Chapter One: Forgotten
Canterlot: a place of dreams. The city where somepony could make a start in their life. One pony could understand another. The place where the morals of friendship thrived for over one thousand years…
…Now lays in ruins at the bottom of the mountain. Broken homes, buildings, and lives take up the atmosphere. The smell of decaying wood, stone and flesh mix with dust in the air. Some parts of the city still lay atop the mountainside, waiting to take their turn and fall. A train sways across the air, hanging on the tracks that were broken off years ago.
Hoofsteps come from the edge of the debris. Twilight Sparkle comes out of the darkness of the night and into the ongoing fires of destruction. She finds a tall climbable pile of rubble with a small fire and sits near the top and takes a knapsack off of her back. She glares into the sky. The gaseous affect in the atmosphere blinds eyes from the old beauty of the night. Space from the world looks mostly black, with a few specks of light from the stars. Rocks falling distances, fires and industrialization in the distance make up the sounds.
Other than that, it's a beautiful night.
Twilight pulls the sack open with her teeth and brings out gauze. There was a good sized gash around her front right hoof. She started to wrap it, which becomes difficult holding her limbs up to her head. When she rips off the right amount she bumps the sack down, releasing its contents on the ground. The alicorn swears at herself and starts to pick up the items. Then she sees something gleaming in the corner of her eye; a DM.
She trots over and picks it up. It's an HHDM, or Hoof-Held Defense Mechanism.
"Not exactly what I'm looking for," she murmured, "but I could still use the spare parts."
Defense Mechanisms, or DM's, started to be commonly used a long time ago. They were meant for rightful use to put down a pony of great force, or for military use. Until they started being mass-distributed to normal citizens. Then the revolts began, and they started to be used for assault against masses. DM's are hoof, leg or shoulder mounted weapons that can shoot a bullet or multiple bullets, depending on the type. Hoof-held, automatic, rifle, and on occasions explosive are the ones commonly used by the government and the only mainly-known ones.
Twilight grabbed all of her things and put the knapsack on her back again, and moved deeper into the heart of Canterlot's remains. The fires grew dimmer as the mountains drew closer. Twilight drew light from her horn, which flickered weakly soon enough. She was too tired to keep her magic going for too long. But she still trotted along with the dim light she could provide.
Not all of the buildings from the mountainside crumbled completely. Some homes, diners, libraries and even part of the castle were still intact, in a way. The lower part of the civilization took the fall for the rest of it. Twilight knew this, from scavenging in Canterlot for the past 13 years, and made her way through the wreckage of the homes to go deeper. She lifted a boulder and entered the front part of the castle.
Foliage took up most of the walls that were decorated with memorabilia for the two sister princesses that used to rule Equestria in a great state of monarchy. Old stained glass windows lay in shattered pieces on the cracked floor. "This place gets more disturbing every time I see it," Twilight says to herself. There are different wings, some blocked off by wreckage and rocks. Words lay across a blocked one: "Main Library". There's a small layer of boulders, but big enough to block a pony's entry. "Figures," Twilight says. She looks up and notices a small opening in the rocks. Her wings spread and she looks back. "I need to remember I have these." She flies up and bucks two rocks to make the hole wide enough to squeeze through.
She tries to enter too hard and ends up falling by fitting too tightly. "Dang," she says, and kicks her front right hoof on the floor and wiggles it in the air. "It's fine, just find the glass and see what else you can get." She looks up for a full view of the library. The entire room is cracked near the middle, and slanted on the farther half. I'll have to be careful of that, she thought.
Books were piled everywhere, except on the shelves. The sloped part of the room had all of its contents fallen downward toward the ground, leaning against the wall. In the middle of the library sits a pedestal. Twilight walks over to it. There's nothing but dust on it. She looks over the edge of the slant and notices a desk. Maybe there's something in there, she thought. She prepares herself to slide down when the crack gives way and the room slants down even more to a ninety-degree angle. She impacts a bookshelf on the wall. The damage it caused was slight. She gets herself to stand on the shelf, but it fixes her body in an odd way. She carefully uses the piles of paper and wood as a path to the desk. She takes out an entire drawer. Nothing in it. She pulls out another. It withheld a magnifying glass. She examines the circumference and width of the glass. "Bingo," she said. "I just need another one." She pulls on a third drawer and it doesn't budge. She gets ahold of all four hooves and pulls her head backwards and the drawer flies out of the desk, along with its contents.
Twilight gets up and notices the other magnifying glass. "Perfect," she says. She looks to her side and notices the book that fell out. She flips it over. It's a journal.
Weird, she thought. I can't ever remember finding a journal in the desks here. It's titled "Hate and Struggle" on the cover. Twilight puts it in the sack and picks up the two glasses as well. She flies back up the other half of the room and leaves the wing through the same opening, now larger. She goes toward Celestia's old throne. The doors were broken down, andmanaged to rumble to the other side of the room. In the middle of the hall was a stand where the elements of harmony used to sit. Used to. Twilight takes a step in, takes a deep breath, and decides against going inside like the last forty-seven times. Just before she leaves she spots unused RDM bullets on the ground, next to a broken RDM. Perfect coincidence. She picks them up and finds her way back to fresh air.
The night has completely fallen and the smaller fires blew out in the cold air. Twilight lights up her path and makes her way across the rubble and back onto the grassland. She ignores the sound of the train nearing its downfall behind her, and heads toward the lands north of Ponyville.