Chapter 31 - Faithless Hope, Hopeless Faith
**Thirty-Thirty**
They might have short legs, but Thirty-Thirty had to admit that these little ponies could really motor when they wanted to. He was actually having to canter along the hallway to keep up with the small herd and, even with the carpet down the middle providing some cushioning, his metal shoes were kicking up quite a racket from the stone floor. There'd been some kind of commotion in the hall outside their room, and then Twilight had shouted for them all to follow her and shot out of the place like her tail was on fire.
Applejack put on a short burst of speed, both ponytails streaming out behind her as she surged up towards the front of the pack. Unlike the rest of the small group, she didn't seem too bothered by the pace being set, her voice still relatively steady as she caught up with Twilight.
"I get that there's some sorta emergency goin' on, Twi," she asked, "but could ya maybe tell us what's got ya so dang fired up? What're we runnin' into here?"
"I don't know," Twilight said, head set forward and breathing heavily, "I might be wrong, I hope I'm wrong, but I think... I think Princess Celestia might be in trouble."
"But the throne room's that way!" Pinkie Pie called out, indicating an adjoining corridor with a hoof as their tiny stampede rolled past. She somehow managed to keep moving forwards, three legs blurring underneath her, while simultaneously turning her whole body to keep her outstretched leg pointed at the mouth of the hallway as she passed it.
"We're not, going, to the throne room," Twilight called back over her shoulder, sucking in increasingly heavy breaths with every few words, "not yet."
"Well then, where are we goin'?" Applejack persisted.
Twilight ran on for a moment in silence before answering, "To ask a very stupid question."
*
"Absolutely not. And the same to thee, Dayspring. Take that armour back off."
Thirty-Thirty stood just inside the chamber door. That was as far as he could force himself to go into what he now recognised as Luna's room. The white-and-gold-appointed ostentatiousness of the place set his teeth on edge, and that was nothing compared to the feelings engendered by the dark mare pacing back and forth beside the bed. Even if she was preoccupied with wearing a groove into the white stone floor, he still saw her glance in his direction every once in a while. He couldn't help flinching a little every time she did, and then cursing himself for it.
This was what he had to do to get home, so he was doing it. Didn't mean he had to like it.
Twilight had led her little herd into the room, quickly blurted something about guards, arcanite and the pony he'd shot two nights ago, and then asked Luna to come with her to the throne room in case something had happened to Celestia. To say the lunar princess and her guards had taken the proposition poorly would probably be somewhat of an understatement.
The little dappled bat-winged pony whom Luna was addressing stopped halfway through donning what looked like a suit of armour, a few black metal leg plates already fixed on top of a heavy padded cloth undersuit. "You should not go in there unprotected," she declared. For some reason Thirty had yet to discern, this 'Dayspring' sounded different to the other Lunar guards. They all sported some degree of British accent, but the others were just a hint here and there. This one sounded so stereotypically upper-class it was almost a parody of itself. "Neither should you face her alone. Not this time."
Luna stopped pacing, raising a hoof as if to stomp on something. Then she slowly placed it back down again, taking a steadying breath, and stared down her muzzle at the half-dressed guard. "I don't know whether to curse your newfound rebellious streak or kiss you, but this is hardly the time to be arguing with me."
Thirty blinked, then glanced down at the rest of the ponies in front of him. Strangely, none of them seemed to be reacting to the princess's professed desire to kiss one of her guards. Twilight in particular only seemed to be half-listening — she was looking down and off to one side, ears still perked but mouthing something to herself. After a few moments, something seemed to surprise the small purple pony, and she started blushing furiously.
The guard's cheeks had also coloured slightly at first, but shuddered at the final reprimand, a twisted expression of pain and disgust flickering across her features. "I am not arguing with you," she said slowly, almost forcing the words out, "because I can't. I am suggesting an alternative course of action, and waiting for your decision. Please don't make this any harder on all of us."
"I will not," Luna replied, voice low and threatening, "go before my sister caparisoned for war. Never again. Do you hear me?"
Dayspring leaned back, almost cowering, but held her ground in silence.
The princess's expression hardened, and suddenly she was almost shouting. "I said—"
The guard's head snapped down into a low bow, her right foreleg bent. "Yes Mistress. I hear you."
Luna's anger suddenly evaporated, her ice-blue eyes widening in shock. She pressed a silver-clad hoof to her muzzle as if she thought she might force her own words back inside it, a tiny sound somewhere between a gasp and a whimper escaping her lips.
As the princess began some sort of apology, Pinkie Pie leaned into Applejack and loudly whispered, "What's going on?"
"Beats me sugarcube," Applejack replied, angling her head towards Twilight. "Twi? You understandin' any o' this?"
Twilight started, face still slightly flushed. "Um, I, ah, I mean, I recognised a few words here and there," she stammered, "but, um, I think my Old Equestrian might be a little rusty because... well, never mind why."
"Dayspring wants to put her armour on, and her boss ain't lettin' 'er," Thirty-Thirty said. All five pairs of ears turned back towards him, closely followed by the attached heads. "Somethin' about her sister and gettin' gussied up for war that she don't like, so the eager little soldier's gettin' yelled at. You all not listenin' or something?"
"You..." Twilight began, then her eyes widened. "No way," she said, excitement bubbling up beneath her words. "You can understand that? Oh, I am so getting Luna to teach me that spell when we get back." Twilight began rocking from side to side lightly, not quite succeeding in suppressing an excited jig. "I was learning Old Equestrian anyway, but that would make things so much easier! I mean, I'll still learn it properly, but this would let me get started on—" She paused, noticing the expressions of the ponies around her. "Okay, okay," she said sheepishly, "so not the right time for this."
"None o' you can understand what they're sayin'?" Thirty asked.
"Nope," Applejack said, as all five ponies shook their heads.
"They're speaking Old Equestrian, and it's not even the standard form," Twilight commented. "Back then there were large variations from village to village, never mind on a national level. Not to mention all the distinctions between formal speech and common vernacular, and all of the slang terms and crazy irregular pronouns."
Before Twilight could get any further along her train of thought, Rarity skillfully cut in. "We'd be ever so grateful if you could keep us appraised of what's going on," she said sweetly, eyes flicking back towards Luna and the guard.
Turning his attention back to the pair, Thirty realised the other bat-winged guards had joined the first. It seemed he'd missed some sort of change of heart during the brief distraction, as the other three were helping the first get the rest of her armour on. The lighter suits worn by her fellows, or the golden ones the solar guards favoured, looked like they belonged on a parade ground. This plate suit looked as if it would be right at home on an ancient battlefield, drenched in mud and blood. A trained soldier would face down enemies wearing the ornamented guard armour without flinching, but Thirty was certain the sight of this elegant, yet brutally efficient personal fortress thundering across a field would make a hardened veteran piss himself.
Every inch of the pony's body was covered by curving black armour plate, shaped to redirect and deflect weapon strikes. Heavy hoof boots thudded against the floor as Dayspring shifted around, solid metal weights that would likely shatter skulls as easily as they would stave off crippling blows to her legs. Overlapping segmented sections covered her joints and neck, maximising flexibility while retaining almost the same protection as the rest of the suit. The segmented section protecting her neck widened out at the top, wrapping around the back of Dayspring's head and enclosing her entire lower jaw — the 'helmet' was more of a visor fixed into place on top, covering the mare's face and ears. There were no concessions to comfort whatsoever - the places that would normally be open slits over the eyes and ears were instead finely perforated grilles, and the hot, heavy suit would doubtless be hellish to wear for more than a few minutes at a time. But, just like the field plate of ancient Earth, the protection such a suit would provide against primitive weaponry would amount to near invulnerability.
That made the seemingly obvious flaw in the suit's protection even more surprising - Dayspring's bare wings protruded through two slots in the upper back, the membranous limbs completely exposed.
"You know as much as I do already," Thirty-Thirty said, "but it looks like someone changed her mind while we were jawin', 'cause the armour is goin' on anyway."
With that said, he looked at the larger pony in question. Luna stood a little apart from the guards, having backed off a short distance, but her thoughts on the situation before her were clear for all to see. Thirty-Thirty had seen that expression before, on different faces, across different worlds, but always the same. The face of somebody watching someone they love make a terrible mistake, desperate to talk them out of it but unable to find the words.
Nothing good ever came of moments like this.
**Twilight Sparkle**
"She doesn't believe us, you know. That we chose this."
Twilight looked to her right. Even though she'd probably spent more time around them than any other pony during her studies almost a year ago, she was ashamed to admit that noctrals still frightened her. Especially Luna's four guards. There was just something... off about them, something alien and unsettling that she could never quite get over. The wings, the slightly shaggier tufted coats, the eyes. The teeth.
It was always the teeth. You'd hear a normal voice, and sense a normal pony next to you, then you'd turn around to look and you'd see a flash of something sharp, something lethal. They all had them, even the foals. It was almost possible to ignore the sharp needle-point canines on the civilians, especially given their smaller size — and, of course, it helped to know that they were for punching through thick fruit rinds rather than the skin of other creatures.
The larger predatory teeth of the Princess's guards, on the other hoof, were always unsettling. They were definitely not for getting the juice out of oranges; Nightmare Moon had made certain of that. They couldn't even eat fruit any more, so it wasn't like they had a choice, but that didn't make it any less frightening to be stood muzzle-to-muzzle with somepony who could drink you like a juice box.
On an intellectual level Twilight knew it wasn't really any different to standing next to a carnivorous griffin; but griffins were a completely different size and shape, the mind expected them to be different. There was just something in that conflict of instincts telling her that the stallion walking beside her was both herd and danger that made her skin crawl, and Twilight found her inability to explain or overcome that instinctive prejudice incredibly annoying.
She had clocked up quite a few hours of interview time talking to Echo during her prior studies, and even her passing familiarity with the black stallion wasn't entirely enough to override the instinctive response. Twilight was fairly certain he noticed it every time, and he'd never been anything less than honest with her when he had spoken, but Echo hadn't confronted her about it. She didn't exactly shy away whenever he got close, but Twilight was certain there were dozens of other little bits of body language that betrayed her nervousness.
Predators can always tell when prey is frightened.
"Well," she replied, "it doesn't really seem like the choice most ponies would make. I think I figured out why you all did, but you've never exactly spelled it out. If I'm right, then I don't think Luna would even have considered the possibility, given how she feels about herself."
At the mention of Luna's name, Echo's amber eyes flickered backward, towards the rear of their small procession. Twilight would have liked to go faster than a walk, but the same fears that drove her to action were holding her back. She didn't want to be right about this, and even if she could have driven herself to move quicker, Twilight was sure Luna wouldn't be able to force herself towards a confrontation with Celestia any faster than they were already going. As it was, Luna was trailing along at the back of the group, almost pulled along in its wake and surrounded by the other three Night Guards. Twilight and Echo were leading the group, with everypony else in between — the hulking form of Thirty-Thirty gravitating towards the front, away from Luna.
"Then you already know that that is exactly why we did it. Those who do not covet power are the most suitable to wield it." Echo walked on in silence for a few moments, armoured boots clinking faintly against the castle floor. "Most of our people gave up hope when Luna changed. They resisted the Nightmare and were broken, forced into its service, because they believed our Princess was dead. That is why they did not survive the trials of the Empty Void, and only we few endured - guards and civilians both. By the time our long exile was over, there was nothing left of them but shadow, nothing to survive the return of the light. We few still had hope somewhere within us, corrupt as we were. Because when our Princess demanded our fealty, even while she was lost to pride and despair, we gave it willingly; because we knew that one day she would rise again, and that on that day, she would be profoundly alone. Hope is a heavy burden to bear, but all of us were glad to carry it for her, for as long as was required of us. Even if we four are still touched by Midnight's hoof, we are blessed to see Luna again, and to know that the rest of our people are free.
We weren't entirely correct about our Princess being alone on that day," Echo said, a half-smile stretching the white diamond splashed across the fur of his muzzle, "but then again, I believe you're already familiar with that part. You six Sunwalkers did more for the scattered remnants of our people than generations of your forebears ever had, when you saved our Princess from herself."
"Not enough that you'll stop using that word, apparently," Twilight replied, with a small smile of her own spoiling the affected offense in her voice.
"I'll stop when you do," Echo replied pointedly. Twilight felt her cheeks heat a little, and her ears twitch back in embarrassment. "We're both working on being more accommodating. Maybe one day you won't shiver every time one of us dirty fruitbats gets within touching distance, and I won't need to remind you."
"Sorry," Twilight said. "I am trying."
Echo's gaze softened a little. "I know. I'm not trying to make you feel bad. It's just that..." Twilight watched as Echo's eyes turned forward again, his gaze fixed on something beyond the horizon. "There aren't enough of us left that we can continue to live in isolation. If you can't accept us, what chance do we have with anypony else?"
They walked on in silence, as Twilight's thoughts returned to the confrontation ahead. They were almost to the throne room.
**???**
Wearing his guard armour was actually a rather novel experience, even if it had been sized and fitted for a younger, less indolent version of himself many years ago. Technically he'd always possessed a rank, of course, but in his old life the idea of dressing as a common soldier had hardly been appealing. Under these circumstances, however, it was better to become a part of the throne room's scenery than to be visibly malingering there in his more official capacity.
"Why isn't it working?"
He resisted the urge to glance aside at the guard's whispered inquiry. The Princess' increasing paranoia would work in their favour, but only if it wasn't directed at them. Giving her cause for suspicion would only lead to trouble.
"Patience," he murmured, allowing his gaze to continue to wander naturally about the room. "The distress and confusion lasted hours for us, with only a single lifetime of thought and memory to correct. It will be far worse for her."
His companion persisted, "But what are we going to do if Luna shows up? She could ruin everything."
At that, he allowed himself a small smile. "On the contrary," he replied, "I'm rather counting on it."
**Twilight Sparkle**
The threshold of the Royal Seat is to be guarded at all hours by a minimum of two (2) sentries, to be drawn from the ranks of the Royal Guard as per special selection requirements in Section 7.
She could still hear Shining Armor's voice reading it back to her. He'd been the one trying to learn the special orders for the throne room guard post at the time, but of course that information - which Twilight had no real use for - had lodged itself firmly in her brain too, and refused to leave. Despite the regulations, however, there were no guards standing watch at the doors to the throne room.
"Something is definitely up," Twilight murmured, slowing as she approached the door.
Echo made a small sound of assent, then quietly added, "There should be guards here."
Twilight looked back to address the rest of the group. "I'm not sure what we're going to walk into here. If the arcanite sample Princess Celestia was planning on using today really has been corrupted somehow, then we have to get it away from her."
As she reached up to push at the door, Rarity asked, "And what if Princess Celestia is... reluctant to part with it?"
Twilight hesitated for a moment, then, leaving the question unanswered, opened the door.
The throne room was bathed in early morning light, streaming in through the large windows lining the chamber's walls. Although the guards outside the door had been absent, their fellows stationed inside were not; Twilight could plainly see a pair of golden-armoured earth pony stallions stood at the foot of the dais before her, and two more - another earth pony and a unicorn - revealed themselves at the corners of her vision when they closed the door behind the small herd trailing in her wake.
Princess Celestia sat upon her throne, the light of the rising sun reflected in her shifting, billowing mane as much as in her golden accoutrements. The display was nearly dazzling, but not unfamiliar to Twilight or anypony else who had seen the Princess sat in state at this early hour. Less familiar, however, was the large gem in the center of Celestia's golden peytral - the usual purple gem had been replaced with a deep red stone, which seemed to swallow the light rather than scatter it. More unusual still, to Twilight's eyes, was the cold, calculating indifference in Celestia's gaze. Twilight's intended greeting died in her throat, and she couldn't help but feel like she'd done something wrong, something she should be ashamed of. Something in Celestia's expression shifted for an instant as Twilight hesitated, and then the Princess's eyes moved up a fraction - over Twilight's head, to the back of the group.
"How long?" Celestia said, her voice hushed but hard as iron. Even though she spoke barely above a whisper, her voice carried through the silence enveloping the room as easily as if she were screaming. "How long have you been engaged in this charade?"
Princess Luna responded to the raw hostility in her sister's gaze with an expression of mute shock. Before she could gather herself enough to reply, Celestia spoke again.
"You weren't told about this meeting. You weren't supposed to know, and yet here you are, with your little pets in tow, hiding behind a shield you think I have not the will to break. When Loyalty was taken and the Elements broken, I became suspicious. Then, after the incident with Twilight, I had to be certain. So, I confided in her, and... here you are. I don't even know what I did wrong, when I lost you again. Or was it a lie from the very beginning?" Celestia asked. "At least answer me that much. Did my sister even return to me at all? Is there even any of her left in you?"
"S-Sister—"
"DO NOT—" Every pony in the room shrank down and pinned back their ears as Luna's halting reply was drowned out by a furious scream, loud enough to shake the floor. The temperature in the room shot up to uncomfortable levels, and the calm pastel colours weaving through Celestia's mane briefly burned through shades of red and orange. Then, Celestia bit off the rest of her reply, incendiary rage disappearing once more beneath an icy mask. "Do not insult me by attempting to prolong this farce, Nightmare Moon. If it were not for the possibility that something of Luna does still live within you, I would burn you where you stand."
Twilight recoiled, glancing from one Princess to the other in mounting fear. She thinks Luna has... No, no she couldn't have. We would have noticed something, wouldn't we? Besides, Nightmare Moon is a prideful, arrogant narcissist, she wouldn't pretend to be Luna.
With a rush of air and a whisper of shifting armour plate, Dayspring interposed herself between the elder alicorns, hovering just off the ground and facing down Celestia.
"Ita longissimus dies dēbētō conditur," she said quietly. Then, raising her lance in salute, she declared, "Te provoco."
"Hm." Celestia's brow lifted in mild surprise. "Normally I would not entertain such a proposition, but I do believe you actually have the right of challenge, Knight. Given our relative abilities, however, I feel it necessary to ask if this is truly what you want."
Longest day, must... um, wait a second, provocare, verb, to challenge. Oh. Oh no.
"Did she just—" Twilight exclaimed, looking for some sort of explanation from the other noctral guards. Everypony else in the room was watching the unfolding scene with a sort of fascinated horror. "What does she think she's doing, and why isn't Luna stopping her?"
"Because as much as it pains us all," Nightshade said, "we would sooner kill Dayspring ourselves than question her honour. She has been Luna's Lifewarden for as long as any of us can remember, and she wouldn't want things any other way. The last time they fought she wasn't there, and she has carried that burden through centuries of exile. This is her duty, her right, and her choice."
"Faciam quodlibet quod necesse est," Dayspring declared loudly, before lowering her helm's visor and leveling her lance. "Pulvis et umbra sumus, sic manēbimus." As she spoke, a flickering nimbus of liquid shadow sprung into being around the edges of her ornate armour, flowing over both the plate itself and the noctral's exposed wings. Twilight felt something old and heavy writhe against her magical senses, as that second statement simultaneously pulled something up out of an ancient archaeology book she had once read. It was a phrase sometimes found inscribed on tombs and graves in pre-unification ruins.
Dust and shadow we are, and thus we shall remain.
"So be it," Celestia replied matter-of-factly. "Die, and be forgotten with the rest of your order."
Twilight instinctively flinched back as she felt the overwhelming inrush of magic drawn to Celestia's horn. A hissing roar of superheated air tore at her eardrums as a wave of heat battered her body. The armoured noctral and the floor section above which she was hovering disappeared in a flash of molten rock and dust, torn apart by an invisible beam of raw thermal energy.
Twilight only had an instant to glance back at Celestia in shock before a black blur shot out of the expanding dust cloud, glancing off a plane of force that flickered into being a hair's breadth from the princess's head.
The lance beneath her tearing a lengthy spray of golden sparks from the shield, Dayspring swept up toward the ceiling and began to turn. One side of her dark armour still glowing cherry-red, she came about for a second charge at Celestia's back shouting, "Faciam ut mei memineris!"
I will make you remember me.
Celestia didn't change her stance, only inclining her head slightly to turn a dispassionate gaze back towards the descending guard.
"No. You won't."
Celestia's horn flashed into an instant of near-blinding luminosity. Twilight's head swam as magic ripped through the room again, and she had to fight to retain her footing against the tide. There was a sharp, wet crunch, and Dayspring was unceremoniously smashed out of the air, her sweeping dive sharply diverted straight down into the throne room's floor by a sledgehammer of telekinetic force. The stone tiles shattered, broken pieces thrusting upward like jagged shards of bone at the edges of the small crater.
Dayspring's lance landed a second after she did, torn free of her hooves by the force of the blow. The ring of metal on stone was the only sound in the ensuing silence as it skipped and rolled across the fractured marble.
The crumpled heap of black armour shuddered once, then lay still.
"What have you done?"
Luna's almost silent query was directed at her sister, but her eyes were locked on the crumpled remains of her guard.
Twilight couldn't believe what she was seeing. Princess Celestia had just killed a pony right in front of her. It hadn't even looked difficult. She hadn't tried to talk, she hadn't agonised over the decision, shown any hint of remorse. She'd taken the primal force of life and creation, and used it to...
Twilight looked into the eyes of the pony that might as well have been her second mother, and saw nothing there that she recognised.
"After what you did to them," Celestia replied dispassionately, "I would call that a mercy. There is only one escape from the waking nightmare to which you consigned them all."
"Luna saved us all," Echo shouted back at her. "Betrayer. Murderer!"
"Yes, you would think that," Celestia said, glaring at Luna with narrowed eyes. Luna was still staring at Dayspring's fallen body, seemingly frozen in place. "But then again, you can't really see it any other way, can you? She won't let you."
"Princess?" Twilight almost choked on the word, still hoping that there might be something that she wasn't seeing, something that she didn't understand that would make all of this suddenly make sense. Celestia twitched as she spoke, as if Twilight's voice pained her somehow. Slowly Celestia tore her gaze from her sister, and Twilight realised her mentor was actually having to force herself to look at her. When their eyes met, Twilight at last saw some reaction, some emotion in the elder alicorn as Celestia's dispassionate mask cracked.
Fear. Fear, and anguish, and despair.
"I'm sorry, Twilight," Celestia said quietly, voice almost breaking on her name. "I can't—" Celestia broke off, closing her eyes and turning away. "I'm sorry, but it hurts too much to see you like this. This is my punishment. That you'll see this, that you won't understand what's happened to you, and that you'll hate me for what I have to do to save you. I failed you, and this... is the price I have to pay for it. For not believing in you, and for... for being too late to protect you. She has done something to all of you, altered your minds to earn your trust. I should have guessed what had happened when I couldn't penetrate your mental defenses in our training yesterday. Of course she'd build them back up," the princess said bitterly, gaze locked back on her sister, before all trace of emotion vanished back beneath the mask. "She knew what I'd see if I got in."
"I don't know what you did to her mind in that dream," Celestia said to Luna, "or what dark magic caused that transformation, but I'm going to fix it. I'm going to save Twilight. I'm going to save her friends." The scarlet gemstone at Celestia's breast began to glow faintly, a deep crimson spark at its core. "If there is anything left of her, I am going to save my sister; and then, I am going to end you. You took my sister from me, but you will take no more. Nothing else. It ends, here."
Twilight started to open her mouth to protest, one leg rising to take a step forward, when one of the golden-armoured sentries started barking out orders from beside her. "Guards, secure the room! Get these—" There was a pained grunt and a crash of armour, and Twilight sensed a brief surge of magic behind her. Turning to look, she was stunned to see Applejack standing over the crumpled form of one of the guards, still wobbling unsteadily from the impact. Judging by the look on Applejack's face, she didn't understand what had just happened any more than Twilight did.
"W-What'n the hay?" Applejack slurred, speaking as if she couldn't remember how to work her jaw. "I didn't..."
The unicorn guard on the other side of their group cried out in dismay as his companion fell, then shouted, "We're under attack! Defend the Princess!"
Something about that voice made Twilight take more notice of the stallion. There was something strange and out-of-place about him, but she was too distressed to place it.
"Do not harm them," Celestia said, as the guards before her throne rushed forward to assist, "they are not in control of themselves. Contain the others as best you can." Celestia turned her gaze on Twilight and Luna. "Leave them to me."
Twilight felt the world lurch and swim again as Celestia drew on a colossal quantity of magic, the elder alicorn's face drawn and hopeless as she stepped forward off the throne. "Please, Twilight," she said quietly, golden light blazing along the length of her horn, "stand aside. I don't want to hurt you."
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Nice to see an update of this story, but I am not sure what had just happened here, mind shedding some light on that?
8750549
It's been too long, I'm going to have to reread this to answer that
Element of Honesty just interdicted Betrayal?
Time to force controlled Celestia into Ego Catch 22? If Luna was Evil, then she wouldnt speak the truth. But Evil would speak the truth because it lies better than lies.
Who claimed to be telling you the truth Celestia, that would best forward their own power. Would Luna want powe, she already has everything.
You know the truth Celestia, about power. Only those who dont have it and dream of having it, desire to have and use it. Those who truely have it, know what its like to use it.
And just how little is left when such happens.
My name is become Death, the destroyer of Worlds.
A god gets power from the devotion of its followers. Kill off all its followers? Puny God.
8750549
Stampede (the villain from the Braveheart world) is attempting to conquer Equestria by proxy, through the use of dark magic to corrupt certain ponies to his side. Right now, he's trying it on Celestia - convincing her that Luna never stopped being Nightmare Moon, that the Nightmare has been twisting the minds of all the other ponies around her, including Twilight and friends...
...and it looks like it's working.
Dash, strap as much kerium to your body as you can and Rainboom through the dimensional barrier.
If possible, divebomb the Hexagon while doing it to give Stampede a very bad day.
8750549
. Basically, the faecal matter has just hit the rotary air circulator.
8751072
Looks like someone answered for me
Great. Once again, Celestia goes down like a stuffed pillow when a threat emerges.
I think it's time to let Sara-Jean do the talking here. On stun of course. A very high stun.
Are we at the Year and a Half mark? Because it feels like we're at the Year and a Half mark. 😨
At least the Author is still checking the site, so that is good news...
9781327
It has been 11 months since my last comment here. It was also the most recent comment here. And still no word from the author beyond logging in. I'm now more than a little concerned for the future of this fic.
10339538
Add another 8 months to the tally.
10717402
New year, but the author hasn't logged in since my last comment. Concern is starting to escalate.
11115796
Another January with no news in sight.