Chapters
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Every one of Flynn’s worst fears was confirmed. It wasn’t just that things at the hospice changed—things at the hospice were always changing. It was, rather, that everything changed. His friends still visited him, helped push his wheelchair around the grounds on days he could leave his bed. They still played the same handful of board games together every night.Still the arrival of Ponypads had brought change, and even with his hatred of Equestria and those who lived there, Flynn couldn’t ignore it.…-
24.5 K •
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Flynn stared at the rectangular package on the bed in front of him. It was wrapped in brown paper; the same kind people had once used to contain old packages. Not only that, but it had been tied up with twine—almost like it had been decorated. Flynn’s hands were weak, and he barely had the strength to pull the envelope out from inside. Down the hall, he could hear the happy squealing of his fellow children—an uncommon sound indeed in St. Justin's Hospice. Something exciting must be in these packages.…
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24.5 K •
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Hayden wasn’t in a castle anymore.She started to panic, worrying that she’d somehow wandered off, maybe been dragged of by some Celestia loyalist. She’d been living only at her hospitality for at least a week now, and there were probably plenty of her staff that would’ve jumped at the opportunity to make her vanish into a cell.But this didn’t feel like a cell. She was in bed, surrounded by stars.I’ve been here before. This is Princess Luna’s tower.She sat up at once, memory flooding back to…-
141.3 K •
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Outside the castle, Hayden could hear the sound of war. The steady crack of her own arquebus weapons, answered by volleys of crossbow bolts. Tonight’s rain was not of water, but of blood.But those soldiers weren’t meant to keep princess Luna from entering the castle, not really. At the first sign of serious resistance, the fleet was to retreat to the outpost of Canterlot, leaving Celestia and Hayden behind surrounded by the enemy.Princess Celestia sat by one of the windows near the thrones, watching…
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141.3 K •
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The nightmare that had been Princess Luna cut a devastating path across Equestria, cutting scalpel-precise through the most important lines of trade. Her army had no airships, but they didn’t need them. Half of them weren’t even alive.Hayden was no longer leading the military opposition, so she had little to do with the conflict as it happened. Princess Celestia might’ve decided not to kill her after all for practical reasons, but that didn’t mean she trusted Hayden. Mostly she spent her time in an…
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141.3 K •
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As it turned out, the keep had survived. Whole sections of its eastern walls had caved in and the glass windows had been reduced to splinters, but other than that the building was intact, with Hayden’s own soldiers waiting outside. They stared out on the desolation of Icefalls with bleak, empty eyes. Demographics had shifted too—there wasn’t a single bat here.I shouldn’t have tried to keep you, Nightbreeze, Hayden thought to herself as she strode out of the ruins. Instead of saluting her, one of…
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141.3 K •
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Hayden was still there when the golden airship stopped in the air above her. She hadn’t moved from her place since then, filled as she was with pain and exhausted from the siege that had almost saved Icefalls. So many ponies she had failed. So much death that was her fault.Maybe I should’ve gone with Princess Luna. At least then I wouldn’t be suffering like this. Hayden tried reaching out for the creature every few minutes, hoping that maybe she could persuade Luna to change her mind. Maybe she would…
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141.3 K •
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It was just a dream, it was just a dream…Hayden found herself returning to consciousness in the burned-out wreckage of a fortification, surrounded by the dead. There were hundreds of them—ponies, birds, a few other creatures. All dead around the place where she and Luna had fought for their lives.She was herself again, no longer some strange hybrid of pony and human. The sky was still dark, though there was something missing. The cage of light, the creature it had contained, both were gone.There was…
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141.3 K •
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The world dissolved around her. Hayden felt the ground lifting up and away from her hooves. The ponies all around her dissolved into the nothing, and all the world was unmade. The great keep of Icefalls cracked and came up into the air in tiny pieces, followed by little chunks of stone that were the buildings. What her terrible storm hadn’t destroyed to keep the griffons at bay for a few minutes more, now crumbled awayIt’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, it’s just a dream.Then she saw something…
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141.3 K •
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Hayden could feel her world crumbling around her. Victory had been almost inside their grasp, and now she could feel it slipping away.“Can we stop the ritual?” she asked, painfully conscious of the war drums echoing from all sides now. Even from the north, though she couldn’t be sure how the griffons might’ve got themselves around that far. “I’d like to get my bats on their hooves again. We can’t have most of our soldiers unconscious.”Avalon shook his head, not even looking up from his…
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141.3 K •
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