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// Startracking - Part 6 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
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Twilight was in Canterlot, when the Behemoth came there. She was in the castle, in her throne room, pacing up and down the length of the wall as she munched on her bottom lip and reran the same set of thoughts through her head for the twelfth time at least that afternoon alone.
It was the speech she had to give later that evening. Her first big speech as Princess, barring her coronation. Her first post-coronation speech. And despite every sign and previous example pointing towards her being perfectly able to deliver a good speech, and her being perfectly aware of that fact, she still most definitely did not feel like she was going to.
She really had to ask Celestia how she managed to deal with that. Assuming the alicorn did, and wasn't just as much of a nervous wreck, simply good at hiding it. But she wasn't a good actress. Either way, she definitely knew how to deliver a speech.
It was at that moment that something drew Twilight's attention away.
A voice. Barely a whisper, so quiet she wasn't sure if it was even there or she'd simply imagined it. Far too quiet to understand what it had said.
The floor shook, just barely. Twilight felt an itch at the base of her horn, a prickle of electricity in the joints of her wings. The ground shook again, with a touch more intensity, and something akin to a sudden static discharge travelled down her hind legs, starting at her cutie marks.
The Sun's light from outside the stained glass windows of the room got just a smidge less intense, slightly distorted. There was something like a shadow on the other side, like leaves against the sky when you look up from beneath a tree, like clear water you can barely tell is there. Something moving. Something looking at her.
The ground shook, hard enough for the floor to crack and rise in uneven, broken chunks. The windows shattered, fragments of broken glass flying into the room on a cold gust of wind from outside. The entire castle creaked, as cracks appeared all over walls and pillars and crawled upwards like reverse lighting. Screams of ponies echoed through the halls, and all through the streets of the city below.
And Twilight, standing still, gazed at the impossibly large and only half-there creature, as it lifted its head away from the now broken windows and stepped forward again, shaking the ground like an earthquake and tearing down what was left of the room's outer wall.
And Princess Twilight Sparkle watched, frozen there in her throne room, as the Behemoth came to Canterlot, and walked over its streets. As the buildings fell and the towers collapsed. As the creatures screamed and ran and cried. As the ground split open and the fountains froze and flowers and plants closed up as if it was nighttime.
And the souls of the living shrieked as they were ripped from their earthly shells and carried along with the storm, and the souls of the dead were raised alongside them and all they shattered against the Behemoth.
And Twilight watched, frozen there, as the Behemoth stood over Canterlot, and cast its shadow over Equestria. Unmoved, unmoving, silently watching the mayhem it had caused.
And Twilight watched, from the torn and broken edge of the room, through the hole that had once been a wall and now spanned the whole length from one side to the other. Like an actress on a stage, looking at the audience. The whole world outside her castle, and her inside.
And the knowledge that things would never be the same once she stepped out into that world.