Chapter 2

"Aaauuuggghhh!"

The scream made Twilight and Spike look up from their work. They could hear more cries of terror by the second. The cacophony also included doors and windows being slammed shut, and when Twilight glanced through the window, she could see a bunch of ponies running as fast as they could in no specific direction.

What's going on? Twilight thought to herself as she began walking to the door. The unicorn wanted to go outside and see for herself just what was scaring everypony. But before she reached it, a light more bright and intense than anything she had ever seen blinded her. She gave a cry of pain and instinctively raised a hoof to shield her eyes, even though they had already snapped shut the instant the light had reached them. A second later, a massive explosion shook the very ground beneath her, toppling Twilight to the floor of the library. The fearsome rumbling was so loud that it blocked out everything in her head and threatened to burst her eardrums with the immense strain. She covered her ears with her hooves, but it was a pathetically inadequate counter.

When the horrendous sound finally vanished, Twilight picked herself off the floor half-blind and half-deaf. Beside her, Spike did the same. He said something to her, but her hearing was still muddled. She shook her head to let Spike know that she didn't get his message. He made a second attempt, and this time his words broke through.

"What do you think that was?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Spike," Twilight replied as she began heading towards the door (again). "But we're going to find out."

"Wait!" Spike called out. He pointed down at the floor underneath Twilight. She looked down and found herself about to step on razor-sharp shards of glass. Taking a closer look at her surroundings, she found that every single window in the library had been smashed and the majority of the books had fallen off the shelves. The room would be cleaned up later; they had to find out what had happened first.

Twilight stepped outside. Her first thought was: Why is it darker? Before the mysterious light and explosion, Ponyville was basking in all of the glorious sunlight that came with the middle of the day. Now the lighting had diminished to a feeble glow more suited to dusk than noon.

Thinking that maybe she and Spike had unknowingly passed out during the rumbling and spent the afternoon unconscious, Twilight looked up at the sky to see where the sun was. Her jaw dropped open as she struggled to process what she was seeing. Every fiber of logic and reasoning in her body told her that she was dreaming, that this was all a hallucination. But no matter how many times she blinked or looked away and back, the sight was still there.

Spike came out of the library. "Hey Twilight! Did you find…" His sentence drifted off, incomplete, as he looked at what had Twilight in a daze.

The sun and the moon had melded together! The left side of the new orb had the moon's face, while the right had the sun's. The two were separated by a squiggly border in the middle. Not only that, but the sky had separated as well. On the side of the moon, there was black night. On the side of the sun, there was bright day. In the middle, though, the sky was sunset-orange.

"It's horrible!" a pony cried out. "That…that…thing! That horrible thing!"

"How could this happen?" another shouted. "This is impossible!" Other ponies voiced their questions and fears.

"It's the end of the world!"

"What's going to happen now?"

"We're doomed!"

"I thought Princesses Celestia and Luna were in charge of the sun and moon!"

That snapped Twilight out of her stupor. "Princess Celestia! Spike, send a letter to her saying that I'm going to be at the Royal Castle soon. She should know how this happened."

"Right away!" The baby dragon hurried back inside the library to carry out his assignment as Twilight began her run to Canterlot. As she galloped through Ponyville, she witnessed the other residents either engaged in fierce conversation or staring blankly into space, cracked from the stress of the past few minutes. The mood was one of tension, suspicion and fear. No one extended any greetings to the lavender pony rushing past them. Passing by Town Hall, she saw that Mayor Mare was trying to calm a crowd of ponies that had gathered (it wasn't working). The gloomy lighting didn't help lift anyone's spirits either.

I hope my friends are okay, Twilight thought. She was most worried about Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy was self-explanatory, but Rainbow Dash was in Cloudsdale at the moment. Anything could have happened to the city in the sky and Ponyville wouldn't hear about it for days. If there was one thing Twilight hated the most, it was lack of information.

At the edge of the town outskirts, she ran into the border that separated dusk from day. It was actually a black barrier that abruptly rose up in her path. A bit hesistantly, Twilight reached a hoof out to touch it. It went straight through, to her surprise. She was willing to bet that on the other side of town there was a similar barrier that seperated dusk from night.

Twilight walked through the division, which felt like turning on a light in a darkened room. Her eyes blinked rapidly as they adjusted to the sudden change. It then struck her that something looked odd about Canterlot in the distance. Maybe it was just her imagination, but the city looked slightly…lopsided.

As the unicorn watched, the entire city suddenly jerked downward, causing a tower to topple and begin a long free-fall to the ground. Another jerk caused an entire section of Canterlot to detach itself from the rest, crumbling to its doom. The city desperately tried to keep its hold on the mountain, but gravity triumphed in the end. With a final crack of rock and stone breaking, the capital of Equestria slid down the mountain, dashing itself to pieces before landing on the ground in a cascade of debris.

It was all too much for the horrified Twilight. With a soft sigh, she fainted.