Time seemed to slow. The guards stopped stabbing, froze with mouths agape. The red glow outside the ship stopped getting brighter, and Equestria stopped getting closer. Harmony alone seemed able to move. “I cannot. The ancients created strict… controls, guidelines, however you wish to consider them. We do much within those boundaries, but not everything. If we could operate all aspects of downstream civilization, the instances who form it would be only accoutrements. The ancients did not accept this.”