This story is a sequel to Only the Best, Only the Elite

8 years have passed since that fateful test, and Twilight has been taken under the wing of Celestia; to become the next heir to the throne. However, a Nightmare from the past will challenge that right.

Recently an uprising has been gaining traction, the Cult of the Nightmare Moon. They've been relentlessly promoting the return of Celestia's sister: the infamous Mare in the Moon. Years ago, they did something Twilight will never forgive. They took something precious from her. Something she can never replace. Her very being yearns for revenge.

When the sun goes down and with Nightmare Moon's return inevitable...one can't help but wonder, which one is the real Nightmare?

Unicorns are Elite. Just ask them. All must enroll in Celestia's Magical University in Canterlot. The motto however is adhered to without exception: Only the best, only the Elite. May Celestia show them mercy if they fail any task. The Princess however, has none to give.

In a society where knowledge is power, the unicorns of Canterlot refuse to be anything less than the best. Everything depends on it. Everything. Money, friends, it all is based solely on how well you've done at the Academy. Failure is not an option. But don't fret, even the failures will graduate...Eventually. They have to. Because at any cost all Unicorns must be:

Only the Best, only the Elite.

When Starlight Glimmer tricked Twilight Sparkle into freezing a filly Rainbow Dash in crystal, the sonic rainboom was prevented. This sent a wave of chaos through the timesteam as destiny unraveled, and empowered Discord. He is quite curious as to who exactly was evil enough to cast a potentially lethal spell at a filly.

This story is a sequel to Seven of Six: A Screaming Butterfly

Twilight Sparkle is a unicorn prodigy, her special talent of magic allowing her to wield all manner of the arcane arts with ease. She is an SGU graduate, has connections with the Royal Guard, knows Princess Celestia, and is a mother to a juvenile dragon.

She's also apprenticed to Discord, Lord of Chaos and Disharmony.

And he has a mission for her. A fallen alicorn named Nightmare Moon will soon return to bring eternal night and assured death to all the world. It's up to her to retrieve the Elements of Harmony and stop her.

Join her as she explores a familiar town, befriends familiar ponies, and completes a quest that's as old as the fandom itself, but with a twist.

A retelling of the pilot episode Friendship is Magic, but set in one of Starlight's alternate timelines.

Even though it seemed normal for her, Derpy's never been the best at breathing. When she panics, when she flies too fast for too long, or sometimes just randomly in the middle of the night, waking her up out of her dreams and nightmares. She's never known there was a solution for her problem, or for the other problems she didn't even know she had.

After Derpy's visit to the hospital, things in her life get more complicated than she feels like she can handle. What happens after that? Derpy tries her best, of course. That's all anypony can really do.

Written as part of a series of ongoing PG-13 commissions for an Anonymous donor.

Content Warning: Mild AU, depression/intrusive thoughts, realistic portrayals of mental illness and emotional trauma.

Please be careful reading this story if you suffer from depression or another mental illness. Some of the passages contained now (and especially later) may be triggering.

Twilight Sparkle's wildest dreams have just been met, and exceeded. Due to an unexpected magical outburst during her entrance exam to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, the Solar Princess herself took an interest and took Twilight on as her personal student.

This was a pleasant shock for Twilight and her family. However, a few months later, a less pleasant shock would reach Twilight in the form of Celestia returning to Canterlot with a new daughter, a freshly adopted pegasus filly named Rainbow Dash. As the two get to know each other, Twilight can clearly see something eating at the self absorbed and competitive filly's mind.

To make matters even more confusing, Princess Celestia is now hiding something. Twilight dares not question it, but it is quite clear that Celestia isn't being wholly open with anypony about her decision to adopt some random orphan.

Could the answers have something to do with the cryptic dream Twilight had the night before she met Rainbow Dash?

**Apparently, this was featured on August 12th, but I slept through that brief window. All the same, I am flabbergasted and humbled!**

Cover Art by the wonderfully skilled Novaintellus

Now with a TV Tropes Page.

Changelings can be named after insect body parts. Thorax. Chrysalis. Pharynx. So Leg is a changeling name. Sortof. Technically. She's not happy with it.

My entry in the Quills and Sofas Speedwriting Contest #14, "A Worthy End." Written in one hour and totally unedited.

This story is a sequel to Good Trooper Gilda

Gilda has been a fugitive, a refugee, a prisoner of war, and a bat-hen to Equestria's fussiest unicorn. But it wasn't until she took 'the Princess's bit', that she began to know something about what it meant to be responsible for the welfare of others, even if the others in question happened to be the pack of imbeciles, blackguards, con-ponies, and bat-ponies who had been fool enough to answer her captain's call to the standard.

A crystalline standard which had not been seen in the living world for over a thousand years.

And although Captain Gleaming Shield and her motley band of raw recruits and shifty bat-ponies aimed to do nothing more exotic and dangerous than put a foreign princess on her proper throne, there are other things stirring in the shadows.

Like calls to like, and the revival of ancient battle-colors may lead to the revival of other, darker memories upon which the rays of Celestia's sun lay lightly and infrequently.

Gilda only wanted the humble things in life. Cheap rent, copious bits, the respect of her peers, the occasional juicy field-mouse.

Being captured by the Equestrians and dragooned into the Territorials wasn't quite what she'd dreamed of, but at least the rent was free.

And the rats were nice and plump.

Given a unique perspective on negative emotion, less than a foal's knowledge of ordinary magic, a healthy schadenfreude, and danger bearing down on all sides, the self-proclaimed "Weiss Noir" makes no plans accounting for his death, and plans to keep it that way, even after being torn away from earth, turned into a unicorn, and dumped into one of the most inhospitable locations and times in all of Equestria.

Stranded in the Frozen North, a place where biting cold ends lives, and one thousand years in the past, in a time when peril is the norm, rather than the exception, Weiss decides to indulge in sorcery most foul, stolen ideas, and human ingenuity to survive.

Given the choice between a mad slaver and a mad sage, however, there is no avoiding an inevitable tide of ponies escaping the conquered Crystal Empire to bask in the warmth of his well-stoked hate. Something which draws attention, enemies, and most worryingly, the rivalry of his "peers".

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