Ok. So the actual story doesn't start until the second chapter, which is this chapter! I was going to put in a small bit of the actual story last chapter, but I decided to cliffhanger you with "And so our story begins." If enough of you want to actually read the full story of this story's backstory then I'll make a prequel, which I would enjoy making. I have the tendency to say I'm going to do things and don't so I'm just not going to make any promises to my story. You may notice that this story shouldn't be rated M, but I'm probably going to toss in a few things here and there that I wouldn't want immature people to be reading. It's nothing super gory, but I'd rather not take the chance not rate it high enough. And now here is the REAL first chapter of the story.

Hi. I'm Dawn. I hate my life. In today's society this is normal. The reality is that ponies die every day and everyone is starving. We're slaves in Equestria. if you're a pony then you're a slave. Of course there are exceptions to this. King Sombra, Trixie, Diamond Tiara, and Silver Spoon are the only ones immune to all of the laws that affect ponies because they are classified as gods. The Baleful League are our gods and expect worship from us. Naturally as a pony myself I want to be free and live a normal life. To make matters worse I live in the province where it's even worse to be a Unicorn, which I am one.

Trixie has always had a bit of insecurity with people being better than her in anything that she wasn't good at. In fact she actually had to be better than everyone at everything. Though she did prohibit all different kinds of activities and made laws about anyone being better than her at a plethora of things. Through out the years law after law arose and some were abysmally horrible while others weren't a big deal. These laws brought many punishments upon those foolish enough to break them. There is one law though that you should never even think about breaking and it's to use magic of any kind. The only way for unicorns to be able to utilise their magic for whatever reason was to get a permit to use the spell. If you break that law unspeakable things happen. And by unspeakable I mean you're never seen again. No one even knows what Trixie does to the criminals.

Enough about Trixie though. I really don't like writing about her. The Royal Guards can find this in a heartbeat and I will be hanged for treason or something along those lines. Besides, I need to get out of here.

I closed my journal and put it in my saddle bag with my quill. It's time to leave the house I'm at. I don't actually live here. This house belongs to someone else and I climbed in through the window. I'm only doing this to have a bit of shelter, even if it was only for a few minutes. I am a traveling orphan. I don't know who my parents are because they were taken from me a long time ago. I was raised by my grandparents for many years, and all was well, or at least as well as things can be around here. I don't live there anymore because of my atrocities. I had to leave because I made a very rash decision to assault a few guards that were being entirely too rough with my grandparents. I couldn't stand by as the only family I ever knew were being hurt right in front of me. I'm not entirely sure how I got out of there alive, but I left my grandparent's house so they wouldn't be punished for my crimes. I was so wrong to believe something like that. They were hung before the provence a week later. Guards are now stationed at their house, so now I'm on the run. I can't leave the province since I don't know how to. Barriers separate them all from each other. All I can do is not show my face and wait. For… Something… Anything… I don't know! What options are for a pony in this world that aren't horrible and hindering? There must be some way to not be enslaved by anyone. To be able to run around and travel where ever you like. To hold a job that you'd actually want. To be free. It just a dream.

I left the house and threw on my cloak. Luckily it was raining outside, so having a cloak wasn't a weird thing right now. It's usually raining here, but sometimes it doesn't when certain people are being pursued. Most of the houses are built closely together, so there are a lot of alleys and ways to move around. It's around night time so I'll just walk back to my "house." It's really just a grave in the middle of a cemetery, but no one goes to those anymore, besides to bury the dead, so it's mostly peaceful. I traversed through the alley ways until all the houses stopped and there was an empty trail until I reached the cemetery. Most of the graves are filled with corpses, but one day I found a very special grave. If you kick the gravestone you'll hear the whirl of machinery underneath the grave. Dig into the grave and you'll notice that nobody is present. You'll also notice that it has no ground and is a drop down into the darkness. Jump into the grave and you'll fall down for a good fifteen seconds and you'll land on concrete. Some how, someway, you don't get hurt. Then you're in a nice, quiet room. It's very dark, so you can't really see anything, but it seems to just be a room. This is where I sleep. When I want to leave I just walk to the part of the concrete I fell on and jump. I mysteriously make it back to the top. I can't explain any of this, and it goes against everything I know.

I threw all my stuff down in a random spot and walked to a random corner. I have nothing to do right now, so I'm just going to go to sleep. I slept until dawn, grabbed my things, and headed out to find something to eat. I have no idea of where to go, so I headed to the town square. There's all kinds of items there. It's the place where all the ponies nearby get their rations. Originally I wouldn't try to get food this way, since the guards do random security checks, but I haven't eaten in a week, so I'm running out of options here. I took the long way to the square, no need to get caught for no reason. The town square is in the dead center of the city. It has six entrances/exits all around it, each leading to a different place. Guards were stationed everywhere! Two by each entrance, five in watch towers stationed around the circle, and a good twenty to thirty more guards handing out the rations and keeping the crowd in control. I'm starting to regret coming here… It's too late to go back, so I decided to chance it. I needed food pretty badly. There were a lot of unorganized lines for the food rations, so I walked up to one of the lines and waited. Everything was chaotic around me. Ponies everywhere were trying to get their food at the same time, so the guards had some work cut out for them. Throughout the whole time a few guards were pulling random ponies out of the line and searching there bags. Luckily, I decided to leave my diary at home. The only thing I had with me was a map that I never used. I waited in line for a good hour until I could see the rations and the guard's tables where they were handing them out. Just five more ponies ahead of me. Four. Three. Two. One. My turn!

I walked up to the table where a guard had a gigantic book with everyone's name in it.

"Hello. I'm here for my rations." I said

"I haven't seen you around here before."

"I'm a new resident."

"Name?"

"Dusk." (They'll never catch me now!)

"Let me check the list. Dusk… Dusk… Dusk… Ah! Here we are! It says here that you already got yours today."

Crap! I should have thought of that!

"Well… Um… That's a mistake."

"I don't think it is. Oh! Wait a second… Stray pencil mark! Sorry, mam."

He then pulled out a piece of paper from under the book and held it into the air.

"Permission to use magic number 45 to assist this young lady in getting her food."

The paper bursted into blue flames out of nowhere.

"Thank you, your eminence."

He then pulled off a helmet that he was wearing to unblock his horn and the horn started to flow with magic. On top of the rtions pile a small cluster fell down towards him. He was pulling them down and dropped them right into my bag.

"Thank you."

I then turned around and walked towards the exit that would take me back to the cemetery. Before I was about to leave the two guards stepped closer to each other and blocked off the narrow path. I was hoping they wouldn't do that…

"Where are you headed?"

"The cemetery."

"Why are you headed there?"

"To visit my grandparent's grave."

"Alright, you can pass."

"Thank you."

They stepped to the side and just as I was about to walk home I was pushed to the side. Some random cloaked pony ran past me. His pockets were stuffed with rations. They were so full some were flying out of his pockets. About ten guards were following him. They were all chasing him and holding up papers in their mouths. In unison, they all said

"Permission to use magic number 176 to apprehend the thief."

The papers burned up and they all started shooting fireballs at the thief. His cloak caught on fire by a couple of fireballs whizzing by him. He threw it off and then turned around. He had a horn, as well, and he turned straight around and faced the guards. His horn started to glow, but before he could do anything he was struck by blue lightning and he was gone. Some of the guards winced at this, which means only one thing. The thief has been transported to Hell, a.k.a Trixie's Castle. May all gods, existant or not, have mercy on his soul… The guards simply reported back to their positions. I walked up to the last spot the mysterious figure was and the only sign he was ever there was the burnt scraps of his cloak. I walked to the cemetery with many thoughts abou the fate of the man, each worse than the last. It made me so uncomfortable thinking about it I couldn't even imagine what it's feels like actually being there.

I got to my gravestone, kicked it, and hopped down. when I got there something was different. Right above my diary was a shining pink light just hovering there. I stared at it for a good five minutes just waiting for it to do something, but it stayed in the same spot. Since it wasn't moving I decided to move. I walked slowly over to the light and it still didn't move. Then I had the crazy idea of touching it, which I went through with. The light then started to vibrate and shake violently and then it shot itself straight into the wall in front of me. It hit the wall and instead of it bouncing back it embedded itself into the wall. the room I was in lit up with pink light everywhere that shined brighter, and brighter until it hurt to look at it. I covered my eyes and heard the wall move away from me. Eventually the light in the room died down. I looked back at the wall and what I saw there was absolutely astounding. Somehow there was a library in front of me, and it was filled with books, so many that the book shelves I could see had no space left for books so a lot were in piles on the ground. I walked into the library and I saw how tall the book shelves really were. They were a good twenty-five feet tall, some even bigger. I decided to explore and all I found for a couple of minutes were bookshelves after bookshelves, all filled and books in piles near them. I didn't notice this at first, but the library was brightly lit, but there was nothing like candles around to light it. Eventually I got to the end of a row of bookshelves and found a window. I'm not sure why there would be a window, since we were underground, but I walked up to it anyway. What I saw almost drove me to tears. Outside the window was the sun. I can't remember the last time I saw the sun. It had to have been years since the last time I saw it. I didn't even question the impossibility of all this being under a cemetery. The sun wasn't the only thing I saw out the window. I looked down and there were beautiful buildings all around. They were built like the cities where Trixie and the others lived at, but it all seemed more welcoming. The buildings were painted very bright and vibrant colors and made of a material I wasn't familiar with. The roads were also paved in what looked like gold and not made of dirt like our roads. Where am I? I couldn't possibly be in Equestria anymore, but where else could I be? Where is everyone? I haven't seen anyone in this library. I mean it's an absolutely massive library, but I should have at least heard someone by now. I turned around and almost had a heart attack. The pink light was back, but this time it was moving a circle, almost like it wanted me to follow it. I obliged, and it led me down a row of bookshelves and started turning a random spots and leading me down aisles. After a good ten minutes we finally reached the front of the library and what I saw was incredibly vexing. There was a coffin. It wasn't a normal coffin, like the wood ones some of us get when we die, it was made of ivory and pure white except for a symbol in the middle of the coffin. It was a pink six pointed star with a smaller white six pointed star behind it with five even smaller white six pointed stars behind it.

The pink light shot itself forward and hit the symbol. The coffin started to glow pink and the whole library was starting to shake, like an earthquake was happening. As I was stumbling and trying to find my balance the coffin started to glow brighter and brighter until I couldn't look at the light. I heard the coffin lid start to move. When I could look back at the coffin I saw another pony in front of me. She was stunning. She had a very shiny magenta coat with a dark purple mane, with a pink stripe through it. She also had the same coffin marking on the side of her flank. She not only had a horn, but wings too and a crown on her head. I noticed that her fur wasn't as dour as mine and was a lot more sleak. I never really cared about my appearance, but seeing her like this put me to shame and I was envious of her looks. I realized that I was staring at her for a bit too long and was probably making her uncomfortable, but where did she come from? Was she in that coffin, and how did she get out? None of this makes sense to me… She then surprised me by talking.

"It worked." She said

"What?"

"It worked! I knew it would and hoped it would, even though I knew the chance was slim! If it worked for me than it must have worked for the others!"

"Uhhh…"

"Oh! Sorry. Where are my manners? I'm Twilight Sparkle."

"What just happened?"

"Basicly I just came back from the grave! I was dead! But now I'm not! And we can save the others, too!"

"Not to inconvenience you, but could you start from the beginning and explain everything? For starters where are we? This can't be Equestria."

"Oh, but it is! And it's not! This is a magical relm that's based off of my memories of Equestria, or at least my best memories of Equestria. I've had a lot of good memories in my lifetime, but the library will always be my home."

"Wait a second. You said memories. This place seems way too jovial to be the same Equestria I live in."

"How long was I dead? What year is it?"

"I believe it's year 673, last time I checked."

"Year 673? What calendar are you using?"

"The only one there is. 673 years ago the calendar was made by the royalty of today."

"Wow. It's really been that long? Seemed like yesterday I was fighting a war. How is Equestria now, after the war?"

"What war? There hasn't ever been a war. Trixie and the others have never fought with each other and they're the only living creatures that could fight a war."

"This is so bad. I never knew that it would turn out like this… I'm sorry. My friends and I couldn't save you from the present you live in now. It was foolish of me to think they would leave the residents of Equestria alone after we died. Is there any kind of resistance alive fighting their control?"

"No. No one has ever tried to fight the rule. No one would even begin to know how to fight them. They have everything we don't. We've all accepted our lives as slaves. Well all except me. I'm on the run. That's kind of how I got here in the first place."

"Well I do have to congratulate you. If it wasn't for you I'd still be dead."

"I meant to ask you how I did that or if I even did."

"Well you did just do that and only certain people could. Had you not found the entrance to my tomb I would have stayed in that coffin for an eternity. But the risk was worth it!"

"Wait a second… Why is all this happening? Why try to save yourself and come back to this?"

"I have a story to tell you that will explain everything."

You know I like having larger chapters to my stories. I don't know why I went with such small chapters in the beginning. I mean, yeah I could have updated quicker with that, but the content was lacking and the stories weren't all that great. As always read and review and the question thing still stands, but it has to be a private message or I won't answer it. Otherwise I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

Fact #2: I'm usually very calm and collected, but when I play a card game I become a major d bag to everyone. I am ruthless and I show no mercy to anyone. Not even new players.

-SpiritofPurity520