The present, aboard the airship Everdream
---------
The door to the deck burst open, and Starlight and Papyrus half fell out on to the wildly sloped deck. Papyrus managed to maintain a grip on the door while Starlight went tumbling through, landing heavily in a pile of ropes.
“Rig lifting lines!” they heard Genoa call out from where he was hanging on to the command deck. The air around the falling airship was now filled with pegasi as the Everdream’s flyers abandoned ship, leaping out through hatches and windows and into the sky. As Starlight hauled himself up, crew ponies rushed to tie lines to the Everdream and throw them to the flying pegasi circling the ship. The flyers caught the lines and struggled to haul the weight of the massive airship.
Starlight scrambled up steps that where becoming a wall and onto the command deck. “What’s happening?” he shouted to Genoa over the rising wind of the falling airship.
“We are falling.” Genoa snapped back at him, then he turned back to the deck. “For Luna’s sake, somepony slice that aft balloon!” he bellowed out over the chaos.
“What, why!” Starlight shouted as the ship lurched, wrapping his legs around the railing he was hanging on to.
Genoa did not respond, just kept shouting down at the crew ponies that where trying to carry out his orders while hanging on for dear life.
“Why wreak the aft envelope as well?” Starlight shouted, this time almost into the old pony’s scared face.
Genoa made an impatient gesture. “Because if we don’t, we are going to smash to pieces when we hit the ground.” He ground his teeth in frustration. “What the Discord are those flyers doing.” He shouted wildly to the air around the rapidly falling ship. “Rainstorm, get that balloon cut!” he screamed.
It seemed to Starlight that what the flyers were doing was grabbing lines -- and more importantly ponies -- out of the air as the falling ship ploughed thorough wispy clouds on its way to the ground.
“I got this.” Starlight heard called out from the aft. He looked up and saw Rapier clinging to one of the aft support poles for the crystal canopy. The ship was now falling at a good forty five degrees off the vertical, so the post he was climbing along was now getting close to horizontal. As Starlight watched, he slid his hoof blade out of its sheath on his fore limb, then let go of the post entirely.
Rapier fell ‘forward,’ down the ship. He landed on the aft balloon with a thud, and Starlight saw him stick his hoof blade savagely into it before he rolled off, dragging the sharp blade down one side, opening a long slice in the balloon. Rapier fell forward off the balloon, but somehow managed to catch one of the support lines in his teeth as he dropped. Lifting gas flooded out of the hole in the envelope as the balloon partly deflated.
“That is better,” Genoa sighed, as the ship started to level out.
“But now we are falling faster--” Starlight started, as he unwrapped his legs from around the railing.
“Yes, but now we are falling flat, and we stand a chance of surviving the landing.” Genoa replied not taking his eyes off the air. “Okay flyers, grab lines and get ready,” he bellowed into the air.
Starlight heard a noise and turned to see Rapier climb down the support line and on to the now level deck. He turned to his friend, hoping to get a better answer out of him. “What was that about?” he asked plaintively, waving a hoof at the savaged envelope.
“We needed to level out the ship’s fall,” Rapier replied -- far too calmly for the situation, Starlight thought.
“But didn’t we just cut away half of the remaining lifting power? We are falling faster now!” Starlight repeated, indeed they were, even if the levelling of the ship had removed the immediate feeling of panic and had lessened the howling wind.
“Yes, but we are falling level. Airships are built and braced from the flat bottom; if we hit the ground flat, we spread the shock over all the supporting beams. If we had struck head on, the bow would have taken all the force and it would have split the ship in half, or worse.”
“But why cut the envelope, why not just kill the power?”
“Lifting envelopes do not respond instantly, it takes time for the magical charge to properly dissipate. It would be at least an hour before we lost buoyancy just from a power loss.”
“Cloud!” one of the pegasi shouted, and Starlight heard the cry repeated around the rest of the ponies. Glancing over the side he saw a large cloud approaching. It must have been quite a low cloud, as he could clearly see the green of the forest below it.
“Why the shout--” he started, as the Everdream fell through the cloud, then there was a violent shaking that knocked him off his hooves and slammed him into the railing. Dazedly, he pushed himself back up and saw the lifting lines fall lose around the ship, looking up he saw the flyers freeing themselves from the cloud and darting back to retrieve them. Of course, to the pegasus ponies, clouds were semi-solid, and that thud must have been them trying to use it to slow the falling airship. He stumbled over to where Rapier and Genoa where hanging on to the wheel.
“You got any control?” Rapier was asking.
Genoa spun the wheel. “Not much.”
Rapier pushed himself up on his hind legs and scanned the rapidly approaching ground.
“There,” he shouted, pointing ahead and a little port off the bow, “that clearing there, can we make that?”
“Going to be close.” Genoa scooped up the communications tube. “Full power!” he bellowed into it. “Get me some Celestia dammed lift!” That last was another shout to the flyers, and Starlight saw the pegasus ponies grip the lines and heave for all they were worth.
“Going to be very close,” Genoa muttered, as the Everdream started to pick up forward speed. Starlight watched in terror as the trees rushed towards them.
“Here comes the ground.” Starlight heard somepony almost sing as he saw the crew scramble for any hoof holds they could find. There were a few moments of utter silence and stillness, except for the rushing of the falling wind, and then…
“Trees!” somepony screamed from the bow, and Starlight felt the crashing thud as the belly of the Everdream plowed into the forest canopy. There was a splintering of branches and the crashing of fully grown trees as the full weight of the air ship crashed through the leafy canopy, and more thuds as the ship crashed into the trunks of trees. The ship cracked and shuddered, and Starlight saw more of the panels of the damaged canopy shake themselves lose. There was one massive thud, he lost his grip and was sent flying into the air. He just had time to hear the shout of ‘ground!’ from the crew, before he hit his head hard against the suddenly rising deck and blackness overtook him.
------
“You must find them.” The voice of the White Pony drifted to Starlight through the light speckled darkness. “They are needed.”
Starlight twisted and searched, looking for her, but he could not see her, only hear her voice.
“You know we actually came off quite lightly--” he heard Rapier swift say from somewhere else.
“They must stop it,” the voice of the White Pony whispered to him. Starlight spun around trying to find her.
“--it could have been a lot worse,” Rapier finished.
“A lot worse? We crashed into a forest!” Papyrus’ slightly hysterical voice came from the same place as Rapiers’.
“We landed,” Rapier insisted.
“You must find them,” the White Pony said again, more insistently, the urgency in her voice tugging at Starlight.
“No, Rapier, we crashed.” That was Rainstorm. “Trust me, I am an expert on the difference.”
“Well, whatever we did, we did not do it that badly. The hull is largely undamaged. The middle lifting envelope is intact, and we did not even damage that many sunlines.”
“Where are they?” Starlight called out desperately into the star speckled darkness. “Tell me where I can find them.”
“We need to fix or replace nearly half of the sunlines.” The caustic tones of Captain Genoa bullied themselves into the dream. “The aft envelope needs patching. The fore envelope needs heavy repair -- and did you even look at the canopy? It is not meant to be at that angle--”
“They are close,” the White Pony whispered to Starlight. “Part is nearby.”
“--it will take time to fix and we crashed into forest.”
“So you will be able to find a tree to replace the support that went, and now you can shut down the spinner and get the repairs done properly.” Rapier’s voice sounded optimistic.
“Where is it?” Starlight pleaded , “tell me where it is.”
“Not the point. When night falls, whatever lives in this forest is going to realize that there is a nice pony buffet sitting here.”
“It is nearby,” the White Pony whispered. “Look for the one who is and is not. The joining of strength and beauty. She holds the given heart.”
“…and they will find it sitting in a heavily armed airship,” Rapier insisted, “we have over two hundred armed ponies here, and more than a few war weapons. Rainstorm and her pegasi will sweep the area and we will set up proper scouts. We even managed to ‘crash’ in a clearing so we have clear fire lines. Stop worrying, Genoa, like I said, it could have been worse.”
“You MUST find them.” The image of the White Pony flashed in front of Starlight.
“Wait!” he screamed, reaching out with his forehooves… and fell out of the bed, landing in a tangled heap of blankets on the floor of the cabin.
He looked around and saw that he was sitting on the floor of Papyrus’ cabin. He had been lying in the pony’s bunk. Rapier, Genoa and Rainstorm, as well as the old unicorn, were standing in the cabin . They all turned to look at him.
“Yes, things could always be worse,” Genoa said, looking at Starlight. “I better get back to organizing the crew.”
He left the cabin as a worried Papyrus came over and helped Starlight disentangle himself from the sheets.
“How are you feeling?” the old unicorn asked.
“I am fine,” Starlight replied, “what happened?”
“You hit your head and knocked yourself out,” Rapier said.
“Before that. What happened to the ship?”
“One of the fore supports for the canopy must have been damaged in the fight with the Dark Cloud,” Rapier explained. “When we started replacing the panels in the canopy, we removed some of the panels that were spreading the weight to the undamaged supports, and the damaged one could not take the strain. It snapped and some lose panels fell to the deck, one of them spilt the fore envelope and damaged the spell lifter mechanism -- without its lift we had no buoyancy. Fortunately we managed to land.”
“Crash,” Rainstorm interjected.
“Land,” Rapier insisted, “in this forest.”
“It was quite a impressive crash, really, when you think about it,” Rainstorm added. This earned her a half dozen fixed stares.
“Maybe from your point of view,” Starlight told the pegasus. “I probably did not have as good a view of the beauty of it, what with all the terror.”
Rainstorm shook her head. “That is not what I meant. I mean it is quite hard to get an airship to accurately crash like that.”
“Seemed easy enough to me,” Starlight said with feeling.
Rapier shook his head as well. “I know what she means. Airships are designed not to crash easily, I mean, think about it Starlight. The Everdream is designed to be shot at. If it was that easy to take us down, we would not have been any good in a fight, would we ?”
“So what went wrong? I distinctly remember falling to the ground.”
Rapier seemed to think about it for a bit. “You might call it a perfect storm of circumstances. Like Rainstorm said, it was kind of impressive.” Rainstorm nodded. “The crystal canopy was weak at just the right point when that post snapped. The canopy twisted in just the right way to snap a panel, and the panel fell in just the right way to completely take out that balloon, as well as damage the spell plate and force us to shut down the lift.” He shrugged again. “One in a million accident.”
The ponies stood and thought about that. After a few seconds Papyrus interrupted their thoughts. “Well, my young pony.” He looked Starlight straight in the eyes. “You bashed your head pretty hard. How are you really feeling? Are you feeling dizzy? Seeing double? Hearing anything strange?”
“More than usual,” Rainstorm added.
Starlight looked carefully around the cabin, they seemed to only be one version of all his friends. “No, I seem to be okay,” he said, deciding to ignore that vision. It was the White Pony after all, it was not like that was unusual at the moment.
Papyrus looked carefully into his eyes and probed the back of his head with one hoof. “Are you sure, my young pony, you were out for quite a while there.”
Starlight shook the probing hoof off. “Yes, I am fine. I probably just needed a little rest after the excitement of crashing. Now,” he said, standing up, “shall we go and see just what sort of forest we have landed in?”
-----
In the past, in a little cottage just outside Sweetapple Acres
“Tea, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked in her gentle lilting voice.
“Yes please, Fluttershy,” Twilight responded.
Fluttershy picked up the teapot in both hooves and refilled Twilights cup.
“Rarity?”
“Yes please, darling.”
They were sitting in the garden of the little cottage that Fluttershy and Big Mac shared on the edge the Sweetapple Acres, near where it met the Everfree forest. The Apple family had built it when Fluttershy and Big Mac got married, and Twilight always thought its placement was a nicely symbolic merging of the two ponies who lived there.
It was a perfect spring afternoon. The sun was shining, but it was not too hot; the birds were singing, and in the distance she could hear the sounds of the Apple clan busy at work in their orchards.
In the large lawn in front of the cottage, two foals were playing in the grass. Twilight took a sip of her tea and gazed out at them. She did not get to spend as much time with her friends in Ponyville as she would like anymore -- her work took her to Canterlot too much, and away to more distant and dangerous locations, but she liked to return here whenever she could. Ponyville had a tranquillity to it that helped restore her occasionally battered self.
“Twilight dear,” Rarity’s unmistakable voice interrupted Twilights daydream.
She turned back to her friend, guiltily aware she had missed what she had said. “I am sorry, Rarity, I was just watching Sweet Apple and Rough Diamond playing. Foals are so cute at that age.”
Fluttershy and Rarity turned to look at their respective offspring.
“Yes, they are,” Rarity said with a sigh, before turning back to Twilight. “Are you getting lonely, Twi? Are you yearning for the clip-clop of tiny hooves on the floor of your library?”
“No.”
“Really. Is the life of the most studious unicorn in all of Equestria not getting a bit lonesome?” Rarity pressed.
“No, of course not. I love my studies.”
“Really.” Rarity leaned forward over the table and folded her hooves. “So who was that handsome stallion I saw you having lunch with in Canterlot last week?”
Twilight nearly choked on her tea.
“Why, Twilight dear, anypony would think that you are hiding something.”
“No,” Twilight managed to get out through her coughing. “I just did not realize that you were in Canterlot, that is all.” Twilight did in fact have something to hide, but it was not what her friend thought, and her mind worked desperately to try to find a way of diverting Rarity’s hunt for gossip.
“Fancypants and Fleur invited me to an art show,” Rarity said with a casual wave of her hoof. “But no changing the subject. Who was that handsome pony -- and am I going to have to dig out my wedding dress designs?”
Twilight’s mind raced through the possible options -- maybe the best was to hint at what Rarity wanted to see and let her own imagination fill in the blanks.
“He is just a colleague,” she said, trying to inject just the right amount of casualness in her voice.
“So he works for Celestia then?”
“Yes.” That was true enough.
“And he is studying magic with you?”
“Yes.” Twilight said relaxing a bit.
“And so the armour he was wearing was to protect him when your spells go badly wrong?”
“Yes… no… what I mean is,” Twilight flustered.
“Yes, Twi dear, do go on,” Rarity said, calmly looking at her friend.
Twilight was actually secretly pleased she was managing to keep her friend thinking in terms of a romantic relationship, instead of venturing into more dangerous speculation. She decided to wriggle on the hook some more and see if Rarity could be persuaded to bite deeper.
“Well, he is a member of the Canterlot guard, he works with my brother.”
“Ah, so he is a friend of your brother then.”
“Yes.”
“So was it Shining Armour or Cadence who set you up on that date?”
“Neither. No, look it was not a date,” Twilight said firmly, going for the theory that the more you deny it, the guiltier it looks, “we were just two friends having lunch together.”
“So you where just two friends, having lunch together in quaint little street café in the picturesque old quarter of Canterlot? Just like Fluttershy and Big Mac were two friends who liked to have lunch together, and then two friends who liked to have candle lit dinners together, and then take midnight walks in the apple orchards together?”
Fluttershy giggled softly at this.
“Is that the sort of friendly lunch you where having?”
Twilight’s further blustering was interrupted by a high pitch crying. Everypony’s heads snapped around to where the foals were. Sweet Apple was sitting on the ground, looking curiously at Rough Diamond, who was sitting in the middle of a muddy puddle crying tremendously.
Fluttershy and Rarity jumped to their hooves.
“Oh, Diamond dearie, what has happened to you?” Rarity called out, as she dashed over to where her foal was sitting. As soon as she got close enough, a blue magical aura enveloped the little filly and she floated up to her mother. “Oh dear, you are all muddy, don’t worry, mummy will make it all better. I will get all the disgusting mud off you in no time.”
She glanced at Fluttershy, who was had picked up her own foal and was checking him to see if he was hurt.
“Fluttershy darling, do you mind if I take Rough Diamond inside and give her a wash?”
“Oh, of course not. You know where everything is.”
“Of course, Flutters dear, many thanks.” Rarity trotted off in the direction of the cottage, her foal held close. “Come on darling, mummy will give you a nice bath and we will get all that nasty mud off you.”
She disappeared inside and Fluttershy walked back to where Twilight was sitting. She put Sweet Apple down on the table, where he grabbed at one of the scones and tried to eat it all in one go.
Twilight watched where Rarity had gone inside. “How is she coping with Rough Diamond?” she asked Fluttershy.
Fluttershy retrieved the scone from her foal. “She is doing, well... okay.”
“Okay?” Twilight asked quizzically.
“Well, it is hard for her, with Spike being away for long periods of time, and with Rough Diamond being… well it is hard sometimes.”
Twilight nodded. She could read between the lines to what Fluttershy was not saying.
Ponyville was a very accepting place -- not only did all three types of pony live together in harmony, without the discrimination you sometime got in places like Canterlot or Fillydelphia, but also cows and donkeys -- even Zecora had come to be accepted, after Twilight had explained to her friends what a zebra was. And when she had moved in, she and Spike had been welcomed with open doors. But Spike was definitely a dragon, and even though they had not known what one was they recognised that Zecora was definitely a zebra, whereas Rough Diamond was… well, different was the only real way to put it.
Her rear hooves and legs were that of a pony; proper hooves and fur as brilliant white as her mother’s. But instead of a normal pony tail made of hair, she had a thick muscular tail like a dragon; it was still furred underneath, but on top it had thick green scales like Spike. Those scales continued along her back, blending into her fur at the sides. Half way along her back she sported a small set of wings, leathery and dragon-like, not feathered.
Her front legs started off like a pony’s, but instead of hooves she had dragon-like claws with sharp talons. Most of the time she would walk on all fours, but more and more often she would try to walk upright like Spike, and use her claws to grab at things. The scales on her back continued over her neck, taking the place of a pony’s mane, and up around her head. Her face started off on the top like a pony’s, with pony type pointed ears and eyes, but instead of the flat face and button nose of a pony mare, she had a long, almost stallion-like muzzle.
In the centre of her forehead she had a little horn, but it was not straight and smooth like a unicorn’s, but more twisted and rough like a dragon’s horn, and as far as Twilight knew she had shown none of the wild spurts of magic that made the life of a unicorn’s parents so interesting.
Yes, Rough Diamond was different, and unfortunately to a lot of ponies, different still meant something to be afraid of. Twilight herself had felt the occasional twinge of fear when she had looked at the little foal, but she had decided that was to do with how much her mixture of species reminded her of the villain Discord. And it was not helping that Celestia and Luna needed Spike for much of the work that was being done, and that kept him away from Ponyville much more than any of them would have liked.
“Spike,” Fluttershy’s voice reached into Twilights thoughts.
“Yes,” she mused, “maybe it would be easier if he was able to spend more time in Ponyville.”
“No, Spike. He is here,” Fluttershy said, pointing a hoof down the garden.
Twilight twisted around and followed the direction of Fluttershy’s hoof. Sure enough, the unmistakable shape of the purple and green dragon was coming up the road that lead from Ponyville. Butterflies started to flap in Twilight’s stomach. Spike was not supposed to be in Ponyville. Celestia had sent him on an important errand. Why was he here now? She turned back to Fluttershy.
“Flutters,” she said trying to hide her nervousness with a causal tone. “Why don’t you leave Sweet Apple with me and go and tell Rarity that Spike is here.”
“Oh, okay, sure.” The two mares stood and Fluttershy picked up Sweet Apple and placed him on Twilights back, where he immediately climbed up her neck and started to try to chew on her ear. Fluttershy trotted over to the cottage door while Twilight and Sweet Apple set of to meet Spike at the edge of the garden.
“Hey, Twilie,” Spike greeted his old friend. Twilight grimaced. She thought that Spike had been spending a bit too much time with her elder brother. “It seems you are getting on well with Sweet Apple. Foals seem to like you.”
“Don’t you start.” She waved a warning hoof at the dragon. “I got enough of that from your beloved wife.”
Spike tilted his head to one side. “Oh,” he said, curious, “and what has my darling Rarity been saying to you?”
“Oh, nothing much. It was just that she saw me and Bright Spark having lunch in Canterlot.”
Worry crossed Spike’s face. “Does she think you are keeping secrets from her?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Only of a romantic nature.”
Spike smiled. “Well you know, Twi, you and Bright Spark…”
“I told you not to start,” Twilight scolded, prodding Spike in his chest. She leaned in close and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Anyway, what are you doing in Ponyville, aren’t you are supposed to be over in the Dragon Teeth mountains?”
“Celestia sent me to come and get you,” Spike replied, also in a whisper.
The butterflies in Twilight’s stomach had babies. “How bad is it?” she asked. Celestia would not have sent Spike to Ponyville to get her if it was not urgent.
“Bad. It is on the move.”
The butterflies in Twilight’s stomach froze. She glanced around at the cottage and the farm, which suddenly seemed so very small and vulnerable. “Do we need the Elements of Harmony, are we going to have to tell them?”
Spike shook his head. “Celestia does not think so. The Dusk Hunters are mobilising; we will meet them and Luna at the Broken Pass.”
Twilight’s mind raced. The Broken Pass would be too close to Trottingham to be a good place to meet the enemy, but was there a better place before they were forced into action? She disliked the idea of meeting it on the wide open planes. Luna would know the situation better than she did, but this was still worrying. This was much earlier than they had expected; they had not expected it to start moving for months yet.
Her train of thought was interrupted by a cry from behind her. Spike’s head shot up and his face broke into a smile.
Twilight twisted her head around and saw that Rarity and Rough Diamond were standing at the door to Fluttershys cottage.
She looked back at Spike. “Go ahead. We have time. Sweet Apple and I will catch up.”
Spike bounded over the lawn and the air was filled with Rough Diamond’s screams of delight, and Rarity’s mock protests as Spike picked them both up in his large claws.
Twilight steadied Sweet Apple on her back and set off at a slow walk. So it has started, she thought, as she watched Spike playing with his daughter. Even if Celestia was right and they did not need the Elements of Harmony this time, this would not be the end of it. At some point she knew that they would need them, and at that point they would need to tell their friends the secrets they were keeping. But not right now. For now she agreed with the princesses. It was best if they like the rest of Equestria remained ignorant of the darkness facing their world.