue let out an outraged cry and surged forward, robbed of all logic and reason by inflamed passion. They clashed with the crowd of gold-bearing ponies, and hoof-fights quickly broke out.
The Equestrian Civil War had begun.
As fighting broke out, the Guards loyal to Twilight looked to her with confusion. Surely she did not want them to attack ponies of Equestria!
And of course, she didn’t. But to be fair, the young Princess was still trying to understand what precisely had happened. All she had done was taken measures required under the Equestrian Constitution, for pony’s sake!
“Guard, get this crowd under control,” she ordered. “But do not hurt them, or I swear to the Sun and Moon that I will have pony responsible dishonorably discharged from the Royal Guard!”
Their orders received, the ponies moved forward to dispel what could only be described as a riot.
A riot. That is a term I never thought I would use to describe a protest in Equestria.
Whatever term she used, however, she could not deny that the ponies of Equestria were so inflamed by anger and loyalty that they had seemed to have abandoned their calmer, gentler side. It was disturbing, really.
The Guard slowly started to push back the fighting ponies, using the blunt side of their spears to create space between themselves and the civilians. Slowly, the crowd’s energy was spent as the Royal Guard, disciplined that they were, had formed a solid wall between the belligerent ponies.
As Twilight watched this, she slowly felt the tension that had formed in her chest dissipate.
Of course, then all hell broke loose.
Unbeknownst to Twilight and her loyal Guardponies, two small groups of Royal Guards, each numbering about five strong, had mustered in an adjacent street. What made these guards different from the ones Twilight commanded, however, was the fact that one group carried gold bands on their forelegs, while the other wore blue.
As the crowd was slowly subdued, these other Guardponies slowly creeped into the square. Using the chaos to blend in, they slowly approached the Princesses.
By the time the new arrivals had come within two meters of the Princesses, Twilight finally noticed the fact that these members of the Guards were not in ranks. Couple that with the observation that they wore those colored bands, and she quickly put two and two together.
“Wait- Guard, STOP THEM!” she ordered, verging on panic. She also charged up her horn, preparing to knock back the traitors.
Whirling around, the loyal Guard broke ranks and left the angry mob of ponies to do as they wished. Which meant, of course, that they surged forward again.
Upon hearing that they were discovered, the traitorous Guard abandoned any attempt at stealth and ran forward, no doubt to free the Princesses they supported.
When she saw this, Twilight used the spell that she had prepared. There was a flash of lathander light, and all of the ponies near her, loyal and otherwise, were knocked back a meter or so.
This allowed the loyalists to catch up, and hoof-to-hoof combat quickly broke out. Twilight’s guards fought both Lunar and Solar supporters, but what was curious was the fact that both of the traitorous factions didn’t refrain from fighting each other. Rather, the Luna supporters fought both loyalists and Celestia supporters, and visa versa.
Twilight ran forward to join the fight, planning to use her magic to knock down the traitors. However, something stopped her dead in her tracks.
One of her soldiers let out a terrible scream, and then collapsed. The entire fight ground to a halt as everypony turned to the soldier, and tried to see what had caused such a scream.
The soldier lay on the ground, twitching. Blood, bright red and...well, bloody, was everywhere. Even more obvious, however, was the spear sticking out of his chest.
Upon seeing this, everypony in the square recoiled. Twilight herself barely refrained from throwing up, and some of the ponies in the crowd lacked the same amount of self-discipline.
She rushed forward and, despite her uneasiness, forced herself to examine the wound. It was incredibly deep, pricing at least a half meter into the poor pony’s chest. She could tell that there was no hope; the wound was far too large and deep. By her estimate, at least one lung and the heart of the pony had been damaged beyond repair, and the life was leaving his limbs.
Magic could only do so much.
And then the moment snapped.
The ponies loyal to Twilight let out a deafening cry of anger and pain, seeking vengeance for the fallen pony. They surged forward, and the traitorous Guard broke ranks and ran. But the did not run away, rather, they charged forward and each respectively went to the Princess that they supported. There, while dodging and parrying attacks from the Guards loyal to Twilight, they escorted their lieges out of the square, no doubt to regroup and plot their next move.
Angry and saddened, Twilight ordered her Guard: “Let them go.”
“But, Princess-”
Fighting back tears, Twilight yelled, “Let them go!” Still crouched over the corpse of the fallen pony, she said “I don’t want any more blood split today.”
“Princess, with all due respect, if we let them go, they will only come back, and they will be stronger!”
“Let them,” she said, now well and truly sobbing. “What does it matter?”
The pony said nothing, but merely bowed his head.
Twilight sat in silence for several beats, morning the dead pony. Quite frankly, she was still in shock that this happened.
Curse them, she thought to herself. This is their fault. Celestia and Luna brought this upon us.
Slowly starting to re-gather her thoughts, Twilight closed her eyes briefly, counted to ten then opened them again. After completing this exercise, she asked in a shaky, but passable voice, “Does anypony know this brave soldier’s name?”
All of Twilight’s guard indicted a negative.
But the crowd, which had been still and silent up to this point, opened up to reveal a single mare, slowly walking up to join Twilight. The mare was a earth pony, middle-aged, more or less average height, and had a purple coat with a dark grey mane and tail. Most prominently, she wore a gold band on her front left leg.
The mare walked forward as if she approached her doom. Every step was slow and painful, while her face was marred with dread. She took one look at the body, and whatever mental defense she had built up against her sadness broke down instantly. The pony promptly collapsed and started bawling like a little filly.
Deciding to ignore the gold band, Twilight stepped forward, put a hoof on her shoulder, and tried not to start crying herself. Hoping that she sounded at least slightly reassuring, Twilight asked in a semi-soothing voice, “You knew him.”
In between sobs, the violet pony nodded and said, “Y-yes, Your Highness. He was my colt.”
Twilight felt as if she was just sucker-punched. Of course, it made perfect sense, but the logic of the situation did not stop Twilight from feeling a redoubling of her grief.
“...I wish there was something I could do,” said Twilight, lamely. Even in her own mind, it sounded pathetic. “Surely I could have done something else different…something better-”
But the mare shook her head. “No, no. ...Princess, this-this is all my fault. I am the one...I supported Celestia. How could I? I brought this upon myself the second I put on this” - here, she violently ripped of the gold band - “This stupid band!” She threw it to the side. “And now, my son is here, dead, and I, his mother, killed him as if I stabbed him myself!” It was too much for her, and she quickly broke back down in tears.
Suddenly, however, her tears stopped, and she looked to Twilight with a fervor that somewhat scared the young Alicorn. “You-you can stop this, Princess! You must stop this!”
“What? I-”
“Princess Twilight, I want to help you restore harmony to Equestria. And you must!”
“Me? Restore harmony? But there is only one of me against the inflamed passions of the entire city, possibly the nation!”
There was a long pause, then the Guard that had led Twilight to the square said, “With all due respect, Your Majesty, that’s not entirely true.” He then laid the spear he carried horizontally in front of him, knelt, and said, “I pledge my spear to Princess Twilight Sparkle. I renounce my former allegiance to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. I renounce my position on the Day Guard, and I pledge to serve Princess Twilight Sparkle, the true Defender of Harmony, in any way she sees fit. I pledge that I will not rest until harmony is restored to the land of Equestria.”
He was not the only one to do. All of the other loyal Guards followed suit.
Twilight took an involuntary step back, for she was not exactly confident in her ability to lead a fraction of ponies in the complicated political crises Equestria now faced. Taking a look around, she saw that at least a quarter of the ponies in the assembled crowd near her were taking off the bands that they had donned, and looked to Twilight with the same look that they had usually reserved for Celestia, before this mess.
“...I-I suppose I accept,” said Twilight, trying not to panic too much. “If I alone lead you now, then my first order is to insure that this pony,” she indicated the fallen warrior, “is buried with full honors. He died loyal to the principles of harmony. Let us make sure he is honored as such.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Looking around, Twilight felt as if something was out of place, but she could quite put her hoof on it.
Discarding the feeling for now, she spoke to the pony that had led her to the square. “You said that Princess Cadance had gone missing?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then where did she go? She was in the same room as Celestia...and...Luna…”
“Huh?”
Is it possible? “Guard, is it possible that the traitors took Princess Cadance captive?
“No...why would they? What would they stand to gain?” The pony didn’t sound certain, though.
“I don’t know, but we cannot ignore the possibility,” replied Twilight. She hesitated for a moment before continuing.
“If that is the case, then we must deal with it as it comes up. For now, however, we need to regroup and figure out what precisely is going on with the other two Princesses.” Twilight took a deep breath. “Also, I cannot believe that you seven are the only Royal Guards to take the side of harmony. Do not draw attention to yourselves, but see if there are other ponies that will join us.”
“If a pony wants to know the name of our faction, what do I say? I mean, Celestia has the Solar Empire, and Luna calls her following the New Lunar Republic. We don’t even have a name, never mind one with such a good ring.”
“Tell them…” Here, Twilight’s voice and mind trailed off as she considered the options. After a moment, she had found it.
“Tell them that you serve Equestria United.”