//------------------------------//
// Chapter 39: Recap/The Ritual 
// Story: New Beginnings 
// by Black Alicorn 
//------------------------------//

Wolf slowly opened his eyes with a groan. With every little pull of the muscles in his eyelids, another wave of pain tore through his head. After much effort to keep them open, he started a new task. As the blur in his vision started to clear up, Wolf tried to lift himself up. He made it a few inches above the matress he was laying on. His arms began to shake before he finally fell back to the bed. Wolf groaned as his back fell upon the soft matress. He was sore all over. He could barely move at all. But Wolf was too proud and too stubborn to let his own weight defeat him. He pushed off the bed with renewed vigor. He winced as his back slowly lifted off the bed into the air. As he finally reached a position where he wouldn't just fall back again, he stopped straining his arms and exhaled, exhausted by the whole ordeal. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't over. As he made it up out of the bed, the new images sent by his eyes into his brain was too much for it in its weakened state. A severe headache was the result. The voice he heard only made it much. MUCH worse...
"You're up!"
Wolf waved his arm at the direction of the voice, before it finally fell back to the bed, too tired to continue. Unfortunately, the sudden pull of the arm brought him falling back to the bed. Wolf sighed. As the ringing in his ears stopped, he replied to the voice. He knew it was Twilight.
"Not so loud...please..." He whispered.
"What was that?" She asked in response, just as loud.
As the bells in his ears were ringing like there was no tommorow, he managed to blurt out:
"Not so loud!"
Twilight took a step back as Wolf finished his very loud sentence.
"Sorry..." She whispered.
As she was thinking about this whole ordeal, she had an idea that would make the whole thing easier. Her horn glowed as a bolt of white light shot out of it and was heading for Wolf's head. In that state, he couldn't get out of the way. Wolf closed his eyes as the bolt hit his head. He opened them back up immediately, feeling much better. He was actually feeling strong enough to get up out of the bed. His head still hurt though, just not as much as before. He wobbled a bit before finally regaining his balance.
"I feel like a mountain fell on me..."
"Mind control can have that effect..."
"Great...How long was I out?"
"Two weeks."
"Eh...I've had worse."
Twilight wanted to ask, but she realised that she really didn't want to know.
Wolf walked out of the room. Twilight forgot to mention something.
"Watch out for the-"
A series of loud thuds and cries of pain stopped her. She poked her head out of the door to see Wolf lying on the floor below her, dazed by the multiple impacts.
"-stairs..."
Wolf picked himself up slowly. He then dusted himself off. 
"I'm okay..."
Twilight merely shook her head. She watched as he made his way into the kitchen and practically fell on a chair. Then something in her head clicked. She dreaded it and knew that it would come. And this was the worst possible time. There was no point in trying to control herself, she knew she would fail.

Wolf had just sat down on the chair when Twilight appeared right next to him, just like Pinkie Pie had done to him a couple of times. He looked at her face and nearly died of fright. Her eyes were wide open, her right twitching along with her ear.
Her voice uttering those two simple words nearly gave him a heart attack.
"Hi Wolf..."
He gulped as her ear twitched again. He barely managed to utter a response.
"Hi..."
He felt that she was staring right through him. He couldn't break free. He suddenly felt very vulnerable. He had seen this kind of behavior before and was terrified it would happen again. Twilight's horn glowed. His heart nearly gave out as a drawer in the kitchen slowly opened and saw the distinct purple aura of her magic peeked from the top of the drawer. He could only gasp as she levitated out a...

Pencil and notepad?

Wolf breathed a sigh of relief when he realised that she was just going through one of her 'interrogation' phases.
When she started plying him with questions, he realised that maybe his initial thought wasn't so bad after all...
He answered nearly all of them with 'I don't know, ask Sam.' But one he knew very well.
"How did the war begin?"
He sighed as he recollected the information he knew was buried in his head somewhere. But to reach that particular answer, he had to tell a much bigger story.
"By the dawn of the twenty-fourth century, we had already colonised our entire solar system. Every planet, every moon was colonised. But we still sent out probes to look for more colonisable planets. Everything changed when two men, Drs. Maxwell Whittenstein and and William Carson, two scientists working on deep space probes made humanity's crown achievement by mistake."
"I'm not sure this is the answer I was looking for..."
"Just bear with me Twi."
"By mistake, you said?"
"Yeah, some flaw with the fusion engines caused it to vanish before their eyes. It nearly exploded. Anyway, they assumed it was lost."
He leaned in closer to Twilight, who had sat down on a chair next to him.
"But, three months after the probe dissapeared, they found something."
"What did they find?"
"The probes locator beacon. It was transmitting from nearly three-thousand light-years away. They realised that they had just discovered faster-than-light travel. Research contunued. After three years of research, experiments and some other crap, they finally mounted the first Jump Drive on a ship."
"Why was it called the Jump Drive? And what exactly does it do?"
Wolf thought for a moment.
"For lack of a better name. About what it does...I don't know the physics behind this stuff, but basically? It tears a hole through regular space-time and sends the ship with the drive through Jump Space, where travel is much faster."
"But how does this have anything to do with how the war with the Spinar started?"
Wolf sighed. He had spent much of his time analysing that very question. The answer wasn't proven, but the evidence was overwhelming.
"In the late twenty-fifth century, mankind had colonised hundreds of worlds. Jump technology was getting better and better, and more probes were being sent into deep space. But something happened to one of them. Probe L-742. It was sent to a system that was designated L-742. That's how they named probes, by the systems they'd visit. Anyway, upon arrival, the probe sent a signal for a few minutes...then vanished, without a trace."
He shuddered at the continuation.
"And it was confirmed by recon ships sent only two years ago that..." 
His breathing became irregular as he struggled to utter the words he wanted to say.
"System L-742 is home to the largest Spinar population that's ever been seen. Hundreds of ships patrolled it."
He gulped. He didn't want to finish, but he had to.
"And after...analysing a few captured Spinar ships...It was confirmed that...Their Jump technology is almost identical with our own."
Twilight gasped as she realised what he meant. Humanity's greatest achievement became their downfall. More questions lingered in her head.
"Why did they use children in the program to turn you into soldiers? Couldn't they use adult subjects?"
"No. Adult test subjects were already used. They either died or were severely crippled. The augmentations had to be received at a young age so that the body could grow into them."
"But couldn't they wait until you reached adulthood to deploy you?"
"Yes. But something happened that showed the High Command that they couldn't wait to deploy us. Our training was cut in half."
"What happened?"
"A Spinar Assault Cruiser breached the Earth's Lunar Perimeter. The fact that it even made it into our home system was scary enough, but getting that close to our homeworld? After we won there, we abandoned nearly three dozen systems to regroup our forces. By the time I entered the war,  from a few hundred colonised systems, we had dropped to sixty-four. What I told you before, the hundred-twenty four billion dead? That was only in seven years of fighting. The war lasted twenty-four years. In total? Nearly two hundred-and fifty  billion humans were slaughtered."
Twilight nearly fainted. She wanted to stop, but couldn't resist one last question.
"What was the training like?"
"In total it lasted four years. One was devoted to surgeries and implants. The second to psychological psychological training. The third and fourth was four months of vehicle training. Two months on a Cerberus Main Battle Tank, and another two  on a Minotaur Light Recon Vehicle. Add another eight months of aircraft training. Two on a Harpy Gunship, Two on a Guardian Angel Helicopter, another two on a Thunderbird Fighter/Bomber and the last two on a Phoenix Space Superiority Fighter."
"And the other year?"
"Just regular combat training. Hand-to-hand, firearms, that kind of stuff."
Twilight was satisfied by the information received. She leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She smiled warmly at him.
"Thank you. I know it must have been hard to tell me all those things."
"You know, they'd probably have me shot if they knew I told you all this..."
"Who would?"
"High Generals. Some of the stuff I told you was classified. Real hush-hush."
He looked straight into her eyes and smiled.
"But you're worth the risk."
Twilight couldn't resist the urge to kiss him. They locked lips together in the kitchen, as the sun's light began to fade away...

Many hours later...
The night above the dark Everfree Forest was stunningly beautiful. The full moon shone brightly, bathing Equestria in it's light. On top of a large boulder, a Unicorn wearing a cloak over it stared into the sky above.
"Such beauty..." He muttered.
"I believe it to be highly appropriate for our Queen to be reborn on a night such as this..."
As he started to descend from the boulder, he said one final sentence.
"Soon, the night's beauty will last forever..."

At the bottom of the boulder, three more cloaked ponies waited for him. Another Unicorn, a Pegasus, and an Earth Pony.
"Report, my Lieutenants."
The Pegasus took a step forward, intent on speaking first. He was interrupted by the other Unicorn. Her very tone of voice was taunting him.
"My Lord, Celestia's defeat at the hoof of the Changeling Queen was the turning point we hoped it would be. Thousands realised her weakness and joined our ranks."
"Excellent."
The Pegasus spoke next, making sure he wouldn't be interrupted.
"Lord Night, the Griffons have agreed to aid us. They will strike when we instruct them to."
"This is marvelous news Darkmane. Soon Equestria will be ours..."
The Earth Pony stepped forward and bowed.
"My Lord, I have gathered all that is neccescary."
"Good...She has waited too long..."
All four of them moved into a nearby clearing. Four pillars were placed in the corners of the clearing while a large circle with complex patterns was drawn in the dirt between them. Six more Unicorns emerged from the shadows.
"Welcome, Elders. It is time." Lord Night spoke. His horn glowed as a small bottle with a red fluid within levitated from a pocket on his cloak. Their horns glowed as the lines in the dirt the circle was composed of began to glow red. The clear sky began to cloud up as the wind intesified.
"Her two defeats at the hooves of Harmony shall only delay her rise!"
The bottle was placed in the center of the circle. The outline of it was now completely red, and now the lines inside it were beginning to glow red.
"And she shall rise again from her own blood!"
Lightning began to flash in the cloudy sky above as the red glow had reached the bottle in the center. It lifted in the air and hovered ten feet off the ground.
"Oh, Nightmare Moon, Godess of the night, Queen of Darkness, one more, you shall rise!!!"
A bolt of lightning struck the bottle in the center of the circle and it exploded in a cloud of smoke. As it cleared, the red fluid had multiplied many times and was taking form. A set of hooves appeared first, followed by the rest of the body and a pair of wings, ending with a horn. The ritual was complete. In the center of the now worn circle, a jet black Alicorn filly lay on the ground whimpering. Lord Night approached her. The filly looked up to him.
"Who are you? Where am I..." She paused.
"Who am I?"
"Calm yourself child...I will show you who you are..."
Lord Night only smiled as the plan was set in motion...

End Chapter 39.