A Chaotic Landby donutsforthewinChaptersIntroduction: A Bit of HistoryChapter 1: The Adventure BeginsChapter 2: A FriendChapter 3: It's Been a WhileChapter 4: The MineIntroduction: A Bit of History"Hundreds of years ago, the land of Equestria was united, pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies alike under one banner. It was a glorious time of piece and prosperity. There was no war, no famine. Trust was built between the different races of ponies. Everything was as it should be." "Some even say the unicorns could control the sun and moon, raising and lowering them like clockwork, the same time every day and night. They say the pegusi could control the weather, push clouds, cause rain, even create rainbows. They would schedule rainy days to help the earth ponies grow food, they would schedule sunny days for ponies to relax and play." "There was organization, they had leaders, towns, even cities. One could simply walk into a town and they would be welcomed, everypony trusted one another. The leaders did their best to help the ponies under their care. Everypony could rely on those around them to help them if they were in need." "Wow, Grandpa, is it really true? Could Pegasus ponies like you and me control the weather?" "Yes, Spark, we still can, but the clouds don't cooperate like they did back then. Now we could move clouds to one place, turn around, and they would be headed off somewhere else in no time. It is like they have a mind of their own now." "And the unicorns could control the sun and the moon?" "Well, I'm not sure it would have been that easy. They would need a few unicorns all concentrating at once to move something like that. But, it just doesn't work anymore." "Why won't it work? What happened?" "Well, the story goes back a few hundred years, and it don't make much sense. It was a rainy day, the pegasi had scheduled it for growing food, and it was somewhere around midday. Suddenly, it just started happening, the clouds began to move, slowly at first, then gaining speed. There was no wind, yet the clouds just moved. The rain began to stop and the Earth ponies started getting angry. They demanded to know why the pegasi had stopped the rain that was keeping their crops alive. The pegasi didn't know what to say, they hadn't moved the clouds, they moved on their own. The pegasi suspected the unicorns used their magic to move the clouds themselves, but the unicorns said they had nothing to do with it. Now, if this had happened by usual causes, they probably could have worked out an agreement, but there was something else wrong." "None of the ponies could seem to work out an agreement. It was like they just couldn't stop arguing. Then one earth pony looked up. She stood just looking up for a long while, her mouth hanging slightly open in awe. Soon, other ponies stopped arguing and looked up too, with the same look of astonishment on their faces. There was the sun, still high in the sky, and there, off to the west, was the moon starting to rise along the horizon. This hadn't happened in, well, it had never happened before. This was unheard of, nopony thought it was possible. Then the arguing broke out again, worse than before. 'See, this is all the unicorns' fault, they are the ones supposed to raise the sun and moon!' 'We unicorns didn't do it, it is impossible with just magic to raise both the sun and moon at the same time! The earth ponies must be doing something!' 'We earth ponies can't control the sun and moon! This all started with the clouds, it must be the pegasi's fault!' " "And so the arguing continued until fighting broke out. It wasn't even just between the different kinds of ponies anymore. Pegasi and pegasi were fighting. Unicorns blamed other unicorns. The earth ponies were no different than the other two. In just days, the order and peace that had covered Equestria up until then was destroyed. Gradually, revolts sprung up all over Equestria, throwing it into total chaos. All the governments failed, the cities and towns broke apart, there was no more unity in Equestria." "So all this happened just because the clouds, sun, and moon started moving by themselves?" "Not quite. It was like the virtues most ponies lived by were taken away. The biggest change was not in the clouds or the sun and moon, but in the ponies themselves. The sun didn't start revolts. The clouds did not overthrow governments. Ponies did that. Something changed that day, and nopony has been able to figure out why in over hundreds of years." Chapter 1: The Adventure BeginsHey there, my name is Spark. I'm a pegasus. Well... I guess I'm not a full blown pegasus until I can actually fly, but Grandpa says he will start teaching me very soon. Speaking of Grandpa, I guess I should tell you about where I live. Grandpa and I live up in the clouds, safe from most of the chaos down on the ground. I've never been down there, but Grandpa says it is no place for a pegasus that can't fly. He says a pony can get into a lot of trouble down on the ground, it just ain't safe. Back to where I live, the cloud Grandpa and I live on is a pretty stable cloud, as far as clouds go. It rakes a lot of maintenance for Grandpa to keep it from dispersing and dropping us to the ground, but we manage. I live alone with Grandpa. He tells me my parents were killed by thieves on the ground. They just snuck up on my parents, stabbed 'em, and took off with their belongings. By the time Grandpa wondered where my parents were and went searching for them, it was too late. He found them lying on a path, nearly dead from lose of blood. He tried to save 'em, but he didn't have the supplies he needed. They died together. Grandpa says they were happier that way. I was only a little colt back when my parents died. I only can remember a little bit about them. However, I can remember the day Grandpa came home and told me that I wouldn't be able to see my parents anymore. He was decent enough to tell me the truth: that my parents had died. He explained it to me many times, but I was too young to fully understand it, though as I grew older I began to understand what had happened to my parents. I still miss them, you know. It is ok living with just Grandpa, but he could never totally fill the gap left by my parent's death. Grandpa did try his best though. And to be honest he did a pretty good job. He could still comfort me when I was sad, and could cool me down when I was angry. And instead of singing me to sleep, like my mother did when I was just a colt, he would tell me stories. He told me of stories of happy times, sad times, but none compared to the stories of the times when there was order in Equestria. These weren't just stories, they were legends. I was always so interested in the legends. When Equestria had recently been founded, and ponies worked together. I never understood the story of when it all went wrong. It didn't make any sense. More and more, nowadays, it keeps me up at night. There had to be more to the story. What had really happened that could make ponies, who had been able to work together for hundreds of years, change so much. In just weeks, days even. There was something unnatural about it. And I was going to find out why. I had been considering it for a while, but I never quite had the nerve to try to go to the surface. It is such a dangerous place, as Grandpa tells me. But, I just had to go. I was too curious. I decided to ask Grandpa if he would take me with him the next time we go to the surface. It would probably take a lot of arguing, but I was determined. "OK, you can come with me." I turned around and saw Grandpa standing there. He is a yellow pegasus with a bright orange mane. Similar to me, I have a yellow coat and a yellow mane, which is why my parents named me Spark. Grandpa had been sitting there behind me the whole time, listening. I need to start thinking inside my head. "What?" I replied. "I heard you talking to yourself about wanting to go down to the surface, and it probably is about time you see what the real world is like." I had thought this would take a lot more convincing, but OK, works for me. "Cool! When are we going?" "Now. We are running low on food so we need to get some more. Also, the surface is the best place to teach a pegasus how to fly." Awesome! Grandpa is finally going to teach me how to fly, and I get to go to the surface. In the the same day. "Now, the surface is very dangerous," began Grandpa, "If you see another pony, make sure you are close to me, and remember, there are many ponies on the surface that would have no problem with killing you just to get the food you are carrying." "Yeah, whatever." I can't believe I'm going to the surface! Finally! "Spark! This is very serious. You could die down there if you are not careful. Your parents died even when they were very careful. You cannot let your guard down. If some thief sneaks up on you.. well you won't get a second chance." "Oh, yeah, sorry Grandpa." "I just want you to be careful Spark. Now, lets get ready." About a half an hour later we are finally ready to go. I am so excited, I finally get to learn how to fly! We head down to the surface with Grandpa carrying me and flapping his wings to keep us below leg-breaking speeds. As we get close to the ground, I begin to see just how big it is. "Wow, I can't even see the end, how far does the surface go?" "Well, it just keeps going, in every direction. There is no end." I had never thought of that. I was so used to living on a cloud, where of you went too far one way you would just fall off. This was totally different. And kind of scary. I was in a whole different world. When we reach the surface, Grandpa is looking around constantly. "You have got to be careful down here Spark. Ponies aren't usually too friendly." But, we don't see anypony around. Grandpa said that the first thing we had to do was find food. Simple enough, plenty of trees around, lots of flowers too, the usual stuff ponies eat. We begin to collect apples, and all sorts of food. We don't need any water because Grandpa can just find a cloud and make it rain to get water. Soon we are done collecting food and it is time for the part I have waited for for years. Grandpa is finally going to teach me how to fly. "Well," Grandpa says' "The first step to learning how to fly is to learn the form. Flying is not about flapping your wings as hard as you can, it is about pushing down on the air so it pushes you up." Grandpa then begins to show me how I need to curve my wings when they go up, and flatten them when they go down. Curve and up, flatten and down, curve and up, flatten and down. I practice for about ten minutes or so, until Grandpa is satisfied I am doing it well enough. "For the next step we need to find a large rock, or a small cliff. It will take forever for you to start learning to take off from the ground before you learn to just fly. You will need to jump off a rock to give yourself some time in the air to catch yourself." We search for a little while and find a suitable rock. It is about six feet high. We climb up some smaller rocks to get to the top of the big rock. I am about to jump off the rock when Grandpa stops me. "Don't jump off this side, if you fall onto one of the rocks we just climbed up you would probably break something. Lets check the other side." Sure enough, the other side looks over a grassy plain, and the ground looks much softer. I jump off and flap my wings, but I just fall to the ground. Grandpa gives me some encouragement and I get back up and try again. The second time I manage to slow my descent and land on my feet. I try a few more times and eventually I start to get the hang of it. I can't fly very fast, but I can fly! I fly around a little bit and notice a few ponies off in the distance, but who cares, I can fly! My wings begin to get tired and I glide down to the ground.When I hit the ground I stumble and fall, I need to work on landings more. "Great job." Grandpa says. Next he has me practicing taking off from the ground. It is a lot harder than jumping off a rock because I have to flap my wings and get going as soon as I leave the ground. It takes me a little while, but I finally get that too. I begin to soar around. It is fun to go sideways and spiral down to the ground, then lifting up a few feet before I hit the ground. I look over a Grandpa and wave. Then I something shiny on the hill just behind Grandpa. I look closer at it and realize it is a pony. The pony is running toward Grandpa, with what looks like a sword in it's mouth. Wait, that is a sword in it's mouth! I yell a warning to Grandpa, but it is too late. I see the pony leap and stick the sword into Grandpa's back. I... I don't know what to do. I just fly towards Grandpa as quickly as possible. I don't even slow down when I get close to the ground, I just need to help Grandpa! I slam into the ground and feel my head hits the earth. I start to black out when I hear another pony. "Should we kill the other one too?" "No, just take his stuff. He knocked himself out when he hit the ground. Stupid pegasus. Besides, he doesn't even have his cutie mark. He is no threat to us." They begin to walk away as my world goes black. Chapter 2: A FriendI slowly opened my eyes, and the first thing i noticed was my massive headache. What happened? As my eyes began to focus, I noticed a glowing light. Then I realized it was attached to a pony, a mare in fact. That doesn't make sense. After about a second or two, my headache started feeling much better. Able to think clearly, I looked at the unicorn standing next to where I was. Oh, a unicorn, that explains it. When the the unicorn's horn stopped glowing, I tried to remember where I was, but I failed. I decided to look around and my eyes fell on an old pegasus laying about ten feet away from me. Then it all came back. I felt a tear roll down my face as I continued to stare at the pony who had taken care of me for my entire life. More tears followed when I looked at the hole going through his body. I turned to the unicorn. "Is... is he..." "Yes, he is dead." More tears began to cover my eyes. I had to keep blinking just to see. I had just witnessed what had happened to my parents years ago. The only difference was I was there, watching this time. But I had been just as helpless to save him as I was to save my parents when I was miles above them. I never wanted to have this helpless feeling again. Ever. "What happened here?" I turned to look at the unicorn as she spoke, remembering she was there. I tried to explain, but it ended up taking 10 minutes to say what should have taken 2 minutes. "Ok, I think I understand." she said "If you need a place to stay you can come with me." I thought about it a little and figured it would be pretty boring up in the clouds alone. Alone. The sadness in me intensified as the thought crossed my mind. Another tear. I still couldn't get my mind around Grandpa being dead. The unicorn watched as I stared at Grandpa. "We should bury him." she said. I nodded and slowly began trying to dig a hole with my hooves. "It is going to take you forever to dig a big enough hole that way. I can get a shovel from my shack. You stay here and I'll be back in a few minutes." Sure enough, she left and came back with a shovel. She levitated it with her magic and started digging. In a few minutes we had a decent hole. It would have to do. It was hard to predict sometimes, but the sun looked like it was headed toward the horizon. We had to finish soon. The unicorn levitated Grandpa's body into the hole, and started shoveling the dirt back into the hole. I searched for a little while, and found a rock, which I put on the mound of dirt. The unicorn mare lowered her horn and put some symbols on the rock. "What are those?" I asked "Don't tell me you don't know how to read!" she paused, waiting for me to tell her I could, but I disappointed her with my silence. "You have a lot to learn." she finished. As we walked to her shack, we started talking. "You never did mention your name," she began, "My name is Starlight, but you can just call me Star." "I'm Spark," I answered. I noticed her cutie mark on her flank. Wonder when I will get mine. Her's was a crescent moon with some stars around it. "Whar kind of special talent is a crescent moon?" I asked. "Well, some things are just a mystery." Was she avoiding talking about it, or did she really not know? I decided to change the topic. "So I guess you saved me back there." "No, you would have woken up eventually, just a few hours later with a much worse headache. But, I couldn't tell until I started healing you. I had no idea if you were perfectly fine, or almost dead. But, when I saw the hole in the pony next to you, I wanted to make sure you were fine." "Well, thanks." I said, "Do you live with anyone else?" "No, not many ponies around here are very friendly. You have to be careful around other ponies." "Then why did you trust me not to just attack you after I you healed me?" "You've got a bright coat, I.. I mean you're very noticeable. That's how I saw you from far away and wondered if you were OK. You have to watch out with a coat like that. Bandits could see from a mile away. You probably shouldn't fly around too often. You could attract all sorts of unwanted attention." She definitely avoided my question that time. We walked a little further, then I noticed something move to our left. I stopped and turned to look, but all I saw was a large rock. I looked over at Star to ask if she saw anything, then I saw a gray pony leap off of a rock to out right. The gray pony was falling right toward Star, with a sword in his mouth. I was about to yell a warning, but it was over before I could say anything. A sword covered in a blue glow was sticking out of the gray pony, and Star's horn was surrounded in a similar blue glow. I blinked, my mind trying to process what just happened. Before I could try to think, a grayish-blue pony jumped from behind the rock I first thought I saw something moving around. Star, however, didn't see this pony. She was still facing the dead gray pony. This was exactly the way Grandpa died, with a pony stabbing him in the back. My new, and only, friend was about to die the same way Grandpa did. Rage filled me as I launched myself at the grayish-blue pony. I saw the surprise in his eyes as he glanced toward me. My right fore hoof plowed into him. We landed on the ground with a thud. I continued to slam my hooves into him, even long after he went limp. Star walked over and pulled me off the pony. "He's dead Spark." I continued to struggle. "HE'S DEAD! SNAP OUT OF IT!" The rage inside me slowly faded. I looked at the bloody mess that had once been a pony. My eyes went wide. I had just killed a pony. The proof was all over my hooves. I told myself I was just defending my friend. But, I couldn't convince myself. If I was just defending a friend, then why wasn't there a face left on the pony? I had gone way out of control. We walked the rest of the way to the shack in silence. I saw it in the distance. The shack was quite small. "Here it is. Home sweet home." Star began, "It's not much, which is good when you have bandits looking for anything valuable around here. Most just pass by, assuming it is abandoned." It certainly looked abandoned. It hardly looked big enough to fit three ponies in it. How could anypony live in there?I found out as we walked inside. The only thing in the shack was a set of stairs going down. They creaked as we walked down, threatening to collapse under us. "How old is this place?" I asked. "I have no idea. I found this it a while ago when I was traveling, patched it up a bit, and moved in." When we reached the bottom of the stairs I looked around. It didn't look much better than the floor above, but it was much more spacious. And it had some furniture. OK, it was a lot better than the floor above. But, just as dirty. "First, you need a weapon if you want to survive out here. You can't just beat all your enemies to death with your hooves, it only worked that time because you surprised him. A weapon gives you a big advantage. Since you are a pegasus, lets try a bow first. You could fly above your enemies and shoot down on them." Star levitated a bow off of the wall and set it down next to me. She got a bow out of her bag, pulled out an arrow and demonstrated how to fire the bow. "You strap this strap around your forehoove, you get out an arrow with your teeth, you put the arrow on the string, and you pull the string back with your teeth. Then you aim it at the target and fire." Star demonstrated the steps and shot the arrow. It hit the target a few inches away from the center. "Now you try." It took me about a minute to wrap the string around my hoof, and it wasn't even tight when I got it. I tried getting an arrow with my teeth, and managed to somehow pick it up with the sharp end in my teeth. After much struggling I got an arrow the right way around. I latched it onto the bow and pulled back. I tried to aim, but ended up just going in a circle, never coming close to the right direction. I decided to just close my eyes and fire. Twang. I opened my eyes and, sweet! I hit a target! It wasn't very close to the center, but I still hit it! "Ummm, weren't you aiming for the target on that wall?" Star asked, pointing to the wall to my right. "Oh, darn. Can we try something else?" "Yeah, how about a sword? If all else fails you can just swing it around wildly in the enemy's direction." She levitated a wooden stick to me. "Try to hit me with that stick." "That doesn't look like a sword to me." "Well, we aren't going to practice with actual swords. One of us could get killed. That would not be helpful." "OK." She levitated a stick in front of her and started walking towards me slowly. I picked up the stick in my mouth and ran at her. I beat the stick she was levitating out of the way and lunged at her. She leaped back and picked up her stick again with her magic. I kept swinging at her, and she kept dodging, until I felt a stick poke me in the side. I glanced over and saw a blue glow covering the stick. "Always keep track of what you enemy is doing. If they can catch you by surprise, you don't stand a chance. However, that was an impressive first attempt. Lets try again." After about ten or so rounds of me trying, and failing, to best her, we stopped. "You have made a lot of progress, Spark. Now, lets take a break from fighting." Finally, some rest. "Now it is time for you to learn how to read and write." Great, I thought sarcastically. Chapter 3: It's Been a While2 months have passed since the day my life was turned upside down. I was younger back then, more innocent. I did not know of the dangers down here. I did not realize how common death was down here. This was not the world I used to live in, but it took what it wanted from me nonetheless. It captured me, by my own will. I can return to the clouds if I want to, but I know I never will. This world has mysteries. Mysteries I was told of in stories by my grandfather, and mysteries I have found myself. The mysteries of this world are not the kind I could ever solve, not on my own at least. That is why I am lucky to have a friend. But, that is not the only reason to have a friend. This world pulls at you. You can't escape it. You can't run from it, where would you go? There is no place in the world safe from the world itself. You have to fight it. Endure it. You need an anchor. Something to hold on to. No shield can protect you from the pull of the very world you stand on, live on. No sword can help you fight it off. That is why you need friends. As I said before, 2 months have passed since I began to live on the surface. I have been learning to fight with Star, I have been learning to, ugh, read (Seriously, when is that ever going to be useful? Nopony is going to send me a letter or anything) with Star, and I have been learning about the world, with Star. Basically, I have been learning everything a pony needs to know, and I have been learning how to read (Seriously, not useful at all), from Star. My head hurts. "How old are most ponies when they get their cutie marks?" I asked. If I had to learn, it was going to be about something interesting today, I was going to make sure of it. "You are older than most ponies are when they get their cutie marks, if that is what you really were asking." Darn, she saw right through me. But it was pretty obvious. "But, it makes sense that you don't have yours yet." "Why?" "Because, you spent almost your entire life in the clouds, and the time you did spend down here was mostly in this shack. Ponies get their cutie marks when they discover their special talent, and since yours obviously isn't learning, I'm not surprised you don't have yours yet." "Today we are going outside." Star continued, completely off topic. She does that sometimes. "You, being a pegasus, might have a special talent for something involving flying, not to mention being able to fly well is a big help if we get in a sticky situation." I had only flown once in my entire life, however, it ended horribly so I have been kind of hesitant about trying it again. But, I had waited long enough, flying was fun. We walked outside and I tasted the air. It might sound weird, but the it air tastes so much better on the surface than it did in the clouds. In the clouds, it is thinner, and the only thing the air has touched was clouds, and clouds taste pretty bland. Down here, the air touched flowers, trees, grass, and picked up all sorts off lovely scents and tastes. Much better than just clouds. Is soon as I could, I took off. If felt so great to be in the air, that lovely tasting air. I loved the feeling of freedom that came with flying. I couldn't believe I had been nervous about flying again. Flying was amazing. "Now it is time to learn about flying." Star said, crushing my feeling of freedom. "How can you know more than me about flying too?" I was sure I knew more than her in at least one area, but I still had yet to find it. "Well, pegasi don't fly just because of their wings you know." "What? Of course we use our wings to fly. That is why we have them. Right?" "No, you fly using magic." I looked up, towards my forehead. Flat, no magic. Star noticed me looking at my forehead and laughed. "Just because you aren't a unicorn doesn't mean you don't have magic. Why do you think you were able to learn how to fly in just a day, without having to build up wing muscles? You use the magic to fly." "But, if we use magic to fly, then why do we have wings in the first place?" "Well, it is hard to steer yourself in the air with your hooves. Your wings are for steering." OK, that made more sense. "But, if flying is all about magic, than why can't unicorns fly? They have magic" "Well, flying isn't all just about magic. Your wings are made for flying, horns are not. I can levitate myself, but I can't go nearly as fast as you can with your wings, and I can't keep it up nearly as long as you can either. My horn allows me to direct my magic to do what I want it to do, but your wings are specifically for using magic to fly. They are much better at using magic for flying." I continued flying around for a while, then Star suggested I practice aerial combat. She would throw sticks at me with her levitation, and I would dodge them or bat them away with the stick I was holding with my mouth. I wasn't very good at it at first, but I eventually started to get the hang of it. We practiced for a while, then went back to the shack. Star started to cook some vegetable soup. She always did all of the cooking. I tried it once, and well... I certainly wasn't going to get a cutie mark for cooking. After we started eating, Star announced "You need to learn your special talent soon. It could be something very useful." "But, I'm not going to find my special talent by just sitting in this shack, doing the same thing every day." I didn't see where this was going. "Exactly, we are going on a field trip." "What!?" I nearly spit out my mouthful of soup. "A field trip. You are not going to find out anything about yourself doing the same thing you always do. Besides, it is getting pretty boring just sitting in this shack all day. Although, it might be less of a field trip, and more of an adventure. I don't know where we will be going." My ears had perked up at the word adventure. That is what I had wanted to do ever since Grandpa had told me the stories about the surface. But, the place I used to live was probably just a mile or so away from this shack, and about a quarter of a mile up. I had never even gone two miles from the place I was born in my entire life! "I have lived long enough in this shack." Star began, "It is about time I left. And, it is much safer to go with somepony else to watch my back. Although, we need to get you a real sword, Spark. That stick you trained with is not going to cut it (no pun intended) if we come across real trouble." "It's been a while since I did some proper adventuring. How does that sound Spark?" "Sounds great, Star, But where exactly am I going to find a sword?" "You can borrow one of mine for now, but these swords I have are designed for unicorns. Usual swords are made from heavier metals to allow ponies to put a lot of force behind their attacks, but these swords are designed to just be sharp. My levitation takes away the weight from them, so they can only cut, my attacks don't have much actual force behind them. They use lighter metal to save on cost." "That didn't answer my question." "Oh, right. We are bound to come across a town or something eventually." We discussed it a little more and came up with something almost like a plan. It didn't really have any details, or goals, or anything really. We were just going to pack some supplies and start walking. Yeah, not much of a plan. So we packed and started walking, all according to plan. I looked back, and wondered if this was really such a good idea. Oh, well. I realized we had already finished with everything in the plan, we had packed, and we were walking. Some adventure this was. Time to start improvising. Chapter 4: The MineOur plan sucked. Walking sucked. This adventure sucks. "Spark, your pessimism really sucks." Hmm, it must be contagious. "We need a new plan, Star. Do we even know if there is any civilization out here? We haven't found anything yet." "Of course we haven't found anything yet. We have only been walking for five minutes." Ok, maybe I was a little impatient, but our plan didn't give me any hope. I guess all I can do is follow it though. We walked for another hour or so, and I was hating our plan more and more. I decided to fly up to get a better view of the landscape around us, but there was nothing. No civilization anywhere around. Just a huge dust cloud to our right and a huge mountain to our left. The dust cloud did look more interesting, under closer inspection. It looked almost like it was headed our way. I flew down to the ground and mentioned it to Star. "What!? A dust cloud? And it is moving towards us?" "Well, Star, that is what I just said." "We have to go, now." Star sounded worried. "Those dust clouds are caused by stampeding buffalo, and they don't stop for anything. In fact, lately they have been reported to actually chase travelers they find, and stampede over them." "Why would they do that?" "The world seems to be getting more and more harsh, more deadly. Ever since the day the clouds, sun, and moon started moving on their own the world just keeps getting worse. We need to get away from that dust cloud." "There is a mountain to our left." I figured that would be safer from the stampede. "Good, start galloping, now!" We started running and after a few minutes, we could se the dust cloud from the ground. It was getting closer. We could also see the mountain rising up in front of us. As we got closer, we saw a huge cave in the side of a cliff. "Get in the cave!" Star yelled, even though I was right next to her. She was panicking. I looked behind us and found out why. We could see buffalo now. Hundreds of them. I realized I could feel the ground rumbling beneath me. We needed to hurry. The shaking in the ground was causing some rocks to fall on the mountain. It was getting dangerous just being near the cliff. I looked back and realized the buffalo were quickly closing in on us. I looked at the cave. It was about 50 yards away. We were going to make it! I galloped as fast as I could and leaped into the cave. Star got in about a second after me. We collapsed on the ground, out of breath. I turned to look at the buffalo and was relieved to see them turning. I turned to Star to ask if she was Ok, and saw her running towards me. I felt myself be tackled to the ground as a boulder fell where I had just been standing. I looked over the entrance of the cave and stared in horror as the rumbling in the ground caused more boulders to fall. They were falling from higher up on the mountain too, piling up at the entrance. Finally, the entire entrance collapsed and I watched the last beam of light disappear behind the rocks. I closed my eyes to stop the dust it kicked up from getting into them. I opened them and saw no difference. I blinked a few times and saw (or figured due to by lack of seeing anything) that there was no light at all. It was darker than I had ever seen before. Then, a small glow appeared from right next to me. I looked at Star's, now glowing, horn and let out a sigh of relief. We could now see. The cave walls were mostly black, with a blueish glow due to Star's horn. The walls were also surprisingly smooth. Star walked over to a wall and put her hoof on it. "This cave was carved with magic. That doesn't make any sense. It would be much easier to use tools to cut through this rock, it would take too much energy using magic." "I don't think it matters if this cave was carved by magic or tools, that won't get us out of here." "You're right. We need to do something to find a way out. But we won't be able to get through that mound of rock, so our only option is to go deeper into the cave. Time to do some exploring." We started walking. This seemed too much like our last plan: we stopped planning after the walking part. The cave didn't seem to go down, only straight into the mountain. That was good, it meant we should come out the other side of the mountain any time now, right? Wrong. It just kept going. After half an hour of boredom, (a.k.a. walking) the walls started to become more jagged, like they were carved using tools, like Star said they should have been. The walls also seemed to have some sort of ore in them. The ore reflected the glow from Star's horn, like they were bits of mirrors, scattered along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The cave itself started to give off an oppressive feeling. Something inside me kept telling me I had to get out, get away from this cave. Before the panic that had started to creep into me could form, the cave opened up into a large cavern. There were about five different caves leading out of the cavern, including the one we came from, and a small shack in one corner of the cavern. While Star walked around examining the caves, I started investigating the shack. The door creaked when I opened it, causing Star to flinch, then shoot me an annoyed look. Apparently the cave was making her as nervous as it was making me. The inside of the shack was lit up by a small, but strangely bright, candle. There was no way it could have been burning the entire time. Must be unicorn magic. I noticed a few papers on a table with writing on them. Wow, being able to read actually is useful. They looked old. Very old. I walked over and read the dates at the top of the pages. They were a little out of order, but I soon fixed that. After blowing off the dust, I started to read the earliest one. Today is the first day we begin mining the ore. I was given the position of managing this operation, which means I get all the credit for this, all I have to do is document what we find. This is too easy. About 2 weeks ago, we were working on another mining operation about 10 miles south of here. One night there was a meteor shower, and some meteors actually fell to the ground! One hit right near our mining operation. Drifter went to check it out, and came back with a shining blue stone. (His name isn't actually Drifter, we just call him that cause he is always wondering around, looking for excuses to take a break, not to mention his actual name is pretty weird.) Anyway, the blue ore was soft, and we could easily shape it, but when we tried melting it, it just hardened. It became even harder than the iron we were mining for here. This new metal was far superior to the iron we were currently mining, so we tried to gather more of the star metal. We have been able to make multiple tools and weapons from it. A few nights later, there was another meteor shower, and this time we saw an enormous meteor fall and hit the ground to the north. It felt like an earthquake had hit. We hiked over to the meteor and found it was the size of a mountain! We started to dig into it and eventually created a small base of operations here. We have found loads of this new ore. Finding this meteor is going to make us all rich! I called Star to tell her about what I had found. "Star, I found something!" "Well, what does it say?" Star looked at me curiously as she entered the room. "You aren't going to believe this. We are inside a meteorite." "What!?" "These papers are some documentation from some miners who discovered the blue ore we saw in the walls." "Let me see those." Star walked over and looked at the dates. "These are from hundreds of years ago! They might even be from before the world went wrong." I looked at them again. Wow, they really were old. But that blue ore sounded interesting. "You keep reading those reports, I'll search around a bit more." Star left the room and I continued reading. The next paper was dated a few weeks after the first. We are making major progress. We have created a few more tunnels searching for large pockets of the ore. We even built a forge in here and I have been experimenting with the star metal. It doesn't work like usual metal does. You have to shape it when it is just the ore. Then you just heat it up, and it hardens. But, once you harden it, it is impossible to reshape. We tried to bend it by wedging it in a crevice and pushing on the handle, but it's no use. This is the strongest metal I have ever heard of. However, it hasn't been quite normal around here lately. Drifter has been less focused on work than usual, and that is a hard feat to accomplish. Also, nopony will go anywhere alone. Thinking about it, I wouldn't want to either. There is something uncanny about this cave, but it doesn't matter. Once we finish this job we will be set for life. We won't have to go into another cave ever again. This is operation leader Stonehart signing out. Well, it looks like Star and I weren't the only ones to find this cave a little weird. I decided to read the next paper. We have found more of the ore. It is just so abundant in this cave. We hardly have to dig for more than a minute or so and we find more of the ore. We have piles of it in the main cavern. We also haven't been outside in a few weeks now, and I think it is getting to some of us. Most of the ponies here are in a bad mood constantly now. It's been hard enough just trying to get them up. I have to pull literally Drifter off his bed he made out of the ore. I just can't imagine how he can sleep on that stuff, but Drifter always was quite odd. Well, it is time to get some sleep. I must say, it's strange to not even know if it is night when we are sleeping now. The reports seemed to be getting shorter and shorter. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything useful in them, but they had told us that we were in a meteorite. That was somewhat useful. Also, we found out about this blue ore. That could be useful. I guess they might get more interesting eventually. I decided to continue reading and the next one was a few weeks after the last one. That damn Drifter, he needs to learn his place. He has been wanting some of the ore now, as payment. Some of the other workers are joining him too. They are saying that their pay isn't high enough and that they should get some of the ore as well as being payed. I already told them, the ore is mine. First Drifter started making a pile of the ore on one side of the cavern and stated that it was his portion. Some of the other miners thought it was a good idea too and started making their own piles. When I got back to the cavern they all had piles up to their heads. They want my ore, but it is mine! All mine! I haven't been able to document in a while due to all these damn greedy workers. Can't wait for this job to be done so I can never see them again. Wow, what happened in that week? They seemed to be pretty fine the week before. I decided to just check the next paper. It was dated a whole month later. Things are different around here. I can't turn my back on any of the workers, or my ore. None of us have slept in days, and I won't be the one to break that trend. The moment I go to sleep, they will all just take my ore and run. I just know it. And they all just guard their piles of ore like they own them. Ha, they think they own my ore? Well, I'll show them. But, the lack of sleep is getting to me. The other workers don't look like they used to. I hardly recognize Drifter. But, its all just hallucinations. It must be. The sooner I get out of this cave, the better. I can't sleep here with these ponies, eyeing my ore like hawks. As soon as they all fall asleep, I know they will, I will take my ore, including the ore they stole from me, and run. I get out of this accursed meteor and find somewhere else to live. I don't have much time, though. We are almost out of food. We still have a couple days, at most. I will hopefully never need to write these damn reports again. I will be gone. Hmm, that's strange, because there were still a few more reports here. The next one was dated the next day. This meteor really is cursed. I didn't realize how true my words were last night. None of us can eat anymore. The food doesn't stay down. We can't sleep either. And some of us have really begun to change. I am sure it is not just hallucinations anymore. Silverdust has it the worst. Her eyes have begun to shrink inside her skull. Her tail swelled up and burst, the bones and blood getting everywhere. Also, one of her legs started to curl up like a dead spider's legs do. Others of us have strange things happening too. Drifter has got these humps on his back, and one of his ears grew much longer and became very spiky and solid. I would be surprised if any of us survive. I suddenly felt the urge to get out of this cave as fast as possible, the panic from earlier back as strong as ever. I rushed out to the main cavern to look for Star, but she was gone. And so was any light. "Star?" I said, quietly. I was beginning to get the feeling something was watching us. I kept turning around quickly, not wanting to leave my back facing one way too long, but it didn't help not being able to see. When I turned to my left, A flash of blue light burst out right in front of me. I nearly hit the top of the cave when I jumped. I looked down and saw Star rolling on the ground, laughing. "Really?" I asked, extremely annoyed. "I couldn't help it. You seemed so paranoid, it was the perfect opportunity." Suddenly, Star's eyes went wide as she looked behind me, a look of terror on her face. Yeah, right, like I was going to fall for that. I turned around, expecting to see a dull wall, but I certainly didn't. A blob of pulsing, silver and red flesh, about the size of three ponies, was slithering toward us. It had the resemblance of an eye, more like a hole in it's skull with some white ooze in it, in the upper right corner off it's 'face,' if you can call it that. I suddenly thought of Silverdust. It's (or her i guess) mouth opened to reveal a few organs spilling out and a circle of sharp teeth. I turned to run, but tripped over Star. It took us a few seconds to get up, then we ran. We took the first exit we saw out of the cavern. We were just hoping it would be a way out. As we turned a corner, I looked back and saw that somehow that thing was almost as fast as we were. It was getting farther behind though, and I let out a sigh of relief, just as I tripped over something very squishy. I looked over at it and saw the remains of what seemed like a mix between a pony and a fish. The change obviously hadn't gone well. I looked up to see the thing coming around the corner, eyes locked on me. I looked at the pony-fish thing and noticed a blue sword in it's mouth. Perfect! I reached my head over and yanked on the sword, by the blade. It cut my mouth, but I was desperate. Unfortunately, the pony-like head was still biting down on the blade, even after it looked like it was dead. What was this place? I slammed the head on the ground a few times and noticed the silver blob-thing open it's mouth again and charge towards me. I finally got the head loose from the sword and swung it at the silver thing. It sliced a huge gash in the thing's front, but it just ignored it. It was about to sink it's teeth into me, when it was covered in a blue glow. It floated up in the air and a blade covered in a similar blue glow flew towards it. The blade cut right through the thing, and Star cut off the levitation. But the thing just ignored the blood gushing out of it. It then charged Star, who had a horrified look on her face. I rushed over and started to swing the sword at it, again and again, but it just turned to me and opened it's mouth. One chance. I lunged at the thing and stuck the sword right into it's mouth. I aimed for a very important looking organ hanging about 3 inches from the opening of it's mouth. It squealed this time and started thrashing about. I was thrown against the wall, still holding the sword. I watched as it slowly stopped moving. I looked to Star, who still had the horrified look on her face. I walked over to her and started pushing her. "Come, on. Let's get out of here. Now." She nodded and we started to run the same way we were going. I almost cried when I saw a ray of light from the outside. I dove onto the ground and started rolling in the grass. I loved the outside. It was a while before Star spoke, but she finally turned to me and asked "Spark? What did those reports say?" I explained them to her as best I could and waited as she seemed to be thinking. "You said that there were more reports there that you hadn't read?" "Yeah, but I am not going back in there just to see what they say. There was a whole crew if workers in there and we only found 2. I don't want to know what happened to the rest of them, especially if any more are still alive." "Well, I guess you found a good sword, Spark." I looked over to the blue sword laying on the ground where I had dropped it when we got out of the cave. "Yeah, at least we got one good thing out of that hellhole." "So, where do we go now?" I asked, greatly hoping it would be nothing like our last few plans. "Well, the first thing I want to do is get away from this cave." "Agreed." So we started walking... again.
Introduction: A Bit of History"Hundreds of years ago, the land of Equestria was united, pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies alike under one banner. It was a glorious time of piece and prosperity. There was no war, no famine. Trust was built between the different races of ponies. Everything was as it should be." "Some even say the unicorns could control the sun and moon, raising and lowering them like clockwork, the same time every day and night. They say the pegusi could control the weather, push clouds, cause rain, even create rainbows. They would schedule rainy days to help the earth ponies grow food, they would schedule sunny days for ponies to relax and play." "There was organization, they had leaders, towns, even cities. One could simply walk into a town and they would be welcomed, everypony trusted one another. The leaders did their best to help the ponies under their care. Everypony could rely on those around them to help them if they were in need." "Wow, Grandpa, is it really true? Could Pegasus ponies like you and me control the weather?" "Yes, Spark, we still can, but the clouds don't cooperate like they did back then. Now we could move clouds to one place, turn around, and they would be headed off somewhere else in no time. It is like they have a mind of their own now." "And the unicorns could control the sun and the moon?" "Well, I'm not sure it would have been that easy. They would need a few unicorns all concentrating at once to move something like that. But, it just doesn't work anymore." "Why won't it work? What happened?" "Well, the story goes back a few hundred years, and it don't make much sense. It was a rainy day, the pegasi had scheduled it for growing food, and it was somewhere around midday. Suddenly, it just started happening, the clouds began to move, slowly at first, then gaining speed. There was no wind, yet the clouds just moved. The rain began to stop and the Earth ponies started getting angry. They demanded to know why the pegasi had stopped the rain that was keeping their crops alive. The pegasi didn't know what to say, they hadn't moved the clouds, they moved on their own. The pegasi suspected the unicorns used their magic to move the clouds themselves, but the unicorns said they had nothing to do with it. Now, if this had happened by usual causes, they probably could have worked out an agreement, but there was something else wrong." "None of the ponies could seem to work out an agreement. It was like they just couldn't stop arguing. Then one earth pony looked up. She stood just looking up for a long while, her mouth hanging slightly open in awe. Soon, other ponies stopped arguing and looked up too, with the same look of astonishment on their faces. There was the sun, still high in the sky, and there, off to the west, was the moon starting to rise along the horizon. This hadn't happened in, well, it had never happened before. This was unheard of, nopony thought it was possible. Then the arguing broke out again, worse than before. 'See, this is all the unicorns' fault, they are the ones supposed to raise the sun and moon!' 'We unicorns didn't do it, it is impossible with just magic to raise both the sun and moon at the same time! The earth ponies must be doing something!' 'We earth ponies can't control the sun and moon! This all started with the clouds, it must be the pegasi's fault!' " "And so the arguing continued until fighting broke out. It wasn't even just between the different kinds of ponies anymore. Pegasi and pegasi were fighting. Unicorns blamed other unicorns. The earth ponies were no different than the other two. In just days, the order and peace that had covered Equestria up until then was destroyed. Gradually, revolts sprung up all over Equestria, throwing it into total chaos. All the governments failed, the cities and towns broke apart, there was no more unity in Equestria." "So all this happened just because the clouds, sun, and moon started moving by themselves?" "Not quite. It was like the virtues most ponies lived by were taken away. The biggest change was not in the clouds or the sun and moon, but in the ponies themselves. The sun didn't start revolts. The clouds did not overthrow governments. Ponies did that. Something changed that day, and nopony has been able to figure out why in over hundreds of years."
Chapter 1: The Adventure BeginsHey there, my name is Spark. I'm a pegasus. Well... I guess I'm not a full blown pegasus until I can actually fly, but Grandpa says he will start teaching me very soon. Speaking of Grandpa, I guess I should tell you about where I live. Grandpa and I live up in the clouds, safe from most of the chaos down on the ground. I've never been down there, but Grandpa says it is no place for a pegasus that can't fly. He says a pony can get into a lot of trouble down on the ground, it just ain't safe. Back to where I live, the cloud Grandpa and I live on is a pretty stable cloud, as far as clouds go. It rakes a lot of maintenance for Grandpa to keep it from dispersing and dropping us to the ground, but we manage. I live alone with Grandpa. He tells me my parents were killed by thieves on the ground. They just snuck up on my parents, stabbed 'em, and took off with their belongings. By the time Grandpa wondered where my parents were and went searching for them, it was too late. He found them lying on a path, nearly dead from lose of blood. He tried to save 'em, but he didn't have the supplies he needed. They died together. Grandpa says they were happier that way. I was only a little colt back when my parents died. I only can remember a little bit about them. However, I can remember the day Grandpa came home and told me that I wouldn't be able to see my parents anymore. He was decent enough to tell me the truth: that my parents had died. He explained it to me many times, but I was too young to fully understand it, though as I grew older I began to understand what had happened to my parents. I still miss them, you know. It is ok living with just Grandpa, but he could never totally fill the gap left by my parent's death. Grandpa did try his best though. And to be honest he did a pretty good job. He could still comfort me when I was sad, and could cool me down when I was angry. And instead of singing me to sleep, like my mother did when I was just a colt, he would tell me stories. He told me of stories of happy times, sad times, but none compared to the stories of the times when there was order in Equestria. These weren't just stories, they were legends. I was always so interested in the legends. When Equestria had recently been founded, and ponies worked together. I never understood the story of when it all went wrong. It didn't make any sense. More and more, nowadays, it keeps me up at night. There had to be more to the story. What had really happened that could make ponies, who had been able to work together for hundreds of years, change so much. In just weeks, days even. There was something unnatural about it. And I was going to find out why. I had been considering it for a while, but I never quite had the nerve to try to go to the surface. It is such a dangerous place, as Grandpa tells me. But, I just had to go. I was too curious. I decided to ask Grandpa if he would take me with him the next time we go to the surface. It would probably take a lot of arguing, but I was determined. "OK, you can come with me." I turned around and saw Grandpa standing there. He is a yellow pegasus with a bright orange mane. Similar to me, I have a yellow coat and a yellow mane, which is why my parents named me Spark. Grandpa had been sitting there behind me the whole time, listening. I need to start thinking inside my head. "What?" I replied. "I heard you talking to yourself about wanting to go down to the surface, and it probably is about time you see what the real world is like." I had thought this would take a lot more convincing, but OK, works for me. "Cool! When are we going?" "Now. We are running low on food so we need to get some more. Also, the surface is the best place to teach a pegasus how to fly." Awesome! Grandpa is finally going to teach me how to fly, and I get to go to the surface. In the the same day. "Now, the surface is very dangerous," began Grandpa, "If you see another pony, make sure you are close to me, and remember, there are many ponies on the surface that would have no problem with killing you just to get the food you are carrying." "Yeah, whatever." I can't believe I'm going to the surface! Finally! "Spark! This is very serious. You could die down there if you are not careful. Your parents died even when they were very careful. You cannot let your guard down. If some thief sneaks up on you.. well you won't get a second chance." "Oh, yeah, sorry Grandpa." "I just want you to be careful Spark. Now, lets get ready." About a half an hour later we are finally ready to go. I am so excited, I finally get to learn how to fly! We head down to the surface with Grandpa carrying me and flapping his wings to keep us below leg-breaking speeds. As we get close to the ground, I begin to see just how big it is. "Wow, I can't even see the end, how far does the surface go?" "Well, it just keeps going, in every direction. There is no end." I had never thought of that. I was so used to living on a cloud, where of you went too far one way you would just fall off. This was totally different. And kind of scary. I was in a whole different world. When we reach the surface, Grandpa is looking around constantly. "You have got to be careful down here Spark. Ponies aren't usually too friendly." But, we don't see anypony around. Grandpa said that the first thing we had to do was find food. Simple enough, plenty of trees around, lots of flowers too, the usual stuff ponies eat. We begin to collect apples, and all sorts of food. We don't need any water because Grandpa can just find a cloud and make it rain to get water. Soon we are done collecting food and it is time for the part I have waited for for years. Grandpa is finally going to teach me how to fly. "Well," Grandpa says' "The first step to learning how to fly is to learn the form. Flying is not about flapping your wings as hard as you can, it is about pushing down on the air so it pushes you up." Grandpa then begins to show me how I need to curve my wings when they go up, and flatten them when they go down. Curve and up, flatten and down, curve and up, flatten and down. I practice for about ten minutes or so, until Grandpa is satisfied I am doing it well enough. "For the next step we need to find a large rock, or a small cliff. It will take forever for you to start learning to take off from the ground before you learn to just fly. You will need to jump off a rock to give yourself some time in the air to catch yourself." We search for a little while and find a suitable rock. It is about six feet high. We climb up some smaller rocks to get to the top of the big rock. I am about to jump off the rock when Grandpa stops me. "Don't jump off this side, if you fall onto one of the rocks we just climbed up you would probably break something. Lets check the other side." Sure enough, the other side looks over a grassy plain, and the ground looks much softer. I jump off and flap my wings, but I just fall to the ground. Grandpa gives me some encouragement and I get back up and try again. The second time I manage to slow my descent and land on my feet. I try a few more times and eventually I start to get the hang of it. I can't fly very fast, but I can fly! I fly around a little bit and notice a few ponies off in the distance, but who cares, I can fly! My wings begin to get tired and I glide down to the ground.When I hit the ground I stumble and fall, I need to work on landings more. "Great job." Grandpa says. Next he has me practicing taking off from the ground. It is a lot harder than jumping off a rock because I have to flap my wings and get going as soon as I leave the ground. It takes me a little while, but I finally get that too. I begin to soar around. It is fun to go sideways and spiral down to the ground, then lifting up a few feet before I hit the ground. I look over a Grandpa and wave. Then I something shiny on the hill just behind Grandpa. I look closer at it and realize it is a pony. The pony is running toward Grandpa, with what looks like a sword in it's mouth. Wait, that is a sword in it's mouth! I yell a warning to Grandpa, but it is too late. I see the pony leap and stick the sword into Grandpa's back. I... I don't know what to do. I just fly towards Grandpa as quickly as possible. I don't even slow down when I get close to the ground, I just need to help Grandpa! I slam into the ground and feel my head hits the earth. I start to black out when I hear another pony. "Should we kill the other one too?" "No, just take his stuff. He knocked himself out when he hit the ground. Stupid pegasus. Besides, he doesn't even have his cutie mark. He is no threat to us." They begin to walk away as my world goes black.
Chapter 2: A FriendI slowly opened my eyes, and the first thing i noticed was my massive headache. What happened? As my eyes began to focus, I noticed a glowing light. Then I realized it was attached to a pony, a mare in fact. That doesn't make sense. After about a second or two, my headache started feeling much better. Able to think clearly, I looked at the unicorn standing next to where I was. Oh, a unicorn, that explains it. When the the unicorn's horn stopped glowing, I tried to remember where I was, but I failed. I decided to look around and my eyes fell on an old pegasus laying about ten feet away from me. Then it all came back. I felt a tear roll down my face as I continued to stare at the pony who had taken care of me for my entire life. More tears followed when I looked at the hole going through his body. I turned to the unicorn. "Is... is he..." "Yes, he is dead." More tears began to cover my eyes. I had to keep blinking just to see. I had just witnessed what had happened to my parents years ago. The only difference was I was there, watching this time. But I had been just as helpless to save him as I was to save my parents when I was miles above them. I never wanted to have this helpless feeling again. Ever. "What happened here?" I turned to look at the unicorn as she spoke, remembering she was there. I tried to explain, but it ended up taking 10 minutes to say what should have taken 2 minutes. "Ok, I think I understand." she said "If you need a place to stay you can come with me." I thought about it a little and figured it would be pretty boring up in the clouds alone. Alone. The sadness in me intensified as the thought crossed my mind. Another tear. I still couldn't get my mind around Grandpa being dead. The unicorn watched as I stared at Grandpa. "We should bury him." she said. I nodded and slowly began trying to dig a hole with my hooves. "It is going to take you forever to dig a big enough hole that way. I can get a shovel from my shack. You stay here and I'll be back in a few minutes." Sure enough, she left and came back with a shovel. She levitated it with her magic and started digging. In a few minutes we had a decent hole. It would have to do. It was hard to predict sometimes, but the sun looked like it was headed toward the horizon. We had to finish soon. The unicorn levitated Grandpa's body into the hole, and started shoveling the dirt back into the hole. I searched for a little while, and found a rock, which I put on the mound of dirt. The unicorn mare lowered her horn and put some symbols on the rock. "What are those?" I asked "Don't tell me you don't know how to read!" she paused, waiting for me to tell her I could, but I disappointed her with my silence. "You have a lot to learn." she finished. As we walked to her shack, we started talking. "You never did mention your name," she began, "My name is Starlight, but you can just call me Star." "I'm Spark," I answered. I noticed her cutie mark on her flank. Wonder when I will get mine. Her's was a crescent moon with some stars around it. "Whar kind of special talent is a crescent moon?" I asked. "Well, some things are just a mystery." Was she avoiding talking about it, or did she really not know? I decided to change the topic. "So I guess you saved me back there." "No, you would have woken up eventually, just a few hours later with a much worse headache. But, I couldn't tell until I started healing you. I had no idea if you were perfectly fine, or almost dead. But, when I saw the hole in the pony next to you, I wanted to make sure you were fine." "Well, thanks." I said, "Do you live with anyone else?" "No, not many ponies around here are very friendly. You have to be careful around other ponies." "Then why did you trust me not to just attack you after I you healed me?" "You've got a bright coat, I.. I mean you're very noticeable. That's how I saw you from far away and wondered if you were OK. You have to watch out with a coat like that. Bandits could see from a mile away. You probably shouldn't fly around too often. You could attract all sorts of unwanted attention." She definitely avoided my question that time. We walked a little further, then I noticed something move to our left. I stopped and turned to look, but all I saw was a large rock. I looked over at Star to ask if she saw anything, then I saw a gray pony leap off of a rock to out right. The gray pony was falling right toward Star, with a sword in his mouth. I was about to yell a warning, but it was over before I could say anything. A sword covered in a blue glow was sticking out of the gray pony, and Star's horn was surrounded in a similar blue glow. I blinked, my mind trying to process what just happened. Before I could try to think, a grayish-blue pony jumped from behind the rock I first thought I saw something moving around. Star, however, didn't see this pony. She was still facing the dead gray pony. This was exactly the way Grandpa died, with a pony stabbing him in the back. My new, and only, friend was about to die the same way Grandpa did. Rage filled me as I launched myself at the grayish-blue pony. I saw the surprise in his eyes as he glanced toward me. My right fore hoof plowed into him. We landed on the ground with a thud. I continued to slam my hooves into him, even long after he went limp. Star walked over and pulled me off the pony. "He's dead Spark." I continued to struggle. "HE'S DEAD! SNAP OUT OF IT!" The rage inside me slowly faded. I looked at the bloody mess that had once been a pony. My eyes went wide. I had just killed a pony. The proof was all over my hooves. I told myself I was just defending my friend. But, I couldn't convince myself. If I was just defending a friend, then why wasn't there a face left on the pony? I had gone way out of control. We walked the rest of the way to the shack in silence. I saw it in the distance. The shack was quite small. "Here it is. Home sweet home." Star began, "It's not much, which is good when you have bandits looking for anything valuable around here. Most just pass by, assuming it is abandoned." It certainly looked abandoned. It hardly looked big enough to fit three ponies in it. How could anypony live in there?I found out as we walked inside. The only thing in the shack was a set of stairs going down. They creaked as we walked down, threatening to collapse under us. "How old is this place?" I asked. "I have no idea. I found this it a while ago when I was traveling, patched it up a bit, and moved in." When we reached the bottom of the stairs I looked around. It didn't look much better than the floor above, but it was much more spacious. And it had some furniture. OK, it was a lot better than the floor above. But, just as dirty. "First, you need a weapon if you want to survive out here. You can't just beat all your enemies to death with your hooves, it only worked that time because you surprised him. A weapon gives you a big advantage. Since you are a pegasus, lets try a bow first. You could fly above your enemies and shoot down on them." Star levitated a bow off of the wall and set it down next to me. She got a bow out of her bag, pulled out an arrow and demonstrated how to fire the bow. "You strap this strap around your forehoove, you get out an arrow with your teeth, you put the arrow on the string, and you pull the string back with your teeth. Then you aim it at the target and fire." Star demonstrated the steps and shot the arrow. It hit the target a few inches away from the center. "Now you try." It took me about a minute to wrap the string around my hoof, and it wasn't even tight when I got it. I tried getting an arrow with my teeth, and managed to somehow pick it up with the sharp end in my teeth. After much struggling I got an arrow the right way around. I latched it onto the bow and pulled back. I tried to aim, but ended up just going in a circle, never coming close to the right direction. I decided to just close my eyes and fire. Twang. I opened my eyes and, sweet! I hit a target! It wasn't very close to the center, but I still hit it! "Ummm, weren't you aiming for the target on that wall?" Star asked, pointing to the wall to my right. "Oh, darn. Can we try something else?" "Yeah, how about a sword? If all else fails you can just swing it around wildly in the enemy's direction." She levitated a wooden stick to me. "Try to hit me with that stick." "That doesn't look like a sword to me." "Well, we aren't going to practice with actual swords. One of us could get killed. That would not be helpful." "OK." She levitated a stick in front of her and started walking towards me slowly. I picked up the stick in my mouth and ran at her. I beat the stick she was levitating out of the way and lunged at her. She leaped back and picked up her stick again with her magic. I kept swinging at her, and she kept dodging, until I felt a stick poke me in the side. I glanced over and saw a blue glow covering the stick. "Always keep track of what you enemy is doing. If they can catch you by surprise, you don't stand a chance. However, that was an impressive first attempt. Lets try again." After about ten or so rounds of me trying, and failing, to best her, we stopped. "You have made a lot of progress, Spark. Now, lets take a break from fighting." Finally, some rest. "Now it is time for you to learn how to read and write." Great, I thought sarcastically.
Chapter 3: It's Been a While2 months have passed since the day my life was turned upside down. I was younger back then, more innocent. I did not know of the dangers down here. I did not realize how common death was down here. This was not the world I used to live in, but it took what it wanted from me nonetheless. It captured me, by my own will. I can return to the clouds if I want to, but I know I never will. This world has mysteries. Mysteries I was told of in stories by my grandfather, and mysteries I have found myself. The mysteries of this world are not the kind I could ever solve, not on my own at least. That is why I am lucky to have a friend. But, that is not the only reason to have a friend. This world pulls at you. You can't escape it. You can't run from it, where would you go? There is no place in the world safe from the world itself. You have to fight it. Endure it. You need an anchor. Something to hold on to. No shield can protect you from the pull of the very world you stand on, live on. No sword can help you fight it off. That is why you need friends. As I said before, 2 months have passed since I began to live on the surface. I have been learning to fight with Star, I have been learning to, ugh, read (Seriously, when is that ever going to be useful? Nopony is going to send me a letter or anything) with Star, and I have been learning about the world, with Star. Basically, I have been learning everything a pony needs to know, and I have been learning how to read (Seriously, not useful at all), from Star. My head hurts. "How old are most ponies when they get their cutie marks?" I asked. If I had to learn, it was going to be about something interesting today, I was going to make sure of it. "You are older than most ponies are when they get their cutie marks, if that is what you really were asking." Darn, she saw right through me. But it was pretty obvious. "But, it makes sense that you don't have yours yet." "Why?" "Because, you spent almost your entire life in the clouds, and the time you did spend down here was mostly in this shack. Ponies get their cutie marks when they discover their special talent, and since yours obviously isn't learning, I'm not surprised you don't have yours yet." "Today we are going outside." Star continued, completely off topic. She does that sometimes. "You, being a pegasus, might have a special talent for something involving flying, not to mention being able to fly well is a big help if we get in a sticky situation." I had only flown once in my entire life, however, it ended horribly so I have been kind of hesitant about trying it again. But, I had waited long enough, flying was fun. We walked outside and I tasted the air. It might sound weird, but the it air tastes so much better on the surface than it did in the clouds. In the clouds, it is thinner, and the only thing the air has touched was clouds, and clouds taste pretty bland. Down here, the air touched flowers, trees, grass, and picked up all sorts off lovely scents and tastes. Much better than just clouds. Is soon as I could, I took off. If felt so great to be in the air, that lovely tasting air. I loved the feeling of freedom that came with flying. I couldn't believe I had been nervous about flying again. Flying was amazing. "Now it is time to learn about flying." Star said, crushing my feeling of freedom. "How can you know more than me about flying too?" I was sure I knew more than her in at least one area, but I still had yet to find it. "Well, pegasi don't fly just because of their wings you know." "What? Of course we use our wings to fly. That is why we have them. Right?" "No, you fly using magic." I looked up, towards my forehead. Flat, no magic. Star noticed me looking at my forehead and laughed. "Just because you aren't a unicorn doesn't mean you don't have magic. Why do you think you were able to learn how to fly in just a day, without having to build up wing muscles? You use the magic to fly." "But, if we use magic to fly, then why do we have wings in the first place?" "Well, it is hard to steer yourself in the air with your hooves. Your wings are for steering." OK, that made more sense. "But, if flying is all about magic, than why can't unicorns fly? They have magic" "Well, flying isn't all just about magic. Your wings are made for flying, horns are not. I can levitate myself, but I can't go nearly as fast as you can with your wings, and I can't keep it up nearly as long as you can either. My horn allows me to direct my magic to do what I want it to do, but your wings are specifically for using magic to fly. They are much better at using magic for flying." I continued flying around for a while, then Star suggested I practice aerial combat. She would throw sticks at me with her levitation, and I would dodge them or bat them away with the stick I was holding with my mouth. I wasn't very good at it at first, but I eventually started to get the hang of it. We practiced for a while, then went back to the shack. Star started to cook some vegetable soup. She always did all of the cooking. I tried it once, and well... I certainly wasn't going to get a cutie mark for cooking. After we started eating, Star announced "You need to learn your special talent soon. It could be something very useful." "But, I'm not going to find my special talent by just sitting in this shack, doing the same thing every day." I didn't see where this was going. "Exactly, we are going on a field trip." "What!?" I nearly spit out my mouthful of soup. "A field trip. You are not going to find out anything about yourself doing the same thing you always do. Besides, it is getting pretty boring just sitting in this shack all day. Although, it might be less of a field trip, and more of an adventure. I don't know where we will be going." My ears had perked up at the word adventure. That is what I had wanted to do ever since Grandpa had told me the stories about the surface. But, the place I used to live was probably just a mile or so away from this shack, and about a quarter of a mile up. I had never even gone two miles from the place I was born in my entire life! "I have lived long enough in this shack." Star began, "It is about time I left. And, it is much safer to go with somepony else to watch my back. Although, we need to get you a real sword, Spark. That stick you trained with is not going to cut it (no pun intended) if we come across real trouble." "It's been a while since I did some proper adventuring. How does that sound Spark?" "Sounds great, Star, But where exactly am I going to find a sword?" "You can borrow one of mine for now, but these swords I have are designed for unicorns. Usual swords are made from heavier metals to allow ponies to put a lot of force behind their attacks, but these swords are designed to just be sharp. My levitation takes away the weight from them, so they can only cut, my attacks don't have much actual force behind them. They use lighter metal to save on cost." "That didn't answer my question." "Oh, right. We are bound to come across a town or something eventually." We discussed it a little more and came up with something almost like a plan. It didn't really have any details, or goals, or anything really. We were just going to pack some supplies and start walking. Yeah, not much of a plan. So we packed and started walking, all according to plan. I looked back, and wondered if this was really such a good idea. Oh, well. I realized we had already finished with everything in the plan, we had packed, and we were walking. Some adventure this was. Time to start improvising.
Chapter 4: The MineOur plan sucked. Walking sucked. This adventure sucks. "Spark, your pessimism really sucks." Hmm, it must be contagious. "We need a new plan, Star. Do we even know if there is any civilization out here? We haven't found anything yet." "Of course we haven't found anything yet. We have only been walking for five minutes." Ok, maybe I was a little impatient, but our plan didn't give me any hope. I guess all I can do is follow it though. We walked for another hour or so, and I was hating our plan more and more. I decided to fly up to get a better view of the landscape around us, but there was nothing. No civilization anywhere around. Just a huge dust cloud to our right and a huge mountain to our left. The dust cloud did look more interesting, under closer inspection. It looked almost like it was headed our way. I flew down to the ground and mentioned it to Star. "What!? A dust cloud? And it is moving towards us?" "Well, Star, that is what I just said." "We have to go, now." Star sounded worried. "Those dust clouds are caused by stampeding buffalo, and they don't stop for anything. In fact, lately they have been reported to actually chase travelers they find, and stampede over them." "Why would they do that?" "The world seems to be getting more and more harsh, more deadly. Ever since the day the clouds, sun, and moon started moving on their own the world just keeps getting worse. We need to get away from that dust cloud." "There is a mountain to our left." I figured that would be safer from the stampede. "Good, start galloping, now!" We started running and after a few minutes, we could se the dust cloud from the ground. It was getting closer. We could also see the mountain rising up in front of us. As we got closer, we saw a huge cave in the side of a cliff. "Get in the cave!" Star yelled, even though I was right next to her. She was panicking. I looked behind us and found out why. We could see buffalo now. Hundreds of them. I realized I could feel the ground rumbling beneath me. We needed to hurry. The shaking in the ground was causing some rocks to fall on the mountain. It was getting dangerous just being near the cliff. I looked back and realized the buffalo were quickly closing in on us. I looked at the cave. It was about 50 yards away. We were going to make it! I galloped as fast as I could and leaped into the cave. Star got in about a second after me. We collapsed on the ground, out of breath. I turned to look at the buffalo and was relieved to see them turning. I turned to Star to ask if she was Ok, and saw her running towards me. I felt myself be tackled to the ground as a boulder fell where I had just been standing. I looked over the entrance of the cave and stared in horror as the rumbling in the ground caused more boulders to fall. They were falling from higher up on the mountain too, piling up at the entrance. Finally, the entire entrance collapsed and I watched the last beam of light disappear behind the rocks. I closed my eyes to stop the dust it kicked up from getting into them. I opened them and saw no difference. I blinked a few times and saw (or figured due to by lack of seeing anything) that there was no light at all. It was darker than I had ever seen before. Then, a small glow appeared from right next to me. I looked at Star's, now glowing, horn and let out a sigh of relief. We could now see. The cave walls were mostly black, with a blueish glow due to Star's horn. The walls were also surprisingly smooth. Star walked over to a wall and put her hoof on it. "This cave was carved with magic. That doesn't make any sense. It would be much easier to use tools to cut through this rock, it would take too much energy using magic." "I don't think it matters if this cave was carved by magic or tools, that won't get us out of here." "You're right. We need to do something to find a way out. But we won't be able to get through that mound of rock, so our only option is to go deeper into the cave. Time to do some exploring." We started walking. This seemed too much like our last plan: we stopped planning after the walking part. The cave didn't seem to go down, only straight into the mountain. That was good, it meant we should come out the other side of the mountain any time now, right? Wrong. It just kept going. After half an hour of boredom, (a.k.a. walking) the walls started to become more jagged, like they were carved using tools, like Star said they should have been. The walls also seemed to have some sort of ore in them. The ore reflected the glow from Star's horn, like they were bits of mirrors, scattered along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The cave itself started to give off an oppressive feeling. Something inside me kept telling me I had to get out, get away from this cave. Before the panic that had started to creep into me could form, the cave opened up into a large cavern. There were about five different caves leading out of the cavern, including the one we came from, and a small shack in one corner of the cavern. While Star walked around examining the caves, I started investigating the shack. The door creaked when I opened it, causing Star to flinch, then shoot me an annoyed look. Apparently the cave was making her as nervous as it was making me. The inside of the shack was lit up by a small, but strangely bright, candle. There was no way it could have been burning the entire time. Must be unicorn magic. I noticed a few papers on a table with writing on them. Wow, being able to read actually is useful. They looked old. Very old. I walked over and read the dates at the top of the pages. They were a little out of order, but I soon fixed that. After blowing off the dust, I started to read the earliest one. Today is the first day we begin mining the ore. I was given the position of managing this operation, which means I get all the credit for this, all I have to do is document what we find. This is too easy. About 2 weeks ago, we were working on another mining operation about 10 miles south of here. One night there was a meteor shower, and some meteors actually fell to the ground! One hit right near our mining operation. Drifter went to check it out, and came back with a shining blue stone. (His name isn't actually Drifter, we just call him that cause he is always wondering around, looking for excuses to take a break, not to mention his actual name is pretty weird.) Anyway, the blue ore was soft, and we could easily shape it, but when we tried melting it, it just hardened. It became even harder than the iron we were mining for here. This new metal was far superior to the iron we were currently mining, so we tried to gather more of the star metal. We have been able to make multiple tools and weapons from it. A few nights later, there was another meteor shower, and this time we saw an enormous meteor fall and hit the ground to the north. It felt like an earthquake had hit. We hiked over to the meteor and found it was the size of a mountain! We started to dig into it and eventually created a small base of operations here. We have found loads of this new ore. Finding this meteor is going to make us all rich! I called Star to tell her about what I had found. "Star, I found something!" "Well, what does it say?" Star looked at me curiously as she entered the room. "You aren't going to believe this. We are inside a meteorite." "What!?" "These papers are some documentation from some miners who discovered the blue ore we saw in the walls." "Let me see those." Star walked over and looked at the dates. "These are from hundreds of years ago! They might even be from before the world went wrong." I looked at them again. Wow, they really were old. But that blue ore sounded interesting. "You keep reading those reports, I'll search around a bit more." Star left the room and I continued reading. The next paper was dated a few weeks after the first. We are making major progress. We have created a few more tunnels searching for large pockets of the ore. We even built a forge in here and I have been experimenting with the star metal. It doesn't work like usual metal does. You have to shape it when it is just the ore. Then you just heat it up, and it hardens. But, once you harden it, it is impossible to reshape. We tried to bend it by wedging it in a crevice and pushing on the handle, but it's no use. This is the strongest metal I have ever heard of. However, it hasn't been quite normal around here lately. Drifter has been less focused on work than usual, and that is a hard feat to accomplish. Also, nopony will go anywhere alone. Thinking about it, I wouldn't want to either. There is something uncanny about this cave, but it doesn't matter. Once we finish this job we will be set for life. We won't have to go into another cave ever again. This is operation leader Stonehart signing out. Well, it looks like Star and I weren't the only ones to find this cave a little weird. I decided to read the next paper. We have found more of the ore. It is just so abundant in this cave. We hardly have to dig for more than a minute or so and we find more of the ore. We have piles of it in the main cavern. We also haven't been outside in a few weeks now, and I think it is getting to some of us. Most of the ponies here are in a bad mood constantly now. It's been hard enough just trying to get them up. I have to pull literally Drifter off his bed he made out of the ore. I just can't imagine how he can sleep on that stuff, but Drifter always was quite odd. Well, it is time to get some sleep. I must say, it's strange to not even know if it is night when we are sleeping now. The reports seemed to be getting shorter and shorter. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything useful in them, but they had told us that we were in a meteorite. That was somewhat useful. Also, we found out about this blue ore. That could be useful. I guess they might get more interesting eventually. I decided to continue reading and the next one was a few weeks after the last one. That damn Drifter, he needs to learn his place. He has been wanting some of the ore now, as payment. Some of the other workers are joining him too. They are saying that their pay isn't high enough and that they should get some of the ore as well as being payed. I already told them, the ore is mine. First Drifter started making a pile of the ore on one side of the cavern and stated that it was his portion. Some of the other miners thought it was a good idea too and started making their own piles. When I got back to the cavern they all had piles up to their heads. They want my ore, but it is mine! All mine! I haven't been able to document in a while due to all these damn greedy workers. Can't wait for this job to be done so I can never see them again. Wow, what happened in that week? They seemed to be pretty fine the week before. I decided to just check the next paper. It was dated a whole month later. Things are different around here. I can't turn my back on any of the workers, or my ore. None of us have slept in days, and I won't be the one to break that trend. The moment I go to sleep, they will all just take my ore and run. I just know it. And they all just guard their piles of ore like they own them. Ha, they think they own my ore? Well, I'll show them. But, the lack of sleep is getting to me. The other workers don't look like they used to. I hardly recognize Drifter. But, its all just hallucinations. It must be. The sooner I get out of this cave, the better. I can't sleep here with these ponies, eyeing my ore like hawks. As soon as they all fall asleep, I know they will, I will take my ore, including the ore they stole from me, and run. I get out of this accursed meteor and find somewhere else to live. I don't have much time, though. We are almost out of food. We still have a couple days, at most. I will hopefully never need to write these damn reports again. I will be gone. Hmm, that's strange, because there were still a few more reports here. The next one was dated the next day. This meteor really is cursed. I didn't realize how true my words were last night. None of us can eat anymore. The food doesn't stay down. We can't sleep either. And some of us have really begun to change. I am sure it is not just hallucinations anymore. Silverdust has it the worst. Her eyes have begun to shrink inside her skull. Her tail swelled up and burst, the bones and blood getting everywhere. Also, one of her legs started to curl up like a dead spider's legs do. Others of us have strange things happening too. Drifter has got these humps on his back, and one of his ears grew much longer and became very spiky and solid. I would be surprised if any of us survive. I suddenly felt the urge to get out of this cave as fast as possible, the panic from earlier back as strong as ever. I rushed out to the main cavern to look for Star, but she was gone. And so was any light. "Star?" I said, quietly. I was beginning to get the feeling something was watching us. I kept turning around quickly, not wanting to leave my back facing one way too long, but it didn't help not being able to see. When I turned to my left, A flash of blue light burst out right in front of me. I nearly hit the top of the cave when I jumped. I looked down and saw Star rolling on the ground, laughing. "Really?" I asked, extremely annoyed. "I couldn't help it. You seemed so paranoid, it was the perfect opportunity." Suddenly, Star's eyes went wide as she looked behind me, a look of terror on her face. Yeah, right, like I was going to fall for that. I turned around, expecting to see a dull wall, but I certainly didn't. A blob of pulsing, silver and red flesh, about the size of three ponies, was slithering toward us. It had the resemblance of an eye, more like a hole in it's skull with some white ooze in it, in the upper right corner off it's 'face,' if you can call it that. I suddenly thought of Silverdust. It's (or her i guess) mouth opened to reveal a few organs spilling out and a circle of sharp teeth. I turned to run, but tripped over Star. It took us a few seconds to get up, then we ran. We took the first exit we saw out of the cavern. We were just hoping it would be a way out. As we turned a corner, I looked back and saw that somehow that thing was almost as fast as we were. It was getting farther behind though, and I let out a sigh of relief, just as I tripped over something very squishy. I looked over at it and saw the remains of what seemed like a mix between a pony and a fish. The change obviously hadn't gone well. I looked up to see the thing coming around the corner, eyes locked on me. I looked at the pony-fish thing and noticed a blue sword in it's mouth. Perfect! I reached my head over and yanked on the sword, by the blade. It cut my mouth, but I was desperate. Unfortunately, the pony-like head was still biting down on the blade, even after it looked like it was dead. What was this place? I slammed the head on the ground a few times and noticed the silver blob-thing open it's mouth again and charge towards me. I finally got the head loose from the sword and swung it at the silver thing. It sliced a huge gash in the thing's front, but it just ignored it. It was about to sink it's teeth into me, when it was covered in a blue glow. It floated up in the air and a blade covered in a similar blue glow flew towards it. The blade cut right through the thing, and Star cut off the levitation. But the thing just ignored the blood gushing out of it. It then charged Star, who had a horrified look on her face. I rushed over and started to swing the sword at it, again and again, but it just turned to me and opened it's mouth. One chance. I lunged at the thing and stuck the sword right into it's mouth. I aimed for a very important looking organ hanging about 3 inches from the opening of it's mouth. It squealed this time and started thrashing about. I was thrown against the wall, still holding the sword. I watched as it slowly stopped moving. I looked to Star, who still had the horrified look on her face. I walked over to her and started pushing her. "Come, on. Let's get out of here. Now." She nodded and we started to run the same way we were going. I almost cried when I saw a ray of light from the outside. I dove onto the ground and started rolling in the grass. I loved the outside. It was a while before Star spoke, but she finally turned to me and asked "Spark? What did those reports say?" I explained them to her as best I could and waited as she seemed to be thinking. "You said that there were more reports there that you hadn't read?" "Yeah, but I am not going back in there just to see what they say. There was a whole crew if workers in there and we only found 2. I don't want to know what happened to the rest of them, especially if any more are still alive." "Well, I guess you found a good sword, Spark." I looked over to the blue sword laying on the ground where I had dropped it when we got out of the cave. "Yeah, at least we got one good thing out of that hellhole." "So, where do we go now?" I asked, greatly hoping it would be nothing like our last few plans. "Well, the first thing I want to do is get away from this cave." "Agreed." So we started walking... again.
