//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9 
// Story: Midday in the Heart of Equestria 
// by Wheller 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 9


Princess Celestia couldn’t help but smile on their return from lunch. Twilight had finally calmed down and was acting as she normally would. Celestia figured that this had to have been her own fault, she had sent Twilight away. Clearly, it had been for her benefit, and she had reaped much from it. Still, Celestia couldn’t help but feel like she had planted the need for everything to be perfect in her students mind.

‘Well this was fun!’ Princess Celestia exclaimed as she looked down upon Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Surprise, who had been the only ones to actually join her for their lunch. ‘I don’t get away often enough; we shall have to do this again sometime’.

‘Oh! Yes! Of course your highness! That would be great!’ Twilight said with a smile.

‘Indeed it was, unfortunately, I really should be returning to Canterlot, duty to the state and all that, the conference calls’, Celestia said, even though she had no intention of calling the conference back into session, not today. ‘Goodbye Twilight, tell the rest of your friends I said hello’.

‘I will, Princess’, Twilight said.

And with that, Princess Celestia spread her wings and leapt into the air on a fast track back to Canterlot. Twilight waited until she was out of range and then turned to Rainbow Dash. ‘Do you think she noticed something was off?’ she asked.

Rainbow Dash sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘The way you were acting? I’d be surprised if she didn’t!’

The turned back towards the Library when they noticed the front door to Sugarcube burst open. ‘Everypony out of the way! I have the cake to save us all!’ Pinkie Pie called out as she galloped up the road towards the Library.

‘Pinkie Pie!’ Twilight called out to her, causing the pink party pony to stop in her tracks. ‘It’s okay! She’s gone’.

Pinkie Pie sighed a sigh of disappointment as she looked at the cake box that she had tied to her back. ‘Aw, and here I spent the last hour coming up with and baking the recipe for that two layer cake’.

‘Oh don’t you worry Pinkie Pie’, Rainbow Dash said, eyeing the pink party pony’s flanks and was beginning to drool. ‘We’ll find some use for it!’

...

The first five years of the Principality of Equestria had been rocky ones. The transition of power could have gone better. The first week of the new government didn’t go by before a popular uprising in Fillydelphia left the city sacked and most of the town’s population, almost a million earth ponies had hijacked the entire Equestrian Navy (of both sea and airships) and sailed east to lands unknown. Celestia would have ordered them followed and destroyed had it not been that she had planned to scrap the navy anyway.

Celestia had plans of her own; she had slowly being deconstructing the country’s technological infrastructure as quickly as she could, but as slowly as necessary to keep from drawing Luna’s attention. Technology was dangerous, and there had been a number of ‘accidents’ at installations around Equestria that were proving her point. The city of Hopeville to the far south, past the Mohoofie Desert had been destroyed when the missile base that it had been host to had an ‘accidental’ launch.

Slowly, Luna had found out what Celestia had been doing, though Celestia had reasoned that Luna had probably figured it out a while ago and had been contacting other to stop either stop it, or make the accidents less devastating.

‘We are supposed to be ruling together Tia! I do not see a lot of togetherness in this new government! You have been undermining me at every turn!’ Luna screamed at her during one of their numerous arguments late in the day.

‘I am doing what is necessary for the safety of the public!’ Celestia shouted back.

‘The public!? You are damning them to a life of ignorance. You do not do what is best for them; you do what is best for you!’ Luna cried back.

‘Better ignorant, then dead’, Celestia said denying the claim entirely.

Luna frowned at her sister; she opened her saddlebag and pulled a book out from it. ‘Then you leave me no choice’.

Celestia’s eyes widened in horror, she recognised the book instantly. ‘You wouldn’t!’

‘You aren’t leaving me any choices... so yes, I would’, Luna said, and opened the book. ‘Tome of Alhazred! Lend me your power so that I may stop my sister!’

‘Luna no! It’s evil! We...’

Light began to shine out of the book; it enveloped Luna in bright light. She let out a scream in pain and terror. Celestia reached out to help her, but the magical energy pushed her back against the wall, narrowly missing the throne entirely.

The light faded and a new form stood in Luna’s place.

‘Luna...’ Celestia called out to her sister weakly.

‘Luna! Ha! Luna is no more!’ the tall, black Alicorn said. Her body covered in silver armour. ‘I am Nightmare Moon! Using the power of the Tome of Alhazred, I shall defeat you and take your place as sole ruler of Equestria as you would have eventually done to me!’

Celestia glanced up and noticed that she had been flung back against the wall containing the Elements of Harmony... surely not; surely, Nightmare Moon couldn’t have been so short sighted as to have noticed this. Her sister had become mad with the power of the Tome, the ancient dark magical artefact that the royal family had kept hidden, along with many countless others for millennia.

Celestia opened the case containing the Elements of Harmony and allowed them to dump out around her. ‘I’m sorry Luna; it is you who give me no choice’.

She used her magic to surge the five Elements of Harmony and charged at her once sister, she knocked the Tome away from her and unloaded the magic into her.

Nightmare Moon screamed and then winked out of existence. Celestia collapsed onto the floor. She knew her sister was still alive, she had not enough power to actually defeat her, and she was not the one destined to wield the Elements. No those ponies had yet to come. She had sent Nightmare Moon to a fitting imprisonment, on the moon. She would have to bide her time, wait for the bearers of the Elements of Harmony to come, then, and only then, could she save her sister.

Until that time came... she needed to make Equestria safe. She would set out to do just that.

...

When Oberlander Cromwell stepped out onto the island of Welara for the first time, it was like taking a step back in time. Welara was inhabited, of course, though sparsely and with no real central authority. There were a few petty kingdoms scattered about here and there, though nothing they couldn’t handle.

Cromwell had stuck around long enough in Equestria to see some of the first orders of the Principality of Equestria. The destruction of technology! They were knocking themselves down on purpose! Cromwell knew that Celestia had a dislike of technology, but he had not thought it that extreme that she would actually go about and destroy it!

That was wrong, technology was for the betterment of ponykind, and it wasn’t there to destroy them! Any other claim was one of insanity! The ponies of Welara were in their early middle ages, and Cromwell knew better than to try to advance them quickly. Technology was a good thing, but gradual progress was key. Anything else and they would kill themselves with it because they didn’t know the correct way to do things.

Cromwell had a plan, he would make his way into Welaran society, and he would become a trusted advisor to one of their petty kings. When the king became commonplace in his advisor’s loyalty, he would strike, dispose of the king and establish a government for the people. He would give the ponies of Welara what the ponies of Equestria had deserved. It was time for Oberlander Cromwell to get to work. He had much to do.

...

In the aftermath of the banishment of Nightmare Moon, Equestria plummeted into the dark without the liberal ideas of Princess Luna to keep Princess Celestia’s more conservative views in check. Celestia remembered what Duke East Wind of Cloudsdale had said to her about the restructure of government that day when he first took regency of the Kingdom of Equestria.

Princess Celestia perceived East Wind as a threat to her authority, and feared he was building support for a popular uprising. She had no proof of the matter, and instead summoned him to Canterlot, where she declared him a traitor and had him executed, and ordered the rest of his family to be disposed of. They escaped, however and began a life as commoners in Manehattan, occasionally moving around until the Duke East Wind passed out of living memory.

This lead too many years of distrust between pegasi and unicorns, violence between the two races would be somewhat common until the year 500 of Celestia’s reign, when discrimination became illegal, and was failure to adhere to the anti-discrimination laws was harshly punished.

Soon enough, ponies of all three races, earth, pegasi, and unicorn forgot that they had once hated each other, and Equestria began to flourish once again under the pretence of a benevolent princess ruling them.

They had all forgotten about Princess Luna, and their past, and just how much better life had been while their king and queen had still been alive.