The year is 1019, and the scars of the Great War are finally starting to fade from Equus. Queen Chrysalis of the Changeling Hegemony was defeated by a last, desperate alliance of free creatures from across the continent. The All-Ponies Front pushed into the heart of her empire in Vesalipolis after years of daring tank maneuvers beyond muddy trenches while planes dueled above. The Stalliongrad Soviet fought beside the Principality of Equestria it once shunned. The Crystal Empire modernized and stood with the Yaks across the northern mountains. The penguins and bears of the north resisted in the bitter cold. The deer of Olenia rose up under their rightful queen. The Republic of Nova Griffonia mostly made money selling guns to all the little ponies.

The war, and what came afterward, was a time of great upheaval and change. Princess Celestia and Luna abdicated their titles to Twilight Sparkle; the Princess of Friendship rules beside Prime Minister Sunset Shimmer and the Council of Friendship. The Crystal Empire, being a time displaced feudal state, did not change that much. Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Prince Shining Armor rule as a universally beloved sovereign and a war hero. As the world changes around it, the eternal Crystal City stands still.

Princess Flurry Heart, currently going through "a phase," would like to change this.

By summoning the Ghost of Communism Past as her new political science tutor while her mother is away.

It is up to Shining Armor to avert the dictatorship of the poneletariat and the downfall of the bourneighsie.

May Harmony help them all.

Celestia, Princess of the Sun and Princess of Equestria, has led a long life. She's made a lot of decisions, for good and for ill, and she's decided it's time to quit. Twilight Sparkle, her faithful student and fellow Princess, will assume the crown and rule Equestria in a month's time with the help of her friends. But before that can happen, Celestia has to host one last Grand Galloping Gala. She decided it would go out with a bang.

That was last night.

Today, the Princess awakens with a ring on her horn and a strange earth pony in her bathroom. She's hungover, and the pounding in her skull triggers some memories of events she pushed far out of her mind for many years. Because Princess Celestia wasn't always a Princess or even Celestia.

And her new husband won't stop running his mouth.

(Cover art by cadillac_dynamite.)

For the Sixth Annual Equestria at War Writing Contest...
and an Express Ticket to Horse Hell.

The year is 1023.

The world burns. Harmony has been forgotten in the fires of war. Guns, tanks, planes... technology outpaces magic and cruelties hitherto unknown are daily occurrences. One of them is Chiropterra, the last remnant of Nightmare Moon's rebellion. A thousand years ago, her loyalists fled across the sea to Zebrica, and their offspring have built a millennia-long legacy on fear and suffering. The beleaguered Hippogriffs of Aris have been pushed back to their home islands, as they were decades ago under the Storm King.

But no longer. Equestria and the Crystal Empire have withstood the invasion of Queen Chrysalis at great cost. They have rebuilt, and now the Princesses turn their eyes to their last mistake. Across the ocean, the Griffonian Empire, reforged and reformed, sees an opportunity to thaw relations between three species.

The greatest expeditionary force ever assembled, bearing weaponry never used before in war, descends upon north Zebrica to end the long night of terror. Two of the leaders find themselves at one of the first landings: Flurry Heart, the Crystal Princess and heir apparent to the Crystalline Throne, and Grover VI, the constitutional Kaiser of the Griffonian Empire. They are barely adults, and this is their first war.

Everyone wishes they took it seriously.

It has been a peaceful few years under the reign of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Ponies are happy. Equestria is progressing. New technologies have appeared, including the first fixed-wing planes. The first intercontinental flights now soar across Equestria, allowing long-distance friends and family to meet up for the first time without an arduous journey or fancy magic.

Earth Ponies are not meant to fly. Rind Watermelon knows this—and it terrifies him—but he will go with his fiancée Smoldering Ember to meet her family in Kiria, realm of the Kirins. It is only a twenty-hour flight away. He just has to look out the window, and ignore that he is in a metal tube hurtling through the sky on flimsy wings.

And there is something on the wing.

It has been a decade since Twilight Sparkle was crowned sole Princess, and Equestria is at peace.

The Crystal Empire, not so much. King Sombra is apparently unkillable, despite all efforts. He returns several times a year to be destroyed, leaving behind his horn and always swearing vengeance. The jaded Crystal Ponies, some literally jade, have grown used to their tyrant attempting to return. Princess Cadance rules with her husband Shining Armor, while their daughter Flurry Heart excels in school. All is well.

All seems well, until Cadance begins to suspect that something is wrong with her daughter after the latest battle with Sombra. Flurry quite literally walks off a blast of concentrated dark magic. What Cadance discovers will shake her family to the core and upend everything she thought she knew about her daughter.

Flurry Heart is evil. If Cadance cannot save her daughter, she must stop her before it's too late.

Equestria and the Crystal Empire have fallen to the Changeling Hegemony, led by the brutal Queen Chrysalis at the head of a mechanized horde of guns and tanks. Princess Cadance stayed in the Crystal Empire; Princess Twilight stayed in Equestria. Chrysalis rules the continent, only defied by Nova Griffonia, the poor Griffon colony in the north.

Across the ocean, the Griffonian Reich pledges to reclaim its lost territory, sundered by revolution a generation ago. While the Alicorn Sisters retreat to New Mareland, Princess Flurry Heart and Shining Armor turn to Aquileia, the Republic born out of the ashes of the Griffonian Reich. The Kaiser of the Reich is only a child, subject to a regent bent on war and conquest.

Flurry knows the Reich and Chrysalis have worked together.

She knows that war is coming to Aquileia.

She knows that Celestia and Luna abandoned her mother and Twilight Sparkle.

She knows that the world is on fire, and she is the last true Princess of Ponies.

She knows she will go home.

Cover Art by Opal Radiance, commissioned by Sunstreaker.
https://www.deviantart.com/opalradiance