Harmony 6: The Coming of Nightmares

by CopperTop

Prologue: Midnight on the Firing Line

‘Equestria Will Prevail!’

A few years ago, those affirming posters had been everywhere. They’d been plastered on nearly every flat surface in every town across the continent. A bold statement emblazoned above a scene of defiant ponies wearing pristine uniforms and barding. Motivational. Inspiring. Desperately prophetic.

They’d turned out to be little more than a comforting lie. One that ponies had continued to tell themselves for years.

The lithe purple unicorn mare found herself idly wondering—and not for the first time—how many of the ponies behind the creation of those posters had known it to be a lie from the beginning? Surely, after seeing the results of the first true battle of the war, it had to have been obvious to Equestria’s leadership how outmatched ponies were. How hopeless…

And yet…they’d still continued to make the posters.

Not as many of them remained anymore—and there were several reasons for that. Eventually, a few years into the fighting, it was decided that the time and ponypower being spent making the posters would be of better benefit to the war effort if directed elsewhere. Like building up earthworks around what towns and forts still yet remained undestroyed by the enemy.

Not many of those had remained either.

Those few posters which still yet endured today showed their years. They bore the scars of wind, rain…and disillusioned ponies. The last poster that the mare had seen on her way out of the city had been heavily marred by water damage; and its text now read: ‘Equestria Will Prevail! DIE’.

Staring out from the slope of the mountain, towards the distant lowlands surrounding Equestria’s last remaining city worthy of being called such, and counting the pinpricks of light of the camp fires that surrounded it, the unicorn found that she no longer disagreed with the sentiment expressed on the poster. It was no longer a poster dictating a lie. It finally reflected the truth. One that she’d known for a long time.

She’d run the numbers.

Even when the answer provided was objectively disheartening, the mare still found that there was a comfort to be had when solving any given equation. After all, nothing was more distressing to her mind than uncertainty. Planning around variables required creating contingencies to cover the possible undesirable outcomes. Which was fine. To a point. Nopony knew everything, after all; and so having a fallback plan was always necessary.

Being prepared was the mark of a good leader. However, if there were too many variables at play, then the number of contingency plans needed could become cumbersome to work with.

The middle of a battlefield was a less than ideal place to whip out and consult a flow chart.

Contingencies needed to be kept to a minimum, which meant eliminating as many of the outstanding variables as possible beforehoof; and so the mare had gathered up all of the information that she could on the situation in an effort to run the relevant numbers and solve as many of the equations as possible. She eliminated the variables, leaving only the most likely outcomes left to consider.

The answer that she’d gotten had been…less than ideal. To put it delicately.

But she had still managed to find some measure of comfort in the truth where none at all had been present within the lies of those posters. The mare ascribed that comfort to the answers having allowed her to reach the final stage of grief under the Tuber Moss Model: Acceptance.

We won’t win; but at least we tried.

Trying mattered.

She liked to think that wasn’t a lie.

“I heard that they took Fillydelphia in two days.”

The purple unicorn managed to peel her eyes away from the distant specks of firelight long enough to look at the pale yellow mare standing beside her. Even in the dim, predawn light, it was easy to make out the trepidation carved into her executive officer’s face as Lieutenant Moondancer stared down with her at the enemy encampment.

No. It was more than mere ‘trepidation’, the other mare ruefully admitted to herself; it was fear. Maybe even a tinge of outright despair. It was hard to blame her. The purple unicorn’s own gaze returned to regard the enemy once more, staring down the slope of Canterhorn Mountain at the army which was besieging the last city of ponies. The invading forces had encircled Canterlot the previous day. It was a foregone conclusion that they would attack in the morning. Perhaps as late as the next day, depending on how much artillery they felt like bringing up.

“The terrain around Fillydelphia wasn’t very defensible.” The words were more deflection than substance. It was a factually true statement…and little else. It completely overlooked the fact that, according to the reports from the few scouts who’d managed to make it back to Canterlot alive, Fillydelphia had been bombarded very nearly into rubble by hundreds of artillery pieces the likes of which Equestria had never seen before the war; and certainly couldn’t hope to match.

Many unicorns were capable of spells which came close to duplicating the destructive power of the enemy’s explosive shells, sure. But most would succumb to burnout after just a few castings. Perhaps a dozen at most. Such destructive spells were extremely energy-intensive, and so drained unicorns quickly.

The little purple mare had devised a work-around for that and proven its efficacy. Unfortunately, her methods hadn’t turned out to be very sustainable either. Just in a different way…

The enemy siege artillery bombing Equestria into ruin didn’t rely on magic though. It used more mundane methods, and the pieces could fire at a nearly continuous rate so long as they could be supplied with explosive shells. And these invaders had shown no sign that their supply of such destructive munitions was in danger of running out any time soon, given how liberally they were using them during battles and sieges.

“Come on. Let’s finish our patrol.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Moondancer said with a quick nod before turning and motioning for the rest of the company to move up.

The formation of two hundred armored unicorns made their way down the southern slope at a clipped canter, all eyes scanning the forests surrounding the mountainside. Ears swiveled atop heads, seeking out any sign of their enemy. The pickets had reported enemy movement in the forests surrounding Canterlot. The generals feared that spotters for the invader’s artillery were being set into position in preparation for the imminent attack.

Their mission was to go out and chase off any of these small enemy units before they could dig in. They were also supposed to find and turn away any enemy scouts that might be trying to get a look at Canterlot’s defenses.

Moondancer’s attention tended to focus on the treeline near the base of the mountain. A frown was creasing her muzzle. Then her eyes squinted for a brief moment. “I think I see something in the trees,” she said aloud after a few moments of staring. “I’m going to take a closer look.”

Without waiting for her confirmation from her captain, the pale yellow unicorn peeled off a dozen ponies from the rest of the group and charged off before the other mare was even aware of what she’d said. “Lieutenant!” The purple unicorn hissed, but it was too late. The detachment had already accelerated into a gallop and wasn’t looking back. She swore under her breath, briefly torn between the urge to go after her wayward XO and the importance of sticking to their assigned patrol route.

Then her own amethyst gaze also caught sight of…something in the treeline. A flicker of movement. There was always the possibility, of course, that it had simply been an animal. A deer or something else of the sort. Possible, but not worth assuming. They needed to operate under the assumption that such a thing was either an enemy forward scout or one of the forward spotters for the artillery they were out here looking for. The unicorn was about to rally the rest of the company to follow the lieutenant.

Then she caught sight of another flicker of movement a little further down the treeline.

Her lips pursed. Something was wrong. The distance was too great for both points of movement to be associated with the same enemy grouping. At least, assuming what they’d stumbled upon was a picket of some sort. Nor would two separate units have been positioned so close to one another—not on purpose, anyway.

A glint of something metallic reflected the waning moonlight. The lavender unicorn instantly recognized the shape of one of the rifles used by their enemy. She’d seen a lot of them.

She was seeing a lot of them now. Glints of steel at the edge of the forest. Several more. A dozen. Several scores.

The invaders were in the treeline. All along the treeline.

These weren’t some of their artillery spotters; they’d moved their whole army into the forest!

It was a realization that all but froze the unicorn’s heart. Her mind reeled with the impossibility of it all. They’d all seen the distant pinpricks of firelight in the distance—miles in the distance—denoting the enemy’s camps. Those points of light had been there all night, unwavering. Simultaneously ominous and reassuring in the darkness. For, while those fires showed that the enemy had Canterlot surrounded, they had also shown that the enemy was way over there!

It had been a ruse, she realized now. The enemy had moved their lines up from their camps under cover of darkness, getting their forces into position so that they could begin their assault on Canterlot the moment the sun peeked over the horizon.

Her company wasn’t facing a dozen or so enemy scouts. There was a battalion or more in those trees.

“Moondancer!” The cry was one of desperation. Perhaps even one of futility. All the same, she couldn’t stand by and remain quiet while her XO charged unwittingly to her death. The chiffon mare drew up slightly and turned her head back towards her commanding officer and the rest of the company. “Get back—!”

The rest of the warning was drowned out by the rolling thunderclaps of firing rifles as the nearby forest came alive with muzzle flashes. The purple mare watched in utter horror as the dozen unicorns heading towards the forest were mercilessly cut down in a hail of bullets. The steel barding they wore offered no protection from the withering fire that assaulted them.

Moondancer didn’t react to the cacophonous gunfire erupting behind her or the slaughter of the ponies nearby. She simply dropped in a heap of limbs and armor, like a marionette which had had its strings cut, dead before she’d had time enough to realize that her life was in danger.

Only a few of the ponies with her had lived long enough to get out a scream.

The lavender mare’s shock lasted only a heartbeat before years of battle-bred instinct took over. “Contact! In the trees!” She called out at the top of her lungs. “Form ranks and advance!” She ordered. “Two deep!”

Her own hooves were already in motion before the commands were fully out of her mouth. She didn’t look back to confirm that the rest of her company was responding to the order. She didn’t need to. The din of hundreds of armored hooves pounding down the mountainside was all the confirmation that the purple unicorn needed.

“Charge!”

Running these numbers was pretty straightforward. The purple mare wasn’t particularly surprised when the answer she came up with wasn’t an encouraging one.

She’d seen the breadth of the firing line sequestered in the trees. It wasn’t difficult to extrapolate that out to a rough number of bodies and from there the approximate size of the group which had apparently advanced up to the base of Canterhorn Mountain under the cover of darkness. The unicorn knew she was leading her ponies into the waiting maw of a numerically vastly superior force. One which also possessed weapons whose lethality far outclassed what Equestria was capable of producing.

She knew she was leading her ponies to their deaths.

There simply wasn’t any better option. The mountainside behind them was all but devoid of any cover worth considering. Her ponies were out in the open, and well within the range of the enemy’s rifles. To turn and run in an attempt to escape would just mean all of them being shot in the back.

But…if she could get her ponies in close—get hoof-to-hoof with the enemy and negate the advantage conferred to them by those Tartarus-damned—

The treeline bloomed once more with another broad volley. Ahead of them, the charging formation could see the brilliant orange muzzle flashes which were pelting their formation with fire that was far too effectively placed for the mare’s liking. To say nothing of the absolutely absurd rate of fire that was being maintained!

The slender unicorn at the head of the formation felt her lips pulling back into a frustrated sneer as she inwardly cursed their enemy’s superior arms. Equestria had only just unlocked the secrets of gunpowder a scant few decades ago—and had only just begun to explore its military applications with the onset of the invasion. Conversely, she was led to understand that the invaders had refined their own familiarity with the versatile compound over many centuries.

That vast gulf of experience was on full display now in the predawn hours. With lethal effect.

A mare’s pained whinny sounded immediately to her right, followed swiftly by the agonizing staccato of metal armor and limbs grinding to their final rest upon stony ground. Out of the corner of her eye, the mare spied another pony shifting to fill the gap left in their line by the loss of their slain comrade. Their numbers had thinned noticeably since the start of the charge.

“Unicorns, ready!” The cry rose up from her throat. Her own horn ignited with brilliant magenta light. All along the line of charging ponies, bright motes of light made up of nearly any color which could be imagined burst to life. Another cascade of muzzle flashes from the treeline ahead snuffed out the better part of a third of them. The cries of the dying threatened to drown out the sound of pounding hooves and shifting armor. “Release!”

A veritable prism of light lanced forth from the line of charging ponies, striking at the treeline concealing their enemy. It was nearly impossible to know how many of their foes they’d slain with the magical assault. The nascent morning hour was still too dim, and the foliage too thick. Nothing about this fight favored her or her ponies. That was almost certainly by design, she suspected.

She lit her horn and shot a brilliant flare of magic into the air. A signal to Canterlot that contact had been made with a substantial enemy force. An assault on the city was likely imminent. Every last able defender would be roused and armed—perhaps even those who were less than able. After all, it wasn’t as though there would be much of an opportunity for non-combatants to retreat.

There was nowhere left in Equestria for the ponies to retreat to. Canterlot was all that was left. When they fell here—

When…

…Well, perhaps other races would remember Equestria in stories and history texts. Maybe the enemy would craft a song or two about their final victory that deigned to make mention of who it was they had so utterly destroyed.

Her fatalistic thoughts were briefly interrupted by something striking her right cheek. Not a whole bullet, fortunately. Likely just a fragment of one that had ricocheted off of a rock as her squadron was further culled by another salvo of rifle fire; for those were rifles that were being employed against her ponies. Ones which fired with only a hoofful of seconds between rounds, while Equestria’s own craftsmares could barely manage to assemble a proper matchlock that was lucky to fire once a minute. Twice a minute if the user was a well-drilled unicorn; and those shots might land in the approximate vicinity of the target. Presuming the target was standing still and out in the open. And close.

If it weren’t for the ‘charity’—though the extortionate prices being charged for the weapons was anything but ‘charitable’—of the griffons in selling them somewhat more comparable arms, the ponies would be launching crossbow quarrels and slinging stones at an adversary who was known to employ—

A new source of ear-splitting thunder roared up at the ponies, spewing much fiercer gouts of smoke and flame. “Cannons! Spread ou—!” The unicorn’s orders were lost as an explosive shell detonated a scant few yards behind her. The concussive blast flung her forward, sending the mare tumbling to the ground in a rolling mess of hooves and barding. She opened her mouth to urge what remained of her company—barely a squadron’s worth of ponies now—towards the enemy’s ranks, but all that emerged was a pained cry as every new hurt her body had experienced during her fall announced itself to the world through her throat.

She grit her teeth, hard enough that she was genuinely unsure if she’d chipped something or if her mouth was simply filled with dirt and grit from her fall. She willed away the pain with middling success even as she struggled to get back onto her hooves.

“Captain!” A stallion’s voice managed to pierce through the ringing in her ears. The mare’s eyes looked onto the armored form of a caramel unicorn holding out his hoof to help her up. “I’ve got you, ma’am!” She reached to take the offered limb—

Another crackle of rifle fire echoed up the mountain. A heartbeat later the stallion jerked as no fewer than three bullets effortlessly tore through his steel-plated barding as though he’d been wearing a burlap sack. He fell over dead, his eyes locked open in shock and surprise.

She cursed under her breath and wheeled her head around to glare at the offending treeline teeming with the enemy. She flared her horn and issued a magical reprisal for the death of one of her ponies. She’d tried to focus in on where she believed she’d seen a muzzle flash, but it was hard to be sure through the haze of gunsmoke which was settling over the underbrush like fog.

Again she struggled to her hooves, succeeding this time in getting all of the way back up to a mostly standing posture. “Pon—” She barely got out even a single syllable before she was forced into a coughing fit by the dust and smoke in her lungs. Judging from the sickly sweet taste in her mouth, she judged that there was a fair bit of blood mixed in as well. “Ponies! On me!” There was only a slightly better than zero chance that anypony had actually managed to hear the order which had come out as more cough than shout.

It didn’t matter. Any who hadn’t heard her would at least be able to see her closing with the enemy’s line and fall in at her flanks.

She was unsteady on her hooves as she pushed on down the mountain. So much of her hurt. But she shoved the pain aside. It wouldn’t be there for much longer anyway. The cannons fired again, filling the mountainside with fresh explosions, screams, and corpses. Still she pressed on, her hobbled gait stretching into a trot, and then eventually a canter as she managed to find her stride once more.

Nopony else was running with her. The unicorn wasn’t sure whether there was anypony left alive to run with her. It didn’t matter. There had been no turning away from this fight once it had begun anyway.

She was close enough to spot them now, the shapes moving in the trees. The creatures who had killed her ponies. Who would soon be making their way up Canterhorn Mountain to slaughter everypony else who’d somehow managed to survive the war up to this point. A city packed to bursting with the paltry remnants of Equestria’s ‘civilian population’: those ponies who were simply too young, too old, and too sick or injured to cast a spell or couch a lance and fight.

Their killers were reforming their own ranks, preparing to advance up the mountain.

“...No you don’t,” the mare was dimly aware she muttered, as her thoughts escaped her lips, heard only by her own ears. “You don’t get to walk up this mountain…” She stretched out her stride even further now, extending her stiff gait into a full gallop. “You don’t get to walk into my home…” Her horn flared, glowing once more with brilliant magical light. “Not while I’m still here to stop you!”

Maybe her defiant scream had actually been loud enough to grab their attention. She couldn’t be sure. The words pained her throat so much that she doubted there had been any real volume to her cry. It was more likely that they’d spied her glowing horn as she gathered together all of the magic that she could for her next spell. Her last spell. The last spell.

She’d caught them in the midst of forming their lines in preparation for an advance, so nearly every one of the enemy’s forces was out of position and not prepared to fire. Some managed to get off shots though. Rushed and unaimed as they tracked the running unicorn. Rockdust was kicked up by rounds which fell short, pelting her barding with grit. Her ears flickered at the whistles of rounds which went wide to her left and right. One of the enemy’s bullets would have found their mark in her chest, were it not for the violet barrier the unicorn had conjured directly in front of her. It was a ward which would draw at least some of her gathering magic away from the lethal casting she was mustering, lessening its effect; but her spell would have exactly no effect if she died before she could release it.

“If I’m going to die here, then I’m at least going to take some of you with me!”

Another round sparked off her barrier ward. She was close enough now that she could make out the shocked expressions on several of the enemy soldiers’ faces. Faces that were bathed more in the magenta glow of her charged spell than the orange light of the sun just starting to crest over Canterhorn Mountain. A few fearful gapes suggested that at least some of the enemy recognized what the unicorn intended to do.

Her head ached with the overcharged spell. Her lungs burned with the effort of her sprint. Every movement of her limbs was another stab of pain from the many wounds inflicted by shrapnel and her earlier tumble.

None of it would matter in a few more seconds.

“When you get to Tartarus; tell them Twilight sent—huh?!”

As far as last words went, the purple unicorn mare was certain that they’d have been properly pithy. However, her parting quip had been rather abruptly undercut when her view of the confused and cowering soldiers was rather unexpectedly eclipsed by the sudden emergence of a new arrival leaping over the line of soldiers. They veritably vaulted over the hesitating soldiers, interposing themselves in front of the galloping unicorn and her overcharged spell.

There was no sign of fear or hesitation on the striped face before her. Only grim determination was visible in those narrowed aquamarine eyes.

The new arrival wasn’t alone either. In their company had been a small brown pouch, which had apparently been launched in the unicorn’s direction. Its appearance was surprising, but not immediately concerning. She still had her ward up. The barrier was sturdy enough to turn away rifle fire, even at this extremely close range. A little canvas bag was hardly going to pose any threat. So she ignored it and pressed onward. She just needed to get…a little…closer…

The bag struck her ward and burst open.

The mare’s world was consumed by a blinding white light.

Then she knew only darkness.

***

10 Years Later

***

“Oi! Look alive at that rudder; mind the buoys!”

The clipper ship listed to the left as the stallion at the ship’s helm snapped into action, barely managing to keep the vessel from wandering outside of the marked lanes off one of the shallows few safe approaches. Twilight Sparkle reared up and wrapped her forelimbs through some nearby rigging to keep herself from being heaved all the way to the other side of the deck as it tilted to what felt to her like a full forty-five degrees. The mare standing beside her barely seemed to react at all to the ship’s violent motion, her hooves rooted to the wooden deck as though they’d been nailed there as she glared balefully at the pony at the helm.

The ship passed the buoy and the stallion turned the wheel back the other way, steering the vessel straight once again. He offered his clearly unamused captain a sheepish smile. “Put a reef through my hull, Mister Shanty, and I’ll use your flank for the plug! Savvy?!” The stallion had the good sense to swallow back a lump of fear in response to the non-threat. For it sounded very much to Twilight like the captain was making him a bona fide promise.

The ship’s Master Under Sun and Moon, a salty—in both demeanor and likely majority composition of her coat—seafoam earth pony mare named Keelhaul, muttered some largely unintelligible epithets under her breath before saying more clearly: “...Moonfall Islands claimed enough ships as it is. Ain’t keen to add the Lickity to their tally.” She only then looked up to see her passenger disentangling themselves from the rope rigging that they’d latched onto. “Y’alright there, Colonel Sparkle?”

“I’m fine; thank you, captain.” The purple unicorn briefly ignited her horn as she invoked her telekinesis to smooth out her uniform. She’d thus far managed to keep it mostly free of sea spray so that she would look properly presentable when they arrived at their destination…and her new home. She’d keep the baby-blue wool jacket and white flank skirt packed away in her trunk during the entirety of their trip just so that it would be in proper order when she assumed her new command.

“Two weeks out ‘ere on the blue and you still ain’t got yer sea legs,” the older mare noted with a wry smirk. “Meanin’ no offense there, colonel; but you don’t seem very suited to nautical life.”

“No, I’m very much not,” Twilight agreed, flashing the other mare a rueful smile of her own. “The biggest body of water I ever encountered before this trip was the lake under Canterlot Falls.”

The ship’s captain quirked a surprised brow “And they assigned you out here?!” She let out a long, bewildered, whistle. “Who’d you piss off to get saddled with this assignment then?”

It was a fair question, the unicorn supposed, and one she’d have liked a proper answer to as well. The explanation that she’d been given by her superiors had been…unfulfilling. “Believe it or not, this is supposed to be a reward,” she informed the captain.

Keelhawl snorted. “You got ‘rewarded’ by bein’ banished to the middle of the ocean?”

A small rueful smile touched the corner of Twilight’s lips. “I only received my promotion to colonel a month ago. Being given command of a whole fort, even one this remote, is a pretty big deal for somepony in my position.”

The earth pony mare raised a brow and eyed the other pony. “Y’sure you didn’t piss somepony off an’ they’re tryin’g to get rid of ya?”

Twilight frowned now. “I know the posting’s a little remote…” Even as the purple mare said this, her gaze once more took in the desolate rocky archipelago that the ship was sailing through. She was thousands of miles from Equestria—from any nation, really. There was certainly room to argue that Twilight had been ‘banished’.

Not that she could have contemplated a reason why this assignment was intended to be treated as a punishment. Equestria wasn’t generally in the habit of punishing their ‘war heroes’ for no reason…

“‘Remote’ ain’t the issue,” the ship captain's cackle was hardly encouraging. Then the earth pony fixed the purple mare with a bemused expression. “What? Ain’t nopony told ya about what happened to the other five Harmony fortresses they built out here?”

Twilight blinked. “Um…no, now that you mention it.” Nor had the unicorn thought to read up on them. They weren’t where she’d been assigned to, after all. She’d kept the focus of her research on the specific fortress that she was being stationed at. “Are they not around anymore?”

Another bark of rough laughter that was far from encouraging. “Oh, they’re ‘around’ alright!” The mare swept out a forehoof in a broad, all encompassing circle around the ship before settling on one direction. “Harmony Fortress-the-First was right over there. Briefly.” Twilight followed the captain’s indicated direction, but found only empty ocean. “The atoll they built it on turned out to be a might on the unstable side, so it sank into the sea before they were quite done buildin’ it.” Twilight winced, still spying no sign that a massive fort had ever existed where the earth pony was pointing.

“They built the second fortress on top of the remains of the first, figuring that its forebear would make a decent fort-bearer,” the mare allowed herself a brief chuckle at the pun before continuing. “But they were wrong and it sank into the sea too.” Now Twilight was regarding the captain with an incredulous expression, searching for signs that she was being played for a fool by a joking captain, but the earth pony didn’t appear to notice the look and pressed on with her historical accounting. “And since ‘third time’s a charm’ and all that, they then tried for the hat trick! That one held for a little while…until it burned down, fell over, and then sank into the sea…

“Now the fourth fortress—”

“Let me guess: it sank into the sea?”

“Oh, no,” the captain’s outstretched limb shifted to a new location. This time Twilight’s attention was drawn to a craggy outcropping of an island. “It blew out into the sea. Its magazines exploded.”

The unicorn’s eyes widened in shock. Then narrowed as she finally caught a detail that had nearly slipped by her notice. “Wait. Magazines? Plural?”

“Yep. All four of’em. At once. Kablooey.” Her hooves pantomimed a massive explosion. “T’wer like a second sunrise, they said.”

Now Twilight was frowning again. “That’s not possible. A fortress’ powder magazines are reinforced along the walls and given a deliberately weakened portion of roof so that any explosion is directed up and away from the other magazines, negating the possibility of an accident causing a chain detonation and mitigating harm to the ponies inside the fort.”

“Aye,” the ship’s captain nodded her head in solemn agreement. “But I didn’ say nothin’ about it being no ‘accident’, now did I?” There was not even a hint of mirth in the mare’s expression.

Twilight looked more intently at the indicated island. Only now did she notice that the ‘rocky outcroppings’ weren’t formed from any true ‘rock’. They were the scattered remains of worked stone. All that was left of the collapsed curtain walls and bulwarks of a fort that used to be and was no more. Its destruction truly did look far too thorough to have been the result of a genuine accident. “Sabotage? By who?”

The seafoam earth pony shrugged. “If’n anypony knows, they ain’t made mention of it to me; and I ain’t keen to know, t’ be honest.”

“...And the fifth Harmony Fortress?” Twilight was almost afraid to learn the fate of the next incarnation at this point.

“NoPoNy KnOwS~” Keelhaul replied with the exaggerated inflection and wide eyes of somepony regaling a foal with a ghost story. Then she snickered and pointed her hoof out at another island off in the distance. This island was rather smooth and bare in appearance. There was certainly no sign that anything had collapsed into the sea or been destroyed. In fact, it didn’t even look like anything had ever been built there at all. “It was right over there. For all of about a week after the last stone was laid, is the best guess.”

“‘Best guess’?”

Another shrug from the earth pony. “Nopony was here to see for sure,” she said, sounding nonplussed despite the absurdity of her assertion. “Best as I know it, the last of the ships carrying the engineers left the anchorage…and when the transports with its proper garrison arrived, there wasn’t a fort no more! The ships spent three days wandering the archipelago jus’ in case they’d been given bad charts. Their charts were bang on, o’course. But the fort weren’t where it was s’pposed to be; and ain’t nopony seen nor heard from anypony t’was there since. To say nothin’ of the fort itself.

“‘S’like it vanished into the aether.”

Twilight felt herself frown at that, unable to point out the technical flaw with the analogy. “Nothing can vanish ‘into the aether’,” she countered. “The aether is just a transient non-dimension. It doesn’t have any physical space that can actually be occupied by anything from the Prime Material Plane. Things pass through the aether, but nothing stays there.”

The earth pony mare rolled her eyes. It wasn’t clear to Twilight whether the captain had actually taken any of her explanation to heart. “Well, if’n the fort popped back out of the aether somewhere, ain’t nopony found it—or the ponies t’were in it—since. Might as well be on the moon, for all anypony knows.

“In any event…” The mare’s words hung in the air as the ship’s captain turned back to face the bow and peered past her unicorn passenger. “...Y’ain’t here to lead none of the Harmonys what ain’t here no more. You, Colonel Sparkle, are here for that,” she pointed her hoof past the purple mare, drawing Twilight’s gaze ahead of the ship. “Harmony Fortress, sixth—and hopefully last—of her name.”

Twilight’s amethyst eyes followed the outstretched foreleg to just a point or two off the starboard bow of the little clipped ship she was riding. They were just clearing an outcropping that was barely worthy of being called an ‘island’, and the unicorn caught sight of the distant fortress that could only be their destination.

What surprised the unicorn the most, she supposed, was the sheer scale of it all. They were still several miles away from the island hosting the fortress, and yet she could make out the contours of its towering curtain walls and the many parapets which dotted those intimidating walls. It was the most well-defended fortress that the unicorn had ever seen in her life. A part of her cynically noted that she was judging the station by pony standards, and found herself darkly wondering if a zebra war cruiser would need to fire two salvos or three in order to completely level it…

She shook the thought from her mind. There was no need for it. The zebras were now allies of Equestria—and while Twilight was certainly grateful for that fact, she was unable to come up with a personally satisfactory reason as to why that was the case—and so their formidable weapons and ships would would be pointed away from her and her ponies, and not towards them. A welcome change.

Indeed, for the moment at least, Equestria had no enemies. At most there were a few races who remained largely indifferent to the existence of ponies, and these existed mostly among the minor races who controlled what amounted to city-states or micronations of one sort or another. Like the donkeys or the yaks. Among the major powers, the ponies actually enjoyed quite amicable relations. Aside from the surprising turn of amiability from the zebras, Equestria had long held pleasant relations with the griffons. That relationship had morphed only slightly since the war, in response to the massive debt which the ponies owed to those who had sold them the weapons which let them stave off total annihilation as long as they had.

The dragons too didn’t seem to bear Equestria any ill will. Likely because they had none to spare, saving it wholly for the griffons whose oppression they had only relatively recently thrown off after nearly a century of occupation and plunder of their lands by their avian neighbors. There was something of an armistice which existed between the two races now. A cold war which threatened to go hot with a misplaced word.

As far as Twilight was concerned, keeping tempers cooled between those two belligerents would represent a primary focus during her tenure as the commander of Harmony Six. After all, finding a way to maintain the peace between all the races of Equus was the whole goal of the Harmony Project. Their friction would provide something of a litmus test for the project’s effectiveness.

It wouldn’t be easy, her mission; but it was important. Few likely knew that as well as Twilight Sparkle did. She’d seen the consequences of a shattered peace. She saw them still, on the occasional night. Smelled the blood and the saltpeter. Heard the screaming—the cries of pain and the begging for the final loving embrace of a mother before the end.

Her mission here was important. Perhaps the most important mission of all: the fostering of Harmony between the races of the world. It was a goal that Twilight vowed she would pay any price to uphold. The world would not be bathed in darkness and blood.

“...Not while I’m here to stop it.”

Author's Note:

Welcome to the start of what is planned to be a trilogy not-so-subtly inspired by Babylon 5 :P Don't worry if you've never seen the show (but if you haven't...why?!), like Ponytech, knowledge of the source material isn't required to enjoy the story. It just helps catch the occasional reference or in-joke.

I hope everyone enjoys this little re-imagining of Season 1 of FiM with a J. Michael Straczynski twist!

As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated

If you like the cover art and want to see more stories get them, I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!

Comments

[Mix-up]

Nice so far, I am looking forward to see more of this story again soon, keep it up.

[Sunset_Shimmer83]

I recognized the story synopsis as Babylon 5 themed instantly.
Commander Jeffrey Sinclair is Twilight Sparkle
Interested to see what ponies and other creatures you cast as The rest of the B5 crew.
I'm going to go off on a limb and take some guesses.
Zecora as Delenn, lennier no guess
Sunset as Sheridan
Ember as Gkar
Gilda as London
Gallus as Vir
Spitfire as Ivanovna
Fluttershy as franklin
Rarity as Garibaldi
Celestia as Kosh.
Starlight as lita

[CopperTop]

11951653
Those are some pretty good guesses, actually! I think you indeed got more right than wrong, so good job! Guess we have similar views on which MLP and B5 characters share personalities and such :P

I won't confirm exactly which one's are right here and now, we'll see most of the cast introduced in the next chapter. But I will say that Twilight's going to be pulling double-duty as Sinclair/Sheridan in the story. Mostly because (unlike quite a few of my previous works) I won't be killing off the main character in this series! XD

Hopefully you'll enjoy my take on this mashing of these shows' plots! Like with Ponytech, I endeavor to be faithful as possible to both franchises, as I love B5 very much.

[TheLastWolfinEquestria]

After reading chapter one, and being a huge B5 fan, I am very interested. Personally, I think you have the Griffons and Dragons swapped. It'd make more sense to me that the Dragons, being physically larger and stronger than Griffons, would be the Centari and the Griffons beind the Narn. Especially since it was the Narn who sold weapons to the Earth Alliance (In this, Equestria), and the Centari gave no further aid after giving the Alliance the limited information they had on the Minbari.

I would put in a recommendation of making the slight change in the Griffons and Dragons, but you don't need to. I'd also suggest that you make Shining Armor this stories version of Sheridan. I personally think he'd be a good fit there. I can also see Chrysalis and her changelings being the Drahk to Nightmare Moon as the Shadows. I even think Discord could be Lorien. Just some suggestions and thoughts. Loved this first chapter, well done!

[CopperTop]

11973667
I hemmed and hawed over who the griffons and dragons should be for a while, don't get me wrong! And I did initially favor the dragons to be the Centauri exactly for the reasons you stated: obviously physically stronger and more domineering. But, after noting a lot of AU fics have the griffons using tech while the dragons don't bother, I thought that that actually lined up better with how the Narns and Centauri are portrayed; with the Narns being largely technologically "backwards" at the time they were enslaved, while being presented in the show as actually being a physically stronger species. (G'Kar, a statesman, is often shown to be exceptionally strong when compared to typical humans/centauri).

And don't worry, I have a role for Shining Armor in this story that aligns pretty well with B5 and his relationship to Twilight. Not that he wouldn't have made a good Sheridan, you're correct. However, I didn't need a Sinclair and a Sheridan as two separate character arctypes in the story, so I'm having Twi pull double-duty.

I'm glad I got you intrigued and hope you stick around to see where I take the story!

[Javarod]

Hmmm, just getting to this, and gotta admit it's looking real interesting. I'm kinda wondering where NMM/Luna will fit in, and who will be the Vorlons, for Shadow, changelings seem an obvious choice, perhaps too obvious. I'd assume you're going to split the dragons into effectively two races, it's really the only way that can work. And Twilight as Sinclair and Sheridan, I can see, Sinclair as a character never quite worked for me, though it was a shame why he had to leave.

[CopperTop]

12002024
While I also enjoyed Sheridan more than Sinclair, what happened to Michael O'Hare was truly heartbreaking.

I'm glad you're giving the story a try and hope you enjoy the choices I made to mesh B5 with FiM!