My Little Pony: Warfare is Tragic
Chapter 1: Just Like Any Other Day
-Ponyville, Present Day-
It never took much to get Twilight Sparkle riled up, especially if it threatened her looking like anything less than a model student in front of Princess Celestia. The tongue lashing ponies risked by being even slightly slovenly in her presence had reached something of a legendary status in Ponyville, as had her nervous breakdowns. Some foals had actually taken to relieving boredom by seeing who could make her snap the fastest, with Snails being the current record holder at under a minute. Consequently, Spike informing her that the Princess would be gracing them with a surprise visit the day after a Sapphire Shores concert had trashed nearly half the town made her a bit panicky.
"WHAT?" It was moments like this that made Spike marvel that his ears still worked.
"Yep, just came in, she'll be here in a half-hour, and that she wants… to… Twilight?" The frantic clopping of hooves as she galloped out the door was all the answer he got. Sighing inwardly, he trotted out the door after her, hoping the inevitable commotion would do his job for him of getting the girls together. C'mon, Spike, if you want a job done right… Chastising himself, the young dragon took off in the direction of the Carousel Boutique. After all, it was only gentlemanly to ensure that the ladies, especially Rarity, knew exactly what was going on.
:::::
Ponyville's town square was, in a word, a disaster. The assorted detritus of a night of partying, dancing, and general levity was omnipresent, as were the ponies still blearily extricating themselves from wherever the revelry had flung them. As Twilight gawked in utter horror at the herculean task before her, Applejack was doing her level best to get Apple Bloom untangled from the mass of light cables on stage.
"Now, sugar, you're just makin' it worse! Quit jerkin' around like that 'till I get this knot worked out…" The cable gave a violent spasm, tangling itself several times more and undoing what little progress she had made. "That goes double for you, Rainbow!"
The dangling cocoon of wires with a rainbow-hued mop protruding managed a rough approximation of a shrug, followed by a rougher apologetic mush, "Srryh!" Applejack rolled her eyes as she returned to her work, determined to salvage some merit out of this cable-collecting gone wrong.
This'd be a lot easier if I had fingers, she mused, Spike'd be really helpful right about now. A furious scrabbling sound diverted her attention as a distinctly bedraggled Twilight clambered frantically onto the stage, looking just about ready to have a heart-attack.
"Applejack! Oh, thank goodness, you have to help me! Listen, we've got less than twenty minutes until she-gets-here-but-I-don't-think-this-is-gonna-"
"Whoa there, hon, just slow down. Only twenty minutes until who gets here?"
"Princess Celestia! She's making a surprise visit and this place is a mess!"
"Mm shrr shs snn wrs."
"I don't care if she's seen worse, Rainbow! What does this say about us? What's she going to think when she gets here and the only progress we've made towards cleaning up is a pile of confetti?"
As if to drive home the point that the universe doesn't respond well to temptation, Pinkie Pie erupted from the aforementioned mound with an enthusiastic cheer. "She's gonna think that the party was amazing!" One last swig of her soda, and she lobbed it away, smacking right into a trash can and adding its contents to the vast swathes of litter. "Ooh! We should totally have a party to celebrate how super-awesome this one was!"
Twilight's mouth contorted into a wordless scream as her preciously small success was lobbed into the air by Pinkie. Applejack put a comforting hoof around her, more than a little concerned about how quickly her eyelid was twitching.
"Twi, just calm down, and think for a moment. The concert was less than eight hours ago, I'm sure she'll be more than understandin' if we haven't exactly had time to gussy this place back up. Ya gotta stop stressin' out like this every time she swings by."
Twilight let out a monumental sigh, so deep that one might've been forgiven for thinking it was the first time she'd exhaled all morning. "You're right, AJ, I'm sorry. I guess I'm just letting how unexpected this all is get to me." A hearty, if nearly bone-shattering, slap on the back knocked any remaining air from Twilight.
"Atta girl! Now c'mon, help me untie these two before something else goes wrong."
:::::
By the time Spike returned to the square with Rarity and Fluttershy, something else had, in fact, gone wrong.
"…and then I thought, 'Hey, that looks fun!' So I jumped in after Applejack, and it turns out I was right!"
"Getting wound up in a giant tangled mass of wires was fun?"
"It's an acquired taste."
"Yeah, that about rounds out Pinkie's contribution." Twilight was swinging lazily back and forth, her hindquarters trussed up in the cable's trailing end. "If we could discuss the specifics after we've gotten out of this mess, I think I'm starting to black out."
"Right, let's see here…" Spike gave the loose end an absentminded tug as he began to weigh his options for proceeding. And that was all it took. With an almighty groan, the weight of the five entangled fillies, plus Spike's tug, overwhelmed the stage's support structure, which began to crack and splinter ominously. The stage bent inward, threatening to collapse if even one of them made an errant twitch. All eyes slowly turned to Spike, who could only grin and chuckle sheepishly in a vain effort to look as innocent as possible.
Then Angel hopped up onto the stage, curious as to what exactly was happening.
That did it.
As the Spike wiped the dust from the implosion from his eyes, a figure strode up next to him through the billowing cloud. "Need a little help, Spike?"
"No thanks, your majesty, I think we've got this- your majesty!" He immediately leapt to his feet and bowed as graciously as he could given the circumstances. The others rapidly followed suit, similarly constrained by their predicaments.
Princess Celestia smiled down at them, casting an appraising eye across the milieu with obvious amusment.
"That must have been one amazing party last night."
:::::
Eager to put the whole stage incident behind them, the group retired to the library; the Princess had insisted on speaking with them somewhere private, an unfamiliar note of worry in her normally unflappable attitude. Apple Bloom, despite her objections, had been left behind to help dispose of the former performance venue at Big Macintosh's insistence. He had seen the look in his sister's eye: it'd be best if she didn't hear what they were going to discuss.
Upon arrival, they were greeted by several nervous looking guards who Twilight distinctly recalled not having been here when she left. Many more seemed to be cordoning off the approaches to the library, their steely glares discouraging any who thought to try and get a peek.
"Pray tell, your majesty, what exactly is so urgent that all this is necessary?" Rarity was quite understandably vexed by so much security for what, she had assumed, at least, was a social visit.
"It's my sister, Luna. She's been having trouble sleeping lately, plagued by nightmares."
"Oh my, that isn't good at all, definitely not. But… is that really so serious of an issue? Maybe she's just a little anxious, what with being finally back home and all." Fluttershy offered.
Celestia shook her head as she gazed out the window, "That was what we had both initially thought as well. But they repeat, night after night, and it's always the same. She sees visions of Equestria being assailed by a great and terrible army from the west, cities razed to the ground, Canterlot in flames, and a great black cathedral in the mountains. From inside the cathedral, she can hear a voice whispering to her to kill me."
A stunned silence settled over the room as the girls tried to process this revelation. Meekly, Twilight piped up, "But, princess, what does that have to do with us?"
The princess turned back to the assembled ponies, and what they saw shocked them: fear burned clear as day in her eyes. "The voice is that of Nightmare Moon."
"…what?"
"Does this mean that…?"
"Yes. She is still alive, though not as she was when you fought her. Now, she is no longer possessing someone's mind, she is made manifest through sheer force of willpower. A being like her can only physically exist in a place of extreme hatred and malevolence, and that place is most likely the cathedral from Luna's visions." She paused to collect her thoughts, "We sent scouts to investigate, but none ever returned."
"But why tell us this now? Why the urgency, why the secrecy? It's almost like you're afraid she'll… hear… oh no." A look of horrified realization crossed Dash's face as Celestia grimly nodded.
"We have reason to believe that she has agents nearby, and that they are hunting for the Elements of Harmony. Or…" She cast her gaze over the six girls, "…their wielders."
"This doesn't make sense! How could that much hatred exist in a single spot, and who would've built a cathedral, of all things, that far out in the mountains? Nopony lives out there, only dragons and griffons!" Twilight was absolutely desperate for some sign that this was simply another of the Princess' elaborate tests.
Celestia closed her eyes for a moment, as though preparing herself for some immensely difficult endeavor, then motioned to one of the guards. Silently, he came forth, and the Princess extracted an impossibly old looking book from his saddlebag; a book that, in all her years of studying, not even Twilight had ever seen.
"Princess, what…?"
"As far as you, or anypony else knows, that's true. I admit, even I had forgotten what had happened: it's been over a thousand years." She cracked open the book and began to page through, hunting for some ancient article. Stopping, her eyes glanced back up to the group, "Have any of you ever heard of a place called 'Cavalon'?"
:::::
On the edge of the Everfree Forest, unseen by even the most hawk-eyed of sentries, three figures silently observed the library, before slinking off into the undergrowth. Never betraying their presence, they made their way deep into the heart of the Forest, to a small temple, overlooking a high cliff…
AN: And so the first tendrils of darkness make themselves known. Caution, gentle reader, OCs await in the coming chapters.
Please Read & Review! Thanks!