Chapter 7
Second Chance found herself corralled into a large line of ponies, with leering changelings preventing any escape she might’ve attempted. There were perhaps half a dozen ponies, all adults save for herself. Of course, what she noticed even sooner was how alive the ponies looked.
“Do you know what’s going on?” she whispered to the pony beside her, an older mare with a little gray in her mane.
“No!” Her voice was an urgent squeak. “I just woke up here! This can’t be allowed, can it?”
“No.” Chance sighed. “I don’t think it is.”
They joined up with another group of ponies somewhere in the halls, stallions and colts instead of mares, though all were unicorns and all still had their cutie marks. They walked for a while through the strange plain hallways, which seemed mostly empty and unused. Whatever this place was, it was way bigger than what was actually being used.
That wasn’t to say none of the ponies fought back. As they turned a bend, a stallion with a white coat and yellow mane turned and blasted the changeling about to prod him with a wave of telekinetic force.
Drones weren’t as big as ponies, and this one was no exception. It went flying, striking a stone wall with a painful crunch. As one, the other drones all around him descended with hisses and furious screeches, piling atop the stallion and slamming into him over and over with the butts of their weapons. Nopony else fought after that, and the stallion had to be dragged along with the group. Apparently whatever fate was waiting for them couldn’t be delayed by a beating.
Chance did learn one useful thing, though she had no way to communicate it. The changelings she saw didn’t carry spears as she had first thought, or clubs. Instead, each one levitated a rifle along in front of it, like something that could’ve been used in the American Revolution, save that they weren’t so long.
The stallion was lucky they hadn’t used their bayonets.
Chance herself toyed with the idea of trying to teleport to safety. Toyed with it, except that she knew even with her best possible range she would be limited to a few city blocks, and nearly unconscious on the other end.
Even if the “thaumcraft node” in her implants was still working, she needed a sympathetic connection to wherever she wanted to go. If she knew where this building was located, if she had seen a single window and could look outside to see somewhere she could flee too, then teleportation might’ve worked.
As the line moved, the ponies in front of her growing solemn and almost placid, Chance considered her other options. She kept trying radio pings to Truth, which she knew wouldn’t work unless she was in Ponyville or near a repeater antenna, but she still tried anyway.
Damn these changelings and knowing about firearms. This planet did have firearms, though last time she had checked it was only the griffons and minotaurs who used them. Could changelings learn to manufacture guns?
The line stopped in front of a plain door, apparently no different from the others but with a pair of armored changelings standing outside instead of the regular drones. They were lined up against the wall, and there they waited, while one pony at a time was let inside.
Ponies huddled together in fear, whispering what they thought might be waiting for them once they got inside. Chance wanted to offer comfort to them, but of course she had no comfort to give.
Chance didn’t know any better than they did. No ponies emerged from the room on the other end—either there was another exit, or ponies didn’t survive.
She wasn’t stupid. Whatever happened in there probably didn’t kill a pony, it… somehow hurt them and took their cutie marks away. What process could do that? Chance knew almost nothing about cutie marks—hadn’t even been conscious when she got her own. Even so, she knew what every school filly knew, that a cutie mark was the connection between magic itself and every pony.
What did it mean if that connection was taken away?
Nanophage system.
Ready.
Are you still in emergency mode?
No delay. Negative. This unit has entered stage two recovery mode. Advanced features are still not available. Functionality should return to normal over the next 24 hours.
Do you have access to the internal medical database?
Affirmative. Database access is available even in emergency mode.
Figures. She slid forward another space along the wall, amidst terrified whimpering from the pony being led inside. Chance was at the very back of the line, right behind the only other child here. This one was a colt, slighter younger than she was with an inky mane. She didn’t pay him much mind.
Command not recognized.
She ignored her desire to scream. A little over a week ago, this subject suffered an injury, correct?
Affirmative. Subject Equestrian native suffered mild thaumic starvation. Subject was treated with—
She cut off the implant with a silent command. What are the symptoms of thaumic starvation?
She moved forward in line again. She could see the door clearly now, only a few more places ahead of her in line. She could hear deep voices conversing beyond the door, though she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.
Weakness, headaches, disorientation, or unconsciousness. Prolonged sufferers experience tissue damage consistent with radiation exposure, an increased risk of cancer—
Chance shivered. While it was true that “weakness and disorientation” could be caused by almost anything, it was also true that the ponies she had seen here matched those symptoms remarkably well.
Could someone in there be removing magic from ponies? Chance couldn’t even begin to imagine how that was possible. Yet when she had looked on the ponies in the barracks, that was exactly what she had felt. The profound wrongness that came from something sacred taken away and despoiled.
It was a decent theory, but it didn’t really help her. Didn’t help as the colt in front of her was shoved roughly through the door to his fate, and she was left alone outside it. Only three of the changeling drones remained outside to watch her, their eyes never leaving her and their weapons pointed in her direction.
Could she take three changeling drones in a fight? Not if they knew how to use those guns. Besides, if she did fight them, what would she do? She had seen hundreds of their kind in the massive structure, hundreds that could all come running if she tried anything to escape. No attempt was likely to succeed that didn’t get her immediately out of the hooves of these ponies.
Chance considered. She planned, plotting every escape attempt she could imagine. Every hallway they had used was still mapped perfectly in her mind. Maybe if she got past these three, she could make it back to the barracks, and…
And what?
Apparently nothing, because the door went swinging open, and one of her guards shoved her bodily inside. Before she could strike back, before she could try some vain and perhaps suicidal escape attempt… she was trapped inside.
The room was not well lit. There was a fire burning somewhere in the distance, but it wasn’t bright enough for pony eyes and gave her only vague suggestions. She saw a pair of dim outlines standing by the door behind her—more armored drones with their rifles. Neither seemed to much care about her, other than putting themselves between her and the door.
“Is it safe, the pony wonders.” The voice was strange, old and stretched and very feeble. The Equestrian sounded harsher somehow, though Chance couldn’t have said what gave her that impression. “What happened to the ones who came in before her?”
Chance froze in her tracks as she finally realized what her magical senses were telling her. For a second—and only a second—it seemed as though she had been ripped from her body, up into the higher order spaces upon which all reality was anchored.
The world of bodiless existence defied all sane description among third-dimensional beings, but still she saw something. Two somethings, actually.
One was a familiar form, a form made of countless mad forms of non-platonic chaos as they boiled up from ether, merging and reforming and joining in upon themselves. Discord.
The other shape was something stranger, something no younger but somehow worse. Chance thought she saw a dark star burning in the void, an angry red eye marred with horrible spots. Forgotten secrets whispered in that darkness, drawing images of tortures unremembered in a mind that had tried very hard to forget.
Second Chance slammed back into her own body, shaking from the force of the terrible impact and barely able to stay on her hooves.
The terrible voice whispered in the dark again, and she knew it wasn’t Discord’s. It didn’t seem to be speaking to her anymore, either. “Now that was interesting. You never told me ponies could possess such powers in these times.”
“They don’t.” For the year that separated Chance from her last meeting with Discord, his voice was utterly unchanged. He sounded always on the edge of joy and strange pride, more impressed with himself than he had any right to be.
Chance felt something tug at her hooves, like the levitation of a unicorn but irresistibly strong. It yanked the ground right out from under her, dragging her across the room and scraping her flank up as she went.
She moaned, kicking out against the invisible force. It was gone already of course, leaving her unmolested in the gloom. Well, maybe not quite so dark as before. She could make out a strange bulk beside the fire, though the shape her eyes suggested did not match any Equestrian creature she knew. Is that a centaur?
Of course, the figure on the other side of the single small torch did not take bright waves of light to identify. The mismatch of parts would’ve been clear to her even in darkness, without the need for an out-of-body vision.
This close to him, Chance’s magical senses told her something that didn’t make sense. There was a pull coming from the centaur creature, a sense of gravity that didn’t pull her body, but seemed to be attracting her magic. It was unlike anything she had felt, even among powerful beings like Celestia or Luna.
Chance lept to her hooves. She had been frightened of changelings, frightened of the beating they might give her and what might be waiting beyond the door. Chance might be afraid, but Kimberly Colven would not be. Kimberly had not shaken in the face of death. “Did your friendship with Equestria not mean anything to you, Discord? Could you really be working with monsters who could make a place as horrible as this?”
The vague outline of Discord shifted in the faint light. It was hard for her to tell, but it looked as though he wasn’t meeting her eyes.
He didn’t answer, but the other figure did, laughing in that old voice. “The only evil Discord ever did was betray his own nature. I suspect you know that evil well, since you yourself have given yourself a pony body to wear. We both know you’re something greater.”
“Ponies are a loving, compassionate race.” Her voice came out braver than she felt. “This does not make them lesser.”
“No,” the voice responded. “Their weakness makes them lesser.” He laughed, like the last cackles of a madman with a dagger in his lungs. The fire surged up beside him, and in that light Chance briefly saw his face.
The monster was a centaur, with black fur on most of his body but shaved red skin on his arms. Its body did not look living, but shriveled and desiccated. Fur had patches of gray, and she could even see his ribs. The monster’s eyes were black, with little yellow pinpricks of light in each one like dying suns.
“You stand here and defend them, yet you stand, don’t you see? Grown stallions four times your age quivered and trembled in my presence! Few could even speak for their terror.” He laughed again, eyes narrowing. “The age of ponies is ending, traveler. No doubt you had your own reasons for walking among them.”
He sat back, and his smile of wicked teeth was far worse than his anger. “Freedom is far better than friendship. Why shouldn’t we change this world until it serves us better?”
“She can’t.” Discord’s voice was matter of fact, and he still didn’t look at her. “Kimberly here comes from a world without magic. What power she has she borrowed from Equestria.”
“Is that so?” The toothy smile in the firelight faded, replaced with the empty cold of the void. “Not even your world is of use to me, then.”
From his sitting position, the monster rose, suddenly towering above her on spindly legs. “You will bow to Equestria’s new ruler as the ponies before you have done.”
Kimberly did not retreat, didn’t look away or lower her head. “My teacher is the best wizard in all Equestria! When she finds you, she’ll unmake all the pain you caused! And Celestia… when she finds you, she’s going to throw you screaming into the void! I’ve seen her do it.”
The monster’s dreadful laughter returned more raucous than before. She could practically hear the bones grinding together. “The pony princess has bones of glass and will of water.” He gestured vaguely at his side. “You see her plan? Her champion serves me now.”
“Serves the planet now.” Discord didn’t argue, not exactly. He did look up, though still he avoided Chance’s own eyes. “We’re going to make it safe, remember? No more Outsiders ever again.”
“Yes, yes.” Tirek waved one of his bony hands dismissively “I said bow, pony. You will show proper respect to Equestria’s new sovereign.”
Kimberly did not bow. “I met worse than you on the invisible road.” Her horn surged to life, her filly’s magic crackling and glowing the same color as her eyes. Thaumcraft node active.
I need the most dangerous attacking spell you have, right now!
“Amusing. You wish you strike me?” The monster reared up, spreading his arms in a passive gesture. “That feeble body is no threat to me.”
Atomic destabilization field spells are known to cause fatal side-effects if cast upon a target within a thirty kilometer radius. User confirmation required.
Yes! Do it! Chance’s mind was assaulted then, drowned with a thousand different shapes and runes and patterns. The spell filled her until there was no room for anything else.
The air in front of Chance split down the middle, torn apart by the force of gray magic. The room’s doors were blown right off their hinges even as the torch went out. Anything that wasn’t bolted down went slamming into the walls away from her.
A lance of nighted blackness blasted towards the monster, crackling with unmaking fire. Chance had never seen magic like this, yet on some deep level she recognized it anyway. It was the darkest of magic, the kind that could take something real and make it unreal. The kind of magic that left scars on the world that never healed.
A dark star grew in the void, a star of swirling yellow and nighted blackness without end. Kimberly’s lance, a lance that might’ve killed the monster and Kimberly herself and everypony else in the building… never struck. Instead of striking him, the magic unraveled, fading to a feeble gray glow as it neared him.
The monster swallowed it, then chewed as though it were something physical.
Chance collapsed, the strength gone from her limbs. Such a powerful spell required great strength from her—though less than she had expected. She wasn’t unconscious.
“A respectable effort,” the monster said, nodding toward her. “There are few wizards with the skill for true unmaking. Far fewer who would dare to use it. Pity.” He opened his mouth again, wider and wider and wider. Chance felt the pulling again, about the base of her horn.
She could scarcely put her revulsion into words. An irresistible force penetrated her magical defenses, thrusting aside whatever resistance she might’ve shown. A force that pulled and pulled and pulled, tearing deep gouges in her as it dragged every last drop of magic from her soul.
Chance collapsed like a pony strangled, shivering and whimpering no less pathetic than any of the ponies in the barracks.
The whole world went gray, colors all blurring and fuzzing together. No, that wasn’t quite right. Chance could see the flicker of the torch as Discord replaced it, still see all the browns and tans and yellows of his body. She just didn’t care.
From the other doorway, the one she hadn’t used, a pair of changelings emerged, bearing a stretcher between them in their magic. “You want to be one of them so badly, traveler? Go and join them then.” The monster turned away, but Chance no longer cared. She stared down at her hooves, wondering what she had been so angry about a few moments before.
She hardly even felt it as the changelings loaded her onto the stretcher and carried her from the room.
* * *
Twilight Sparkle was not in Ponyville when morning came. Instead she stood in the throne room of Canterlot Castle, swimming in the sea of colors beaming in through the many stained glass windows. She didn’t gallop up the path, despite how nervous she felt.
The eyes of three other Alicorns watched her as she made her way to the base of the throne, nodding towards each one in turn. “Celestia, Luna, Cadence. I came straight here as soon as I got your letter.” She held up the scroll, still a little singed around the edges from Spike’s dragonfire.
The princesses were not on their thrones. Of course Cadence had no throne here, but tucked away in the Crystal Empire far to the north. Twilight resisted the temptation to ask some inane question about her brother.
“Is it…” She swallowed ‘is it true.’ Obviously the Sun Princess wouldn’t have sent her a letter unless it was true. Among those who knew her well, Celestia was notorious for her pranks.
Yet for all the impressive scale of some she had seen, this did not seem in the spirit of any Celestia had tried. More than that, Luna didn’t really “get” any of it, and Twilight had never seen the dark princess involved.
Wanting it not to be true won’t make it that way. She shivered all over, then forced the words out she didn’t want to ask. “Did Discord really… really betray us?”
Luna nodded, her expression fierce. “There can be no doubt of it. He did not merely fail in his intended mission to capture—such might’ve been expected at first.”
Celestia continued where her sister left off, walking slowly toward Twilight. “Tirek’s power has grown so great he can feed on pegasi. As of late last night, he was seen attacking weather teams in Fillydelphia. I sent a detachment of the Solar Guard to investigate, some of my fastest fliers. They returned with… disturbing news.”
“Discord!” Luna practically shouted, the whole castle rumbling with the force of her anger. “We should have known his loyalty to Equestria was feeble. Our ponies saw the fiend helping Tirek, gathering pegasi right out of the sky for him to…”
Cadence visibly shook, and even Celestia looked uncomfortable. None of them needed to finish Luna’s thought.
Twilight found herself feeling suddenly sick. She had spoken to Discord, when she had thought he was well on his mission and near to finishing it. He had said strange things to her that night, things that hadn’t made sense to her at the time. Had he already betrayed them, even then? “So… So you need me to gather up the Elements again? I’m sure the girls and I—”
Celestia shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid not, Twilight. Your friends are noble ponies, but the Elements of Harmony are no longer available to us. We will need to find another way.”
“We have called thee on a more pressing need.” Luna approached her from the other side, as though the princesses were surrounding her. It was a little disconcerting. “Tirek can steal only so much magic from mortal ponies before he realizes each new abomination brings him diminishing returns. Sooner or later, he will come for Alicorn magic.”
Cadence looked sad. “You already know magic can’t be destroyed, only moved. We need to hide Equestria’s Alicorn magic, or else be faced with an immortal enemy.”
Twilight lowered her head. “I understand. I’ll… I’ll give up my magic, if that’s what it takes to make Equestria safe.” She wondered if her mentor understood what Twilight would be giving up. Magic was, after all, Twilight’s whole world. Or at least it had been, until she moved to Ponyville. That Twilight probably wouldn’t have been able to make a sacrifice like this.
“No.” Celestia’s voice was firm, harsher than Twilight had heard in a long time. “Tirek knows of my sister and I, so neither of us could take it away without being discovered.”
“And I don’t know how to fight.” Cadence didn’t sound shy about it. If anything, she sounded proud.
“Fight?”
Celestia nodded. “Your new task is a simple one, Princess Twilight. Take our magic, and discover a way to stop Tirek. Do whatever you must to return him to Tartarus.” Her eyes burned then, her mane flickering more like fire than pastel light. “Tirek is not like the others you have faced, Twilight. He is a monster, and he has done monstrous things to our little ponies. If he ever takes Equestria for his own, he will do worse.”
“I understand.” Twilight gritted her teeth, flexing her wings. They still felt a little strange against her back. “I’ll do it.”
Twilight lowered her head again, waiting for the spell to begin. She didn’t really know what to expect. So she watched as the three other princesses surrounded her in a rough triangle. Watched magic glow from horns all pointed at her.
“I give you love,” Cadence said. “I give you the force invisible that can turn armies and crush nations. I give you the will to fight, the joy to create and of new lives kindled.”
Magic washed over her, magic beyond anything Twilight had felt before save once. Her whole body shook with it, coat beginning to stand on end. She opened her eyes and light poured out, and in that light she could see. See the bonds of friendship between herself and Cadence, the motherly affection Celestia felt for her, and the bone-deep sisterhood Luna and her brighter sister shared. She saw the love they all felt for the ponies of Equestria, and in it she wept.
“I give you darkness,” Luna whispered. “I give you the softness of dream and the wisdom of rest. Last I give you death, and in it the end from the beginning.”
Twilight hung weightless above an endless sea of stars, stars that came to life in little flashes in her mane. Unlike Rarity’s Gala dress, each one was technically accurate. Even in the daylight outside Twilight could feel them watching, and thousands upon thousands of dreams from ponies still asleep, like an endless sea.
Only one voice had the strength to cut through the alien feelings drowning her. “I give you the light,” Celestia said. “The day that brings life to plants and ponies and joy to their hearts. I give you the fires of hearths and summers, and the purity that cleanses all things.”
Twilight screamed as the magic struck her, lifting her into the air and sending her spinning. Her mane began to wave to an unseen wind, glowing with the light that came just before night. The air rippled with the heat of stars boiling just above her coat, and yet she felt no pain.
Her whole body burned with power, and in that power came understanding. Twilight Sparkle saw the atoms spinning in their course, felt the moon as it orbited and the stars as they related. She looked upon Equestria and knew it from one end to the other, in ways she hadn’t imagined before.
A power like this could end the world, she thought to herself, shivering at how matter-of-fact it seemed. Or take the ash and make it anew.
Princess Twilight Sparkle did not land awkwardly, tripping over her own hooves as she had done so many times before. She settled down on her hooves with the grace of a thousand lifetimes, her veins burning with a power no living pony had ever known.
The princesses had changed. Ethereal manes no longer waved, and their flanks were bare. Twilight embraced her mentor, holding her tight. For once, it was she who gave the comfort, and not the other way around.
“Save our ponies.” Luna’s voice no longer had any of its melody, nor did it echo with the songs of distant stars. She only sounded afraid. “You’re the only pony who can.”
“I will.” She hugged each princess in turn, knowing she was the only comfort they would have for some time. If Tirek did come for them, there was no telling what he might do.
“Princess!” The shout came from the open doorway, loud and urgent.
Celestia looked up, her mane no longer flowing and her expression drained. “Yes?”
A pair of solar guards galloped into the room, skidding to a stop only a few feet away. Both were either so panicked they didn’t notice the change in the princesses, or else too respectful to point it out. Whatever the case, the guard continued right where he left off. “Ponyville is under attack!”
“What?” Twilight and Luna asked, almost at the same moment. Despite her weakness, the Lunar Princess was the one who continued. “Tirek?”
“No!” The other guard bowed to her too, then continued. “A changeling army! Bigger than the one that besieged Canterlot!”
“Attack might be too generous.” The first guard gesticulated wildly with one hoof. “The village only has a squad to protect it, and we don’t see any sign of them. They never would’ve stood a chance, really. The town’s occupied. From the looks of it, changelings are digging trenches and rounding up the population as we speak.”
Chance! The thought came unbidden into Twilight’s mind, with a wave of horror she couldn’t entirely repress. She wasn’t worried about Spike—the dragon was more dangerous than he looked, and plenty capable of taking care of himself.
Her apprentice, on the other hand, had nearly gotten herself killed two days ago. She had already been attacked by changelings once before, and the scars had taken time to heal.
Twilight only barely heard Celestia’s words. “Why Ponyville? We can see it from Canterlot… and there aren’t any strategic targets there now that the Elements are gone.”
“What do we do?”
The Elements. That thought didn’t bring Twilight an image of magical stones imbued with various aspects of friendship. It had once, years and years ago. Now when she thought of it she imagined her friends. Some were delicate, some were strong, and all were in danger.
She found all eyes on her. The princess didn’t answer, staring at her and apparently waiting for her say. Twilight balked, looking to Luna. “Aren’t you… in charge of the army?”
Luna frowned. “I feel… I feel uneasy about this. But I have many reasons to feel uneasy.”
“How many changelings are there attacking Ponyville?” Twilight found herself feeling more decisive than she ever had before around the princesses. Of course, she no longer felt the awe of their magic. It was all in her, packed in so tight she felt like she might explode.
“We guess… about five thousand, princess.”
Twilight shivered. That was two changelings to every pony in ponyville, with plenty to spare for the farmland all around. “How many Solar and Lunar Guards are in Canterlot right now?”
The guards looked unsure, but Luna didn’t. “Twice that many. Many more in reserve in all the cities round about.”
Twilight looked to Celestia for approval. “I think… we should do something about the enemy we can fight, even if there’s another we can’t. The army wouldn’t have done us any good against Tirek… but they can help my friends.”
“They can.” Luna looked up, and for a second it seemed as though she would fall over on her hooves. She didn’t though, and she fixed the soldier with an icy stare. “Mobilize the guard. You go to retake Ponyville as soon as you are able.”
“Yes, Princess.” They both bowed, turning to gallop back out of the throne room. Twilight could hear them shouting the orders before they even made it to the door.
“You can’t lead them.” Celestia’s voice was matter of fact. “Tirek will be able to find you once he knows what he is looking for. A mighty Alicorn leading our army would be a sign so obvious he couldn’t miss it no matter where he fought from.”
“B-but… my friends!” Twilight gestured vaguely with one hoof, and lightning crackled from the end of it. Entirely without her will, the energy lanced forth, striking a stone wall and cracking it a dozen times.
“Calm thyself, Twilight.” Luna rested a feeble wing on Twilight, however briefly. “Changelings do not kill, remember. They harvest. Your friends will be rescued.”
“What…” She lowered her voice, turning back to Celestia. She spoke very quietly. “My daughter… Spike… I can’t leave them.”
Celestia nodded very slightly. “Get them out, then. The ponies of Ponyville already know an Alicorn lives amongst them, so… resist the temptation to fight off the invasion yourself. I suspect you could do it, but it would cost you much power.”
“And our secret.” Cadence sounded weakest of all, her shoulders slumped. She looked like she could barely hold herself awake.
Luna nodded her agreement. “Even thy close friends could cost Equestria everything, if they were to discover what we hath done. The time Tirek wastes in the vain quest for our magic is time you need to find the solution.”
“I understand.” Twilight prepared a teleportation spell almost without thinking about it. Possessed of the power of all Equestria’s Alicorns, Twilight could see as never before she had seen. Before the might of her magic all creation was dust.
Yet there could be subtlety in that. Twilight Sparkle could already teleport. Now she used that bridging to make the way open between the throne room and the library, as she had done so many times before.
There was no opening the void, no shunting herself through higher-dimensional space. Twilight simply willed it, and space itself bent.
With power like that, Twilight could even stop Tirek. Right?
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~I wonder who that could be...?~
OMG. This is an awesome chapter. I love it. Can't wait for the next one.
So, Chance has just seen magic-based attacks having no effect whatsoever.
With her scientific background, I wonder if she recovers enough to get another shot at him, will she try using magic to create a physical attack? Tirek might be able to eat magic, but if Chance uses magic to physically create a railgun/laser/cloud of chlorine gas, there wouldn't be any magic in what she was hitting him with...
I want that Next button to be there near that Chapters button already
I haven't even seen Marathon Man and that gave me the creeps.
So Tirek's working with the changelings, or vice versa. Well, why not.
Good to see Twilight taking charge of things again, though knowing you this attack on Ponyville is some kind of trap.
7234664 discord is there to handle physical based attacks.
It was so great how they left this open ended. Fanfics can take it either way and nobody will bitch about it.
Amber: You done in fo' it now!
Somewhat disappointed none of them are smart enough to realise the Importance that Truth has. Though he had to be dismissed somehow. With enough electricity amd materials he's almost a bigger deus ex machina than Discord is.
This is glorious!
My only gripe is that Cadance can, in fact, fight. It's just not her preferred course of action.
Hmmmm....I wonder if this is what leads to the visions of Clover.
Also I love how much more controlled this Super Alicorn Twilight is. How much see seems to have knowledge about everything as well. Super cool! <3
SCREAMING
Nooooooooooo
Ohhhh they're guarding the Elements/Mane Six so they can't help Twilight. I think?
This is a different change of pace
I feel like this story needs the Dark tag added what with all the kidnappings and torture.