Somewhere, behind the gloomy clouds, the Sun and Moon remained hidden even to their respective Princesses. In theory, a new day was about to begin, but none had the possibility to know that for sure, except those possessing clocks (but the latter became scarce lately, as most of them were either burned in the numerous bonfires or used as barricades for the doors or windows). Nonetheless, the new residents of Canterlot Castle were waking up after a good sleep. Of course, it wasn't the best kind of sleep, since each passing day and night inevitably brought closer the hopefully avoidable Apocalypse. But it was still a form of much-needed rest. It was now time for the eight friends to come back to Ponyville and venture into the Everfree forest, seeking help from the Elements of Harmony.
Spike, who had finally awoken from his unplanned slumber, bustled around, helping his friend to get ready for the journey back home. Deep in his heart, he was hoping he would be able to just come back home and avoid any further injuries, but his awareness of the extreme importance of their current task was far stronger and greatly surpassed his lazier desires.
In the meantime, Celestia, now accompanied by her sister, was trying to bring back at least some small fragment of order into the ruined city. This task, however, was far from easy, as they frequently needed to deal with hordes of crazed cultists or ponies simply protesting against the Sun Princess' recent behavior.
As the preparations approached their end, a new problem became apparent. With how terrible the current state of the city was, no trains were available. Indeed, most of the train conductors either fled, or joined the city's hysteria, so even the trains that remained in Canterlot had no one qualified to drive them. Thus, even if it was painfully slow, the trip to Ponyville needed to be done by hoof.
"Aw, come on! Isn't there any other way?!" exclaimed the cyan pegasus when she discovered that fact "Can't you use your magic or something! I mean, there must be some kind of spell able to transport us there!"
"Rainbow Dash, please stop, I already explained that neither of us has enough power to teleport us that far." asserted Twilight, extremely annoyed by the endless complaints "Even the royal Princesses can't do that kind of magic!"
"But, you two were able to travel through time!..." the Rainbow pegasus paused, noticing the annoyance building up on Starlight's face "Alright, we won't talk about that."
Despite the general dissatisfaction, the group was ready to depart. As they had already said their goodbye to the royal sisters in the morning, no time could be wasted. They chose to avoid the panicked ruins of Canterlot, leaving the castle by a narrow mountain path, poorly known by anypony except the Princesses.
Slowly progressing through the empty wilderness, boredom quickly started to settle. As beautiful as the landscape was, it didn't really have any remarkably outstanding structures. In addition, the gloomy lighting provided by the Entity's "stars", didn't help to appreciate the panorama.
All this repetitiveness went on and on, when Starlight suddenly remembered something.
"Uh, Twilight?" she said "I think we forgot to mention something about our encounter with Tirek."
"Oh, I thought he proved himself pretty useless when it came to our current problem." responded the purple alicorn, curious about this new potential piece of information.
"Well, that's true, but even if he didn't know anything by himself, when the Entity came back, we were still in the cave." she paused, trying to play the scene again in her mind "So, when that happened, we all freaked out, but I remember Tirek saying something about the fact the Entity was made of pure mana. And he seemed pretty scared or at least very confused when he detected the Entity's magic."
That was interesting "But how is this possible? Mana has no consciousness." responded Twilight, extremely confused by this news.
"That's also what I thought." asserted Starlight, pondering that fact "But don't forget that we're talking about Tirek here, so he might always be lying."
"Maybe, but I think we should still keep that in mind, it might give us another idea if the Elements don't work."
"Don't care about it too much darling!" intervened Rarity "I'm sure the Elements will defeat this unfashionable Entity without any problems!"
"Ah sure hope so!" exclaimed Applejack, taking part in the conversation "This weird light sure ain't good for the apples!"
"Oh, I know!" suddenly yelled Pinkie "When we get to Ponyville we should do a We are going to save the world again very very soon party! And then, after we do it, we could do a Hooray, we just saved the world party! And then, we could do a We saved the world again yesterday party! And then..."
And so it continued. A new spark life was brought to the Little Ponies as they continued their journey. All the boredom was gone and all were already musing about their certain victory. However, despite the ambient cheer and carelessness, Twilight couldn't help but feel a bit scared of their mission's failure. And who knows, maybe she was right to be scared...