Twilight Sparkle had a bad dream.
She was trapped in a small office room filled with swirling papers and lots of bodies. Folding tables stacked high with advanced radio equipment lined the walls. Ponies breezed around the room on the tide of papers, chattering away in morse code.
At some point, an entire stack of them toppled to the floor. Nopony seemed to notice. The papers got trampled. They didn’t have time to pick them up.
This was the worst part of Twilight’s dream; its timelessness. The dream didn’t end--it merely looped at an opportune moment. Either she was stuck where she was now, behind her desk, behind the circus playing out before her, or she was a few minutes in the future. Only on a very rare occasion did the dream progress logically, the way she remembered.
Dreams didn’t follow the rules of time. She was a passive observer to an impending calamity that inched a little closer with every second yet never quite reached her, and she was in the middle of absolute and wrenching stillness in the moments after.
She preferred the chaos of a crowded room. It gave her a place to hide.
One of the ponies floating around the room started a new pile on her desk and said, “They’re two minutes off target, princess.”
Twilight replied, “Any sign of anti-air elements? More griffon flyers?”
“No Princess.”
“Proceed on course. Make sure the quick response team is fully fueled. I submitted the paperwork for extra fuel twenty minutes ago. It should have gone through to the prep team by now.”
The soldier broke eye contact and pointed towards the fallen stack of papers being swirled around the floor. A brutish staff sergeant kicked his way through the largest collection, tearing a few pages apart. Twilight and the soldier winced together.
“See if you can’t get a courier over there, please. I don’t want the magic platform running out of power halfway across the mountains and dumping our reaction team in the snow.”
“Yes, princess.”
Twilight watched the soldier run away for as long as she could until ten other ponies stepped between them. She sighed.
Did she have a name anymore? Princess. Her official title. A public official ceased to be human in wartime--and peacetime, for that matter. They became their title. Princess. Soldier. Did that soldier have a name? Yellow coat, bright eyes, atrocious green hat. Twilight didn’t think to look at her name tapes until she was too far gone. It was odd--the only ones who ever really wore green during the war were specialized units of deer. Odd.
She must have been one of the desk jockeys slinging classified documents through shredders and mailboxes and mailboxes converted into shredders for convenience’s sake. A bureaucrat. How had she wound up in the most important room in all of Canterlot that evening? Extra ponypower, probably. More couriers, and--gods above, somepony who could properly file lots of papers at once would be more valuable than a hundred tons of bombs out there. Bureaucrats never started wars, but by Celestia bureaucrats filed the documents that ended wars.
Twilight looked over the crowd. She could have sent somepony else, relegated the task to a dumber pony with longer faster legs and less of a brain to weigh them down.
But--but!--she was here. The mare she needed was running away from her at breakneck speed. There were papers in front of her, dozens of them, tossed onto her desk and into her lap in passing gestures of dismissal by the ponies in the room. Nopony bothered with staples. The documents kept coming and not enough of them were being picked out to be destroyed to keep up.
Her hoof went up, then down. The din was awful. Why didn’t she just ask everypony to quiet down a little? She couldn’t think. Did she need to? Typewriters clickyclack-clickyclack-brrring ponies walking hard-hooved boots and formal dress shoes clickyclack-clickyclack boxy leyline communicators hissing and crackling like a muffled fire about to explode from beneath a canvas bag the warring nation of Griffonia is about to attack Canterlot stop advance team discovered in Whitetail Woods stop enough to induce panic in local populace stop dispatch Wonderbolt squad to suppress from air stop please quiet down stop princesses advised shut down court and were evacuated to greater Canterlot catacomb network awaiting further information other importants in castle saferoom orchestrating countermeasures stop why is it so loud stop aerial bombardment deemed hazardous due to dry season stop it’s a cycle stop may produce forest fire stop they speak louder because they can’t hear themselves and in doing so drown out everypony around them stop protesters outside gates to be ushered inside castle proper in event of attack stop potential PR campaign stop
What were her thoughts in all this? Were they the notes on the transcription in front of her? Or were they in the head of her speech writer who would be alerted of the discovery in about an hour to give him time to craft a press release regarding why Twilight Sparkle almost burnt down a protected wilderness area.
Twilight couldn’t think--how could she? It wasn’t her fault, though sometime many years in the future somepony or other would undoubtedly pin the blame on her. The room was loud. Papers flew in the door and onto her desk, then off again. Ponies shouted coordinates and status updates--one of the Wonderbolts had to turn back due to a bent primary messing with her descent patterns, the rest of the squad was still okay--over each other.
A brief exchange crystallized in her mind. It probably originated there--though she couldn’t tell for sure.
“It’s Rainbow Dash?” one officer asked another. “She’s the scrappiest Wonderbolt out of the lot.”
“I’ll bet it’s because of what happened in Gallopili.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. This is her first time back in the field since that all went down.”
“Can you blame her for being skittish? Not that the similarity holds any weight--”
“No. It’s probably not. I’m just saying--the two missions are sorta similar.”
“And did you see her face? With your own eyes? Gods above.”
The papers on her desk slid over each other. A few of them fell to the floor, deceased. The rest remained just a few inches away from her. She felt as if she could almost reach out and touch them.
The fuzz from the communications devices intensified as the Wonderbolt squad hit a pocket of magical interference. Hardly mission-ending, but the static caused the room to swell and retract in regular intervals, as if the building was breathing hard to get rid of a headache.
It was only a dream of course--the building couldn’t breathe.
A dream.
“Princess.”
“Final permission from the princesses are in.”
“Wonderbolts are two minutes off target.”
“Why are we shouting?”
“Weather charts from Cloudsdale are in, Princess.”
“Princess?”
“Yes,” Twilight replied. “Uh--what? Who was that addressed to?” Four ponies raised their hooves, then lowered them at the same time. “The--one about the weather.”
A pony in a suit stepped forward. “Yes Princess, weather reports are the same as usual. Dry and warm. Still no rain in the forecast due to the cloud rationing.”
“See what you can do about getting some clouds for our reaction force in case they need to put out a fire. We have weather pegasi, right?”
Another pony stepped between Twilight and the suit. “Yes Princess. A squad of pegasi, most of them former weatherponies, a couple mages, and a squad of earth ponies with teleportation capabilities.”
“Okay. Keep the earth ponies away from the fire itself, should one break out. The pegasi can do their magic with the clouds while the earth ponies dig fire trenches around the forest should it come to that. They have spades, right?”
A garbled message crackled over the communicator. “We’ll use our hooves if we have to, Princess.”
It unnerved Twilight that somepony else had been listening to her conversation. There was no privacy in this room. The walls heard her every word.
It briefly occurred to her, then didn’t, that there were almost certainly recorders in the room. In case somepony messed up and got everyone killed, they would need the tapes to assess what and who went wrong. The technology didn’t exist to monitor her thoughts, but she kept her mind blank just in case.
Private thoughts were detrimental to the process of deciding which places to bomb, Twilight knew. Science and the arts could harbor it, but war couldn’t. There wasn’t enough time and there wasn’t enough room for opinions. Only what was before you. Whatever you could comprehend, you acted on. Whatever you couldn’t, you remembered. Days and days and days of content--yet you would always come back to the things you could not understand.
The unknown is a drug that some try to escape and others try to embrace. Nopony would ever admit it, but both outcomes ended the same way.
Twilight looked towards the corners of the room, where the surveillance cameras were located. She stared into its eye, a wide black drop of paint at the end of a box. How many ponies were watching her--if any were at all?
She didn’t know. There it was--the unknown! Twilight Sparkle hated the unknown. She yearned to escape it permanently, a little at a time. Did that mean she tried to escape the unknown or embrace it? She didn’t know. She couldn't think in this room--everypony was shouting. It was so loud!
She raised her hoof and waved to the camera.
“Princess Sparkle?”
She turned. Her hoof snapped to her side. Rigid and stiff; the princessly pose. Anything else would not do. Anything else would alert the ponies watching her of her duress. “Yes?” she asked, her voice monitored by somepony else, and then a moment later herself.
“The squad’s ready to initiate their attack run. We need your final approval to go through with it. And, it’d probably be best to listen in, Princess. For posterity's sake.”
“Posterity?”
“Don’t you want to tell your grandfoals about the day you saved Canterlot?”
“They’re going to attack Canterlot?” Twilight’s eyes shrunk. That had not been included in her mission briefing.
“Well, they’re in range to. We think that’s what--princess, are you really unaware?”
With a great lurch, Twilight rose from her chair and felt the tole sitting at perfect attention had taken on her body. “How far away are they from their target?” she asked the soldier.
“They’re just about to cross the forest threshold. They should be on target in one minute.”
One minute--what a riot!
The past was a glutton when Twilight least needed it to be. It savored seconds, devouring them with a slow slackjawed bite that left Twilight’s nerves shot. Fifty five seconds. These other ponies all looked so busy. Why couldn’t Twilight be busy? She wanted a job. She didn’t want to command ponies. She wanted to educate. She wanted to be a teacher. Fifty seconds. She wanted to bring her books to the nations and enlighten a generation and then die when she no longer had the capacity to learn. The capacity to know better. Forty five seconds. That’s what she was; a failure. Because she didn’t know any better. She didn’t know anything about military command. She knew what other ponies had done in the past. That had kept her afloat until now. Forty seconds. But she didn’t have any real skills. She was an artist who made exact copies of famous portraits and sold them at low prices. She was a cover band. Who the hell cares about cover bands? Thirty five seconds. This was real. This was now. What did she know about dropping bombs on a forest in a precise enough manner to not start a forest fire? What did she know about the new ways Equestrian scientists were creating to more effectively destroy other living things? Thirty seconds. It was beyond her how they came up with some of these tools. What did they know about rockets that could rip through a forest without burning the trees? Twenty five seconds. All she knew was in the past. Not this. This mission was real! It was in the present! Twenty seconds. The ponies throwing themselves into the fire had just talked to her. They talked. They could hear her--hear the words she said! Fifteen seconds. They were alive, and some of them might not be in a matter of seconds. What did they know? They were soldiers, sworn to defend Twilight Sparkle and the princesses with their lives. They didn’t know what to do. That’s what soldiers were good for; they followed orders. Ten seconds. They don’t know how to make things better and they can’t live with not doing anything. They aren’t supposed to have all the answers. Twilight was supposed to have all the answers. That was the nature of her position. She didn’t. Five seconds. Maybe Twilight was wrong about herself--maybe she really was a soldier, because she didn’t know what on earth to do--
“Where are they?” Twilight blurted. “It’s been a minute--what’s going on? What’s happening?”
A few heads turned to stare at Twilight, and for the first time she noticed immense bags under each and every pony’s eyes. Had she gotten any sleep last night? Had she ordered anypony else to get some? She couldn’t remember--there was no room to remember. The present was here. The past was eating away at it, slow but steady.
“You counted, Princess?” one asked.
Twilight stared back only to find Spike staring back at her. “You counted?” he asked, horrified. “You counted all the bodies? How is that--how was there anything left?”
The typewriters clacked away in the background, their keys falling to the page in a regular heartbeat. Padded footsteps against hardhood, crafting words like swords. You’d be surprised, she wanted to say, at the miniscule amount of body actually needed to declare a lump of ash a body. She wanted to talk to Spike about the incident report, the pictures. The blackened talons lying on the earth as if they had been casually discarded there. She was good at picking those kinds of details, finding the small traces of humanity that hadn’t been obliterated by the fire. She did it to herself everyday, It still overjoyed her to find a shard of bone or a piece of horn. It meant she hadn’t been completely burned up yet.
“Princess Sparkle,” the radio blared, “we are on target.”
“What do you see?” one of the officers across the room asked on Twilight’s behalf. “Is the camp there?”
“We see a camp--”
“It’s something--”
“It’s smaller than we expected--”
All three Wonderbolts spoke at once, then paused to let the other finish.
“And?” Twilight blurted out.
“And--Princess, it appears there’s about a two griffons down there.”
“I count ten--no, nine?”
“No--there’s a couple over there in the clearing with the tents, then there’s a couple by the treeline--”
“About two dozen,” can the third voice, sturdier than the rest. “There’s more or less two dozen. Could be more if they’re out and about patrolling the forest.”
In Canterlot, Twilight wheeled around to face the room. The ponies closest to her had sensed something brewing and had stopped to stare at the communicator. Now they looked to her. In the background, a courier placed another file of papers onto her desk.
“I thought--our intel said it was closer to a hundred.”
“Princess,” one of the Wonderbolts spoke through the communicator, “I can see the camp. There’s a couple tents in a circle around a heating box. They’ve probably been cooking on it.”
“I--” Twilight paused. “I thought it would be bigger.”
“Are we clear to begin bombardment?” the communicator asked. “Princess?”
“I thought it would be--camp. Our camp. Like, barracks and a flagpole.”
“Princess?”
“What good would a flagpole do in the forest?” one of the soldiers beside her mumbled.
The room glowed purple. A document appeared at Twilight’s side, pulled from one of the many file cabinets behind her. “Look. Here. Estimates showed upwards of a hundred griffons setting up an advance outpost in the Whitetail Woods. Likely origin is from the remnants of their fifth aviation unit. Likely objectives are attacks on the surrounding metropolitan areas. Ponyville and Canterlot in range. Canterlot, being a more symbolic target, is more likely to be attacked.” She looked up from her paper in desperation. “Where are all the griffons?”
The typewriters insisted. Chugging away. New papers--new intel, perhaps? Enemy strength was overestimated--payload reduction strongly advised due to fire hazard? Twilight had heard it all before. Who had made the initial report? Had anypony seen the camp with their own eyes until now?
The communicator popped and fizzed before spitting out a non-reply. “Are we clear to begin bombardment?” the Wonderbolt asked again.
Should she? Twilight finally remembered she had to give the final go-ahead to begin dropping bombs and the unease that came with it. She pictured two dozen Griffonian flags, neatly folded and delivered to houses across the empire. No coffin--she would make sure there was nothing left to bury. Was that all it took to become brutal--necessity? If she really had to do this--no. Hypotheticals led to thought. She couldn’t think right now. She had to make a decision. She wasn’t brutal. She wasn’t a devil. She was just terrified of making a mistake. She was in a war. What else was she supposed to do--argue for peace? Fluttershy tried to do that. She was probably still outside the castle walls, holding a sign with the draft-dodgers and the conscientious objectors and the peace advocates. How would she feel when it came out that Twilight gave the order to almost burn down the Whitetail Woods? It was a protected preserve.
Would she and Fluttershy still be friends after the war? In Twilight’s dream she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t possibly know what would happen next.
Was it worth it? She asked herself as she took hold of the communicator with her magic and brought it to her lips. She kissed the metal on accident and cringed as a loop of feedback cut through the room. Ponies were moving again. They were alive. She was about to say a few words, and then let go.
“This is Princess Sparkle. Sequence eight, seven, negative, ten.”
“You’re authorized.”
“I think they see us.”
“No, they’re just walking around.”
“I think they see us.”
“Do it!”
No more talking, Twilight wanted to say. If it hadn’t been counter-intuitive to her point she would have screamed it. Picked up the closest pony and shaken them until they fell apart. Why couldn’t these ponies realize what she had just done? They were running around again, darting in and out of the room, yanking paper from typewriters and feeding more into their metallic jaws, shouting over each other. Precious Metals had to be informed. More paperwork to fill out. Go ahead. Scream until you’re hoarse. Nopony can hear in this room. There’s no privacy. There’s no thought. It’s all a single action, like the many parts of a muscle flexing simultaneously, or a ripple of fire passing through dry brush.
“Bombs away,” she somehow heard. “Bombs away. Bombs away. Bombs away.”
Bombs away. Bombs away. Twilight couldn’t breathe. Here were the consequences. She shouldn’t breathe! Fire! Fire everywhere! Her hooves were made of parched earth, her mane cracked branches. Her heart burst into flames. Each beat brought another explosion. Each beat of her pulse pushed the flames out a little further, until it reached the bottoms of her hooves. Her foundation was alight. Mares and gentlecolts, fillies and foals, Twilight Sparkle was on fire!
She burned until the bombs hit the ground and sucked the oxygen out of her. While they were still in the air, she backed up. Heard the whistling. Was it the air current around the Wonderbolt fliers? It had to be. She had filled out paperwork so that they could use bombs that fell silently. This wasn’t an air raid. It was a series of aerodynamic and mathematical calculations followed by a tremendous explosion.
And then the fire ate up her foundation, she she was falling.
Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling down! Twilight Sparkle was falling like she had been dropped instead of the bombs. Falling, spinning, full of fire and death and so pent up--so hell bent on keeping it inside the only possible release would be a violent and sudden explosion. She hit her chair the moment the communicators filled with a disgusting static hiss--Whoosh!--rising up, snaking its fingers through the cords of the communicators and then through naked space itself, reaching out from the mesh-coated speakers, propelled by sine waves, making to cauterize her ears shut.
Somewhere in it all--somewhere far removed from the chaos, a flower bloomed in the Whitetail Woods.
The naked breeze swayed it from side to side. The forest floor collected the sounds of early morning, the distant birds and their useless flapping, the creaking, the groaning, the confident hum of life building itself up atop the dead, into droplets which condensed on the flower’s petals.
Somewhere in it all--somewhere far removed from the chaos, another flower bloomed in the Whitetail Woods.
The naked breeze swayed it from side to side. It sucked in a rush of dry air as its petals rushed outwards. It ate up the trees, the birds, the griffons--the forest floor itself seemed no less immune. The earth itself was burning. In a place teeming with life, there was no better place for a thing like fire. It ate what it could and clung to what was left; the air, the brush, the pitiful tents. It moved without sound through the trees like an ancient predator. Older than animals, older than them. Seconds old--but who was counting?
Ponies were fickle. They changed their minds. But fire was unthinking. Fire had a lot in common with ponies. It was beautiful and at times terrifying, and at its very heart burned the desire to survive. Fire didn’t die quickly or easily. You had to smother it or bury it alive or starve it. Fire didn’t go out beautifully. It sputtered and sparked and coughed and screamed.
To call it carnivorous was an understatement. It clung to carbon. It ate everything organic.
Twilight Sparkle listened on in horror as the fire surged around the camp. The bombs weren’t on target. Somepony had made a mistake. They fell just to the left into the treeline. The trees fractured, then disappeared. The tents billowed and burned.
All at once the radio swelled with a dozen different voices, all shouting. The room spun. Everypony was talking. Talking talking talking talking talking and she couldn’t hear a word of it, like she was the odd filly out sitting in the corner of the lunch room, eating, drinking up the noise. Listening.
She listened as, in a matter of seconds, the fire surrounded the clearing. The Wonderbolts could hardly see it. It took root among the dry brush on the ground before it could snake its way up the trees and blossom among the leaves.
It roared with savage finality. The whole room heard it above its own noise. Half a minute had passed since the bombs hit the earth and pushed up their strange flowers.
“We can’t control this,” Twilight heard the Wonderbolts say in a few different ways. “We need to call the reaction force--”
“We can fly back and get fire suppressant--”
“We won’t make it back in time--”
“Rainbow Dash would--we can too--”
All the talk finally resonated with Twilight. She understood, as she had a hundred times before. This was the worst part of the dream.
The past hour of conversation, planning, execution, and reaction slammed into her chest just a tiny bit off-center to the left. Spike appeared above her, performing rapid chest compressions with his stubby little hands, screaming, “What do I do? What do I do?” over and over. Twilight tried to push him away but failed, first because her hoof went right through him and then because he didn’t exist. Was this what guilt felt like? She didn’t know--she was right. She burned the griffons alive and she was right.
All that pain, the noise, the stiffness in her chest, the burning, the fire, built up and built up. Fighting and screaming didn’t make it go away. It lingered.
That was the last straw. In a fury--in a panic? Who knew?--she vaulted out of her chair and skirted her desk. Her legs flexed, and she flew through the hot dry air. She was too trapped to extend her wings--but there was room to move forward, into the middle of the chaos, towards the row of communicators and their respective operators.. There was always a way to run.
She had a moment mid-lunge to think about what she was about to do. It had happened--how many times before had it happened? She wasn’t angry at herself or any of the ponies in the room or the griffons. They were only wrong. She had been wrong before. It was okay to be wrong. The only real emotion she could conjure was sadness mixed with confusion. She had been wrong before. What had happened to her then?
The next second she slammed into the nearest communicator operator and grabbed the communicator with her bare hooves. Magic? What magic? She was a griffon, a primitive savage with a penchant for violence. The operator struggled, cried out in surprise, then went rigid. Twilight wrenched the microphone from her hooves and stumbled backwards.
The cord got tangled in the struggle and wrapped around the operator’s neck. As Twilight retreated behind her desk, it went taut and dragged the operator out of her chair to the floor. The circus train followed Twilight the few remaining steps to her deskside.
She put the microphone to her lips and spoke into it. She couldn’t remember, but it was probably more like a wail.
“Let it burn!”
Strange flowers bloomed somewhere far away. Twilight Sparkle was their caretaker now.
The desk stretched on and on and on. Why did she even need a desk? Only other ponies out things on her desk. Important ponies had desks. Important ponies signed papers and kept pictures of their loved ones on their desks. What was a nice big desk good for if you didn’t use it right, other than to make the room seem smaller and to make the pony sitting behind it appear larger?
What did Twilight have on her desk? Stacks of papers, falling over in the breeze. A standard-issue hoofgun she was able to keep in the bottom left drawer as opposed to in her belt holster thanks to her status. A few rock candies Pinkie had given her the week before. Her crown. A bottle of water. The operator she was inadvertently strangling; she was partially on top of the desk now, facing upwards, her back arched over the edge, beating out SOS with the back of her head.
Twilight noticed a peculiar thing. Silence. Thank the gods! Silence. The room was utterly quiet save the gasps of the communicator operator, who slid down the side of the desk and kicked herself headfirst into the desk while making a disgustingly wet wheezing noise.
Fire crackled in the communicators. The noise brought to mind summer bonfires with her family, roasting s'mores and looking at the stars. How high up were the Wonderbolts? High enough to avoid the heat of the blaze--but not high enough to avoid hearing it? Something almost compelled her to order them higher, until the only sound she heard was static. She was a commanding officer, she reminded herself in a hot flash of pride. She was a princess.
The operator wheezed again. Twilight was strangling her--yes. The princess stared at her subordinates with the cornered glint of a rabid animal until she realized she was still holding the microphone.
The operator gasped and curled up in a ball as Twilight dropped the microphone. Breaking eye contact with everypony in the room, she snatched up her own communicator microphone, perched on the left side of her desk for easy access.
It was like she was giving a press conference all over again. The first one she had ever given ended with her tearing up and relinquishing the podium to Princess Celestia. The reporters had understood. They left that part out of the papers. Weakness was bad for morale. Griffons scoffed at weakness.
She addressed the silent assembled crowd.
“Let it burn. Call off the reaction force.”
“Princess?” one of the Wonderbolts accused.
“The griffon team--the griffons down there are still capable of escaping and completing their mission. They’re still capable of mounting an assault on Canterlot.”
“Due respect, Princess, but no they’re not,” another Wonderbolt replied. “I count five moving targets. They’re all totally encircled by the fire. Let us help them--”
“You will do no such thing!”
She hadn’t intended to shout. She did anyway. Her mane was everywhere. It fell into her eyes and sliced the ponies before her into pieces. Funny--their fractured faces all seemed terrified. For a moment Twilight wondered if they were just mirroring her look.
“You will do no such thing,” she repeated. “I will not have Equestria’s capital put under siege. Not one griffon will get out.” Why did she sound so harsh? Her words buckled opposition like that of a grizzly general. What the hell was wrong with her? She was right.
“Princess, please,” one of the couriers begged, “let the reaction force deal with the fire. If we send them out now there’s still a chance of saving the whole of the forest. We don’t have to let the griffons scar the land.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Twilight swung her head like a pendulum. The rest of her upper body got caught in the momentum and moved along with it. “I will not be contradicted on this.”
“Twilight,” Rainbow Dash wailed in her ear, “Why did you ground me? Why couldn’t I be there for my teammates?”
“Why Twilight?” Fluttershy cried. “Why?”
All six of her friends spoke at the same time. “Why?” Their heads manifested onto the bodies of the courriers and officers and operators. Like the changeling invasion all over again. “Why?”
She cast a fleeting glance out the window and wondered how long it would take a frightened and charred griffon to reach her office.
She turned back to find the disgusted gazes of her subordinate officers, couriers, operators.
“I will do whatever it takes to protect my home,” Twilight snapped. “Not one griffon will see this castle. I will do whatever it takes. And you!” she pointed with the microphone. “You all want the same thing I do!”
They didn’t look too convinced. That much was expected. Twilight wasn’t a good soldier. She wasn’t a good leader. A good leader would have inspired confidence. All she did was piss her soldiers off and burn down a forest.
But she wasn’t done! Every muscle inside her told her to collapse and end the dream, but she couldn’t. She had to keep going. Once again she ate the microphone and said, “Did you hear that? I will do whatever it takes to protect Canterlot. Are you with me?”
Silence.
Then, “Yes, Princess.”
Twilight nodded. It had to be this way. The only ones who didn’t seem to understand that grave necessity were the couriers and runners and operators and officers sharing her office, staring at her as if she had just executed somepony.
“Resume your tasks,” she told them, “we have to complete the mission.” Her voice cracked. What an awful princess she made; couldn’t even keep her voice steady in front of her own subordinates!”
“Princess,” one of the junior officers in the rear spoke up, “the mission is over. It didn’t call for this.”
“Fire’s getting bigger,” the communicator hissed.
The junior officer passed a grim look over the row communicators and continued. “There was no plan for this. We didn’t know what to do.”
“Princess!” the communicator squealed in obvious panic.
“What do you mean you don’t know what to do?” Twilight asked. “I made plans for every contingency. There’s, like, twenty of them. In that file cabinet over there. I triple-checked the double-checks.”
“Princess!”
“I planned everything out. There are no surprises in a good plan.”
“Except you.”
Now it was Fluttershy who stood before her. Her mane was everywhere. Pieces of it fell in front of her eyes and cut Twilight into pieces. Her hooves were black and burned. She took a step towards Twilight, exposing a limp in her left forehoof.
“Except you. We didn’t count on you. We were prepared to save the animals, we had everything going for us. We had funding and we had lots of ponies ready to help. We could have saved the forest. But we didn’t ever expect you.”
“Fluttershy--”
“Princess!”
“No Twilight.” Fluttershy’s face bled the worst kind of sadness, the kind Twilight knew was her making. “You can’t undo this. You let the Whitetail Woods burn to the ground. It didn’t even stop there, you know. It burned the ground. All those little animals who took shelter underground?” She sniffed. “Why did you do it?”
“Fluttershy,” Twilight stammered, “I had to. You understand, don’t you? I had to. This was the only way.”
“Was it something I did? I know the protests may have been distracting, but--” Twilight’s friend could no longer look her in the eyes as she added, “Is this because you hate me?”
“No! No, please don’t think that. Please no. Fluttershy, don’t think I hate you.I don’t hate you. This is a mistake!” But the idea was already there. One was terrified of the other, and the other was terrified of the other being right. Twilight was right. Fluttershy was terrified of her.
“Why, Twilight?” Fluttershy wailed. The noise came with a terrific blast of feedback that knocked Twilight backwards into her desk. Mind reeling, guts tangled, face on fire--were those tears?--ears ringing, soul splintered, she fell at Fluttershy’s feet. Something like the noise at the very edge of a record played in her ears. Maybe it was the communicators. I probably wasn’t.
“Please forgive me. I’m sorry.”
“Princess!”
“Twilight.”
“You don’t understand!” Now she was screaming, shredding up her vocal chords to be heard above the noise--what noise? “If one griffon gets through, the city will panic. We’ll have to institute martial law. Ponies will die. If not by the griffons, then by the panic that’ll come about. The city will look weak. If we look weak, the griffons might try this again. The ponies in this city are weak. They won’t be strong when we need them to. They can’t do it. I need to be strong for them.”
The air went cold, then hot and sticky, flashing through many seasons of uncomfortable silence. “And this is how you show your strength?” Fluttershy finally asked. “Why?”
“Please forgive me!” she sobbed again, hot dry and high, a clarinet player standing up to take his one-note solo. “This isn’t my fault. I’m sorry.”
“Please princess,” Fluttershy said, “tell us why? Why?”
“We can still be friends, can’t we? Right?” Begging--what a disgrace to the crown. A year had passed. When was the last time Twilight had been to Fluttershy's cottage--just because? Then two. Who was the stranger at the edge of the forest? Who was the princess who for months after the armistice treaty was signed refused to come out of her castle and join in the town’s celebrations? Who read natural history books to feel reconciled? Who stocked a fire extinguisher next to the door?
How many years does it take to forget enough to forgive? The same, Twilight reasoned, as it took to win a war. But she was still alive--just dreaming--and that day hadn’t come yet. She would know, eventually.
The apparition of Fluttershy faded away, leaving her once more alone in her tiny office crammed full of ponies staring at her like she had just committed a war crime.
“Princess?”
“What?” she snapped, whipping her head towards one of the communicator operator she hadn’t just suffocated. This one, a sad, brightly-dressed stallion with a microphone glued to his hoof with sweat, pointed to the box.
“It’s not a television. What is it?”
He replied, “Princess, they’re trying to fly away.”
At first Twilight thought it was the Wonderbolts trying to fly away. In her mind there was mutiny, a hushed conversation, a nod of the head in one direction and then the other, towards home.
She took a rushed step towards the communicator, then almost tripped over the softly sobbing body of the operator she had accidentally strangled. Recalling her past mistakes, she backpedaled to her desk and grabbed her microphone. "Wonderbolts, you will not leave the scene. You will not defy a direct order or I will have you disavowed for treason, do you understand?"
She silently hoped she didn’t sound too angry. She would have flown away a long time ago. It was all her nerves, really. They made her voice jump in intensity without her meaning to.
"Princess, we're still here."
Twilight blinked. She looked at the stallion at the communicator and squinted. "Then who's trying to fly away?"
“They are, Princess. The griffons.”
If the room weren’t silent before, it was now. The typewriters hammered away. clackaclackaclackaclackaclacka--like they were old friends chatting away, while in the background a radio reported more deaths from the Borderlands. A normal, peaceful afternoon with her friends for Twilight.
She opened her mouth and drew a breath just in time to hear a horrified screech, the mad rush of a violin bow pressed too hard against its strings, blast through the radio. The microphone slipped from her hoof, left to dangle by the cord.
The noise rose into tragic dissonance and crystallized in a moment of sheer and utter panic. Twilight went limp. She leaned into the desk but felt nothing. Her body betrayed her. She was listening to somepony die. She knew it. She was responsible, and now she had to listen to somepony die.
“What is that?” Twilight shouted only to be interrupted by another wail. Somepony was dying--they had to be! Ponies didn’t make those sounds. Animals made those sounds as they were being torn apart by an ancient predator.
Chaos filled the room, sprouting from the communicator boxes.
“What is going on?” Twilight shouted again. Where was her training now? Etiquette and poise--what were those? The blood rushed to her head and carried all the heat of her body with it. Who was it? Twilight pressed her head to the microphone, felt its momentary coolness, and stammered, “Is anypony injured?”
“Nopony’s injured princess,” something like a voice replied from the other end. It quivered and shook, a body suffering shellshock. “The air is too hot. They’re burning.”
Twilight didn’t know what was worse; the wailing or the relief she felt that it was only griffons being burned alive. Another awful noise from the box perished the thought.
“I think Fleet’s hurt,” a brave Wonderbolt announced. More flyers chimed in.
“We might need to evacuate her.”
All four Wonderbolts paused and stared at each other. Fleetfoot grimaced as more tears froze in her eyes. They knew what was at stake. Up here the winds whipped around their faces. If they drifted down far enough, their bodies would thaw.
Soarin’ pulled his microphone away from his throat so it couldn’t pick up any vibrations. “We need to help them.”
“Fleet’s eyes are messed up,” Spitfire said after removing her own microphone. “We should scrap the bonfire and help her.”
Soarin’ pointed at the inferno. “We need to help them--”
“Get yourself together and help Fleet.”
“Gods above, can’t we help them?”
Spitfire tried to shake Soarin’, but he shrugged her off. His eyes were in the flames. “Do you see that?” he said, and pointed down. The colors down below pulsed with life. Above them was nothing but blue.
“Holy shit,” Spitfire murmured.
“He’s looking at us--gods, he’s looking at us--”
Fire raged all around them. Spitfire shoved Soarin’s face away from the fire. “Go help Fleet.”
“He’s looking at us!--”
Static. Twilight wondered where the signal had gone.
“Help Fleet,” she heard Spitfire say through the communicator.
“Okay. Okay, I’m gonna go help Fleet.”
“Princess is listening.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go help Fleet.”
Twilight didn’t hold it against them for the way they acted. When they were all debriefed, it was revealed that only four griffons actually tried to fly away through the fire. From what the Wonderbolts could gather, their last witnessed moments were agony. They watched as the survivors flew straight up, their arms extended, clawing for clouds. They watched their wings combust, their royal plumes explode into flames. They watched them writhe and then fall, pinwheeling down into the rapidly-growing flames. They heard screaming, then nothing at all. The buzz had faded into the background. Temporary tinnitus for the technological warrior. This was the consequence of fighting wars through boxes.
Twilight bore all this, the dialogue, the defriefs, without complaint. She had to. But she had to step in eventually. The end neared. The dream was almost complete. All she had to do now was--
“Dismiss that order!” she cried.
“What?”
“Gods--”
“Do not retreat,” Twilight heard herself say. “If any of those griffons make it out they will be out for blood.” She looked out her window again. Was that smoke on the horizon? Couldn’t be--the war existed solely in her radio. “Do not retreat. Make sure no griffons get out.” She almost added “alive,” but somehow that seemed too cruel.
“Gods above--”
“Soarin’, don’t clog the channel. Princess, this fire is getting out of control. There will be no survivors.”
“Keep in high formation until you are absolutely sure they’re gone,” Twilight ordered.
The radio judged her, silently, like the rest of the room. Here was the end! The part that made her wake up without fail every time.
The Wonderbolt gulped and sighed into his radio. “Yes, Princess.” He then moved the mic away from his face, as if that would keep Twilight from listening. These communicators were too good for old-fashioned tricks. She was omnipotent. A circuit, bound by copper wire to the Wonderbolts.
That’s how she heard the Wonderbolt say, “Pull up a cloud. We have to watch it.”
“All of it?”
Static.
The hammers of the typewriters thundered on in the background. On and on and on, fading into a buzz roll long tone, fading into the past, fading into the creak of Twilight’s bedroom door as it swung open.
Spike, his stubby hands clutching a feather duster, walked in on a sleeping Twilight splayed out over a copy of "Bank Robbery and Grand Theft for Dummies, Vol. Seven.”
He let the door swing until it knocked over the fire extinguisher sitting against the wall. It hit the floor like a bombshell without a charge inside.
The past surrendered control of her mind. Twilight lurched into a ball, sucking in air like fire in a confined space. In an instant she had stuffed the books beneath her bed.
"Twilight?” Spike screwed up his face in confusion. “You have room on your shelves for those.”
“I had to,” she replied in a whisper.
Thrum, thrum, thrum, the inked hammers went. She heard them now. Sometimes she didn’t, and those were good days--but right now she could make out their faint beats against paper.
Spike’s face grew sullen. He bit his lip, then took a cautious step towards Twilight. When she didn’t move, he moved closer and set the feather duster on her nightstand. “I’ll be right back, okay?” he told her, at once authoritarian and vulnerable. Twilight thought it was kind of cute.
He came back a minute later with a cup and a spoon. “Sorry, it’s only instant tea. I didn’t want to bother with the tea leaves. Takes too long. And do you know how messy those things can be?”
“You spilled them, didn’t you.”
“No. What’s a guy to do when he doesn’t have magic to help him open bags?”
“Spike, you have fingers,” Twilight chuckled, slightly, then in a stumbling repeat. “That’s, like, the best possible body part to have in terms of ripping things open.”
“Ripping stuff open is really easy--but do you know how tough it is to keep everything in the bag once it rips? You kinda jerk it upwards when the bag opens--and everything flies up!” He mimed an explosion and hoped for a laugh.
He got it. “I’ll remember to put a horn on you first chance I get.” Twilight smiled, the first time in what seemed like seconds. “I’ll strap you down in my evil lair in the basement and zap it onto you.”
He got another, a quiet contemplative one fading into silence.
“I was thinking,” Twilight started.
“You do that a lot.”
“About how Rainbow Dash hurt herself.”
“She did? When? Yesterday? Is she okay? Did she fly into a tree again?”
“No. It was some time ago. She didn’t fly into anything, really. It just kinda happened. She must have overextended her wing and caught a weird air current at the same time, or something.”
“She seemed fine the last time I talked to her. That was only yesterday morning, I think. She flies fine, too. When did this happen exactly? It must not have been that big of a deal if she’s up and about now.”
“It was a big deal to her,” Twilight replied. “You know how she can get.” Twilight paused, and then admitted, “I’m really glad Rainbow Dash hurt herself.”
Spike looked away. “Come on Twilight, don’t talk like that. She’s your friend.”
“Really. I’m glad she hurt herself,” Twilight repeated. “She had to sit on the sidelines. She couldn’t do a thing.”
“Don’t think about that kind of thing.” Spike took a nervous sip of the tea.
“She was so heartbroken she couldn’t participate. Even after everything that happened afterwards. Rainbow Dash is such a good person. She didn’t care what happened. She was sad she couldn’t be with her friends and support them. She wanted to help them and she couldn't. That’s why she was so sad. She’s such a better person than I am.”
“Twilight--”
“Fluttershy would have never forgiven her. She didn’t forgive me. She said she did, but I can see it whenever the six of us are together. She walks on the opposite side of the group,” she said as if it were an admission of a war crime. “I’m glad it was me and not Dash. They’ve been friends since they were foals. I’m glad they still get to be friends.”
Spike was inconsolable. “Look, Twilight, whatever you’re thinking about, you need to get it out of your mind. Thinking about it won’t do you any good. You need to focus on the good things you have instead of--”
“Spike,” Twilight interrupted as she reached towards the tray for her tea, “please.”
“It’s not good for you.”
“May I have some tea?”
“Do you think about how I feel when you say this kinda stuff?”
Twilight picked up a glass and poured herself some tea. Spike tossed a sugarcube in before she could pull it into her chest. It probably had medicine in it, but Twilight didn’t care anymore.
“So what are you doing up here?” Twilight asked between sips.
“I was going to sweep under the bed. But maybe I should just wait until later.” Spike hesitated, the words caught in the vocal filter keeping him from shouting and screaming at Twilight to forget. “Or never,” he finally spoke. “Maybe you should do it yourself from now on if you’re gonna hide books under there.”
She smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
“That’s not what I’m alarmed at, but thanks.”
“If you just leave the duster here I can take care of it.”
Spike nodded. He set his empty tea cup back on the platter and made for the door.
“Oh, Spike?” Twilight stuttered, then added, “Can you come back in a little bit? We haven’t had a day to ourselves all month."
The scales on the sides of Spike’s head perked up. “Sure thing,” he replied, measuring his words to last long enough to seem casual. “I can bring some lunch up too if you want. Or we can go out someplace.”
“In a little while, sure.” Twilight nodded. “Let’s eat in. Crowded places don’t sound as nice as here.” She almost said she didn’t have the nerve to face other ponies. She didn’t, though. Spike didn’t need that on his mind. He was such a good friend. She didn’t need to dump her troubles on him. He reminded her on occasion that he would be okay talking about the war with her. She knew he could handle it, but part of her still dreaded the notion of weighing him down like that. Why should he worry about her? Talking was selfish.
Twilight put the teacup she didn’t realize she was holding next to the feather duster and rolled around on the bed, searching for a position she could tolerate lying motionless in for another hour or two. Without really thinking she pulled the books and papers from beneath her bed. The books went back behind the bookshelf where a magically-induced blind spot concealed a small hole in the wall. The papers went into a binder--they hadn’t fared as well as the books. She would have to uncrumple and retranscribe them some other time.
“By the way,” Spike added, sticking his head through the doorway, “don’t forget--uh--” he hesitated as Twilight jumped. “you promised to have tea with Rarity and Rainbow Dash tonight.”
Twilight’s heart sank.
“Let’s just focus on lunch first,” she said.
“I can tell them you’re sick in bed.”
“I think I really am sick.”
“Are you really?” Spike’s voice radiated with concern.
Twilight sighed and rubbed her head. “Nevermind. Just tell me when they get here, Spike.”
The door gently clicked shut. Twilight laid her head on the closest pillow and tried to forget about the tea growing cold on the nightstand.