The Secretary
Octavia rammed an empty bookcase against the door before retrieving the trench gun. It was an older model from the beginning of the Great War, metal flecked with rust. She pumped it easily enough with her earth pony strength.
“I can hold them down here,” she said tiredly. The pony knocked over a thick oak table covered in dust and braced the shotgun atop it. She jerked her head to the stairs. “Go, Rae.”
Raven Inkwell observed the barricade and bit her lip. “That won’t hold long.”
“There’s one door and no windows,” Octavia countered. The gray earth pony was lean; her ribs showed above her saddlebags when she breathed out. “I got sixteen shells and a grenade.”
Raven closed her eyes. “Goodbye, Octy. Good luck.”
Octavia smirked and tossed her black mane with a nicker. “Only Vinyl can call me that. I’ll see her soon.”
Raven turned away and galloped up the circular staircase to the top of the observatory. Her trick knee ached as she climbed, bouncing the saddlebags against her flank and she sneezed from the dust kicked up by her bare hooves. The unicorn’s horn glowed a pale raspberry as she provided a simple light.
The Changelings had long cut the power to the building; they had no interest in Luna’s night sky, nor did they broker anypony still looking at the constellations. They’d probably ban staring at the stars if they could, Raven huffed. She reached the top of the staircase with froth in her coat and shaking limbs.
She always felt tired and drained, even during the weeks when the Love Harvest squads didn’t roll through Middle Canterlot. She no longer worked in Canterlot Castle; nopony did. The Heer sectioned it off with sandbag checkpoints along the roads, adding to the checkpoints along the bridges connecting the districts of the city. Only the ponies and changelings living in the mansions and estates ever had business there, and they were escorted at all times.
A whistle sounded from above her as an errant shell landed somewhere in Middle Canterlot. Raven listened with pricking ears. The falling shells and anti-air batteries echoed through the entire city, amplified by her current height. It was once the best place to stargaze in Equestria.
The old observatory had been too tough and too plain to make a show of burning it down, unlike Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns two blocks away. It had just been boarded up and forgotten, another tombstone to the Princesses. But aside from the castle, it was the tallest building remaining in Canterlot, thanks to the large telescope installed at the top of its tower.
The Changelings had smashed the telescope, but Raven wasn’t here for that. They had also torn out all the silver gilding and shattered the marble downstairs. Everything else was left to gather dust. Luna’s colors weren’t as flashy as Celestia’s, or perhaps the Changelings just wanted to make a statement that she didn’t matter.
She just needed the thin slit at the top of the observatory. Raven studied the entrance to the stairwell, then trotted over to the boarded-up balcony. The doors were wood, and more wood was bolted onto the outside and inside to prevent pegasi from getting in. There was a miniscule gap through both barricades, and Raven squinted through it.
She couldn’t see Lower Canterlot, but smoke drifted above the ruins of Celestia’s School. They had burned it down years ago as a show of force, but the foundation still remained. Aside from that, the unicorn could only see a few bell towers and steeples.
The booming guns outside continued to fire into the sky around the Estate District and Canterlot Castle. Dust fell from the broken telescope; its bronze frame warped and rusted from beatings with sledgehammers. Raven found the chain on the wall to the shutter above the shattered lens and tugged on it with a hoof.
The chain caught. Celestia, please. The unicorn wasn’t sure she had the magical strength to punch a hole through the solid roof. She wrapped both forelegs around the chain and pulled as hard as she could. Her back popped from the effort.
The Changelings hadn’t welded the shutter closed; it was just rusty. The slide creaked back and fresh morning sunlight filtered in. Dust motes floated through the abandoned dome.
Raven didn’t pull the entire shutter back, only enough for a thin slit of light, too small for anyone above. She wrapped the chain around the bottom of the bent optical tube before scanning over the abandoned room. The Changelings had long looted everything of value.
Raven’s horn flickered as she shoved one of the two remaining metal tables against the balcony, then flipped the other one onto its side and gauged the thickness with a hoof. Won’t stop a rifle, maybe some pistols. Crouched behind the table, the balcony was to her left and the staircase to her right.
Raven pulled her two pistols free from her saddlebags, one old revolver and a Changeling broom-handle pistol from the start of the Great War. She set three magazines down for the pistol, then two speed-loaders for the old revolver. She let the saddlebags fall to the floor after tugging out a pair of pliers.
48.
Raven took a deep breath and opened her muzzle. The pliers floated above in her telekinesis. She felt along her teeth with her tongue while the pliers waited.
I need to make them count.
She found the false tooth and ripped it out with a hard twist. Raven spat bloody phlegm and tossed the pliers roughly to the side after gently setting the false tooth on the floor behind the table. It was a cap, a simple white molar with a strange purple root.
She still remembered getting it installed in a back-alley dentist as Canterlot surrendered. There was no anesthetic, and Raven had been punched out with a heavy hoof after screaming too much. Neither of them complained afterwards, and the unicorn never saw her again during the occupation.
She’s probably dead.
Raven took the false cap off and held the little purple crystal up in her magic. It was such a small, frail thing, nothing more than a recording imprinted into a cheap little crystal. Another round of artillery whistled into Lower Canterlot as she stared at it.
Ponies had been ordered to shelter by Generalmajor Pagala. The broadcast had gone out in the dawn’s early light, delivered by speakers that usually pumped out propaganda and cover songs. Most cowered in their houses while the soldiers ran to reinforce the eastern road after the shelling started. Gunfire echoed from down the mountain, towards the eastern road.
Raven knew what was going on; the same thing that happened over two years ago. Ponies had surrounded the mountain, and the encircled troops were trying to break out. This time, there was no aerial assault and desperate on-hooves attack. The army below was shelling the city directly. Fires had already broken out in a few blocks.
The unicorn hid under desk in Canterlot Castle the first time, watching the Heer panic at the flailing attack. Fighting from the airborne ELF troops filled the streets as they tried to take the eastern road and open the city gates. The Generalmajor at the time froze up at his desk the entire battle, just like Raven hiding below hers.
She prayed it would succeed, then wandered back to her blasted tenement when it failed. There was no victory parade for the Changeling Hegemony; Raven had been conscripted to help burn the corpses of the fallen ELF soldiers several days later. She found a few she recognized as ones she passed information to before the uprising, but VOPS never came for her in the night.
It was like she never did anything at all.
I should’ve done this before. Raven floated the crystal up to the top of the shattered lens. She gently set it atop the battered telescope, then cast the spell to replay the recording. There was a soft chime of magic.
High above Middle Canterlot and several blocks from her foalhood home, Twilight Sparkle shimmered into existence. The last Princess of Equestria floated above the city as the magic sparkled. The hologram was purple like the crystal, and it matched the Princess’ natural colors.
The alicorn was the size of an airship. Princess Twilight’s mane and tail were slightly frazzled, and several feathers stuck out of place on her right wing. She was naked, not even her crown was atop her head when she stood for the recording. Her horn and wings flickered as the spell solidified; nothing below her legs was visible. The Princess took a breath and pushed it out with a foreleg.
“My name is Twilight Sparkle.”
Her voice rang out across the city. The Princess was soft-spoken; the spell amplified her cadence to a boom that overpowered the anti-air batteries and falling artillery. Raven smiled as she listened; she knew the speech by heart, having adjusted the spell to be the grand display that Twilight probably never imagined it to be.
But it needs to be. Raven returned to her table and readied her pistols. The anti-air guns quieted around the Estates and Upper Canterlot.
“I'm honored to stand before you. I'm honored to be a Princess of Equestria, and honored to the Princess of Friendship.”
A thin ray of light extended up from the crystal atop the telescope. The Changelings would trace it to the observatory quickly. Raven leaned against the metal table and simply listened while she could.
Twilight looked to the side and smiled. Her wings stilled against her side. “It’s strange,” she said lightly, “I’ve practiced this so many times it feels like I can see you.”
The city fell quiet, only the crash of whistling shells from below continued. Raven no longer heard the soldiers rushing to reinforce the east. The observatory dome rattled from the voice above it. All of Canterlot could hear it, from the ponies sheltering in the basements or under desks or behind beds. From the ponies in the servant’s quarters of the estates to the ones in Lower Canterlot watching the Changelings rush to the city gates.
“I have always been proud of Equestria, of what we’ve accomplished, of our history. Our legacy of friendship stretches back thousands of years. To the Pillars of Equestria, to the Three Tribes…” Twilight trailed off. “Equestria is built on a thousand years of peace. It is a beacon of harmony that lifted up the world.”
Voices shouted from outside. Raven heard buzzing wings under the speech. A shadow crossed the doorframe of the balcony as a Heer soldier landed and tried to peer through the boards. Another landed up on the roof and tried to stand over the beam, but the projection shimmered and continued anyway.
“I always wanted to be lifted.” Twilight’s voice was so raw and earnest. It didn’t match the bags under her eyes. “I was always eager, always waiting to be inspired. I was so proud to be Celestia’s student, and my friends…” Twilight stopped and swallowed. “I remember every time it happened, every time one of my friends lifted me. With their lives and their truth.”
The trench gun fired below Raven. A screech of pain echoed up the stairwell, covered by a hail of gunfire. The shotgun continued to fire below; Raven counted the booms under the submachine guns and pistols trying to stifle it.
“And now I'm gone,” the Princess said slowly, “and I yearn to lift you. Not because I want to shine, or even be remembered,” Twilight shook her head. “It's because I want you to go on. I want Equestria to continue. If not the land, then the idea.”
After sixteen shots, the trench gun fell silent. Raven did not hear Octavia die, but a last spat of submachinegun fire followed screeches and grunts as the Changelings forced their way into the stairwell. The blast of a grenade left the ground floor silent, then hooves pounded up the metal stairs and Raven readied her pistols.
“But I fear for you,” Twilight admitted. “We closed our eyes for too long. For all the threats we faced, none of us imagined that a war would come to Equestria, not like this. The world was always out there, but it left us alone. We had each other, and Equestria, our friends, our days. We had each other and they left us alone. We could shelter under the sun and moon and everyone left us alone.”
The first changeling that rushed through took a bullet to the throat. He fell with a weak green magic field around his horn as he choked to death. Raven shot the next submachine gun that tried to float through the door after him and destroyed the spring. A lifetime of filing papers, she snorted. Changelings had poor control over their magic compared to unicorns. The gun spun away and the trigger clicked uselessly.
Twilight looked askance. “We told stories about changelings, about zebras, about griffons, about bat ponies, about the world and all the horrible monsters in it, until one finally took it as a challenge and came for us.”
Raven kept a steady stream of gunfire on the doorway, pausing to reload a new magazine every ten rounds. She let the Changeling bleed to death on the floor with grasping hooves. She kept the revolver floating under the table, holding both guns in her magic.
Shadows landed on the balcony. A Changeling tried to force their way through the boards, so Raven fired through the narrow gap. The shadow retreated. More hooves landed atop the dome, pacing and trying to open the shutter with their hooves and magic. The chain rattled, but stuck to the end of the broken telescope.
“Chrysalis did not make it this far by herself. The changelings that helped her, that fought her war for her, know who she is and what she’s like. She doesn’t care about them, about how many died to get this far.”
A stick grenade flew into the room, tossed up from the stairwell. A lifetime of catching frantic reports while following the Princesses kicked in. Rather than duck, Raven dropped both pistols and flung it back with her horn. Her ears pinned back from the blast.
I know the speech by heart anyway.
“This war was always about her. I saw who she was at the wedding. But the moment she was blasted into the horizon, we forgot her.”
“Raven?” a voice called up from the stairwell.
Raven Inkwell recognized the dual-tones through the ringing in her ears. “Generalmajor?” she called back and loaded the last magazine into her old pistol.
“Because we still had each other,” Twilight sighed. “We had Equestria. And so we closed our eyes. I did too. I turned away from the truth I didn’t want to face.”
The Changeling officer that poked his head up from the stairwell looked like a typical Heer Commander, black carapace and fangs. His eyes were green and lacked pupils. The changeling’s uniform was slightly ruffled and speckled with blood.
“I don’t have that position anymore,” the changeling said in Herzlander. “I was demoted to Unterfeldwebel.” He licked his fangs. “I want to talk, please. The Jaeger team is on their way. I can’t call them off.”
Raven kept the pistol trained on him, but waved the barrel into the room. “What’s there to talk about, Generalmajor?”
He stared at the barrel. “Are you going to shoot me?”
Raven didn’t answer.
“We closed our eyes to Chrysalis, to her purges, to Olenia, to the Storm King, to the Thestrals. We pretended that Equestria was the whole world and we decided who lived in it with us. We conflated ‘peace’ and ‘friendship’ and ‘harmony’ together and imagined that nothing could ever drive it apart.”
Jachs stepped into the doorframe. His holster was still visibly clipped against his right flank. Another changeling, a purple-eyed mare judging from the rounded muzzle, poked her head through with a glowing horn. Jachs buzzed a wing and waved her back.
Raven recognized Jach’s adjutant, but her name escaped the unicorn. She was always there whenever Raven delivered papers to them in the castle. It had only been two years, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Raven’s brown mane was streaked with early gray hairs.
“You look terrible,” Raven observed.
“You don’t look much better,” Jachs responded in Equestrian. “I see you cut off your mane bun.”
“It got in the way of the welding mask,” Raven explained. “Been working at the dockyards.”
“I wondered where you went,” Jachs nodded. “I’m sorry you were removed. You were a good secretary.” He kept his hooves still.
“It’s better than a visit from VOPS.” Raven checked the balcony out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t see any movement. “Guess they were too busy hunting down everypony else.”
“The rest of my ‘lings are downstairs, wounded from shrapnel,” Jachs claimed. “There’s more on their way.”
“Octavia?” Raven asked. “You knew her, right? You let her play for the POWs before Chrysalis’ coronation.”
Jachs winced. “She killed seven of the first responders.”
“She wanted to kill more,” Raven nickered.
“Changelings stood with Chrysalis instead of against her because it was easy. We made it easy. We looked away as she crushed everyone that stood up to her. Because that was easy too.”
Jachs inhaled at the speech echoing above and fluttered his wings against the smooth black leather of his coat. “What are you doing, Raven? You’re a secretary. Your mark is is a quill. Octavia Melody was a cellist. Neither of you are soldiers.”
Raven smiled. “I didn’t even have to ask. You killed Vinyl Scratch in Manehattan.”
“I always thought you passed information to the ELF,” Jachs sighed.
“I did,” Raven confirmed, “in between dealing with the nobility for you and your gang.”
The purple-eyed changeling narrowed her eyes and scowled at the unicorn. She unclipped her pistol, but stayed halfway crouched in the doorframe and the circular staircase.
Jachs looked up to the telescope. “Is the spell even real?" He hesitated. "Is...is it really her?”
“Yes,” Raven responded. “It’s her. She recorded it just before you captured Canterlot.”
Jachs shuffled his hooves and the singular medal pinned to his jacket bobbed. Raven remembered far more.
She gave him a wry look. “Very skillful, Generalmajor. Twilight wanted to limit the damage to her home.”
“I thought that the School of Friendship was the answer.” Twilight nodded absently. “That if we made friends, we would never need to fight. But the ones that needed a helping hoof the most are not the ones that can come to Equestria. They live in chains, beaten and starved and whipped while we look away.”
“I’ve been here before,” Jachs began. He sat on his flank and slowly raised his holed hooves. “Please, this will just make everything worse. The Queen’s Guard have orders to not let the city fall! If this starts a revolt-”
“Yes,” Raven agreed. “I hope it does.”
“Ponies don’t have guns!” Jachs hissed. “The Canterlot Commiseriat was completely disarmed after the rebellion. Not even Kommandant Second Wind and the Canterlot Guard have anything! Listen to me! Do you think you’re going to win this!?”
“Every creature can understand friendship, but some don’t want to. Some don’t care who they hurt. I thought the world could come to us, instead of reaching out to the world.”
“I think you’ll be too busy shooting us in the street to reinforce the road,” Raven answered. “I hope so, at least. That’s all I have left.”
The changeling blinked. His adjutant in the doorway lowered her own pistol and gaped at the mare.
"You can't kill us all," Raven continued in a small voice. "You never could, Generalmajor."
“You’ve had this the whole time?” Jachs asked in bewilderment.
“I was afraid,” Raven said quietly. “I wanted to pass it to the ELF, but there was never a good moment. I had to make sure ponies heard her.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why the Princess gave it to me; I guess she hoped I would keep it safe.”
“Friendship doesn’t care about imaginary lines on maps, about species, about ideology. About a crown. I tried so hard to be a Princess of Equestria that I forgot about being the Princess of Friendship.”
“Hundreds of thousands of ponies are going to die, if they even try it,” Jachs stated. "Please, think about this."
“I know,” Raven returned.
“Princess Twilight wouldn’t want this.”
“You didn’t know her!” Raven snapped.
Jachs closed his eyes and took a chittering breath. “The Queen’s Guard will kill her,” he said in a lowered voice. “They’ll kill Princess Twilight if the city falls.”
“She’s been dead a long time,” Raven replied with a sneer. “That lie won’t work on me.”
“It’s not a lie!” Jachs hissed. “Please, don’t you have a responsibility to her!?”
“The first Friendship Lesson I ever learned wasn’t one I wrote down: I did not make friends, then fight the Nightmare. I stood up to face it, and found my best friends in the ones that stood with me.”
“I do,” Raven said sadly, “and I’ve failed that responsibility for years. Ponies will hear her words, and nothing Chrysalis ever claims will undo this. No more lies, Generalmajor.”
“It’s not a lie!” Jachs implored. He stared at up the sliver of light coming through the shutter, transfixed by the glowing beam. Shadows flittered above it as a squad of Changelings tried to block the spell with their bodies. The anti-air guns had resumed firing, this time trying to tear through the projection.
Twilight Sparkle flickered and reformed with every burst of flak. The spell held; her voice warbled, but continued to overpower the explosions and reverberate through the city. The ‘lings on the road can probably hear her, Raven thought. I hope her niece hears it.
“And there is a darkness, reaching like a nightmare, into everything around us. We let it grow until it came for Equestria. And now it’s here. It’s here, and it wants to stay. The Hegemony is a disease that thrives in darkness; it is never more alive than when we close our eyes.”
“Please, Raven. Just stop the spell,” Jachs begged. “Believe me about Twilight or not, this’ll kill thousands. All this will do is make everything worse!”
“It can’t get any worse!” Raven laughed.
“They’ll burn the city to the ground!”
They? Raven chuckled. “Celestia’s School burned when you were in charge, Generalmajor. My school. I remember graduating there. You tossed her Friendship Journals into the bonfires with everything else your Queen hated. You started the fire.”
Jachs shook his head in denial. “I didn’t order-”
“Sir,” the mare said in the doorway. “Two minutes. Jaegers are on the block.” Her pistol still floated beside her.
“Please,” Jachs stepped aside. “Stop the spell and go. Just get out of here.”
Raven smiled. “You haven’t been listening to a word the Princess has said, have you? That would be easy.”
Twilight swallowed. “I don’t expect Chrysalis to be kind to me. I don’t expect to survive this. I don’t know when you will hear these words, or if you ever will.”
Raven and Jachs listened together, a unicorn and a changeling. He took another step into the room, hooves stretching over the dead Changeling soldier. “Please, Raven,” he pleaded. Shadows landed on the balcony.
“You’re a good stallion Jachs,” Raven admitted, “but you work for a horrible mare.”
“I know,” Jachs sighed. “Please, just go-”
The revolver suddenly snapped up in her magic and Raven fired. The bullet ran across the changeling’s jawline and splattered blood onto his black jacket before slamming into the doorframe. Jachs staggered back with blood across his lapel. The changeling mare leaning out of the doorway fired back with her own pistol.
Raven felt a bullet shatter the bones in her exposed shoulder and she fell backwards, scooching against the table. She emptied both pistols blindly against the door as her horn flickered. Raven whinnied in pain and flung the empty Changeling pistol into the stairwell.
“Damn it, Alcippe!” Jach’s strained voice screamed out. “Hold your fire! Hold fire!”
The Jaegers on the balcony fired through the boards, still trying to beat them down. The metal table against the window shook. Raven clumsily reloaded the revolver and let the empty casings roll around her hooves. Her shoulder was bleeding badly and her foreleg trembled. It took two tries to force the speed-loader into place.
Twilight smiled sadly, looking out and far away. “And it’s also easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it's true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it's too late.”
Almost done. Raven fired six shots through the wooden boards against the balcony. A changeling screeched in pain. She reloaded again with the last six bullets.
Twilight’s eyes hardened and she took a deep breath. “But if I could do it all again…” she began in a low growl.
The adjutant with purple eyes held Jachs back as he tried to rush back into the room. Raven fired a wild shot that landed in the doorframe and the two changelings disappeared down the stairs.
“…I would open my eyes…”
Raven put two more bullets in a gap in the wooden boards as an armored hoof punched through. If I could do it all again, I would’ve done this for Starlight. A bullet sparked off the heavy armor of the Jaeger team on the balcony.
“…and be fighting…”
But I hid under a desk and waited. The Changelings above her finally wrenched the shutter open with a crowbar. Two stood in the opening, trying in vain to block the beam with their hooves. They weren’t Jaegers; they were normal soldiers in black uniforms and caps. Raven laid prone behind the table and fired two shots upward. The crowbar tumbled down, followed by a corpse. It bounced off the brass frame of the telescope. One left.
“…that bitch…”
Raven tucked the revolver under her chin as her magic wobbled. The Jaegers on the balcony finally forced their way through the boards with crushing armored hooves. One shoved his submachine gun into a gap and sprayed bullets against the metal table. A bullet grazed across the quill and inkpot on her flank, punching through the narrow metal.
“…from the start!”
Raven pulled the hammer back and cocked it.
Raven’s magic faltered, so she pressed the gun against her jaw with her hooves. Her right foreleg shook on the trigger as blood matted down her fur. She knew what happened to the ones taken alive.
And high above Canterlot in a backdrop of falling artillery, Princess Twilight Sparkle stood tall with flared wings and gave her last command.
“Fight the Hegemony!”
As the first Jaeger broke through with a submachine gun and blazing horn, Raven twisted the revolver around and shot him through the eye lens in his gas mask. The changeling crumpled to the dusty floor.
His two other squad mates opened fire.
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"I can not promise you will survive. I can not even promise you victory. All I can say is that in the end, you will have mattered."
Even Twilight is saying fight damn. Though I am interested to see if she's still alive by the end of the battle.
Talking about deers, well done sisters.
This cover is nice but grover looks really...um... you now poison scary,
Is it really like him.
I cannot say I expected to see an Andor Speech here, of all places, but it is strangely fitting.
I would reallly like to see how Grover is doing in the Castle of two Sisters.
Minuette?
I can feel the space-time continuum trembling from all the EAW's version of TikTok users making sick edits of the uprising.
Oh boy. I am on Jach's side. The Warsaw Uprising was a disaster for my country, many of my nationals hate people like me for holding that view, as a matter of fact almost everybody who knows a tiny bit about the event holds disdain towards that viewpoint. That is however the essence, that they know only a little. Two hundred thousand people, of which many were children have died and the city was destroyed; a few centuries of bricks making the justification for the indentity of around 30 milion people was being shattered day after day, culture was being extinquished with merciless brutality like a failed project. Honest heroes and acts of kindness were as common as alcoholism and banditry.
What did we win? Nothing politically, the undeground state was demolished which helped the soviet powers to thrive and subjugate my country; for one german there was ten partisans dead; internationally it was a laughing stock (and barely anyone knows wtf it is - so, no fame either)
"With what and with whom do they want to fight with? (...) Boys that for guns have valiant hearts? With a heart you can't shoot..."
Yet, despite all that I can't deny the resentment, the resulting militant xenophobia, the symbolicism that will weaponised, the sheer passion of will and courage, the hatred that will be reforged into unbreakable morals, the realisation that Twilight's "good faith" interpretations were toxic to the point a natural disaster like the Hegemony was allowed to reach Equestria will finally be forever surgically removed from the Pony mindset.
However, a speech just like a text is up to interpretation. Maybe the horror of the uprising and Twilight's sudden retort will give us equestrian national-socialism?
Who will after the victory step away and ask "Princess, when does a punishment become a crime?"
Well now I'm even more depressed. Just watched the Bad Batch finale before reading this...big mistake.
I wonder if Discord will record the speech? It would go a long way towards repairing the bridges he burned.
11542047
Raven's not exactly expecting a successful uprising here. She knows she's not making it down from that tower once the speech starts. She's hoping against hope that the ponies of Canterlot haven't been too broken, too beaten down by the Changeling Hegemony to keep fighting in the face of sheer numbers and cruelty. All she's expecting is to stall the breakout attempt. If the encirclement can break out, they'll be behind the front and can tear through the supply lines. It might make or break the battle.
Now, Twilight (probably) never intended that speech to be given in the middle of an active bombardment led by her desperate niece during an apocalyptic battle. But it was her last words to Equestria, and a searing condemnation of herself and the attitude that led to the Hegemony. As Canterlot fell, after she sent Spike away, Twilight took a long look at herself and concluded she failed as the Princess of Friendship. Twilight became a symbol to millions of ponies; they held her up instead of Celestia as a reminder of Equestria-That-Was from before the war.
And that Equestria was deeply flawed. It was founded on the ideals of Friendship...but it never really lived up to those ideals.
It ignored the Thestrals for over a thousand years; they aren't part of the Hearth's Warming Tale. Ponies seem...ignorant...overall of history. Nightmare Moon, the Crystal Empire, even Discord seem to be a surprise to the common pony. Most ponies don't know a thing about the other races in the world, even the ones they share a land border with. Even the School of Friendship, which is a very token response to nudge Equestria away from its isolationism, faces heavy pushback from Neighsay and the EEA.
Twilight Sparkle was not stupid. Chrysalis and the Hegemony aren't going to stop until someone punches their muzzle in. She certainly wouldn't approve of stringing corpses to lampposts and executing surrendering prisoners. She says, "Fight the Hegemony," not "Slaughter the Changelings." But she also doesn't absolve the changelings from following Chrysalis. Or the ponies that spent years watching her build up her army, including herself. And the ponies that turned a blind eye to the suffering in the world around them because their life was still comfortable.
The summation of her speech is that she should've joined Thorax, taken her friends, and caused a massive diplomatic snafu as she went to dethrone Chrysalis on a wave of friendship and harmony. Because "friendship" and "peace" and "harmony" aren't synonymous. Sometimes you need to punch a Queen in the face.
11542214
Well said.
42
11542652
The revolver was already loaded plus two spares.
30+18.
loads several murder weapons
This is the million dollar question.
Will flurry, Celestial and Luna meet face to face again❓ or is that something that won't happen.
11542745
The answer to life, the universe, and everything
I love this idea and visuals, but the fact that it's lifted from Andor is so on the nose.
Still, maybe something like that should be expected from fanfiction, even if it's competently written
11542032
11543081
Flurry's short, prebattle speech is taken from Outlaw King.
Grover's declaration is from Gears of War 2.
Twilight Sparkle gets the Andor speech.
I have written unique speeches before for my characters, but Twilight's speech just wasn't working on-page. And then Andor came out and I realized I was writing a shallower, worse version of that speech. A Song of Ice and Fire references run through the entire story anyway, so it's not like I'm especially subtle. Twilight needed something that reflected who she was, not how everyone remembered her as, and the climatic speech from Andor is a better base than anything I could've built myself.
I'll leave it here then, just to share
This chapter was epic, I guess the army heard it as well. Now they all will mos probably abandon Celestism and accept Flurryism
Wow. That was some heavy, emotional stuff.
Yes, as a matter of fact I am bawling my eyes out, what about it?
I hate seeing my favorite characters die but this is war. This was so well done. I don't really have the words.
.... man... i really want to keep reading this, but its one am and i've got school tomorrow. I can't wait to finish this arc, this is some of the best writing i've ever seen in a fic.
Wonder if there could be a spinoff with twilight going back in time and changing things
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Unrelated to this story or EAW. But there is the story Hard Reset by Eakin.
Granted it's unintentional time travel and being stuck in a loop.
...I sat here for some time now, thinking of a suitable comment to share. But I can't seem to get what I wish to say quite right. The way the story is written just does that to me, I guess.
Given that the chapters seem to be showing certain themes, the sinking feeling I have, akin to watching a car crash in slow motion and being able to do nothing about it, has been growing. Here we read about hope in war, in "The Element of Loyalty" we had loss caused by war, in "The Cadet" we saw the guilt caused by war.
Where I'm going with this, I don't know. I'm just dreading about what comes next, I suppose.