4. Uber Allies
Equestria : 1940
13 June - Equestria
“Out of his mouth go burning torches; Sparks of fire leap forth. Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth As from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, And a flame goes forth from his mouth.…”
— Job 41:19
Being on a dark train headed into the mountains of northern Equestria was far from what Jon Walthers had expected when arriving in Manehattan. A lazy evening in a hotel, perhaps with a long, hot bath to relax and a full night’s sleep would have been nice. Then again, having a human courier deliver that packet to him two days ago pretty much put an end to normality in his life. Since then he had almost been blown up, drowned, shot, and that was just on the airplane flight. Actually meeting Princess Celestia had only topped the experience, then finding out she had a sister, and said sister had been corrupted by darkness and was to return shortly…
If he got out of this alive and didn’t have his mind wiped by some unknown Equestrian spell, he was going to write a book. Maybe two.
Even better, or perhaps worse, his trip into the interior of Equestria put him in a very small group of famous people and lucky idiots. No humans were permitted inland further than a few coastal cities, and even Richard Burton had not gotten more than a glimpse of the rural interior before being politely escorted back to England by a pair of stern pegasi, quite unlike his successful attempt at sneaking into Mecca. Then again, it was rather difficult for a human being to disguise themselves for the journey, even though Charlie Chaplin had done little more than put on his mustache in order to spend several weeks taking a leisurely and quite unofficial tour of Equestrian towns.
Mr. Chaplin’s escort back to a departing steamship was conducted much more courteously, and with more than a few autographs granted to the escorting guards.
It was quite a contrast with the way Wrong Way Corrigan had made a prime example out of how not to meet Princess Celestia when he crashed his aircraft into a tower, a particular tower in Canterlot which housed her bedroom.
His escort included a six-place pegasus air carriage which had taken the resulting wreckage with a complaining pilot inside it all the way to Ireland to be dumped onto the first aerodrome runway they could reach. There were no autograph requests.
Jon Walthers was having a unique experience in the opulent railroad carriage, because he was fairly certain none of the other human visitors to Equestria’s interior received the experience of riding in a train car with the Goddess-Empress of All Ponies to his side, chatting amiably over a cup of tea. The topic of sisters or Nightmare Moons was most certainly not on the conversational agenda, which was understandable. Celestia had been keeping this information close to the vest since roughly the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, and the two golden-armored pegasi by the door to their train carriage were certainly not on the list of only four living creatures who knew about her sibling, Princess Luna, and the path to goddess-level insanity she had trod nearly a thousand years ago.
The word for this evening seemed to be ‘surreal.’
But here was Jon, and there was Celestia, and the tea was most unmistakably an Equestrian blend. Several of his human counterparts would have been willing to break both of their arms and the legs of a few graduate students to be in the velvet-covered seat he was sitting in, just to validate some theories or stories that had been repeated about Princess Celestia and her history on the planet. Jon found himself more occupied with current topics in order not to think about his strange upcoming task of bringing friendship to the friendless.
“So, Your Highness. What was in the box you gave to Colonel Bradley?” Jon took a sip out of his fresh cup of tea and added a cube of native beet sugar while waiting for the answer, which he suspected would be very ‘Celestia’ in its nature.
“A German Kriegsmarine encryption machine with manual and notes, copied from the machine on board the U-49 out in the Manehattan harbor,” said Celestia just as calmly as always.
Very glad that he had been stirring instead of drinking at the moment, Jon asked, “Won’t they… miss it?”
Celestia smiled and took another sip of tea. “A copy, quite literally. I am constantly amazed at the ingenuity of my little ponies. I was talking to one of my nobles, the father of my student as it turns out, and happened to mention the difficulties we were having decrypting the communications Captan Goßler was exchanging with his superiors. A week later, it just ‘turned up’ in his office. Quite miraculous, and no violation of our neutrality. Since then, we’ve made several duplicates, so my busy little ponies have quite enough to do without this spare.”
Jon nodded, imagining the mountain top of Canterlot and the tall radio aerials that would be stretching out their electric ‘ears’ to hear the whispers of warships and their ilk. No doubt, Germany would not be the only country with their messages decoded and stacked on sheets of paper for diligent ponies, freshly returned from Europe and the US, to pore over their contents. The Walthers family had not been overly fond of the game of chess, but Jon knew the game and how to play it, and in particular, how to look several steps ahead. He got the distinct feeling that setting up a chess game between himself and Princess Celestia would result in a forgone conclusion before it even started, and he similarly dismissed whist and most other card games, particularly poker in order to pass the time, even if the two stoic pegasus guards in the car could be enticed into the game.
Their golden armor and identical visages were something Jon was not familiar with other than a few photographs in books, so it was only natural for him to cast the occasional glance at them during the quiet conversation with Princess Celestia. The guards were fine figures of Equestrian pegasi, strong and muscular with square jaws and thick legs. In close combat against a human they would be nearly impossible to defeat, much the same as a flying, four-armed weightlifter carrying four sledgehammers could go through soldiers like a threshing machine. At a distance, however, the light armor they were able to carry aloft would be easily penetrated by rifle fire, even with the rumored enchantments they were supposed to carry.
He thought he was being discreet about his sideways glances until one of the two guards caught him looking and shifted slightly in order to look directly back at him with a wink and a quick sensual lick of his lips. It almost made Jon bobble his teacup onto the floor if not for the quick reactions of Princess Celestia, who even managed to catch the tea before it was wasted.
“Oh, my,” she said with a low chuckle. “I didn’t know you were that kind of a stallion, Mister Walthers.”
Squelching his first instinct of putting forth a protest which would most probably only dig his embarrassing hole deeper, Jon coughed into one fist and took another look at the pair of guards, one of whom was now chuckling into a hoof even more than the Solar Princess he was guarding. Little bits of information just seemed wrong somehow, but nothing connected, even when Princess Celestia placed both teacups down on the table and cleared her throat.
“I believe we are near enough to our destination. Mister Walthers, you will want to bring a warm coat. And bring…” Celestia’s golden magic brushed across the front of his casual tweed jacket and floated the .38 revolver out for inspection. She spun the loaded cylinder much as a cowboy would, then slipped it back into his shoulder holster with a positive nod. “I sincerely hope there will not be a need, but if there is, I will most certainly tell you, and I would appreciate it if you were not to resort to violence prematurely. This way please, Mister Walthers.”
With that cryptic statement hanging over Jon’s head, Celestia rose off her cushion with all the grace of a ballet dancer and turned for the door to the compartment. After hanging up his tweed jacket and grabbing a warmer coat out of his luggage, he adjusted his shoulder holster and followed, of course, down the empty hallway and across the accordion-fold diaphragm between cars while the train continued clattering along into the night. Their destination turned out to be the last car on the train, which was almost empty except for a small pony-sized wagon.
It really did not look to be a safe form of transportation, with thin metal tubing smaller than a bicycle frame and two tiny wheels, and quite unlike a bicycle, would require the passenger to lie down on his chest with arms tucked forward and legs trailing out the back. There was a tiny plexiglass face shield, and the wicker chest rest was padded at least, with rings to put the appropriate limb through for both arm and leg rests, so it seemed stable, at least. In fact, there was lot of ‘least’ in the vehicle, to the point where he really expected to see some tissue paper or perhaps string involved in the construction. It was also small and certainly not designed for the much larger Celestia to pull. Jon could not resist lifting it up with one hand and hefting it easily before setting it back down on the wooden floor of the train car and turning to Princess Celestia with an unspoken question.
“It’s called a cob, Mister Walthers.” The tall monarch moved to one side in order to allow one of her pegasus guards to stroll into the train car. Then the door closed with a glitter of Celestia’s golden magic remaining afterward, leaving Jon only one way out, through the closed door at the rear of the car.
“I really don’t like to fly,” he said, trying not to be self-conscious about being the only creature without wings in the car.
“It is not very far,” countered Celestia. “The train does not go where we need to be tonight, for very good reason. I shall need you both at my side this evening.”
“Both?” Jon looked back at the guard, who licked his lips and smiled a very satisfied smile. There was still something wrong about the hefty golden-armored pegasus, but Jon tried to put it behind him… Okay, that was a bad choice of words. He tried to overlook the subtle wrongness and concentrate on the more royal of his problems. “Princess Celestia, could you please tell me—”
“Nightshade will be your transportation and protection for this evening,” said Celestia, cutting through his objections like a razor. She turned away, and the door at the back of the train car opened, revealing a rushing darkness in which the vanishing rails of their passage glimmered in the moonlight. “Guard him well, and tell him what we discussed. I will go ensure your safe arrival. Oh, and change please. Mister Walthers is already quite uncomfortable.”
It was quite impossible for a winged mare of Celestia’s size to vanish out the back door of the train car with such speed, but one moment she was there, and the next a vanishing speck of light in the darkness.
In the resulting relative quiet of the clatter of train wheels and whistling wind through the open door, Jon was really beginning to regret his previous volunteering to help, even with the stakes being so high. It still seemed unreal to him, with Nightmare Moon actually being the sister of Princess Celestia, and strange meetings in the darkness of night, but the quiet cough from the attending guard behind him was most certainly real.
Jon turned around and regarded the smirking guard, who seemed to be having quite a bit of humor at his expense. He opened his mouth to speak, but the guard held up one gold-armored hoof and spoke first in a very feminine contrello.
“Sorry, Mister Walthers. Princess’ orders. Let me get changed and we can introduce ourselves.”
It seemed an odd thing to say, but even odder when the pegasus guard put a hoof up against the golden sun symbol on his chest and twisted. The golden armor shifted in hue to a dark blue shade, almost purple in the dim lights of the train car, while the sun symbol on his chest turned into a crescent moon, although the armor was not the only thing to change.
The white coat of the pegasus also underwent a similar change to a dull grey, while his mane and tail turned deep violet. What was worse, the feathered wings of the pegasus shimmered and turned into thick membranous limbs more like a bat or a dragon while his eyes turned from blue to bright yellowish-gold with dark slit pupils like a cat or snake. Jon watched the transformation with more than a little shock, but managed to avoid saying anything until after the fuzzy ears and sharp teeth appeared.
“You’re a girl!” he yelped, taking a step backwards and seriously considering the open door at the rear of the train.
The female bat-pony creature regarded Jon with a quizzical expression and burst into laughter. “Oh, my stars. The first thing you notice about me is that I have teats?” Jon had to look, and when his eyes flickered back to look at the giggling pony’s face, it only made her laugh harder.
“I can’t tell you have tits… I mean teats in that armor,” he protested weakly.
After wiping her streaming eyes with the back of one hoof, the dark bat-winged pony managed to calm herself down enough to stick out the same damp hoof to shake. “Specialist Nightshade of the Canterlot Home Guard, recently on loan to British SIS.” The dark mare winked one golden slit-pupil eye at Jon and smirked. “I was hoping to be paired up with another Brit, because of the way they speak the language. They’re quite cunning linguists.”
“Jon Walthers of the US State Department, Translator and Cultural Attache,” he responded while shaking the outstretched hoof. “That’s really an amazing illusion. You look just like a bat… Well, except the wings aren’t structured in a bat-like shape. Do you mind if I…” He trailed off with one hand outstretched while looking at her sharp fang-like teeth.
“Sure, honey. Help me get strapped in and you can look then. Who knows.” Nightshade waggled one fuzzy eyebrow. “You might want to try out the rest of me when I’m off work. Maybe play with some other parts.”
What he meant to say in response was on the order of “I’m sorry, but I’m not attracted to Equestrians in that fashion” but what came out instead was garbled. Still, he helped get her simple over-the-shoulder harness in place with the quick-release clamps that the Equestrians favored. Once Nightshade was situated, she extended one dark wing for his examination and made embarrassing little squeaking noises while he gently ran his fingers along the warm membranes.
“Oh, you beast,” she breathed. “Keep doing that and we won’t get to our appointment tonight.”
Jon stopped. “These wings aren’t an illusion. They’re real.”
“That’s not the only thing.” Nightshade looked back over her shoulder and licked her lips even while Jon could feel an inquisitive tail begin to work its way up his inner thigh. Then she took a long, shuddering breath and the unwelcome tail touching stopped. “Get into the cob’s saddle so we can make it to the rendezvous, Mister Walthers. Business before pleasure.”
- - ☾ - -
There were probably a few things more terrifying than riding in a seaplane doing a night landing in the ocean. Lying across the skeletal framework of the ‘cob’ with nothing below him but the rushing ground and nothing above but the stars and blotchy dark clouds should have been one of those.
Instead, he was finding it oddly invigorating, and not just because of the company. The batpony mare in front of him had her tail trimmed short or it would have been thrashing into his face, so he had no excuse for not looking at where he was going other than his own cowardice about it all. Well, that and the tendency for the young mare to look back over her shoulder and lift her tail when Nightshade caught him with his eyes open.
“Hey, lovercolt,” she called back during one of his glances. “I’m sorry for putting the moves on you back there, but I’ve been a little rattled since I got back from Europe and this week isn’t helping. No hard feelings?”
“No,” he called back after a moment to catch his breath.
“Darn,” she called back, then laughed at his instinctive grimace. “Oh, you are so much fun. I’ve missed this.”
He hated to admit it, but talking with the flirty mare made his flight through the darkness better somehow. Plus, it gave him an opportunity to ask questions, in particular…
“So… what are you?” he asked, suddenly aware of what the answer was going to be before she said it.
“Horny.” Nightshade laughed again and shook her head, making the skeletal wagon shake in the breeze and Jon grab onto his handholds on the cob with greater enthusiasm. “Sorry,” she added. “You just write the jokes back there. You’re a lot more fun to tease than my last partner.”
“Who was that?” Jon managed to say into the slipstream. “You said you worked with the British, so was it a soldier?”
“Naaa, just a guy from Naval Intelligence.” She waved a forehoof back and forth. “Ordinary chap, until he turned on the charm, then he could talk a unicorn out of her horn. He’s how Celestia got those pictures you seen earlier of the submarines and the report on Root Stock.”
Some of the cheerful flirtiness went out of the flapping batwinged pegasus with a brief shudder. “Poor thing. I talked with her once before she went over there, and she was all bubbly with chemical terms, all polly-this and hexa-that’s. Then she vanished and we got the word to go find out what happened. Ian wouldn't let me see the report on our way back. Celestia did, though. An’ she held me afterwards until I cried all the way out. Couldn’t go back after that. My partner quit field work anyway, an’ I didn’t have the heart to fly any more missions.”
Jon did not really know what to say except, “I’m sorry.”
“Ain’t you that’s gotta be sorry,” said Nightshade with a sharper bite to her tone. “Wouldn’t have told you about it either, if Celestia hadn’t approved it. She said I should talk to somepony about it, but there isn’t no other pony around with that kind of clearance but you, and asides, I don’t need to anyway.”
The cool night streamed past as the dark guard continued the long, slow beats of her membranous wings, making Jon feel a little as if he were suspended in the darkness with nothing else in any direction except the faint minty scent of her perspiration. She flew for a while without another word, but after a bit, she continued the conversation.
“Anyway, to get back to your question. Our kind of pegasus has got a lot of names the other ponies use, but ain’t none of them very pretty. I like ‘Little Dragons’ myself, on account of our big brothers and sisters, but you can just call us batponies instead of thestrals or nocturne, I suppose. Flows easier off the tongue and sounds a little less like something that’s going to suck your blood.”
“I see.” From this end, the batpony did not look very blood-sucking, but her wings did look more like dragons than bats, or at least from the limited amount of reading Jon had done about dragons. “So what connection do you have with Celestia?” he asked after a suitable amount of thinking.
“Princess Celestia,” corrected Nightshade. “She negotiated a truce between us and the dragons back around the settling of Equestria. Good cave real estate is hard to come by, and my primitive forebearers were giving as good as they were getting in a polite little war that had been going on for since the gods know when. After beating a few thick skulls together, she got us to see that cooperating worked better than fighting.”
“Definitely can see her hoofprints in that,” murmured Jon under his breath.
“You said it.” Nightshade swished her tail in front of his face, although she kept it tucked down in the slipstream afterwards. “Look, sexy. It’s going to be a little while before we land. Why don’t you take a nap, get some rest.”
He wanted to object, but the reclining position of his seat on the cob was relaxing, and Nightshade’s long, slow wingbeats were a little like being cradled in a rocking bed. The scenery below was distracting, a long series of blurred vegetation mixed with the rocky ground of Northern Equestria all shining silver in the moonlight. It made a nice way to take his mind of the altitude by just thinking about how many of the plants were native species or had been imported from other countries over the last few centuries. After all, he had met a new species just today, and there were probably many more where he was going.
And before he knew it, despite the chill of his surroundings, Jon fell asleep.
- - ☾ - -
After the long ocean flight in the flying boat, the train ride, and his most recent experience with a most unique form of Equestrian transportation, Jon could easily have slept through a dozen alarm clocks. Having a long, wet tongue slither across his face was a different alarm that he had no chance of sleeping through. He awoke with a splutter, muffled by the lean batpony’s hoof over his mouth and her husky whisper afterwards.
“Princess Celestia is up ahead, talking with the family. We’re supposed to go up beside her and not say anything unless she tells us to.” She paused a moment, gazing into Jon’s sleep-deprived eyes with a look of serious concern. “Are you all right?”
“My mouth tastes like alfalfa,” he whispered back after wiping his face on the sleeve of his coat.
“You think that’s bad?” whispered the dark mare. “My tongue tastes like chapstick. Bleah!”
She eyed Jon when he got out a tin of the lip balm and applied it to himself anyway despite her objections, and broke into a tense giggle when he whispered, “Pony repellent.”
“Be serious.” Nightshade straightened up and stopped giggling. “And try not to look afraid.”
They walked side by side along a rocky path in the moonlight, obviously headed for a towering volcanic cinder cone. There were a few small flickers of light coming out of the opening at the top and one small hole at the base, but nothing like the lava the massive monster would have spat out in its prime. Now it was a decaying hollow shell, with tall walls of hardened lava and piles of cinders which the centuries had turned into exotic sculptures and the moonlight was casting into a playground of shadowed monsters.
Jon had his fingers resting in the dark batpony’s mane to provide some help with guiding his way. She appeared able to see in the dark like a cat, guiding him around various sharp rocks in the path, but he could feel a low trembling of tension beneath his fingertips. He hated to admit that he had gotten a little used to the mare’s constant string of innuendo, so he rubbed a little on the hard knots in her neck while they walked until he finally asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she hissed back. She shrugged her shoulders in a vain attempt at relaxation, but after a few more paces added, “Nothing you need to worry about.”
“You’re sure about that?” Jon kept rubbing at the knots in her neck during their walk, partially in order to keep his own nervous tension down.
“I…” Nightshade swallowed as she slowed. “I didn’t leave the Little Sisters under the best of circumstances. They wanted me to stay in the family, push clouds over the apple farms for a living.” She stopped and gestured with a hoof out into the inky darkness. “There’s a whole string of farms up and down the valley. We water them. They give us food. All of the talk our elders make about keeping to our traditions and staying separate from the other ponies is all hypocritical bat poop. There’s a lot of tail-raising that goes on in the night between our kind and the farmers, but our elders pretend we’re some special—” She cut off abruptly and turned back to the path.
“So you joined Celestia’s guard.” That did not get a response other than Nightshade picking up the pace on the treacherous gravel, so he added, “A girl in a world of dangerous men.”
“A dangerous mare,” she snapped. “Twenty little colts apply for every open position, and I made them all eat dirt. Princess Celestia doesn’t hold back when danger threatens Equestria, so why do you think a mare can’t do the job? Besides,” she added with a slight relaxation in her bitter tone, “there’s more than a few mares out there willing to do what I do.”
- - ☾ - -
They did not exchange any more words while climbing the rest of the way up the path and through a massive gap in the ancient igneous rock at the base of the cinder cone. A rough tunnel led to the center of the extinct volcano, which seemed much larger once they stepped inside of the cavernous empty space open to the sky above. Only a little light filtered down from the stars hidden behind the cloud-spotted sky, but Celestia stood in a pool of golden hornlight in the center of the flat floor of the hollow volcano, just as quiet and calm as if she were willing to wait on them for years.
Jon expected the crunching noise from their mixed foot and hoof-steps would have echoed around the vast chamber, but there was another noise that grew as they walked. A faint hiss of breathing or perhaps the motion of lizard scales on sand, although it was pervasive enough that Jon could not identify a direction. He was a little more worried about being inside of a volcano with the Princess of the Sun, but the last known volcanic eruption in Equestria was… just over a thousand years ago.
The timing seemed very suspicious now.
“Good evening, Mister Walthers.” Celestia looked straight at him with that eternal half-smile that would have been just as at home in the corridor of a castle or the throne rooms of Europe. “Allow me to cast some light on the guests I wanted you to meet tonight.”
Her horn glowed even brighter, and little flecks of silica in the surrounding lava glittered in response, spreading across the floor and climbing up the walls. It was as if the stars were embedded into the frozen lava, brightly shining down into the immense open cavern until everything was illuminated in a sourceless light.
Including the inhabitants.
The eyes were what he noticed first, pairs of golden eyes spread all around him and up into the rocky ledges and crevices of the walls. Hundreds of glowing eyes showing where clumps and clusters of batponies gathered to look down on the strange bipedal visitor who suddenly felt as if hiding under Celestia was an option he should keep open just in case. The batponies whispered to each other and pointed, which was when Jon noticed the colorful rocks they were sitting on moved, with draconic eyes and wings of their own.
Dragons gathered around on every wall and spot of floor, in such a wide variety that Jon could not see any two that even looked similar other than having ‘lots of teeth’ and ‘wings’ in common. Some of them were providing perches to their draconic pony companions, while others seemed to have a small circle of empty dragon space around them, but the one thing they all shared was an intent stare at the only human in the area.
Jon really would have felt better if so many of them had not been smiling. So many teeth.
“A human, Celestia? With my precious little sister.” The largest dragon Jon could have imagined appeared out of the shadows and bent over to look at this newest curiosity. He was an immense monster with teal scales shimmering in Celestia’s magical light and a nose like a cross between a rhino and an axe, but somehow Jon just could not be as terrified as he should have been, not even when the dragon stuck that enormous nose right up over Jon and sniffed so hard he almost got a tour of a dragon’s sinus cavity.
“Good!” bellowed the dragon afterward, nearly knocking Jon over on his rump. “You live!” The enormous dragon paused, then looked at the cavern full of dragons and batponies. “That was funny! Be amused!”
Jon laughed despite himself in the gale of amusement that swept through the cavern, although Nightshade did not seem to relax at all under his hand, and only trembled more despite her impassive expression.
Celestia’s powerful voice cut through the last of the lingering laughter. “Now is not the time for games, Dragonlord Torch. I have seen the signs, and I know you will not believe me when I tell you what needs to be done, so I have brought this human with me to explain the circumstances of Nightmare Moon’s return in words you will understand. Go ahead, Mister Walthers.”
For one terrifying second, Jon thought he was supposed to tell them about Princess Celestia’s sister, which would have strained his will to the breaking point because Jon was still struggling to get his own mind around the reality of it all. Thankfully, he caught the subtle hints in Celestia’s guarded expression that it was not yet time for the secret of Luna’s questionable history to be exposed. He was still caught off-guard by the intense draconic and pony attention, making Jon reflexively ask, “You want me to explain about the upcoming volcanic eruptions?”
It must have been the answer she was looking for, because he could catch the hint of a smile at the corner of her lips when she responded simply, “Yes.”
“What eruptions?” bellowed the massive teal dragon. His immense head snaked down to stare at Jon—badly cross-eyed because of the massive flat nose—but the rows of sharp teeth encouraged a rapid response. Jon immediately started talking because if he stopped talking for a heartbeat, he would have time to think and panic.
“It’s obvious. A thousand years ago when Nightmare Moon first appeared, she couldn’t actually move the moon. She could only block the sun. There’ve been other volcanoes that blotted out the sun before, like Krakatoa, but in this case, these Equestrian volcanos put enough magically active silica clumps up into the atmosphere to make everything dark and still look like there were stars.” Jon reached down and scooped up a handful of glittering dust. “When Nightmare Moon comes back on the Summer Sun Celebration—”
Dragonlord Torch bellowed so loud Jon thought he was going to lose an eardrum. “What do you mean, comes back? She’s gone! Nightmare Moon is in the moon!” The echoes from his voice died out rapidly, and the smallest of rumblings could be felt from below. Suddenly, Jon realized how all of the eyes on him had gotten very intense, as if he were a circus clown who had turned into a fizzing bomb of some sort.
Celestia continued in a quiet voice. “I didn’t tell Mister Walthers about the volcanos. He worked that out on his own, and if even a human can see the danger…”
Torch did not respond out loud, but lowered his eyebrow ridges and fixed Celestia with a glare that by all means should have set her on fire. The Princess of the Sun continued in the same quiet voice that nevertheless still echoed from the back of the massive cavern, and that Jon had no doubt at all could be heard by every dragon and pony there.
“When the dragons of the world were hunted by humans, hounded to the tallest mountains and deepest valleys, who gave you sanctuary? When your eggs were being smashed by the—” Celestia made a growling noise deep in her throat that nearly made Jon jump out of his boots “—who brought peace between your kind? When your hatchlings were about to freeze from the Windigo, who brought your people to this new and rich land?”
A deep and thunderous voice much like a mountain responded in a bass rumbling that rattled the walls. “You did.”
The back side of the entire cavern moved as an eye the size of a small car opened up to regard Princess Celestia. While some small fraction of that powerful gaze touched Jon incidentally, freezing him in fascination much as an ant might look up at a rock lizard, it was not fear that held him entranced. Immense as the dragon was, he still projected a need for care and caution in his movements, much like a parent would act around a sleeping infant. Even Nightshade by Jon’s side relaxed, although that may have been from the open-jawed awe with which she was regarding the gargantuan dragon.
“Hello, Celestia,” rumbled the dragon.
“Hello, old friend.” Celestia lowered her head and looked down. “I wish I did not have to bring you this news, Dragonlord.”
“Call me Stone, for I am Dragonlord no more,” rumbled the dragon. “I do not speak for my people. All I can offer are my own wings, Dawnbringer. Speak and I shall rise to battle on your behalf.” That immense head moved forward and rested on the ground so close to Jon that he could have reached out and touched it, and a gust of cool, brimstone-scented air swept over him as the dragon exhaled.
“She lives,” said Celestia in a bare whisper that made the eyes of the huge dragon abruptly open slightly. “I would not have you, my oldest living friend, rise up against—”
Celestia stopped and exchanged a look with her old friend, then both of them nodded silently, immortal alicorn and ancient dragon sharing an identical thought with the frail human to their sides. She continued, “I need your help to pay a great debt of honor, not to have you fight, old friend. I believe she can be saved from the Nightmare, and this human is the key.”
In order to look at Jon with both eyes, Stone had to pull back a short distance. Those huge green eyes focused on the small human, and he gave a short sniff with nostrils that could have been used to park a Greyhound bus. Each. Still, Jon could not feel afraid as he should have, and looked back with the odd thought of how in the world he was going to explain this to his parents when he returned home.
“He stands when he should run, and looks instead of cowering. What kind of warrior do you place your faith in, Celestia?”
“Not a warrior, but a scholar who knows knows and respects the lessons of war,” responded Celestia. “Someone wise enough to see what is under his nose. Someone who can bring friendship to my student, and freedom to my heart after these many, many years.”
The old dragon gave him an evaluating look and schnuffed out a short breath that nearly blew Jon backwards. It made him suddenly realize that he had a hand still resting on Nightshade’s neck, and was rubbing at her knotted muscles to keep her calm as much as it was to keep one of his hands busy. Then Stone shifted his head to one side and caught Dragonlord Torch in a piercing stare.
“Trust her,” he rumbled. “We owe them.”
“We owe them nothing,” snapped Torch in return. Although his voice was just as loud, it sounded thin and weak compared to the immense dragon, and he quailed under the force of the glare he received in return.
“Would you rather the little sisters and brothers be consumed in fire with the return of the Nightmare? Then do nothing.” One immense talon with a few small dark ponies on it emerged from the wall, and Stone watched the little winged foals clinging to it sway and stretch tiny wings. Torch seemed to sink in on himself, trying to look in any direction other than the little yawning batponies, then spoke into the floor in a weak grumble so soft it was difficult to hear him.
“Speak, Dawnbringer. We will listen.”
“That is all I ask.” Celestia had none of the arrogant superiority a human negotiator might show when getting his way, only a sense of taking one more difficult step in a long journey. She turned to Jon and gestured back along the path. “Please wait outside. I’m afraid our discussion might become a little… heated.”
Jon started to open his mouth to object, considered what might happen with the entire volcano full of dragons and dragon ponies in an argument, then closed his mouth and followed Nightshade back outside.
- - ☾ - -
“Do you think we’re far enough away yet?” Jon glanced over his shoulder, but without taking his hand off Nightshade’s mane. If he lost the dark mare out here in the moonlit night, he never would find her again.
“Almost,” grunted Nightshade. “I knew I should have marked where we parked that cursed thing. It’s around here somewhere.”
“Over here, sister.” The ‘small’ dragon who had just called out in Equestrian strode out from behind a low hedge of bushes, and looked calmly up at Jon. This one was more bipedal than most of them, nearly the same shade of dark and light teal as the massive Dragonlord Torch inside the extinct volcano, but only came up to Jon’s chest instead of towering over the neighborhood.
Nightshade obviously knew the dragon, and stopped just out of immediate reach to bow her head and respond in Equestrian also. “Greetings, Ember, Daughter of Dragonlord Torch. May your fire glow bright.”
“I greet you, sister.” The dragon took several quick steps forward to put one clawed hand under the batpony’s chin and lifted it up until she could look Nightshade in the eyes. “The cavern is quiet without the beating of your wings.”
There were several shrill cries from behind Ember and two smaller batponies tumbled forward, bouncing and flapping until they were underneath Nightshade and running in circles. “Sister, sister,” they chanted in Equestrian while Ember rolled her eyes.
“Not that quiet,” she muttered.
“Hi, guys,” said Nightshade, trapping the two little foals under a foreleg each and thwapping them repeatedly across the top of the head with her wings. “How’s my two favorite little pests?”
“Thistle said you were gonna bring us back a pirate,” said the littlest batpony through her giggles.
“Nuh-uh!” complained Thistle, the larger of the two who seemed to be marked by several thin blue stripes running through his mane. “Puff is making things up again. I said Gran’pa Torch was talking about when some of the little brothers flew off to join the human pirates, an’ they came back with earrings.” Thistle squinted up at Nightshade’s ears, then over at Jon. “He doesn’t look like a pirate.”
“I’m not,” said Jon in Equestrian.
“Oooo,” cooed both of the little batponies. “It talks.”
“Are you mating with him?” asked Puff. Guileless yellow eyes looked up at Jon, framed by tiny little ringlets of the violet mane all of the batponies seemed to have, but tinged at the tips of every hair with light pink. It was such an innocent and cute picture of adorable hairy batpony-ness, broken only by the glint of sharp teeth in the moonlight, that Jon was struck speechless. Unfortunately, Nightshade was not.
“Every night,” she said. “Twice on weekends, and—”
“NO!” It was a very loud word, but Jon had not said it. Instead, the booming echoes of Dragonlord Torch’s exclamation rumbled out of the extinct volcano quite some distance away, followed by some draconic words that must have been curses of some sort, due to the way Nightshade put her wings over the little batponies’ ears and waited until the bellowing had died down out of audible range. In the resulting silence, Jon lowered himself down to one knee and tried to clarify the intentional misconception.
“No. My name is Jon Walthers, and I’m here as a teacher for Princess Celestia’s student, Twilight Sparkle. I’m not—” he coughed into one fist “—involved with your big sister. In that way. She’s a guard, assigned to protect me. Against little balls of fluff like you two,” he added, giving the little batpony filly a ruffle on top of her very pettable head.
“She’s a lot more than that,” said Ember, who had watched his interaction with the little fuzzballs while obviously restraining a smirk. “We used to wrestle when we were growing up.”
Jon took a longer look at the bipedal dragon and the smaller batpony, trying to imagine how the uneven contest would turn out, only to have Nightshade add, “I could beat her too, three falls out of five.”
The shriek and bellow of another dragon echoed around the surrounding volcanic mountains, making all of them look at the nearby hollow cinder cone and the flashes of light emerging from inside. “Wow, dad’s pissed,” said Ember. “What did you two say to get him so heated up?”
Nightshade paused and looked up at Jon in an obvious prompt for him to take the uncomfortable subject. “It’s complicated,” he said as a compromise, because if Princess Celestia wanted her student to deal with Luna being behind Nightmare Moon’s return, there was no need to drag that into the main focus of the ongoing conversation. “The most important thing is the volcanoes along this end of Equestria are going to erupt in about a week, and she wants to make certain you’re all going to be safe.”
“Our home is going to blow up?” asked Thistle. “Can’t the Sun Pony stop it? She’s the biggest, most powerfulest pony in like ever. Even Dragonlord Torch says so.”
“Even dad can’t stop a volcano from blowing up,” said Ember. “Our dragon magic is more about making fire and explosions than stopping them.” She stole a glance at the extinct nearby volcano with her lips thinning out in an obvious sign of worry that Jon could recognize even in another species. “It wouldn’t hurt us, of course, but you little fuzzballs would get toasted.”
“But I don’t want to leave my home,” said Puff with a plaintive little quiver in her bottom lip guaranteed to turn any human’s heart into jello. “Can’s you make the volcano not blow up, mister?”
After taking a few seconds to recover from those big, plaintive eyes, Jon sat down on a nearby smooth rock. “No, I’m afraid not. But Celestia must have a plan. She wouldn’t have brought me up here and told me what she did if she didn’t have a way to keep you safe. All of you,” he added as he caught the glimpse of a few more small golden eyes out in the darkness. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the short time I’ve known her is that she loves and cares for all of her little ponies.”
“All of us?” asked a little batpony who crept out of the darkness around them, with a few more of his batwinged siblings lurking in the shadows behind him.
“All of you. Even the dragons,” he added. “After all, she was the one who first made peace between the dragons and the—”
John cut off abruptly as the scale of Celestia’s deception became abundantly clear. Although dragons lived for centuries, the peace between the night-dwelling batponies and the dragons had happened thousands of years ago, when Luna and Celestia ruled together. He instinctively looked up at the moon and the pattern of darkness across its face where the second corrupted alicorn princess waited impatiently to return. Outside of Equestria, the shadows were barely visible, but in the island principality’s magical field, the resemblance to a unicorn could not be mistaken.
With her former position as ruler of the night sky, it only made sense that Luna had been the princess to negotiate the present peaceful coexistence between the night-dwelling ponies and mighty dragons. Their peace was most certainly a good thing, but the credit for that peace had been stolen away from her over the years in in exchange for… what, exactly? And why?
All questions which could be asked later, if there was a later.
He looked back down at the collection of little batwinged colts and fillies who had begun to cluster around the exotic human, now that they knew he did not bite. They all looked more than a little frightened at the concept of having to flee their homes, which he could understand with all of his own relatives who had to flee Europe. From the sounds echoing out of the hollow volcano, the dragons and the princess were going to be talking for some time, although what they were discussing was beyond his pay grade, apparently. That left him babysitting, or rather foalsitting, much the same as Dragonlord Torch’s young daughter.
“Do you little ones know very much of human history?” he asked, and felt vaguely worthwhile when all of the young ponies shook their heads, including Ember. “Well, a long time ago, back when Celestia was just a little filly like yourselves, there was a man named Moses…”
- - ☾ - -
By the time the flashes of fire and rumbling had died out from the direction of the cold volcano, Jon had run out of Jewish Exodus stories, and was trying to explain the Jewish tradition of Passover. Translating Jewish religious tradition into Equestrian by an American who was raised to respect Jewish tradition in a Methodist household left quite a few of the little ponies scratching their heads and Ember breaking into giggles at the strangest times.
It was a great relief to see the golden light of Celestia’s horn approaching, much like the dawn which was most probably only an hour or so away. He yawned, but did not get up right away for Her Highness due to the two snoozing little ponies in his lap. He settled for a bob of the head and an embarrassed look at Ember, who made no effort to pick up Puff or Thistle from their comfortable bed.
“Hello again, Mister Walthers. Princess Ember. Children.” Celestia was warm and cheerful as if she had just emerged from a relaxing spa, giving each of the dark young ponies a happy smile before turning to the dragon in their midst. “Princess Ember, I had hoped to see you in the conclave.”
“Father thinks I’m not big or strong enough,” growled Ember.
Celestia’s smile grew larger. “I remember when he was a small drake, no larger than you are now. He kept falling down on his nose because he was front-heavy.”
The comment did bring an awestruck smile to the small dragon’s face, much as Jon expected it had been intended, and Celestia did not hesitate before moving to her next point.
“Your father will need every dragon’s help, both large and small, to get your two peoples moved away from here before the volcanoes begin to erupt again. Perhaps if you distinguish yourself in the evacuation, he might soften his stance.”
“What about the earth pony farmers in the valley?” asked Ember, which Jon considered a very good question, because he was about to ask the same thing.
“I’ve already made arrangements. Within two days, the valley will be empty of ponies.” Celestia slowed and took a breath. “Depending on how long the volcanoes erupt, some of the small towns in the area may not recover for decades, but the ponies will be alive. If all goes well, you will see me at your evacuation point the day after the Summer Sun Festival, and if your father has not softened by then, I’ll tell you some embarrassing stories about him.”
After saying their goodbyes and rousting the two sleeping little batponies off Jon’s lap, he bundled himself back onto the skeletal framework of the cob and watched as Nightshade and Celestia rose up into the sky with matching wingbeats. It had been an exceedingly long day and night so far, and his fatigue and altitude was winning out over the excitement in short order. One nagging thought chased him into his dreams and did not go away even after a rather blurred recollection about being flown through a balcony and tucked into the bed on the other side.
What if everything goes to hell and Nightmare Moon wins?
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Celestia plays the long game.
VEr long game interesting take on various events
Why do I think that Celestia already has her side picked out in the war?
Also did Celestia help with the Jewish exodus from Europe when the United States did not?
If Luna can force the sky to darken with a volcanic eruption, how does Celestia's role fit into this? There's not a volcanic DE-eruption that I know of, so her own role as the controller of the day doesn't work that well.
Okay, I think I have this figured out. Jon is going to use a Tommy Gun on Twilight when she ascends because he thinks she's a zombie!
Its still 1940 and a lot of people that died during the second world war are still alive.
Will europe experience a different fate this time?
Now the important question. Volcanoes are the only way to make day into night everywhere on a globe. Fair enough. But that’s true even if she has divine power.
So does Luna spin the moon and Celestia spin the earth, or not?
I like the dragons and bat ponies being allies and friends. I also like the image of them being a big crowded community basically sitting on each other like a real bat colony.
I still think Thestrals sounds better but eh. When in Rome...
Interesting to see that dragons were driven to Equestria by humans. One more reason Celestia distrusts us I suppose.
Nightshade is incorrigible.
So bat ponies have extra long tongues...they nectivores then?
9271828
Because she’s Celestia. Also, the Nazis experimented with chemical weapons on one of her little ponies and are planning to either attack or hold Equestria hostage.
Like Vinyl said. Boss lady is pissed, they gonna get sunburned. Probably in the literal sense.
9271904
Luna might still move the moon, but you can’t make a globe dark everywhere by doing that. Even an eclipse only covers a small area. So she could black out Equestria but most of the world, not so much.
i'm finding it highly improbable that they could their hooves on enigma machine. First why was U-boat at equestria at first place? second how some one could infiltrate there because they would be heavily guarded and find exactly right machine and papers and copy them on the spot flawlessly, and get out without rousing suspicion because if they would they would change the code on the spot.
And how could humans possibly be only reason for dragons exile from whole other world? Because dragons must be done something that would make them hated around the whole world and chased away, there cant be smoke without the fire.
9271772
I'm getting overtones of David Xanatos in this Celestia. I wonder if she's illuminati?
9272052
perhaps sea-ponies are better at hiding there existence then most other ponies and the human race hasn't yet caught on to there existence?
Well, Celestia remains impressively magnificent as ever.
This chapter had so much good bat! I hadn't made a connection between batponies and dragons, but it makes an interesting amount of sense. And all those little bats! My heart could barely take it.
Very wonderful chapter.
9272213
There’s a family story involving stealing part of an enigma machine.
I assume it was done with diving suits and a very careful duplicate spell, but yeah it could also be sea ponies.
9272213
sou you are saying that that they went inside from the top switch has spotters using levers to go inside command centers in 90 decree angle on ladders switch are not made for ponies, all the while going thru cramped spaces filled with crew without been noticed knowing anything about layout of the whole ship moving practically blind without knowing what he is looking for anyway, to radio room switch has operator always, and there without him knowing copy the machine and the papers and put them back exactly the same way and go back without been seen. yea extremely unlikely
9271828
She has always been on the side of Ponies.
It goes deeper than that.
Pillar of smoke by day, Pillar of Fire by night.
In this world that would imply both Sisters helped The Hebrew nation out of Egypt at the time.
I was going to guess that this partner might be a certain Mr Bond, but given the name she drops later I guess you've gone for his less fictional creator Ian Fleming.
9272253
Yeah, I do feel the pones are getting rather overpowered here just stealing all this stuff without being noticed and then apparently cracking the whole system which was not a simple task and required the building of whole new avenues of technology on the allies side while at the same time also cracking all the other sides codes, although to be fair that idea was only in the protagonists head.
In addition she's evacuating the ponies which could be hurt directly by the eruption but hasn't warned the rest of the world about the few years of harsh weather which is coming once a proportion of the incoming sunlight gets blocked.
Just gonna toss this out now, I would hope there will be a pony pun on peenemunde at some point in the story. Seems like a lot of potential to be a place for the development of friendship based weaponry.
Oh my god.
9272052
Teleportation, item duplication, then teleportation out. Or an invisibility spell, maybe changeling intervention, mind control could be a possibility too... Or at least memory manipulation.
Just accept that magic was involved and move on.
Why must you ruin my long held dislike of Human in Equestria stories?
9272804 The same reason I made people like Diamond Tiara, and Seaponies, and one attempt at the Flim/Flam brothers that didn't work as well I I wanted.
9272777 9272571 Unicorn!
9272418 Probably stretching a point.
9272399 She can just turn up the cosmic thermostat for a few years.
9272382 Would I drop names in my story?
9272316 "Sister, the smoke is getting in my nose!"
"Don't complain, Luna. I'll make you a nice manna sandwich and some manna cookies before it's my turn in the cloud, how's that?"
9272222 That's actually the canon Hasbro batpony story, I believe. I need to buy that book sometime.
9272124 Such a silly idea.
9271971 Krakatoa or The Year Without A Summer.
9272901
Oh I know, I was pointing out why you have to use the volcanoes instead of just stopping the earth.
9272253
As the author said. See Unicorn, Phoebe and Her. Get close enough with a diving suit to do something incredibly sneaky.
Or they had a seapony listen VERY CAREFULLY to the mechanism from outside the hull, and figure out how it works. Because magic sonar.
Basically, Celestia has worked very very hard over the years to make magic an out of context problem for the world. They desperately need an edge, since they’re pretty far behind for the tech.
Of course the simplest option is they used applied friendship in the field of espionage. Genuine friendships of course, not the Cozy Glow kind. And so some young officer just passed off the plans to their friend in the hopes that Celestia could end this madness.
9272052
They're on friendly terms, so getting on board the submarine might be possible. From there, some sort of x-ray scanning spell to look through walls and copy the machine's structure? She stressed that nothing was done to the original.
9273279 Um, because the proper model for the earth is not an apple or an orange, it's a water balloon with an extraordinarily thin skin, and if you abruptly stop it from spinning, Bad Things would happen very fast.
I'll consider writing a 'Equestria 1940: Side Stories' scene on the Great Encryption Scheme, just to make you guys happy. Here would be a snippet:
"It's impossible!" Widget slammed one hoof down on the table, which made the maze of wires, crystals, and spinning wheels jump. "Nothing matches up at all and this is the seventeenth try we've made at it."
The column of spinning crystal disks did not answer. Over a thousand thin films of pure crystal marked on each side with runes and formulae rotated quietly in their mineral oil bath, making intermittent contacts that caused flickers of light to strobe in patterns against the ceiling. Widget gave the thaumaturgic mechanism another brief charge of magic, then began to peck out a response on the teletype connected to it, making characters appear on the paper already scrolling out of the platen and across the floor;
EX17 = 6793747569390123725 EX17 = ULTRA Y/N? RESULT = N RECOMP Y/N? YEN SEED =The discs began to spin again, making whirls of light spin and dance around the ceiling of the darkened government laboratory while Widget rested her horn against the top of the Plexiglas container and wept in frustration. "Come on, baby," she whispered. "Mama needs this, honey. I haven't sleep in a week. It's just a German code box, not even a tiny fraction as complicated at you are. I... Oh, horseapples," she muttered as she opened one eye and saw that the ENTER key had gotten nudged without any seed numbers being input. "Three honking hours of runtime blown to toothpicks before I can try the next iteration of--" Widget looked at the papers "eight-hundred and twelve."
She rested her forehead against the Analog Circuitry Automated Calculating Device and felt the trickle of tears flow down her face until they vanished into the swirling pools of purified mineral oil below. The fluid held the thick cylinder of enchanted disks mere millimeters apart while they independently spun, making contacts with other disks and others until thaumaturgic theory produced an answer that thousands of unicorns flipping thousands of abacuses for thousands of years would be unable to match. ACACD, or "Acked!" as the fellow nerds in the intelligence services like to call it was her baby, hoof and horn, developed and expanded over the last ten years through far too many midnight enchanting and engraving sessions that had taken the place of dating, or any other form of social interaction. The thrum of its action was like the heartbeat of the foal she never going to have, and the tick-tick-tick of the teletype was the cry of an infant, yanking her out of the sleepy state Widget had faded into. She looked at the teletype, then took off her glasses with her magic and rubbed her eyes.
CALC COMP ULTRA = ULTRA SOLUTION RECRUIT AGENT DEEP MANE USE EQ NAVY SUB DUP ULTRA AT SOURCE WITH SPELL SOLUTION COMPLETE EOLWidget looked at the teletype paper again, then gave ACACD a distracted pat. "That's a good girl, AC. Duplication spells. Wonderful idea. I'll tell Prime in the morning and--"
The teletype rattled again, and Widget stared with wide eyes before giving out a tense chuckle. "No," she stated quite firmly. "Absolutely not."
GO TO PRIME NOW REQUEST PRIORITY NIGHTMARE RECRUIT DEEP MANE FIRST THING AM SLEEP WITH MAKE FOALS NOT GETTING YOUNGER9272901
Wait, where is the cannon story of Batponies being similar to Dragons?
Also I am loving how much Celestia is acting like Xanatos but she knows and says that she could still fail.
And the Dragons? And everything? Dang. This is a very well thought out and fleshed out world, I look forward to reading more, please tell me they come back, While I call them Thestrals myself, I will while in Rome here call them Batpoines.
Very nice.
9273474
That too :) The logistics of eternal night on a globe with a distant light source are tricky.
If you write that, looking forward to it :)
9273504 It's in one of the books, I believe. I read about it once, and didn't cough up the cash (which seriously Hasbro, I'm supporting several of your employees already).
9272777
but he would not know layout of the ship sou randomly teleporting inside the ship would most likely materialize inside a pipe or inside a human killing himself instantly, Invisibility spell would not work because decks are made of metal and using levers to go thru doors is loud, invader could be heard and i have not seen them using that in the show once sou that would be just lazy writing same with mind control.
Unlike you i'm not thinking that Germans are incompetent idiots.
9273279
how would getting inside with diving suits work? if you mean that going thru torpedo tubes well, first you would need to go thru metal shielding that keeps thous tubes pressurized, if that would happen crew would notice because they have meters to look at air pressure to fire thous torpedos. Then you would need to go thru torpedos lauch tube and somehow open access door without filing it with water because that would be noticed quite fast. Then go thru tight corridors unseen switch are filled with crew because that is where their living quarters are. To radio room switch has operator on it.
Because if they suspect anything they will message to the reich and there gestapo will gently interrogate few of thous pony scientist for spying.
sou because infiltrators actions just risked lives of i don't how manys lives.
9273432
there is a difference of being in friendly terms and giving all your military secrets to some random nation. Germans did not give such info to their allies sou why would they let anyone near their u-boats? they would have guarded that thing around the clock.
If every answer is just "magic" then that is just lazy writing,
9273716
The ship is likely a standardized design. You're not blindly teleporting in it if you've seen blueprints or have had an actual tour of the ship... Or just a pony like Pinkie Pie.
Either way if it's story breaking for you I suggest you just give up fiction. Although even history is full of stories that seem less plausible than this.
Alondro scoffs, "Bah! As if I'd let every emo grimdark fanfic writers' wet dream come true! I'd sooner blow the world to asteroids!"
He would... he REALLY would...
Typos...
One's a mistake, I think.
Shouldn't that be "sun"? Why would she block the moon?
9274213 Yep, fixed. The actual 'name' of the featherweight carts is a little fuzzy, since 'cob' gets used for wagons and horses a little randomly, but I decided to pick something that looked good and try to stick to it. And fixed the second. Thanks!
HNNNNNGGG!!!
9273515
You can find most of the books once yayponies I think
Translation: please don't shoot my sister; we're trying to save her?
Ahh, academic as he might be on these Equestrian matters, a diplomat he is not
And people wonder why these rumours about humans and Equestrians getting it on are so prevalent. I blame the nocturne
Wait, does he think the bat wings are an illusion? She just switched off the illusion
But of course she did
GOD dammit
The hot mare in front of him compensates for that
“That was not in the job description, and you know it!”
Looks like we identified the fourth.
Ah, and she said "on Earth", before. Because Nightmare Moon / Luna herself isn't on Earth, of course.
Ember!
Oh no. It wasn't Celestia. It was Luna
"Why" is indeed a very good question. I'm imagining Celestia might not be so certain Luna can actually be saved, and wants the element bearers to be able to do what is needed to vanquish Nightmare Moon without reservations. Always works better if they don't know there's a sad little woona inside the Big Bad Evil Nightmare Moon.
Then again, she did tell Jon.
Then, my good Sir, you are allowed to resort to violence
Remarks and corrections:
> Cultural Attache
"Cultural Attach[é]"