A Queen's Perspective - Correspondence

by gerandakis

Wargames

Dear Twilight,

a fashion rampage using ancient dark magic? Somehow that sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would happen to us, doesn't it? Now I have two major questions. One: What was Spike thinking? A sinister sounding spell from an ancient book? Maybe show that to an expert for ancient magic first. Especially when there are not one but two such experts nearby. And Two: Why was that book in the castle of the two sisters to begin with? What exactly did Celestia and Luna get up to, to have such a book stashed in their castle?
That being said, I'm glad you got the matter cleared up and the dark magic cleaned up. Wishing you and your team good luck at the Equestria Games (those should be happening soon, right?)

Sunset

---

Dear Sunset,

those are happening rather soon yes, in fact mother and myself are currently on the Deception with our teams on the way to the Crystal Empire.
Now to answer your questions. Spike wasn't thinking at all, not with his head anyway. And Celestia and Luna say they kept that book in the castle to keep it out of the wrong hooves and simply forgot about it after the whole Nightmare Moon debacle. Now whether you choose to believe them or not is your decision.
I'll let you know how the games went once I know,

Twilight

---

Dear Sunset,

well the games are over and we're on the way back home. Spike had an interesting time. Not sure if I ever told you that, but he has a bit of hero status in the Crystal Empire because, while I found the Crystal Heart and Cadence brought it in position and got the crystal ponies to activate it, it was Spike who got the Heart from me and past King Sombra to Cadence.
Because of that he was offered the chance to ignite the fire and officially open the games. Unfortunately he had a bad case of stagefright and couldn't get his fire to work, so I cheated a bit and ignited it with a subtle bit of magic. For some reason he saw that as evidence that he could ignite fires with his mind. (Yeah, not sure what gave him that idea) After a while I took him aside to tell him what had actually happened. (he was going around trying to set things on fire with his mind, which obviously didn't work. He was embarrassing himself, not to mention that trying to set things on fire all the time is not a healthy state of mind, especially for a creature with actual fire breath.) He then managed to convince Miss Harshwhinny to let him sing the anthem of the winning team after the Aerial Relay.
Speaking of the Aerial Relay, Mom's excursor team managed to come in third behind Cloudsdale (a.k.a. the Wonderbolts) and Ponyville (a.k.a. Rainbow's team). My own kids managed fifth place after the team from Griffonia in fourth and before the team from Manehattan in sixth.
Back to the topic of Spike, turns out he can't sing. At all. Unfortunately this time I really had no way to subtly help him, especially as they had put a dampening spell on every magic user in attendance to prevent interference with the contests. (Obviously they didn't need that for the opening ceremony.)
That safety measure came back to bite them later. Specifically during the Ice Archery competition. One of the contestants miss-fired and the arrow struck a stray cloud, I take it you can imagine what happened to the cloud. Anyway it came crashing down towards part of the stands. Now some pegasi, griffins and even a few of mine and mothers drones came in to slow it down, but they couldn't stop it. There was not enough time to cut the suppression spell either and mine and mother's psychic abilities were nowhere near strong enough to help. But then Spike came in, just yelled for everypony to get out of the way then breathed out a massive flame and vaporized the thing.
So yeah, that was how the day was saved at the Equestria Games. Of course Spike was being all humble about it, but I don't think the crystal ponies care much. 'Spike the brave and glorious' (yeah, they actually call him that. Every time. It loses its novelty fast) saved them again. I hope it doesn't end up getting to his head.

Good luck with your own games when they come around,

Twilight

---

Dear Twilight,

I'm impressed, vaporising an entire frozen cloud, I didn't know his fire was that powerful. Give my congratulations to all the teams you have access to. (the ones that know of me that is.) It'll still be another two weeks, roughly, before the Friendship Games start over here. When there are so many teams from beyond Equestria, why do they still call it the Equestria games anyway?

Take care, it feels like it's time for some big bad again soon,

Sunset

---

Dear Sunset,

are you an oracle or something? How do you keep doing that?
I'm currently aboard the Deception with a detachment of Queen's Guard. A little over an hour ago we got word from Princess Celestia that a being known as Tirek has apparently escaped from Tartarus a few years ago (Remember when I told you about my experience with time travel? One of the things we fixed was brining Cerberus back to Tartarus. Yes, I literally went to Tartarus and back. It was a stressful week) and has been laying low ever since, It seems he now managed to gather enough of his strength to regain some of his original power. Namely the ability to drain Magic from Ponies, he can only affect unicorns for now but it's likely only a matter of time before he can draw the innate magic from pegasi and earth ponies as well. The Princesses are sending Discord to catch him but requested we come as a back-up plan.
I only hope that won't be neccessary,

Twilight

---

Dear Twilight,

I don't know how I keep doing that, I just get a feeling like that on occasion. Good Luck in dealing with him.

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Your worried friend,

Sunset Shimmer

---

Dear Sunset,

you can relax now, all is well. Tirek is back in Tartarus.

This was an exciting few days. Tirek Managed to convince Discord to join him and betray us. Turns out we needed a backup plan afterall.
I met with the princesses in Canterlot. They told me that Tirek was after alicorn magic and that they needed to get rid of theirs. We had a bit of a discussion but long story short, they ended up giving their combined magic to me for safekeeping. Now If I was an alicorn myself I could have probably handled it, but being a changeling queen meant I could only hold about half of it for any significant amount of time. I had to distribute the rest of it among the drones on the Deception. Once Tirek reached the Princesses, he, from what I've been told, threw a bit of a temper tantrum and went searching for their magic after throwing them in Tartarus.
Now of course he had a bit of trouble with that seeing as it was aboard an invisible airship. My meeting with the princesses was in the early evening, but the real meaning of the power I was keeping didn't come up until early the next morning. I had Celestia's and Luna's magic, I had to do their daily jobs. I tell you, moving the sun and moon is a lot harder than they make it look, though in retrospect, trying to move both of them at once probably didn't help.
In the meantime, I sent my first squad of Queen's Guard to Ponyville to find my friends, I had them take along a box of voidstones to set up a trap in Whitetail Woods.
Then came the scary part. Tirek was still trying to find the alicorn magic and tearing apart Equestria in the process. So we had to buy time for my kids and my friends to set up the trap. And so it came that we went up against him, powered up with nearly all the pony magic in Equestria, with the Deception, a heavily armored and armed warship, protected by a shield made with the expertise of my family-line (we are experts at shields and many of our special talents even revolve around that, we know some secrets about shields that even the princesses don't know) and backed up by the entire alicorn magic of Equestria, truly an epic battle. As it turns out, Tirek is good at stealing magic, but not so much at using it, his repertoire consisted mainly of a beam to attack and a shield to block our attacks. He also lost Discord's support some time during the night. From what he told me later, Discord apparently got tired of listening to Tirek talk to himself about himself. It was relatively easy to fight him to a stalemate and slowly lure him towards Whitetail Woods.
Once my friends sprung the trap, the battle was over pretty quickly. Like, really quickly. It seems containing that much magic is rather difficult in a null magic field, they used a prototype voidstone booster Ratchet and I developed. Improves the range of the voidstones, which was very helpful because Tirek grew proportionately to the amount of magic he stole.
Turns out having that much magic funneled into such a powerful attack spell right before being disrupted by an amplified null magic field and having a gigantic amount of magic escape you to return to its rightful owners on top of shrinking from the size of a medium to large Canterlot house to that of an average stallion in about two seconds really messes you up. From all I could tell he'll be out like a light for a few more days.
After that it was easy to open up a portal into Tartarus and bring the Princesses back home. Getting all of their magic back to the correct Princesses was a bit more complicated but also manageable.
Fluttershy and Rainbow gave Discord a stern talking to about why friends shouldn't betray each other. Now he knows not to incur the wrath of Fluttershy. I almost feel sorry for him.
So in conclusion: Equestria is safe once more and Tirek is back in Tartarus where he belongs (Cerberus was oh so happy to have him back).
I hope you didn't worry too much,

Twilight

Comments

[DavisSentoV5]

What a battle that must have been for Twilight & her kids!

[gerandakis]

9059673
I guess you'll just have to wait and see ... It shouldn't be too much longer. But it just so happens that Queen Twilight will be spending a week with her family (for reasons you should know if you 'read For the Hive') and leaving the journal unsupervised in her bedroom aboard the phoenix (which is why she'll be unreachable in this timeline)
I've made it my policy here to only show what changes in this timeline, as the majority of the frienship games will happen largely unchanged AQP Friendship Games will actually skip most of the movie and deal with the aftermath which will be a lot more extensive in this timeline. I can't really say more about that without spoiling everything, but I can say that it wiii change everything.

[HeartfireFirebrand]

He also lost Discord's support some time during the night. From what he told me later, Discord apparently got tired of listening to Tirek talk to himself about himself. It was relatively easy to fight him to a stalemate and slowly lure him towards Whitetail Woods.

Wow, damn Tirek has a huge ego.