It was nearing midday by the time the sun’s rays reached over Mount Avalon and onto the ruins of Canterlot in full. Outside the veil of the mountain’s shadow, the city appeared much as it had for the past four weeks—which was to say that the city looked like it had been completely destroyed. The one and two-story buildings of Outer Canterlot were now the tallest objects apart from Avalon itself, but even they had been rendered inhospitable by the king’s unyielding storm. Roofs had been stripped bare, doors and windows shattered giving the gale force winds free leave to scour each building of its insides. The cobbled streets had been churned and ploughed, their stones hurled about like autumn leaves.

The inner city was worse. Here the tall and proud towers of Canterlot had failed totally. Now they gave the impression of dashed-in sandcastles that had then been left to the waves. Where buildings ended and streets began was hard to say; with storm and rubble both to contend with, the narrower paths that wound throughout were lost forever.

Even the mountain itself had broken in the final battle, and the thunderous rock-slide that had been rent free from Avalon’s western face could be distinguished from Castle Canterlot’s pulverized remains only by the shade of the stone.

High, high up on the mountain’s edge stood two figures. One had once been a god. The other had once been a pony.