//------------------------------//
// The Circle of the Dark Between Stars 
// Story: My Brave Pony: The Knight Who Fell From Space 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


The Circle of the Dark Between Stars


 

Raven walked down the street. 
As streets went, this one was nothing special. Just a very ordinary street in Canterlot. It was nowhere near the palace, it was not in one of the swinging parts of town that never slept. It was nowhere near the gala and, just as importantly, nowhere near the doughnut shop where Twilight and her friends had retired with Lightning Dawn after the fiasco of the party. 
Raven frowned beneath the hood of her cloak. She remembered that night. She remembered tonight, and she remembered that tonight was the night when Lightning Dawn asked permission to stay in Equestria. The night when, looking back, it became clear that everything had begun to go awry. 
This was the beginning of the end. The end that she had come to avert. 
She had lingered in Ponyville for the last few days, watching as Twilight and Lightning grew closer to one another, as everything proceeded just as it had done the first time. Now she had watched long enough. The time had come to act. 
Perhaps she could have just killed him and been done with it. Perhaps she should have killed them both and made absolutely certain that the future she dreaded, the future so filled with pain and suffering, would never come to pass. Perhaps that would have been the safest course. 
But she had not always been a killer. She had not always been a warrior. She had not always taken lives as easily as breathing. There had been a time, before she gave up her destiny for the sake of power, when she had been accounted good and noble, kind and generous, warm and caring and loving and all the sweet, good things in the world; there had been a time when she had been acclaimed as a font of every virtue in Equestria admired. There had been a time when she had been… innocent. 
Raven was under no illusions that she could return to that pre-lapsarian state, and live as she had done in the years gone by; that life belonged to a different mare, to a foolish girl who trusted in friendship and compassion until all her friends were dead from her folly and weakness. She was not that little filly any more. She was Raven, she was death, the fire of heaven burned within her blood. She had made her bargain long ago and she had chosen the path of war and conflict. 
But she could still remember when it had been otherwise. She could still remember what it had been like to laugh and talk and hang out with friends, to have picnics on the hill, to watch the stars, to live a life without care and free from strife and worry in equal measure. And although she knew that she could not have that life back, the very fact that she had come to this place and to this time to save not only the world but that childlike way of living it… it encouraged Raven to not resort to murder with her own hooves and her own magic if she could avoid it. She had come to spare Equestria a river of blood; she would rather accomplish that goal by means more subtle than another river of blood created earlier by a different pony. 
She would kill for the greater good, if she had no other choice… but she would prefer not to. 
And so, rather than confronting Lightning Dawn, she had hidden away from him and from Twilight Sparkle lest a meeting with the twin authors of all her pain cause her to lose all self-control and become again the wild and savage warrior that she had become in latter years, Raven was walking down a nondescript street in downtown Canterlot. 
Watching them from afar had been hard enough. She did not want to lose herself. She did not want to lose control. Not that it was easy, in Ponyville. So full of memories. So full of ghosts. She’d see Pinkie Pie and want to burst out crying, she wanted to run up to Applejack and yell at her to take her sister and run, to go far, far away from here; she wanted to kidnap Rarity and take her to Manehattan where she’d be safe. She wanted to pull Twilight Sparkle’s pretty little head off and grind Lightning Dawn’s bones to dust. 
Instead, she walked down this Canterlot street, her shadow walking beside her in the moonlight, walking down the middle of the road between the rows of terraced houses with their little garden plots before them, walking until she came to the house that she was looking for.
Number 3. It had a wrought iron gate and an antique door knocker nailed to the ochre door. 
Raven stopped, and stared at it. She remembered this street. She remembered this house, though it would be many years in the future before she walked down it. The conflict with the Circle of the Dark Between Stars would not begin for some time; the sleepers would not awake for a little while until after that which they should – according to their oath – have kept watch for had already begun and was too late to stop. By the time that she and her comrades and those who still foolishly called themselves her friends had clashed with the Circle their victory – if you could call it victory – was already assured. Raven remembered that they had been a rather pathetic bunch, compared to the zebra Servants of Memory; in fact they were pretty pathetic by any reasonable measure. But these pathetic ponies had in their possession some decidedly un-pathetic things. Things that she needed. Things that, if they were deployed more swiftly and by someone with a better grasp of tactics, might actually turn the tide and save unhappy Equestria before it actually became unhappy. 
Raven pushed open the gate and walked briskly up the paved pathway towards the door. She ignored the antique door knocker, with its face like a dragon’s head leering at her, and simply pounded upon the door with one grey hoof. 
The door splintered a little. Raven bit back a curse. This wasn’t a world for an enhanced warrior. She would have to keep that better in mind. 
The door was opened by a unicorn mare, wearing a flannel tied around her head and levitating a foal in swaddling clothes – and a dummy in their mouth beside them. She glanced at the dent in the door, then turned her irate blue-eyed gaze on Raven. 
“I’m very sorry about that,” Raven said. “I will, of course, pay for the damage.”
“You’re darn right you will,” the mare snapped in an accent that reminded Raven a little of Applejack. “Who are you, anyway? What do you want?”
“My name is of no importance,” Raven said softly. “I’m here for the meeting.”
The mare rolled her eyes. “Oh, I see, you’re one of those, one of his friends.” Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you coming around here before.”
“I’m new,” Raven said. She used her wing – which was more deft than her telekinesis – to extract a purse of gold from underneath her wing and threw it down at the unicorn’s feet. 
She looked down at it. Then she looked back up at Raven. “That… that’s far too much for a dented door.”
“Keep it anyway,” Raven said. “Buy an expensive toy for the little one. Buy them lots of toys.” She leaned a little closer to the levitating baby. Children were such treasures. So innocent, so helpless, so in need of the protection of adults; that was why she’d… she’d made her mistakes. She’d thought that she was protecting the children. And now she was back to save them all from herself. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Yes, you would. You’d like all the toys that bits can buy.”
The foal recoiled from her, from the wrongness of Raven, as though she could sense the death and decay that clung to the mare. Raven drew back as the little filly began to cry, or tried to in spite of their pacifier. She didn’t mind being rejected, but she was sorry that she had upset the child. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Um, may I come in?”
“Uh, sure,” the mare said, taking a few steps back to admit Raven into the sanctity of her home. “The clubhouse-“
“Is in the basement,” Raven said smoothly. “Yes, Emerald told me already. I know the way.”
“Okay,” the mare said. “They’ve got snacks down there already, but do you want a drink or anything?”
“No,” Raven said. “No, I don’t want to be any trouble. Thank you for the offer, but I’m fine.” Success was the only nourishment that she desired.
They have snacks down there? Good grief, and I thought that they were pathetic from my memories.
The wife nodded. “Okay. Well, just holler if you change your mind.”
She left Raven to it after that, taking her child off somewhere to attend to his needs, leaving Raven to make her own way through a thoroughly ordinary middle class house. It was not at all the sort of place one would expect to find the best hope of resisting an invading interstellar empire, but then – even allowing for the fact that this was Equestria, where a bookworm, a dressmaker, a farmer, a speed freak, an animal lover and a loon would save the world more than once – these weren’t the kind of ponies one would trust to be one’s best hope against domination. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, a weak reed. 
But, Raven reflected as she made her way through a house where the walls were lined with photos – wedding pictures, baby pictures, vacations, that sort of thing – they would prove strong enough for her purposes. 
Raven found the basement easily – she’d been here before, after all – and trotted down the steps, with no care for how loud or quiet she was as she descended into the darkness of the cellar. 
She pushed open the door, to find roughly what she was expecting to find – a basement decorated as a den for a certain kind of stallion, with classic movie posters on the walls and a pinball machine in the corner. In the centre of the room three stallions – all dressed in black cloaks embroidered with a single silver star - were sitting around a table, with a bowl of some kind of cheesy chips sitting between the three of them. 
“Okay,” one of the three stallions, a pegasus with square spectacles and a beard growing around his jaw, said. “Roll to detect traps.”
“Are you playing Oubliettes and Ogres?” Raven asked incredulously. 
The three ponies – one earth pony, one pegasus, one unicorn – all turned to stare at her. 
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Raven said. “Let me try that again: the caged whale knows nothing of the mighty deeps, yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless mares. Yet verily the rose is within the thorn. The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy and I could keep going but I have neither the time nor the patience. Now, are you really playing Oubliettes and Ogres?”
The three ponies continued to stare at her. “Uhhh,” the green earth pony said. “Who are you?”
Raven advanced into the den. She kicked the door shut behind her. “I’m a little more interested in who you are, Emerald Ray. You see, I was under the impression that this was a meeting of the Circle of the Dark Between Stars, not a gaming group.”
“You know who I am?” Emerald Ray asked alarmedly. “How-“
“Emerald Ray, forepony of a small construction outfit here in Canterlot,” Raven said. “Type Setting, you run a small printing house, mostly working for publishers of niche academic texts. Memory Foam, you don’t actually need a job because your father wrote a well-received travelogue and you live off the royalties. I know who you are and I know what you are and I thought I knew that there were six of you, so where are the other three?”
The three ponies looked at one another anxiously. 
“Speak up,” Raven said.
Emerald Ray got to his feet. “Listen, I don’t know-“
He stopped, as a sword appeared in the air above Raven’s head, emerging blade first from a shimmering golden portal. 
I see that still works. Until Raven had tried it she hadn’t been entirely sure that her connection to the great vault was still extant, let alone that she would be able to summon weapons from it as she had done when she was still a loyal soldier of the King of Kings. Thank you, Sunset Shimmer.
Raven kept her voice soft, but sharpened the edge of it a little like the blade that hovered above her. “That’s right,” she said. “You don’t know. You don’t know who I am. You don’t know what I am. You don’t know what I’m capable of. I know all about you, but you know nothing about me, so don’t think about being brave because we both know that you’re no hero. Now: where are the other three members of this society?”
Emerald Ray swallowed. “Not… not everyone comes to every meeting,” he said. “Cornflower hasn’t come since her father passed away... Gold Hunter is at his grandson’s birthday party and… and Fondant Fancy is with his wife at… pilates class.”
“…Pilates class,” Raven repeated. “Sweet Celestia this is worse than I thought. The Circle of the Dark Between Stars,” she said, raising her voice. “Founded a thousand years ago by six brave ponies, who on the day Olympia was banished took a vow binding their heirs and successors to keep an eternal watch against the return of that city or its lords. And look at you now, roleplaying or… going to pilates classes.”
“How do you know about that?” Memory Foam asked. “My father told me that was a secret.”
“And why do you care?” Emerald Ray said. “It’s just a story.”
Raven shook her head. Of course, that was the problem, wasn’t it? That had always been the problem, even in her time. It was all well and good to bind your successors to something with a vow so long as they believed the thing was real. But nopony did, not any more. Olympia was a myth to these ponies, and by the time it became clear that it was real it was already too late. The Circle had become nothing more than a social group, whose meetings were a matter of convenience not urgency, to be attended when possible and not otherwise; and not even that for the eternally absent Cornflower. In a generation or two it would probably have ceased to exist altogether. 
The zebras are so much more fortunate.
Still, I have to work with what I’ve got. Just like I always have.
“You are precisely wrong,” Raven said. “Everything that your fathers told you is true. And now the hour of your watch has come. An emissary from Lord Jupiter has returned, and now the fate of Equestria rests in your hooves.” She took a moment to savour the looks of fear and confusion upon their faces. “But don’t worry,” she added. “I’m not actually asking you to get up and do anything to save your world. I know that you’re no heroes. Just leave everything to me.”
“Then… what are you doing here?” Type Setting asked. He was a grey unicorn whose dark mane was receding back away from his brow.
“Because I know the other part of this story,” Raven said. “I know that there was a seventh pony who was a part of the original circle, a great warrior named Silver Spear. When the other six ponies of the circle vowed to stand vigil, Silver Spear vowed to sleep, enchanted to lie suspended by magic, not dead and not alive, until he was awoken to do his duty and defend Equestria from Olympia once more. I know that that is a story as true as any other that you have been told. I even know where Silver Spear is sleeping. I know that the six of you each have a piece of the amulet that can break the enchantment and awaken the sleeping knight, so here’s what your going to do: you’re going to give me your pieces of the amulet, and then you’re going to tell me where I can find the other three so I can get their pieces, and then I’m going to save the world while you can carry on sitting here rolling for random monster encounters.”
“And… and if we don’t?” Emerald Ray asked.
Raven was silent for a moment. “I never wanted to be a violent pony,” she confessed. “When I was a little filly I loved to read. I wanted nothing more than to be left alone with my books. But fate… destiny had other plans for me. So I became a warrior. I fought. I bled. Along the way I lost everyone I ever cared about.” She threw back her hood, and watched the horror upon their faces as they beheld her monstrous visage. “I have passed through death and destruction on a scale you soft ponies could never imagine. I have walked upon the path of daggers until my hooves bled. I have waded through rivers of blood. I have passed through flame unburned. The fire of heaven burns within my blood.” Her horn began to flare, and the terrible flame sparked upon its spear-sharp tip. “With this flame I will light a way through darkness, and turn to ashes all who oppose me.” Daggers appeared through gilded portals, forming a halo around her head. “Including you, and your wife and child upstairs. And lest you be in any doubt; I will find the other members of this circle, the only difference is whether you’re alive to see it. Now: give me those amulet fragments, and give me those addresses.”



The Canterlot Museum of Antiquities was closed for the night. The building was quiet and still and almost sepulchral as Raven trotted through it, her hoofsteps tapping on the tiles of the floor the only sound in this hallowed-seeming place.
Of course it wouldn’t have seemed so if she was visiting in the daytime, when it would have been thronged with chattering crowds and out of control school trips, little fillies and foals having to be restrained by their teachers from climbing all over the exhibits. 
Raven remembered what it had been like, trying to visit this place in normal hours; it was practically impossible to learn anything for all the hubbub!
Now it was quiet, and still. Now there was no one here but her. And yet she had no time now; no time to read the notations underneath the ancient vases, no time to examine or admire the statues, no time for anything but the dark purpose that had brought her here.
No time for anything but the salvation of the world.
And so, as she moved through the dark halls, she flitted between exhibits and displays but regarded none of them. Ancient Mareathonian urns, statues carved by pegasi from before the three tribes were united, graven images of the Shedu who had once roamed the lands of the zebras far to the south, kirin wood carvings, none of them made her pause. None of them excited her, though there was a time long, long ago when she would have stopped to geek out over each and every single one of them. In fact she had probably done exactly that, although it was hard to say for sure. It was becoming a little difficult to remember. The memories of her old life were fading away, disappearing from the recesses of her memory. It was one of the consequences of her bargain that she had not been made aware in advance. She had traded everything for power: her cutie mark, her destiny, most of her magic, she had given it all away for the power to keep her friends safe; but not only had she failed in that endeavour but she couldn’t even remember everything about her life any more. Holding on to her memories was a constant struggle; she fought to retain the important ones; important either for strategic reasons – they were memories of her past that would, she hoped, provide a guide to her future – or else for purely sentimental ones; she hoped to remember her dearest of times with her dearest of friends for longest. Those memories would motivate her the most. Those memories would drive her on, until her task was done. 
Please, Celestia, if there is any mercy in you, let me remember them until… until it doesn’t matter any more. 
Let me remember them until the worst thing that my memory retains has been averted.
Let me remember them until I can die in peace, my final mission a success.
With good fortune that day might come very soon. Of course she would have to wait a little while to be sure of that. She would have to observe Twilight Sparkle, and make sure that she didn’t do anything foolish, but Raven had hope that this plan, for all that it was a gamble, might actually pan out. 
And what had her life been but a series of gambles? It was true that not all of them had worked out for her, particularly in latter days, but she was no longer in those latter days. She was back now, back in Equestria of old, back in the golden days of the past when everything had seemed so bright and hopeful. And in those days, things had had a way of working out for her. 
She had gotten everything she needed. She had gotten the pieces of the Amulet from the members of the Circle; some of them had been glad to give them up; none of them had required actual force to persuade them, although in some cases the threat of it had been a sad necessity. She wasn’t sure if she would have actually killed any of them if it came to it. She hoped not. She’d come here hoping to do better than that, to walk back some of the choices that she had made in the future; but at the end of the day she was who she was. She was Raven now, and being back in the past had not transformed her back into the pony she was before. 
And the fate of Equestria was at stake. The lives of all her… she could not call them her friends, she had lost that right, but everypony who remained precious to her nonetheless. She would do whatever she had to do to keep them safe. 
She would protect them, even from themselves. 
The object that she was looking for, the key to her victory, lay near the centre of the museum, surrounded by priceless relics and objects of immense antiquity. Raven moved quickly past all of them, intent upon the sarcophagus of onyx that sat in the very centre of this hall, under a skylight which admitted the moonbeams like a searchlight upon the dark tomb. 
He had not always been here. Silver Spear had been laid to rest in a cavern in the mountains, a location known only to his six companions who had placed him there. But that had been a long time ago, and Canterlot had not even been a gleam in Silver Spear’s eye then. It had been some years ago when construction work on a new hotel had unearthed the crypt and the sarcophagus within. Unable to open it up, the entire great stone coffin had been brought here, to the museum, where its size and the intricate carvings on the stone made it an impressive and popular exhibit for all that nopony knew quite what it was. 
Along the sides of the sarcophagus were engraved images, like hieroglyphs but – unfortunately for those scholars who had, over the years, attempted to decipher the messages – not the same language. Even Raven couldn’t read what was written here; she wasn’t even sure if the carvings of battles and death and much destruction, depicting dark gods and grave perils, was an actual language or just primitive pictograms left for those who might not speak or read the same language as Silver Spear by the time the tomb was found. She couldn’t read it, but she had learned the gist of what was carved there: a warning of the truth about Olympia, and its great lords Jupiter and Saturn; a warning of what would befall if they should ever return to Equestria. 
It was against that eventuality that Silver Spear, captain of the royal guard, had been willing to suffer the long sleep like death, to wake only when the need was great and Equestria had need of him once more. 
A red velvet rope surrounded the sarcophagus. Before it sat a sign, reading:


	Unknown sarcophagus, c first century ANM


	Although practically everything surrounding this object, first discovered in 960 during the construction of the Canterlot Grand Hotel, remains a mystery, it is nevertheless a fine example of stone carving in this period, and a tantalising hint of the burial customs of elite ponies during the early years of Princess Celestia’s reign. No sarchophagus quite like it has been discovered anywhere else.


Of course not, Raven thought as she leapt over the velvet rope. Because nopony else quite like it has been buried anywhere else.
Upon the surface of the coffin the onyx was smooth and shiny, save for words in ancient runes in the language of Olympia, a tongue ne’er spoken in Equestria now, but which she had learned – or would learn – in less happy times.


	Here lies Silver Spear, the bravest of the brave,


	Though in that sleep like death he dreaming lies,


	When need and land doth call once more he’ll rise


	 

The land is in need now. It doesn’t know it yet, but I have seen the results of waiting until those who have been half-blind become half-ready and believe me it does not end well for us. The land is in need, and the time has come for you to wake.
Raven fumbled with the amulet around her neck. She had combined all six of the fragments that she had bullied or wheedled out of the members of the Circle into one, a single key shaped like a six-pointed star with Celestia’s sun in its centre, symbolising their devotion to the princess and to her Equestria; of course, when Silver Spear had been laid to rest Princess Luna had been banished as the evil Nightmare Moon; they would not have included any mention of her in the symbol of loyalty.
That was something that she would have no need to explain to Silver Spear. There was no point in troubling him with such minor details. 
Raven continued to fumble with the amulet. There was a time when she would have simply levitated it into the indentation on the slope of the sarcophagus lid that was clearly made for it. There was a time when had possessed the power to bend the world to her will. Now her telekinesis was as weak as that of Lightning Dawn, weaker perhaps, and for much the same reason: they had traded their birthright for something that had seemed more important at the time. 
But it was very awkward using her hooves for deft work like this. Since she had not been born to it she struggled with getting used to doing things the way earth ponies did. What would have been second nature to Applejack and Pinkie Pie was tough for her. 
But she did it, in the end. She got the amulet out, balancing it awkwardly upon the flat of her grey hoof, and placed it into the keyhole that had been fashioned for it long ago. 
For a moment nothing happened. All was quiet within the museum as if it were in truth a mausoleum, and Silver Spear as dead as the occupant of his sarcophagus was presumed by those less well-informed to be. 
Then, of its accord, without any glow of magic manipulating the process, the amulet turned in place. There was a click, and the heavy onyx lid of the coffin moved a little. 
Raven smiled, and waited for it to finish moving. 
It didn’t. It became clear that she was going to have to finish the rest of the job herself. 
She had traded her magic for power, but that didn’t mean that she enjoyed these uses of brute strength, especially when she could still – despite her fading mind – remember when she could have done this with telekinesis much more easily. Still, needs must with Equestria and all her precious friends at stake, and so Raven stalked around the sarcophagus until she was standing beside one of its long edges, put her forehooves to the coffin lid and heaved, pushing upon the stone slab, forcing it backwards inch by inch as the grinding sound of stone upon stone grated at her ears until, with a thud and crack upon the floor, the lid tumbled to the museum floor and slipped off the elevated steps on which the coffin sat. It thumped, thumped, thumped as it dropped down the steps and hit one of the metal stands suspending the velvet rope, dragging the whole thing down with a clatter which rang out in high-pitched counterpoint to the echoing boom of the falling stone.
Boom, the dolorous sound echoed in the silent museum, until it almost sounded like a voice proclaiming Doom. 
Raven paid little attention to that. Her gaze was wholly fixed downwards, staring at the sleeping occupant of the stone coffin. 
Silver Spear was a unicorn, his coat as silver as his name, what Raven could see of it beneath the shining armour – the spell that kept him in a suspended state had also suspended the sheen to which his warlike raiment had been polished, as though it had been tended to this very day – which enveloped him. Silver Spear was a pony of the elder days, and his armour too was of an old-fashioned type, the kind that you could still find in the ruined Castle of the Two Sisters if you looked for it; unlike the largely ceremonial armour of today’s royal guard, this armour covered every inch of the pony who wore it, even the tail, and much of it spiked to make for a more deadly weapon. Silver Spear wore all his armour, save for his helm – complete with a scarlet crest as bright as fire and a mask that would cover his face when he donned it – which rested on his left beside his forehoof. On the other side of him rested his spear, as silver as his name, with a replica of an apple at the butt of it. Silver Spear had not been one of the greatest enemies that Raven had ever had to face, but he had been sufficiently persistent that she had learned a few things about him; the apple on his spear was a tribute to his wife, who was a very distant ancestor of the Apple Family; the unicorn blood had been bred out of the clan over long generations, but nevertheless Raven had found that fact ironic at the time. 
She still found it ironic. Looking down at Silver Spear, his face so noble in repose, brought back a flood of memories that would probably pass beyond recall before too long. He had that scar across his right eye, exactly as he had when she had first met him. He had had more scars than that by the time he laid down his famous spear. 
She had persuaded him to lay it down. In her time, in her future, she had convinced him that his war was over, that there was nothing to fear from the Olympians, that he should give up his enmity towards them and his ancient quest. And he had done so, because he trusted her and trusted in her honour. They had become friends, you see, after a fashion, before they had stopped being enemies. Even across the battlefield foes can learn about one another, can see things worth respecting, even worth saving. His courage had been undeniable even when she thought his cause a bad one, and he… he had been a fool. 
The King of Kings had cared nothing for her honour or her word. He had put Silver Spear to death as an enemy of New Olympia. At least he had not lived long enough to see the full extent of Raven’s failure.
At least he had not lived long enough to understand how wrong Raven had been when she preached peace to him. 
“Arise, arise, warrior of Equestria,” Raven whispered. “The dawn has failed, the dark is almost on us.”
For a moment longer all was still and silence. Then Silver Spear’s eyes, as golden as the sun, snapped open. 
“Breath the living air again,” Raven whispered, as Silver Spear gasped for breath. 
“I… I am awake?” Silver Spear gasped.
“Did you dream away the aeons?” Raven asked. “Or did they pass before you in an instant?”
Silver Spear looked at her. “I’m awake?” he repeated.
“You sound surprised.”
“I hoped… if I am awake does that mean-“
“An emissary of Lord Jupiter has found his way to us,” Raven said. “That which you feared has come to pass.”
Silver Spear continued to stare, wide-eyed. “If that is so, then… then where are the descendants of my brothers who swore to keep watch over against this day?”
“Their descendants failed, and forgot their watch and the oath their forebears made,” Raven said. “But what of that? I am here, and you are awake, is that not enough?”
Silver Spear sat up. “Who are you?”
Raven took a step back. I am your enemy. I am your friend. I tried to help you in the worst possible way. I betrayed you. I admired you. I detested you. I tried to save your life. I caused your death. 
You have cause to hate me.
I need your help.
“I am a servant of Princess Celestia,” Raven declared. “My heart belongs to her, but she does not recognise the danger that she is in.”
“Does not recognise?” Silver Spear repeated, as he leapt out of his sarcophagus. His horn flared with silver aura as he levitated his spear up out of the stone. “How can this be? Has she forgotten?”
“Perhaps,” Raven said. “I confess I do not know. But she has taken this envoy of Jupiter at his word of peace and good intent and this very night has granted him leave to remain here in Equestria as a pony of this land.”
“Leave to remain, what madness is this?” Silver Spear snapped. “How long have I been sleeping?”
“One thousand years, more or less.”
“One thousand… have the princess’ wits degraded in that time?”
“Don’t talk about Princess Celestia that way,” Raven snapped. “She is kind, and if she is too kind then… at least she is a prince who understands that virtue of kindness.”
Silver Spear bowed his head. “Of course. You are right. Her gentle heart is amongst the greatest of the princess’ virtues, and the reason why she is so well-beloved as our ruler, for all that she errs sometimes too much upon the side of kindness.”
“If she did not there would be no reason for you and I to exist,” Raven said. “We do the things that she will not… the necessary things.”
“Is that so?” Silver Spear murmured. “You think we are so alike?”
“You have travelled through time to be here, after a manner of speaking,” Raven said. “You are not alone in that.”
Silver Spear snorted. “Nopony knows that you have awoken me, do they?”
“Nopony else sees the danger as I do,” Raven replied. “Does it trouble you to work in shadows? Or do you wish for a parade to be given in your honour by those that you have saved?”
“I only care for the salvation of Equestria,” Silver Spear growled. 
“Then you understand what must be done,” Raven said. “This visitor from Jupiter must die, before he brings a horde of conquerors down upon us once again; Equestria is not prepared for such, not now; we have been at peace too long. He must die.”
“For what else did you awaken me but to take his life?” Silver Spear replied. He levitated helm and mask upon his head, encasing himself completely – even his horn – within his armour. “For what else did I slumber all these years but to fight this battle? I will kill this dog, for all that Celestia in her soft heart has shown kindness on him. I will kill him, and though she may hate me for it at least she will have space and life and free though in which to hate me.” His voice echoed out of all-enclosing helmet, but when he ceased to speak a sigh escaped his lips like hissing out of the armour. “One thousand years,” he murmured. “One thousand years and all my comrades dead and turned to dust.”
“In that, too, we are very much alike,” Raven said softly. “Take comfort in knowing that your dear friends and battle companions lived out their lives and died peaceful deaths in a peaceful land.”
Silver Spear looked at her. “And yours were not so fortunate?”
“And I was not so fortunate as to sleep away their passing,” Raven spat. “All that I do I do in memory and love of them.”
“We will avenge them, you and I.”
“It will be more than vengeance for me, if we win,” Raven said. “When we win,” she hastily corrected herself.
“Aye,” Silver Spear muttered. “When we win.” He placed the tip of his spear upon the ground, and touched the snout of his armoured mask upon the apple. “I go now to war once more, and whatever befalls this will be my last riding. Of my conduct I am not ashamed. I have bested enough monsters in my life. Provided I defeat this last one then I may die content.”
“A noble sentiment,” Raven said. “And worthy of a pony of the elder days. Will you come with me now, or do you need more time.”
“No more,” he said. “I am armed and well prepared. Lead on. Where may this wretch, this danger to our princess and our peace, be found?”