Her hoofsteps echoed in concert with the memories.
Smuggled into the area, and teleportation could be viewed as an improvement over being transported in what her nose had quickly told her was a trailer meant for moving racehorses: the manure cleaning had been something less than thorough. Kept out of sight until the time came, and then the procession towards the doors, the chance to step out under open sky --
(It had been the second time.)
-- in front of watching eyes, the world filling in its gaps as introductions were finally made...
...but there was a reason why Cerea had wound up in Japan. It was something which had started at the moment those older doors had opened, it had sent her thousands of miles from what they'd told her had never been her home, and when it happened here (because this time, 'if' felt like the impossibility), she would have nowhere left to go.
So much of the final trot was familiar. The guards escorting the procession were ponies instead of humans? Then they were still guards. And the scent of fear was there, she couldn't believe it would ever truly fade -- but there were other aspects now, ones which had initially emerged from a completely different species. Nervous anticipation. An undercurrent of dread. The terror which only came about when facing the new.
The humans who brought them to the doors had been like that, on that first day of a new world.
Then they had emerged into the true fear.
And then it had all gone wrong.
It was familiar, and so the past tried to overlap the present. Hoofsteps came all too close to echoing boots. The ancient nature of one hallway was easily mistaken for another. She could glance down at Acrolith, see the sturdy earth pony mare clearing the path ahead -- but lose focus for a single second, and the top of the mane would twist into deep blue, gain a thin line of silver-white trim around the peak as a Parisian police officer made a visible effort to keep his right hand away from the grip of the gun.
But the scents were those of ponies, and they kept her anchored within the moment. Swimming through the more recent ocean of fear.
There were other new aspects, of course. The Princesses were trotting at each other's sides, close to the front of the strange procession. (There were Guards in front of them, watching the path -- and more behind Cerea, probably present in the increasingly-likely event that she made a break for it.) On that earlier day, France's president had been nowhere near the conference: for the pony nation, royalty had chosen to directly take the lead.
Their movements were steady. Every hoofstep seemed to have been planned in advance. But looking at the strange mane of the white mare showed the borders of those colors twisting against each other, and the dark Princess wasn't displaying twinkling stars so much as a series of steadily-increasing flares.
The partial armor worn by each had been polished. Heavily, to the point where light bouncing between marble and regalia might have needed nothing more than a slight touch of wavelength compression to successfully lase.
It reminded Cerea of her mother, because her parent was among the strongest and so would often show up at herd meetings wearing highly-polished armor. It tended to be the sort of polish which suggested that the mare wearing it had put in five minutes more than you had (and that even if you put in an extra hour, she would still find a way to go for five over-and-above minutes). The presence of that armor made a statement: the same one the Princesses were silently making. And as with Cerea's mother, it wasn't a suggestion that the protection was actually needed. The message was simpler than that.
Royalty moved through its palace, something where the hallways no longer had any need to be cleared in advance of Cerea's passage. (They had come across a few on the staff who were seeing her for the first time, and she'd tried not to look at the trembling bodies as they pressed themselves into alcoves.) And with every hoofstep, the polished armor told the world We Are In Charge Here.
There were times when Cerea could simply sense the aura which came from power. The Princesses seemed to feel their populace needed a reminder.
A gold-armored female pegasus flew up to the white mare, hovered near her head. "We just got five more, Princess."
"Are the conditions holding?" the regal horse quietly asked.
"We're okay so far." Wing patterns briefly twisted into an awkward sort of flap. "But the rivers are going to be a little low for a while: the weather team wasn't ready for this, and --"
"-- the necessary moisture," the dark mare patiently cut in, "had to be taken from somewhere. And the Courtyard itself?"
"The divide is there for the fall." Back to the white mare. "We could use a little help with the heat, though."
"When I get in there," the taller Princess steadily promised. "I know the Solar shift nearly flew themselves into froth for this, Glimmerglow. I'll do my part."
Two unicorn stallions (one white and slim, the other brown and muscular) briefly registered their presence near Cerea's right flank as a twinned gust of nerves before moving into actual view: eight legs scrambled to reach the Princesses.
"Ready," the white one said as he caught up, with the thick black mane displaying more stability than his voice. "As we're going to be."
"Good," Princess Luna told him. "Because I am certain that we will be hearing at least one question regarding contagion, and it will help to have professionals standing by to declare idiocy. Thank you, Doctor Bear." Her gaze moved towards his partner. "And Doctor Bear, I see your field is carrying -- folded charts?"
The brown stallion nodded. "We're going to try and sell them on sexual dimorphism," the larger unicorn said. "If it becomes necessary. In this case, it helps that she doesn't have cloven hooves or fur on her upper portions, and the absence of --"
"-- should we push her sleeves back?" the taller Princess cut in. "Emphasize the skin?"
He winced. "Princess..."
She managed a smile. "I know: you're a surgeon, not an image consultant. But we might consider doing that at some point."
The nod was a fairly weak one. "Anyway, the idea is that we can't make anypony see her as something other than a centaur -- but by using gender as a dividing line, we may be able to put a little distance between her and Tirek. Best-case, we can add 'subspecies' to that."
"But that won't be easy," the thinner male said. "Not when they both affect magic. Most ponies are going to be thinking --"
His head went up, and slightly to the right. All four legs continued to move at the same pace, and the brown stallion leaned into him just in time to steer the smaller away from the first crash.
"It's still worth trying," Princess Celestia decided.
One more body went past Cerea, head down and horn lit. Some of the wind produced by Nightwatch's wings got through the glow, and the tall stack of carried papers shifted slightly at the top.
"Ready," Crossing Guard told Princess Luna, and said no more.
"Good," she told him. "As we are nearly there..."
The procession moved through new sections of the palace. Cerea still didn't know how large the structure was: just that there were portions where the marble had silver flecking, and that was where she'd spent the majority of her time when out of the cell. Other parts showed gold. There was at least one layer below, many more above, and she couldn't say anything about the view because there had been a policy about keeping her well away from the closed windows -- but it didn't feel like they'd come that far up. There was a chance they were at ground level. And ponies joined the little parade while others moved ahead or dropped back, while all Cerea could was silently keep pace and try to focus on where she was. On the when.
"...are you okay?"
She glanced at the black pegasus, whose near-hover had placed silver eyes directly on the most natural view line. Replied on the same level of whisper. "...no. I do not think that..." She swallowed. "I don't think anyone could be okay right now. But I'm still going to try."
The little knight nodded --
-- and the front of the procession reached two large silver-bordered doors. Portals which faintly vibrated from the accumulated force of hoofsteps, something which had been added to what Cerea's twisting ears insisted was a faint whisper. A whistle of air current around the frame, perhaps, or some tiny intruding fraction of another sound produced by whatever was on the other side...
"Stop," Princess Luna told Cerea, and her hooves nearly tangled in the attempt to hold up. "This is where we leave you for a time. Princess Celestia and I shall initially speak to the press together. While accompanied by selected members of the government and palace staff --"
"-- but if male unicorns had curled horns, you'd never be able to find anypony free on the weekends --"
"-- and thank you, Doctor Bear," the white mare sighed. "We're going to prepare them for you, as best we can. And when we think they're ready, we'll bring you out. So for now, just try to stay away from the doors. We don't want anypony to get a look at you when they initially open, or if somepony needs to duck back in for a minute."
She automatically took two hoofsteps back: one blind spot-occupying Guard shifted just in time to keep from being accidentally trodden.
"This may require some time," the dark Princess stated. "But it is preferable to have you waiting nearby than to create an additional delay through bringing you up from the cell after we are finished. And we will not teleport you, because having you appear from nowhere will undoubtedly exacerbate a number of what we are expecting to be extant issues. Nightwatch?" The little knight instantly focused. "Stay with her. You emerge when she does. However, keep two body lengths between you. A watcher, but not a warden."
"Yes, Princess," Nightwatch evenly replied.
"All right," the white mare said. "Does anypony need a restroom?"
Multiple heads shook. (Cerea decided it wouldn't help.)
"Then we're as ready as we're probably never going to be," Solar royalty wearily announced. "Here we go..."
Light surrounded her horn, projected forward to coat the doors in a shimmer of sunlight-yellow. Pushed, and --
-- Cerea was too far back to truly see anything, especially when trying to look past the bulk of the white body. There was a brief glimpse of patterned stone, the impression of open space beyond, and a blast of sound, so many words that the wire started with a hiss and quickly accelerated towards shriek, dozens of partial syllables twisting within her ears as the cold surged into the hallway, her arm came up and her ears went back and --
"-- wait for us," Princess Luna softly told her. "We will do what we can to clear the path."
Royalty moved forward as large white wings unfurled, began to subtly shift. Part of the retinue followed. The doors closed.
And Cerea waited.
She seemed to have an odd awareness of her own ears.
It was the sort of thing which usually resulted from a rather base level of prank: someone in the household would go up to another one of the girls, whisper "Did you ever realize that you have a tongue?" (or any other portion of anatomy) and in the case of those who had them, they would then spend the next hour trying to rid themselves of the constant sensation that there was a tongue in their mouth and they weren't entirely sure what to do about that. As pranks went, it was fully effective against five-sevenths of the group: Suu could simply reabsorb the part, and Papi had been known to forget about things which were attached.
In this case... when it came to comparing the features of her head against those of a pony, ears were what came closest to matching. But it was, in many ways, a cosmetic similarity: some degree of resemblance in the overall shape, with an added range of motion. Pony ears were just about set towards the apex for both sides of the skull, were larger in proportion to the head than Cerea's and didn't narrow as much or as quickly while moving towards the tips. They also lacked the little tufts of fur at the very ends, and the default position was just about straight up.
For Cerea... her ears didn't have a human shape
ears down and back, under my hair
I'm okay if they don't see my ears
but they did share the placement. (Many little things about human anatomy still shocked her, and the fact that the entire species could only fix on a noise through turning their entire heads was the sort of disturbance which could make obsessive thinking about tongues into an improvement.) It still gave her a fairly good rotational range, and subtle muscles allowed for some small degree of cupping to focus sound. But they were on the sides of her head, and... there were still ponies in the hallway. Nightwatch, and a small selection of observing Guards.
"Do you need anything else to eat?" the little pegasus softly asked. "Drink?"
Her stomach was already churning. "No. But thank you."
The awkward pause hovered on Cerea's right. "Do you want... um... anything?"
I want to go home.
"Different ears," was what actually slipped out.
"Um. ...what?"
Because it was harder for her to press her ear against a door. She couldn't exactly do it subtly --
-- all right, it wasn't as if humans were all that subtle about it either. But at least their ears had been designed for a better fit. In fact, now that she thought about it (because it was so much better than thinking about what might be going on outside, or remembering what once had), it was as if whatever had created humans had basically said 'You know, eventually, these two-legged things are going to be listening at doors, assuming they can ever think of them. We'd better set something up in advance.' Meanwhile, she had to rotate, and then she had to cup at best she could so as not to miss any sound which might make it through, and then she had to figure for the fact that she wasn't exactly casually leaning against the wall in order to acquire that position in the first place, plus there were awkward angles of head and neck to consider, one shoulder was probably curled inwards and as for what was probably going to wind up happening to that one breast...
"...nothing," Cerea sighed, because she also wasn't supposed to be anywhere close to the door and listening at the wall wouldn't do much.
She had been straining to pick up sound from the outside. Hear any portion of what was going on. But just about nothing reached her: at most, she occasionally got a tiny susurrus, the undercurrent babble of voices without any meaning.
They were talking about her, where she could not hear them. There had been times when the herd had done that, speaking in what was meant to be perfect privacy just before her mother had arrived, wearing armor polished to a level which could blind --
"It's been a while," Nightwatch observed, perhaps under the delusion that doing so would somehow help. "About forty minutes, I think."
Cerea's hooves briefly cantered in place against the marble.
"Um," the little knight continued. "I didn't think it would be this long. But there's a lot to talk about. I guess it could be this long. Since it already has been. Or it could be longer --"
The heavy left-side door opened. A lesser cold trotted through, with warmth close behind -- but very little sound followed them. There was a distant sort of rumble, something rising and falling as it worked with the need to stop for more oxygen. But for that which most immediately awaited them, the world seemed to be holding its breath.
"We took it as far as we could," the white mare quietly told the waiting group. "And we got them quieted down. They're as ready as they're going to be, and -- that may not be ready enough."
"Some things arise from instinct," the dark Princess said, with that steady gaze focusing on Cerea's eyes. "And when the herd decides that the time for thinking may have ended, not all will be capable of retaining rationality. You..." A slow breath, and a single wisp of fog rose from her fur. "...are likely about to see something which we did our best to prevent. A reaction. Because in the most realistic outcome, all we accomplished was to convince the strongest among them to hold their ground."
"Please don't judge them," the white mare softly asked. "Not for this. Nearly all of them live in Canterlot, and... just about all of them were attacked. Seeing you for the first time -- it won't ever be any worse than that. But we're going to do exactly what we discussed. Trot out with you. I'll be on your left. Princess Luna will be on your right. Without fear."
They said they would stay with us...
And the words slipped out. Just barely a whisper, only audible in the near-silence of the marble hallway -- but they emerged, and so they could never be taken back.
"...are you afraid of me?"
Her hands immediately went behind her back, clutched at each other as her head went down, and blue eyes closed with shame.
Something touched her right flank, poking lightly against the skirt. A wingtip, barely registered and visibly unacknowledged.
"No," Princess Luna said. "We are simply afraid for you. Arms at your sides. Hands open. Matching our pace. With us now, Cerea."
The brown ears twitched.
'Cerea.'
She called me --
It didn't mean anything. It was the only thing the disc wouldn't render as 'centaur'. It didn't represent the near-sisterly bustle of the household, or a quiet word from the one she had so hoped would be her love...
But she had heard her truest name, and so her eyes opened again.
Flanked by royalty, in the company of a true knight, Cerea walked into the light.
Too much light.
It should have taken hours of careful thought to fully reconstruct the events of eight seconds, something which would have been further slowed by the steady heat of humiliation. Under normal circumstances, there would have been no way to track events as they were happening, not even for someone with a lifetime of knightly training: there was simply too much happening at once.
But nothing was normal about that night, and the newest level of strangeness began at the moment the moon's light touched her, streamed across skin, sweater, and fur in something close to a caress before it reached down to her core and yanked.
Time slowed. Every sensation intensified. Instinct surged towards the master controls and did its best to shove Reason into the stinking trailer.
The moon was full.
It was the first thing she was aware of: for an endless horrible instant, it was the only thing she was aware of. And she didn't know what this world's lunar cycle was, but she had been outside for exercise at the track, the sky had been visible and the moon...
She recognized that it should not have been, and did so in a moment when she was trying to reconcile anything but that which came from her senses, every channel of input turned up beyond its maximum. But nothing she could do would make it anything other than what it was: the clearest, largest full moon she had ever seen. It was something which put all supermoons to shame. It didn't dominate the sky: it almost was the sky. It gave her a perfectly clear view of every crater, it was something which would have given an astronomer fits as they tried to make the choice between once-in-a-lifetime observations or pointlessly trying to flee before that life ended, and it probably would have made Papi screech about how it was the third day again and the harpy still didn't have the right masks.
It was something which existed at any moment when night was upon an occupied Lunar courtyard, and she had no way of knowing that. She only felt the heat surging under her skin as her heartbeat accelerated, lungs working so smoothly that the Second Breath would be the product of a casual wish. The moon was full, and...
Almost every liminal had that dubious relationship with the orb, although the exact nature of the channel and its results would vary. With centaurs... with Cerea, it was an amplifier. On the first night under a full moon in Japan, she had still been looking for a host family. She'd been granted an unusual degree of freedom to begin with: most of the exchange students could only venture out if their government-assigned host was with them, but the herd (or rather, her mother) had convinced the program that a centaur needed to find her own match, and so Cerea had begun her search. She still wasn't sure if toast would have changed the results.
That had been the foremost thought at the moment the light first touched her in Japan, and so it had seemed perfectly sensible to extend her search into the night. All night, every night until the moon waned again, and what she'd mostly learned was that patrolling police officers liked to check IDs multiple times (while having no interest in hosting, despite a knight's obvious match with law enforcement), while the majority of those stumbling home at that hour were good for nothing else. But in the household, during that time when it had just been her (failed) beloved, Miia, and Papi... she had been thinking about... the same thing as the other two girls. She'd just hung on a little longer before the desire had overwhelmed her, had even told herself that she was just entering his bedroom in order to defend him -- but there had been two rivals, she had to be the one who claimed him, she couldn't come in second and --
-- what would have happened, had she beaten them? She didn't know. She had never faced her instincts on that level before, not when the males of her own species repulsed her, and she had lost. But she knew what the worst case was. The thing which had seen her cage herself during every full moon which followed.
It wouldn't have been seduction.
It wouldn't have been love.
It would have been horror.
It had taken some time before the shame had pretended to fade, something which had been true for all of them: even Papi understood how bad it had almost become, at least once sunlight had returned. Every full moon after that had seen the girls locking themselves away, trying to keep him safe, and each successive new addition to the household had agreed to follow that code. He had escaped them once, and only the belief that he had been injured had shocked them back to their senses. They couldn't risk having it ever happen again.
But he was gone. (She was still telling herself that he never could have loved her.) There was no desire. The moonlight reached within her, and what it amplified was desperation, frustration, the anger which she had been repressing from the moment she'd learned that there might not be any way to return home and there was the possibility of spending the rest of her life as the only one of her kind, friendless and loveless in a world which reeked of fear.
It reached all of that, and the mix which had been building from the moment of her arrival surged.
Less than a second, and she was struggling to hang on. To remain a being of thought instead of turning into something ruled by instinct. (The Princesses had yet to realize something was wrong, hadn't had enough time to pick up on the change in her breathing.) But there was so much else competing for her attention, every sense fully open, and in the endless moment when the light first touched her, she registered every last bit of it.
Look to the sky and there was the moon, the largest and fullest moon any centaur had ever seen. A circle of small, exceptionally dark clouds which nature never would have allowed to be so close to the ground, and those were about to become important. But beyond that, there was only swirling white.
She had seen some of what the little winged ponies could do during the first fight, and Nightwatch had tried to explain a few of the intricate ways in which pegasus magic worked. Cerea now understood that the species had some capacity for controlling the weather, something which became easier when done by groups (although for some yet-unknown reason, the groups couldn't be too large). She'd seen the dark Princess casually adjust the temperature with a few flaps of her wings, and felt the mare's anger chill the world. But this was another level entirely, autumn night forced into something close to blizzard. Cold and wind and blasting snow, nearly whiteout conditions -- but they were something which existed only beyond the boundaries of the courtyard.
(They were entering a courtyard, one which had been paved with huge flat opalescent stones. She was just starting to register that: the ornate columns which set the borders for the vast open perimeter, the benches set out for those who had assembled there. Easily sixty meters across the most narrow portion, perhaps double that for the widest part of the oval.)
Where she was... brisk, a little breezy, and both conditions seemed to microscopically mollify with every shift of a white feather. But outside the courtyard, snow was coming down in sheets. It seemed to have been doing so for some time: a carefully-shoveled (plowed?) path indicated where the majority of attendees had entered, and there was something which vaguely resembled a huge open-faced copper grating next to that corridor: the snowpile next to it was steadily melting.
Autumn within the courtyard, winter beyond, and not a single snowflake reached Cerea. (She would have welcomed the cold. Anything which calmed the inner fire.) And somewhere within the surrounding storm, there was shouting, echoes pulled across the space between worlds to emerge anew from pony throats, and she realized too late that her first look at the gathering was actually a desperate search for yellow vests.
But there were none, although some of the ponies were still dressed for the weather which lay beyond the invisible border: others had placed their heavy jackets underneath the sturdy wooden single-occupancy benches. One was still moving down a wide, carefully-arranged aisle. A few were wearing hats, and what she guessed to be band-trapped press passes rustled lightly in the breeze.
None of them were shouting. (Those vocalizations were the property of the protestors, somewhere out in the white, and she distantly wondered at the level of dedication required to keep a protest going in that.) They weren't speaking at all. They had simply all focused their complete attention upon her, doing so at the instant she had become visible, and in the moment when she truly began to look at them --
There was just enough time to make an initial estimate, during the stretching of the seconds. At least seventy ponies for the portion directly in front of her, probably more to the sides. She finally saw a living gryphon (griffin?) and wondered how anyone was supposed to read an expression upon the inflexible beak. But she saw them all after days of never being with more than six or seven, after a time when the number who could stand to be near her was usually closer to one, and...
...she hadn't seen them in this kind of gathering. Not when they weren't attacking her, or celebrating her defeat. There were at least seventy of them, and they were --
-- small.
They were all so small.
The white Princess was still the only true horse among them. These were ponies. Some of them would have barely reached her upper waist: the tallest would have had their features lost in the shadow of her breasts. And every last one had magic of some kind, but when she compared them to her own body, even the sturdiest earth ponies seemed small and weak and
"Of who could be in charge, if she wasn't so nice..."
It almost made her jump. The memory of words arrived as something close to speech, and the phantom touch of a pointed tongue flicked against her right ear. But there was a sense which had yet to be heard from, she was already operating on the edge of overwhelm and when the next impression reached her, pushing in on altered breezes...
How to describe it, to someone who wasn't a centaur? When she finally tried to tell Nightwatch about her perception of what had happened, she would turn to something she thought the pegasus might understand: electricity. About seventy ponies, just within her immediate visual perception. More than that in the olfactory world, although it would take some time to truly sort them out as individuals. They mostly existed as intertwining currents within flow tides, because pegasi had a different base scent than a unicorn, who wouldn't smell like an earth pony, and nothing duplicated the scent which arose from royalty.
So imagine each pony as their own generator. In any given moment, they would be producing sparks of scent: things which arose from mood, health, simple existence. And when Cerea had first emerged, some of those generators had been running at settings which she was slowly learning to recognize. The sub-aspects of fear: anticipation, nervousness, worry and trepidation. But then they had truly seen her, and...
Every piece of internal machinery begins to ramp up production. Voltage surges. Scattered at various points across the courtyard, six of those generators surge into overdrive. Every setting instantly dials up to the maximum, and a burst of pheromonal lightning blurs white-hot off the fur. The energy seeks a conductive surface and so even as the pony starts to move, the wind is carrying that power to the nearest pieces of biological hardware.
It makes contact, sinks in through skin as much as snout. And where it touches, those generators begin to flare...
It's not quite instantaneous, because air requires time in which to travel, and reflexes can only respond so quickly. But the surging parties are spread throughout the group. Each one serves as a fresh epicenter for a traveling series of flares. Every victim, regardless of what their own state had been, responds to the terror. Every one of them starts to produce fear. And it's possible to see a few struggle against it: ears go bolt-upright before twisting backwards, lungs work too quickly, a tail lashes against the owner's flanks over and over again in an attempt to provide new input, anything else to focus upon, and so she also sees one deliberately bite his own lower lip. Some fight, wings twisting, hornlight pushing against their own skin, and there are those who win. The settings begin to dial down, much more slowly than they had surged up. But breathing slows. Eyes focus. What remains is still filled with fear, but it has some control over that state. A sapient being choosing how to respond, and those who win can choose to stay where they are.
But all around the victorious, those who have lost their battles are still surging. Their production brings the intensity of the invisible electricity up and up, until what's starting to fill the courtyard is at a temperature which threatens to melt all resolve. Nightwatch's wingbeats falter. The Princesses tense and when she senses that, she nearly loses the last of her hope.
Later, she will recognize this as her second experience with the phenomenon: the first came when she vaulted the greenery and landed in the pony town, and it is only the full moon (or the way her body has responded to what it believes to be the expression of that orb) which allows her to track it so closely now. A few succumb immediately, their defeat spreads out, even those who win contribute, and --
-- there are gaps. Three of them, all producing their own variations of scent, beings which can't be ponies. They may be able to recognize the lightning, but they can't conduct it. They serve as tiny breaks in the storm, and they aren't enough.
Fear conducts.
Terror surges.
Every pony serves as a conductor.
And the lightning burns away rationality, sears individuality into something smaller than dust.
There are a few ponies left before her.
The rest is the herd.
It looks at her through more than a hundred eyes. It needs to react, and there is some portion which evaluates her, measures its sheer cumulative mass against her own and comes up with a total which has her begin to reach for a weapon which isn't there --
-- but it knows what happened the last time it encountered something with this arrangement of limbs. It remembers the violation, the wrenching removal of its core. Something very much like a rape of the soul.
It can't go through that again, something which cannot think has been reduced to a pair of choices -- and the first is impossible. Because if the herd moves, it can trample her. She will be kicked to death within seconds, and the mindless beating will continue until hooves are stomping into bone fragments and pulp. The herd can kill her, the herd knows that, the simple mercy of a single mare who had regained herself at the last cannot happen here --
-- but she is flanked by the two most powerful entities in the nation. Those whom, in a state without true thought, the herd can only see as that which stands against it, something which can stop it, and so the herd knows victory is impossible.
It cannot fight.
And for the parts of it which, until a moment ago, lived and breathed as pegasi, the 'flight' part becomes literal.
Wings flare, send those portions towards the white. Endless sets of legs kick out, get their owners upright and make them gallop down the nearest available path to safety. And one has his horn flare with brilliant blue, a burst of light which takes him with it, but the rest are flying and running and for the most part, they are doing so using those wide, carefully-arranged, channeling aisles.
The herd flees. It has to run, if it wants to live. And the paths it takes brings it under waiting dark clouds which have Guards hovering above them.
Silver-coated hooves slam into vapor, and every last milliliter of cold moisture dumps onto the herd.
The shock is almost instant. The majority of generators momentarily short out. Some trip over their own legs (and four legs offer a multitude of options for how that can happen), a few slow and get hit from behind by the ones who didn't. And a number continue on no matter what, race into the white where the cold and moisture dampen and dissipate their scents, chased by Guards who can easily catch those who cannot think, get them in front of something which generates heat before illness sets in. But the rest...
The herd begins to fall apart, doing so almost as quickly as it formed. Pupils snap back to their full size. Tails untuck themselves.
Eight seconds.
"And this," Princess Celestia quietly, evenly said as her wings slowly settled into the rest position, "is why we requested that you honestly ask yourselves whether you were ready. Why we took so much time to let you try to internally prepare. Some of you were ready. For the rest... we are here. I'm asking you to remember that. No matter how you feel about what she might represent, even with what you went through... we're here. The full Diarchy, standing ready. We've told you she's harmless. And if you believe she isn't... then also believe that we aren't."
"Gather by the heater," Princess Luna added. "We will have two additional ones brought in, along with using the palace's desaturator to separate water from fur. And once everypony is dry and warm, the next stage will begin."
"She'll talk to you," the white mare continued. "She'll answer your questions, as best she can. So will we. And after that..." It was a deliberate pause, one meant to create the opportunity for hope to bloom, and so it was also the moment in which it tried to die. "...maybe you won't be afraid any more."
And the girl couldn't move. Moon-heightened instincts burned through her, and she didn't lift a single hoof. For to move just then would have been to run, and she would have run until the moment when she would never move again.
Eight seconds.
Eight seconds as a preview for the rest of her life.