//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: Princess Twilight Sparkle's 505th Birthday 
// by Autumnschild 
//------------------------------//

The Goddess of Magic and the two young fillies walked out of the Moon Tower and into the spacious Celestial Courtyard. Honeycrisp, the not-so-little red unicorn, was visibly gob smacked by the sight. Where as war, age, and decay had deformed the courtyard of the ancient castle of the royal pony sisters into a sad pile of rubble, Honeycrisp couldn’t imagine that such a fate could ever befall this sacred place.
 
The walls were lined with gems and precious metals the likes of which Honeycrisp had only dreamt of. An elaborate gate, wrought of a silvery metal was their entrance into the courtyard proper. At its apex, a jade relief depicted a massive dragon, studded with purple sapphires, sleeping peacefully near a small tree with a door in its trunk.
 
She turned to look at the moon tower behind her. Honeycrisp noticed the winding spirals of carved runes flowing from the ground all the way to the top. Whatever their purpose was, she couldn’t say, but she could feel the power emanating from them, like the heat coming off of a hot stovetop.
 
“Come on, Honeycrisp! Waffles!” shouted Smarty Pants from a ways into the courtyard.
 
Honeycrisp turned and walked through the gate and into the courtyard itself. The polished stone beneath her hooves gave way to a well-worn earth path. All around her hedges bloomed with every shape and color of rose imaginable. It smelled heavenly. She reached her cousin and the Princess and let out a contented sigh.
 
“Peaceful, isn’t it?” asked Smarty Pants “The Celestial Courtyard is the Princesses’ own private retreat. Princess Twilight’s side is full of these roses. Oh, and one tree. Come on, let’s catch up.” She added with a broad smile.
 
Honeycrisp nodded lazily and followed her cousin over to the Princess, who was studying a perfectly maintained crystal rose bush with a befuddled look on her face. She saw the two girls approach out of the corner of her eye and she turned to match their pace.
 
“This is your first time in the castle, isn’t it Honeycrisp?”
 
“You bet, Your Worshipfulness!”
 
“Well how about a brief tour on the way to kitchen, hm?”
 
Honeycrisp’s pink eyes sparkled “That’d be great! Thanks Princess!”
 
The three ponies followed the dirt path for a few minutes until they came to the center of the courtyard. Here the two halves of the courtyard stood in sharp contrast. On Princess Twilight’s side stood row after row of knee high rose bushes, on Princess Cadence’s side the ground was mostly grass save for the occasional crystal statue.
 
Floating just a few feet off the ground in the center of Cadence’s half of the courtyard was snow-white cloud bank with a rainbow fountain. Honeycrisp had heard of the rainbow fountains in Cloudsdale from her dad, but his stories didn’t do this fountain justice. To see one for the first time and for it to be as beautiful as the personal rainbow fountain of the Goddess of Love… well it was a magical experience for the unicorn.
 
Thinking of her dad, a sudden surge of panic hit her in the gut. Her ears flattened against her head and she turned to face her cousin.
 
“Mom and Pop! Pants, my folks don’t know where we are!” With wide eyes she looked this way and that impossibly looking for her parents, as if they’d be standing here in the Celestial Courtyard.
 
Smarty Pants started trotting in place and breathing short sharp breaths. “Oh no. Oh no!” She turned to face her unusually serene looking teacher. She leapt up onto her hindlegs and grabbed Princess Twilight just below the neck with her forehooves.
 
“Princess Twilight! What if they go into the Everfree Forest to look for us? What if the Beacon of Order gets them!”
 
The Princess offered a calming smile to her protégé and her country cousin. “Relax girls, it’s already taken care of. While you two were cleaning up, I teleported over to see Merry Hearth and Appleseed, told them what was going on, and got them on the next train for Canterlot. They should be here in a few hours.”
 
Smarty Pants crumpled into a pony pile as relief washed across her features. Her Aunt and Uncle were safe. Their unborn foal was safe. It was all going to work out.
 
“Y-you told them what was going on?” Asked Honeycrisp. “D-did you tell them everything that happened in the Everfree Forest?”
 
Princess Twilight gave the worried unicorn a knowing look. “I told them that you three were safe with me at the castle, that a new threat was coming out of the Everfree Forest, and that Sweet Apple Acres and the rest of Ponyville were being evacuated to Canterlot.”
 
She walked over to Honeycrisp and poked her with her a wing. “Anything more than that, you’ll have to tell them. Come to think of it…” she turned to look at Smarty Pants “I’d love to hear what you three were doing in the ancient castle of the royal pony sisters. Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me over breakfast?”
 
Smarty Pants and Honeycrisp shared a worried look. Smarty Pants got up from her little ball and nodded to the Princess.
 
Princess Twilight smiled at the two nervous girls. “Now, how about that tour?”




 
Twenty minutes later, the three ponies stood before a set of ornate double doors. The doors were made of a dark wood and had rectangular panels that made them look like giant chocolate bars.
 
“And here we are at the kitchen. Well, the pastry kitchen. Truth be told, there are seven kitchens here in the castle. Sandy’s mother, Powder Puff, is our head pastry chef.”
 
Smarty Pants rocked back and forth on her hooves in barely contained excitement. “Ooh, I can’t wait to see what she’s making today!”
 
Two royal guardsmares stood at attention. With a nod of her head, they opened the doors revealing the sights and smells of the pastry kitchen beyond.
 
“Bleh! What the hay is that smell!” Honeycrisp scrunched up her nose and tried to physically fight off whatever the horrid new stink wafting out from the kitchen was. “It’s like… moldy hay wrapped in sweaty hooves!”
 
Smarty Pants and Princess Twilight both sniffed the air, but didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary.
 
“You seriously don’t smell that?”
 
The Princess and her Protégé both shook their heads. Smarty Pants looked to the guardsmares for any sign that they smelled something peculiar, but they stood there staring into some unseen horizon, stoic as usual. Until the Princess addressed them.
 
“Bubbles, Buttercup, would you take Miss Honeycrisp to get some fresh air? Oh, and when she’s ready, please escort her to the East Breakfast Nook. We’ll be there shortly.”
 
The two guards saluted and accompanied a thankful red unicorn back out the hallway they came down.
 
Twilight walked into the kitchen with her pupil in tow. To her left were rows of stoves. From the nearest, a tray of freshly baked doughnuts floated out of the oven wrapped in a white magical aura. On its stovetop a pot of glaze was being stirred by an autonomous spatula.
 
The next stove top had a rack of muffins cooling on it and a mixing bowl danced above it, as a new batch was being stirred into existence. Another stove was set up to can preserves, as sealed glass jars full of colorful mixtures were lowered into a pot of happily boiling water.
 
Another stove had a large pot full of whatever soup Powder Puff was making today.The white pudgy unicorn always had some soup or stew coming together. She was good soups but she was great at making baked goods. Hence the cupcake cutiemark. After all, one can’t live on baked goods alone.
 
Though you’d never know it with her chubby frame. She always said that ‘You can’t trust a thin chef. Even more so if it’s a pastry chef.’ Powder Puff was one of Smarty Pants’ favorite ponies in Canterlot.
 
“Smarty Pants! There you are! I was just telling Mommy about how we met that scary Disco guy!”
 
Sandy hopped down from her chair and rushed around a prep station where a roller was having its way with a bit of lumpy dough. She tackled Smarty Pants in a hug and the two fillies went down in a giggling pile. Twilight looked past the two girls to Powder Puff, who couldn’t hide her worry from the Goddess of Magic.
 
“Good Morning Princess.” Powder Puff said with a nod of her head from her spot at the table. “I’d bow, but I’m in the middle of whipping this meringue, and if I don’t get it just right it’ll be ruined.”
 
Twilight smiled at her friend. “It’s quite alright, Powder Puff. I don’t much care for unnecessary pomp and circumstance anyway. Any chance you can whip us up a batch of waffles? We’ve got three hungry fillies to feed.”
The white unicorn smiled and a passel of waffle making supplies floated over to an unused prep station by the window.
 
Sandy untangled herself from her friend and fluttered over to the prep station. “Can I help, Mommy?”
 
“Sure sweetie, will you get the eggs, butter, and syrup out of the pantry for me?
 
“Hey, wait up, I’ll help!” shouted Smarty Pants. She ran past the Princess and the two fillies disappeared into the larder.
 
Content with the quality of its peaks, Powder Puff stopped whisking her meringue and left it to her magic to complete the dish.
 
“Princess. Can I… can I have a word with you?”
 
Twilight blinked in slight confusion at her friend as she made her way over to her counter. “Of course, what’s the matter, Powder Puff?”
 
Powder Puff crossed her forelegs on the table and took a deep breath before continuing. “Twilight, Sandy’s all I have. She’s my little girl. I know this Beacon of Order nonsense isn’t over yet, and I’m sorry for that, but can you promise me that you won’t let anything harm my Sandy?”
 
Twilight had never seen Powder Puff so worried before. She patted her forehooves with a reassuring hoof of her own. “Powder Puff, my dear friend, you have my word as a Princess of Equestria that I will not let any harm come to any of them.”
 
A loud crash from the pantry punctuated her statement.
 
“We’re okay!” The two girls shouted in unison.
 
Powder Puff chuckled to herself. “Well… They do seem resilient, don’t they?”
 
“They do indeed.”
 
“I’m sorry to be such a worrywart.” Powder Puff turned her attention down kitchen towards the pantry and focused her magic. Two flour coated ponies floated out of it along with a dozen eggs, several sticks of butter, and flagon of syrup. “I’ll finish up here, Princess. Why don’t you and the girls head out to the East Breakfast Nook and I’ll have the waffles out to you in a jiffy.”
 
The white aura surrounding the Smarty Pants and Sandy shifted to a pale purple and the two powdery ponies floated out of the kitchen behind Princess Twilight.
 
“Bye, Mommy!” Sandy waved a dusty forelimb at her adopted mother and Powder Puff smiled back proudly.
 


 

The three ponies entered the East Breakfast Nook and Smarty Pants couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. It wasn’t the room that was funny. Honeycrisp was standing on her hind legs on the table, her forelegs pressed up against the glass of the adjacent window that looked out over the bustling city of Canterlot. It was clear from her awed expression that she’d never seen anything like it before.
 
Canterlot hadn’t changed very much in the last few hundred years. It was considered the cultural center of Equestria and the world at large. Though the finest fashions now came from the Crystal Empire, the latest trends in the culinary, performing, and literary arts still came from old Canterlot.
 
Like a ring of cobbled streets and hallowed halls, the city now circled the entirety of Canterhorn Mountain and no longer just stuck out of its west side. The oldest and richest neighborhoods remained in the shadow of Canterlot Castle, but the city’s industry, night life, and its import and export center were all on the newer Eastern half of the city. 
 
Directly outside the window stood the second tallest structure in Canterlot; the Senate. The Senate had two halls joined by a massive dome. The two halls, the House of Commons and the Noble House, worked together as the true ruling power in Equestria. Anypony could be elected to the House of Commons, though one must be of one of the 63 recognized Noble Lines to serve in the Noble House.
 
Princess Cadence, much to her sister’s chagrin, cared little for the Senate and instead decided to live life as a figurehead. A mascot of ponydom, if you will. Princess Twilight, though a member of the Sparkle Noble Line, has served in the House of Commons since its inception. Every 6 years she runs for re-election, and every 6 years she wins by a landslide. It was only within the last 100 years that she accepted the internal nomination for Secretary General, and ever since she’s been re-elected to that too.
 
It was a bit worrisome actually. If she was there constantly and consistently, then was the new republic any better than the old monarchy? She knew that ponies could govern themselves. Maybe next year she wouldn’t run for re-election. But then again, there was still so much work to do! There was—
 
“Bwhahahaha! What in the hay happened to you two?”
 
Princess Twilight was pulled out of her musing by Honeycrisp’s raucous laughter.
 
“We were gonna help Mommy make waffles, but—“
 
“It turns out that a pile of flour bags doesn’t make a very good ladder.”
 
Honeycrisp blinked at that. “Ooh-kay. When do we eat?”
 
Princess Twilight chimed in at that “Soon. Smarty Pants, why don’t you lead the girls to the washroom to wash your hooves for breakfast?”
 
Her prized pupil nodded and the three girls left the room.
 
Twilight took a seat and summoned up the morning’s first cup of coffee. She loved this room. She commissioned it to be an exact replica of her old dining room in the Golden Oaks Library in Ponyville.
 
It was on moments like this, when everything was still, she felt like she really was back in Ponyville all those years ago. She could almost hear the voices of her friends from just beyond the corner. Was it Rarity stopping by to ask for her help in sizing a new dress? Maybe it was Fluttershy coming by for morning tea and a bit of gossip. Or was it Rainbow Dash on her way to show off her latest moves? Dishes rattled in the distance and she turned with wide eyes.
 
“Spike?” she whispered.
 
A cart full of waffles, cream, syrups, butters, plates, and utensils was wheeled in by Powder Puff.
 
“What’s that, Princess?” she asked over the clatter dishes and cups
 
“Oh, I’m just imagining things. These looks great! Thank you so much, Powder Puff. Will you be joining us for breakfast?”
 
“Oh, no, not today Princess. I have a whole heap of baking to do today and I’m sure you girls will be busy enough without me fretting over little Sandy all morning. Send the cart back if you need more, ok dearie?”
 
Twilight nodded as the pudgy unicorn turned to leave the nook, humming to herself as she walked back towards her beloved kitchen.
 
After another moment, the three fillies walked back into the room where they were greeted with the glorious sight. A stack of waffles as tall as Sandy. Boats and bowls filled with heavy cream and freshly churned butter. To top it all off, there were three wide ceramic jugs filled with three heady syrups.
 
“Dig in, girls.” Twilight regretted the words as soon as they left her lips.
 
The voracious ponies descended on the table like a pack of half-starved wolves. There were no screams. There was no time.
 
Mercifully, it was over in a moment. Twilight looked at the ravaged table in equal parts studious appreciation and abject horror. Telekinetically, she pulled a few stray bits of waffle from her mug and took another sip of her coffee.
 
Sandy burped a tiny burp and flushed with embarrassment. Ever so quietly, she muttered “Excuse me.”
 
The four ponies sat in uncomfortable silence as the lone cart in the room began to shimmer with purple energy before it wheeled itself back towards the kitchen.
 
“So, girls. Tell me about last night.”
 
Smarty Pants laughed nervously. “W-what’s there to tell, Princess?”
 
Honeycrisp had enough of Smarty Pants beating around the bush. She was going to tell it straight. “You see, Princess Smarty Pants had this idea about going into the Everfree Forest to find some old Godde—“
 
“Good old fashioned Poison Joke!” Blurted Smarty Pants with a desperate look on her face.  “Right girls? Poison Joke? That’s what we went into the forest for, remember?”
 
The Princess let out a sigh, shut her eyes, and furrowed her brow. “I was afraid of that.”
 
She opened her eyes and looked imploringly at her student. “Smarty, you are on your way to becoming the greatest Seeker I’ve ever known. And you’re only twelve. That’s high praise from somepony like me.
 
“But every year on my birthday you go and do something dangerous in search of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Do you remember when you fell into the catacombs last year and broke two ribs? We didn’t find you for a whole day! What if we never found you? You’d just be another skeleton down there.”
 
Smarty Pants didn’t say anything, but she turned her head to look out the window. She huffed and Princess Twilight continued.
 
“Your heart is in the right place, but you’re not ready yet. You know that. I need you to wait until you’re older before you start looking for them again, okay?”
 
At this Smarty slammed a hoof into the table and looked down at her reflection in the polished table. “I was so close.”
 
Sandy reached over and rubbed her friend’s back. Smarty’s brow furrowed with a frown, but she wouldn’t make eye contact with the Princess. Honeycrisp clicked her tongue against her teeth as she continued to stare out the window.
 
Smarty Pants sniffled. “I was so close this time. We… we found her diary in the Sun Tower.” she said as she rubbed her hoof. 
 
Princess Twilight straightened up in her seat with wide eyes. “You found another one of Princess Celestia’s Diaries?”
 
Smarty Pants nodded as she idly traced the table’s wood grain with a hoof. “It’s in Sandy’s  right saddlebag.”
 
Sandy watched as the Princess closed her eyes and took a breath. When she let it out, Sandy’s saddlebags popped into existence above the table. The green book she found in Princess Celestia’s study floated out of the bag and floated down in front of Princess Twilight. A second pop resounded through the East Breakfast Nook and the bag was gone again.
 
The Princess studied the cover of the book and turned it over to show the girls. “Did it always have this hole burned into it?”
 
Sure enough, a roughly hoof sized hole had burned about half way through the center of the book.
 
“Horseapples,” muttered Smarty Pants, “I bet that happened when Sandy saved me from the Beacon’s magical blast.”
 
“Yeah,” Honeycrisp chimed in, “I’m surprised it didn’t go all the way though the book like it did Discord though.”
 
The Princess gave the girls a worried look. “Well, Discord told me that it was a weapon designed to fight him. Maybe it has something to do with—”
 
“Did somepony need more waffles?” Asked an overly cheerful Powder Puff as she wheeled in a fresh batch on the returning cart.
 
Smarty Pants flopped back in her seat to stare at the ceiling and raised a hoof. “Hit me.”
 
A tall stack of waffles landed on her plate and she busied herself with smothering them in the rest of the blueberry syrup and butter. Smaller stacks made their way onto Honeycrisp and Sandy’s plates. As Powder Puff wheeled her trolley back out of the room, Twilight buried her nose in the diary.
 
She flexed her magical will and sent a simple fix-it spell through its battered pages. The first quarter or so of the pages mended as would be expected, but the spell seemed to slow to a trickle and eventually die out. Frowning at the book, she tried the spell again, with a bit more power, but it refused to repair itself beyond what it already had.
 
“That’s odd. Well, I can still make out most of this.” She looked up at Smarty Pants. “This is an incredible find. Well done!”
 
Smarty Pants blushed slightly at the compliment, but still worked to maintain her pout. She wasn’t about to let a little thing like praise from her beloved mentor ruin her rotten mood. Sandy clapped happily and her fluttering wings rattled the cups in their saucers. “Honeycrisp and I helped, too!”
 
Princess Twilight laughed a gentle laugh. “And you both have my thanks, My Little Ponies.”
 
Honeycrisp and Sandy hoof-bumped each other and shared in a laugh. It was an adorable sight that chipped away at the last of Smarty Pants’ foul mood.
 
“So, Princess, what does it say? I remember reading something about how the Beacon was a failed experiment that the Princesses locked away in the Sun Tower because it was so dangerous.”
 
Princess Twilight read silently for a moment. As she read her face became more and more distraught. By the time she answered the question her ears were flat against her head with worry.
 
“Breakfast is over girls.” She pushed her chair away from the table and started walking for the exit. “We need to get to the Senate, right now.”
 
The three girls exchanged anxious looks with each other. “W-why? What’s wrong?” asked Sandy.
 
The Princess turned and said mournfully “There’s no way we can stop the Beacon of Order.”
 



 
The four ponies gallop past the Castle entrance, startling staff and guests alike. Their large dome of the Senate looms ahead of them in the midmorning sky.
 
Smarty Pants puffs out a question to the Princess between breaths. “Princess Twilight, why can’t we stop the Beacon?”
Eyes ahead on the path to the Senate, she said “According to the diary, the Beacon can only be stopped by a two-part verbal spell. The first part needs to be whispered into the Beacon’s ear by Princess Celestia. The second part needs to be shouted by Princess Luna.”
 
Honeycrisp ran alongside the Purple Princess and asked “Why can’t we just have two other ponies say the magic words?”
 
Twilight turned her head to look at Honeycrisp. “Because they didn’t write down what those words are! Only they know them.”
 
Sandy, half running, half gliding on fluttering wings offered her own thoughts to this revelation “Oh, Mommy.”
 
Twilight turned her head towards the lime green pegasus. “’Oh, mommy’ is right! And to make matters worse we—“
 
“Watch out!” a voice called out.
 
Twilight looked straight ahead and saw that she was just about to crash head first into a wooden stall full of cabbages. She gasped and instinctively teleported beyond the obstacle. Her path once again clear, she continued with her breakneck pace.
 
Sandy jumped over the stall and glided safely to the ground at running speed. Honeycrisp teleported around the obstacle, like the Princess did, but she looked more fatigued after the fact. She’d never teleported at a run before.
 
Smarty Pants, and the cabbages, were not so lucky. Smarty Pants did what earthponies do best when met with an obstacle. She crashed right through that sucker at full speed, scattering wood and leafy greens in a wide radius. She shook a particularly ill-fated cabbage out of her wavy mane and ran ahead.
 
“My cabbages!” cried that same voice again.
 
“Sorry!” shouted back Smarty Pants. As she caught up to the others, the Princess continued.
 
“We know what it’s designed to do! It’s looking for a unicorn because it can take control of other ponies, and with a second unicorn it can cast magic twice as fast!”
 
“How?” asked Sandy nervously.
 
“That’s the scary part. All it needs to do is communicate with another pony. It can magically compel others to obey it.”
 
As the reached a wall and took a left through an alley way, Honeycrisp thought back to the two times the Beacon spoke to her in her head, and how she almost gave in each time.
 
“You mean it can take control of more than ONE?!” shouted Honeycrisp in alarm.
 
“The Princesses designed it to seek out every living pony for use as weapons against Discord.”
 
Smarty Pants shook her head in disbelief. “That’s awful! Why would they do such a thing?”
The four ponies skid to a stop in front of the massive steps leading up to the Senate dome’s entrance. Twilight turned to face the girls.
 
“It was a dark time… A desperate time. If they didn’t stop Discord, then there’d be no Equestria now. There’d be nothing but Chaos.”
 
As the girls walked up the stairs behind Princess Twilight, Honeycrisp added her two bits. “Well hay, if it was designed to fight Discord then let him fight it. He’s on our side now… right?”
 
“He’s been on our side for almost 500 years. But he’s not a citizen of Equestria. I can’t order him to fight the Beacon. But that alone isn’t what makes me hesitant to let him fight it. The Beacon is designed to beat Discord, not just fight him. According to Princess Celestia’s Diary, the Beacon is a magical construct built using a forgotten school of magic called Memetic Harmonization.”
 
The doors to dome, flanked by a dozen members of the specialized Senatorial Guard flew open as the four ponies approached it. They walked through without harassment or acknowledgment into the empty chamber beyond.
 
“Memetic Harmonization?” asked Honeycrisp, “What the hay is that?”
 
Blue light filled the room and with a poof of magic a new figure appeared the room. The figure’s voice, flippant and self righteous, answered Honeycrisp’s question from her magnificent podium in the center of chamber. 

“Memetic Harmonization is a school of magic that pre-dates the Magic of Friendship. It came to Princess Celestia in a dream over 1500 years ago. Working together with her sister, Princess Luna, the two Alicorns created a new type of defensive magic that adapted to any kind of assault, keeping the caster unharmed.”
 
Princess Twilight smiled at the blue hologram standing in the center of the wide marble room. “Yes… Thank you, Trixie.”
 
The hologram gave a curt nod, though still managed to look down her muzzle at the Princess. “Sparkle.”
 
Honeycrisp stared at the cart-sized golden pyramid structure that Trixie’ s hologram stood on. It was studded with priceless gems and lined with silver runes. And there were three large white pearls, or things that looked like pearls, orbiting the main structure in floating elliptical orbits. To the country unicorn, it looked like some kind of fountain but there was no water or rainbows to be seen.
 
“Princess, what was tha—“ a purple wing lightly bopped Honeycrisp on the snout.
 
“No more questions until we leave the Gateway of Knowledge, ok?” Princess Twilight threw the confused country mare a heartfelt smile.
 
Honeycrisp nodded and the girls walked through a set of massive open arches. The arch was made of marble like the rest of the room, but it was carved to resemble planks of wood. Honeycrisp marveled at the intricate wood grain carved into each ‘plank’. At the apex of the arch was a wooden statue of an earthpony, rearing up on his hindlegs, holding a hammer high in the air. Below his feet, a bronze plaque read:
 

HOUSE OF COMMONS

 
Once out of the main room under the central dome of the Senate, Honeycrisp turned to look at Princess Twilight.

“Can I ask my question now?”
 
That same haughty voice called out from behind them. “Yes!”
 
The Princess ignored the shouting hologram and looked to Honeycrisp as they walked further into the House of Commons side of the Senate.
  
“Go ahead, Honeycrisp.”
 
“So, why does the Beacon need to mind control other ponies to beat Discord? It seemed to be doing a good job of filling him with holes on his own.”
 
“Well,” said Twilight, “Discord gets his powers from strife, disharmony, and chaos. If ponies don’t fight each other, if there’s no strife or disharmony, then Discord’s powerless.”
 
Smarty Pants gasped “So if all the ponies are of one mind…”
 
The Princess nodded gravely “Then there’s nopony to argue about anything, and Discord becomes powerless.”
 
The group had walked for some time through the unusually empty halls that wrapped around the Assembly Chamber the House of Commons, and stopped in front of a modest wooden door labeled ‘Undersecretary’. Princess Twilight turned to look at the girls.

“Um, excuse me, Princess.” Said Sandy, “But if we can’t find Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and the Beacon mind controls all the ponies… what happens then?”
 
“After it accomplishes its primary objective and beats Discord? Nothing. Nothing will happen for a very long time. Possibly forever.”