15. For Equestria, and the World
“What do you intend to do?”
“The best I can.”
Hoity Toity let out a little sigh and cocked a sympathetic brow toward the pacing mass of Princess Rarity. She'd been wearing a row into the rug in Princess Celestia's bedroom, walking back and forth, trying to formulate some sort of solution to the sun problem. The problem being, of course, that there was no sun to speak of, and trying to convince Canterlot that everything was going to work out okay was going to be awfully hard to do with an empty, black sky overhead.
“Princess,” Fancy Pants said, stepping up from beside Hoity and holding out a hoof, “that's a lovely sentiment, but we really need a direction to move on. You're bogging yourself down with too many problems right now. Breathe.”
Princess Rarity resisted the urge to snap at him. Of course she was bogged down with too many problems; there were too many problems! She slowed her pacing, but didn't stop it completely, and attempted to pace her breathing. Helpful. Not a solution, though.
“Do you think it’s a ‘Princess’ thing?” Hoity asked aside to Fancy, who chuckled a little.
“I think it’s a leader thing,” he replied. Princess Rarity looked over, confused and agitated. Fancy pointed at the floor. “You didn't do all that yourself, Rarity,” he said simply.
Rarity glanced at the rug, and for the first time took notice of the faded row that had been trampled into it. The only part of the rug that was threadbare, and it was the same track she was walking.
“Princess Celestia… did this?” she asked, taken aback.
“Does that,” Fancy corrected, “with some degree of regularity, actually. Usually when she’s worried about her student, and the rest of you.”
Princess Rarity stopped walking and slowly dropped into a seated posture. “I… huh,” she pondered. “She always just seems so composed. I never thought of her as a worrier.”
“Most ponies don't,” Hoity said, smiling from under his shaded glasses, “which is why when she tells them to do something, they do it. Even if she doesn’t have all the answers yet. They assume she does. Often, that's enough, until the other answers can be found.”
Princess Rarity looked around the room. Princess Celestia's room. Her sanctuary for some thousand-plus years now. It was simple, elegant. But here and there she could spy little pieces of personal paraphernalia. Tiny trinkets, hanging from doorways or hidden beside books. A little bauble. An earring. A stuffed animal. She smiled. What possible memories could all those hold, that an eternal being would keep them perpetually present in her company? They almost seemed hidden, like she'd placed them specifically to forget they were there, and experience the thrill of finding them again.
For perhaps the first time in her life, it occurred to Rarity that Celestia was, in fact, a pony, as well as a princess.
“It’s all an act,” she said softly.
“All the world's a stage, dear,” Hoity Toity replied in an equally gentle voice. “The trick is putting together one hell of a show.”
Princess Rarity set her gaze. “I can put on a show,” she said firmly, and looked over to the pair of them. “Alright. Immediate problems. I have a declaration to the public to make in two...” she looked at the fine filigree clock on the wall and swallowed, “... one and a half hours. I need the Sun Dais prepared.”
“Already on it,” Fancy Pants reported.
“Annnd I need to know how to raise the sun.”
Fancy and Hoity clenched their teeth a little and looked at each other.
“Er… that one is a little more… touchy,” Fancy chanced, motioning with trepidation with a circling hoof. “Princess Celestia never really indicated if she'd ever recorded that trick anywhere.”
Princess Rarity blinked. “She… what?” she asked incredulously, “She had to have. Surely there was some sort of contingency in place for this sort of thing, in case she was ever lost or captured?”
“Princess Luna,” the two of them replied in unison.
Rarity waved her hoof. “Beyond that.”
“The Elements of Harmony,” they again replied as one.
Rarity rolled her eyes. “Beyond that!”
Hoity and Fancy looked at each other, before turning back to the princess and shrugging. Rarity felt her lip tremble.
“When this is over,” she declared hotly, “we're going to have a serious talk about re-evaluating the emergency protocols of this nation.” She resumed her pacing. “No pony knows how to do it. Delightful. It has to be somewhere. She wouldn’t just take it to the grave with her, it’s too important! It’s written down, it has to be... It’s just finding it.” She looked over as she walked, trotting the same path they'd watch Celestia trot many times before. “The palace libraries? The Starswirl the Bearded wing? Twilight said that's where all the most dangerous spells are kept.”
Twilight had never actually told her that, she realized. For a fleeting moment, she scoured her mind for the link to her purple friend. Nothing. Silence. But still, she had that little tidbit, tucked away. Maybe there was more of Twilight left in her than she'd realized. She said a quiet thank you for that. Twilight Sparkle was exactly the pony she needed to be right now.
“I'll have the librarians scour the shelves right away, Princess,” Hoity declared, saluting and spinning on a hoof to exit the room.
Fancy stepped forward. “Princess,” he cautioned, “it’s a good place to start. We can send an army of ponies in there, check every book, but it’s still a public wing. Albeit a high security one. I can't guarantee Princess Celestia would have left a spell that important in there.”
Rarity chewed her lip, but her gaze remained firm. “I don't think she'd hide it too well,” she replied. “Celestia is ageless, but she isn’t invincible. She knows that. She wouldn’t leave us all in the dark if she passed. It has to be somewhere accessible.”
Celestia. Not Princess. She hadn’t even realized she'd left the title off. Fancy noticed, but didn’t comment, save for an almost invisible smile. There was hope yet.
“Is there anywhere in the palace only accessible to the princess?” she asked, exploring a different route of investigation. “Somewhere only she's allowed to go?”
“Several, but they all have exceptions to the rule,” Fancy replied, mentally scrolling up a list. “Her bedroom, for instance, but we're both in it right now. Her private study, but Twilight Sparkle spent most of her childhood in there, along with Spike and their other tutors. Some of the old wings that have artifacts from the Discord Age locked up in them, but scholars and researchers are in and out of there on a reasonable basis. The vault where she held the Elements of Harmony,” he scrunched his face, “but I think she emptied that when Discord proved himself able to penetrate it so easily. The private garden, but it’s all outdoors. The harem-”
Princess Rarity blinked, and looked over at Fancy Pants, who seemed to have stumbled upon the same possibility.
“She wouldn’t have...” Rarity said.
“She might have!” Fancy countered. “It’s one of the most private areas in the palace. Everypony in there is sworn to personal secrecy and exclusive to the Princess. It’s the only place completely free of outside traffic.” He seemed to mull the possibility. “It’s more than just a room for indiscretions, Rarity; it’s also a rather beautiful building. More often than not she'd go in there just to have some quiet time alone.”
Rarity lifted a brow, both in incredulity and interest. “Worth checking out?”
“I would recommend it,” he replied. “I'll scour the Princess' study myself on the off chance she kept it there, but she was usually only in that room if she was helping Twilight. If you're going to keep something that fundamental around, you'd probably keep someplace a fair distance from inquisitive children.”
“Somewhere you would feel safe in,” Rarity mused.
Fancy nodded, and moved for the door. “This way,” he gestured, “and, Princess… do try not to get distracted in there. We're on a bit of a tight schedule.”
Princess Rarity made no promises.
=====================================================================
Cold.
Twilight struggled to right herself as the frigid clutch of the ocean's embrace numbed her to the bones. She'd felt cold before, but there was something altogether more sinister about this kind of cold. It was deceptive, almost ignorable upon first encountering it while the blood thudded through your veins and convinced you that the chill was a minor nuisance more than anything else. But within a minute's time its slow crawl would seep into your very being and sap you of your strength and mobility, as it threatened to do to her. This made three times she'd been flung from the boat. She was long past the point of underestimating the cold of the open water.
Vibrant bio-luminescence swirled around in the inky black like a tornado of light and fury. It was all she could see down there, that and the dark hulks of ship hulls and the occasional forlorn silhouette of shattered vessels slowly sinking to their eternal rest. One set of lights, eyes and teeth in the dark, darted below her with staggering speed, and she felt herself lifted violently toward the surface. Her heart sang with relief, but sank with realization that felt even colder than the water around her. Once more, she'd been rescued. Once more, into the fray.
Sound and violence erupted around her when her head breached the surface. Yelling from all sides, calls to arms and the roar of cannon blasts from a dozen of Equestria's finest sailing vessels rained down around her like a deluge of bedlam and urgency. A familiar face erupted from the water beside her, and wrapped a fin around her side.
“You've GOT to stop falling off your pretty little boat, Twilly!” Windswept yelled as she towed the waterlogged unicorn toward relative safety, if anything still counted as that.
Twilight coughed ocean out of her lungs in a sputtering attempt to speak. Windswept couldn't hear her anyway, head half covered by water as it was while she swam.
“Just-” Twilight coughed, “get me to the closest one!”
Windswept got the idea, or had the same one herself, but never had the chance to implement it. An object of such immensity as to defy identification landed on the nearest ship from above and detonated it like a hoof stomping on a sapling. Twilight had barely enough time to hold her breath before the resulting wave caught her and her finned escort and towed them under. She squeezed her eyes and mouth shut, winced against the pressure, and counted heart beats while she prayed for rescue. It was all she could do out here, in the middle of the maelstrom. Windswept had been right: Equestrians couldn’t swim. Not really. Not in this.
Strong fins towed her to sweet air and the howls of an unearthly foe once again, and Twilight shook her head and gasped, blinking the water free from her eyes. The small ship that had been there moments earlier was gone. Completely and totally. Kelpie rescue teams swarmed under the wreckage like frenzied sharks, grabbing as many ponies as they could and towing them to the nearest ship still afloat. Twilight reoriented herself and pointed toward the next potential refuge with a fevered yell, and Windswept took off toward the hull of the Sunrise with Twilight gripping her dorsal fin. Her teeth were chattering by the time they pulled alongside it, but its outline stood out in razor focus. She clenched her jaw against the cold and grunted as she flickered out of existence, leaving the water that coated her fur behind as she exited her teleport on the deck of the ship. Being free of the wet went a long way toward being free of the cold, but not enough to thaw the ache in her bones. At this point, though, Twilight wasn’t sure if they'd ever stop aching. Within her lifetime, at least.
“Good luck!” she yelled to Windswept, who threw her a salute before disappearing beneath the jagged waves and joining the swirls of blinking lights just below the surface. After the first time, she'd made a note to thank the kelpie later for pulling her out of the water and getting her back to her ship. Twice later, that mentality had faded. Windswept was doing her job, and so was Twilight. Everypony, all of them, deserved more thanks than could possibly be afforded to them. The question now was less 'who was worthy of praise' and more 'would anypony be left to give it'.
Which was not to say Equestria was listing on its last legs. The majority of the fleet still remained, thanks to the amazing efforts of the kelpies to keep them from harm. Devastating attacks were narrowly avoided by quick manipulation of large masses of water to shove ships just barely out of the way, and ponies hurled from their ships by impacts or the rocking of the waves were swiftly rescued and teleported back on board by the combined efforts of lightning-quick kelpie swimmers and Twilight's own unicorn support team, tasked with the job of ensuring that every post that needed a pony had one.
Crew reallocation via teleport had made for brutally efficient shooting on the part of the Equestrian navy, but was exhausting Twilight's own teams fast. After the first few waves she'd implemented a cyclical system to ensure no unicorn was performing more than three teleports in a row before being relieved by the next in line so they could catch a moment's rest. 'Moment' had changed its definition since the start of the fight. She'd hoped it could be ‘two minutes’. It was currently ‘thirty seconds’, and even that felt like stretching painfully thin. She wanted to drop it to fifteen, but it was becoming all too clear that they couldn’t keep up that level of intensity for the long haul. She chewed her lip as she ran for the bow of the ship. 50 seconds? 50 seconds. The math worked out. They could keep that pace for a while. They'd have to. Though it meant the unicorns on the front lines would be taking on the additional lapse during their shifts. Efficiency would drop. Twilight groaned at that, and seethed at her own attention to detail. Efficiency WOULD drop. Ponies would slip through the cracks, and the kelpies had to prioritize the ships over the stragglers. There would be losses.
She put the thought from her head. Win, Twilight Sparkle. Win or we're all lost anyway.
The Star had hit the front lines less than seven minutes ago.
=====================================================================
“NOW!”
Rainbow Dash felt the wind bite hard at her wings as she banked, tip to tip with Spitfire and Soarin, each pony loaded down with heavy griffin explosives. They released, and the spherical iron payloads sailed with brilliant accuracy toward their target. Rainbow could feel the explosions behind her, like cannon balls hitting home. They singed her feathers, and she swerved to avoid the shrapnel. A hit. A most palpable hit. She would have cheered, like she did the first time.
She knew better, now.
The thing behind her howled its indignation, and she could hear the thunder-like crack of the solid stone of the mountain being ripped asunder. She bit her lip, and looked toward her wingmates. They were looking at her, too. Fear glinted in their eyes. For the smallest of moments, it was unearthly quiet. As though something was blocking the air from reaching her ears from behind. She could almost hear her wings whistling.
“Here it comes again,” Soarin said softly, and inhaled with a wince.
The world around them exploded. Stones the size of houses shot past at cannon ball speed. Rocks like watermelons showered from above by the thousands. The thing was throwing the mountain at them, chunk by chunk, with all the concern of a filly kicking mud at an annoying rodent. Rocks. Rainbow Dash had never in her life been afraid of somepony armed with rocks. She was very afraid now.
Spitfire howled in pain as pebbles like grapeshot pelted her from behind, and dropped altitude rapidly. Soarin called out to her, but was forced to abandon his pursuit as a cluster of skull-sized stones hurled past him, almost too quickly to see. By the time he had a clear shot, she was already too low. He dove. Six seconds away. Just six seconds. And five seconds to the ground. Rainbow felt her breath catch in her throat, and ticked away the last moments of Spitfire the Wonderbolt. She could hear herself speaking. She couldn’t hear the words. She doubted they were words at all.
Gilda screeched upward from below, emerging from around the treeline and snagging the falling crimson haired pony, hauling her upward. The lift brought her into Soarin's range, and he scooped her up on the pass and sang the griffin's praises as he deposited his injured partner around a bend in a thus far untouched mountain. Rainbow shouted out loud with glee, but Gilda's face remained stern. Celebration would come later.
The griffin had opted to sacrifice mobility for armor, and was clad in the overlapping metal plate her race had sported to battle for years. The smaller stones sounded like hail on a tin roof as they rained against her bulk during her ascent to Rainbow's level. Their assailant had turned back and resumed its inextricable march toward the Equestrian interior. Their attack was naught but an annoyance, and its response little more than a limb brushing away gnats. Depressing though the thought of that was, at least it was according to plan.
“Up above the clouds!” Gilda yelled, soaring past Rainbow Dash, who flapped up alongside her. The pair of them powered upward, sacrificing discretion for speed to take full advantage of the Star's momentary lack of interest.
“Are you sure?” Rainbow yelled over the sound of the remaining rocks dropping from the air and thudding into the ground, “We'll lose eye contact! If it throws again-”
“The bombers are ready!” Gilda yelled back. “It’s now or never, Dash!”
Rainbow swallowed hard. She'd heard that before. This might well be the first time it was genuinely true.
“I sure hope your dad's ready for this, Gilda,” she said, kicking her wings hard to sail through the cloud level. Gilda scoffed.
“Have you met my dad?”
Rainbow and her golden partner burst through the clouds to the field of white above them, and the pegasus pony's breath caught in her throat. Hundreds. There had to be hundreds. Row after row of beautiful, gleaming, armored bodies. Gauntlet clad talons wrapped around sinister black iron bombs. Overlapping rows of plate, clanging rhythmically as the entire host flapped as one. And breeds, every sort of breed she could think of. Griffins she didn’t even know existed. Lion griffins and tiger griffins and lynx and panther and hawk and eagle and every breed in between. Stripes, spots, lines and blotches, united with the cold unyielding lines of gleaming plate steel. Harsh, avian eyes glared through hooked, silver helmets. Rainbow had never seen its like. For a heartbeat, she almost felt over-prepared.
The feeling passed.
At their lead was a massive bald eagle, clad in gold, leather and muscle with pauldrons that bowled around the curves of his feline shoulders. He gripped a long metal club with a wicked talon protruding from one side and a painfully blunt stop on the other. His beak was framed in feathers, fluffed outward so as to give the impression of a full beard and soot black. What she could see of them, anyway, behind his savagely large grin. Gilda's father, Gultan.
“It’s below you!” Gilda called out, gesturing with a claw. “Headed southwest, into the mainland!”
Gultan laughed, his voice low and full, and Rainbow couldn't decide if his confidence stemmed from sheer ability or relative insanity. A solid mix of both would suit the situation well enough.
“GOOOOD!” He exclaimed, and lifted his mace high above his head. “Squadron forty!!!”
The griffins immediately behind him for three rows snapped to attention with a sudden clanging of armor and hefting of munitions. Gultan set his gaze, and his eager grin widened.
“DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!”
Screeches filled the air as the first wave howled downward, tearing through the cloud layer and billowing it outward into mist as they traveled. No sooner had the last of them vanished into the haze when Gultan lifted his mace once more.
“Second wave!” he thundered.
Gilda shoved Rainbow in line with them. They gave each other a look, one last moment of trepidation, before swallowing it down. Time for the real thing.
“DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!”
Rainbow Dash shot downward, Gilda and thirty other griffins joined to her, wing tip to wing tip, into the white blind of the cloud. Sound and fury echoed around her as the first wave delivered its payload. She could see nothing, wrapped in the white haze, but she could feel the impacts. Each concussion struck her like a club, threatening to knock the wind from her lungs. She held strong, and she and her wave breached the lower surface of the cloud and took aim at their enemy.
==================================================================
Mountainous. That had been the first word to come to Twilight's mind. It was mountainous. In more ways than one.
She estimated its size as roughly twice that of the Canterlot palace, at least in height. Flesh like stone, but porous and rough. That had been what had made all the noise as it fly past; all the hard, deep holes catching and rending the air. It moved on five independent limbs, each one wider than the largest of Equestria's ships and surrounded by the same armored carapace. And it felt like armor, to Twilight. Their cannons were damaging it, flaking it off with repeated, magically guided impacts, but she didn’t feel like the thing itself was enduring any harm. It was like beating on a shell they had yet to crack. Its motions were slow, but maddeningly powerful, and it was impossible to tell where it was focusing its attention. At any given moment it would change directions, as though it saw from all sides at once. It couldn’t be flanked, and it could shift its orientation with enough speed to keep sustained fire off the areas of its body that had already sustained harm. It had no discernible head to speak of, and in the spaces between each of its five limbs lay a stony maw with teeth like the crags of a cliff face. A maw that could swallow a ship completely, and crush it between its rock-like jaws.
She knew. She'd seen it happen.
“Guide those IN, unicorns!” She yelled over the maelstrom, her own violet magic taking the shape of a curved ramp and guiding the propelled cannon balls of the neighboring ship in toward a centralized location on the creatures body. The other unicorns followed suit, and volley after volley collided in rapid succession. It was tremendously efficient, but it just wasn’t doing enough! They were chipping at it, chipping away while it ran rampant through their lines and tore through their kelpie escort like a dog with a chew toy. Twilight fought back her panic. Adjust. Adjust the plan. She'd lost track of how many times the plan had been adjusted. She'd lost track of how many ships had been reduced to so much flotsam in the water.
“Twilight!” Applejack's voice called out over the battle din. She ran up the deck from below, concern and exhaustion on her face. “We're taking on water, sugarcube. I think we can patch it but we're gonna lose this boat if we don't put some distance between us and the meat grinder!”
“WE MOST CERTAINLY ARE NOT!” came the booming voice of Admiral Magenta McGorgamaforg, who just then leaped up on the deck of the ship from along side it. Her smoking pipe had ricocheted square off Applejack's forehead before her hooves had even met the timbers. Every pony on deck breathed a sigh of relief as their commander set her jaw and fetched a new mouth prop from her coat. This one blew bubbles.
That meant it was serious.
Pinkie had taken temporary command of the Rodeo, which was left captain-less after taking a wave that nearly capsized it. Its command now replaced, she'd only just arrived back aboard the Sunrise, and the fire in her eyes burned hot.
“THIS SHIP,” she declared, and put her hoof up on a nearby pony so as to strike a more dramatic pose, “is going IN!”
“In where?!” Applejack exclaimed, and Pinkie Pie grinned.
“Luna has a plan,” she explained. “We're going to punch a hole in one of those legs, and the kelpies are going to start flooding it. Build up enough pressure-”
“And it will crack the shell from inside!” Twilight said in shock. “Pinkie, you're a ge-”
“Admiral,” she said matter-of-factually, and puffed a few smug bubbles from her pipe.
“ALL AHEAD, FULL!” Applejack yelled to the wheelhouse, and the pony within saluted her.
Twilight took off toward the cannons to relay orders down the line and ready them for the operation. Applejack turned quickly back to her puffy maned friend, who now stood stalwartly at the bow.
“Pinkie,” she cautioned, “I weren’t kiddin' about the hole in the boat. We get in much more chop and we're not gettin’ out again.”
“Plug the hole for me,” Pinkie Pie replied, her back still turned.
“Pinkie, it ain't-”
“Applejack,” Pinkie said softly, and turned to face the blond mare.
She was smiling. Not her big, Pinkie Pie smile. A small one. A resigned one. A smile that made Applejack hurt inside, just a little.
“We need to get there,” she said simply. “We need to get there, and we need to get the job done. We don't need to get back. Please. Make that happen for me.”
Applejack slowly closed her mouth, which was hanging slightly agape, and nodded. “Aye aye, Admiral,” she replied, and found her smile matched Pinkie's.
They looked at each other in silence for a moment, before embracing firmly.
“Whatever the end, Applejack.” Pinkie said, a single tear on her cheek.
“I'll meet you there, sugarcube,” Applejack replied, and squeezed tighter. When she released, she spun on her hoof and took off toward the lower decks, snagging two other ponies to help her on the way. Pinkie didn't see her face. For that, she was thankful. It would have hurt too much.
The Sunrise's screws churned the water hard behind it as it steamed forward toward the nearest of the massive stone pillars that thrashed in the water. No fewer than seven other ships changed course and followed suit, falling in line. It would never hold still long enough, though. There was no chance. Even as relatively sluggish as it was, it could still move its leg faster than the fleet could compensate.
“Pinnnkiiiie...” Twilight said worriedly, but the other mare didn’t acknowledge her. She simply reached into her overcoat, and pulled out an umbrella.
Opal tentacles surged upward from below the water, and the hiss and grind of gears filled the air. The mighty spires of Kelantis breached the water's surface and soared upward into the midnight sky, crashing into the Star's carapace and lifting it, with considerable strain, sideways. The Star screamed its protest like steam hissing through vents and whistles. Legs held aloft by the massive mechanical palace crashed downward into its beautiful polished surfaces, and they exploded in showers of stone and metal. Up till now, Kelantis had been kept to the outskirts, assessing its chances and baiting the Star when it charged the lines too aggressively. Twilight swallowed hard. This was it. They were committing. One way or another, one of these two titans wasn’t coming out of this encounter in one piece.
Kelantis coiled its tendrils around the creature's legs, wrapping them in its unyielding mechanical grip. But its organic body could twist and writhe in ways the fixed joints of the mighty palace couldn’t compensate for. Cables snapped and twanged, gears ground and spun. Massive, ship-sized armored plates fell free of the mighty arms of the castle and splashed into the water below, sending ponies scrambling to adjust their bearings to compensate for incoming waves. But it was working. The thing thrashed and crushed, but couldn’t get away.
“ALL CANNONS,” Pinkie Pie roared, running backward and manning one herself, “OPEN FIRE!”
“Direct all fire toward the nearest leg!” Twilight yelled to her unicorns, sparking from ship to ship to ship in a dazzling display of rapid teleportation. “All fire! Not one ball misses!
Eight of Equestria's finest opened up with every bore they could bring to bare. Great ramps of magical manifestation curved and scooped from every stray shot. Twilight reinforced them, lending her talent to every ramp that wasn’t long enough, every curve that wasn’t the right angle.
They will hit, she told herself, they will ALL HIT.
And they all did.
A massive fissure, like the very plates of the earth splitting, opened in the creature's leg. It split upward toward the knee joint and all the way down to the bottom, and Kelantis strained its all into cracking the stone shell like a lobster. The resulting sound was so massive, Twilight could actually see the shockwave resonate over the water. The tentacle broke, its internal mechanisms having been pushed too far beyond their limits to maintain functionality. It fell into the water as ships both Equestrian and Kelpie steamed out of the way. But so did the Star's armor. The leg, at long last, was exposed. Ocean water spiraled upward in a roil, surging into the opening with so much force and aggression that Twilight could feel the Sunrise being drawn toward it like a whirlpool. Pinkie hadn't bothered with orders; she was already leaping through the door to the wheelhouse and bringing the listing ship around, throwing every ounce of thrust the Sunrise had left into a straight shot out as millions of gallons of furious sea forced upward into the rocky shell.
It was getting heavy. Twilight could see it leaning harder, its limbs moving slower. Full as it was with seawater, it no longer had the strength to move its own bulk. Pressure was building up inside it, and Twilight lent her magic to the cause, doing the best she could to reinforce the wake rollers that were force feeding ocean into the breech. Her magic added energy to their actions, and her unicorn teams followed her lead. She could hear cracking and thrashing from inside the beast. Leaks sprang like geysers from its armored hull, and pegasus pony air teams fired lightning bolts at them, conducting the electricity in through the armor that had so casually shrugged them off before. Something inside was screaming, and Twilight Sparkle savored the sound.
“Come out, come oooout...” she muttered through gritted teeth. And all at once, in a deluge of stone and water, the igneous shell split at its seams, and exploded.
“TAKE COVER!” Pinkie Pie roared, and Twilight shielded the deck of the Sunrise with a magical barrier. Her unicorns assisted her, and the smaller shrapnel was shrugged aside. But the larger...
“Uh… Piiinkie...?” Twilight swallowed.
She could see it coming. A piece larger than the ship itself, hanging in the night sky, falling in perfect trajectory. There was no avoiding it, and the shield stood no chance of stopping it. Twilight wondered, for the briefest of moments, if there would be books in the afterlife. She did hope so. Worlds of books. It seemed an appropriate paradise.
Luna collided with the incoming meteor beside no fewer than thirty Pegasus Guard. Their mighty wings offset the projectile's course, sending it flipping end over end and landing off to the Sunrise's port side. The resulting wave didn't pick up its full size and energy until it had passed under the ship, but for a sickening moment, Twilight found herself gripping the rail and staring downward into the ocean, from the deck. When the vessel righted itself, it was all she could do to not be launched from the side.
“SPARKLE!” Luna's voice sounded out over the crashing of waves. The massive mare slammed her hooves to the decking and helped the purple pony off the floor. Twilight was too disoriented to speak a response, but she coughed and nodded at the once-princess. Luna nodded back, and turned toward the wheelhouse. She looked like she was going to yell something up to Pinkie Pie, but her voice was cut off by a new sound rippling over the ocean. A sound like a million garbled voices screaming secrets in a forced whisper. It spanned the audio spectrum from the very height her ears could hear, to so low it threatened to vibrate her bones from her body. It sounded alien, so devoid of recognizable phonemes and structure that her mind manipulated it to make it sound more identifiable. Like hearing madness so profound you couldn’t help but try to understand it. Luna turned to face the new form that stood in the open water, now free of its stoney husk, and Twilight could see terrified recognition in her eyes. That, more than the sound itself, was bone chilling.
“Oh,” the great dark mare breathed softly, “there you are...”
=====================================================================
It was headed for the munitions depot.
Rainbow Dash grit her teeth and said a silent thank you to the goggles that kept the dirt and sweat from her eyes. She was coated in it, despite the Shadowbolts uniform's best efforts to keep her refreshed. Her wings screamed. She'd never flown this hard before. It was as though her muscles wanted to tear free of their tendons and plead for rest. She would ignore them, if she could, but it hurt too much.
So she powered on to spite them, instead.
“We have to change its direction!” Soarin yelled, and Rainbow nodded, though for the life of her she wasn’t sure how they were going to manage that.
“Let’s piss it off,” Spitfire seethed. She too had re-entered the fray, and Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but beam with pride at that. She was patched and bandaged, but the wounds had not been superficial. She needed a hospital. She was fighting to ensure there would still be one left to go to when it was finished. “Low through the breach. Try and find something squishy to ruin.”
The trio banked and dived hard, screaming inward toward the monstrosity below them. The griffin air bombardment had been devastating and underwhelming all at once. Three waves of brilliant, bomb-toting birds slamming their payloads home on the Star's back with knife's edge accuracy. It had been beautiful. Gultan had half expected the thing to fall to the floor, stone dead.
The attack had made a fissure in its rocky hide. And it was most soundly upset about it.
The tide of the battle had shifted dramatically after that point. The griffin army knew it was only going to have one shot at a completely coordinated attack like that one, and it hadn't been sufficient. Now they had to strike in waves, distracting while the others came back around, harrying the wound with smaller strikes and circling like vultures overhead. The air was thick with them, and that was proving problematic.
“LEFT SIDE!” Rainbow warned, banking hard toward the right as the Star hurled the better half of a city block upward into the air. She could hear the screeching of griffins banking out of the way, and the terrifying thuds of those who failed to do so, their screeches cut short. Dirt and rocks. That's all it was doing. Throwing dirt and rocks into the sky. And yet it was so brutally effective that Rainbow felt her heart in her throat every time one of the creature's armored limbs dug into the soil. It wasn’t just the throw, it was the return to earth. It was night, and the stones and dirt were dark, and as they fell from the sky they made no sound to speak of. Boulders rained like silent cannons, and you didn’t know one was on you until it was too late.
Rainbow veered in and down, dragging her griffin spear through the canyon-like crevasse in the Star's armor, searching for breaches. Left, right, left again, faster and rockier than any run through ghastly gorge she'd ever attempted. She could smell the thing, in there. Feel it moving the air as it shifted in its shell. She wanted to call it vile. She almost wished the scent was fetid. But it wasn’t. It was just… strange. Alien. She'd never smelled its like, and couldn’t find words to describe it, which chilled her all the further. If she survived this, by some miracle, she'd remember that smell the rest of her life.
“There...” Soarin said, pointing. A breach in the canyon. Something dark and glossy was moving under it, just out of sight. Shifting and spinning inside. A nearby bomb illuminated it, just for a second, and Rainbow and her company recoiled reflexively. She felt a small scream escape her throat, and clamped it down. An eye. An eye larger than a dozen ponies. It had looked at them.
“H..Here!” she stammered, finding her voice. “HERE! RIGHT HERE!”
Spitfire and Soarin yelled with her, each pointing frantically toward the breach in the armor. Griffins took notice. High above, Gultan was summoning up all wings still carrying bombs and redirecting them. Two dozen griffins, tired, bruised, but determined, formed up a wing with massive black bombs in tow. They turned a wide left and lined up for a dive, and Rainbow held her breath.
And then, just like that, they were gone.
The massive chunk of ground and stone that had been thrown from a leg clear on the other side of the Star collided with them, facing upward and outward toward the sea, and they were ripped from the air like flies to a swatter. They had yet to even light the fuses. They simply exited the sky, and Rainbow could see the silhouette of the boulders splash down some miles away. She couldn’t see the bodies.
“No...” Soarin whispered.
That had been it. Griffins were diving toward the munitions depot, situated high in a tree on a platform that spanned several, to re-arm and re-group, but no other wings in the sky still had explosives to drop. And the Star was nearly too them now. Trees shattered like glass under its massive limbs.
Rainbow Dash set her jaw.
With a powerful flap, she shot upward into the sky, leaving Spitfire and Soarin behind. The Wonderbolts yelled after her, but she didn't stop to explain. They couldn’t follow her in this, anyway. Plans had failed. It was time for good old fashioned desperate effort. She almost smiled at that. For some reason, it felt good to be back in her element. Higher. Higher. Above the range of the Star's throw, where the wind bit cold and threatened to ice the lenses in her goggles. Enchantment kept them clear, but she could see the steam pouring off her body, and the fog in her breath. It was dark up this high. Dark and silent. She savored that reprieve, for a few brief seconds, before leaning backwards and beginning to fall.
Her glare deepened as she kicked hard with her wings and stretched her body out. A million subconscious adjustments turned her shape into the most perfect arrow it could be. Tiny wing adjustments found the slips between the air with least resistance. She could feel it fighting her as she gained speed, forming a buffer just ahead of her hooves, threatening to fling her backward like a slingshot. She pushed harder, and angled toward her goal. That had been the key. Know where you were going. Know what you had to do. Know that failing wasn’t an option. What was a little thing like reality, in the face of necessity?
Irrelevant.
Gilda the griffin watched the air split in front of her friend some distance away as she picked up a fresh payload from the arming platform. She had to wince as light and color exploded outward from the pegasus pony's body in a wave of rainbow light just inside the fissure that had been blasted into the Star's back. It collided with the walls of the miniature canyon like waves crashing on a reef, and Rainbow shot forward into the breech, and out of sight.
“DASH!” Gilda screamed, dropping her unarmed payload and taking to the sky. She hadn't come out the bottom side. She was in there, somewhere. The mammoth creature was thrashing, howling, and stumbling in rage and insanity around the forest skirting the supply lines. She was inside it, somewhere, and it was none too happy about that. But that was no advantage on Rainbow's part. She could feel herself being smothered, the impossible weight of flesh and sinew baring down on her like all the pressure of the oceans as she lay suspended amid its enormous body. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe.
There was a second explosion. Gilda had to double-take to believe it. A second Sonic Rainboom. It detonated from some unseen source in the same area Dash's had, and its pressure wave finished what the first had started. The mighty shell cracked, the sound alone splintering the nearby treeline, and fell in shattered pieces from the monster's body. And out the bottom of the beast shot a line of brilliant yellow light that banked a hard turn before its momentum died off.
Fluttershy. With Rainbow Dash in her arms.
Rainbow's dazed eyes opened slowly, and caught sight of the yellow pony's pink mane stained a deep blue by the Star's ichor. She was smiling down at her, and Rainbow smiled lazily back.
“‘Bout… time...” she muttered.
Fluttershy smiled wider. “I had to ask for directions,” she responded apologetically, and the exhausted blue pony coughed, and laughed. Fluttershy set them down on the munitions platform next to Gilda, whose jaw had just about hit the floor. “Sorry I'm late,” Fluttershy said, brushing her hair from her eyes with a hoof. “Long… flight.”
“You...” Gilda stammered, and looked to Rainbow, who was pulling herself upright, “She...”
“... Is dramatically more impressive than she gives herself credit for,” Rainbow finished, and smiled at her friend, “and flew an awfully long way to pull my butt out of the fire. Thank you, Fluttershy.”
The yellow pony didn't hear her, however. She was looking back, toward the now exposed Star.
=====================================================================
Fancy had been right. It was a rather beautiful building.
Rarity stepped in through the golden doors and listened to the hollow sound of her hoof-falls on the polished marble floor. The gentle noise of small waterfalls into shallow pools filled her ears. And birdsong. There were birds in here, flitting to and fro amongst the branches of opal-white tree trunks with leaves in a myriad of brilliant colors. Frosted skylights would have lit the whole foyer into brilliant daylight had their been any sun to shine on it. For now, it was dark, but lit along the ponds and pathways with soft orbs of floating light.
“Hello?” she called out, softly at first. No response came, save for the echo of her voice around unseen hallways. “I'm, uh… I'm Princess Rarity.” The introduction sounded lame, even to her. She swallowed and put aside her awkwardness. “Is anypony here? I'm trying to find something, I need help.”
The birds that were sleeping made a few noises of protest and went back to their naps. Rarity made a face and stepped further down the path. Was it empty? Did harems keep regular hours? That seemed somewhat contradictory to the intended purpose of the structure. She wished Fluttershy had stayed with her, if only to bounce ideas off of, but the frantic yellow pony had only arrived in Canterlot for a moment, long enough to tell Rarity where she was going and get a boost in that direction via distance teleport. Rarity had never teleported a pony before. She didn’t even know how to, a few days ago. It made her smile a little. Another little gift from Twilight. She only hoped the other unicorn was finding her influence as useful.
She stopped at a planter in the middle of a crossroads and looked with puzzlement at its rim. There was a folded piece of paper there, sitting on its own. No title, no address, just sitting, folded neatly. She extended a hoof and pushed the fold open, squinting to read the words within it.
be Naked.
Rarity blinked. Be naked? Really? She was already naked! It was a harem, everypony was probably naked! She almost hurled the paper away in agitation. For some unexplainable reason, she'd almost hoped it was the spell she was looking for, sitting right there waiting for her. Desperation made her pick it up and read it again, turning it around a few times to look for something, anything, to suggest some hidden message. Nothing was forthcoming. She growled and dropped it back on the stone, sitting in a huff next to it.
“Be naked,” she grumbled.
But that wasn't what it had said.
She blinked, and looked at it again. The ‘be’ wasn’t capitalized. The ‘Naked’ was. As though it were a proper noun. Didn't mean anything, really. Could just be a habit of the one who wrote it. But something gnawed at her, and it wasn't Twilight's memories. Twilight would have dismissed it by now, and begun a systematic search of the building. Rarity even knew where to start, and how to proceed. She could see the whole process as clearly as if Twilight had written it up for her. But her own, romantically inclined mind was fixated on the little message that lay before her. It tickled the part of her that read romance novels and dreamed of being swept off her hooves by princes. It meant something.
be Naked.
She wasn’t, was she. When she thought about it. She was never. Every moment of the day, she wore some mask of dignity and appearance. Now she wore a title to go with it. ‘Princess.’ Luna spoke in the royal plural because it represented her attachment to her nation. She was never alone; she was Equestria. Celestia had dropped that in lieu of contemporary language, but the meaning, the notion, was still there. She was her title. She was Princess. She was never anything less grand than that. Except, perhaps, in here.
Where she could be Naked.
Rarity closed her eyes, and breathed slowly. Bit by bit, she dropped her shields. The feints, the drama, all the little things she did to carefully craft her public image. She let them go. She allowed herself to be empty. The real her, not the crafted facade that served as Rarity the designer. She set that aside, in a little box in the corner of her mind, and became Rarity the pony. Not even that, she realized. She stepped into the darkness of her link to Twilight, an emptiness she'd avoided for its loneliness up until now, and pushed all that she was aside. No shield. No protection. Just her, naked and vulnerable. And she waited. Alone, in the dark.
And a rather remarkable thing occurred.
Tiny points of light appeared before her closed eyelids. Little souls, huddled in a dark field of night-like black. She could see the faces of each one, scattered through the night. They were alone. Each little body hung in a clear ball of bubble-like crystal, dispersed through her infinite vision like stars in the sky. They hung low and sad on her horizon, and trembled. Ponies. Frightened ponies, each of them. If she listened, she could hear them speaking to her. They wanted her help.
Tears streamed down Rarity's cheeks. She could hear them all, pleading for salvation. Not with actual words, but with feeling. Wishes for support, for guidance. Wishes she could only understand because she'd felt them already, interpreted them through Twilight's link. But the scale of this, the immensity... She wanted to hug them. She wanted to bundle them all together as one and lift their softly glowing hearts high and show them it would be alright. She wanted to give them everything she was so that they could rise to be everything they could be. One, collective point of brilliant light amid the clear blue sky.
And all at once, she realized: She could.
=====================================================================
It stood taller than before, with its supporting limbs under it rather than outward to the side. In the dark of the night, it was difficult to make out its details, but its flesh was smooth and glossy, and colored a bluish teal that would no doubt shine vibrantly in direct light. Massive, coiling tentacles extruded from five points on its body, but they would split and join at random intervals, as though they were solid and malleable at the same time. And eyes; great, brilliant, gleaming eyes riddled the mass that made its body. They would blink, and become mouths, the eyeball vanishing only to reappear a moment later when it blinked again. Great toothy maws that spoke. They SPOKE. Twilight could see the massive lips moving in the dim light, forming maddening alien words and speaking them out over the water. Gone was the animal howling, replaced by squirming sounds and bone-shaking whispers so foreign that they seemed to turn around in her brain and snag at the corners of her thoughts.
She wished the howling would come back.
The nearest ship took aim and fired at it, using its momentary stillness. A dozen cannonballs soared toward the core of its body. But it moved. With startling grace, it shifted its orientation and every last one sailed by, above or below. It had never exhibited near that level of speed and agility before. Another volley, from the other side. It shifted, extending upward on two powerful tentacles like some twisted dancer as the salvo sailed past it, nearly hitting an Equestrian ship on the other side. One of its eyes, massive and gleaming in its bulbous body, blinked. The ship before it exploded. Twilight didn't see a projection. No beam, nothing to dodge or deflect. But the water between the Star and the ship had leaped upward as though displaced by some moving object. A projectile so fast as to defy her visual acuity.
It turned and faced the shape of Kelantis, now struggling to right itself. It had taken devastating damage while it grappled the creature, and was attempting to compensate. But with the Star's new mobility, the mechanical marvel's attempts to snag it fell hopelessly short. It circled the damaged form of the once-mighty city like some twisted carrion bird, and all at once, explosions began riddling its surface. Detonation after detonation exploded outward as the Star focused its gaze on the ancient city.
All at once, the urgency surged. Ships steamed forward, trying their best to advance without drawing the baleful eyes of the Star. Nopony knew its range at this stage, but Kelantis was being kicked into the seabed. Kelpies in the water were seething, trying to assault the smooth hide of the creature with waves. But it wasn’t solid enough to strike against, not with Kelantis itself serving as an enormous break-water. Air support, thought Twilight. Now was the time for air support.
“Luna!” she yelled toward the mighty alicorn. “Luna, we need lightning! It’s not shelled anymore, hit it from above!”
Luna and her team pushed air below them as the shot upward into the dark clouded sky. It roiled with thunder and flashed, pent up and eager to release. Lightning had proved of little consequence against the Star's rock-like shell. But now...
Thunder that dwarfed the cannonfire rained brilliant blue and purple on the Star's flesh, and it howled in agony. Dodging cannons was one thing; it wasn’t dodging this. Bolt after bolt lanced from the skyline and seared ribbons of agony across its body. The deck of the Sunrise erupted in cheers. They were hurting it! At long last, they were finally hurting it.
The Star immediately redirected its attention to the sky, swinging massive tentacles through the clouds and sending ponies scattering. But Luna pressed the advantage. When a tentacle breached the cloudline, pegasus ponies stayed behind and stomped the storm cells. The cloud lit up like a nightlight and sent waves of electricity coursing through the monster and into the water below. Kelpies tore off in every direction, putting distance between themselves and the point of impact. They weren’t fond of electricity, but they weren’t about to voice complaint when the tactic was working.
The Star recoiled in agony, and pockets of flesh exploded from it. Wisps of some sort drifted free of the wounds, but Twilight couldn't make out their shapes in the dark. But they had shapes. It wasn’t just gas or smoke; it was a thing. They seeped from the wound and floated skyward, as though escaping into the night sky. One of the creature's massive eyes fixated on them, and blinked, becoming a mouth. The vaporous shape was sucked inside like a vacuum, and the wounds on the creature's flesh began to close.
“No...” Twilight said, “no no nonoNONONO! PINKIE!” she screamed up at the wheelhouse. “WE CAN'T LET IT DO THAT!”
Pinkie Pie kicked the throttle forward once again and gave a silent prayer for the ship to hold together. It had already performed well above and beyond what it ever should have. Finest in the fleet. Pinkie didn't even know what other ships were in the fleet. It hardly mattered.
“What are you planning?” the pink pony asked, and Twilight looked around frantically.
“I don't know! I..I… We need to see what its eating!” she settled on that as a course of action. “If we can keep it from re-absorbing what its losing, I don't think it can heal itself!”
The supposition was based on cursory observation alone, but it was all she had, and Pinkie nodded.
“ALRIGHT YOU WORMS!” she bellowed, “TO KELANTIS!”
The Sunrise howled forward, protected by the creature's struggle with the clouds above. Choppy as the sea was, it was all the ship could do to get close to the hull of the battered castle, which now lay motionless above the waterline. Twilight fizzled out of reality and reappeared on one of the shattered battlements, as high as she could manage. She zapped from platform to platform, working her way to the highest point she could stand on, and stared outward toward the writhing monster's wounds as it continued to fire upward at the clouds, dispersing them with blasts of water while lightning rained down on it. She could see the shapes now. See them, but not… understand them.
A stuffed doll? Twilight blinked and looked again. A ghostly, vaporous stuffed doll. Looked like a zebra. And beside it, an image of several ponies, smiling together next to a fireplace. Floating above it, away toward the sky, was the ghostly visage of a Hearth's Warming tree and presents in layers below it. Twilight shook her head violently, looking to another wound. Gaseous visions of everything from new apple carts to ponies entwined in coitus were seeping like leaks from the creature's open wounds, and it was trying to snatch them back up.
“What-”
“Wishes,” came a voice from behind her.
Twilight spun and gasped. Princess Aurora was sitting, coiled and injured, on the control throne to the mighty palace. She didn’t get up when Twilight ran to her. Twilight wasn’t sure she could.
“What did you say?” the little pony whispered.
“They’re wishes, Twilight Sparkle,” the serpentine, coral princess replied, looking at Twilight through one undamaged eye. “Every wish made upon a star in the sky.”
She breathed slow and even, and Twilight felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.
“We've been feeding them,” the pony whispered. “All this time, we've been feeding them. They sustain off our wishes...”
She was shaken to the very core. They had handed these creatures this power. They'd been giving it to them since time immemorial. How many times had she herself gazed up at the night sky and wished for something. A test to pass. A book to read. A friend to talk to. And all that time, she'd been feeding… this. Her eyes closed and her breath caught in her throat.
Princess Aurora slowly smiled. The purple pony in front of her was dazed. Empty. So full of tumultuous emotion that she no longer knew how to focus it. Shards of so many feelings, so many hurts, so much trauma over so short a time, had piled to their very highest point within her. She couldn’t see anymore. She was just a pile of broken pieces.
Or kindling. Kindling, waiting to spark.
“Are you going to let it, Twilight Sparkle?” she asked in a low, harsh voice.
Twilight's eyes opened, devoid of their irises. Pale pools of white, that burned like fire.
“No.”
Pinkie Pie and three other ponies were hauling Applejack out of the wreckage of the Sunrise. It had seen its last; battered against Kelopolis by the motion of the waves. Pinkie was sobbing, pressing against her friend's chest to force the water from her lungs with rhythmic pulses. She'd been in the hold the entire time, working miracles. Patching holes with nothing but scrap and brute strength, holding back the ocean with will and legs alone. She'd sealed door after door, plugged leak after leak, and hauled trapped ponies from the bilge. They had said she moved like a freight train, slamming the ship back together with sheer force of will every time it threatened to give way. She'd been there to the end, and when the last of the lower decks filled with water, she'd stayed, and worked with the kelpies to pump it back out again. For as long as she physically could.
Longer.
She coughed hard, sputtering out ocean into Pinkie's face. The pink pony hardly seemed to care, and clung close to her friend, who coughed fiercely. Pinkie held her at arms length and smiled through her tears.
“How do you feel?” she asked, through stifled laughs.
Applejack coughed and smiled weakly. “... Honestly?”
They chuckled, and embraced again.
“Pinkie,” Applejack said quietly.
Pinkie leaned back, and saw the other pony looking up. She followed her gaze high above, to a single point of light hovering in the sky. Twilight was held aloft in an unearthly glow, suspended out and beyond the fractured balcony of the Kelantis control throne. Her eyes were white, and the Element of Magic sat clear as day upon her head. The Star stopped attacking the clouds, and turned, just slightly, to face her with all its vile vision. A hulking, monstrous shadow in the night.
“The sun...”
Applejack and Pinkie Pie looked toward the east, at Twilight's back. Light. Brilliant, golden, glowing light breaking on the horizon. It crept over the distant mountains and bathed the clouds and sea with its glow. For the first time in some two days, Equestria turned and faced the sunrise. Its luminous beams bathed Twilight as she hung in mid air, and all at once, with such ferocity as to make the Star stagger backward, the purple pony snarled, and burst into voluminous flame.
“YOU CANNOT HAVE THEM.” She roared, and fires laced with righteous indignation flashed from her mouth. “OUR WISHES. OUR HOPES. OUR DREAMS. OUR LAND. OUR WORLD! THEY WERE NEVER YOURS TO STEAL!”
The Star howled as the sunlight hit it and lit it up into full view for the first time. Vibrant blues and teals made up its body, veined with vicious reds and spotted with vibrant, glistening yellow eyes that all moved independent of each other, but were all fixated on Twilight. It swung a massive arm, one of many that had batted the ships of the line aside like so many annoying insects. It incinerated. Burned from existence within twenty feet of the pony. The Star pulled back a cauterized stump, and for the first time since its arrival, it was entirely silent. The Firemare was reflected in every one of its eyes.
“Begone,” she hissed.
It was as though a volcano had erupted from the core of her being. Flame so thick it seemed to have mass and body surged out of the air before her and slammed in pillar as wide as a warship into the monster's body. It staggered, screamed, tried to escape, but the massive mechanical arms of Kelantis roared out of their slumber and snagged it, holding it riveted in place. It shook and howled, tearing the once great mechanisms apart in its struggle, but it wasn’t fast enough. It was as though the hope and determination of all of Equestria was coiled into that raging inferno. It shown with every color of the rainbow, and with an explosion of ancient wishes and long forgotten dreams, it erupted out the other side of the Star. Its tremendous limbs fell slack, and its husk, ripped asunder by the fires of Twilight's fury and the will of the nation of Harmony, came apart at the seams. A million vaporous wishes floated gently upward into the morning sky.
=====================================================================
Dawn had reached the Eastern shore faster than it had the west, and with it came salvation of its own. Shapes in the distance. Massive, heavy shapes that cast shadows across the landscape and the shattered forces of the griffin defensive. Dragons.
Celestia stood astride the largest of the lot; a massive golden red beast large enough to support her on its brow. She had a beautiful gleaming scimitar of conjured magic extending off her horn, and her face spoke of hell in her wake.
“Fire,” she growled.
Hundreds. Hundreds of dragons. Every possible mighty lizard that could take to the sky. They opened their mouths and flame vomited forth from their bodies, with the sun burning brilliantly at their backs. The now unarmored Star brought up its blue arms in defense, but was bombarded by burning pitch and magical impacts. The griffins cheered, their morale boosted by the light of the sun and the sudden appearance of these most mighty of allies. Every wing that could still carry explosives took the the air, and swooped in low for one final run. The Star no longer had an avenue of escape, pinned as it was by the salvo of dragonflame. Griffin bombs ripped flesh out of its hide, shattered golden eyes, and sent billowing masses of strange imagery upward toward the clouds. It howled, bloodied and torn, toward its assailants, but its howl trickled off as one of its few remaining eyes turned and fixated on the dragons. They had arrived. All of them.
Princess Celestia stood upon the brow of a friend she'd known for almost two thousand years, and gazed outward on the carnage the Star had wrought to the landscape surrounding them. Her scowl turned back to the Star, and it almost seemed to shrink from it.
She said nothing. She merely nodded.
Every dragon in the ring that now encircled the great terror opened its burners to full. Rainbow could feel the heat so powerfully from her location that she, Gilda and Fluttershy had to abandon it. Griffins fled from the fire zone, dropping anything, everything, they had onto the flames. Metal incinerated and rained in molten form upon the smothered foe enshrouded in flames. Unexploded munitions detonated under it. The onslaught continued for a solid minute before trickling off.
When it had ended, nothing remained.
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WAT? An UPDATE? I completely forgot the plotline of this story
. I may have to reread the whole thing.
HOLY BATMAN, now I know why I have so many "dead" stories in my favorites list. Faith in Fimfiction has been restored.
OMG! UPDATE!
Is. Is that a Space Gordon reference? Please tell me it is.
oh how I love over-excessive firepower
Aaaaaaugh this awesoooooome! You may have taken nearly a year you bugger, but this chapter makes up for it!
I had decided to un-favorite and forget this once it had reached a full year without updates.
I'm glad that it hasn't come to this.
...Almost worth the wait.
The Firemare indeed... She's every bit the equal to a whole battalion of elder dragons? Excellent!
Awesome chapter indeed...
Rarity, dropping her shields and learning to raise the sun, double Sonic Rainbooms from Rainbow and Fluttershy. Adm. Pinkie being awesome as she's been since she formed... and then of course... Twilight finally flipping out and simply incinerating the thing.
2 Down, presumably a 3rd down if the Sphinxs are as capable as Celestia believes, and only 1 left.
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n.n
Somepony has been watching flash gordon
Holy hell this actually updated. Now I have to reread everything because I've forgotten a ton of it.
Bout time Sev
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And I almost appreciate your comment!
I was just wondering about this... and here it is!
Sev lives! Great chapter, well worth the wait!
Great job. Didn't realize how much I had been missing this story until now
is it wrong that i read that in Brian Blesseds voice
2986408
oh no, its right. its very right.
Ohoho. I got shivers from this. You write sublime war scenes.
Been far too long since I read the name "Admiral Magenta McGorgamaforg". Brought the entire plot to mind again the minute I read it.
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Likewise. Very glad to see this update.
Goddamn. When you write a action scene, you write an action scene.
Loved it, well done!
~Skeeter The Lurker
HELL. YES. Damn if that wasn't one of the best action scenes I've ever read. I found it physically necessary to find some epic music to play while I read the final charge scene. Here's what I decided on:
Start when Aurora says "They’re wishes, Twilight Sparkle." Ideally the drums and strings should hit right as Twilight says "No."
Like several others, I decided to reread the story since it had been so long, and I wasn't sorry about that. You, sir, can write. I hope you don't decide to restrict your efforts to comics or anything, because I'd LOVE to see another work like this from you.
THIS MOMENT!
And so the stars die in all the fires!