Chapters
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Iron Quill wandered through a field of the dead. His legs faltered under him, and more than once he nearly lost his grip completely and had to spread his wings to keep himself moving forward. But he had to keep moving—if he wasn’t here to give these ponies final mercy, who would?The Solar Legion—fifty thousand stallions and mares, along with uncountable numbers of sellswords, mercenaries, and other hangers-on—lay on a battlefield as vast as a city. Nightmare Moon hadn’t burned them with Alicorn…-
231.4 K •
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Penumbra was gone for hours. Iron Quill had other tasks to do in the meantime—being the Lord Commander of the army wasn’t a position ponies aspired to because it was easy.He reviewed proposed settlement maps for the caverns, in particular one that Silver Needle had drawn up just the day before.“We might not even need a magical solution to this,” she said, gesturing at her illustration. “Ponies have been living in frozen environments before, and we’ve always managed.”“Ponies in the Empire…
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231.4 K •
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Iron Quill watched from the front of his camp as the army passed. They marched in tight order, with many of the soldiers looking eager to be moving. Don’t worry, I’ll have you all working soon enough.But ultimately it wasn’t these soldiers or their captains that he feared. These troops were demoralized, but he hardly needed to force them into doing something whose only intention was warming them up. Their captains were now suitably frightened into submission… though he would’ve preferred they…
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231.4 K •
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Some part of Iron Quill hoped that some of what the Polestar had done had made him magically immune to the cold. But as he returned to the colony beside the exhausted princess, he was disappointed. The air still caught in his chest with his first breath, sucking what little of his strength was left and assaulting him like a physical force.As he entered the cave, he stopped for a moment to appreciate Nightmare Moon’s work. A gigantic metal spike pierced the ceiling now, almost directly overhead. It…
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231.4 K •
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It didn’t feel quite right to call Moonrise a city, in the sense of the places in Equestria that were cities. But neither was it a military camp anymore, since nearly two months had passed since any of them had done anything remotely military. Given the two options, Quill preferred to think of it as a city. It wasn’t a place for soldiers to wait until they fought again—it was a place for them to live, with no more expectations beyond that.Quill passed through the outer barrier to the central warm…
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231.4 K •
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Sunset Shimmer had known full well that there might be civilization on the other side of the portal. American fiat currency would be worth less than the paper it was printed on, but she might need money to get things done. There hadn’t been a transcendental instant waiting beyond the mirror, stripping away the illusion of substance from reality and giving her a single experience that would empower her with magic forever.She would have to work, have to read, and have to study. That’s fine. I knew it…-
27.2 K •
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The pony city of Canterlot might have the same name as the real city she’d left behind, but its charming design led far more to confusion than it did to understanding.Sunset thought she’d be heading for the train station, yet as she got closer, she realized the path she was on led right to a cliff. She hadn’t noticed because dozens of ponies were still taking it, sliding off into the void and coasting down on their wings to the train station below. The flow of messengers and businesspeople up and…
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27.2 K •
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If the world through the portal was the same geographically as the one Sunset had left behind, it got harder to tell during a sea voyage. Sunset spent much of her time aboard the Chrysanthemum’s deck, reading or practicing the suggested levitation drills. While up there, she saw basically the same empty ocean stretching away in all directions. Occasionally an angry member of the crew told her to move so they could work the sails, but she soon found the places she wouldn’t disturb them.She gave up on…
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27.2 K •
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Sunset hadn’t been allowed to see the dig site before. But now, after weeks of cooking and hauling and cleaning, she was finally allowed to walk the short trail up into the hills and see what was worth sending people so far into the wilderness to retrieve.The ruins were located at the bottom of a valley, nestled into the peaks of Isla Colas so tightly that most would probably have walked past them within a hundred meters and never known what they were missing. “Couldn’t have happened to a better…
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27.2 K •
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Instead of being packed into the cargo hold with the other help, Sunset got a cabin all to herself on the return voyage. Well, it was assigned to her, but she invited a certain stallion to share it with her just like their tent. Some part of her wondered if Daring Do had put the two of them together like that all along, after noticing their friendship during the trip over—but that was stupid. There was no reason for an important pony like her to care.Sunset did a lot of stupid things during the trip…
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27.2 K •
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