“Princess! Princess, princess, princess!” the voice of my sister’s beloved ex-student roused me from my slumbers, drawing groans of frustration and annoyance as the young alicorn galloped down the halls of the castle, likely looking for my sister. “Princess Luna!” she called out again, drawing flicks of my ears at the call of my name.
With a groan, I rolled from my bed and landed on… most of my hooves… My chin ended up hitting the end of the mattress and almost became glued to it as an act to return me to my dreams.
“I’m coming…” I groaned through yawns as the sounds of galloping ceased at my door and was replaced by frantic rapping of my chamber doors. “I’m coming!” I called back again, urging the student to stop the noises.
“Princess Luna, it’s urgent I speak to you!” Princess Twilight announced as soon as I neared the door. Twilight didn’t even seem to wait for me to open the door myself and instead bucked her way in before sprinting for my balcony. “You have to see this!”
“What is it, Twilight? It’s too late for you to be up!” I groaned but followed after the mare regardless. Whatever had gotten her riled up probably would keep me up for as long as she was, which going off her current record would be for the next eight weeks.
“Princess, I know this is going to seem like a strange question, but how aware of the events going on in your sky?” Twilight demanded as she began fumbling with my telescope, a gift from her after I’d dealt with the tantabus.
“Twilight, it is my sky. I would think I know it very well, why?” I frowned, now curious and slightly curious about what was going on. Twilight swiveled the telescope towards the East and began working to get something into focus. My own mind began to search in the same direction but found that none of my heavenly bodies had move- wait...
“Can you feel it? There’s something moving up there that shouldn't be! Should there?” Twilight remarked as she found her target. “Found it!”
“Let me see, please.” I requested and pressed my eye to the eyepiece once Twilight had stepped back. Searching for the object, I was forced to combine the starmap in my mind with what I was looking at in order to adjust the direction of the object and focus in on it. There it was, whatever it was.
Glowing brightly as a star, I reached out with my magic to try and feel it out, find out what it was. The strangest thing was that I couldn’t quite get a proper grip on it, as if it wasn’t actually one of my heavenly bodies, so I announced such.
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel like a star…” I muttered to myself before looking up from the telescope to the stars above, trying to pinpoint it’s location in relativity to everything else. Looking back down into the eyepiece, I reached out again and magically touched the surface of the object, finding it warm to the touch; not star warm but certainly pleasant to the touch.
Tracing the exterior of whatever it was, I began trying to paint an image in my mind of whatever it was but grew further curious as my magic reached some kind of pillar on all four sides, near to the back. A bit more mental tugging and I felt the craft begin to turn towards the planet, towards me.
“So? What do you think? Is it possible something new may have wandered in from beyond?” Twilight asked giddily, prancing on the toes of her hooves eagerly. “Can I name it?”
“I would withhold your enthusiasm, miss Sparkle.” I frowned as I tried to keep the object from growing nearer, but failed as my magic was now completely sliding off it’s surface. “Whatever it is, I think I may have…” I stepped back from the device to star upwards at a steadily growing dot in the sky. “I think I may have altered it towards the planet...”
“Then can’t you just stop it and put it back?” Twilight’s eagerness turned to curious worry, with the worry growing over the curiosity and devouring it steadily. I shook my solid blue mane in reply.
“Whatever it is, I can’t get a hold on it…” I admitted with a half-hearted smirk. “I seem to have redirected it towards us and… well I can’t move it any longer.” I announced and stepped back into the room with the youngest alicorn.
“So… what you’re saying is that we’ve got an unknown object from space flying directly at the castle?” Twilight’s eyes went wide with danger before bolting from the room with me hot on her heels. “Princess! Princess, princess, princess!” She began calling again, this time most likely form my sister. “Luna, get Celestia and I’ll get Sunset!”
“We’ll meet in the courtyard.” I agreed and continued down the hall while Twilight diverted towards her student’s room. I slid to a halt before the grand doors of my older sister and knocked as quickly and as urgently as Twilight had done on my door.
“What in Tartarus is going on out here!” Celestia barked from behind the door. She wasn’t a morning person in the slightest and it showed whenever someone woke her from sleep too early. “This better be bucking important!” she barked again as she stuck her head, solid mane and sans crown, out from the crack looking completely cranky. “What?”
“Sister, forgive me for the rude awakening, but we have a major problem heading straight for the castle!” I announced hurriedly. “Twilight found something in the night sky that was moving when it shouldn’t have been. I took a look and I think I may have detoured it towards us!”
“Then go put it back! You don’t need me to hold your hoof anymore!” Celestia groaned back and sucked her head back into the room. “Goodnight!”
“I can’t, that’s the problem! It’s not a celestial body so I can’t get a grip on it!” I shouted back at the door while the guards on either side merely shot me a nervous glance from the sides of their eyes.
“You brought it here, you can turn it away!” Celestia’s voice shouted back as the sound of her bed squeaking under her weight told me she was adamant at not helping.
“I can’t! My magic just keeps slipping off it!” I shouted back with growing tears of frustration. “I need my sister’s help!”
“Get Twilight to help you! I’m going back to sleep till it’s time to switch the sun and moon!” Celestia announced firmly before going silent. I held my breath in disbelief before turning away from the door to make my way to the courtyard as planned.
“Guard, begin mass evacuations of Canterlot, we may be in for a massive problem.” I announced once sucking in a breath. The guards all around me had their eyes expand before sprinting off to comply. Not even a minute later and an air-raid siren began to whine through the air, waking and alerting the entirety of the city on the mountain.
Stepping into the courtyard, I found Twilight with her student Sunset Shimmer sitting on a nearby bench with a squad of guards around them protectively. At my arrival, the guards all split and let me through to sit down next to Sunset.
“So, what exactly happened?” Sunset inquired looking up at me. “Twilight wasn’t very informative.”
“It seems that she found something travelling the stars. I tried to reach out and touch it, find out what it was.” I began to explain, drawing raised eyebrows from the tired orange mare. “In my eagerness to find out what it was, I think I knocked it off it’s course and aimed it towards the castle. I can’t move it now because my magic just glides over the surface.” I lowered my head at the announcement, ashamed that I’d be the cause of the destruction of the castle.
“So, what do we do?” Twilight looked past her friend at me expectantly. Everyone else nearby all seemed to be thinking the same thing and watched me, waiting for an answer.
“I’ve already begun evacuations.” I announced as the sirens in the background hopefully meant that ponies were fleeing the city in droves. “We have to get everyone off Canterlot Mountain and to safety. There’s no way to tell what will happen when the object hits the ground.” I announced and turned my muzzle to the steadily closing light. Even now, the object was beginning to enter the atmosphere and its surface was beginning to glow as the reflections of my sister’s sun no longer provided it’s light.
“So it could hit and wipe out everything around us… Ponyville included?” Sunset inquired with fear, all our minds going to our mutual friends nearby. “Is there anything we can do? Your sister, can she help you move it or redirect it away from here?”
“She doesn’t want to help. I don’t think she knows what’s at stake.” I reported as a burst of light warned everyone to a teleportation spell being cast and received.
“Oh, I’m well aware of what’s at stake now.” Celestia remarked, having returned to her motherly nature. “I apologize for my outbursts earlier, Luna.” she briefly bowed her head to me as the Guard took steps forward in all directions to widen their area of protection around Celestia.
“It’s not a problem. I forgot how grumpy you can be when you’re woken prematurely.” I nodded back and stood with my friends. “So, what do you think? Can you help?”
“Perhaps. If we have the assistance of Twilight and her student.” Celestia remarked with a smile while aiming the comment towards the two mares.
“Absolutely, princess Celestia. We’ll help however we can.” Sunset announced and the four of us all stood in a circle, our horns pointed towards each other before I raised mine upwards towards the threat. As it grew nearer and burned up in the atmosphere, I could begin to see enormous jets of blue fire erupting from underneath the thing as I attempted to apply my magic over it’s glossy surface.
A sudden influx of magical energy told me that the two alicorns and unicorn were pouring their magic into me, strengthening my own magic by a factor of twenty. The glow around my horn erupted into an overglow, followed by a second and third as I attempted to wrap the object in my magic and at least bump it off in a direction.
“I..” I groaned out in frustration as a fifth overglow surrounded my horn, making me look like I had a second body attached at the horn. “I can’t…”
“You can do it Luna! You’ve got this!” Sunset shouted over the whipping winds around us and the screaming of not only the ponies still in Canterlot but the screaming of the object as it sliced through the atmosphere like an angry Phoenix.
I tried again, searching for any kind of surface I could use to grab onto before reaching the back of the thing and grabbed onto the two pillars at the top. With a shake of my head I applied as much braking force on the pillars in hopes that it would cause enough drag to lift the nose of the thing up and over our heads.
“I think it’s working!” A stallion nearby announced as he watched the proceedings. A quick check and yes, it did seem it was working. It seemed like I had managed to establish just enough drag on the top portion of the thing that it no longer looked like it was aiming directly for the castle, but was going to end up going just over it.
“Is that...” another guard spoke up, his voice filled with confusion as the flames died off to reveal the shape of the thing. “Is that some kind of craft?”
“I think so…” a third guard remarked as I opened my eyes and everyone who wasn’t pouring magic into me turned them upwards. True enough, now that the flames had burned out I could make out the shape of a massive craft aimed nose down towards us. It seemed that whatever I was pushing against looked to be two of the four… limbs of propulsion. The blue fires underneath seemed to have been purposely lit and kept burning with force as the craft began to lift it’s nose higher, now without my intervention.
“We’re done, I think we’ve saved ourselves!” I shouted and gave my sister and friends break, which they did by dropping to their stomachs. I watched through weary eyes as I too collapsed, but kept my head up to watch the craft turn from it’s point of impact on us to its new heading towards a nearby lake and White-tail woods.
The screaming continued even as the craft knocked the top of the tallest tower from Canterlot Castle and set the rubble into the rest of our home below. The heat felt from the craft and it’s blue flames was like being trapped in the Saddle Arabian deserts at high noon with the force of the air pushing everyone to the ground and blowing everything unanchored around.
The craft roared overhead and continued on its original trajectory, though now with the four of us flying behind it to try and catch up; Sunset levitating herself to do so. It seemed that whatever the blue fires underneath were, they were indeed responsible for the craft’s propulsion as the same fires, only even more massive in scale, burned behind the craft towards the forest.
None of the four of us could keep up with the craft and it soon ripped through the night sky until it finally reached the treeline and promptly deforested a good stretch of at least a kilometer. A kilometer of ground that had at one point housed the lives of the deer who never really did anything or even came out of the forest in the first place. Who knew how many lives were lost there…
“I suspect we’re going to be hearing from the deer soon, won’t we?” Celestia sighed as she kept pace alongside me and Twilight with Sunset on my other side as we followed after the destruction. We were in for quite a night, that was certain.