The Price of our Sins

Equestria

Birthplace of Ponykind.

My once peaceful home was a paradise, harmony reigned in the highest order, friendship provided us with all the concord we needed, and for one thousand years we lived in a time of love and tolerance. It’s funny how such an unending period of peace can be broken by the span of just a few days.

Six years ago, our planet was visited by beings from another world, six mighty warriors who we came to know as the Toa. They were seeking another of their kind, one who was bent on destroying our way of life, and lead us all to a startling conclusion. Our races have met before.

My friends and I, along with the Toa heroes, found the defiler of our land, the one they called Makuta, and fought against him. The battle was long, the cost was extreme, and the dead beyond the counting, none of those who fought that day came away without scars. I should know, I received my fair share in that fight.

With the dead thick upon the ground, and the Makuta banished back to his own realm, followed swiftly by the Toa, Ponykind assumed that life as we knew it would return to normal, that peace would once again rule the land. It was a hope that has gone unfounded.

For three years, negotiation talks with foreign nations progressed and deteriorated. Relationships frayed to the point where they were almost none existent as countries and species demanded reparations for their part in the war. In time, the negotiations came to only one inevitable outcome, but one we still could never have seen coming.

Our planet has been kept at peace by an Alliance for time immemorial, all races working together to assure that what happened one thousand years ago when the Makuta first arrived, and four years ago when the Makuta came back could never happen again. The Alliance was headed by ponies, the benevolence of the princesses guiding it through the ages, but now, we are no longer a part of this great Alliance.

Deciding that Equestria was the root of the problems that cost the other races so dearly, the Alliance was reformed into the Coalition, this one with only one goal in mind: to break the power of Equestria, ensuring that the princesses of the sun and moon would never again hold absolute power. The war against the Makuta proved them vulnerable, the actions of the Coalition will handle the rest.

War broke out a year ago, cities fell and burnt while ponies fled from the onslaught and the death that the Coalition brought with it, leading to where we are today, the siege of Canterlot, the last bastion of ponykind, the last hope for Equestria.

My name was Twilight Sparkle, formerly the Element of Magic, and this is the story of our sins, and the price we pay for them.