Chapters
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Hayden stepped outside into a ruin of the griffon military unit. Corpses were spread around them in two rings—the first, facing inward, with weapons all nearby. The second facing away, without their weapons.The Blackwings killed the ones attacking, then they killed the ones running away.Princess Luna stopped beside her, staring at the dead. Then she looked to the side, where the Blackwings had gathered. Not all of them stood in ranks—there were still scouts watching the city, and a few remained in the…-
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The destruction of Luna’s shield spell did no damage to the city.But now there were hundreds of ships, so close that even Hayden’s worst cannon crews couldn’t have missed them if they tried. Hayden watched as almost every shot scored a kill, watched as ship after ship tumbled to the ground outside the city. But some kept moving, crashing down onto the walls or tearing up houses right on the edge.Hayden winced with each crash, praying that none of her own men were down there to be crushed under the…
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Hayden had once struggled to fly. When she was new to Equestria and still adjusting to the body Luna had imagined for her, she had tripped on her own hooves and tumbled from the air if she thought too much about her flight.Princess Luna did not have any of those weaknesses. The princess had the magic of all the tribes, and more experience than ponies got in their long lifetimes.Hayden borrowed all of that experience now, tearing through the air so fast it seemed like the world around her was stretched and…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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…
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