Imagination crowded in as well. Celestia still and dark as Discord once was. Twilight missing, captured, killed on some nameless ground. The nation of her birth decapitated and trampled by intruders, struggling to cope. The explosions and havoc of combat, already diminished by hearing protection, faded completely. The hiss of her breaths and the pounding of her heart filled her ears, her whole body. The fleeting seconds oozed by one after another as she and the portside gunner threw round after round at the larger airship, gradually elevating the tubes as their ship fell toward the sheltering cloud deck below.