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.

Twilight Sparkle discovers that the alternate timelines created by Starlight Glimmer in her misguided attempt at revenge did not, in fact, disappear when the original timeline was restored. Instead, they persisted as separate, parallel universes.

Never one to leave a job unfinished, she decides to employ the magic of friendship to restore those universes to a more harmonious state.

She begins with Nightmare Moon.

This story is the first in a series. The other stories can be found below.

1. For Want of a Horseshoe <-- you are here
2. A Big Brother's Duty
3. Healing

Cover art provided by the excellent Sini.

Flurry Heart is not the Princess of Love, but maybe she should be. She's certainly never met anypony able to match her taste in relationships. So many ponies with the wrong partners... It's sad, really. And then they have the audacity to say her pairings are wrong.

Written for the Writeoff's Ship It prompt.

Reading by StraightToThePointStudio

Harry Potter had the (mis?)fortune to fall through a portal to the Everfree near Ponyville. He was transformed into a unicorn, to his surprise. After being found, Twilight Sparkle took him in as an orphan, and to learn more about him as he learned more about Equestria. His adventures there are another story. This story is about what happens when he is pulled back to the human world by the Goblet of Fire when he is fourteen.

Finding himself back in the human world is bad enough, but also to discover he has an unbreakable magical contract to compete in a Tournament that is known for the deaths of the competitors is just icing on the cake. What else can go wrong?

(Not a continuation of “If Wishes Were Ponies . . .”)
Scheduled posts on Monday and Thursday (UTC-4)

Edited by gerandakis. Picture by Quinn Kepner, from an image in the MLP comics.
Made the Featured List with Chapter 1! Hurray! And Popular Stories list on 9/14! A second Hurray!
And every 100 up votes gets an early release of the next chapter.

This story is a sequel to Without Your Cutie Mark

The Great and Powerful Trixie has her eye on a place in Twilight's circle of friends at Celestia's School... and then suddenly discovers it may be her only chance to stay at the School...

For more of this AU, see: Saving Sunset Shimmer (Note: You could also optionally take a detour through its backstory prequels: Sunset -- Part I and Part II.)

And check out the series, beginning with Not Exactly Friends.

After years of tireless work for the good of Equestria, Twilight Sparkle is finally getting her just rewards: a hall named after her in the Royal Canterlot Library!

However she's about to find that earning the honor was a cakewalk compared to trying to actually get there to accept it.

Winner of the August 1000 Word Challenge, written around the prompt words "Denied" and "Accidental". Some slight edits were made post-contest, but the length has been preserved.

Edit: Some people have pointed out the similarity of one of the jokes to a comic made by Glanco Justicar. While this was not intentional, I like to take it as evidence that great minds think alike.

This story is a sequel to Empty Horizons

For the first time in a thousand years, the old magic has returned to Equestria.

The Elements of Harmony have been torn asunder by the careless Equestria they found themselves in just one month ago. Twilight Sparkle fled into the ocean, pleading for her friends not to follow her after only barely stopping the destructive rampage caused by The Other. Rainbow Dash and Applejack, with nothing but their knowledge of Twilight's nature and a crew of seasoned adventurers, leave Altalusia hoping to find their lost friend and bring her back. Meanwhile, Countess Rarity finds herself trapped among the machinations of Duke Titus, but perhaps she can yet use her new position for good.

But the new Equestria remains as treacherous as ever for six mares lost in time, and the sunken ruins of their old home still holds fresh and terrifying dangers. Mysteries a thousand years old demand solving, and even those born on the floating islands of the new Equestria may find themselves torn between two paths.

The world changed in the absence of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, and with their return it braces for change once more.

Audiobook updates Thursdays and Fridays!

Edited by Noc, Dominus Alicorn, and PsyonicG.

Join the Empty Horizons Discord or Support Me On Patreon!

When Nightmare Moon’s rebellion tore across Equestria, leaving a trail of blood and horror in its wake, Princess Celestia knew that merely banishing her sister wouldn’t be enough. Her army was too powerful, and too bloodthirsty, to be left behind without a leader. When she finally turned the Elements of Harmony against her, she didn’t just banish Nightmare Moon. She banished thousands.

Now they’re in a race against time, to find a way to survive in an environment so alien that every aspect of it is trying to kill them. They face suffocation, freezing, boiling, starvation, radiation, meteorite impacts, low gravity… the list goes on.

Nightmare Moon thought she should be the ruler of all Equestria. Now, in a world nopony was ever meant to survive, her abilities will be put to the ultimate test.

This story now has a hardcover! If you'd like one of your own, you can grab it here: https://starscribe.net/

Editing by the indulgent and patient Two Bit and Sparktail. Coverart by Zutcha.

Note: I intend this story to be as faithful to our current scientific understanding of the moon, and I’ve consulted for help with the aspects outside my technical purview. That said, I fully expect to make decisions that some may see as mistakes, based on their own independent interpretations.

I am a storyteller first, and I realize it’s likely I’ll eventually make a mistake, or an arbitrary decision to simplify the storytelling over accuracy. I’m doing my best here, but this isn’t a NASA white paper. Set your expectations accordingly.

This story was commissioned by Canary in the Coal Mine on my Patreon, feel free to contact me if you’d like one of your own!

The graffiti did not bother her. The art of vandalism was, in some form or another, as old as civilization itself. The content, on the other hoof, was an entirely different issue. “Princest Is Wincest,” it said. Bad grammar and spelling were one thing, but this was an attack on the Equestrian language.

Luna frowned. She would have to ask Celestia about this at the first opportunity. Perhaps there were spare funds for a literacy program. If nothing else, Tia might be able to explain what exactly the phrase meant.

Thanks to Wade and Sereg for prereading. Thanks to Burraku_Pansa and especially Midnight Rambler for editing.

Dramatic reading, courtesy of CaptainBron3y.

A long time ago, two sisters ruled over the land: one held dominion over the day, and the other commanded the night. They quarreled, and to solve their dispute, they did something petty. They split the planet in half. They stopped the rotation of the planet—tidally locked it—so that one side would always be night, and the other always day.

Rarity is a member of the Corona Empire's parliament, sworn to do what is best for her country. One day, Queen Celestia summons her for a private talk. She asks Rarity to do something unthinkable, unfathomable, unheard of: deliver a message to the leader of the Nightscape, Queen Luna.