//------------------------------// // Epilogue: Ordo ab Chao // Story: Ordo ab Chao // by Integral Archer //------------------------------// Praise Celestia!—came the cry from Los Pegasus in the West—for she brings the sun and its glory across our lands, feeding our crops and warming our homes! Praise Luna!—came the cry from Manehattan in the East—for she raises the moon in its turn, lighting the way when no other light exists! Princess Celestia had made the metaphor nearly one hundred eighty years ago, but it had been rhetorically repeated by her and her supporters due to the overwhelming appraisal it had received the first time; so much so that, as far as the citizens were concerned, it was an undeniable fact. An eminent geneticist hundreds of years ago had called the existence of an alicorn: “Akin to winning the jackpot in the gene lottery pool.” And it is easy for one to see why: for an alicorn to be born, the biological mother and father needed to be a pegasus and unicorn respectively—and, even then, there was only a one out of one hundred thousand chance that the genes would combine in their optimal way. Having one or more parents already alicorns increased the chance; but, even if both were alicorns, there was only a one in four chance an alicorn would conceive. But, if it did, the benefits to the foal were enormous. If the genetic phenotype manifested itself in both unicorn and pegasus genes, the foal would inherit the superior genes of both their unicorn and pegasus ancestors and would discard all of the crippling ones. This blessed them with an exceptionally long lifespan, and it is for this reason that Princesses Celestia and Luna had been able to devote themselves entirely to the long, arduous process of rebuilding a country that had been torn apart by a civil war—and those one hundred and fifty years came to be known as the Reconstruction Era of Equestria. It had begun with Princess Luna making her first public decree, in order to establish herself as the new leader. When Princess Luna had been standing in the antechamber immediately adjacent to the courtyard of the Hall of Congress, minutes before she had been scheduled to make her speech—her first appearance while wielding all the presidential authority—one of her servants had brought her aside and had informed her of the heartbreaking news: One of Enforcer’s neighbors, who had smelled something burning from the apartment over, had broken down the door after hearing no response and had come in to find thick black smoke clinging to the ceiling. He had put a rag over his mouth, calling out Enforcer’s name until he had tripped over a garbage can. The smoke had still been rising from it, even though no fire could be seen. The rest of the apartment had looked intact, and the neighbor had breathed a sigh of relief. Then, walking backwards in the direction he had thought the door was in, he had bumped into something cold. He had turned around; and when he had seen what it was, had let out a shriek that awoke every single tenant on the floor, striking fear into their hearts and ruining any chance of sleep they had in the foreseeable future—Enforcer hung from the ceiling, his face twisted into a horrible disfigurement. His body was stone cold, and his skin and eyes were a color of white unseen anywhere in the world. After recovering from his shock, the neighbor had grabbed Enforcer and had held him, still screaming for help. But it had been too late: he had expired hours earlier. Princess Luna had fallen to her knees, weeping loudly and unrestrainedly. Her sister had first noticed all the eyes of their servants turning in her direction before she had noticed that the cause of their stares was Princess Luna, collapsed in a pathetic heap upon the ground. Princess Celestia had walked quickly across the room toward her, avoiding the eye contact of those she had walked past. She had reached her sister, had grabbed her mane with her teeth, and had pulled her up to her hooves. She had glanced back at her servants, who had still been inundating her with their prying eyes, and she had waved her hoof angrily and dismissively at them. They had interpreted the gesture, and they had left the antechamber into the courtyard. Princess Celestia had repelled their fleeting glances with her own stare until they were completely out of sight. Turning to her sister, in a firm whisper she had said: “How dare thou make a scene like that! What could have possibly happened which caused thee to lose thy royal composure?” Princess Luna, not mitigating her voice or her tears despite the obvious wishes of her sister, had told her what had happened in rapid, shallow breaths. She had wiped away her own tears and had looked up at Princess Celestia, expecting at least an iota sympathy from her, but like always, all she had seen from her sister was complete indifference. “Princess Luna, although thou may be immediately stricken by his death, it should not come as unexpected. As thou know, he had not seen the power of the Elements of Harmony; therefore, he was one of the last remnants of the fallen Union, and his death should serve as an indicator of what is to come. Thou have promised me to see this through, and a filial outbreak like this will not be tolerated by me or the citizens who thou will rule—nor will it stop thee from upholding thy promise,” her sister had said. Princess Luna had whimpered something inaudible in protest, but that did not stop her sister from pushing her out of the door into the courtyard in front of a cheering crowd. Like magic, the instant she had left the threshold of the antechamber and was thrust into the spotlight, the sorrow on her face had disappeared and she had assumed the assuring smile that was expected of her. Vice president Princess Luna, under the consultation of Princess Celestia, had decreed that the old remnants of the Union were to be dissolved, to pave way for the future. The Department of Magic and Defense had been first on the list, much to the anger of its director; however, as soon as he had been offered a position on the princesses’ private research team with more pay and more flexible hours, he had instantly ceased his complaining. After he had performed a multitude of valuable mystic services for the princesses—among which was designing the security system that protected the Elements of Harmony—the director had ended up marrying one of their cousins, much to the envy of his peers and much to the chagrin of Princess Luna: to say that it had been odd for her to see a short, skinny, bespectacled unicorn with a rented tuxedo and bow tie await a tall, elegant alicorn in the most decorative of wedding dresses, who turned the heads of every stallion she passed by, to come down the aisle would have been an understatement. The old director had fathered three children with her and had died thirty years later, abruptly, while sitting at his desk. His secretary had found his notes, which had eventually found their way to Princess Celestia, who had been overjoyed when she saw had seen that he had been on the precipice of finding a method to convert the life forces of the Elements of Harmony so that they could reside in advanced forms of carbon-based life. In addition, the hundreds of thousands of rifles manufactured for the war had been ordered to be decommissioned, and they had been smelted down. The metal had been used to repair broken water pipes and rebuilding the infrastructure that had been destroyed by the war. Stallion’s Manufacturing Company had been nationalized and liquidated, in the name of “peace.” The soldiers had been reluctant to surrender their rifles at first, citing that they had been together through so much; and being ordered to turn them over, after they had spent days cleaning them, polishing them, lovingly clearing their barrels of any detritus, was akin to asking them to abandon a child or a loved one. However, all it had took was for one steely glance from their superior officers, and they had given them up without any further question. These aforementioned orders had been made under the new policy, “Out of sight, out of mind”: a policy that had been exceptionally well-received by the public for its progressiveness and the policy that had justified the numerous renovations of the Presidential Mansion. This had involved removing all the furniture, the old desk in the Horseshoe Office, and putting the old portrait of one of the princesses’ ancestors into storage. It had took only twenty years; but, by that time, there was nothing in the building even reminiscent of its original design. The appearing architecture had been completely redone and constructed in a design that would have been fit for a king. Coincidentally, the princesses had taken up residence in it. Part of the policy had been, after the decommission of the rifles and the nationalization of its manufacturer, the order to dissolve the Union military and, as a consequence, the disbandment of the Army of the Friendship. General Sherbert, former commander of the Union Army, who had deserted her post shortly before the Battle of Canterlot had begun, had been found in her house in Manehattan. She had been brought in to see Princess Celestia and had been there to sign the papers along with General Buckner, the commander of the Army of the Friendship. When Princess Luna had seen General Sherbert, the sight had been bone chilling: She had not worn her uniform; she was completely naked, and her mane was knotted in a thousand different places. Her face had shriveled when the light from the sun had landed on it, and her eyes had dark circles under them. It was as if some cruel demon had attached its pernicious strings to her lifeless corpse and had been pulling it around, so that he may have gotten a laugh out of fooling somepony. But Princess Luna had seen it for what it was, and when she had looked into General Sherbert’s vacant stare, and when she had seen the deathly pallor that had come over her face, she knew that the signing was unnecessary, for the embodiment of the Union Army was right there, and Princess Luna could see that it had already been dissolved. When General Buckner had offered General Sherbert his hoof with a warm smile, she had brushed it aside, saying: “Let’s just get this over with.” After the signing, Princess Luna had offered General Sherbert an elite position in her “personal staff.” General Sherbert had declined without a second thought, had immediately dismissed herself from the scene, and disappeared forever. It had been suspected that she had fled to the Frozen North with her children, where she and they had lived the rest of their days. “If this nation is established on the principles of harmony and friendship,” Princess Celestia had been quoted as saying, “then why is there the need for it to keep standing armies? The presence of such armies only keeps conflict on our minds and is in discordance with the ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ policy.” That word still struck fear in the minds of her subjects, and all it had took was for her to say it for her to get a unanimous nod of approval. Despite this, a new group of soldiers had been seen patrolling the halls of the renovated building where Princesses Celestia and Luna lived, adorned in neither the gray and the red of the Army of the Friendship nor the royal blue of the Union Army, and the princesses walked around them comfortably while amiably receiving their salutes—the princesses’ “personal staff.” A few older ponies living in Canterlot had raised their eyebrows at this but had been immediately ridiculed by the younger ones and were told how important it was to support the new governmental policy—and they had had no choice but to be content with this. No reasons had been given in support of the policy; and, as the years went by, less and less reasons were asked until, finally, they ceased all together. As Princess Luna had watched the ever-changing faces go around her and praise her for the policy she had created, she could not have helped but be unsettled by it; until she was the only pony in Equestria with a qualm; though, of course, as the acting head of state, she would never have mentioned it to anypony else. No matter how much her sister had assured her that it had been the right thing to do, and no matter how much rhetoric she had given on its behalf to convince the public that it was maintaining peace, Princess Luna could not have helped losing sleep over the policy—to her, “Out of sight, out of mind” had been a decree to not think. This had become glaringly obvious to her when, on the seventieth anniversary of the end of the war, she and Princess Celestia had met with the last known surviving war veteran: an old earth-pony from Los Pegasus, who had lied about her age to serve in the Third Los Pegasus Infantry Regiment of Friends. She had not been permitted to wear her old dress uniform as she had sat down with the princesses in front of a swarm of reporters. Polite nods and uneasy smiles had been given in her direction, as the veteran droned on about the most frivolous banalities, interspersed with the most baffling of non sequiturs. It had quickly become clear to all that the old mare had been suffering from advanced stages of dementia; and that perhaps taking her out of her nursing home, even for an hour, had been a mistake. This suspicion was confirmed when, halfway through some unintelligible muttering, Princess Luna’s heart jumped when she had heard: “And how fortunate I am to be under you, dear princess, noble queen—” “Queen!” Princess Luna had interjected. “Well, I—” “What our sister no doubt intends to say,” said Princess Celestia, cutting her off and coming to her rescue, “is that she is surprised at our guest’s archaic and inaccurate term. She would like to remind you that in a republic, the concept of a ‘queen’ does not exist.” Princess Luna had stared at her sister, and Princess Celestia had returned a smile. Princess Luna had said nothing for the rest of the meeting; she had been too in awe about her sister’s prose, how she managed to gracefully and artfully refute the startlingly accurate remark, saying everything while simultaneously saying nothing: a republic that was not a republic, a queen that was not a queen, never admitting that they lived in the former, and never admitting that her sister was not the latter. It really did feel to Princess Luna like the largest-scale balancing act of all time, like balancing two incredibly large boulders on a rickety wooden scale suspended miles above the ground. When there was even the slightest tremor in the plank, Princess Luna would find herself scrambling up the scale to balance it, and she would feel her sister pushing from behind. She would then find herself running back to the other side immediately when she felt the scale lurch in the other direction, but her sister always appeared to always be standing right on the lever’s fulcrum, throwing her back and forth between the balances, and when she was bruised and battered, she would only be thrown harder. As for Disce, he had seen all of this occur, but his screams had never reached any ears, entombed as he was in his stone prison. When the sun had rose on the first day of his incarceration, through the rock which heavily obscured his vision like the bars over the tiny window of a dungeon, he had looked around the courtyard, his stone heart seeming to warm at the sight of any movement, at even the slightest possibility that there might be somepony to free him; but, as the sun set on that day, he felt his head begin to spin as insanity began to take its hold. It was at that moment that he had realized that he was unable to drink water and had sought relief in the fact that his death by dehydration would come quickly; but, after he had waited for a few more days, he had been forced to accept the despairing fact that stones did not need to drink water. Immobile, helpless, unable to dictate the terms of his own life and death, he could not have thought of a worse fate to befall an organism, and he could not have begun to comprehend the macabre magic of the machinations of the Elements of Harmony or understand what could have driven the type of mind to create something like that. On the sixth day, as his mind had begun to leave his body, indicated by the blurring of his vision, he had seen a faint blue wave of light in his peripheral view. Using the last bit of control he had had left, he had focused his eyes on that spot, and when he had seen that the light was indeed Princess Luna approaching him, he had been immediately brought back to reality. He had felt a warm feeling within his stone body as she had come closer, and he had shouted instructions to her with all his might, but the waves of his voice had bounced back in on themselves inside the stone and had never reached her. She had approached his pedestal—Disce’s mind had reeled in anticipation—and had looked up to him with a deep stare. But, when she had left, Disce’s heart sunk when he had realized she had either not received the instructions or had not understood them. Give it time, he had thought, and she’ll see soon enough. And even though the whole encounter had lasted only about half a minute, it had been sufficient to inspire Disce to hold onto dear sanity. He had maintained his tentative grasp on the world for another week, his sight constantly sweeping his limited field of view for the blue light that had illuminated his world for a brief moment in time. A week later, it had returned; and, this time, Princess Luna had decided to stay longer, choosing to sit down and look at him for a few minutes. Disce had yelled down at her, begging her to listen hard enough to hear his screams for help and pleading with her to understand—but, like last time, she had gotten up and had walked away without giving him a second glance. The only thing he could take comfort in was that she had given him the energy to make his silent screams again, and that he could look forward to her next visit, the next opportunity for a small amount of hope. When she had vanished from his sight, he had not moved his eyes from the entrance to the courtyard; and, a few days later, she had come back. This time, she had actually begun to speak to him; and even though Disce would have, under normal circumstances, been bored at her rantings, this time, he had never in his entire life been more intrigued by it. She had spoken about how hard running the country was and how abrasive her sister was, and Disce had eaten up every single word of it. She had eventually started to visit him every single day, and Disce had looked forward to those moments, thinking tirelessly about what she might say to him and how good he would feel when he would hear it. But, after about a month of this, after a month of pleasant visits that had filled Disce with unspeakable amounts of joy and hope, Princess Luna’s visits had started to become less frequent and had been becoming shorter duration. She also had begun to not speak as much to him, and she had stopped complaining about the work she was doing. A disturbing thought had flashed in Disce’s mind—that she had actually started to believe the lies she was forcing upon the country and that she was coming to accept them. But he had forced it out of his consciousness for the time being, refusing to let her go. It was only when she had approached his statue for the first time in a month, had said nothing, and then had immediately turned around to leave, that he had to accept the she was gone; and that he would, more likely than not, never see her again. When the soothing blue light had stopped coming to him, there was nothing left to mollify the dark thoughts that could now only arise in the darkness of the stone and to which the blue light had served as a dam; with the dam gone, there was nothing left to stop it. For the next one hundred eighty years, Disce succumbed to pure delirium as he played out his execution scene over and over again, each time imagining how it could have been different, and each time imagining that he had killed Princess Celestia in more and more horrible ways, leaving him free to take unilateral control of Equestria—his despotic wrath becoming more potent and terrible with each iteration. His deep and dark meditation had involved honing his powers, letting their chaotic influence embrace him more fully, allowing them to guide his being and allowing them to enable himself to refine the perfect plan of vengeance. He told himself that he would, one day, in the most perfect and fitting way possible, exact his revenge upon Princess Celestia and the Elements of Harmony for condemning him to an eternity of torture and confinement, should he ever be allowed to escape. This is not evil, he had said aloud within his stone prison, compared to the rule of Princess Celestia and her arbitrary whim, which will no doubt fail and which will result in my freedom. This is not evil, he had thought, compared to what she has done to me. But, as if to contradict him, Princess Celestia’s plan eventually began to show signs of its hold. Looking back, Equestrian lexicographers noticed a sudden, rapid—but admittedly, not surprising—decline in use of certain words: the last recorded use of the word “Union” when referring to Equestria was in 100 BC; the word “republicanism,” or any of its derivatives, in 38 BC; the words “constitution”—in the context of a governmental document—and “COMTOIS” around the same time, approximately during the years 6 and 5 BC; and the word “president,” in the context of a government official, by 5 BC. And it was around now, one hundred eighty years later—despite the transition that seemed smooth and unnoticeable to everypony else—it began to take its toll on Princess Luna. The first warning sign that Princess Celestia had seen was when, just after she had performed the Summer Sun Celebration for the hundredth time—where she would flare her wings in front of a crowd of eager onlookers just before the sun rose, ponies who believed that the fact that she did so just before the sun rose meant that she caused it to rise—she had returned to the mansion and had come into her sister’s room to find her with her face buried in a pillow, mumbling to herself. Princess Celestia had strained her ears, and she had thought that she could hear her sister saying: “They’re wrong. They’re wrong. I know that they’re wrong. Why are they wrong? Because it’s a post hoc argument, nothing more; it’s a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, and that’s wrong.” She never saw it happen again; but the memory of which still, to this day, chilled her to the bone. The only oddities that showed in her behavior was that she began to consistently appear late to events that she had promised to attend, if at all; and, when she did come, her mane was terribly matted and thrown carelessly around her neck and face, covering up the dark circles that lay under her eyes. This always drew some glances, before Princess Celestia would take her aside—an act that she had found herself doing too much, recently—and censure her privately. The strange conditions under which Princesses Celestia and Luna excused themselves from their gatherings were never mentioned for more than ten or twenty seconds after being observed, as they were quickly dismissed under the assumption that it was grueling work being the benevolent overseers of all things. This was also the conclusion reached by Princess Luna’s personal guards, when they had noticed that Princess Celestia was visiting their mistress’s quarters more and more frequently and when they had heard arguments that were loud enough to be heard but were stifled enough by the paneling of the room for them not to be able to make out what was being said—which would end with Princess Celestia slamming open the doors and leaving the room with an angry look on her face. She would also turn that look upon the guards, who shook in their boots when she said, every time without fail: “You shall continue to keep her unwaveringly in your cognizance.” Every time this had happened, the guards would proceed to exchange worried glances with each other as Princess Celestia walked away and as they heard a muffled weeping coming from inside the room. * * * Princess Luna awoke with a horrible shriek, her pillow and her bedsheets completely drenched in sweat. The night watchponies stationed outside her door came in and inquired upon her; and, after she said it was nothing, they shrugged their shoulders and left her alone, dismissing it as a one-time occurrence. The very next night, the exact same scene happened a second time; and, on the third time, Princess Celestia insisted on calling a doctor, despite her sister’s protestations. In the afternoon, the doctor, a middle-aged dark blue unicorn, dressed in the conventional lab coat and carrying his black leather bag full of his supplies in his teeth, arrived to find her sprawled out on a sofa while staring blankly at a wall. The doctor saw that, aside from the obvious signs of fatigue, she looked fine; nevertheless, after giving the obligatory bow and introduction, he began with that intrusive line of questioning so loved by medical practitioners: “Has Her Grace been taking any new medication?” “Nay.” “Has she undertaken a tremendous new project, no doubt for the good of her country and her citizens, that involves an increased workload? Something that would give cause to Her Grace for an increased amount of stress?” “Nay.” “Has she witnessed any disturbing events recently?” “Nay.” Visibly exasperated, the doctor said: “Has Her Grace experienced anything out of the ordinary, anything she thinks even may have possibly contributed to her recent events?” “Nay.” The doctor sighed and shook his head. Reaching into his bag, he added: “Has Her Grace’s interruptions of sleep been accompanied by any undesirable dreams?” At this, Princess Luna’s eyes, which had remained lifeless for the previous questions, were suddenly filled with energy, darting around the room before finally settling on the doctor’s hooves—which were now ruffling through his bag. She tapped her left forehoof against her chin before finally saying: “Nay.” The doctor gave her a quick physical examination. Finding nothing, his diagnosis was an increased amount of stress, and he prescribed more bed rest. Princess Luna went to bed earlier that night, instead of going to bed as soon as the sun rose, as was her custom. Still, at the same time as the previous night, she awoke in her panic. She screamed louder and longer than before, even awaking her sister, whose bedroom was on the other end of the wing. Princess Celestia entered her room, not having bothered to knock and not having been stopped by the watch ponies, and went directly to her sister’s bedside. She asked her sister what was the problem, and when the only reply she got was meaningless whimpers interspersed by tears, she ordered that the top psychiatrist from the Canterlot Center for Mental Health be brought in immediately. The psychiatrist, unhappy at being woken up in the middle of the night but not daring to refuse the order, came into Princess Luna’s room. After asking about her medical history and not noticing anything of importance, he said: “This will no doubt seem unorthodox, but I recommend that Her Grace spends a night or two under my supervision over at the Center, at least until we can get to the bottom of this.” He looked at Princess Luna, waiting for a response; but, before he could get one, Princess Celestia, who had been watching the entire time, protested, saying that her sister would not be permitted to stay a night intermingled among the ponies that she guided. The psychiatrist opened his mouth to protest, but Princess Celestia raised her hoof to order him to stop speaking; and, at a nod from her to the night watchponies, he was quickly escorted out of the house. Princess Luna watched her sister and the guards leave; and when the door closed behind them, she buried her face in her pillow, making a conscious effort to not fall asleep. Silently, she cursed the doctors’ prescription for more bed rest, for it was only while she was asleep that she was affected by the horrifying dream that never seemed to relent. She would always find herself in the courtyard, looking up at Disce’s face, as she had done one hundred eighty years ago, moments before the light of the Elements of Harmony had obliterated him. She would look at him, as she had done, and he leaned his neck over so that he may whisper in her ear, as he had done. But, in her dream, when he whispered the words into her ear, those words that had imprinted themselves so clearly in her brain when she had heard it from him one hundred and eighty years ago, they were too quiet to be heard. She would always strain her ear, asking him to repeat it. Every night where the dream had repeated, Disce seemed to whisper his words quieter than he had done on the last night, and she had found herself straining even harder to hear them. But the dreams all ended the same way: shortly after asking Disce repeat himself, she would hear his laugh, that laugh which instilled pure fear in the souls of whomever heard it, would come back to her louder than ever. Then, in her mind, she would be able to see his words as clear as the sun but as dark as the night, their letters engulfed in blue flame and searing her consciousness with their red-hot fury while at the same time seeming to scream pure malice and terror in their meaning. The flames of the letters burning in her head was the most intense pain she had ever felt in her entire life—more intense than the spell that the enchantress had performed on her when she was a foal—and it was so powerful that she would feel her consciousness ejected from her body, soaring into the sky and looking down at herself standing in front of Disce, all the while the words cutting through her like a thousand knives. Then, she would fall toward the ground, accelerating faster than gravity would normally make her fall; and, upon hitting the ground, she would wake up screaming. And, like in all dreams, the things she saw so clearly and felt so painfully in them would be a haze as soon as her eyes opened, and the only thing left from them would be a bitter taste in her mouth and a horrible, unnameable notion in her mind. Princess Luna, despite herself, drifted off to sleep that night. Around noon on the next day, Princess Celestia knocked on the door with a strong hoof, angry that her sister was succumbing to her lethargy and neglecting her duties. After four vicious knocks and no response, she ordered the sentries to break down the door; and, with a powerful kick of the guard’s hoof and after a shower of wood splinters from the door, she went in and immediately stormed toward the bed. She put her hooves down on the covers, intending to roll her sister off the bed, but her anger gave way to confusion when she felt only the mattress. Her eyes drifted around the room looking for her sister; and, when they finally made it to the window, and she saw that it was opened, she dashed out of the room, waking up her security staff. “Our sister has been kidnapped as she slumbered last night!” she yelled, as she ran down the halls. “Find her!” The guards immediately jumped from their posts, and a multitude of orders were barked from every direction. They flew out—figuratively, in the case of the unicorns and earth-ponies, and literally, in the case of the pegasi—from every opening in the mansion, looking for any clues to where Princess Luna might have been taken. Some of them stayed back to send telegrams detailing the incident to every single receiving station in Equestria. They filled the surrounding blocks, calling out in their loudest voices to the citizens, who began to walk out toward them and stick their heads out of the windows of overlooking buildings, informing them of the tragedy that had taken place. They urged them to do their part for Equestria and help bring their beloved princess home. Then they started to, methodically, enter the homes of the citizens and ransack them, arresting anypony who even so much as breathed even a hint of protest. The police in every single city instantly devoted nearly all of their resources to finding the princess. Princess Celestia’s guards in Canterlot increased their search radius every hour until, finally, night came, and every single building on every single block had been searched in a method as efficient and as rapid as any seen before. Exhausted, many of the police officers collapsed on the street when it was over, trying to catch their breath. The only thing out of the ordinary that had been found was that the Canterlot archives had been completely trashed, shelves knocked over and every book in disarray. The librarians had spent the entire night cleaning it up. When, at the break of dawn, everything had been put back into its rightful place, they had found that nothing was missing save for a few uncatalogued scrolls. They were asked by Princess Celestia herself to compile a list of the scrolls that were missing; but, being thousands of years old, and most being unnamed, the information concerning them that the librarians put on the list was very sparse and proved to be useless to the private investigators, who were looking for any connection between the scrolls which may give them a clue as to where the kidnapper had taken the princess. Princess Celestia, saying that she was now the head of state in Princess Luna’s absence, ordered the writ of habeas corpus to be suspended and implemented a state of martial law in every single city, and because nopony could produce any evidence as to why she did not have the authority to do so, the order was carried out. Technically, unbeknownst to anypony, the order was unnecessary, as the writ of habeas corpus had never actually been reinstated, after the president had suspended it one hundred eighty years ago. There were three days where Equestria chattered its teeth in anxiety, not so much from Princess Luna’s kidnapping, but from being constantly under the watchful eye of the police. In these three days, nopony dared to breathe a word to anypony else, in fear that the private bodyguards of Princess Celestia would burst into their homes and beat them to a pulp. Then, on the fourth day, a dark cloud began to gather across the skies of Equestria, drawing all eyes—including those of the police officers—to it, for the cloud was darker than any other they had seen in their entire lives and seemed to be suffocating the land that it crawled over in its malevolence. On the fifth day, it had completely collected over the land and was so thick that it had entirely blocked out the sun and engulfed Equestria in its darkness. Princess Celestia, by the light of the numerous lamps in her room, was nervously rubbing her hoof against her desk, walking over to the window and staring nervously out at the clouds every minute or two when, without knocking, a porter burst into room. He was out of breath, but he managed to say that it was the last telegram that had made it out of Ponyville before the telegraph had been destroyed. In his mouth, he held the telegram, the red stamp blazoned across its front signaling that it was of the utmost importance. He quickly unfurled it in front of her and, in a shaky voice, read off of it. A lighting bolt had rained from the clouds; and, on it, a mare of darkness, completely black and wearing light blue armor on her head, torso, and hooves, who called herself “Nightmare Moon,” started to lay waste to the buildings in Ponyville. After the city had been completely flattened, she spoke to its residents, to the ponies whose homes she had just destroyed, and she said this was made necessary by the tyrant Celestia, who had lied to all of them, telling them that she raised the sun. She had said that in order to make them listen, she had shown them what would happen if she had been allowed to continue her rule, and she had said that now that she was done in Ponyville, she was off to Canterlot to dispose of the despot. Princess Celestia darted out of the room and told her guards to get the Elements of Harmony to her as fast as possible. Within minutes, they were brought in their diamond-plated case to her room and shown to her, the sight of them not calming the perturbed expression on her face. After closing the lid, she looked at the bodyguards around her, who looked back at her in their turn, their minds completely blank and not able to act until they had been given an order. In her most royal of voices, she said: “We are going to go into our room and lock the door. Regardless of what you hear, regardless of the screams of assistance I may shout, you are not to attempt to come in. Under no circumstances should I be disturbed.” She did not even make sure that they had understood her order, and she simply turned around to her room and shut the door behind her. The guards swallowed nervously as they heard the ominous sound of the bolts of the five locks of the door slamming into place, being operated from the inside. For ten minutes, they held their breaths in the depth of the darkness, hearing nothing from the interior of the room. Suddenly, at the sound of a clap of thunder and the sound of glass breaking, they all recoiled in unison, the hearts of each one beating furiously. They heard the sound of the rain outside, pouring down with all its fury; and, though they could not hear what was being said, they heard the fierce voice of the princess speaking out against another voice which, strangely enough, had a hint of humor and condescension in it. They did not hear them for long, for the loud report of numerous destructive spells being cast from two expert horns, combined with the sound of wood splintering and glass shattering, drowned out the voices. It was then that they looked at the crack in the bottom of the door: the dim light of the lamps bled out through it, the only light in the blackest of nights, and they could see two shadows dancing a sort of waltz around each other, retreating and coming closer to the music of expensive objects being broken. They watched this light until, at the same time as the sound of another beam of magic and the breaking of glass, the light went out, leaving the guards in complete darkness. The darkness did not last for long. A few seconds later, from under the crack in the door, an intense white light exploded into the hallway, blinding the guards, whose eyes were adjusted to the darkness. When the light died down, the guards opened their eyes to darkness yet again, their night-vision ruined for the time being. Only, this time, nothing could be heard aside from the rain, still pouring down upon the roof of the mansion. The lieutenant struck a match to reveal the faces of a dozen armored ponies around him, each one of them paralyzed with fear. They looked at him as if expecting him to do something. Taking their cue, he approached the door to the room and quietly knocked on it with a tentative hoof. At nearly the same time, and nearly breaking the leg of the lieutenant, the door slammed open, and all the guards jumped back in reflex to a tall, dark figure. The lieutenant held his match up, and the light from its flame danced along the body of the figure, its skin a milky white—it was Princess Celestia. “We have defeated Nightmare Moon. Equestria is safe,” was all she said. In the morning, the princess rode to Ponyville to address its citizens directly. She said that she had, with the power of the sun and with the Elements of Harmony, exiled the demon that had laid waste to their city, and she praised the citizens’ perspicacity, for being able to see through Nightmare Moon’s lies. In addition, she said that, because her sister had taken an important leave of absence, she had taken it upon herself to move both the sun in the moon above their heads each day, and that a new calendar would be instantiated, using the exact moment when the light had been triumphant over the darkness as its pivot. The speech, like always, was riveting and emotional, and it ended with every single citizen of Ponyville cheering through their tears of joy—how fortunate they were to have such a kind leader as Princess Celestia, goddess of the sun, to lead them out of this dark day! Not one of them had even suspected for a moment that Nightmare Moon had indeed been Princess Luna, who had fled from her room in the middle of the night. She had stolen the scrolls from the Canterlot Archives and had spent three days pouring over them in the most secluded region of the Everfree Forest. She had transformed herself into an unbelievable mare of darkness, destroyed Ponyville, and then attempted to destroy her sister, before being banished to her namesake by the Elements of Harmony—a cruel joke that only the twisted personalities of the Elements could think up. And Princess Celestia had never figured out the reason. She had never figured out that, on the night of her sister’s disappearance, the words in Princess Luna’s dream had burned brighter than they had ever before; and she had woken up, not in sweat and tears, but in revelation. This time, she had understood the words better than she had understood anything before, and she knew that she needed to devote the rest of her life to spreading their meaning. But the words alone had not been enough. Thus, she went through every single inch of the Canterlot Archives, looking for the oldest documents she could find, documents that nopony was able to read due to their age and ancient script. She had found them and spent three straight days reading them, eventually understanding every single word that spread across their bodies. The words held the most powerful and dark magic she had ever seen, and she had used them to transform herself into Nightmare Moon, so that she could make them known, and so that she could take her revenge upon her sister—in her own name, and in Disce’s. Before the Elements of Harmony had engulfed her and she had screamed out the words in her dream as her last gesture of defiance, she had yelled what seemed to be her sister’s name, but since the pronunciation sounded mangled to Princess Celestia—because Nightmare Moon had pronounced it with a hard c and with only three syllables—it bounced off her in incomprehension, making her believe that her sister was truly dead. For the words were in an ancient language, a dead language, that contained raw power, and it was not until Princess Luna, in a fever dream, had realized this that she had duly fled to the Canterlot Archives in order to educate herself further—as her friend had tried to tell her to, one hundred eighty years ago. Through rigorous study, in three days, she was able to learn the entire language, when it would have normally taken a lifetime’s worth of study for other ponies to learn even a few sentences. It did not take her too long to gain fluency—as her being, like Disce’s and her sister’s, flowed with the power of the language; and, despite never before using it in her life and despite a painful spell at foalhood, the language had only been suppressed; it had never been truly exorcised from her soul. Her rebellious nature had awoken it from a long dormancy imposed upon it by society; which her sister had never been able to break; and which Disce, with his sharp mind and wit, had destroyed the second he had realized himself and his potential. Nightmare Moon had not mispronounced her sister’s name—she had said it in its original, its true, pronunciation. She had been able to learn the language’s words and its syntax. Finally, when she had read everything, she allowed herself to be filled with its very meaning, its very essence, and its context was finally restored within her. It was within this context that brought power to the words in her dream; it was in this context that Disce had spoken them to her; and it was in this context which she, before destroying Ponyville, had carved them into the foot of Disce’s prison, their energy burning straight through the stone and reaching him. And they conveyed everything to him, invigorating him with their purity, amplifying his magical power by tenfold, and granting him a medium of escape should the opportunity show itself, enabling him to exact his perfect revenge when the time had come. It was within these words of this language which Disce had lived by, these three seemingly simple words that held the entire meaning of every action he had ever taken, these words that he had whispered into Princess Luna’s ear and which she had only grasped one hundred and eighty years later—only then understanding their gravity, their truth, and only then understanding that there was nothing more important than for her to become their emissary, for the sake of the future, for the sake of herself, and for the sake of him: Ordo ab Chao. Ordo ab Chao. Out of Chaos, Order.