Twilight Daylight: Dawn of Equus

by thedarktome

Chapter 36 - The Gates of Snow

She knew it. Narmeelah knew Saemool would disappear. It was only a matter of time. However, she was surprised most of all to see and feel both Shaoloh and Karteen go with her.

Narmeelah sighed with disdain. Now, she had to rethink her plan. At this point, she was stalling. Now seemed like the perfect time for direct intervention.

Narmeelah stood from her position within her Central Rune, glowing with magic and power, centered in the middle of Psera among the thousands of mindless ponies waiting for her command.

"Rise, my Pserateps!!" She ordered. Her hoof was raised, pointing North. "To Snow!"

All at once, the Pserateps that could fly rose from the ground. The morning sky turned dark with their silhouettes soaring through Psera's airspace for the exact same location Equus' soldiers were heading.

Narmeelah's expression soured. All of her children were slowly leaving, abandoning the mission. They all knew why they were doing this. It had to be done.

She couldn't win.

No matter. Narmeelah will stop them herself.

Through a combustion of light and stars, Narmeelah disappeared, leaving the citizens of Psera to meet Equus' army at the gates of Snow.

The battle would begin soon. Very soon.

---

The ride was growing tiresome. Nothing was changing. This is what it must've been like to be in the military all the time. To train and have nothing to fight against. Just wait, wait, and wait some more.

Dawn couldn't understand how any of the soldiers here were able to keep their eyes open. She certainly caught herself nodding her head back a few times.

"How close are we?" First Light asked.

Dawn lazily pulled up the map on her system and identified their location. What she saw brought her relief.

"Four miles out," she reported. "It's about time."

Just them, an alarm rang out from her Comm Block.

"Base to Convoy, hold your position!"

"So close, yet, so far."

All pods slowed to a stop, waking up Twilight and every other soldier that was not driving.

Queen Dawn answered the call. "Situation Report."

Serl's tower scrambled from device to device around Manny and her Generals back in SERL. The alarm was already raised. Beyond the windows, the soldiers of Serl positioned themselves along the wall.

"We're tracking activity all over Psera, your highness," Manny explained. Her focus flipped from one monitor to another. All over the screens, Pserateps were rising from their places and taking to the sky. "There's a lot of it."

Arcadia disembarked the pod and patched into the conversation. "What's happening?"

Secretary Manny looked to Teek. "Direction!!" She shouted over the chaos.

"Northeast!" Teek shouted back. "They're heading for Snow!"

"They're leaving current positions and converging in Snow!" Manny repeated.

Snow? Then... Arcadia snatched a pair of binoculars from a nearby soldier and pointed them in the direction of the city-state they were approaching. She could make out the damage in the city. The collapsed buildings, the roads they couldn't travel due to fallen barriers.

That location was crawling with these ponies.

"I need advice," Dawn called out.

"I propose we stay put," Manny suggested. "Until these ponies calm down."

"I agree," Queen Novo replied. "We have to watch and predict their movements."

"As do I," Celestia admitted.

"I disagree," Twilight said. She looked back to their faces. "If we stay put, we're sitting ducks in a den of timberwolves. We have to take cover."

"But the only place to hide is in Snow," Lord Ember dumbly stated. "In case you haven't been following, they're heading in this direction right now."

"Good." She turned back to the destruction of Snow. "Because now we'll know where they all are. They're in one location, leaving the Central Rune and Narmeelah completely unprotected. That gives us a chance to sneak closer."

"She's right," Celestia agreed. "We take shelter among the wreckage and await their arrival."

"But that means... We'll be leaving the Black Box behind," Dawn stated.

Arcadia shared a look with Luna, Celestia, and Cadance.

"We'll protect her," Cadance promised her.

"Thirty, no, forty Elite plus the ten inside the black box," Manny promised.

Arcadia looked back to the Black Box then Snow. Back, and forth.

"It's not like I have a choice in the matter," she muttered. Although, she would love for there to be one. As a matter of fact, there was one: Dawn doesn't engage at all. But it's already been decided that she would.

"We'll take cover in the destruction," she declared. "Prepare the Acting Queen for extraction, but do not extract until given the go ahead. Your call, command."

Secretary Manny turned to her Force Guard and Elite Guard Generals. "Depart convoys, put them on hooves."

"Looks like we're walking."

Dawn stood up with the rest of the Elite when the door was opened. A full unit was already there waiting for her when she jumped out, including Celestia and Cadance. With the rest of Psera and Equus behind her, she trotted up to the front of her line, where her mother waited, peering through a pair of binoculars.

She pointed ahead. "There's just enough room for us to crawl into the city. Stay close to your guards and the others."

Dawn did as instructed. She kept her head low, beneath the shadows of the guards as they ran across the dirt in the direction of the derelict buildings.

Twilight cast careful glances to the sky. It was a race, first one there to gain the upper hoof. They were almost there. So close... So close...

Twilight rushed forward and gestured the guards escorting Dawn towards a wide dark gap in all the damage.

"Go! Go!" She shouted.

They quickly rushed the Queen inside, shielding her from even the view of Celestia's sun.

"I need a clear space!" Dawn suddenly said.

"What?!" Twilight asked.

"We need a space to split!" Dawn explained. She slid beneath a beam and crawled over another.

"Dawn, you splitting isn't the priority, you know that!"

"Mom, I have a feeling that us splitting is going to throw Narmeelah off." Dawn stopped their progression and faced her mother.

"Queen Dawn, we have to keep moving," Cadance advised.

"We will, but I want to make this clear. We are going to split off, and we are going to split off before any of us gets hurt. We will use Light and Dark against Narmeelah and her, and we will make her fall!"

Her words stunned her small audience before she turned around and continued forward, including her mother.

"Keep moving," Arcadia ordered. Their horde of marched around her. But her sights never left her daughter's form.

"Oh, Madun," she whispered to herself. "I wish you could see the grown mare our little filly has become."

Arcadia took one more moment to herself before continuing behind the others. They had a fight to get to.

---

Their journey through the damage was a quiet and tense one. Filled with only the scuffling of hooves and weapons. They carried the hundreds of disintegrators from Twilight's lab along with their own weapons. Keeping their eyes and ears open the entire time for any movement.

Arcadia was at the front followed closely by the Princesses and a thick wall of soldiers protecting Queen Dawn and Princess Flurry Heart, followed by the Legends of Psera, the Creatures of Tartarus, and the Elements of Harmony. They were closely watched by the command team back at Serl, standing by with the Cleansing Project.

Dawn looked down to Flurry's hooves. They were wrapped in slightly bloody bandages. "How are your hooves?" She whispered.

Flurry shot her head head in her direction then looked down. "Oh, you know. Stings every now and again."

"We need to change your bandages." Dawn insisted.

"I can hold out a little longer," Flurry insisted. "We need to get ahead of Narmeelah's army."

Dawn didn't like it. Those could cause further injury. She's been doing well so far, but it could catch up with her.

For minutes they patrolled through Snow, crawling through the damage and eyeing the windows until Twilight's movements stopped. She raised her hoof, ceasing their movement.

"Hold," one pony commanded through their Comm Block.

Twilight's ears twitched. Moving shifting in place. Slowly, her head lifted up to the canopy of destruction above them. Where metal beams and other materials created the ceiling keeping them from sight.

She could feel them, a single pony above them. There was no report that any of their soldiers would be taking the level above. That means this pony wasn't theirs.

Twilight silently unsheathed her sword.

"Arcadia?" Celestia whispered.

"We're not alone," Twilight reported. "Protect Dawn."

Dawn silently raised her comm block. "Command, do you see any movement?"

"That's the thing, your highness," Teek replied. She stared dumbly at all of the screens around the room. "They've all stopped."

"They've surrounded your current position," Secretary Manny reported in. She turned back to her Admiral. "Where's that Aquata?"

"Within firing range, ma'am."

Manny turned back to the conversation. "The Aquata has also arrived, your highness."

Good! Backup's here! Dawn silently cheered. That was no longer an issue. Now they just had to worry about when to use it.

Arcadia looked back. "Stay here," she ordered. "I'll signal when it's clear."

"No need, Arcadia Nova."

That voice. That familiar voice. Flurry pushed her way to the front to see if the one who spoke was who she thought it was. She gasped upon recognition.

"Mimi?!"

Mimi sat in the middle of their path. A single spotlight from a hole in the ceiling above cast over her eerie figure. She was calm and collected, as if the downfall of society didn't at all faze her. Her expression emotionless. Posture upright. A standard pony. Or so she seemed. Arcadia knew otherwise. She could feel the energy flowing off of her. The power emanating onto her horn, gifting her with a headache.

Twilight narrowed her eyes while Celestia approached.

"When did you get here?" She asked. "

Without taking her eyes off of her opponent, Twilight asked, "You know her?"

"She assisted us during Psera and IHT's cold war."

Well, that makes things interesting. Twilight turned back to Mimi. "So. You finally decided to leave your throne of solitude."

"As if there was a choice," Mimi answered. She stood and turned around. "We both knew that I knew you were coming. We've had this conversation already."

Flurry Heart pushed her way up to the front. "Are you going to help us fight?"

"No, she won't," Twilight answered.

"She's right." Mimi spread her wings and floated into the air. She rotated around, revealing her eyes filled with stars and a sneaky smile. "I'm not here to help any of you."

Dawn narrowed her gaze. Mimi's body broke down into luminescent stars and gasses, illuminating the destruction around them that combined back into a much larger figure. Her coat was light green, wings as wide as Twilight's, eyes colored as blue as the deepest ocean, and a long orange-red mane. She was taller than a dragon, stronger than any of them. Dawn could feel the magic flowing from her. A hurricane of essence blowing through the air that scratched and itched at her horn.

Odega bounced forward and shielded Dawn. "Narmeelah," she growled.

Celestia gulped, Luna backed away slightly, and the army took up their formation. Cadance shared a worrying look with Flurry Heart.

Rainbow Dash leaned over to Applejack. "That's Twilight's great great grandmother?"

"Older than that, I'm afraid," Applejack replied.

Twilight took up a defensive stance. "Narmeelah, I take it."

"I was tired of these mental gymnastics," Narmeelah replied. "Strategy after strategy to be ahead of the other. It's about time we met face to face. Don't you think?" She raised her right hoof. Her wings began glowing. The rocks from the destruction detached themselves and turned to dust. It flowed through the air and behind Narmeelah, forming into a walkway that lead into the air.

She walked onto the path and smirked over her shoulder. "Come now, Twilight Sparkle. Let's talk."

Author's Note:

Sorry for the delay, everyone. I've been really busy and I seemed to have lost my creative writing spark. I may need to do a little bit more reading to get it back.

Comments

[bkam]

Sorry for the delay, everyone. I've been really busy and I seemed to have lost my creative writing spark. I may need to do a little bit more reading to get it back.

That's alright, take your time and don't rush, I'm sure all of us would rather you take your time and produce something that you like, as opposed to something that is rushed and that you don't really like.

Infact, here's a book that is the start of an ongoing trilogy, I think is pretty great, and I hope it helps to give you some inspiration.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/142177/interview-with-a-batpony

[thedarktome]

11735313
Coo, I'll be sure to check it out.