Blackout
(♫)
They were permitted to set up an impromptu hospital tent in one of the larger dining areas in the town square. Twilight found herself shuffled inside in the middle of a clump of other citizens, likely more just because she was a unicorn than because of any actual appraisal of her skills. She couldn’t muster any reason to complain. It was something to do, at least, other than just standing around and waiting for whatever would come their way, and at least it got her away from the town hall and the… entity that as far as anypony she’d overheard knew was still holding court inside.
The entire town seemed to have sunk into a near-catatonic state. Some ponies shuffled back to their homes or shops, or made a halfhearted attempt at clearing the streets of Festival debris, or tried to find loved ones; many just stood or sat where they’d been left, ignored except when somepony bothered to fetch them a blanket or something to eat. Twilight supposed that to the common villager all of this must’ve seemed quite unreal, and she could hardly blame them for their numbness- or possibly it was Twilight herself who was numb. Or both.
Some remaining ember of curiosity in her had given her a brief impulse to examine the Royal Guard pegasi who’d been hit by Nightmare Moon’s lightning spell, but she hadn’t been able to muster the effort to shoulder through to where they’d been laid out. None of them had regained consciousness since the incident, and Twilight quite frankly had no idea if they ever would. After the effort expended just to get here, such a display of magical power should have been utterly beyond even Nightmare Moon. Obviously that meant something about Twilight's model of the transit spell was very, very wrong, but she had no idea what it was. Bits of arcane formulae and half-formed theories drifted through her mind like fireflies in thick fog, but nothing held together long enough for her to make any sense of. There was always somepony around to tell her to wash this or hold that or shine a light on something else, so she chose to focus on that instead.
Between the militiaponies who’d been patrolling the edges of town and the few residents who’d chosen both to skip attending the Raising ceremony and offer some kind of resistance to the Lunar Army, their makeshift infirmary had about a dozen casualties to tend to. She still had no idea what had become of Spike, but she forced herself to consider his absence from the hospital tent an encouraging sign- it wouldn’t do, right now, to consider the alternative. She hadn’t heard tell of anypony being outright executed by the dark-armored soldiers yet, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened and even having limited themselves to technically nonlethal force the Lunars were brutal. Without access to intensive magical healing that Ponyville was in absolutely no state to provide, Twilight doubted that all of the patients would make it to the next sundown with the gashes and blunt trauma they’d sustained. Assuming, of course, that there ever was another sundown.
Twilight didn’t want to think about that, either, or about anything, so she went back to dispensing carefully-measured drops of analgesic potion to poor Citrine Sparks, as another unicorn named Golden Something-Or-Other tried unsuccessfully to magic the head of the Lunar warhammer out of her shoulder. It had dug in deeply, and deformed a section of plate armor with it, and their only proper chirurgeon had been called away to see to a stallion with two crossbow quarrels in his back, so it wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. They’d had to cut the handle off with a bonesaw just to be able to maneuver her properly onto the table, Citrine crying out with every vibration and slight twist; now she just made odd little ‘guh’ noises every now and then when Golden shifted too abruptly, her eyes glassy and unfocused. The potion they were using on her was meant for farm animals, and Twilight was no pharmacist- she had, frankly, no idea if Citrine’s responses meant that she needed more of it, or that she had already been given too much.
The scholar had sat in on her fair share of dissections, even tested a new spell on cadavers in one memorable experiment, but those had been prepared corpses- clean, bloodless, and smelling overpoweringly of formaldehyde. This was different, but it wouldn’t have been quite so bad if the other ponies she’d met didn’t seem to be bothered. She’d spotted Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash running supplies, and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie stood out from the crowd of other conscripts every now and then as they worked, but Twilight didn’t have the nerve to speak to them. As far as she knew she was the only one who had any awareness either of the conditions they were working in or the continued, silent presence of two bat-winged pegasus guards near the entrance.
Abruptly, Twilight felt a hoof tap gently against her shoulder, and looked down to see that she was letting the potion bottle in her telekinetic field slowly tip over and dribble out onto the ground. She quickly righted it and realized she was being looked at with some concern by one of their few proper medics- Redheart, she thought her name was.
“Why don’t you go out and get some air?” the pink-and-white earth pony suggested, and when Twilight opened her mouth to protest, continued, “If your horn cuts out or you knock something over, you won’t be helping anypony either.”
“I… I guess you’re right.” She set the potion on one of the last remaining bare patches of table.
The two Lunar soldiers turned to look at her as she pushed her way through the hastily-suspended cloth drapings, but made no move to stop her. In contrast to the walking skeletons that seemed to make up much of their forces, these two did indeed seem to put on every appearance of living ponies- yellow-eyed, slit-pupilled ponies with leathery chiropteran wings and more than their fair share of scars, but ponies nonetheless. Twilight wondered what they thought of her leaving. Possibly horrible things. Possibly nothing at all.
Despite everything that had happened in the hour and a half since the failed Raising- Harmony, had it really been only that long? To Twilight it may as well have been ten months- it was still a lovely night. The cool breeze off the Everfree still carried the scents of dew and wood-burning fires, and very briefly Twilight found herself confused. She had forgotten what it was like to smell anything other than sweat, disinfectant, or offal. There was a sizeable part of her that wanted to find somewhere out of the way to curl up on the ground and sleep, but the continued presence of the dark-armored guards stationed around the square were a more than effective reminder that she needed to stay on her hooves. Orange light gleamed on their armor, and when Twilight turned to locate the source she saw that the Lunars had set up an enormous bonfire where the orators’ stages had been. As she watched, a trio of bat-winged pegasi flew into view from a side street and meticulously ripped every banner that held Celestia’s mark off of the bunting up above. Those were added to the collection they already held in their forehooves before the lot of it was tossed into the flames. Earth ponies and unicorns on the ground added a wad of crumpled sun-lanterns and what appeared to be the mock-regalia that had been affixed to the whitewashed statue before spreading out again in search of fresh material.
By some unfortunate coincidence, an earth pony stallion headed directly for Twilight. “Thou wouldst best be on thine way now, lass,” he muttered, slitted eyes narrowing, “Would’nae want t’be caught interfering with the change a’ heraldry, now, wouldst thee?”
His accent and grammar were indistinguishable from authentic Old Ponish- a Trottish Highland dialect, if Twilight wasn’t mistaken. Once again she found herself wondering just how much of their old memories the reanimated Lunars actually possessed- or if they were indeed reanimated at all, and not simply somehow… preserved. Then the soldier ducked his head to his shoulder, eyes shining yellow-orange in the moonlight, and clasped the handle of a wicked-looking spiked flail in his teeth. “Go on… on wit’ thee!”
Twilight picked a street at random and didn’t look back.
She was three quarters of the way to the next intersection when something small and hard bounced off of her right shoulder. Almost by reflex she pivoted and began charging a stun spell before she caught sight of purple and green in the shadows between two houses.
She briefly considered funneling her charged mana into a magelight, but then stifled it entirely when she realized she had no idea how the Lunar guards would react to something so conspicuous. Cautiously she edged closer.
“Twilight? Twilight!” The voice was barely audible, but she recognized it immediately.
“Spike?!”
“Shh!” The young dragon extended a claw out of the shadows just for a moment, beckoning her into the alleyway.
She followed his lead and as she drew closer was finally able to make out his form with enough clarity to confirm a lack of any serious injuries. “Where’ve you… what have you… I’m so glad you’re safe, but…”
“I’ve been keeping to the rooftops, mostly. They’ve got those bat… pegasus… things flying patrols overhead, but there’s a lot of eaves and overhangs around this place and I’m pretty sure they don’t even know I’m here. Do you know what happened to Rarity? We got split up when Nightmare Moon appeared and…”
“She’s fine, I saw her rolling bandages in the hospital tent. I think everypony’s still in one piece, so as long as we get-”
Spike’s slitted eyes suddenly focused on something over her shoulder and he pressed a claw against her muzzle. “Somepony’s coming!” he hissed.
Spotting an empty cider bottle nearby, Twilight flopped down on her side as quietly as she could manage and rolled it over near her muzzle, watching through one half-open eye as a pair of Lunar soldiers strode past on either side of Amethyst Star. The Councilpony’s coat and mane were in disarray and there was something small and metallic wrapped around the base of her horn; but she didn’t seem in any immediate danger and in any case there wasn’t much Twilight could do to help her. Instead she waited until the sound of the Lunars’ steel-shod hooves vanished down the far end of the street, stood, and brushed herself off as best she could.
“Look, it’s not safe out here,” Spike admonished from where he crouched in the shadow of a rain barrel, “You can’t climb the buildings and I’d attract too much attention on the ground, so I’ll meet up with you at the library and we can figure out what to do, all right?”
“All right. Just… be careful, okay?”
“Okay.” She didn’t see or hear Spike leave, but when she pawed at the shadows behind the barrel a few seconds later there was nothing there.
The walk back to the Golden Oaks was weirdly, disconcertingly peaceful. The Lunar Army, even its seemingly animate members, seemed to have little interest in policing the movements of Ponyville’s citizens within the town limits. After all, what could anypony do? She doubted they’d be so forgiving of anypony that actively tried to leave the area, however, or gave any sign of active resistance. In fact, that was probably what had put most of her patients in the medical tent. Twilight didn’t intend to join those unfortunate souls any time soon, but from what limited observations she was able to gather of their interactions with other passers-by, the skeletal troops seemed to have very little awareness of suspicious or unusual behavior – or much of anything at all that wasn’t a direct provocation, for that matter. They also seemed to outnumber their flesh-and-blood comrades by a factor of between ten and twenty to one, which was doubly strange, since when they’d marched on the town hall the ratio had seemed closer to five or six to one. The scientist in her wondered if more skeletal specimens were arriving from somewhere else, or fleshy ones were leaving, or both.
The library door was unlocked and the interior seemed, to Twilight’s limited night vision, to be relatively undisturbed. She briefly considered bringing up the lamps, then decided concealment was more important, then remembered that the magically-modified Lunars were no doubt perfectly capable of seeing in the dark. She opted to light one or two to avoid appearing suspicious and then draw several of the curtains. Even with enough light to see by Spike didn’t seem to be anywhere to be found, but after a momentary rustling of scales he carefully extracted himself from a crevice in the ceiling, silently dropped to the floor, and immediately wrapped his arms around her neck.
“Spike, I’m so glad you’re all right,” Twilight muttered, mindful as ever of his stiff dorsal spines as she returned the hug.
“You too. I didn’t want to risk trying to get inside the hospital tent to look for you in there, but…”
Twilight shook her head. “No, you made the right decision, Spike. Nopony needs to try to be a hero here,” involuntarily, she recalled the ghastly wet crunch of a warhammer meeting Citrine’s shoulder, and hoped her assistant didn’t see her wince, “We just need to sit tight and wait until somepony from Canterlot realizes the town’s… uhh… gone dark.”
Spike pulled away and began pacing back and forth, almost unconsciously avoiding the line-of-sight of any of the open windows. “Twilight, I… don’t think help’s gonna be coming any time soon. I took a look inside the Post office and it’s filled with Lunars trying to figure out how to start the firepot back up again. That pegasus Councilpony said she wasn’t going to help them but then they brought out this filly that I think might’ve been her daughter, and…” he turned and gestured beside him to one of the open windows, “well, look at the Moon!”
Twilight did as she was commanded. The entire walk home she’d carefully avoided taking more than a fleeting glance skyward, and now she gasped as she saw the Mare-in-the-Moon image once again in place. In retrospect, it made perfect sense, as so many things lately did. Nightmare Moon would want all the time she could get to gather her forces and fortify Ponyville; given the prowess with illusion spells so many of the histories ascribed to Princess Luna and her inherent connection to the Circle of the Moon, it wasn’t hard to imagine such an image being within her capabilities. That, in turn, meant…
“The rest of Equestria just thinks the Raising’s been delayed a few hours,” Twilight gasped, suddenly unable to sit still as she rifled through her saddlebags by the table, “Celestia… Celestia told everypony who asked that Nightmare Moon was already gone. Nopony outside of town even knows she’s here.” She didn’t have more than a rough estimate of how long the alicorn could maintain her ruse of normalcy; certainly not more than a day, probably much less, but… given her army and her own formidable and difficult-to-judge combat prowess, that might be enough time to organize a major assault. Twilight still doubted that she would be able to stand against the entire Equestrian armed forces, but Twilight had been wrong before, and even if they were eventually put down the Lunars could take quite a lot of innocent ponies with them.
She finally found what she was looking for- a quill, a scroll, and a bottle of special alchemical ink keyed to her personal thaumic signature. “Shiny. Shiny’ll know what to do.” After a moment’s thought she paused, steadied her telekinesis, and began to write:
Shining Armor:
I’m not sure where to begin. I don’t know what this situation looks like from Canterlot or anywhere outside and a great deal of what I’m telling you won’t make sense or will seem to be outright untrue, but it’s vitally important that you take immediate action to at least verify my claims. Ponyville is currently occupied by an assembly of necromantic troops that give every appearance of the former Lunar Republican Army, emerging from Lunar sites in and around the Everfree. They are seemingly under the command of an alicorn-like creature calling itself Nightmare Moon. I would estimate the number of troops at approximately one to three thousand, all armed with Rebellion-era weapons; I was not able to perform a thorough assessment of the creature commanding them myself but I’d estimate its raw magical output to be in excess of Princess Cadance. I don’t know where Princess Celestia is, but her lack of intervention in these events, and the failure of the Raising itself, suggests she too has been rendered unable to react. The hostile force controls the Post and has isolated the entire village; any reports that Ponyville is still under Equestrian control are illusionary. We’ll try to hold out as long as we can, but several civilians were severely injured after they tried to resist and require immediate medical assistance. Please send as many combat troops as you can muster right away; a scouting party could easily be overpowered. I’d prefer the entire force available, but the others need to be on high alert as there may be other, remote sites where dangerous Lunar artifacts are now active. I can’t possibly overstate the danger we, and all of Equestria, may face.
-Twilight
Even with Princess Celestia indisposed -and indeed she had to be indisposed, the alternative did not bear considering- the flame-spell would still be operating, and she had never disconnected it from Shining Armor. She folded the scroll into a neat tube and tossed it to her assistant, watching with barely-controlled anxiety as it disappeared in his bright green flame.
(♫)
Commander Shining Armor was in the middle of an argument with a minotaur Strategos whose name he honestly could not care enough to recall, when a scroll materialized in between them. The general continued talking for a few seconds longer- “… the Heliadae are never this tardy, but I suppose this is what you get when you invest control over your Sun to a single Princess…” before he seemed to finally realize the paper tube was lying at his feet. “Seems you… dropped something?”, he muttered, bending over to pick up the document while somehow managing to avoid spilling even a drop from the full goblet of wine clutched in his other hand.
“Excuse me for one moment. Guard business, I’m sure you understand?” Shining snatched the scroll out of the minotaur’s hand with a bit more telekinetic force than was entirely necessary, and scanned the Great Balcony for a more secluded spot. He caught a glimpse of pink and gold a few meters away, and headed in the opposite direction as quickly as he could while remaining inconspicuous- Princess Cadance was doing an admirable job of holding the attention of the Celebration’s various esteemed guests, and he knew he’d just get in her way. It had been about two hours since the Sun should have appeared, and ponies and foreign dignitaries alike were starting to get concerned. Delayed Raisings weren’t especially uncommon over the course of Equestrian history, their causes ranging from assassination attempts to timekeeping errors, but Shiny could recognize a potentially unstable situation when he saw it. He’d been called away some five or six times now for official reports, but the letters they were receiving from Ponyville had been properly formatted, properly sealed, properly reassuring, and utterly uninformative. He knew Princess Celestia had been called away on some sort of urgent, life-or-death business in the countryside, but other than that not a great deal.
He didn’t know how Cadance was managing not only to keep everycreature calm, but to keep them from noticing his absences. He made a mental note to let her know how much he appreciated her assistance some time in the near future- perhaps a disguised visit to one of the rowdier lower-city pubs was in order, or an invitation to accompany him on an inspection tour of the remote border outposts; he knew Canterlot high society bored her terribly.
Tugging at the velvet collar of his Guard dress uniform- despite the carefully-maintained alpine climate of Canterlot, the presence of so many bodies and a few large firepits had rendered the Great Balcony uncomfortably warm- Shining unrolled the message and immediately recognized Twilight Sparkle’s neat, blocky script:
Shining:
The situation in Ponyville is currently under control. Princess Celestia, her troops, and Ponyville civilians were occupied assembling a scouting party to locate myself after I tried to perform a necromantic assessment of Lunar Army bodies in the Everfree and was injured after three Rebellion-era magical weapons were rendered active.
Please isolate this situation from Canterlot and Princess Cadance. I cannot verify my former claims and my reports severely overstate the danger of Nightmare Moon. I’d prefer they not react to my failure right away.
-Twilight
Shining sidled over to where a set of crystal lanterns provided more reliable lighting, and read the message over once again. He’d known that Twily had for the last year or so been deeply involved in some sort of secretive archaeological project relating to the Lunar Rebellions, but even for the Royal Academy the whole thing had been buried in an unusual amount of red tape. In fact, he knew basically nothing about what she was actually studying- an uncomfortable position to be in for a pony of his rank and responsibilities.
He knew his sister more than well enough, though, to understand that her reaction to so much work apparently having been wasted would be… messy. To be certain the way her letter was constructed seemed damned odd, but given the strain she was under and the uncertain extent of her apparent injuries, he could more than explain the stilted phrasing. His first thought was to make a long-range teleport to Ponyville himself, right then and there, but the weight of his obligation to manage any situation that might develop either in the capitol or elsewhere across Equestria reasserted itself a moment later. In peacetime, in the mainline Equestrian Army, an officer might have been granted emergency leave to see to an injured relative, but the elite Royal Guard considered themselves to be made of sterner stuff.
Instead, Shiny’s eyes tracked over the assembled crowd until he spotted another familiar face engaged in what looked to be a none-too-exciting conversation with professional dilettantes Jet Set and Upper Crust. Major Forward March was head of the Guard’s combat medics, as well as one of Shiny’s old Academy buddies. The two of them and Twilight had played more than a few games of Ogres & Oubliettes together when they had all lived in the same section of Canterlot Castle, and occasionally they still corresponded.
“Forward.” As Shining sidled up to the ochre pegasus mare, Jet Set and Upper Crust took one look at his concerned expression and trotted off in search of fresh victims. He’d expected the public revelation that he was courting Princess Mi Amore Cadenza to bring about no end of trouble, but in fact he was growing to like the influence that came with it. “Twilight just sent me a… very strange letter, and I think she’s hurt pretty bad. If you could swing a long-range teleport and make sure she’s all right I’d really appreciate it.”
“Oh, thank the Sun, an emergency!” Despite her flippant tone, Forward’s expression was concerned as she made her way to the staircase, and the long-range focus circles where the Guard’s staff of teleportation mages were stationed. Once he was sure she was on her way, Shining fished a quill from one of the pockets of his uniform and began to write a letter to send ahead of her. Pondering what to say, he stared at the Moon holding position just above the horizon, and was briefly, immensely relieved to see that the Mare pattern remained just where it had always been. A moment later, though, the feeling was gone, replaced by puzzlement over why he had ever expected the Moon to look any different in the first place. By the time his liaison with the Canterlot Watch pulled him away to brief him on a bar fight near the dockyards that had gotten out of hoof, the incident had slipped from his mind more or less of its own accord. It was probably nothing more than a half-remembered dream.
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Hey there. Thanks very much for getting this next chapter up. I really appreciate you going to the effort. It took a while, but was definitely worth the wait. The exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up were all well done in all the right places. Yeah, the assessment of the situation in Ponyville was appropriately bad, but the details concerning Twilight and her future friends all at least trying to help the injured as well as the efforts Spike is going to in order to avoid getting spotted are well done. That Orwellian Edit that Nightmare Moon did to Twilight's letter to Shining is a good indication of just how powerful AND how clever she actually is, though Shining is JUST smart enough to STILL be worried.
At any rate, very definitely looking forward to more of this.
You know, I am amazed you could turn the series into something very mature whilst still accounting for necessary characterizations and continuity.
Do you want to start writing your own, publishable stories? I think this story could be remade into something original: a lot more excellent writers have gone online ever since Fifty Shades of Grey-which was originally Twilight Saga fan fiction-was published.
10813145
I've considered it; the thing is I don't think I've ever had a genuinely original idea in my life and do better working off the work of others. Plus the whole "ponies" thing kind of ties it to MLP, to the point where it'd be really strange to replace them with The Tolkeinian Races or whatever.
There will be more Extended Cut coming in the nearish future, though, including additional side stories that are set in the same universe but are not episode rewrites.
"Wait, why are we re-reading the letter from Shining's perspective? This seems ludicrously redundant— OH."
–TheAncientPolitzanian, 2021
Well, now we know (maybe?) why the Lunars were so interested in getting the message fire at the Post Office working again!
Nice little glimpse of the situation in Canterlot, too!
Hmm, this Twilight has seen death of a sorts.
Nightmare Moon or her army messing with magic firescroll communications - that's a big thing. Kinda surprised that they can mess with Twilight's direct messages though.
Pretty impressive of ol' Black Snooty to invade, yet keep it under wraps. I'm pondering whether she's been freed multiple times throughout the last thousand years to put these spanners in the system. She sure is taking her time systematically nerfing the populace from retaliating. Kinda funny how she's operating out of a tiny town like Ponyville...
... or is it?!
Guess I'll find out. Moving on!