This Platinum Crown

by Capn_Chryssalid

Chapter Forty Six : Here Comes the Bride

- - -

(46)

Here Comes the Bride

- - -

Her three bridesmaids preceding her, Princess Cadance entered last, trotting alone down the aisle, neither father nor brother present to escort her. Her Serene Highness was resplendent in a wedding dress of virgin white and pure woven gold. Six fillies liberally sprinkled pink rose petals before her, so thick that in some spots they obscured the crimson carpet entirely.

As the train of her dress cut across the carpet, the petals formed into a wake that trailed behind the young Princess. Unicorn trumpeters in ceremonial purple and black uniforms heralded her arrival, briefly drowning out the excited crowds that lined the inner halls of the Palace nearly back to the grand courtyard and even the first few notes of treulich geführt – the bridal march.

- - -

In well-to-do homes and commercial establishments across Equestria, crackling radios announced one noble attendee to the Royal Wedding after another. Equestria had exactly four national stations, two in Canterlot, one in Manehattan, one in Ile-de-Prance. On this joyous occasion, the latter two seemed to be out of luck. Everypony who owned a radio had it tuned to the event of the year.

“…celebrations continue, as everypony eagerly awaits the final public appearance of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza as a single mare. Oh! Would you look at that? Another wedding attendee is trotting down the grand hall and into the throne room! It looks like… yes… the Count and Countess of Cranberry, wearing an imperial purple dress with black embroidery, and a two-tiered feathered fascinator. She’s looking marvelous as usual, Mirage.”

“You can say that again, Lace. This is the Countess’ first visit to Canterlot since the opening of the Butterfly Pavilion. In addition to her husband the Count, you can see she’s also here with the famous Earl of Derby…”

- - -

As was dictated by protocol and tradition, the assembled ranks of ponies invited to the formal proceedings were divided into a left and right section, and in turn, those groups were divided into a front and back square, privileged commoners or ‘small ponies’ to the rear and titled or noble ponies to the fore. Family and close friends were, naturally, invited to stand in the first three rows. There were no seats, nor was anypony expected to sit until the wedding was over. At the very front, before the altar itself, Princess Celestia stood beneath a laurel arch, the groom and best stallion waiting nearby. The three stallions of honor and three bridesmaids also stood to either side of the red carpet, waiting.

Ascending the steps to the altar, the Princess couldn’t contain her gleeful, triumphant smile.

- - -

The commentary continued, even as a dirty cloud of smoke drifted by the radio’s tinny speakers.

“Look sharp, lads!” a slate gray unicorn Royal Guard barked, magically plucking the cigarette out from between the lips of one of his pegasus comrades. Stamping the stub out underhoof, the unicorn directed the smoker and a second white pegasus guardpony to attend to the gate.

Beyond the iron bars, a large black carriage was rolling up, pulled by a pair of armored earth ponies. Behind the gate, protected by the trio of Royal Guards, lay a building of rather unique design in Canterlot. The first three floors were the usual aesthetic of beautiful white stone mandated by the Canterlot Building Code, but towering above that was an eiffelized lattice tower unlike any other freestanding structure in the city. This was Her Majesty’s Wireless Magical Broadcasting Tower, the source of virtually all radio transmissions in the Central Equestrian Region.

One of the on-duty royal guards raised a hoof in greeting, seeing another stallion just like him trot up to the gate just ahead of the carriage. “Who goes there?”

“Royal escort,” the new arrival answered, lifting a white wing in friendly salute. “We’re just here to deliver somepony. Princess’s orders.”

“Papers, if you please,” the slate unicorn in command of the gate ordered, walking up. The carriage slowed, waiting, and the same guardpony from before fished out a folded note from a slit in his golden armor. The radio, perched on a table nearby, continued to drone on about the endless procession of wedding guests across town.

“They came straight from Her Serene Highness, Princess Cadenza,” the pegasus guard explained, even as the unicorn sergeant looked the papers over.

Finally, he nodded, finding it all in order. “Let them in!”

The gates unlocked, and the black carriage rolled forward into the courtyard. Within it, unseen by the royal guards on duty, a dozen specially trained changelings quietly readied their disguises and their weapons.

- - -

As Celestia began to speak, officiating the wedding ceremony herself in place of a priest, a smattering of pony faces milled more anxiously than the rest. Twilight Sparkle stood close by her parents with the rest of the groom’s family. Many of the Canterlot Terre Rare were in attendance, now all under the oversight of her father, by her own command. Crescent Moon was oblivious to the non-family intrigues taking place, and he stood alongside Twilight Velvet, basking in the moment and smiling proudly at his only son.

- - -

“What’s going on here?” An earth pony stallion stomped across the Canterlot rail yard, his yellow hard-hat juxtaposed against his black suit and tie. “Who in Taratrus is in charge? You, guardspony!” He singled out a milling pair of royal guards. “Where is your commanding officer?”

The two guards frowned, but had the wherewithal to at least gesture in a helpful direction.

Without a worth of thanks, Timely Notice stormed past the guards and into the guard camp, muttering to himself about delays and ruined schedules. Tonight was the bloody day of the biggest bloody wedding in recent memory! The trains needed to be running on time! There was already a bloody huge barrier shield encapsulating the city and slowing transport in and out with interminable security checks. And now this? The trains had stopped. STOPPED! It was ridiculous!

Approaching the royal-purple tent, Timely Notice came up short. An older royal guard with commander’s pips on his gold armor appeared, waving him over. He must’ve been expected. Good.

“Commander,” Timely Notice yelled, even as he closed the distance between them. “Would you mind explaining this? Hmm?”

He gestured with a hoof towards the mountainside next to the rail yard. Inside the mountain was a large switching station and car depot for Canterlot’s trains, many of whom were visible in the artificial light of the cavern beyond. Next to it was one of three tunnels that connected Canterlot with the rest of the province below the mountain. They were Canterlot’s living commercial arteries, along with the great sky harbor, and now every single one had been shut down for ‘mandatory security checks.’ Madness! They had very strict schedules to keep!

“Explain it?” the Commander of the guard asked, as Timely Notice grew closer. “It would be my pleasure. To put it in words…”

Timely Notice paused, stumbling.

There was… a weight… on his back. Holding him down. Vision growing foggy, he turned his head to see one of the guards from before, mouth clamped down on the muscle of his shoulder. A pair of fangs were buried in the muscle of his withers. But that didn’t make any sense. Ponies didn’t have fangs. Ponies didn’t have fangs.

Timely Notice fell face-first into the dust of the rail yard, his body numb. He never heard the Commander’s explanation for the delays and the shutdowns of the tunnels and sky harbor. Revelation came, instead, from his eyes, as he saw the royal guards gather together and laugh. Behind them, streaming out from the tunnel that connected Canterlot with the lowlands of the province, came a tide of black and green.

A Swarm.

- - -

By the necessity of protocol, the standing arrangements separated Twilight from her friends.

Rarity was in a privileged position in the second row along with the other elements of harmony, standing out with her dress of lavender-blush and shimmering crystalline blue. She nodded almost imperceptibly, having noticed Twilight and Eunomie glancing in her direction. Both were ensconced with Terre Rares and the groom’s relatives and invites. Rarity glanced to her left, where Fleur stood, naked as the day she was foaled except for the pink diamond earrings and delicate necklace that hung tight to her throat. Fancypants was just beyond her, in formal ‘white-tie’ as the look was called, despite his actual bow tie being a soft shade of lavender. Fleur caught Rarity’s look and smiled, showing her unspoken support.

Rarity returned the gesture and turned to her other side. She soon spotted Lady Sand Dune, far removed from any of the rest of them, the tall Bitalian princess easily able to see over the shorter ponies around her. The time-mage gave no indication of returning Rarity’s glance, instead searching the rafters of the cathedral with her eyes. Rarity also glanced up, but couldn’t see anything. The ceiling was stone, vaulted, and covered in intricate religious murals and icons. Nothing seemed out of place.

To her right, past a few ponies, stood Applejack, her mane nicely styled for once, though she refused to part with her hat even for this, the most formal of occasions. The poor mare would probably wear her stetson over her own wedding veil one day. More importantly, for the moment, she had also finally put on the clasp around her neck in addition to her dress. Likewise, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy stood, both of them less aware of what was to come, just that it was either going to save Equestria or utterly ruin their reputation as the worst wedding crashers in the last three centuries. Rainbow Dash was clearly excited by the prospect, shifting back and forth on her hooves with nervous anticipation. Fluttershy looked like she wanted to curl up and hide beneath the crown of flowers in her mane. Pinkie Pie… well, Pinkie Pie seemed to be staring off into space and not even paying attention.

Each of them had brought plus-ones of their own, a fact that Rarity had seen to personally as – at least in her view – the more stallion-shields they brought in case of an emergency the better. There were four of them, two in uniform and two out. All were Dove and Cross stallions, hoof-picked by Germoglio for their loyalty and bodyguard training. Rarity’s own ‘date’ was a handsome older pegasus. He stood between Rarity and Applejack, his company dress-uniform unarmored but still as flamboyant as ever with delicate white frills and poofs about the shoulders and cuffs. A purely ceremonial stiletto clipped to his belt remained the only technical weapon any of them had gotten past security.

Fluttershy had wanted to bring her bear-friend, on hearing that the wedding was a trap of sorts, and had been sadly informed that a giant brown bear in a tuxedo would probably stand out a bit too much.

Lastly, Pinkie had invited her friend Pierce, who had dressed quite sharply for the occasion… with probably no idea what sort of fracas he was actually about to get into. On the other hoof, given he was dating Pinkie Pie, Rarity fully expected he had to be prepared for anything at any time. Rarity’s heart went out to his absolutely beautiful orchid boutonnière that was sure to be ruined if – or rather when – a fight broke out.

“…may your commitment to each other be embodied in these wedding rings, symbols and sacred gifts to one another, an outward demonstration to all here of your vows of love and respect…”

Listening to the ceremony, trying to keep calm and steel her poor nerves, Rarity focused not on her friends but on the object of so much animosity, distrust, pain and deceit: Princess Cadance. The false alicorn stood and listened to Celestia officiate, her grin from before receding slightly into a small, thin smile as she faced her groom. Shining Armor simply stared forward, his eyes almost painfully unfocused, now that Rarity knew what to look for. This was the so-called Princess’ doing. This was her fault, and so much else besides.

On top of it all, now, Rarity could feel a new indignant anger bubbling up at how the changeling queen had so besmirched and made a mockery of the very nature of a wedding. Maybe it was foolish to take it so personally, but Rarity could not entirely help herself.

All her life, she had dreamed of standing where the Princess now stood, wearing a perfect dress of white and gold, prepared to share her life with the stallion of her dreams. She had made little sketches of it as a filly in class, day-dreamed of it while working in her shop as a teenage mare, and woken up from dreams of it, ready to press forward with her success in business, knowing it would – knowing it could – all one day come true, if she just worked hard enough. She was undoubtedly closer now to that goal than she had ever been before, and never more unsure of it in the process. It was easy, so very easy, to pin a lot of that on this vile changeling monster. A marriage was a partnership; what this Queen planned for was slavery, nothing less. It threatened to boil Rarity’s blood.

“Remember always,” Celestia told them, her voice gentle and wise, “as a Prince and Princess of the Realm… that you also bear the most honorable title which may exist between a stallion and a mare. You are ‘husband’ and ‘wife.’ You love one another. Love and friendship are, above all other things, the foundation upon which our society is built, and the bedrock on which all our fates stand. Let the warm glow of your love give you comfort when the night is cold; let it sustain you when times are lean; illuminate your path when all is dark, and give you solace when you are hurt. This is the gift you give to one another, the gift you share… everlasting.”

Princess Celestia’s words were beautiful, genuine, heartfelt… and wasted on the couple before her.

Still, Rarity waited. She forced herself to wait.

The signal, she had decided, was not hers to give. Twilight Sparkle would have the honor of springing their trap on the evil enchantress who had ensnared her brother. As for the rest of them? Rarity gingerly ran a hoof along her broach. They were prepared to be the hammer to Twilight’s anvil; the needle to her presser-hoof! Though that was probably not a reference many ponies outside the sewing field would grasp. Being a hammer, though, that was just so boorishly inelegant! There simply had to be a better way to phrase it… for the history books, of course.

“Princess Mi Amore Cadenza,” Celestia finally reached the end of the ceremony, just before the exchange of rings. Rarity took a moment glance over at Twilight, but the other mare’s eyes were only on the altar. She couldn’t see her friend asking, unspoken, how much longer she planned to delay.

“Do you take this stallion to be your precious husband, your best friend and your special-somepony, to treasure and support in harmony for all time?” Celestia asked. Her right eye, as always, was concealed beneath a wavy lock of her ethereal mane, and she seemed as serene and pleased as ever to be joining two royal ponies in holy matrimony. It made Rarity want to yell out, then and there. She bit her lower lip to keep quiet.

“I certainly do,” Cadance answered, her smile broadening, though from where she stood, Rarity felt it looked a lot more like a smirk than a smile.

“And do you, Shining Armor, take this mare…”

Rarity tensed, all but screaming at Twilight with her eyes to act.

Finally, she saw her friend slowly shake her head. What had she been doing, waiting this long? Rarity wondered. Was she trying, even now, to give this changeling queen the chance to have second thoughts and a change of heart? To choose to back out? What if she had? Would that just be the end of it? The false Cadance departs, the wedding called off at the last second, and nopony the wiser for what had almost occurred? What about justice, for Shining Armor, for the dozens or maybe hundreds of ponies no doubt harmed by changeling schemes… what of justice for her own Prince, her Blueblood, captured under cover of a ruined party, right beneath Rarity’s own nose?!

There was no way she planned to just let it go, no matter if this changeling had second thoughts!

Not that she did, anyway. Twilight seemed to get that, finally, and her expression hardened as Celestia recited the vows for Shining Armor. Rarity could only guess as to what had been on her dear friend’s mind, but if Twilight hesitated any longer, she sucked in a breath to force the issue on her own accord. Either way, this was happening here and now.

“…and support in harmony for all time?” Celestia asked.

Shining Armor opened his mouth. “I--”

“STOP!”

Rarity let go of the breath she had been holding at the sound of Twilight’s voice. The librarian and apprentice stepped forward, and said again, “Stop the wedding!”

A shocked mutter rippled through the assembled ponies, noble and common alike, at the breath of decorum and respect. Everypony heard tales about interrupted weddings, but nopony actually attended one. It was unheard of outside scandalous tales and trashy novels. Some of the muttering was unabashedly angry (what is she doing? Is that the groom’s sister? Has she lost her mind?), some darkly amused (oh, this is interesting! Would you look at that? How scandalous!), and a lot of it simply confused (this isn’t staged, is it? It doesn’t look staged).

“Here we go!” Rarity heard Rainbow Dash whisper, a little too loudly. Her wings were already peeking out from under part of her dress and starting to unfurl.

“Twilight…?” Celestia spoke first, very softly, and not reproachfully. The Royal Princess seemed to be looking on with a curious, contemplative eye.

“Is there a problem?” Cadance made no effort to hide her annoyance, glancing back over her shoulder at the groom’s family. “…Twilight Sparkle?”

The tone, Rarity realized, was mocking.

‘She isn’t worried about being interrupted? Don’t tell me she… expected this?’

“You could say there’s a problem, alright!” Twilight yelled, stepping forward, only to yelp as her father reached for her to pull her back.

“Twilight!” he barked. “What are you doing?!”

Twilight Velvet frowned and her horn began to glow. “You’ll have to excuse our daughter’s outburst…!”

“Princess Celestia!” Twilight called to her mentor and idol. “Please--”

“Let her speak,” Celestia ordered, just as Rarity was a second away from giving the signal to move. Her hoof lowered back to the floor, willing to give it a few more seconds. Up by the altar, Cadance slowly turned to face her accuser, her face twisted into a cruel sneer. She nodded sharply. Twilight Velvet snorted and Crescent Moon obediently released his daughter. It was an exchange that set off the first of a few warning bells in Rarity’s more detail-oriented mind.

“Everypony,” Celestia said, raising her voice to command her subjects. “Let her speak. Quiet, please! Twilight Sparkle would not disrupt this occasion without good cause.”

The muttering died down, almost instantly, like the flip of a switch.

“Thank you, Princess!” Twilight continued, shaking off how her parents had tried to restrain her. She took another step or two towards Cadance. “The reason I interrupted now was because I wanted to give this so-called Princess Cadance a chance to stop herself. To show she wasn’t the monster I know she is!”

“A monster, am I?” Cadance interrupted, hoof to her chest and feigning injury. “And after all the years we’ve known each other? I’m hurt …and offended… what have I ever done to you, Twilight Sparkle, except shower you and your brother both with my love and affection?”

“Don’t pretend you did any of that!” Twilight yelled, trotting over to the red carpet that led from the entrance up to the altar. “You replaced the real Cadance, secreted her away somewhere, and the only reason I’m talking right now is because I want you to tell me where she is! So out with it! You don’t want me to do this the hard way!”

Cadance’s smirk returned, her lip pulling up just enough to show a flash of teeth.

“You’re delusional. The ‘real’ Cadance? What? Am I a clone?” she asked, and a few ponies even laughed. “A robo-pony?”

More laughter came from her supporters. Cadance raised a hoof, to encourage them, and she took a few more steps onto the red carpet, the better to face down her opponent and accuser. Soon she stood at the top of the steps leading up to the altar, looking literally down her nose at Twilight Sparkle.

“Let me guess,” Cadance continued, clearly on a roll. “You think because you’re the Princess’s favorite that you can try and attack me like this? Or maybe because you’re Shining’s little sister? Or because you’re one of the Elements of Harmony? Sorry to break it to you, but inexcusable behavior is still inexcusable!” She shot a look back at Celestia, who continued to watch, her expression guarded. “Isn’t that right, Princess?”

Celestia simply narrowed her one visible eye.

The assembled ponies, however, seemed to have picked up on Cadance’s speech. They rumbled amongst themselves. Most were nobles. Rocking the boat and making a scene like this grated them the wrong way. Shining Armor, of course, continued to stare blankly forward. Like a mannequin, Rarity couldn’t help but think.

“Twilight,” Rarity spoke up, finally raising her voice, as if to say: it was time.

“It isn’t any of that!” Twilight shouted, as loudly as she could, so everypony could hear. “It isn’t because I’m the Princess’ apprentice, or because I’m Shining’s sister, or because I wear an Element of Harmony. The reason I’m challenging you like this…”

Cadance’s eyes slowly, warily, narrowed. She sensed it.

“Is because,” Twilight explained, slamming her hooves onto the carpet beneath the both of them, “you got careless!”

“Careless?” Cadance sneered, and finally felt the tingle in her hooves. She reared in shock, front legs curling up against her chest. “W-what are you…?”

The same charge, the same magic, surged up Twilight’s legs as well, but she didn’t fight it. Why would she? She expected it. She’d cast it. Rarity mentally amended that: they’d both cast it, one making the illusion spell, the other serendipitously binding it to cloth. It was a simple matter, really, for an accomplished unicorn seamstress turned Baroness. It also insured that, even if something happened to one of them, the other could still set up their little ambuscade. Regardless of what else Twilight had learned from her new beau, she had learned the value of having backup plans for her backup plans.

Now, illusion magic surged up Twilight’s legs and into her torso. Her chest expanded and her legs and neck thickened, her snout lost the soft feminine curve… in seconds, she turned into a very passable approximation for a male Twilight Sparkle. ‘Dusk Shine,’ she had called herself, in this particular disguise.

Likewise, two other ponies at the very end of the red carpet were also affected.

Shining Armor shrunk where Twilight had grown, his body turning petite and thin, muscle fading away in the light of slender new curves. She was not as svelte or Princess-like as Fleur, with a strong, athletic build even for a mare, but as her tail widened and shortened and her mane lengthened and fell over her shoulders, and her eyelashes grew three sizes in body, there was no doubt that he had turned into she. At least, so the illusion went. A collective gasp filled the hall. It was not entirely for Shining Armor, however.

Princess Celestia herself had been affected by the spell.

Which, to do justice to what was happening before Rarity’s eyes, was a gross understatement. Half the mares in the room felt their jaw literally drop as a bearded demigod of a stallion appeared in front of the altar. A stallion to put all others to shame. His chest and the color of his coat were chiseled like flawless white marble. Surprised by the magic, he had spread a pair of glorious wings, wings that seemed large enough for a mare to completely lose herself in. Like they could wrap around a pony and envelop them entirely, holding them in a glorious solar embrace, like a blanket of feathers. Then there was his magnificent beard and mane, like a captured, ever-shifting sunset!

“Oh dear.” It was hardly the most manly of words from their new stallion demigod of love and light, but at least they were blessed by his voice. His heavenly voice. This Prince of Princes!

SPROING

“Fluttershy! Your wing just pegged me right in the eye!”

“S-s-sorry…”

There could well have been a female stampede then and there, if the revealing of the gender-bent Princess Celestia had not coincided with the spell also taking effect on one last pony: Princess Cadance. Instead of simply transforming with the illusion, she screamed as a painful static dissonance filled the air, like hooves on blackboard.

“Y-yyouu!” Cadance howled, voice changing pitch from female to male to something androgynous in-between. “You filthy little gutter rat! W-waa-what is this?!”

The false Princess cringed as her coat rippled and spiked violently and she thrashed violently, flailing her front legs. Her face flashed with light, trying to give the illusion of being male, but then reverting back to female. Her wings snapped out, growing and shrinking; her mane grew longer and then shorter, back and forth, and when it couldn’t be either, it tried to be both, spiking and twisting and bending in impossible ways. The dress ripped away from her torso in a magical fury, tattered shreds of it filling the air as two illusions fought violently for control. Cadance threw her hooves up over her face as it all came apart. Even when she almost turned male, for just a moment, something snapped and the illusion tried to reverse it again.

Finally, both illusions tore each other apart.

They revealed an alien creature: black and insect-like. Long legs were peppered with holes. Feathers turned to mist and were replaced by diaphanous membrane, like a dragonfly’s wings. Green fire surged out and away from the enraged former Princess. A crooked black horn emerged from a wild nest of green membrane, like a slimy mockery of a real mane. Amethyst eyes vanished, turning into a fiery, sickly green. The newly emerged changeling was tall, thin, equine in form, but warped and fundamentally wrong on far too many levels.

“What have you done to me?” Cadance hissed, her voice now tainted by a sibilant, alien quality.

“I’ve studied you,” Twilight explained, both to her and to the assembled ponies. She even turned around very quickly to make sure they were all listening. Her voice, too, had been transformed, so thorough was the illusion spell. That part, they had Antimony and Sand Dune to thank for.

“Your changeling disguises all have a gender component. I can scramble it by using a gender-affecting spell. After all, you can’t turn into just a pony; it has to be a male pony or a female pony.” Twilight pointed her – his – hoof accusingly at the former Princess. “No more disguises to hide behind, Queen Chrysalis!”

Chrysalis slowly laughed, rising to her full height.

“No more disguises,” she agreed, “You’ve got me. But don’t you want to hear me out? I have good reasons for doing all this…”

Rarity didn’t miss the three bridesmaids inching closer to their Queen. One even touched her hoof to the tasseled edge of the carpet, causing the embedded illusion magic to turn her into a ‘he.’ The three uniformed stallions of honor, on the other hoof, inched away from the scene. One turned to Shining Armor, as if looking for some sort of orders. The guard Captain, turned mare, still just stared dumbly forward. It was as if he hadn’t noticed anything at all, even now.

“You can save your villainous monologue!” Twilight replied, emboldened by the trap’s success and the looks and sounds of shock coming from Equestria’s assembled elite. “You’re a parasite! You and your kind want to enslave us and feed off our love! You want to turn us into livestock!”

“Oh, well… you aren’t wrong,” Chrysalis admitted with a titter. “But making the lot of you into slaves and sources of nourishment is just the beginning! The rest of the world will join you in the pens soon enough! You’ll just have the honor of being the first!”

“I’ve heard enough!” Rarity chose that moment to finally intervene. “Girls!”

“I thought you’d never ask!” Rainbow Dash was the first, wings flapping, she was already in the air even as her Element of Harmony began to resonate.

“Ya’ll wanna place bets on if she turns into a statue or not?” Applejack asked, also starting to levitate. She reached a hoof up to her broach, the one Rarity had been so insistent she wear before, and pulled the front of it down. What lay beneath was a familiar apple-colored and apple-shaped jewel, unique in all the world. It was the Element of Honesty, ironically, concealed all this time.

“Oh! Oh! This time, can we please cross the streams? Please?” Pinkie was already in mid-air, striking a variety of poses.

“There’s a whole army to take care of after this,” Rarity promised her friends. “Ah’m sure we’ll have ample opportunity to zap them all in as many ways as you can imagine, Pinkie.”

Still standing in place, Chrysalis squinted one eye, grinning mockingly at the mane six.

“Will you?” she inquired, stomping a hoof against the floor and summoning up a large glass orb. “How confident you are! Before you destroy me, I’d like to know: which of the hundreds of hostages I’ve taken would you like to see die?” Chrysalis actually managed to grin even wider than before, her mouth serrated like two pearly sawblades.

“How about,” her declaration filled the hall. “…these three?!”

The crystal ball flickered, projecting an illusion of three blindfolded fillies, their eyes and part of their faces obscured, but their identities obvious given their distinct mane styles and colors. Rarity felt her throat seize up at the sight and her heart skip a beat. Managing to tear her eyes away from the illusion for only a moment, she could see her friends in a similar state. They were still floating in the air, partly wreathed in the magic of the elementals of harmony, but stunned into inaction by what they saw.

“Apple Bloom!” her sister cried, and like a popping balloon, the power of her element of harmony evaporated, dropping her unceremoniously down to the ground. Nearby, Rainbow Dash had her mouth set into a tight line, her clenched teeth just barely visible. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were clearly confused, looking around for guidance. They understood the threat, but not what to do next. Twilight simply floated there – their leader – gaping at what Chrysalis had revealed. The crowd was already starting to raise their voices at the revelation. Hostages. How many? Whose?

“That’s impossible!” Rarity suddenly yelled, pointing at the changeling Queen. “I had everyfoal in Ponyville evacuated! Under guard! There’s no way--”

“I think her name was Cheerilee?” Chrysalis asked with false uncertainty, parting her fanged grin to laugh triumphantly. “Yes… that was it! Did you think I wouldn’t have insurance against you? Did you?! But if you want proof, I can always order my changelings to rip off the little white one’s horn. The remote viewing spell on this crystal doesn’t have any sound, but I’m sure you’ll still find the spectacle sufficiently motivating.”

“You… you monster…” Twilight’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “How could you… what kind of--”

“These three aren’t the only ones, either!” Chrysalis announced to the entire hall of noble mares and stallions. “I invite you all to stay and watch my little show! In fact, I insist! You may find your own sons and daughters have starring roles! Now, if you’d kindly… noble ponies of Canterlot… I’d very much like you to seize those six mares! Bring me their Elements!”

The crowd began to mutter; fear and doubt running through the well-to-do attendees of what should have been the wedding of the year. A few, already frightened for their children held hostage, began to fidget and fret. A mare hissed to a nearby stallion, forcing him towards where Fluttershy floated, the timid pegasus looking around in fright. She could sense it, as they all did: the crowd was starting to turn on them.

“Or, better yet!” Chrysalis crowed. “Kill them! Kill them with your own hooves! I believe I’d like to see that!”

“You’ve said enough.”

The changeling’s laughter cut short as she turned, slowly, towards the source of the interruption. Likewise, everypony in the chamber hall froze. A blast of heat washed over them like a tide, bowling all but one of the bridesmaids over where they stood. Shining Armor toppled onto his side like a garden statue and his groomsponies hunkered down, their heads between their hooves. One, a unicorn, had the presence of mind to erect a hasty barrier spell around the three of them.

Placing one hoof on top of the podium she had stood behind, Princess Celestia crushed it flat in one go, sending splinters and twisted bars of metal flying. The carpet beneath her burned away, ending the gender-swap illusion from before, but not returning her to her usually tranquil visage. For the first time in living memory, the longest reigning Princess of Equestria was angry.

Celestia’s normally golden magic rippled with violent shades of black and orange, more like a living flame than a uniform aura. The air around her grew wavy and indistinct, like a mirage in the desert, and her golden regalia began to glow hot enough to see the difference with the naked eye. Crawling over the surface, a line of flickering orange highlighted the concentric grooves of her horn, starting from the base all the way up to the tip, until the whole thing began to resemble less a perfect alabaster-white unicorn horn and more a hot slab of iron plucked from a blazing furnace. Her prismatic ethereal mane flowed behind her as always, but less behind her and more around her, in impossible and contradictory directions, lending it a terrible, Tartaran aspect.

“Princess!” Chrysalis jeered, holding up her crystal ball. “Have you forgotten who holds the upper hoof, here? Don’t do anything you’ll regret--”

Celestia’s answer was a lowered horn.

Chrysalis hissed, starting to move, only to howl in pain and shock as her raised left hoof failed to follow the rest of her body. It remained hanging in mid-air, still holding aloft the crystal ball and the projected illusion of the captive cutie mark crusaders. The chitinous hoof spurted black and green blood from the stump where it had once connected with the rest of the changeling Queen, but Chrysalis was already moving, her three remaining hooves hitting the ground with a crunch to the right of where she had been standing.

Behind that spot, an angry, glowing line stood out against the wall, leading straight up and into the ceiling. Or… the reverse. It had begun by cutting into the ceiling, and then come down, like an invisible blade. Everything it had passed over, it cut cleanly through. A second later, and tapestries bisected by the line caught fire and stonework groaned in agony.

Celestia angled her neck slightly, following Chrysalis with one baleful violet eye.

“You bitch!” Chrysalis hissed, protectively clutching her stump of a foreleg to her chest. “How DARE you?!” Her jagged black horn erupted in a tornado of putrid sewage-green. “BRIDESMAIDS!!”

Twinkleshine was already on her hooves, starry black magic enveloping her. Minuette followed almost the same instant, the two unicorns sweeping their horns in unison. Only Lyra Heartstrings hung back in reserve. From out of the conjured aether of the enthralled bridesmaids, form emerged and took shape. The tip of a triangle–shaped barrier shot out from one side of the enraged Princess Celestia, and from the other, a whip-like line of starry black.

The Princess vanished behind the canopy of her wings, shielding herself.

The impact shattered the platform beneath Celestia’s hooves and shook delicate glass fixtures free from the ceiling. The otherworldly edge of the triangle-barrier and the vibrating hilt of what looked to be a black painter’s brush remained fixed against Celestia’ two wings, pinning them in place, until a fierce cry preceded Celestia snapping her wings out and knocking back the two aether-powered attacks. The triangle receded with a snap back around Twinkleshine, and the brush swirled around to protectively cover the front of Minuette. Both bridesmaids stood between Celestia and Chrysalis, the changeling Queen still nursing her amputated limb.

Celestia spread her wings, seemingly unfazed. Behind her, the wall crumpled, leaving a skeleton of metal and stone supports. The Princess stood resolute, but there was a clear element of shock at the sight of what stood before her.

“Triangulum and Equuleus Pictoris?” she let slip, betraying her surprise.

A crimson droplet hit the broken and blasted floor to her left and right. Angling her right wing, she could see a bright red line running down from the back of her wing, along one of the majestic feathers, and finally to where it had hit the ground. It was blood. Her blood.

“Surprised, Princess?!” Chrysalis called out, still hiding behind Twinkleshine’s trio of unbreakable triangular barriers. “Haven’t seen your own blood in a while, have you?! How does it feel?!”

Celestia’s lip curled, bearing teeth, but when she spoke, it was not to the changeling Queen or her thralls.

“Twilight Sparkle,” she announced, in the booming royal Canterlot voice. “No. All my little ponies. Leave. Now.”

A cry went out from the assembled equestrians. More than a few stallions and mares were already gathering their wits to try and help their sovereign. Rarity, finally dropping out of the air as she dismissed her element of harmony, not only felt how the mood of the setting had shifted – from enraged and helpless compliance with Chrysalis’ demands, to an almost reckless courage and need to act. She turned to Fleur and Fancy, her best gauge on the mood of the common pony in attendance, and saw both staring intently forward. It was clear they did not like being told to disperse and leave the Princess alone, especially not after seeing her actually physically wounded. Even if most of them had to know they would only be in the way.

Even Twilight herself looked ready to disobey the Princess and jump in.

Then it clicked.

“Twilight!” Rarity yelled, pushing past and through the packed ponies around her, heedless of her lack of manners. Her horn glowed, briefly, in the second where she could be sure Chrysalis had eyes only for Celestia. “We have to go!”

“I can’t…!” Twilight protested, and Rarity did what she never thought she would’ve had to do.

Overtaking her dear friend, she reached up and rudely grabbed Twilight by her horn.

“It is what she wants,” Rarity said, meaning to whisper, but knowing she was loud enough to be overheard. “We have to go.”

“Twilight?” Dash asked, the last one of them still in mid-air. Her elemental glow was gone, her wings picking up the slack to keep her airborne.

“Everypony!” Celestia roared at them now. “See to your loved ones! See to my little ponies! Protect this city and stay OUT OF MY WAY!”

“NO!” Chrysalis screamed, finally noticing that her hostages were about to escape. “Have you forgotten the ponies I have already?” Already a semi-panicked rush of nobleponies were heading for the exits, overwhelming the more foolish of the queen’s changelings posted to keep them inside. “Obey me! Seize the Elements of Harmony! GUARDS--”

Chrysalis was cut short as an earth-shattering sound, like a bell breaking in half, forced her eyes forward.

Celestia was pressed up against one of Twinkleshine’s athereal shields, her horn glowing like the surface of the sun. Arcs of light and fire washed away from the unbreakable black barrier, blinding the changeling and bridesmaid both and hiding whatever was happening behind the enraged Princess. Against the full onslaught of Celestia, Twinkleshine’s barrier held, the superimposed stars over her cutie mark glowing bright white. No crack formed in the solid wall of starry black, but Twinkleshine herself did grunt in exertion, her knees starting to buckle.

Reprieve only came when Minuette counterattacked, sweeping her brush down and then horizontally, forcing Celestia to jump back and out of the way. A glowing black line hung ‘painted’ in the air where it had passed, glittering with tiny stars. The line was dark, save for one small section, where part of two white feathers remained, neatly separated from their source as easily as one would highlight a section of a picture to copy… or delete.

“Erase,” Minuette whispered, and the black space vanished, taking the sectioned-off feathers with it.

Celestia inspected her clipped wing with a huff.

She stood rather defiantly between her ponies and their assailants. Chrysalis could only watch, unable to intervene, as they escaped. Three changeling guards, dutifully but ultimately carelessly following her orders, tried to swoop in to grab ponies… only to be snagged and pulled out of the air. The fleeing guests didn’t even leave their bodies behind. They just vanished into the press of flesh.

Her eyes darted up to the ceiling. The murals were stained with green blood. Somepony had killed the changelings hidden among the shadows and lifelike frescoes. How had they known? Chrysalis’s eyes next shot over to the glass windows. The ambushers set up there were also dead. How? Had they been seen coming? Finally, among the crowd, she tried to find her hidden operatives. If chaos broke out, they had been tasked to seize the weakest and most vulnerable of the elements of harmony. The one called Fluttershy.

There!

Chrysalis spotted one of her changeling agents, in the disguise of a panicked noblemare, lunging for the frightened Fluttershy… only to be intercepted and stopped. A faint trickle of what appeared to be sand blinded her and then a glow of the same color snapped her neck. Chrysalis couldn’t see any of the other operatives she had planted in all the confusion, in just the split second she could spare away from Celestia, but it appeared they were all dead. Every one of them. How?!

In the span of seconds, they were all gone.

Escaped.

Celestia knew it, too, even without turning around to look. She smirked.

“Celestia! Every second you fight me,” Chrysalis warned, still keeping behind Twinkleshine’s shield. “I will kill another hostage! You know that, don’t you? GIVE UP! NOW!”

“You underestimate my little ponies,” Celestia calmly replied, craning her neck back. “And I put little stock in the promises or threats of liars. And now that they’re gone…” The Princess’s frown darkened, her voice deepening. “I can really cut loose.”

- - -

“Rarity! Rarity!” A sharp tug on her tail finally slowed her gallop to a near-stop. “RARITY!”

Skidding to a stop and pulling a sharp one eighty as a pain shot up her butt, Rarity yoinked her tail free of a pair of cyan colored hooves. Rainbow Dash was usually on the receiving end of the tail-grab in their group, but this once, it looked like she had felt the need to return the favor. Rarity very nearly voiced her displeasure at it, when an explosion rocked the isolated Canterlot cathedral where the wedding had been taking place. A ragged pillar of flame stretched upwards into the heavens before dissipating just shy of the city-wide barrier overhead. A few ponies – the ones already fleeing – screamed in dismay at the sight and simply kept running.

Others were gathering in the manicured grounds between the church and the city.

“What are we doing?” Dash yelled, looking to her and then to Twilight, who also slowed and came around to face her friends. “Where are we going? We – I mean, shouldn’t we head back? I know she said--”

A diving changeling passed overhead, and everyone instinctively covered their heads with their hooves and ducked. The changeling warbled slightly and then crashed, a magical spike protruding from its back. Another changeling zipped right by the corpse, trying to grab an irate looking unicorn mare. Her husband quickly turned and held onto her back legs before the changeling could take off, and a second couple from the wedding came to their aid, ripping off the rear train of a dress and using it like a net to bring the changeling down.

It was chaos all around them.

Unicorns were firing wildly into the air as they backed away and found others to watch their backs. Pegasus ponies were yelling, trying to direct others to safety while keeping the air somewhat clear of danger. The few earth ponies around, including many from the band and the catering staff, were either throwing what they could at dive bombing changelings or helping cover the backs of the unicorns they had been serving. It was hard to focus on anything in the complete pandemonium. Rarity’s Dove and Cross escorts tackled and brought down a changeling just seconds before it could snatch one of them up, the snarling, hissing black beast snapping at them with a fanged jaw. It had happened so fast it wasn’t even possible to see who the target of the attack had been.

“W-w-what’dowe--”

“Rainbow, listen!” Rarity cut her off, stress and adrenalin making her a little short on niceties. She made a mental note to apologize later. She was still a Lady, after all. Pumping magic into her horn, Rarity exhaled in strain as she re-summoned her little prize. “Everypony, listen, please. The point of what the Princess did was for us to escape with this.”

A crystal ball, and the amputated black hoof still attached to it, appeared in front of her.

“Holy!” Dash yelped, quickly catching the ball before it could hit the grass underhoof. She then grabbed the black hoof that had belonged to Chrysalis and ripped it free, tossing it to the ground with a snort of disgust. It continued to twitch, rippling with a few sparks of green magic.

“Oh,” Fluttershy gasped, backing away from the ichor-stained hoof.

“Aw, gross!” Pinkie remarked with a raspberry, her tongue sticking out. Next to her, Pierce nodded, understanding. Like their stallion guard escorts, he kept one eye on the sky, his horn partly charged.

“Oh my gosh! The scrying crystal!” Twilight exclaimed, hitting her forehead with her hoof. “Of course! Of course! Duh! I can backtrack the spell to find out where the girls are! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“The whole thing was a trap,” Rarity reminded them. “It should’ve been obvious… the moment we were invited… of course it would be a trap…” She shook her head. There was no time for that. “Twilight! Work on that while we run. We need to catch up with the others!”

“Others?” Dash asked, as they began to gallop again. “What do you mean ‘others?’ Rarity? What do you mean others?”

Not far from the city, still on the church grounds technically, a number of ponies from the wedding stopped at a grand pavilion – what would’ve been the spot where the reception and other festivities took place. There was still a great deal of party paraphernalia lying around: food and drink and tables and two large stands for musicians and even a hardwood dance-floor set down in sections over the grass. Proud equestrian banners and flags hug limp in the lack of wind.

Just over the wall of the church compound, the spires of Canterlot were already swarming with black shapes. Rarity slowed her gallop, in morbid fascination, as a panicked airship over the city actually tried to ram through Shining Armor’s city-wide shield to escape. It crumpled like tin foil without making so much as a dent. She could only imagine the chaos in the streets.

Beneath the roof of the pavilion, frightened and angry nobleponies had gathered to argue about what to do next. The six elements of harmony and their plus-ones were admitted without protest, a haggard hoof-full of hastily volunteered stallions keeping guard on the outside. A cacophony of voices assailed them the moment the entered, not a one of them in harmony.

“Cowards! Worms! We should never have abandoned Her Highness! Even if we die, what more to wish for than to die by her side?” “Maybe not all of us are so eager to die! Did you think of that?” “You old fool! She ordered us away! Is it not our duty to follow her will, even now?”

“What of the Stable of Lords? What word from the Stable? If magic fails, we must send runners! Couriers!” “Forget the Stable. You heard Lady Goodwind! The Stable is aflame! We will find no help there!” “If the Stable is gone, who is in charge?” “If Lord Fall is no more, then in his absence I claim…”

“Listen to me! We must rally to the Lady Luna! Somepony must know how to contact her!” “The Princess Luna? Surely you jest!” “My loyalty is to Celestia! To our True Princess! The weak have fled, as she wished; let the strongest of us return to the church and lend the Princess our aid! Who else is with me?” “You Swore to Luna, you traitor! And now you would forsake her?!” “I do not stop you from tending to your Princess. Let me attend to mine!” “Hear, hear!”

“Honorless cur! I always knew you could not be trusted! Or your family!” “You dare question my honor?!” “Have you foals forgotten the hostages...?” “Damn you…!” “What of those of us who have no foals? Are we not free to do as please?”

“Listen to me...!” “You?! Don’t make me laugh.” “Who has rank here? Who has seniority?” “How do we know you are not like the Princess Cadenza? So eager to return to the church... to stab Celestia in the back, is it?! Admit it!” “I knew it! No wonder you got here unharmed!” “Yes, prove you are who you say you are!” “So much as touch myself or my wife, Ser, and it will be the last thing you do!”

“Everypony!” Rarity’s voice drowned out in the roaring din of shouting and debating. “Everypony!”

Two dozen nobles were clustered beneath the roof of the pavilion, some with torn or stained dresses or suits or uniforms, more concerned with arguing with their peers than seeing to their appearance. The voices were already heated and growing hotter, various groups breaking up into factions over what to do and who they felt they could trust.

A dozen or more well-heeled ponies – great names in the merchant and social circles – remained on the margins, some by choice, some by force. Quite a few were in on the arguments as well, others whispering and biding their time to see how the winds blew, and others trying to be heard and failing. Among every group Rarity could see frightened faces, unable to completely mask their fear with anger or bluster, who looked moments away from bolting and finding somewhere to hide... as many had already done after the madness of the wedding and Celestia’s declaration. No doubt many simply wished to look after their own families and their own affairs.

None of which helped Rarity muscle past the larger ponies that blocked her path.

“Everypony, please listen!” Rarity tried again, and Twilight joined her a second later.

“Everypony!” Twilight yelled, but still none heeded them. “HEY!”

“I bet if I blow the roof off, they’ll listen,” Rainbow Dash had to yell herself to be heard, even just among her friends.

“No need for something so dramatic,” a tall, sandy gold mare announced, strutting past the group. She had flecks of green blood splattered across her face and her right front leg, marring her otherwise delicate good looks. “Allow us to help.”

“You are not alone,” Fancypants promised, haggard from the escape from the church, his mane a mess. “I see some faces in the room; faces with ears I can bend.”

“As do I,” Fleur said, walking up behind her stallion. She had a scowl on her face and a green stain on her horn. She reached up to wipe her horn with a hoof as she passed. “My Fancy is no fighter; I won’t let anything harm him.”

“Sand Dune? Fancy… Fleur…” Rarity thanked them, sighing in relief. “Thank you. Please.” She stepped back, as a half dozen bodies helped cut a path through to the center of the gathering. Irate equines grumbled or tried to remain steadfast, rooted in place, only to back down as they realized who they were dealing with. Sand Dune and her entourage formed the spearhead, but she noticed more than a few wide eyes as the elements of harmony followed in their wake. Others whispered at seeing Fancypants, one of the most well-respected ponies of the merchant class.

It probably would’ve been easy for Sand Dune to march them all the way to the front, where the loudest voices, the most belligerent ponies, faced each other down over what to do. It would’ve been easy to keep them behind her, to use them as another arrow in her political quiver. For a long moment, as Rarity walked alongside Twilight, leading her friends upstream against the feuding crème of Equestrian society, she wondered if that was exactly what Lady Sand Dune, heiress to the great Family and House Quartz, future Duchess of Bitaly, would do.

It wasn’t.

“Make room, Blue Wave, you crusty old sea dog!” Sand Dune could be quite the refined lady when she chose to be. Or the exact opposite, as it suited her. The elegant mare roughly pushed aside a muscular older stallion, everybit Blueblood or Macintosh’s size, with a gray coat and midnight blue mane. His hackles rose at the sight of her.

“Dune, you Quartz harlot…!” Blue Wave cursed, but stepped back, making just enough room--

For Sand Dune to push Rarity through the gap.

“I have a lot more enemies than you do,” she whispered, as her foreleg ushered Rarity into the center of the noble gathering. “You have one chance. After that...”

She didn’t need to describe what would happen ‘after that.’

“Who is this?” Blue Wave snorted, derisively. “This mare is--”

“Everypony!” Rarity raised her voice, tried to make it as commanding and authoritative as she could.

It was not much. Twilight would’ve done a better job, Rarity knew. She would’ve been a fine face for them to show, as the apprentice of the Princess. Twilight Sparkle would have commanded respect and attention... at least to begin with. But her family had as many enemies as any other in the country, perhaps the very most. Twilight was bright and powerful and, as her friends knew, sweet and helpful to a fault. Sadly, few noble mares and stallions would look past her name and her lineage to see the young mage’s true self.

“Everypony!” Rarity commanded, and momentarily floated the captured scrying crystal out of Twilight Sparkle’s hooves. A bit of magic and the crystal rippled and glittered, spears of rainbow light swirling around it.

The little light show was a simple glamor, one she’d used before to show off her products to interested customers, and it worked here as well as it had in the Boutique. Those who didn’t attend to her voice, now coming from the center of the pavilion where most of the attention was focused, looked up at the show. The light caught their eye, and their recognition of the crystal captured it entirely.

“The very first thing we must do is to remain united!” Rarity declared, and she honestly tried not to sound like she was admonishing them like a group of bickering colts and fillies. They were afraid. She knew that feeling all too well. They were afraid and unwilling to show or acknowledge their helplessness. It was a potentially very toxic environment in the absence of some leader. Any leader.

“The second thing we must do is to see to our loved ones, just as the Princess commanded us to!” Rarity took care to quickly move to this, the part of the conversation she could control. This was the gift Celestia had given them with her distraction. “We will reverse the spell on this discordian device, and we will find where Chrysalis is keeping our foals, our brothers, our sisters...! I ask only who will help us with this?”

For just a moment, everypony simply stared up at her.

“The forces of the Quartz would be happy to take up the challenge,” Sand Dune announced.

“And put all our hopes in the hooves of the avaricious Quartz?” a noblemare objected, quite vocally. “They’d rob our foals as soon as save them!”

“We will not be indebted to the Quartz alone!” another noble, a stallion this time, roared. His horn glowed as he pointed a hoof towards the element of generosity. “I, Lord Iron Star, speak for House Bloomery. We honor the wishes of Celestia – tell us where to go!”

Soon other voices joined in, vowing on their honor and their lives to track down those who had been ponynapped. It was a start. It was something everypony could get behind and support. Even Blue Wave, who had been the most adamant voice in favor of charging back into the church to fight and die for Princess and Country, held his tongue.

Feeling comfortable enough to lower the scrying crystal down and back into Twilight Sparkle’s waiting hooves, Rarity used the inertia to move onto the next, more troublesome, topic. She also tried to access how hostile the crowd was. It was in many ways like making a sales pitch... one where lives were at stake instead of fashion. Sand Dune’s spoken – and unspoken – support was a solid foundation, reinforcing her hoof-full of allies among the Canterlot elite. Others tentatively seemed to draw in, accepting her as a lesser noble like themselves or as an element of harmony, though that one title seemed of less political use than you’d think in a crisis.

“In the further spirit of Celestia’s last orders, to protect her little ponies, we must not forget that much more is at risk than a captured few. Every moment we delay, more ponies in this city will meet the same fate or worse!” Rarity reminded them, sweeping her hooves across the assembled nobles. “We can all see the chaos from here! Let us not add to it. Let us fight it! With all our hearts and our grace.”

“And what would you have us do?” a mare asked, and it was hard to tell whether she was hopeful or condescending.

“Who are you to try and dictate to us?” another mare made her thoughts far more transparent. “A mere nopony from nowhere!”

“Hey!” “You better not be insultin’ mah friend!” Applejack and Rainbow Dash pushed their way up, to stand challengingly between the two outspoken mares and their seamstress friend.

Rarity gently nudged the irate pair to her sides, to address the matter directly. “I am the titled Baroness of Ponyville,” she stated, with authority, “and more than that, I am a mare and a pony of Equestria. I’m not asking you to follow me, but I will ask that you listen to me. In turn, I swear to listen to you, because I need you... I need experienced ponies... I need you all to pull together and help those who can’t help themselves! If you can’t do even that, then just what do you expect the Princess to say the next time you stand before her?”

That final admonishment seemed to truly chastise them. Even the ones who seemed insulted to have to listen to her at least had the presence of mind to feel shame at disappointing the Princess.

Blue Wave sneered, only moved for a moment. “I’ve known the Princess far longer than you have, girl--”

“Do you claim to know her better than I do?” Twilight chose that moment to speak up, for maximum effect. “You all know who I am!” she announced, turning around in a tight circle to everypony could see her. She still held the scrying crystal in one hoof. “I’ll make this quick, because I have more urgent things to do – like reversing this crystal – but I speak for the entirety of the Terre Rare, across four provinces and more! We have already set aside our fight with the Quartz, even with the Bluebloods! Canterlot and Equestria come first, now and always!”

A low murmur swept across the assembled ponies, a drone of shock and incredulity. The Quartz, Terre Rare, and Bluebloods had been enemies and rivals for generations. They were the three biggest and most powerful names in Equestria. That they would be united already… for many, it was inconceivable.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Twilight continued, trotting past Rarity to sit with her back to the crowd, the scrying crystal between her front legs. “I have a counter-spell to devise! Tell me when you’re ready to get serious and take back this city.”

Blue Wave growled, low in his throat, but kept his peace, a least for the moment.

Rarity pressed forward. “As I said, I need your help. Assuming we can send teams to where our loved ones are being held, how can we protect the rest of the city? Know this: I have already made arrangements to cut off our enemy from the outside. Four thousand guardsponies are on their way to help, but they are not here now, and we are. What steps do we need to take? Who can we follow?”

“We must preserve the royal guard!” a stallion spoke, repeating it again and then explaining, “They are the only hope we have to restore order in the city!”

“Half the creatures that attacked us as we left disguised themselves as royal guards!” another objected.

“And how many of us have kin in that guard?” a third argued. “They will be as divided as the city! We must rally them!”

“If there is a relief force on the outside, we have to secure the only ways in, especially with the shield still up!”

“That’s right! Sweet Celestia, what if they collapse the tunnels?”

Amid the chatter, still frantic at points but less panicked or antagonistic, a vote was soon held – in an ad-hoc fashion – to determine who would lead. Though Rarity only heard her name spoken on occasion, her ears twitching in time with the heartbeat of the room, nopony made moves to dislodge her. It was tacit acceptance of her place… not necessarily in charge, but also somepony the majority would accept. Rarity closed her eyes as she tried not to dwell on just what that meant and just where she was. When she did, it only became hard to breathe.

‘They can’t entirely trust one another, but they’re willing to trust me… especially because I’ve already done the same for Sand Dune and Antimony and Twilight.’ In her mind, behind closed eyes, she saw a flash of a blindfolded filly. ‘Sweetie Belle…’

It took everything she had to keep in place, to betray none of the uncertainty or fear in her heart.

‘It isn’t enough to want to be fabulous. I have to be fabulous. One’s image has power all its own. Just like you said, Blueblood... and right now, the only real power I have over them is my image. I refuse to look like anything less than the Lady I need to be. The Lady they expect me to be! With just this image I’ve cultivated, I’ll do what good I can.’

“Lady Rarity.” “Lady.”

When she opened her eyes, a pair of ponies stood before her, both her social superior in any traditional setting or by any traditional standard. She recognized one as Lord Snow Drift, a middle-aged unicorn stallion with an exceptionally square jaw. Partly concealing that jaw was a bristly muttonchop beard. His gray eyes were hard, but expressive and welcoming on meeting her. He was clearly past his physical prime, but still a handsome older gentlepony by Rarity’s reckoning, with a dark mane and gentle blue to almost white coat.

Next to him, a petite pegasus mare presented a less amiable picture of herself. In her youth, she might have had many of Fleur’s wonderful curves, but that would have been two decades ago or more. She compensated with what must’ve been a fantastic silk dress that had been utterly ruined in the mad flight from the wedding. Her name came a moment later, as Rarity thought on it. Lady Providence. She was a noblemare from the coast somewhere near Manehattan. This was not a mare who would be in her court, at least not to start. If there was an ‘anti-Rarity’ faction that had coalesced here, she had no doubt courted it to become their representative.

“Lord Snow Drift. Lady Providence.”

The exchange of greetings and courtesies was quick, rushed, but Rarity made sure to keep it respectful and sincere. These were the two ponies hastily elected from their peers. Crying about one of them wouldn’t help.

“Whatever it is you need, we will provide,” Lord Snow Drift promised. “I have been chosen to try and salvage the security situation here. Rest assured that I will do so to the best of my ability.”

“I am here to be sure that the interests of the minority are not being trampled,” Providence said, not mincing words or wasting time with half-truths. “And… to try and preserve the continuity of government. If there are any survivors of the Stable of Lords they must be found and secured. Princess Luna, as well, until Celestia returns to us.”

“We also need to gather and screen the guard throughout the city, get small ponies into shelters, and secure at least one means of contact with the outside world… among other things,” Snow Drift reminded her, sounding both impressed and a little daunted by the task. “I will also see to what you need to rescue those unfortunates the changelings have ponynapped…”

“We aren’t going.” The voice belonged to Twilight Sparkle, who turned slightly to look back over her shoulder. “Or, at least I’m not.”

“What do you mean?” Snow Drift asked, frowning. “My Lady, I thought--”

“I’m almost done cracking the crystal and backtracking the spell to source… sources, I should say,” Twilight interrupted, holding up the cloudy looking scrying device. “There are several. But you don’t need me for that. I have a job only I can do.”

“Awfully presumptuous of you, isn’t it?” Providence scoffed. “What is it ‘only you’ can do, Lady Sparkle?”

“Only I can cast a five-alliteration spell to permanently unmask every changeling in Equestria,” Twilight answered, not testily, just with a trace of annoyance at being questioned so rudely.

“Nopony can…!” Lady Providence took a moment to realize the young unicorn mare was serious. Completely serious. “That’s impossible. What you’re suggesting is impossible.”

“Incredibly, mind-blowingly difficult is not ‘impossible,’” Twilight corrected her. The crystal ball in her right hoof turned fully cloudy, then rippled with a rainbow of colors and flashed, brightly. “Good. Done.”

From the crystal, an image projected… of two changelings glaring at something.

“Don’t worry, they can’t see us,” the element of magic assured them. “I layered another spell in place before I reversed the scrying. After twenty seconds, it will ‘ping’ the other crystal broadcasting the image, allowing us to fully see everything in the room. A third spell will identify the direction and intensity of the spell and… well,” she promised, smirking now, “you’ll see.”

Lady Providence only realized she was gawking a second too late.

“What Twilight says is true,” Rarity said, not surprised at all by her friend’s magical prowess. “Getting her in position to use her spell has to be our number one priority, above everything else. Without it, we’ll never be entirely sure who is who. I’m sure you see what I mean?”

Snow Drift nodded, somberly. “Indeed.”

Lady Providence scowled, but also nodded in agreement.

“So we’re going different ways, then?” Rainbow Dash floated down to stand to Rarity’s left.

“Oh! That’s usually when the crazy axe-pony gets you!” Pinkie Pie bounced in to her right, wearing a hockey-mask that most certainly was not a normal wedding accessory. “That’s why I’m in disguise!”

“Some disguise, sugarcube,” Applejack noted, flicking the mask up with her hoof high enough to reveal Pinkie’s face. “Ah just saw the lightshow. We finally ready to move out?”

Next to Dash, Fluttershy kept quiet but made no attempt to hide.

“Changeling! Changeling!” the cry came from one of the pavilion guards, as he wrestled a snarling pony to the ground. A snarling pony with rather pronounced canines.

Another earth pony sentry burst in a second later. “They are massing for an attack! Every one of them has wings! Many have magic! The walls are useless! We saw a hundred, perhaps more!”

“Time, it seems, is not on our side,” Lord Snow Drift growled, and turned away from the assembled mares. “All those who wish to fight, all those who honor their vows, all those who love the Princess, step forward without fear or regret! We begin the muster now! Until the Princess is safe, there are no lordly titles or great names! We earn back those things in victory! Until then, there are only those that fight and those we defend! If I die, may a thousand more rush to take my place!”

“Make your plans quickly,” he added, only for the benefit of the elements of harmony.

“Curse these… creatures,” Lady Providence hissed, following behind Lord Snow Drift as he rallied the others around him. Just by her voice, she sounded far less enthusiastic to risk her life, but no more willing to defy what her peers expected of her. She made it only a few steps before bodily ripping her dress away and throwing it to the ground.

Following the other ponies outside, Rarity and her friends got their first real look at the changeling swarm. And it was a swarm. A hundred changelings buzzed around one another like a great, black cloud, ground-based sentries on the walls already having fought for and taken the main gate for the wall that surrounded the church and cemetery.

The vast majority of changeling invaders were in the air, making it impossible for any pegasus to fly, at least not safely. There was no escape with the gate taken, except for the tiny few unicorns who could teleport. Maybe even the changelings expected it, since they made no move to attack, only to surround the wedding guests and pin them down. The sky literally buzzed. The droning sound was so oppressive Rarity instinctively flattened her ears and even tried to cover them with her hooves.

In the shadow of it all, six mares looked up and readied for the fight to come.

- - -

Sitting in a lounge on the third floor, reclining lazily into a beanbag chair, Vinyl Scratch munched freely and loudly on a complimentary bowl of popcorn. One white hoof buried into the bowl, stirred around feeling for the choicest bits and the largest kernels, and then tossed said morsels into her waiting mouth. Mid-chew, she smirked at the mention on the radio of the ‘two mares’ involved in the wedding reception. Sitting next to her, an earth pony waited primly and without a scene, eschewing the beanbag chairs to simply sit on the floor.

“Ivory Keys should really be the one here, speaking for the Orchestra,” Octavia Melody said, having heard the same announcement. Their interview was only half an hour away. “I don’t approve of such blatant favoritism, Vinyl.”

“Hey, don’t blame me for having friends in radio,” the DJ replied with a laugh. “Maybe if you’d studied less and partied more when we were at the old music academy you’d have some of my contacts in cool places. Anyway, it isn’t ‘favoritism.’ Two old friends will have better chemistry over the air than two strangers,” she explained, popping another hoof-full of kernels into her mouth and biting down. “That’s all! It makes for better sound bite.” She munched loudly on her popcorn and winked at the stately cellist. “And we are the bestest of old friends, aren’t we?”

“Yes, if by ‘bestest friends’ you mean the one roommate who didn’t try and kill you in your sleep,” Octavia replied, subdued despite the verbal ribbing. “For that matter, how did you get the DJ job for the reception? You never mentioned knowing the Princess, nor have you ever spoken of her attending your concerts…”

“My agent worked it out.” Vinyl adjusted her trademark glasses and wiped her popcorn-eating hoof off on the side of the beanbag chair. “If you want the specifics, I ain’t got ‘em. I’m not gonna complain, either! Sometimes you just hit the jackpot, ‘Tavi.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times not to use that nickname, Vinyl.”

“And if it never worked before, why would it work now?”

“So long as you don’t call me that on the air, we--” Octavia cut off, mid-sentence, as the electrical lights abruptly flickered and dimmed. “…Vinyl? Is that normal?” She pointed to the fading lightbulb set in a glass lantern that had once helped to illuminate the room. Most ponies used kerosene, but this building was entirely electric. “Is that supposed to be happening?”

The radio crackled, the signal fading and cutting off the wedding commentary.

“No. No it isn’t.” Vinyl Scratch rolled off the beanbag and onto her hooves. Her neck craned as she looked around the room. The open window nearby was still providing some light, at least. “There must be some problem with the magical generator…”

“Ah. I see.” Octavia remained seated, but it wasn’t hard to see her growing nervousness, especially as the lights didn’t immediately come back on. Her front hooves touched, a sign of anxiety that Vinyl had picked up on years ago, back when they were freshmares in college. Tavi had done it the first time Vinyl had explained the ‘socks on the doorknob’ rule, back when they’d been roomies. She knew what it meant.

“Hey, let’s go find the others,” she said, knowing it was just what Octavia needed her to say. “Who wants to sit around in the dark by themselves?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Octavia replied, and together, the two mares left the lounge.

-

Standing by the iron gate, a white pegasus guardpony leaned down to picked up a fallen sleeve of cigarettes. There was a splotch of blood on the corner of the package, but it didn’t stop him from plucking one of the rolls of tobacco out and sniffing it. Experimentally slipping the cigarette between his teeth, tasting it, he just as quickly spat it out.

“Disgusting,” the changeling muttered, turning first to the radio tower above, and then to the mostly empty carriage. Inside, the three guardponies who had been watching the gate were bound in rope and wax. With a flick of the changeling’s white wing, the pack of cigs landed amid them.

Without a word of warning, the door to the carriage closed, sealing the trio in darkness.

-

The lights flickered again, as the generator kicked back in.

“Check it out,” Vinyl said, stopping Octavia halfway down the hall. She pointed up at a nearby electrical light. “They fixed it!”

Octavia sighed in relief. “Thank goodness. But how embarrassing! We were about to made a fuss over nothing…”

In the now fully lighted hallway, both mares noticed a pair of royal guards heading towards them.

“Hey guys!” Vinyl greeted the pair with a confident smile. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened with the power back there, wouldya?”

The two burly pegasus guards continued to stomp towards them.

“Guys?” Vinyl asked again.

Octavia was the first to sense that maybe they weren’t in a talking mood. “Pardon, sirs, do you need us to get out of the way, or…?”

In seconds, the two ‘royal guards’ were close enough to pounce, their eyes glowing green.

-

“You can’t do this to me! Don’t you know who I am!? Huh!?” a lanky, irate older earth pony stallion wailed as he hit the ground, his front legs tied together, wrist-to-wrist. “Tell them Robin! I’m Loud Mouth! Equestria’s Number One Shock Jock! You can’t shut me down! Who do you thugs think you are? Robin! Tell them they can’t do this to meeee!”

“Loud Mouth,” Red Robin, the earth pony mare next to him whispered, “I really think you should--”

“I’m not going to shut up! I’m never going to shut up! Talking is my job!” The stallion continued to bawl, even as the pair of royal guards who had just thrown him to the ground glared down at him. “I mean, even when I should probably stop, I can’t! I just can’t help it! Especially when I’m afraid! My mouth just runs on its own! Oh sweet stars, I literally can’t stop talking! Even if I wanted to!”

“Allow me to help with that,” one of the royal guards hissed in a sibilant tone.

Opening his mouth too-wide, revealing a fanged dentition that was in no way equine, he suddenly projected a stream of green slime out of his throat. It splattered all over Loud Mouth’s face, quickly hardening and muffling the radio shock jock. The thin stallion fall onto his side in shock, still trying to talk despite the wax covering his face; his legs kicked and bucked in panic and a stink filled the air as he lost control of his bladder. Then his bowels.

“I didn’t even know that guy was still on the air,” Vinyl muttered, inching away from the pool of urine. “What is he, like sixty years old now? Kinda less cool than when I was a little kid.”

Like everypony else, her front legs were bound, and like every-unicorn present, she had a film of wax encrusted over her horn. A stronger magic user might’ve still been able to break free somehow, Vinyl assumed, but two of the guards had replacement horn suppressors in the tactical webbing over their golden barding. It wouldn’t have made a difference.

“Vinyl,” Octavia whispered, angrily.

“Shut up, all of you,” the guard who had spat the green wax-slime hissed. He seemed to be in charge.

Except he… wasn’t even a he.

Two of the other supposed royal guards dropped their disguises, the burly pegasus stallions vanishing in a sheen of green fire, revealing the insect-like monsters beneath. An aquamarine membrane covered their eyes, making the pupils barely distinguishable beneath. Where once there had been white coats of hair, there was now only segmented black chitin. Spines laced by black webbing twitched where there should have been a mane and a tail, interspersed with folds of more semi-transparent membrane. Their legs were dotted with pockmarks and holes, some all the way through, and a green-band circled their midsections.

The half dozen ponies in the lounge shied away from the revealed creatures, whispering and in some cases whimpering. The few ponies in the radio station who had been inclined to put up a fight had been soundly beaten and thrown into the room, too, as an example to the others. Not that most radio-ponies were exactly the most violent types to begin with, and the building had maybe half a dozen stallions in it, total; they had been subdued with almost contemptible ease.

Creepily, the radio continued to buzz, the broadcast from before continuing on.

“…and here we have none other than Fancypants, himself, finally making his appearance. With him is… oh, this is just remarkable, we were expecting Lady Fleur de-Lis, but Lady Rarity is with him as well. And emerging from the carriage behind her are a whole retinue of the Baroness’ friends…”

“I hate to cut in, Mirage, but we just now have a new set of numbers for our special radio contest, announced after that brief technical interruption earlier. Sixteen. Fifteen. Eleven. Repeat: sixteen, fifteen, eleven. Back to you Mirage, Black Lace, and the scene at the Palace.”

Creepily, because the voice on the radio belonged to Five-by-Five, the news anchor.

Five-by-Five was currently tied up next to Octavia, the elderly stallion nursing a black eye from his capture. Yet he was also still on the air, announcing sets of numbers for some new contest, ostensibly to win tickets to the after-wedding reception ball. It had to be code of some sort. Whoever or whatever was impersonating Five by-Five was using it to pass on some sort of coded message over the radio… the same radio broadcast that everypony in Equestria was listening to!

“What do you want from us?” Another radio-mare spoke up, this one probably just an engineer given her lightning-bolt cutie mark. “Why are you doing this?”

“I said shut up,” the changeling from before snapped. “No questions. No talking.”

“Wow. Flashbacks. This is like Professor Verse’s music theory class all over again,” Vinyl whispered, and Octavia Melody decided it was best just to nod. Their captors were already glaring at them, just waiting for Vinyl to break their no-talking rule again. Wisely, the DJ grumbled and kept quiet. Octavia sighed in relief. As long as everypony kept calm, she was certain things would work out. Somepony would be along to help them soon.

Right?

- - -

A flash of light and five equine figures appeared out of thin air.

“Everypony okay?” Twilight Sparkle asked, checking on her friends. She had carried them all along with her in the teleport a rather substantial distance.

“I’m still in one piece!” Pinkie Pie said with a grin and a bounce.

“I’m okay,” Fluttershy answered, tentatively looking around at their new surroundings.

“A five-body teleport without a circle – excellent spellwork as always, Twilight.” Her father, Crescent Moon, took a short breath and closed his eyes. “Give me a moment and I’ll have an overview of the next area.”

Twilight Velvet said nothing; like Fluttershy, she seemed to be examining their surroundings. Twilight had teleported them into a dance studio on the third floor of a ‘pierre grise’ greystone commercial-housing complex. It was abandoned presently, the room unlit except for the light streaming in through the large bay windows. Three gramophones and a large library of vinyl records were kept off to the side along a wall, the others sporting lively murals of ponies dancing to unknown music. A few pictures on the wall showed faces from the classes that were held here: some adults, many foals.

“A large swarm is passing by the east facing window,” Crescent Moon warned, his eyes still closed. “Ten seconds.”

It was plenty of time to hide. They kept the curtains on the windows half-open, to look less suspicious. Twilight pressed herself against a wall, next to the window; Fluttershy squeaked and found a closet; Pinkie somehow dove right into the pot of a plant and vanished; Crescent Moon and Twilight Velvet also pressed flat against a wall opposite the east side of the building. They quietly counted down the seconds and Twilight held a hoof up to the faint swirl of magic around her right eye.

Through it, she could see three formations of changelings moving over the street outside. Half of them carried either grenades – for serious fights – or gas bombs, for flushing out civilians. A few carried larger yellow-coated changelings that lacked wings but were built more like lions or griffins than ponies. Squadrons of four changelings each split off as they slowly flew by, buzzing and hovering to look into windows along the street.

Two of them slowly cruised by the bright bay windows of the dance studio, giving the seemingly empty space inside only a cursory glance-over. Then they buzzed away to rejoin their formations. Twilight watched them go through borrowed eyes.

“Okay, everypony, we should be clear,” Twilight said, pulling the curtains closed. “Right, Dad?”

“I believe so, yes… it looks like the changelings are traveling exclusively in large groups.” His horn glowed, projecting a map of the city nearby onto the dance floor. During his service in the guard, he had been known as the ‘Night Light’ for his ability to oversee large areas, night or day, with far seeing magic.

“I’d guess that they’re afraid of individual changelings getting picked off, so they’re only moving in force,” Crescent Moon explained, and pointed to a large mage tower. “It appears they’re operating out of the Aurora Sanctum. It has a large garage for storage and as a bonus it gives them a commanding view of the entire neighborhood.”

“It would appear so,” Twilight Velvet murmured.

“You took me to that Sanctum on my sixth birthday,” Twilight recalled, shaking her head sadly. “They even let me use the telescope…”

“Is it safe to keep moving?” Fluttershy asked, and Twilight nodded.

“Eunomie is moving into position as we speak,” she answered, putting aside her nostalgia and indignation over the honored Sanctum’s defilement. “Once she’s found and marked a safe spot, I’ll teleport us there.”

“Hocksbach Hall is here,” Crescent Moon said, pointing to an area at the edge of the neighborhood he had mapped. “But there’s intense fighting along the streets and in the air. We’ll need to be careful.”

“Do you trust this Eunomie mare, Twilight?” Velvet asked, walking past her daughter and sniffing dismissively at the projected illusionary image of the neighborhood in miniature. “She could be leading us into a trap.”

“Trust me, mom,” Twilight replied, smiling confidently. She tapped the magical glow over her face again. “I can see everything she’s doing through her familiar, Galen. Besides, I can’t imagine Eunomie leading us into a trap.”

“Oh, hey! Hey!” Pinkie chirped, the forward curl of her mane twitching. “I think we’re about to have company!”

Fluttershy dove for the cover of the closet. “Not again!”

Rather than changelings knocking on the windows, however, a rapping sound came from the door to the dance studio. Twilight, Velvet and Crescent all lit up their horns to barrage the door with magic the moment it opened. Pinkie Pie, however, had totally different ideas. She leapt over right into the line of fire and leaned her side up against the door.

“Oh! I love knock-knock jokes!” she exclaimed, laughing into her hooves. “Who’s there?”

“R-royal guard, ma’am,” a voice spoke up, hesitant and clearly afraid.

“Royal guard who?”

The voice behind the door sounded genuinely confused. “Just… the guard, ma’am…”

“Huuuuuh? But that’s not funny,” Pinkie Pie observed with a sad sigh. “I’ll just have to do it myself! Knock-knock! Who’s there? Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie who? I’m you, so me, that’s who. What? Huh? Just open the door! No, you open the door; you’re the Pinkie on the inside! What? I am? Oh yeah, I’d have to be, wouldn’t I?”

Flinging the door wide open as she fell onto her rump, Pinkie revealed two bedraggled looking royal guards. Neither of them seemed to even be armed, though they did have their usual golden armor. The pair tensed and locked eyes with the three unicorns in the center of the dance studio.

“L-lord Night Light!” One of the pegasus guards gasped, throwing his head down in a quick bow. “Thank the Princess!”

“That’s the Night Light?” the other asked, and also lowered his head in a quick bow.

“I’m long since retired, boys,” Crescent Moon said, and Twilight’s horn glowed as she cast a quick spell. The two royal guards yelped as they abruptly turned female. They gaped at one another, pointed, and then whirled on the three unicorns.

“What’s going on?” one asked. “Ma’am?”

“Please tell me this is just an illusion,” the other begged, having briefly stretched his neck to look between his legs.

“You’re both good,” Twilight said, and the two guards quickly reverted back to normal. They sighed with relief. “Sorry. I had to make sure you weren’t changelings.”

“Changelings?” one of the guards asked. “Is that what those things are called?”

“What happened to you, boys?” Crescent Moon asked, slowly approaching them and holding up his hooves in a non-threatening manner. “What are your names?”

“Sir! Guard Knight Sir Snap Shot,” one of them answered, pointing to his friend and then to himself, “and I’m Sir Long Lance. We were on patrol, sir. Six of us. Then the commander told us to start getting civilians out of their homes. Rounding them up. Everypony cooperated, and we did what we were told. I thought it… might’ve been a fire drill or something?”

“It wasn’t,” Snap Shot picked up where his fellow knight and guard left off. “These things came… started taking away the civvies. A few of them started to fight back and the… the commander said to subdue them. Subdue our own little ponies? By the Princess, how could they order us to do that?”

“We refused. A bunch of us,” Long Lance said and shook his head. “It… turned bad after that. There was a fight. We ended up having to hide.”

“We thought we could try and sneak over to Hocksbach,” Snap Shot admitted. “It… it seemed like we’d be safer there, but the streets are crawling with bugs and neither of us are at one hundred percent.”

“You can come with us,” Twilight said, having heard enough. “Is there anypony else?”

Both guards slowly, shamefully shook their heads. The area had already been depopulated.

“Then we’ve wasted enough time talking,” Twilight said, gesturing them over. “Eunomie’s cleared and tagged the next location. We’ll be on a roof. It’ll be a short run to Hocksbach after that, so keep up.”

Everypony clustered close to her and Twilight concentrated on the location and her teleport. Five was now seven, forcing her to expend even more energy, but with Eunomie’s trailblazing it wasn’t nearly as hard as it would be teleporting blind. A circle of light drew around the seven equestrians and they instantly shrank down into a pinprick of light.

Comments

[Brawny Steed]

Between watching the latest episode and reading this, I chose this and OHGODI'MSITTINGBYTHEEDGEOFMYCHAIR.

It's all coming crashing down fast and hard. I can barely contain my excitement. And I can barely imagine Twilight's expression when she finds out her mom has been replaced as well.

Good Lord, this is awesome!

[Obsidian Ink]

And here's the moment we've all been waiting for!

[elmagnifico]

Ahgamahgafragga.

*bounces on toes waiting for next update*

Also, anyone here read Dreadnaught by Cherie Priest? This chapter's mention of railyards makes me wonder if Terre Rare or Neighpon has any armored blockade-buster trains in their arsenals...

[Walabio]

Oh Twilight, ¡you need to use the genderswapping spell on your parents because that is not your mom!

¡Fluttershy definitely should have insisted on bring Harry The Bear as her +1!

[RevelRomp]

I feel kinda guilty for my feelings, but this chapter is kinda cathartic. I've never liked changelings, partly because a lot of the RP I used to enjoy in a MUSH was completely overshadowed thematically when residental changeling drama became commonplace. I'm more OK with the violence than I probably would be otherwise...

Also, drama. And Celestia acting like Princess Badass. And Pierce in a pretty outfit. YAY PIERCE.

[Heron Brokengear]

Its nice to finally see Celestia acting like a nuclear goddess rather than a pushover.

[Amneiger]

It's starting it's starting it's starting it's starting

I can't wait to see the look on Chrysalis's face when Twilight pulls her spell off

Oh man she cut her hoof off why couldn't that have been in the actual show

yes

[Ack Sed]

By Celestia's Beard, Stallion!Celestia (Solaria?) was great. Badass Celestia, though... Start the cheesy metal music because IT'S GOING DOWNTOOWWWN!

[Rocketknightgeek]

I do have to wonder if the Royal wedding chapel is currently just a nuclear inferno.

[FashionablyHospitable]

3951780

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that would cause too much damage to Canterlot. She's probably just filled the place with plasma.

Aaaand we've come to the fighting part. Badass Celestia is awesome. Interesting that she recognizes the torcs and can call them by name.

And what happened to Chrysalis... I guess you could say she was...

DISARMED.

Oh, wait, hooves, never mind. :(

[djthomp]

The R63 spell? Huh?

Oh yeah, to disrupt the illusion.

SPROING
“Fluttershy! Your wing just pegged me right in the eye!”
“S-s-sorry…”

Hah!

Placing one hoof on top of the podium she had stood behind, Princess Celestia crushed it flat in one go, sending splinters and twisted bars of metal flying. The carpet beneath her burned away, ending the gender-swap illusion from before, but not returning her to her usually tranquil visage. For the first time in living memory, the longest reigning Princess of Equestria was angry.

Oh god yes, oh god yes. Incidentally, I love how neatly Celestia sidestepped the issue of the hostages. It's harder to inforce your will by threatening family and loved ones if you have no pulpit from which to issue threats. It's also really nice to see Chrysalis' plans so actively go awry.

“Everpony, listen, please. The point of what the Princess did was for us to escape with this.”
A crystal ball, and the amputated black hoof still attached to it, appeared in front of her.

Nice.

Ooooo, nice job with the politicking, Rarity.

“Only I can cast a five-alliteration spell to permanently unmask every changeling in Equestria,” Twilight answered, not testily, just with a trace of annoyance at being questioned so rudely.

Whoever or whatever was impersonating Five by-Five was using it to pass on some sort of coded message over the radio… the same radio broadcast that everypony in Equestria was listening to!

Hmn, that seems bad.

It seems a little odd that Twilight never checked her parents given how frequently she is tossing around that gender bender spell. Unless she already knows her mother is a changeling? I don't remember that Twilight's conspiracy had figured that out.

[Emerald wake]

Well waiting for crescent to try to kill twi

[Emerald wake]

3952937
I think rarity warned her
She noticed (maybe) during the wedding Crescent wasn't acting quite right
Or crescent is just going to get away until the last moment

[djthomp]

3952955 Could be. I did wonder if Rarity noticed Twilight's parents acting suspiciously during the initial confrontation with Chrysalis.

[onlyanorthernsong]

holy lord , i seriously am going to have to write a whole blog post re my feelings about all of this. but wow. I always love all the little details that remind me why this is a work f genious... like say the changelings setting up a " numbers station" in the midst of Canterlot hiding in plain sight.

Oh and yes when ol' sunbutt got serious.... dear god, literally. get out of her way, because just looking at her will kill you.

[Emerald wake]

3952967
I honestly expected twi to speak up when celestia asked if "there is any reason these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace" or something.
But that's a bit clichéd

we've waited 400k+ words for this moment some longer than others, but reading celestia literally use her sun like a ten year old with a magnify glass that burnt ants to a crisp, she amputated chrsy... so worth it!

[Convisku]

Alright! It's finally on!

Celestia giving Twilight a chance to speak was a nice change compared to the show. Celestia very quickly becoming very angry was just nice. The fact that she appears to be willingly endangering the hostages in order to destroy her enemy (and protect her little ponies in the immediate vicinity) is cool, especially since that's a ruse and she's sent her best to rescue them. The Conspiracy(ies)'s plan(s) have gone somewhat awry with the lack of an immediate knockout blow, but poor little Chrissy has things going a bit worse.

Oh? I had thought that Twilight knew about her mother since the dual-duel, but maybe that was just extra info we saw as readers. Or she's leading her to Eunomie in order to do... something. Or something. Things.

An excellent chapter! Definitely looking forward to Lyra et al. reappearing!

[Quantum_Shift]

Chapter theme:

I await the next chapter eagerly.

[Celestial]

>TPS rapidfire update
YES
>Prince Solaris
YES
>Competent situation defusing
YES
>Celestia laying down the fight
YEEEEESSSS
>Twilight (probably) planning to genderswap Equestria
OH MY GOD YES
>Managing a very good level of tension without any possible casualty
HAVE MY BABIES

That said, I do agree that it's a bit off that Rarity forgot to tell Twilight about her parents. Also the ideas with Sand Dune are flying off the shelf, I mean anchoring before the marriage would be a huge boon, but 1) Yeah it's probably not the case to make a Hard Reset 2 (well, 3 really) and 2) Magic is as magic does, so can't really talk with any certainty.
Another thing that stuck out is how there's no mention of the Blueblood murder so far. But oh well, o me of little faith, I shall probably be satisfied and more in the next chapter(s)!

Thanks so much for writing this, your story is a pleasure and an inspiration

[RoboRed]

And so it begins...

I love it whenever I see someone writing Celestia going into full-on attack mode like that. It's awesome, and strangely, I don't see it enough.

Damn uptight, squabbling, power-hungry nobles...I hates them, I do. So mistrusting of each other and more worried about power and self-gain than the fate of the nation...

I hope we get to see something awesome with Vinyl and 'Tavi.

[coandco]

“I do not stop you from tending to your Princess. Let me attend to mine!” “Here, here!”

Same here -- "here, here" should be "hear, hear".

“Okay, everypony, we should be clear,” Twilight said, pulling the curtains closed. “Right, dad?”

When "dad" is being used as a proper name like it is here, it should be capitalized ("This is Dad" versus "This is my dad").

[sopchoppy]

[nemryn]

OH SNAP

And that's why you don't mess with a Princess, kiddos.

[Leftover of Saikano]

Ah, Malestia, how glorious
static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100920091361/saintseiya/images/f/ff/300px-Ar.jpg
It's cool seeing the princess being badflank.

[Bugsydor]

I'm hoping twi actually knows her mom has been replaced, but that notion is really far-fetdhed at this point and she wouldn't have jeapordized her mission by letting a known changeling accompany her. I've got to give you props for managing to get her away from Rarity before she Rarity could let her know. This is going to be a doozie...

[websterhamster]

3964085 Don't forget her spell would have revealed Twilight Velvet were she a changeling.

[FreedomFiend]

"The Best Night Ever" = five chapters.

"This Platinum Crown," the sequel to "The Best Night Ever" = forty-six chapters and counting.

media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsrhfbhgyE1qmr0k3.gif

[Capn_Chryssalid]

3926263
It occurs to me I never answered your follow up question...
A Ritter given actual training and attention of that sort would have an advantage in two main areas. She's already at her peak speed and strength, really, but her warlike talents being accepted and embraced would greatly improve her teamwork and her emotional mindset. These are more intangible gains than just saying 'she's be stronger' but Ritter's mentality is very much one of her weaknesses. I think you'd end up with a pegasus with all of her normal strengths and a much more stable personality, which would be dangerous indeed.
This is one of the things that sort of contrast her with Fluttershy, as half-sisters. Both are really outcasts in normal pegasus society; Fluttershy for being more like an earth pony and Ritter for being more like a griffin. I guess there's something screwy with Winter Bora's genes! lol. But either one of them I could also see following in his footsteps as a 'monster hunter' just in their own ways.
3928401
Twinkling Star Light may have considered it ("Think of the possibilities!") but Cruciger probably exercised his executive veto ("Hrm. I'm not so sure.").
3936094
Close, but not quite.
I am aiming for a chapter a week, released on the weekends. (crossing fingers) I just hope I can keep up the pace.
3938298
There will be more, rest assured, though the focus is more on the different hives/swarms that Chrysalis has gathered together rather than the castes within the changelings themselves. Though there is a bit of that, too, but changeling castes are very simple: drones (infertile females), greater drones (infertile females given a taste of royal jelly), Princesses (fertile females given royal jelly), and Princes (males, though we have yet to see one), and the single Queen who commands every Hive as the source of said royal jelly (and the source of males).
I'll add that there is traditionally just one Queen and one Princess, but Chrysalis, having broken from tradition in many ways, has already stated she has many daughters that she keeps vying with one another for her favor. But overall, the scheme is very simple, and mostly relevant as it shows how Queens keep power over their swarm.

[Lurks-no-More]

Holy! Now, we find out why you do not want to make Princess Celestia mad. I'm enjoying this chapter rather thoroughly.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

3947632
Celly, I think, would be unhappy indeed. Especially since the bridesmaids that are a genuine threat to her were created by Brass in the first place! And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
3950391
A fine idea, and I think I did mention that Cruciger had personal armored cars for the trains that supplied his army. But they sadly won't be as useful here, as the changelings have outright collapsed the tunnels into Canterlot.
3950877
Yes, changelings can be quite popular and always have the treat of overshadowing a story they appear in. I hope that won't happen here. I've tried to integrate them into TPC at the end here as antagonists, and even interesting antagonists, but not scene stealers. That's Pinkie's job, after all.
As for them being killed in large numbers, well... expect a lot of unicorns and nobles to be biting the dust, too. In a way, this must be ideal for a few readers. lol. The groups they hate the most, changelings and nobles, are blasting the hell out of one another.
3950980
I'm arranging where to place Celestia's fight scene right now. Most likely, it will be in the next chapter (I just want to line it up with one of Twilight's scenes which I still need to write). I do fret a bit about how it'll be received though, since I'm basically deviating from canon by having Celly do more than fly and horn-blast. It can't be helped, though...
3951360
I don't think you'll be seeing too much amputation in MLP. Haha. Funny little fact: it wasn't even in my original outline for TPC (originally Chrys just drops the crystal when she dodges). I was just writing the scene and thought: 'wow, Chrys has really pushed basically all of Celestia's buttons with her threats, the old cyclops is pissed off, wouldn't it be cool if...' and so I wrote in the laser slice. It goes to show that, when writing, you should always be open to changes and improvisations that enhance scenes, and I think this was definitely one of them.
3952336
One of the big things with Chalice is that she doesn't want to be cruel or destructive. It certainly isn't in her nature. But if the order comes down, or if she's pushed, then the shit will really hit the fan. Which is just why she's reserved for special occasions. The wedding here is no different, as you'll see in - I think - two chapters.
3952468
Celestia uses: DISARM
Chrysalis: "Disarm isn't supposed to cut off your whole ---ing hand!"
Celestia: "It was super effective."

[Capn_Chryssalid]

3952937 3953329
Technically everyone's plans went awry back there...
Chrysalis set up her ambushers, but they were countered by Sand Dune.
Rarity and Twilight set up their trap, and it revealed Chrysalis, but Chrys countered with hostages.
Celestia countered the hostages and rising panic by jumping in with the disarm & distract.
Chrysalis countered Celestia, though, with her bridesmaids, who have already drawn blood on the Princess.
So Chrysalis' plan to neutralize the Elements of Harmony failed, and she also failed to cow the nobles there into submission (in fact, not only did they escape, but now Rarity's rallied them into outright defiance). Celestia's last-second plan broke the hostage deadlock, but also caused a fight that is a genuine danger to her. Twilight and Rarity's plans worked partly, but they totally failed to contain Chrysalis with their elements. I guess, out of everyone, Celestia probably pulled off her objectives the most cleanly. Aside from putting herself in danger, she accomplished what she wanted (albeit by trusting much of it to Rarity and Twi to rally the nobles and backtrack the crystal ball).

Point is, plans in TPC get screwed up a lot. In part, this is just because I want to portray basically everyone as quite competent at scheming at this point. Well, except maybe

3952955
How much does anyone know? Always a valid question in this story full of misdirection and lies. Velvet has been replaced for some time (hardly a surprise, given how much time Chrys-as-Cadance has been spending with her in-laws). I like that people have noticed this is situation that is brewing up, but I fear I can't say more on it without spoilers.
3952989
If you do, don't forget to link it to me. I'm always curious to hear what people think about my approaches to the story.
3952994
I based the wedding vows and speech on a less conventional ceremony, rather than the one most of us know. Partly it was because I thought it as cliched, and partly to make it less human-religion based, which I thought might've been surreal. Hence Celestia's speech stressing Equestrian values like friendship, partnership and harmony and how they relate to marriage.
3954296
Don't mess with the ladies in TPC. Though it was off screen, I imagine a Changeling jumped at Fancypants to drag him off, and Fleur just glared like "oh, you are not seriously trying that?" before unleashing a graceful ass kicking.
As for Luna, she's currently freeing Blueblood with Cadance. Don't fret. I promise she's got a lot of stuff to do, when the chronology allows it.
And, yes, Vinyl is back for her second appearance now. This time with Octavia, which is, I believe, the first I've ever written of the two of them outside the TSC crossover chapters.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

3954457
The Assassination of Prince Blueblood has yet to occur. Give it some time. I just need the right spot for it in the story. I'm glad you're psyched about Twi's future mass-gender-swap and liked the Solaris appearance! Like with Chrys' having her... sudden hoofacure... the last chapter, the idea of using the gender swap spell was a bit of improv I added, just because I thought it would be more fun than a mass-dispel spell or something. As a plus, it was hinted at way back at the start of TPC, when Pinkie asks Twilight if she can do a genderswap spell so Pinkie can attend Blueblood's guys-only stag party. Twi basically says, if there was such a spell, it shouldn't be used to frivolously. Skip forward 40 chapters and...
Sand Dune reminded you of Hard Reset, huh? Looking back, I can see why, though I hadn't thought of it at the time. It is the premier time-loop-plus-changeling-invasion story after all.
3954569
Oh yes, more Vinyl and Tavi next chapter. It's a guarantee, because I've already written it. haha.
As for the nobles, I hope you can cut them a little slack. Yes, a few were quick to pick up on "if my superior's gone, then now I lead X or Y" but most were - as Rarity observed - just very afraid, both for themselves and for their families and for Equestria as a whole. I've always tried to portray the nobles of Equestria as a diverse group. Even just among one family, like the Terre Rare, you see stark divisions. They're not monolithic.
Hence why many just wanted to go "Celestia is the only important thing" and charge back into the church to fight alongside her (and die), others decided "we have to find Luna" and subsequently clashed with those who took their oath to the second sister less seriously in what is clearly a crisis, others outright fled to see to their families and homes, others just pleaded for everyone to get organized, etc. The universal failing of Equestria's aristocracy is its disunity, as Rarity had learned over the 40 plus chapters of TPC. Without Celestia around, they bicker. A lot. This has been exacerbated even more by Chrysalis and Alpha Brass, but the strong stabilizing influence that is supposed to be the Blueblood family and the Duchess of Canterlot has faded over the last century, causing this mess.
3955249
Thanks man. Corrections made, as always.
3957806
Ha. Yeah. I know. That sort of thing was never my strong point. I think I can make up for it with action and intrigue, though, which are more up my alley.
I'll also add, in confidence, that while Rarity isn't a prep-time min-maxxer like a certain somepony she's developed into a competent planner of her own. Remember her working on those dresses next chapter (or perhaps the one after, depending on how much I can cram into the next 20 pages).
3958496
I'll admit that Cruciger's "Hrm" is basically his version of "Eyup" - very true.
3964880
Chrysalis is an alien, horrible monster... she's also a loving mother. Is there a conflict? But that sort of feeling was just what I was hoping to evoke (that, and setting things up for a reveal later). You can feel sorry for her, you can empathize with her... she just won't empathize back. That's also, say, the difference between you and most readers and Alpha Brass. I think we ALL want to see the changelings defeated (and maybe even Chrysalis killed) but we can feel for her when she's angry and hurt at seeing her babies killed. Alpha Brass, for all that he wants what we want, would watch that with a straight face and not feel a thing (and, come on, you just know he's involved in that mess, don't you?). I can even imagine Chrysalis mentioning it to him at some point (there was an accident near the Everfree... a clutch of my children were lost) and Brass feigning pity (I'm sorry to hear that).
Brass's 'juju'? As he readily admits, he "gives mares what they want." It is his special talent, as Star Light says. Twilight herself notes that he makes her feel confident and happy and stronger than ever before. Combined with his natural calculated charm... and you get predictable results. This special talent wouldn't be too strange, even then, except Brass can clearly have this effect on more than just Twilight. Lyra also felt this exact same way when she visited the gardens. She felt more creative than ever before, and she played better than she ever had, though she attributed it to being around so many other musicians and artists and being given a new harp. By now, I don't think it is a spoiler to point out that what Lyra was experiencing is very much what Twilight is experiencing, and that it was/is Brass himself at the root of it all.

[Forderz]

I think the most triumphant moment in this fic will be the moment Blueblood's entourage meets up with Rarity.

Seeing Rarity covered in blood and mud, and Blueblood looking positively resplendent (along with his fabulous guards) is going to be amazing.

[Celestial]

3965573
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." - Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke

It really shows, like in the rest of the fic of course, that you know your schemes very well indeed. Must take some amount of notes to keep track of everyone not to mention that, ironically enough, the best plans in fictions go wrong somewhere (and then get winged and succeed again), like you had there. Great job, again

[onlyanorthernsong]

3965573

well I hate to disappoint as it would probably not be a nuanced description examinging every plot development,

but porbably just me gushing about this story in an overall sense and asking all 20 of my followers to come read it.

I have often recommended this fic on the reddit MLP subreddits, so as an example i will just cut and paste some of the praise for this story that i have posted on there:

This Platinum Crown gets nowhere near the amount of love it deserves, despite being in my opinion the best ponyfic that is still being updated and being by far the most ambitious Ponyfic I have ever heard of.

This fact seems even more strange when you realize that it is the sequel to a very popular fanfic, the short and hilarious Groundhog day Homage The Best night ever but it's kind of explained by the fact that Platinum Crown is way way more complex and dense than best night ever...

as I said once before while recommending " This Platinum Crown":

" best night ever" is The Hobbit, "This Platinum Crown" Is Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion combined, with Middlemarch and War and Peace and even One Hundred Years of Solitude thrown in the blender as well. Some people can't make the transition, because it demands so much from you ,( in all seriousness you will probably have to make yourself a chart to keep all the characters and their relationships/interests/allegiances/intrigues straight) but it is SO rewarding. It goes into the politics of Equestria and gives you an entire sociological analysis of the society in a way the show cannot and never will while raising the stakes tremendously and occasionally exploding into epic breathless action. it offers COMPLETE immersion into a fully thought out world. You can feel the weight and substance of every structure, whether it be of the architectural kind or the societal kind.

It is also WAY more breathlessly exciting than a worlbuilding pony political intrigue epic has any right to be.

The comapriuosn to Middlemarch and the talk of solidity is what i want to emphasize . Tjhis fanfict si to mea a " sopurcebook"... perhaps no work has given me a better sense of the spatial and social dynbamics of equestria tahn this fanfic. this equestria just seems so much ,more e real than any opther equestria i have encountered.. so much more thought out. Thi iss THE worldbuilding ponyfic for me.( pardon for the typos, i am writing this on a bad laptop my normal been recently stolen. I can use teh english language i swear.)

[Midnight Rook]

The poor mare would probably wear her steton over

You're missing an 's' in 'stetson'.

[Thisisalongname]

Could you please split this story up into seperate stories. As it stands this would be 14th on the list of longest novels, just in front of atlas shrugged and war and peace. Its 650k word count is daunting and puts me off ever picking back up where I left off 100s of thousands of words ago. I know this story could be split as what ive read could already be classified as two stories and you have even mentioned arcs in the synopsis. It would do wonders for bringing in new readers and allowing fans to more accuratly find and reread their favorite parts if this were five or six seperate stories as sequals. Please do this, I beg you.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

3974506
Unfortunately, the story isn't really in a position where it can be cut into pieces and posted separately. Should I delete all the back chapters here, say, everything after 9 (the Antimony Arc being 1-9), and move it all into a new story, prompting people to re-fav and re-sub? I really don't like the thought of leaving people in the dark, especially given how much trouble I just had switching my EQD page (TPC has two, one pre-chap30, one post-chap30).

Personally, I always thought that this was the most convenient layout: the entire fic, all on one place. I added the chapter zero table of contents to help with this (though it needs updating every few new chapters). I actually DID do something very much like what you suggest when I wrote Gauntlet (a PPG fic), where each installment of the story was a separate fic, but that was mostly artistic, as I wanted it to also be a countdown (the first having 6 chapters, the second 5, etc, down to just one). Afterwards, I thought about how confusing and inappropriate it was on FFN to make people jump through hoops like that and didn't repeat it. "One story, one link" was my thought.

The story here IS long, and I know it can be intimidating, but imagine all the people who will be opposed to that move, too. I'm in between a rock and a hard place with a suggestion like that. Either way - keeping to the course, or changing course - I'll upset people. I very much understand where you're coming from and I see the merits in your suggestion, but technically and practically, you have to see how it can cause lots of problems, too? TPC is nearing the end, though. Maybe once the "complete" label is attached, the length won't be quite as intimidating. Maybe if I could go back in time a year or so, I could fix this, but near the end? I just don't see how.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

3982643 what!? No! There's no need to split this!

[onlyanorthernsong]

3982643 It is a tough decision. But I would not spilt it. I think if anything people are less likely to read a series of stories than one massive one. Just think of how many readers you have lost compared with " the best night ever!". What is more i have spoken to a few people who have given up on this story and they never seem to get past the first two chapters. , once they see how dense anbd demanding this story will be. This is in no way my way opf saying you should rewrtie those frist twio c chapters, just s another way of me stating that I for one see no benefit in splitting this story up.
s
If anything the massiveness of this story is part of its appeal . this story offers total immersion, and part of the way it achieves that is through the length and the details. those 20000 word chapters only help us get lost in the world you have crafted.

[Ponibius]

Well then, things have been getting serious the last two chapters. All the plans are crashing into one another now, and we're starting to learn how much everypony really knows and what their plans are... And it is glorious. Everyone's plans really didn't turn out as expected at the wedding itself. Though things are looking quite grim at the moment.

Should be interesting to see if the Elements gang knows Twilight Velvet is a changeling or not...

I did like how Celestia pretty much roughshotted over Chrysalis's hostage plan. She probably understands the type of monster Chrysalis is, and how she can't be dealt with honestly. Chyrsalis is a monster through and through (and Nope! Nothing can be done to make me feel sympathetic towards that character. And given I can understand and sympathize about 90+% of the characters in this story...).

[kajisora]

"Um... I'd like to bring Harry here as my plus one. If that's alright, of course"

"My apologies ma'm but we simply cannot allow that. He bearly fits in that suit of his. And what if he got into a fight with one of the guests? The situation could get hairy. Grizzly even! I am truly sorry, but even if you are element of harmony, there are some things we simply cannot panda-r to."

"Ya done?"

"yes ma'm."

Genderswap Celestia is now officially the Galactic (Celestial?) Bishounen.

Dammit why did it take me so long to notice this pun? Sure, hur-hur sand dune. She even made the spice reference, and all the sand related Dune jokes. She's named Dune. She has time magic. She's the current head of the Quartz clan. Her parents wanted to name a sibling SAND WORM!
She's the Quarzite Matriarch!
also, yayy, useful time magic for ambushes.

On a slightly more serious note,
dammit Twi! you're dealing with shapeshifters, they've infiltrated everywhere and you have a relatively easy way to tell them apart. vet your party!
I am looking forward to seeing her cast that much awaited five-alliteration spell. I do hope they'll be able to counter whatever Brass is planning afterwards or during. Probably dual deicide. The situation is really very convenient for that, and he's in a perfect position to take over if that happens. Including what is probably the only unicorn capable of raising the sun in their absence

[Fox]

Wait, so... What happened to Twinkleshine and Lyra? How could they be at the wedding, fighting Celestia, and then be back at the caves before Luna realises what's happening, with no recollection that the invasion had already begun?

Unless they're stalling Chrysalis so the others can free the hostages?

[Psyco Josho]

Oh gosh. The changeling replacing Velvet is going to mess things up...

[heynow]

Does anyone else think Loud Mouth is a reference to Howard Stern?

[FOXTrot2]

“Loud Mouth,” Red Robin, the earth pony mare next to him whispered, “I really think you should--”

Anyone else finding Robin to be just a little off keil with the rest of the staff?
Even just one snetnece, and I start think of Robin and Batmare.

Only she's red. And a girl.

I don't know. I just can't help but imagine her as somewhat special compared to the other radio staff.

I half expected Vinyl to pull out a Bass Canon and go on a bug blasting marathon!

[heynow]

“Oh dear.” It was hardly the most manly of words from their new stallion demigod of love and light, but at least they were blessed by his voice. His heavenly voice. This Prince of Princes!

I thought the spell didn't affect voice.