Sometimes even shooting stars
Find wishes that miss their marks.
But we travel on
Like the trail isn’t lost
When the night gets too dark
And the road home seems too far
We travel on
Like the trail isn’t lost
We are the Dawn of Ponykind
We travel on
We keep the trail
Our home may be behind us
But our hearts stay on the trail
Nothing we can do
Prevents war, famine, loss
But there’s a way we can postpone it
By using the Elements
As our light
Like the trail isn’t lost
The light to shine so bright
Is friendship, tried and true.
The green hills, the rolling plains
All in harmony
We keep it as a symbol
Of un-i-ty
Like the trail isn’t lost
We are the Dawn of Ponykind
We travel on
We keep the trail
Our home may be behind us
But our hearts stay on the trail
Our homes may be behind us
But our hearts stay on the trail
But our hearts stay on the trail.
Crimson stared out the window of the passenger car, remembering that song his sister wrote so many years ago. He had started to softly sing it as well, but saw the large explosion up ahead that stopped his peace in its tracks. Coming up on Canterlot, the train was bound to be stopped at some point, but the scale of the blast gave cause enough to worry.
Up ahead, the engine’s brakes screeched as the driver realized his problem. Little pieces of marble and wood were zipping through the air, tearing the Canterlot Valley Bridge to shreds. Tense moments came and time slowed to a crawl. Beside the red Pegasus was Princess Celestia herself, nervously watching the dark tunnel give way to a bright blue sky above the combined Equestrian and Atlantean armies three quarters up the mountain.
To everypony’s relief, the train stopped right as the frontmost wheels hit jagged, twisted rails and fell off the bridge. The engine jerked slightly and angled with the rails, but not enough to fall. Just to be safe, the conductor decoupled the coal tender from the engine and hopped over with the driver.
Crimson leaned out the window and watched what seemed like half the city fall. A blue shimmer appeared above the armies for a single moment before the avalanche overwhelmed the area and covered the ponies in a huge cloud of rocky dust. Tears filled his eyes and he tried to believe the dust caused it.
Celestia walked to the window, visibly attempting to prevent the waterfall of tears - and failing. She knew what had fallen. She saw what hit her subjects - her brave soldiers, fighting to keep Equestria free - and broke down. Tears building up since the beginning of the war, for those in the army blasted by Sombra’s Gem, her sister Luna, and everypony who had died while Crimson reworked her tattered resistance from the ground up just came. And came.
Cadence watched from behind. She couldn’t do anything to comfort the older alicorn, and she knew it. Her inexperience running Equestria during a crisis wasn’t to blame, nor was her virtual lack of war knowledge. Celestia had those same characteristics, aside from the times she had to use the Elements of Harmony - but now those were useless, too. Neither of the two remaining princesses had the experience necessary to run a country during a full-blown war.
Which is where they now fell back to Queen Atlanta. The ocean-blue alicorn with radiant early-morning golden armor had stayed in Manehattan while Canterlot was under siege. She preferred to be there when the offensive began, not before. Until then, the queen would get the logistics train running smooth. With the Domination Army coming from the Dominion of Apollo, personally led by King Flawless Ice, she wanted to solidify a more permanent ceasefire while the two leaders weren’t ready to instantly go at each other’s throats. All the Dominion and Atlantis currently had was a closed-border policy.
As it was, everypony was being stubborn. The armies besieging Canterlot had to resort to blasting the city with twenty-pound smoothbore artillery just to get to where they were now. It was like Manehattan all over again, only the Crystal Empire defended this time. All access points by land had been destroyed by the holed-up two thousand ponies keeping Celestia from her home.
While waiting for Celestia to finish, Crimson tapped his head with an impatiently thoughtful right hoof. He couldn’t find a way into the city, and Captain Midnight Shadow would’ve used one days ago if he knew. Judging by the looks of the mountainside through all the dust and smoke barely cleared by hard-working Pegasi, the ancient tunnels below the city from nearly four decades of gem mining had collapsed. He couldn’t know for sure until he went down there, but the large dents and sinkholes up the slope seemed to confirm his theory.
“Princess. I need you to face reality now. We can win if we just get into the city. Any secret passages or something of the sort?” he asked.
Celestia took a minute before replying, still sniffling a bit. “Yes. I spent the three hundred years after Luna became Nightmare Moon digging an escape route through the mountain to the west end. After the disaster Canterlot became during our duel, even from the distance we started, I couldn’t allow for something like that to happen again without a way to get civilians out of harm’s way.”
“The distance?”
“Yes, the distance. We began fighting over the Everfree Castle, then the duel progressed to Canterlot and I banished her to the moon when it came back to the castle with the Elements of Harmony. But the mere two hours it took to get her to follow me away from the city was more than enough to nearly send it tumbling down the cliffside.
“The entrance is easy to find. The Royal Guards know where it is, and that’s how they were able to evacuate Twilight and I when the time came,” Cadence popped in. “But the city end is right behind the throne itself. Seeing as our army has quite possibly blown it up, we may not get in.”
“That makes it worth a shot. If the remote possibility of the other end having survived so far exists, we try. If it’s collapsed, we blast it open.” Crimson had that grim determination that both scared Cadence and caused her to admire him on his face again.
-----------------
Colonel Crimson Dawn, Major Crystal Snow, and an Atlantean Special Operations squad stood beside Princess Celestia on the west end of the mountain, looking up. Before them was a massive fortress built from the stone brought up from the gemstone mines over a millennium ago, its thick walls blocking view of the sky above even the height of the Everfree Castle’s tallest tower would’ve been at. Large patches of moss covered most of the walls and spiraling watchtowers. All but the hardest of woods had rotted away in the years of lacking maintenance, the few remaining planks covered in moss and grasses.
Princess Celestia always had the citadel kept off the map for reasons of her own, with a magical barrier surrounding it to keep ponies from sighting it. She insisted that it was a final resort, with the only records of it even existing in a locked vault deep within the mines themselves. It had a grand hall that vaguely resembled ruins elsewhere in the wild Southern Forest, but without the booby traps Daring Do typically encountered. Moreover, nopony in Equestria alive today even knew Celestia had something like this, not even the descendants of those who built it.
Starfall Fortress, as Celestia called it, was a sight to behold. Built into the mountain right outside the entrance to her emergency tunnel, it sported a massive assortment of arms. Swords, spears, bows, crossbows, even ancient rust-corroded experimental guns were stowed neatly in the amazingly roofed armory. Huge stone doors hid time-wrecked ballistas behind fifteen feet of solid rock. On every tower spiraling into the sky was a proud Equestrian flag fluttering from bronze flagpoles. If Celestia had ever been paranoid about losing a war, this was when she built Starfall.
“Damn. Just damn. I have, like, no words.” Crystal commented.
“You’re talking, cousin. And I thought I was the one with last-defense paranoia,” replied Crimson. “This place looks formidable, not to mention practical.”
“Coming from you, that’s high praise.” This Special Ops squad commander was none other than Captain Hummingbird Sweetnectar, an Earth pony mare who met the Pegasus during the Atlantean-Dominion War when mares were allowed into the Atlantean Reserve Emergency Army. she’d remained after the war, as many of her friends had done and wound up founding Special Operations, becoming its first squad commander. She had a sweet spot for her old friends Crimson and Platinum Starlight, and tried to get them to spend the night when she could. It never worked.
“And you need discipline,” Celestia noticed.
Before the mare could reply, Crimson stepped in. “Princess Celestia, Hummingbird and I go way back. She’s just having fun.”
“Well, in that case, please accept my apology.” She gestured to the wall of mountain in front of them. They’d been walking through the fortress and were now at their destination. A ghost-like mirage bowed to the princess as it recognized her, and spoke.
“My lady Princess Celestia of the Sun, it has been many years since I last was honored with your presence.”
“Cut the formalities, Filian. I need you to let these ponies through the tunnel.” she curtly responded. “Though it has been much too long. What of Lancer on the other end?”
“I am sorry to report that General Lieutenant Lancer has been lost. His Anchorage Stone fell to the ground along with the Archives.”
“He did his duty. His Anchorage Stone inscription will be carved among those past Captains of the Guard we have lost in the Past Life Hall. See to it once Crimson Dawn and his colleagues are in the tunnel.”
“Yes, my lady.”
The mountain rumbled like an earthquake when a ten-foot three-ton block of solid granite opened to reveal a darkened passageway no bigger than a double door. Magical torches lit up with the inrush of fresh air, and real-enough ashes fell.
“Be careful, Crimson Dawn. The torches signifies the time before the tunnel will collapse. Under many tons of rock it has stood for a thousand years. But its magical braces are failing. You will only have a few hours before this end is shut forever as the lost braces allow the rock to collapse the tunnel. This is my only warning to you,” the mirage Filian said.
“Thank you. We’ll hurry.”
-------------------
The group reached a fork in the tunnel. They had lost track of time, going only forward and east. Winding tunnels and dead ends kept them from actually getting to their objective as quickly as they hoped, but at least Celestia stayed behind in Starfall Fortress. She had given them a map, and they read it as best they could, but even the map didn’t help much.
Crystal Snow eventually came back from her scout ahead with Hummingbird. The two mares were smiling.
“Crimson, we found it. The throne room. It’s completely empty.”
“Guide us there.”
The six ponies crept as silently as hooves on rock allowed. It took the remainder of five hours to get there. All along the way, the torches dimmed more and more, and the Special Ops Unicorn in the squad cast an illumination spell. It didn’t last long, like an aura prevented magic.
Soon, the view was blinding. Celestia’s sun was directly overhead, light streaming through a hole in the roof when they climbed out from behind the once-magnificent throne in the Canterlot Palace. Artillery shells still shrieked their fury at the city with explosive force. One such shell slammed into the Palace roof and caused the whole grand arch to fall.
“Move it!” Crimson yelled as he dragged a mentally paralyzed Crystal Snow towards a side door. She quickly gained control of herself again and ran ahead of him.
After everyone had a chance to catch their breath, Hummingbird asked, “Y’all okay?”
“Should be, Captain.” her squad chorused. Crimson and Crystal nodded their agreement.
“Remember, we’re here to find their commander and take him prisoner. If he surrenders, our army can march up and lay out a bridge to walk across. If he doesn’t, we dead.”
The six ponies hurried through the Palace corridors. Their swords made short work of the few Crystal soldiers they ran into - quite literally. It turned out that nopony even suspected a secret passage into or out of Canterlot.
Hummingbird now snuck up to the newest opponent. She had her armored hooves silenced with the squad Unicorn’s magic, getting to right behind the Crystal stallion before he knew what was happening. A clatter of metal on marble was stopped by the same Unicorn’s quick reactions to a slit in the stallion’s throat.
They continued on to the Crystal HQ, coincidentally in the vault that once kept the Elements of Harmony locked away. The great doors were now torn from their hinges by lucky hits from the bombardment, but the place remained as secure as ever.
The squad took out the four guards outside the building at the exact same time. Crimson swooped into the hall and smashed his hooves on the commander, sending the poor stallion a good five feet of flight distance. He got up and began screaming for his guards, but five shots rang out and they fell to the floor in pools of blood.
Crystal Snow immediately recognized him. “Lieutenant Coffee Bean! Where’s Rocky Road?”
“Executed upon arrival after we failed to take the town near the forest. I was lucky enough to be spared the gift of being stuck in the mines, and have been commanding this army here in Canterlot since. Wait a cotton-picking minute!” he said as he recognized Crimson. “You’re with them? Major Snow, this is outright traitorous!”
“Noted,” she coolly replied. “But it turns out that I have two cousins on the Equestrian side of this war: Crimson here, and Celestia herself. So I decided I wasn’t going to let this tear my family apart.”
“It already has. Lythia would be ashamed of you.”
“And whose current leader foalnapped a neutral alicorn filly for no reason other than to get an edge over his enemy? Sombra’s tactics and, well, everything he’s done is downright unethical! I spent the better part of two years fighting for the Crystal Empire because it was my home! To protect my family! But apparently those on the other side of the world aren’t safe from the King of Shadows and his plans of conquest.”
Crimson butted in. “Sorry to break up this interesting but horribly timed debate, but here’s the deal: surrender, and we spare your life.”
Coffee Bean stuttered for a moment. Then he threw his hooves in the air. “Look, Major Snow, I’ve been fighting for the same reasons you did. But I like my head where it is.”