At this point a girl runs out of one of the buildings and towards Edmund and Nightmare moon, stopping closer to the latter than is polite.

"Hello!"

"Lucy, Princess Nightmare Moon of Equestria. Nightmare Moon, Queen Lucy of Narnia."

"Queen?" Nightmare Moon swivels her head to look at Edmund, then Lucy again, and very narrowly avoids saying, But you're short. Power must manifest differently here. Instead, she says, "Forgive my lack of decorum, Queen Lucy, but there are more urgent matters at hoof. Though I imagine this makes everything much simpler; your brother was telling me Narnia is a land of magic, and you certainly seem more reasonable than this God person."

"Unfortunately our titles are only useful if we can get in touch with Narnia, and we might not be able to."

"What did you need help with, anyway?"

Nightmare Moon eyes Edmund, displeased. "'Our'? I had thought you were barred from the land. I do not appreciate being deceived. And you may get off my back," she adds, and instead of waiting for an answer picks Edmund up and sets him on the ground, not particularly gently.

To Lucy, she says, "My world is in dire peril. I will explain further but I'd rather we find your sister, who at this rate I assume must be some kind of duchess, so I won't be obliged to repeat myself so much."

"Aslan named us kings and queens of Narnia after we helped him overthrow Jadis, but also told us we could never return after the third time we left. We still have the titles but they aren't much use to us here."

Nightmare Moon stares at her for perhaps a few seconds too long. "Why?" She holds up a hoof almost immediately. "No -- this is already hopelessly confused. Susan, Milliways, then explanations. I'd rather like the whole story, this time."

"We have time there stopped, so we we can take as long as we need to prepare.", Edmunt assures his sister.

"As I understand, their sun used to be moved by magic-"

he breaks off and signals to his sister that Nightmare finds this topic distressing. And that they still need to assess how trustworthy she is.

"And here we are!"

"Hello, your Royal Highness. I hope we can be of assistance to your people."

"And now can someone explain what exactly is going on?"

"One moment," Nightmare says. She closes her eyes and lights her horn. There is a teal flash and then they are standing in the hallway of Peter's school, just outside the door he's still holding open. "I thought it best not to teleport directly into Milliways," she explains before walking in herself. She nods to Peter as she passes him. "Good to see you again," she says, then adds, "Your Majesty," a bit pointedly.

"I suppose I should volunteer information first, seeing as I am prevailing upon you for aid. Where would you like me to start?"

"To begin with, we should perhaps also include Bar in this conversation since Milliways might also be involved in whatever we decide to do."

He nods towards the bar.

I can provide room, board, and some supplies, a napkin says. Other than that, Management prefers we remain impartial in most single-continuity cases. You are free to use the facilities as you wish.

"'Continuity'?" Nightmare says, then shakes her head. "Not important right now."

"Well, then let us sit down. And you can begin by explaining how your sun used to move."

Peter leads them to a table.

Nightmare Moon follows, but doesn't sit, mostly because there's no comfortable way for her to do so. "All right. Unfortunately, our records are... somewhat patchwork, especially through Discord's reign, so I can only truly vouch for what I've seen myself. There are three major pony races: earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns." As she speaks, she creates images of light hovering in the air next to her. "The earth ponies tend the land, the pegasi move the clouds and regulate the weather, and the unicorns used to move the sun and moon around the planet. I don't know if that was ever sustainable, somehow, or if that's just how it was simplified through the legend. About a hundred and fifty years before I was born, for some reason, the unicorn faction ran out of power or lost some technique or artifact that let them do this, leading to the Windigo crisis. That lasted about twenty-five years, getting steadily worse, until Unification, which is when we started a new calendar. The unicorns implemented a volunteer system that relied on teams of ponies giving up their magic to move the sun, with the earth ponies and pegasi supporting the foundations of society. Also not sustainable, but less immediately disastrous. My...."

She stops, swallows hard, and continues, face as blank as possible. "Celestia was born about fifty years in and ascended to become Equestria's first known alicorn, able to raise and lower the sun on her own. About ten years after that, I ascended with a similar affinity for the moon. We were crowned diarchs, as representatives of each of the three races. Also, I suspect, as a preemptive bribe against us holding day and night hostage. We became known as 'the Royal Pony Sisters.'

Two hundred years later, Discord appeared. We don't know where he came from or why, but he styled himself the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony and he lived up to the name. He could move the sun and moon apparently effortlessly, and did so on a whim. My sister and I had some control, but he seemed to override it whenever he wanted. We defeated him with a set of magical artifacts called the Elements of Harmony and started a new calendar, again, because for some ponies it had been five minutes and for others it had been a thousand years. It's been about four hundred years since then, and now Celestia is dead, and I cannot move the sun." Her tone is tightly, viciously flat.

"And now I suppose it's our turn to explain our situation. We should begin with the war."

Susan stands up.

"Nine years ago in England's timeline, a faction called the NSDAP, or the Nazis, came to power in the state of Germany. The Nazis established complete control of the government by one man and strict control of all aspects of life by the government; expressing dissent of any sort is punished by imprisonment and even producing art in styles the Fuhrer dislikes is forbidden. They also follow an ideology according to which their own ethnic group should be supreme and others should be either enslaved or killed, and in which the complete destruction of one particular ethnic group- the Jews- is considered an especially important objective.

"Four years ago, the Nazis began a campaign of conquest, taking control of neighboring countries by force of arms. After they invaded an ally of the United Kingdom, her government responded with a declaration of war. Since then, the Nazis have allied with two other powers but antagonized others, and the war has become global.

"Two years ago, the Nazis began bombing the capital of the United Kingdom- that is, dropping explosives on it from flying machines. Like many children in the city at the time, we were evacuated to the countryside- to Professor Kirke's house in the country, in our case. And that's where Narnia comes in. Lucy?"

Lucy stands up, then after a moment climbs onto her chair to stand there.

"The world of Narnia is governed by something called the Deep Magic, which means that, if certain rules are broken, the world will end. One of those rules is that the kingdom of Narnia must be ruled either by humans or by Jadis' race, of which she was the last survivor.

"A hundred years before we came to Narnia, and at least fourteen centuries ago now, Jadis had conquered that kingdom, had its human population massacred, proclaimed herself Queen of Narnia, and induced a magical winter which rendered Narnia's borders impassible. It was foretold that her rule could only be replaced by the joint rule of four human kings and queens.

"In Professor Kirke's house, I found a wardrobe which had become a passage into Narnia, and met a faun who told me of Jadis and of her animosity towards humans. Edmund followed me and encountered Jadis, who correctly guessed that Aslan- that is, the Son of God- had arranged for the four of us to find Narnia that we might overthrow her, and who persuaded Edmund to betray us to her with promises of luxury and power.

"Rebels against Jadis's rule contacted the four of us. Edmund left to report on them to Jadis and the rebels took the rest of us to meet with Aslan, who was gathering an army to fight against the Witch. Then Jadis came to Aslan under parley and told him how she had taken Edmund prisoner- and cited a clause in the Deep Magic which granted her the right to execute any traitor, which of course Edmund now was.

"Aslan offered Jadis a deal- if she released Edmund, he would allow her to kill him in Edmund's place. Jadis, who hated Aslan, accepted. But in doing so, she triggered a clause in the Deep Magic she had not known of; that if an innocent was willingly killed in a traitor's place, they would be returned to life the next dawn and Jadis's rights to execution permanently revoked.

"After this, Edmund apologized for his treachery and the four of us joined the fight against Jadis. In the ensuing battle, Edmund risked death, and suffered serious injury, in order to break Jadis's wand- without which she was incapable of magic. Aslan proclaimed us kings and queens of Narnia and we reigned there jointly for fifteen years.

"After that-"

"-we were transported back to England and returned to childhood.

"We told Professor Kirke what had happened and found out he'd been to Narnia too, before Jadis's reign or the War. The wardrobe we got to Narnia through was made from wood from a tree he'd brought back from Narnia- we assume that's part of how it was able to happen. It hasn't lead to Narnia again since, 'though. But thirteen centuries later in Narnia's time, and a year later in ours, someone in Narnia blew a magic horn which brings aid to whoever blows it, and it brought us.

"By this time, Narnia had been conquered by a people called the Telmarines who for the most part considered all people but humans to be abominations and killed them whenever they found them. We had been summoned by a group of native Narnians who were trying to put a pro-nonhuman Telmarine prince on the throne.

"Peter offered to duel the Telmarine king over the crown- which they both claimed- and some treacherous Telmarine lords persuaded him to accept. Then after Peter killed him, the lords declared claimed he'd cheated and refused to acknowledge the victory. But Aslan woke and freed the Narnian gods the Telmarines had chained while they slept, and so we were able to retake Narnia.

"Aslan offered the Telmarines who surrendered a choice; they could stay in Narnia and accept having to live alongside nonhumans, or they could go through a doorway he made to Earth, where there already weren't any nonhuman people. Some of the Telmarines thought the doorway was a trap, so we offered to go through ourselves. Aslan warned that Peter and Susan were now too old to ever return to Narnia, but they chose to leave anyway.

"Three Narnian years later, earlier this year, Edmund and I got transported to Narnia through a painting of a Narnian ship which had somehow come to be in our aunt's and uncle's house. So did out obnoxious cousin, who got turned into a dragon while we were there and who Aslan turned back into a human. He's been a lot less obnoxious since. We got picked up by a Narnian expedition which ended up having to go to the edge of the world, where there is a wall of water and past it Aslan's Country, and when we got there, Aslan sent us back to England and told us Edmund and I were now also too old to return to Narnia.

And just recently, Eustace and his friend Jill got sent to Narnia by Aslan to prevent an evil witch from taking over the country by mind-controlling the new king."

"Here in England, most people still consider us to be children, so we don't have very much freedom. We've been trying to apply what we've learned in Narnia but we don't have many resources with which to apply it. There's still a war going on, of course. And that's our situation."

"I'm sorry about your sister."