I landed first, with Bardrick hot on my heels. The night guard moved to intercept, unsure of our intentions. "I need to speak to the Princess and Queen right away," I said. They hesitated, so I shifted back to my human form, which was enough to get at least one of them moving. Still, Relena and Wind Chaser were able to catch up before the Queen arrived.
"We finally meet in person, 'King' Daniel. I see the drone I gave you is still in one piece."
"Better than ever," Wind Chaser replied, though she earned only a scowl from her former Queen for speaking out of turn.
"Discipline seems to be degraded, but I suppose that can't be helped. I am sure you have very little experience managing drones."
"I've taken the liberty of optimizing her for my own purposes, rather than yours. But, I didn't come here to discuss Wind Chaser with you. You heard my proposal for augmenting your forces. If we are going to do it, we should start immediately. And regardless, we humans shouldn't stay here for long."
"Leaving so soon? Do you know something we don't? I'd hate to be left behind while the rats flee the sinking ship."
"Did you see the lights in the sky to the south? The enemy was targetting one of us explicitly."
"It was more than your kind that perished. We have learned it was an ambush of the last train evacuating civilians from Appleoosa. There were many pony casualties."
"And that's why we need to not stay here, especially clustered like this. It makes Canterlot a target. If we all leave, he'll consider it an obstacle instead of a priority. There's a good chance he'll just go around it."
"And if not, then we buy you more time?" the Queen asked.
The night guards landed with Frank, joining the meeting, as Celestia strolled towards us. She stopped at the ramparts to lower the moon and raise the sun, a sight I wish I was in the frame of mind to properly appreciate. "Dawn has come, and we have new guests and old. Welcome, Daniel, and welcome back Frank. You I do not recognize," she courtsied to Relena. "May I have your acquaintance?"
Relena courtsied in return. "I am Relena Swift, and it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Princess. I only wish we had time to share tea and stories."
"I have considered your proposals, Daniel, but I do not believe we are desperate enough to take such rash measures. Robert's briefing has been most enlightening, and we believe we have gotten the right spells distributed to our royal guards to begin a proper counter-offensive."
In the next moment, Istaran was the only one not surprised. He guessed correctly that the same crystals that allowed wings to create powerful bursts of speed could be used in the legs to create a sort of 'flash step', bursting into position directly in front of Celestia, and placing a hand on her chest before she could react. Her magic quickly levitated him away as she reared back in surprise and alarm, but the spiders were already crawling, unseen, through layers of skin into her blood.
"What is the meaning of this?!" she cried out.
Sorry to interrupt your train of thought, but I just thought I should note it was about this point when Istaran ordered Deus to start compiling this set of memories for you, this 'diary' if you will. I believe this was when the final shape of the plan was coming together, though some of the details were still to come together. Now back to your memory already in progress.
Celestia faltered in pain, dropping Istaran to his feet. The spiders were spreading through her much more aggressively than normal, and for that matter they were intentionally triggering nerves to leave the diarch off balance. Queen Chrysalis, sorry 'All Heart', tried to intervene with a beam of green magic from her horn. Istaran just got.. colder. His unnerving grin grew large, until he laughed out loud.
"If you meant that to stop me, you have no idea what my nature is," he said to the Queen, with a matter-of-factness than would make Relena proud. But apparently that gave the Queen ideas. She replaced the green beam with a rainbow-colored one, and suddenly I surged back to the surface, Istaran driven back as I was filled with a massive surge of what I could only describe as lovingness. I wanted to just.. hug everything. I shook my head, disoriented by the personality whiplash. "Th-thanks, I think. I'm.. myself again."
Celestia's pain subsided, but she could feel the spiders crawling around in her brain. She stormed toward me, justifiably livid. Her magic held me aloft, crushing me a bit. "Is this what you had planned for my little ponies?! Make it stop! Undo it! End this madness before I end you!"
I stared at her, trying to make contact with the subnet within her. I did, but.. she wouldn't be happy with what I found.
"No. Istaran.. my other self, he was out of line in how he acted, but you.. your reticence, your refusal to push the limits.. You were dooming your people. I thought he was going to compel you to go along with our plan, but I know now that you held the key to victory to begin with. And now you will be compelled to use it. I can't stop it now, even if I wanted to. The spiders don't obey me if I contradict his orders."
"What are you talking about? What?! NO!" Celestia's horn sprung to life, and she staggered under the massive amount of power being drawn through her. Crystals within her body became visible through her skin as they glowed, tapping ambient magic and feeding it into the spell. The castle quickly took on a more 'real' look to it, the tones and details suddenly matching our world more so than this one.
The changeling queen moved, as if to intervene, but Wind Chaser blocked her path, shaking her head warningly. The looked into each other's eyes, and it was enough.
I pointed toward the south, and everyone turned to watch. Soon all eyes would turn to see.
In the sky, four massive magical shields sprung into being, massive curvatures centered above the badlands. The upper two were incredibly large, stretching from horizon to horizon. They were transparent, but their surfaces were still enough to bend light, and together the redirected it from the entire worlds' daylight to a single square kilometer, where the other, smaller shields straightened it back out into a single column of light.
At that intensity, the refraction from ordinary air was enough to make a blindingly bright pillar, even seen from so many kilometers away. As it struck ground, it was hot enough to melt rock and steel. Simulated soldiers caught fire and quickly burned away. Vehicles and structures exploded as a desperate gambit was employed.
As soon as it finished materializing, Ryan stumbled out of his MCV into the cool, dark air of the main hall of the changelings' conquered hive cluster. His body was covered in painful blisters already, and the vehicle was too hot to stay in, but it had been enough to shield him from certain death, and carry him as he activated the teleportation powers of his Chronosphere before it, too, succumbed to the devastating fury of the sun.
Later, perhaps, he would rant and rave about how broken that attack was. Perhaps after a nice long swim in a pool of aloe. In the meantime, he stumbled into the lonely, empty cave. The changelings were long gone, defeated by his might. The handful of dogs scattered about would prevent any stragglers from hanging about, so this was as safe a place as any to be.
There was one of his dogs now. He stumbled toward it, thinking that hugging a nice soft fluffy doggy sounded kind of good right now. It was stupid, he knew, to seek comfort from an unfeeling simulation, but it was all he had right now. But hey.. where did that dog get a crossbow from?
As our phones vibrated, the shields vanished from the sky, and daylight was once again distributed equitably to the world. Smoke billowed up from the square kilometer of cooling magma where the enemy's base of operations had been, where the Player Locator app had said Player 12 was. The Queen cocked her head, as if listening to a sound no one else heard.
"His.. his blood is on your hands, not mine, human! You did this!" Celestia shouted at me, trembling with fury as she began to regain control of herself.
Queen 'All Heart' interrupted, "You give him credit which is not his. My drone, Dopple, has reported in the final blow. I will.. give you credit for flushing him out of his hiding place, though. My operative would have needed more time to eliminate him without your help."
Princess Celestia looked at her with disgust, "you argue over which of you can claim his blood on your hooves? You both disgust me! Begone from my palace, all of you, humans and changelings. Canterlot is no home to you monsters!"
With the threat mitigated, we were able to take our time wrapping up. We gathered in Ponyville, where the Elements of Harmony were able to help us sort out how to activate the codes we had gathered. Angelica had managed to miss the entire war, and was by far the most ready to laugh, so she was able to activate Laughter. Frank, whose desire to return to his family underpinned everything he did had no trouble activating Loyalty. Relena, who seemed at times to lack a filter, activated Honesty, and Scott was the very model of Generosity. Zeke, with his feeble little parlor tricks met the bar for Magic. And after being forcefed stolen love from dozens of ponies, I found myself able to activate the code for Kindness.
There were still problems left in our wake. Ryan, as his elimination message identified him, had left quite a few soldiers and combat units scattered about, including a number of camouflaged or outright invisible ones. They still acted autonomously according to their basic AI, which generally meant attacking on sight. However, the pegasi had no trouble wiping out all of the remaining dogs, and the changelings were able to approach safely while disguised as their adversaries, so it was mostly a matter of finding all of them without anypony getting hurt.
The low magic region around Canterlot was massive and slow to fade, leading Celestia to move her court north, to where the Crystal Empire's capital had reappeared. It gave her a great opportunity to forge a new bond with the long-disappeared people, even if it left her farther afield from most of her existing subjects. The former capital was all but abandoned, as it left unicorns without the use of their horns, pegasi flightless, and earth ponies weakened to be within. Surprisingly, however, this made it a popular site for both international diplomacy in something resembling our worlds' UN, and a rash of new sports competitions in which the tribes played on much more equal footing.
But finally we gathered together with our friends to see us off, in front of the Ponyville library. As each of us pressed the Activate button on our respective markers, the other phones buzzed with notifications, and showed maps clearly identifying our exact locations. As more markers showed up, the map also highlighted the point dead center between us. And as I activated the final button, that point burst open into a swirling vortex of colorful magic. Sure enough, there was our portal home.
Frank was the first to go through, rushing headlong to rejoin his family.
Relena called Toodles out, and kissed him goodbye. "We shouldn't bring our Cheat Codes with us to the real world," she said. 'Cheat Codes'. The name felt fitting. She strolled through the portal second, leaving her mouse-eared companion behind.
Angelica grabbed Zeke's hands, and dragged him along, leaving her magic router and his deck of cards behind. Something told me the router belonged here less than it did in our world, but maybe it wouldn't make any difference.
Scott handed over his magic soup can to his long time partner, Welcome Smile, with an admonition to always serve the poor for free. Welcome tearfully agreed as they parted ways.
Robert shook my hand and shook his head. "We won! It was hard earned, and costly, but after all these tries. I can still barely believe it. We won!" Wind Chaser held out her hoof and accepted his ocarina. "Come on, it's time to go home."
I started to follow after him, but paused right before I reached the portal. [Barely scraping by doesn't feel like victory to me,] Istaran's voice echoed out in Wind Chaser's head, [you know what to do. Go get me a perfect score.]
As I stepped through the portal, Wind Chaser quietly broke away from the scene, making her final preparations.