All was broken, all was lost. Where smoke and putrid air fills innocent lungs is where hope is broken like a fragile image of ponykind through the eyes of madness. The pain hadn't begun yet, neither had the sickness. Even still, worry had shrouded over the denizens of the crumbling remains of a city once known to many across Equestria as Canterlot like an atmosphere of curtains.
Howling winds whistled lazily, blowing dust in it's wake into the eyes of a young colt named Praiseworthy. The pale-white furred stallion who was almost entering adulthood was barely recognizable with the ash and dust coated almost completely onto his face. Yet his pale, rose-colored eyes still glinted hazily with held-back tears.
He loped with a slight limp in his leg across the market street. He had just awoken from the smoldering chaos that the Changelings had wrought upon Canterlot. His memories were faded. Fragments of terror, fire, and death were the only things he could recall in his mind, the only thing that he would think about. He gazed at the toll the vermin laid upon his home.
Looking across the Market street, once bright and colorful, with cheerful fillies frollicking through the streets causing whatever mischief have they, with busy Ponies trotting carrying on with their business and conversing with familiar merchants, was clearly now nothing but ruin. Tattered stands blew in the wind and planks of wood lay scattered and snapped and torn across the entire road. Dismembered and mutilated Corpses of fine ponies he once knew were strewn across the street and slumped over metal fences that were polished with a scarlet sheen by blood. A lonely howling wind muffled by the emptiness left Praiseworthy's heart a shallow husk. And in the middle of the road, was a single rose glowing faintly with a hue of dark jade green that could be seen through the dark dusty wind, untouched by the wreckage and destruction.
The Changelings had won, and what a sweet victory it must've been.
