Part Three Prologue
One month later, Year 498, Town
A crisp wind blew through the trees, kicking up the loose leaves and spreading them over the darkened street. Night had only just fallen, but a chilly autumn night had been quick to set in. The town had long since recovered from the wounds dealt to it over the course of the summer, and the bright new timber stood out slightly in the dark night. A few clouds passed through the skies, occasionally obscuring the moon, but otherwise the stars shone bright.
Under the soft glare of a light-stone streetlight passed two figures, walking quickly to get somewhere warmer. One wore a light pair of tan sweat pants and a soft pink jacket, the hood pulled up over her head. Her mess of magenta hair spilled over her shoulders and poked out the front of the jacket. She held the hand of the other figure, who wore simple blue jeans and a brown leather jacket. His had no hood, and his shoulder-length brown hair, and wings folded neatly behind him like a cape, whipped about freely in the breeze.
The pair rounded a corner and stopped before a small but cozy home halfway down the street. The man pulled his hand back sheepishly a moment later, but tried to laugh it off, scratching the back of his head. The girl laughed as well, a sound pure and musical to his ears.
“That was really fun!” She said. “Kyle, I’m glad you’re a strong enough flyer for both of us, ‘cause that was great.”
Kyle nodded, grinning. “Any time, Pinkie. It’s much more fun carrying you around than the bags of sand they load us up with in training.”
The two laughed together, partly out of simply being tired after an evening of flight. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.” Pinkie said after a pause, giving him a quick, warm embrace before skipping down the path to her home. With a wave goodnight she closed the door, and Kyle began walking back through the street, cheeks flushed from more than the cold air.
“You look like you’re having fun.” A familiar, sarcastic but not aggressive voice was heard as he passed a corner. He spun around, embarrassed, to face his main commanding officer. Her outfit (similar to his own recently adopted one of jeans and a leather jacket) kicked slightly in the wind, and her mint-green hair, a tousled mess to begin with, gave a small bounce. She kept her arms folded and legs crossed before her as her bronze eyes opened to see him. She went on: “ Took her out flying, did you? I’ll be the first to admit, I didn’t think you had it in you. But I gotta say, I’m impressed.”
“Gimmie a break, Lyra.” Kyle chuckled. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve, same as you.”
“A few tricks, sure, maybe.” She admitted. “But a break? Never! Now... if we could get our heads back to business, we’ve got something a bit more important than the success of your date to deal with.” She reached her hand behind her back and retrieved a single sheet of rolled-up parchment paper. “A status update from queen Celestia.”
The haze of happiness left over from his time with Pinkie dispersed instantly, and his mind snapped to attention. Wordlessly, the two soldiers nodded to each other, and they made their way quickly to the inn, where the majority of the Silver Arrows were staying. The pair remained silent, thoughts swirling, until they were secure in Lyra’s room.
Kyle took a seat on a small chair in the corner of the small room, across from the bed where Lyra sat. She unceremoniously tossed him the rolled paper, then stretched out on the bed. “I’ve already gone over it a dozen times.” She explained. “Take a look for yourself and tell me what you think.”
He unrolled it slowly and held it up a foot from his face, quickly scanning the carefully scrawled words. He came to the end of the message, then, adopting a confused expression, reread it again more slowly. Finally, he set the parchment to the side and shook his head. “It... It doesn’t sound like she suspects anything.”
“What, you doubted miss Octavia?” Lyra responded, not bothering to sit up and face him. “She knows what she’s doing. When Tavi says she can keep the queen happy with fake updates, you’d better believe she can and will.”
“I know, but... It seems a little too perfect, don’t you think? I mean, I knew Brigadier General Octavia would be able to keep Celestia from guessing what’s going on for a while at least, but it just seems too easy. I expected to have to do some more backing up of our claims than this.”
Lyra raised herself into a sitting position, pulling up her legs close to her chest. “I thought that at first, too. Celestia has no reason to suspect anything is happening here, for the moment at least. Seems like we got off pretty well, right? Well... We can’t keep things super-secure forever. We’ve been able to keep everything on the down-low so far, but sooner or later someone’s going to slip up and give the queen that piece she needs to suspect us.
“See... Celestia’s already looking for a reason to suspect something is happening in this town to threaten her, but she can’t just come out and say it. It’s because of one factor... The one thing she still fears in this world, the one that was almost the death of her in Nightmare Moon’s Rebellion five hundred years ago... The Elements of Harmony. The original bearers were unable to defeat her, but they came darn close. I know for a fact that she’s afraid of these six kids who’ve inherited their powers, and she’s just biding her time for an excuse to rid herself of their threat to her throne.
“Still, we’ve got two things on our side, keeping her at bay. The first is, of course, our dear Octavia, and the onset of winter. I know Tavi can keep Celestia at bay for a while longer, and with the onset of the cold season, we’ll have a good stretch of time in which there’s little to no chance of any suspicion. Plus the fact that Celestia, to the best of our knowledge, has no reason to suspect the Silver Arrows are anything but loyal to her. With all this in play, I can say with certainty we’ll be safe until... say, midsummer next year? We can last that long without any real trouble, anyway. Celestia might start getting suspicious of the town, and us, earlier than that, but we’ll be safe from danger until then.
“The second factor is her prized apprentice, Twilight. Make no mistake, the queen values Twilight more than anything else, and since she’s an Element of Harmony herself- indeed, the one linking all the others together- it makes it very difficult for her to order the destruction of the other five without endangering her. However... this factor is something of a double-edged sword. Celestia will spare no expense to try and keep Twilight on her side, and it may be difficult for us to keep her from turning on us. This mutual two-sided-coin status of Twilight, applying to both us and Eclipse, makes it that much important to convince Twilight that Celestia is evil.”
Lyra stood, hands clasped behind her back, and stalked over to the darkened window on the far wall. “I’m just anxious about what’s going to do it, that one thing that’ll push that poor girl one way or the other. It’ll take away from only one side or the other, sure, but it’s going to hurt Twilight no matter what. Someone else is going to do something drastic, hurt someone else or do something remarkably stupid, and it’s going to hurt Twilight and send her over the edge, either to us, or to Celestia...” She sighed, her voice having broken ever so slightly. “I feel so bad for her...”
Kyle stood, walked over to Lyra, then paused before reaching her. Shaking away his doubt, he moved next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Nothing we can do about it. No amount of arguing will sway her one way or another now. What matters is that we’re here for her after the fact.”
Lyra nodded at last. “True enough. Well, I suppose that brings you up to speed on the situation. I was going to bring it up to the other members of the Silver Arrows and the townspeople participating in the resistance before too long, but I needed a second opinion first. Thanks for that. Now, you probably ought to get some shuteye, you’ve got a training session with Fluttershy in the morning, right?”