Twilight Sparkle was determined to reach her throne room. Well, it wasn’t her throne room. It was the throne room in the castle, and it was shared by the Goddess of Love and the Goddess of Magic, but before that it belonged to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna so technically—
“Princess Twilight, wait!”
Twilight slammed her hooves into the ground, sliding to a stop. She felt Rarity’s ice cold body ram into hers, sending chills up her spine. She barely noticed the other two bumps as the girls slid into Rarity.
“M-mah thongue ith tt-huck.” Stammered Honeycrisp, who managed to get her tongue stuck to one of Rarity’s back legs.
Twilight righted herself and, in a quick burst of will, separated the young farm mare from her old friend. “Ugh,” grumbled Honeycrisp, rubbing at her tongue with a hoof, “tastes like old socks.”
“I beg your pardon?” glowered Rarity, more than a little mortified at the implication.
“Sandy’s missing!” blurted Smarty Pants.
Twilight did a head count. Honeycrisp was making faces at Rarity, check. Rarity was threatening corporal punishment, check. Smarty Pants was spinning in a tight frantic circle, check. Twilight herself was here, check.
Sandy? No Sandy. No check. Twilight groaned. She hated having a box without a check.
“When was the last time anypony saw her?” she asked
Honeycrisp looked away from the pony of her ire and rubbed a forehoof in thought. “I saw her when we teleported in, but I don’t remember if I saw her after we got inside the castle!”
Rarity gasped. “Surely you don’t think…”
The Princess shook her head dismissively, “No, I remember seeing her after Discord showed up.”
Before the conversation could continue, Twilight heard the sound of fleshy footfalls. Lots of them. Her wings fluttered nervously.
“No time, come on!” she commanded.
Three ponies followed the Princess as they dove for cover in a nearby larder, its door glowing purple for an instant to allow them in and then shutting softly behind them.
“Princess, why are we—“
“Shh!” Twilight motioned for silence as she leaned against the door, her heart pounding. She’d fought demons only once before, and it was not an experience she wanted to relive.
Seconds ticked by and soon the world was filled with the thundering of angry feet. Twilight watched as the two girls hugged each anxiously. Then what was a booming became a thumping and what was a thumping became a plodding. Then there was silence on the other side of the door. Princess Twilight let herself breathe again.
“That was close.”
“What’s the deal, Princess?” asked a visibly shaken Honeycrisp. “Why are you hiding from these things? Why not zap them with your magic?”
Smarty Pants answered for her. “From what I’ve read, hitting a demon with magic just makes it angry. Well, angrier. Really, it’s best to avoid them or outsmart them.”
Princess Twilight nodded “She’s not wrong. Now come on, we have to get to the throne room.”
“But Princess Twilight, what about Sandy?”
Twilight looked at her student and shook her head before a thought came to her. “Smarty Pants, if you can get to her and get back to the throne room, do it.”
Smarty Pants bobbed her head up and down affirmatively and Twilight turned to address the two unicorns. “Rarity, Honeycrisp, I need your help getting the defenses up. It requires a specific magic pattern to activate and another pattern to maintain. Are you up for it?”
“Yeah, I can probably do that,” said Honeycrisp, “But I get a do-over if I need one, right?”
Rarity was staring off into a corner, her thoughts a mile away.
“… Rarity?”
“Huh? Oh yes, yes. Hurrah team and all that.”
The Goddess of Magic smiled and turned back to her pupil, but the little pony was already gone. She wasn’t even in the room any more. Twilight leaned back and looked at the door. The only door out of the larder. It was shut and she was resting her weight against. “Wow. She’s good.”
Moments later Twilight and her two unicorn compatriots were off and running down the hall. They took one turn and then another. They did not encounter another group of demons before they come across the open antechamber that stood between the rest of the castle and the throne room. On most days, this was one of Twilight’s favorite places. Sadly today was not most days.
From here ponies had a circular view of Canterlot and Equestria beyond, blocked only by the spire of Caterhorn to the North. Fire and black smoke bloomed far as the eye could see. She could barely make out Ponyville in the distance, and even there black smoke billowed.
“Oh no,” she muttered as her stomach dropped out from under her.
“Twilight? I’ve never seen anything like this. I… I’m not sure if we can fix this.”
“We have to try Rarity, we can’t give up no—”
To the South a massive purple figure rose out of the rubble of the city below, threw its head back and roared.
“Spike?” whimpered the white unicorn.
“Rarity,” Twilight said, pinning her ears back, “I need your help here, don’t—”
The purple giant stumbled backwards and grabbed his head, groaning in anguish.
“Spike!” The Crystal Empress quickly willed her her frosty armor into existence and leaped out the open window. She cried out as she plummeted to the streets below. “I’m coming, Spike. Do you hear me?! Rarity’s coming!”
“Ow… My head.” Mumbled the woozy Goddess of Love as she stumbled to her hooves. “Auntie Celestia?! Luna?! Sandy? Am I dreaming?”
“Hello Cadence,” said Celestia, her smile shining like the dawn. “No, you’re not dreaming. We’re really here in Canterlot.”
Cadence had more questions, but before could ask them, Luna interrupted her train of thought. “Now that she is awake, we must make haste,” she said as her time-worn battle armor affixed itself to her chest and fetlocks. “There are dragons to fight.”
“Oh Lulu, there’s no need t—“
“Dragons, Tia!” Luna shouted with a stomp of her hoof and a tiny pout. “I have not fought a dragon in over a thousand years. And today I will fight at least a dozen. Perhaps a score.” she gasped excitedly and added, “Neigh, I will vanquish the entire flight!”
The Moon Goddess lowered her back end to the ground and started clapping her forehooves. Her antics earned her a nervous look from Sandy and soft tittering from her older sister. Cadence wasn’t really paying attention. She was still trying to remember what went on in Cloudsdale.
“Why is my cutie mark warm?” she asked nopony in particular.
That’s when Celestia first heard it. It started faintly, like a high pitched sound off in the distance. It was coming from inside the castle.
Celestia’s ears flickered. “Does anypony else hear that?” she asked.
The noise got louder. Whatever it was it was approaching at a steady clip. Now everypony heard it. “It could be a burst boiler...” said Luna, looking around to identify the source of the sound.
“I don’t think so,” offered Cadence helpfully. “I don’t think boilers ‘squee’.”
Sandy trotted out from beneath the trio of Alicorns and looked down one of the corridors that fed into the West Entrance. There was somepony coming. Whoever it was they were light-brown and had a red mane.
“Oh horseapples,” muttered Sandy.
Celestia spun around, “Sandy! Where did you learn such langua—” But the Sun Goddess never finished her reproach.
At that moment a little earthpony filly, who had been galloping as fast as she possibly could, shot up and barreled headfirst into Celestia’s chest, screaming in delight. The two ponies crumpled and tumbled before coming to rest on the hard marble floor.
“I FOUND YOU!” Smarty Pants shouted. She squeezed and shook the white Alicorn as hard as she could. “I found you! I found you.”
Twilight peered around the doorway and looked into her ruined throne room. The twin thrones at its end were in splinters, gems and gold filigree ripped from the wreckage. The tapestries were in tatters, covered in stains from Celestia only knows what.
The marble floor was littered with colorful shard of crushed glass. Not a single panel of stained glass windows that depicted the history of Equestria survived whatever happened here. She was so shocked by the desecration that she almost missed the green dragon laying in the center of the room. Almost.
He was sitting on a pile of gems and pilfered gold. Standing glumly in shackles to his right were a dozen ponies. She recognized them as from their robes. It was the Senatorial Guardmares. She frowned and clicked her teeth.
“Amatharex. Great.”
“What’s an Amatharex?”
She pulled her head back around the corner and looked at Honeycrisp. “He’s a dragon. A real nasty one. Spike told me all about him in a few of his letters.”
“A n-nasty dragon?” asked Honeycrisp, playing with her pigtails nervously.
Twilight smiled at the young girl. “It’s okay Honeycrisp. He’s a bully, but he’s also a coward. I’ll just scare him off and then we’ll get the castle defenses back up.”
Without another word, Princess Twilight walked into her throne room with her head held high.
She unfurled her wings menacingly and shouted. “Whelp! You are in my territory. Be gone before I turn you into luggage.”
The green dragon’s eyes flickered between dull lifelessness and the keen stare of a predator. “Ah, the purple pony Princess. The Beacon of Order says he wants me to bring you to him.”
Twilight stopped walking and lowered her wings. She stood there studying the dragon, perhaps forgetting the inherent risk in such an activity. “You’ve been corrupted, but you can still think for yourself? How are you fighting it?”
Amatharex lazily rose from his small treasure pile and scoffed. “A pony can give orders inside my head, but that does not change the truth.” He said as he slithered and slunk his way over to the Princess.
Curiosity got the best of her and she asked, “And that truth is?”
With a swipe of his mighty tail he struck Princess Twilight in the side and sent her colliding into a pillar, reducing it to rubble. “I do not listen to ponies. Even if they are gods!”
He rose up a bit and opened his massive jaws. Honeycrisp could feel the heat coming off of the scaly beast from her hiding spot. He started to breathe in and she gasped, knowing what would come next. She ran.
“No! Princess Twilight!”
The little red unicorn moved as fast as she could. She skidded to a stop between the half-buried Princess who lying still under a pile of broken stone and the green dragon. Before she realized what she had done, her world was filled with flame.
The green flame of Amatharex washed over her and around her, but it did not pass her. She willed it to stop at her tail and not a hair’s breadth farther. The fire burned and boiled her, but not in the physical sense.
The fire ignited her very being. It licked at her aching soul and kindled her sullen heart. It burned away the melancholy she’d forgotten she ever had. In this moment she felt reborn. Baptized in dragon’s fire, she fully understood why she had flames for her cutie mark.
Amatharex sat up panting. He knew he’d probably never have another chance at killing a god, so he made sure to make the most of it. Nothing could survive that. Moments passed and only the sound of sizzling came out of the sooty cloud in front of him.
The green wyrm raised his head to the ceiling and bellowed in triumphant laughter.
“Alright, hotshot,” said a small cocksure voice, surprising him.
Amatharex looked down in alarm and saw the little red unicorn that had foolishly jumped in front the pony god he had tried to kill. They were both still there and neither pony looked burnt in the slightest, but the red one’s mane and tail were alight with golden flame.
Honeycrisp flashed him a predatory grin. “My turn.”
Spellbound dashed into another alley and hid behind a trash can, he once again regretted his decision to leave the relative safety of the castle. He watched as a troop of demons turned off the corner and began to scour the street he’d just ledt. This group of demons, like the last two, was hollering about Discord all the while. He didn’t want to stick around and find out why; all he wanted to do was rescue Ruby Star.
And live to see tomorrow, if he could swing it. Really how hard could it be? He only had too—
A concussive blast of energy raced out from the castle, shattering storefront windows and knocking him to the ground. After a moment, he got up and opened his eyes to marvel at a rather bizarre sight. There was a bright golden cloud mushrooming out of the castle.
“Oh!” came a shout from the street. He turned and saw that the demons he had been hiding from were standing there, pointing at him excitedly. He looked down and realized that his trash can had also blown away in the blast.
They started to charge at him. One of them shrieked at him, “Get Discord!”
“Ahh!” shrieked Spellbound.
WHAM! Went the roof of the castle throne room.
“Wait… what?”
Spellbound stood transfixed as he watched the roof to the castle throne room settle into its new resting place in the center of the street where the demons were standing.
“Wow.” He blinked in amazement at both his luck and the unluckiness of those particular demons.
He shrugged, chalking it up to providence, and returned to slinking low to the ground. The blue stallion peered left and then right before creeping his way South towards Canterlot’s Grand Central Plaza. That’s where Discord said he left Ruby.
He stuck close to the sidewalks and storefronts as he walked, so that he could duck into an alley or abandoned building when necessary, but otherwise he made good progress. Up ahead at the corner of 8th he heard the approach of another grumbling crowd of demons and dove for cover behind a pickle barrel.
When they got half way down the street they stopped and began to gibber loudly. Had he been spotted, again? Sweat began to collect on his forehead. Spellbound’s fight or flight response kicked into high gear and his body started making adrenaline like it was going out of style. Suddenly a voice that he thought he recognized called out.
“I’m coming Spike!”
The blue stallion shifted behind the barrel to get a better look and balked at the sight of some kind of… white unicorn… thing. It’s body was coated in ice and crystal and it’s horn, longer than any other horn he’d ever seen, was covered in wicked looking hooks.
Apparently undaunted by the mass of demons from freaking Tartarus forming up into ranks, the unicorn monster bashed and thrashed its way through them like a wheat thresher through a dry field of grain. It ran roughshod over the unfortunate wretches and he clenched his eyes shut, unable to watch the scene unfold further.
When he opened them again, he let out a low whistle. The monstericorn was gone, but he could still hear it shouting ‘Spike’ this and ‘Darling’ that. In its wake, there were two newly formed half-walls of ice. Peppered in said ice were shivering demons.
“C-cold,” said one.
“V-v-very c-cold,” said another.
Rarity kept her eyes on Spike above all else. She vaguely recalled trampling through quite a few packs of the little red devil-urchins, or whatever they were called, but they couldn’t stop her so she didn’t care. She only cared about one thing.
She ran, and her heart poured out for her little Spikey-Wikey as he once again gripped his head and stumbled. This time he was heading East, so she turned right to keep up. She was hoping to catch him in Canterlot’s Art District.
Rarity skidded to a halt on the aged stonework beneath her hooves and gazed up at the troubled goliath half a block from her.
“Spike!” she shouted with all her might. The effort lifted her forehooves into the air.
Still holding his head with one massive hand, he turned and searched for the tiny voice. He looked down and spotted her. Rarity smiled. But her smile became a gasp of shock as the lovely green of Spike’s eyes was replaced with a hateful red.
The same red eyes that Cadence had in Cloudsdale when she was the Beacon’s puppet.
“Oh no.”
Every muscle in Spike’s body tensed and, far quicker than Rarity imagined anypony that big was capable of, he fell into a crouched position on all fours and began closing the short distance between them.
Rarity’s eyes were wide with fright and she screamed as only a prima donna could. Her ice covered hooves slid and slipped on the old street before she managed to gain any meaningful traction. She galloped into a nearby alleyway just as Spike flattened the area where she was standing with a balled fist.
She stood there, shaking. “Spike! It’s me, Rarity!”
A brief flicker of recollection washed over the confused creature’s face at mention of a name that meant so much to him. He blinked away the red light and looked at her. For just a moment, Rarity thought she had gotten through to him.
Sadly, she did.
But the icy thing with the barbed horn in front of him didn’t look like the Rarity he remembered. She could hear the betrayal in his roar as he rose to his massive feet. When he reached his full height his eyes were once again burning red with grim intent.
She turned back down the alley and ran for her life. All the while trying to convince him it was her. “But I am Rarity! I really, truly, am!”
“Grawwwr!” he yelled mindlessly in a deep vibrato that rattled the windows and doors around Rarity as she turned on to Theater Avenue.
She ran and ran, only looking over her shoulder as the massive dragon smashed through the alleyway, destroying the buildings on both sides. She let out a distressed cry as he waded unhindered through the rubble after her.
Rarity looked ahead and saw a familiar building coming up on the far corner. If she could reach it, it might be Spike’s salvation. It might be hers too.
She raced ahead and her heart pounding in her armored chest. She reached her destination and spun to a stop just in front of the old Canterlot Theater. She stood her ground as Spike’s possessed body clambered menacingly, his unblinking red eyes focused solely on her.
“Stop right there, mister!” she shouted.
Confused and dealing with conflicting commands, Spike’s limbs refused to move. But momentum carried his body a bit further down the street. He slid to a stop within arm’s reach of the slightly trembling monarch.
She pointed a hoof at the building behind her. “Do you remember this theater, Spike? It’s where we did our Hearth’s Warming Eve Pageant. All those years ago?”
“Graw…Rar?” he asked, the color of his eyes oscillating from green to red and back again.
“I was Princess Platinum and you were our narrator, remember?” She sat down and smiled off to the side. “You were so dashing in your little outfit.”
“Nar…rara?”
“That’s right!” Rarity clapped her hooves excitedly and she willed her crystalline armor away, revealing what she hoped was not a sweat stained mess of a pony.
There was a final flicker of red in Spike’s eyes and he grimaced. Slowly, he raised one of his hands to smash the pretty pony just like the voice in his head was commanding him to do. He looked at her with a pained expression, but she ignored the threat and walked as calmly as she could towards his face.
“Surely if you can’t remember anything else about me,”
She walked forward beyond the reach of his claws and on past his chin, feeling the heat of his breath. She reared up and stood on the tips of her back hooves. She kissed his cheek.
“You should remember this.”
His arm went limp and fell harmlessly to the ground. He sighed dreamily and all the tension melted out of his body. Spike smiled.
“Rarara.” He mumbled happily to himself before drifting off to sleep.
The Beacon of Order frowned through Shining Armor’s face. The possessed white stallion looked away from where he was gazing into the Art District, and glanced skyward. The Moon was just starting to pass over the Sun. The eclipse would soon be complete.
Shining Armor’s body walked over to the converted Ruby Star and smiled at her. She was holding down a struggling blue unicorn stallion. Shining Armor tapped him with his horn and the Beacon could feel the stallion’s mental shield crumble away. Ignoring his protests, he channeled his will into converting this new recruit. It took less than a minute.
Flashes of memory blinked through the Beacon’s mind. Spellbound’s name, his birthday, his favorite food, his hopes, his dreams, his greatest fears. The Beacon knew everything about him, and it found him wanting. Shining Armor’s face contorted into a frown. It appears that the Moon and Princess Cadence are both alive and where here in Canterlot. That could be a problem.
But then that frown became a leer. Princess Twilight was in Canterlot, too.
It thought back to when it found her floating across the ley lines. It recalled how, on a whim, it tasted her power. Such raw magical might was unheard of. The Beacon had never experienced anything like it. It was ecstasy. It would have her power before the end.
For now though, the timeline must be accelerated. The Magicborn was lost to him. Shining Armor’s body turned again and thirty unicorns stood ready before him, awaiting the order.
“Begin the summoning ritual.”
Princess Twilight sat up and pushed a pile of rubble off of her with a wing. “Oh my aching… Everything.”
Testing her joints and flexing, she tapped into her healing magics and tended to her tender bits. She opened her eyes but did not believe what she saw, so she closed them. Then she opened them again. It was still there.
She was starting to worry that she might have damaged her brain.
“That was amazing!” said a nearby voice.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” asked another.
Twilight turned away from the sight that made her question her sanity and looked over at the Senatorial Guardsmares. Now freed, they were standing in a tight circle around Honeycrisp, of all ponies. The little mare looked like she she was having the time of her life, the tip of her blond braided tail swishing this way and that.
The leader of the group walked into the circle and offered Honeycrisp a hoof, who shook it eagerly.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Honeycrisp, Ma’am.”
Black Lotus nodded, committing the name to memory. “You’ve got talent, Honeycrisp. Real talent. I want to see your application to join the Senatorial Guardsmares on my desk the minute, and I mean the very minute you hit 18. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” squeaked the little red unicorn with equal parts worry and glee.
Twilight finished dusting herself off and was walking over to the group. When Black Lotus saw her approaching she clicked her forehooves together twice. Immediately the twelve members of the Senatorial Guardsmares snapped to attention, forming two rows of six,.
Black Lotus, their captain, stood at the far left end of the front row.
“At ease ladies,” Twilight said with a salute. “Can anypony tell me what happened?”
Black Lotus was first to speak. “Secretary General, you were attacked. By a dragon.”
Twilight fished a small chunk of rubble out of her left ear. “I got that part, thanks. I meant can anypony explain this?” she said, gesturing to the sight that made her doubt her sanity in the first place.
“Well, Ma’am, Honeycrisp here jumped in front of that dragon and stopped it from cooking you. Then she cooked it.”
Twilight looked at Honeycrisp. Then she turned and looked at what appeared to be the world’s largest roasted chicken. She looked at Honeycrisp again.
An unusual breeze flowed through her ethereal mane, and Twilight looked up.
Twilight gestured at the gaping hole where the ceiling and roof used to be. “Wow. When did that happen?”
“Just now,” said Smarty Pants with a shrug. She stopped walking and stared straight ahead with wide eyes. “Whoa, déjà vu.”
Princess Twilight turned to see Smarty Pants and Sandy walk in from the antechamber. Both ponies were positively beaming.
“Sandy! Smarty Pants!” giggled Honeycrisp as she pranced over, practically walking on air.
Smarty Pants gave her cousin a puzzled look “Whoa, what got into you?”
Honeycrisp reached her two friends and put them both in headlocks, aiming them at what was left of Amatharex “Look what I did!” She crowed proudly.
“Ugh, that’s disgusting!” exclaimed Smarty Pants as she tried to pull herself out of Honeycrisp’s vice-like grip.
Sandy went limp, with tears in her eyes. “Oh that poor thing…” was all she was able to get out before she covered her eyes with her wings, inadvertently swatting Honeycrisp in the eye in the process.
“My eye!”
“Don’t you yell at her!”
“Yeah? Well, don’t you yell at me!”
Twilight rolled her eyes and turned away from the bickering fillies to face a dumbfounded Black Lotus.
“Can you get the castle’s defenses back up?”
Black Lotus nodded and started barking orders. Unicorns ran about the room activating sigils and opening tomes. Twilight looked back at the three girls and shook her head. Sandy was crying, staring at what she thought was a giant cooked bird, while Smarty Pants and Honeycrisp were exchanging blows.
Curiously enough, sitting just a few feet away from them in a folding chair, was Discord. He was eating popcorn out of a bag.
“Discord? When did yo—“
“Shh!” Discord waved dismissively at the Goddess of Magic, “They’re getting to the good part.” He popped another kernel in his mouth and watched the ensuing chaos.
Smarty Pants grabbed her cousin’s tail in her mouth and flung the red unicorn into the air. Honeycrisp used it to her advantage and turned to come down with her right foreleg bent.
“Flying Elbow!” she shouted.
Just before she made contact with the back of Smarty Pants’ head, she was frozen in mid-air, wrapped in a purple aura. Smarty Pants started to laugh at the filly caught red-hooved, but then she found herself lifted up in a magical aura too. Sandy was too busy being sad to notice hers.
Twilight marched past them, muttering something about fillies, and the three girls bobbled in the air behind her. She reached the antechamber and shut the massive double doors to throne room. The girls came to rest on the ground and Twilight just stared at them.
“Sorry,” offered Smarty Pants.
“Yeah. Sorry,” parroted Honeycrisp.
Sandy just whimpered.
“First of all, Smarty Pants, I expect better from you.” The light-brown earthpony cringed at her mentor’s words.
“Secondly, Honeycrisp. A: Thank you for saving my life. B: We do not shout out wrestling moves in the throne room.”
“Finally, Sandy. If I had my way everypony would live forever. But that’s just now how life is. Be content knowing that Amatharex was an old and proud dragon. His soul will find its way into the deep places of the world to replenish his kind.”
Sandy had no idea what she was talking about, but she nodded anyway, feeling a little bit better. That’s when Smarty Pants sat up, almost jumping.
“Oh! Dragons! Princess, Luna and Cadence are awake, and they went to go fight the dragons. Also, there’s nopony else with them. Nope. Nopony at all.” Smarty Pants’ eyes twinkled and she clapped her hooves together excitedly.
“Okay…” said Twilight looking off into the city below.
A warm hum started up somewhere in the room behind them and a ball energy pushed itself out from the throne room, expanding as it moved. Canterlot Castle’s defensive barrier was back up. The four ponies walked over to a nearby window and looked down.
Far below they could hear the confused cries of demons as they were being pushed out of the castle in droves by the reactivated barrier. They beat against it, but it was built to stop their kind from gaining entry in the first place.
“Good, the barrier’s back up and the ponies in the shelters below will be okay,” Twilight said with a sigh.
“Well, that’s a relief,” said Discord right next to her, still munching on popcorn.
“GAH!” she jumped. Even after almost 500 years, she’d never gotten used to how he could just sneak up on her like that.
“Discord, where did you go?”
“What, am I not allowed to go to the bathroom?”
Twilight scrunched up her face and tried hard not to think the unstoppable train of thought that was careening through the back of her mind. “No I mean, why did you run off mumbling about birthday celebrations?”
“Oh! I made you a cake. What birthday celebration is complete without a cake?” Discord pointed a talon out the window down towards the gardens to the West.
Sure enough there was a giant cake with purple icing, just sitting on the castle grounds. It must have been at least ten feet around. Twilight was fairly certain there used to be a hedgewall there. In massive red letters, the cake read:
Happy 505th Birthday
Princess Tubelight Spa
“Déjà vu, again!” gasped Smarty Pants, her mane bobbing back and forth.
Twilight just stared at it until one of her eyes twitched.
“What? I washed my hands before I made it.”
Something inside Twilight Sparkle’s mind snapped. “That’s it! I’m out of here. I’m going to find Cadence and Luna and fight some dragons or whatever. You guys have fun with your cake.” And with that the frazzled Goddess of Magic poofed out of existence.
The three girls kept staring out the window at the largest cake any of them had ever seen, or probably would ever see in their entire lives.
“How many eggs did it take to make that?” asked Honeycrisp.
Sandy bit her lip and began to tremble at the mention of eggs.
“Dunno, firebug. I just snapped my fingers and there it was.”
She nodded. “So, should we head down there to eat it now, what?”
Discord smiled at the eager red unicorn and snapped a furry paw. “Oh don’t worry about that dear, I’ll just have it delivered.”
The three girls ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ in wonder as the huge cake began to float up through the air towards the antechamber.
“Hay, wait a minute!” said Smarty Pants with a thought. “Can we get that to go?”
The summoning was complete. The Beacon of Order felt its consciousness leave Shining Armor and re-enter its own body at the center of the circle. Now the white unicorn stallion was just another in face in a sea of order.
On pale white hooves, the Beacon took its first steps into Canterlot. Once he exited the summoning circle, the light within it was spent. Thirty unicorns fell to the ground unconscious, their magic and stamina spent.
The Beacon looked much the same as it did back in the old Sun Tower deep in the Everfree Forest, but there was one notable exception. Where before it was all white and would stare ahead blankly, now there was an ominous intelligence in its red eyes.
With its red eyes, it looked up into the dull and dreary sky. The eclipse was complete. He looked back to the Listless bodies of the Solar and Lunar court unicorns and called them over with an unspoken command. It smiled a chilling, hollow smile. The forces of order would be victorious today.
It opened its mouth and a buzzing of flawless voices called out. “Begin the mass summoning ritual.” it said.
Every unicorn under the sway of order moved to stand along the edges of Canterlot’s Grand Central Plaza, where they would stand only a few feet part from each other. Where the last summoning to bring the Beacon to Canterlot took the combined magic of 30 unicorns, this next one would require hundreds.
It smiled again as it watched lights of many different hues from hundreds of horns shot out at once to pierce and carve the needed ritual circle in the stonework of the plaza. Once the ritual was done, there was nothing anypony could do to stop it. Not Sun or Moon or Icing.
The Beacon of Order’s plotting was interrupted when it discovered it was covered in red goop. It lifted a hoof and smelled it. Finally, it gave the substance a lick of confirmation.
Icing. The Beacon of Order looked back up into the sky and looked the purple cylindrical object flying overhead.
“Direct hit!” cheered Honeycrisp sitting at the back of the cake, behind her icing mortar.
“Take that, you jerk!” jeered Smarty Pants standing next to her and loading up another shot.
“I don’t like flying!” shrieked Sandy as she clung desperately to the misshapen pilot of their flying cake.
“I have to say Smarty Pants,” said Discord, adjusting his aviator sunglasses, “Your idea to fly around Canterlot on a cake and shoot icing at the bad guys, is probably the craziest idea I’ve heard in years.”
He looked at her over his shoulder and tipped his glasses down. “And I love it!”
Smarty Pants grinned proudly and gave Honeycrisp the signal to fire again.
An effort of will is all it took for the Beacon to be clean of the icing. And another to send a wave of converted pegasi to intercept them.
Honeycrisp was the first to spot them. “Uh, guys?”
Discord glanced in a side mirror and saw them. “Oh right, pegasi. I always forget about the flying ones.”
There must have been dozens of them. Discord thought recognized some of the faces from that miserable briefing earlier this afternoon, but really all mortals look the same to him. The girls hollered in panic as they continued to load and fire their icing mortor.
It was ultimately futile, since the pegasi could easily dodge their clumsy volleys. The draconequus pulled left and banked right, but he could not shake the seasoned fliers. He looped again over the Grand Central Plaza.
Sandy made a panicky noise and gripped Discord tighter. “More in front!”
He frowned at the pegasi that had split off the main group and were now heading right for them.
“Zig!” suggested Smarty Pants.
“Zag!” proposed Honeycrisp.
But the God of Chaos did neither. He looked down and saw the smug face of that featureless stupid nonpony and pushed the candlestick as far forward as it would go. The cake dove out of the air, stalling out and free falling. Discord gritted his teeth and ignored the girls’ terrified screams.
The last thing he saw before the crash was the big stupid grin on that bland stupid unicorn.
Princess Twilight walked briskly through the empty streets of her broken city. She’d just left the castle through its main entrance after stopping by her royal chambers to pick up a little something for the occasion. Namely, the six pieces of her royal war armor.
She began to hum a tune to match the rhythm of her hooves as they hit the ground. Her humming turned into words and her words became song. Twilight finished the first verse when a sinuous blue dragon slithered in front of her from an adjacent alleyway.
He cornered her and roared a chorus to Twilight’s song, singing of his own inevitable victory.
Twilight offered the dragon a smirk and her horn began to glow. There was a rumbling underhoof and the dragon’s eyes became pinpricks. A sewer main burst into life spraying water, sewage, and Celestia knows what else directly into the dragon’s underbelly. Twilight continued along her way as the defeated dragon was hurled high into the air.
A second dragon, old and grey, dropped out the sky in front of her. Twilight began the second verse of her song and was delighted to hear a new voice harmonizing with hers. She looked up and smiled as Cadence soared overhead.
The two Alicorns continued to sing in perfect harmony as they ducked and dodged the attacks of an increasingly frustrated dragon. Suddenly he slammed his cupped hands together over both Princesses and chuckled grimly. He squeezed his mighty claws around the two Princesses and sang the chorus.
When he felt no resistance within in his hands, he lowered his head and peeked in. That's when four back hooves, one pair pink and the other pair purple, bucked out and crashed into his chin. The old grey dragon teetered on his feet and fell on his back, unconscious. The two Princesses shared a breath and opened their mouths to start the next verse.
But instead a third voice rang out loud and true.
It was quickly joined by the staccato of massive feet scrambling over pavement. Cadence and Twilight turned as one and watched as Princess Luna burst into view. She was riding a red dragon. It was the same red dragon that almost fell on Twilight and the others when they teleported into the West Entrance.
Luna kicked her hooves against the dragon’s backside and he sped up as they approached a gathering of even more dragons blocking the way of the three Princesses.
The wryms stood in a spearhead formation. They were ten enormous drakes of various shapes and colors. They folded their arms, forbidding the Princesses from going any further into the heart of the city and sang the chorus as their just as kin had done before.
Princess Luna didn’t care much for their words. Reins in hoof, she urged her mount to run faster. Then the Moon Goddess unfurled her wings and gave the yelping beast one final kick. He tripped as he ran and tumbled forward.
The red dragon bowled into his ten brothers, knocking them all down.
Luna, Cadence, and Twilight broke into the final verse as they marched beyond the bridge. It was then that Twilight heard another voice up ahead. It was a beautiful voice. A familiar voice.
She ran ahead, leaving the other two Princesses to trot along and share a knowing smile.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she ran and she flapped her wings as she went, forgetting she could fly in her eagerness to get up the hill faster. She reached the top of the hill and stopped. Princess Twilight stood slack jawed at the sight before her.
It was Princess Celestia.
The immortal Sun Goddess stood on top of a towering pyramid of unconscious dragons. The yellow one on the very top began to stir but she stomped a dainty hoof and he was still once more. She turned around and their eyes met.
Celestia sang the rest of the verse to Twilight. She sang of joyful reunions and of many cakes still to be eaten. It was wonderful.
There was a poof and Twilight materialized next to her Princess on top of the dragon pile. “Is this real?” she asked breathlessly.
“Very real.” Celestia replied with a nuzzle.
Before more could be said, Cadence and Luna landed next to them on the yellow dragon at the top of the pile. Princess Luna began to sing the final chorus. It was still a refrain of victory, like the one sung by the dragons, but it different.
Instead of brash and vindictive, it was honest and assuring. They would win because they had to win. The other three royal sisters took up the song and Celestia pointed a hoof towards the gathering lights in the Grand Central Plaza.
The Victory March of the Four Alicorns came to an end, and they flew off towards the final confrontation.
They landed and Twilight saw that the Beacon standing before a wall of corrupted ponies. All around them, standing in a circular formation at the edge of the Grande Central Plaza, were the hundreds of unicorns that made up the Solar and Lunar courts. Twilight recognized that she was standing in a ritual circle, but for what she didn’t know.
She had a bad feeling about this.
Disinterestedly, the Beacon clapped its hooves together and six ponies stepped forward from the emotionless throng behind it. Each of the six looked slightly pale and stared ahead with glassy eyes. Cadence gasped and Luna growled. Celestia twitched but her face returned to cautious neutrality. Twilight swallowed a lump in her throat.
At one end of the line was Ruby Star and Spellbound, Luna’s subordinates. After those two stood Shining Armor, Cadence’s beloved. And at the end of the line were the three girls Smarty Pants, Sandy, and Honeycrisp, who were precious beyond words to both Twilight and Celestia.
All six of them motionless and mumbling about order. All six of them corrupted. Silently, Shining Armor's body jerked forward, standing just ahead of the rest.
"Take one more step," threatened the Beacon, "and I will kill him."