It’s hard to say how long this has been going on; some say this is the way it’s been for centuries, but I don’t believe that. I believe this world was different, fresher, and more harmonic. You don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, I guess I’ll try to explain as well as I can. Ahem. Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together, and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies. Wait. You know this story? So, you know about the sisters getting a chunk of their kingdom taken away and the different tyrants spreading darkness across the land. No. Where have you been? I guess in a nutshell, there were three oppressors that banned together to take down the regal sisters. Not many saw this as a threat, but lo and behold they killed the eldest and crippled the youngest. Even with their royal guards, they were still overpowered.
So, the oppressors took three-fourths of the land, leaving the young princess with the worthless one-fourth of the land. We used to live in Canterlot and some of us in Ponyville, but know we live in the Badlands. This place is literally filled with nothing but dirt and rocks. It’s still surprising that we manage to live a…okay life here. We manage to hold enough natural resources to restore and build our houses, we have enough water to last us a whole year, and now we have food to last us months. I know the food shortage sounds bad, but my troops will be back with more food. Anyway, that’s really our life here it sounds alright but, it’s actually quite tough. During the winter, we’re forced to stay inside our houses because the Windigos are always causing us to ice over. I remember we lost about 20 ponies that day and to make it worse…we couldn’t burry them. The good news (kind of morbid but, still good) is we had enough “wood” to make fires. But, that’s not the worse part. The tyrants are always coming over to our land to demand resources, even though they know we’re short. They’re always so pushy!
“TWILIGHT!”
Speaking of pushy, I have to go.
I closed my diary and set down the quill on my desk. Once again I hear the shrill cry, “TWILIGHT!”
I only groaned in annoyance. I knew those screams and I’ve always hated them, luckily they only visit annually. By the way, my name’s Twilight Sparkle, just in case you couldn’t tell. I used to be the protégé to Princess Celestia before her passing; well I wasn’t really truly able to be her student because I was only able to enjoy it for week, before she died. Anyway, now I’m the servant to Luna, Celestia’s sister. I know it seems like I got demoted, but it’s not her fault, it’s illegal for us to have an education. Take a wild guess on who you think passed that law. As I was saying, it’s not that bad that I’m her servant. She’s really nice and she secretly studies magic with me in the catacombs. We like to go there so Celestia can enjoy endeavors as well, in spirit of course. Hopefully, we don’t sound crazy. “TWILIGHT, COME HERE!”
I hear my name get shouted once again, in the speaker above me. Using my magic, I levitated the funnel down to me and shouted, “I heard you the first time!”
I doubt they heard me or even cared. I put on my holey cloak, opened my door, and left the confinements of my room. As I descended down the steps inside the tower, I looked out of one the windows and watched some of the workers. A bunch of ponies were gathered outside the back of the castle, awaiting orders from Luna. Whenever the monarchs meet, that always meant more or-rarely-less work for us. From the height I was at I couldn’t see, but I could tell that they all were exhausted. We’ve been gathering food to get ready for this winter; no doubt the tyrants were going to send the Windigos on us again. After a while, I walked down the steps again and got to a wooden with black hinges and doorknob. I took a deep breath and exited the tower and entered the fire. An annoyed voice groaned, “Finally you came, did you not here us calling you name?”
I mumbled, “It was kind of hard not to notice.”
“Excuse me!”
“Nothing at all, Queen Chrysalis,” I finished with a bow. I looked up and saw the three monarchs just glaring at me. I just glowered back, they all knew I hated them, and so there was no point in hiding it.
Let me introduce the monarchs: The first is Queen of the Changelings, Chrysalis. She’s really stubborn and hot tempered, so I have to watch what I say and do around her. She owns small parts of Equestria like Canterlot, Stablemark, Equestria Kingdom, Germaney, Saddle Arabia, and a few others. Next to her is King of the Crystal Empire, Sombra. There’s not much to say about him; he has this dark mysterious aura about him that me shudder every time I go near him. He not only owns the Crystal Empire, he also owns Haypan, Chineigh, Manezuela, French Ponynesia, Prance, and other countries. The last one is a draconequus name Discord. He’s nothing but a trickster. He likes to pull pranks and by “pranks” I mean drying riverbeds and causing earthquakes at any random moment. This is someone you definitely don’t want to mess with, because he can change all reality with literally a snap of his talon. Anyway, he owns all of Amaneica, parts of Mexicolt, Ponyville, and half of Caneighda. I actually try not to exasperate Discord; I’m still surprised that he still allowed us to live in Amaneica, so I don’t want him to lead us to exile.
“So Twilight, have any idea where you beloved Princess is at? She’s not sulking about her sister’s death again is she,” Discord asked rather dryly. Getting out of my train of thought, I answered, “No, your majesty. I don’t know where Princess Luna is. Also, shouldn’t she be allowed to be depressed? It’s the two year anniversary of her passing,” I elucidated as I walked over to the side of Luna’s seat. The meeting room wasn’t much of a sight. The walls were made of broken gray granite blocks (bits of moonlight seeped from the cracks), the purple holey drapes covered dirtied windows, the table is a stone tablet held up by stone slabs, and the chairs were crafted from the few trees we could find. Yep, nothing special, but it was at least a roof over our heads. Sombra chuckled at my answer, “Of course not, she should be used to it by now. I mean, it’s not like it was a big secret that she held animosity for her sister. So, she should be happy that she’s now princess of her own kingdom, or whatever it is you call this slave drive.”
I bit my tongue to hold back a few obscenities I had for him. She told me about the jealousy she had for her sister, but she regrets holding it because she believes that’s what held her back from protecting her sister. So, she doesn’t feel she deserves the title of princess, but she certainly doesn’t own a “slave drive”. Buck you, Sombra! “Well, she better get here quickly,” Chrysalis changed the subject, “we all have our own kingdoms to run, you know.”
“I know, you mention that every meeting. Every. Single. Meeting,” I say with great animosity. Chrysalis slammed her hooves on the table and got ready to shout at me, but got distracted by the double doors behind her opening. I beamed brightly at Princess Luna, who smiled weakly back at me. I looked at her back, which used to hold wings and only swallowed sadness. I can only imagine the pain she had at getting them removed. She walked over to me, I pulled out her chair, and she sat down, and began the meeting. She started, “I would like to apologize for being late, I was…busy with personal business. Although, I am confused as to why you called a meeting his early, especially since you know we’re busy harvesting our resources because of winter closing in.”
You know, she has a point. I narrowed my eyes, what’re they up to. The three monarchs all gave each other malicious smile, and Discord began, “Well, we called this meeting to bring up a certain issue that’s been happening in our dominions.”
“And, what would that be?” Luna inquisitively asked.
“Thieves!” The three exclaimed. My eyes widened as well as Luna’s, but I think hers did for a different reason. Her shock expression soon turned into frustration. She fumed, “This again! This is the third time you tyrants brought this up! If you honestly think my subjects would do a thing as stealing, well you couldn’t be further from the truth. They care for everypony in all of Equestria, even in your dominions! Tell me, what makes you think we’d take anything!?”
Right after she said that, Discord snapped his fingers and after a blinding flash of light, on the table revealed two tied up ponies from out area. One had an orange coat, an olive-yellow mane and tail styled in a ponytail, sap green eyes, three freckles on each cheek, and three red apples as her cutie mark. The other one had a cerulean coat, ruby red eyes, a rainbow colored mane and tail, and a red-blue-yellow lightning bolt coming out of a cloud as a cutie mark. The Princess’s jaw dropped. I only bit my lip. How did they get caught? She asked, “Rainbow Dash and Apple Jack, what is the meaning of this?”
The two only looked at each other in silence and then looked at me. Luna looked down at me and raised her brows in surprise. I opened my mouth to speak, but she raised her hoof to silence me. She looked back up at the monarchs and asked, “What have they been thieving?”
Chrysalis answered, “Our food, Luna.”
“Only because we have nothing here, if we were gonna survive the winter, this was the only way!” Rainbow shouted, “You three keep hogging all the food to yourself, meanwhile we’re near starvation.”
AJ put in, “As much as ah was agains’ this operation, ah ‘ave ta agree wit’ Rainbow. Why are y’all keepin’ tha food to yerself? It jus’ ain’t fair.”
Discord responded, “Well, it only makes sense. We’ve numerous amounts of countries to feed, which is about over a million ponies. Meanwhile, you only have your few thousand maybe hundred.”
“Well, if you were kept in a dry and abandoned desert without any supplies to fulfill your needs, then how else would you react? You are the ones who droves up to this,” I retorted back. “It’s not our fault if you greedy ponies can’t just learn to share,” Chrysalis mocked. The three went into a thunderous laughter, which sent my blood boiling. How dare they treat us like we’re nothing!?! Those pieces of-UGH! I looked over at Luna who just had her head hanging down. She knew she couldn’t really do much, it only worsen the penalty they’ll give her, plus there’s three against one (no doubt she’ll want me, AJ, and Rainbow to flee) so there’s no point in fighting. She asked quietly, “How much do we owe you?”
The three plainly said, “One-fourth of your resources.”
I gasped, “But, that’ll barely make us through the whole winter! You can’t-”
“Watch us,” Sombra countered. The monarchs got up from their seats and started walking away. I don’t know what happened after that, the only thing I remember is that all I saw was red, and then the next thing is that I see a gaping hole in the wall between Chrysalis and Sombra. He snarled in anger. His horn shined a black aura and he summoned a tentacle out of the ground that wrapped tightly around my neck. I hacked and coughed when I felt my windpipe getting slowly crushed. He walked up to me slowly and hissed in my ear, “Don’t you ever attack me again, you filthy peasant!”
When he was done, he smacked me with his hoof; I slammed into the table, and blacked out.
When I awoke, I was in my bedroom on my cot. I got up quickly and ran down the steps. When I swung open the door, no one was there, but I heard sobbing. I walked out of the meeting room and went down the long hallway until the sound became louder. Once the sobbing became clearer, I used my horn to light my way. I saw Luna in a corner bawling. I cleared my throat and she looked up at me. She only cried even harder. I walked over to her and nuzzled her chin. “Th-they…” She started.
I asked, “What did they say?”
“They said they w-w-want all of our r-resources n-now and they expect them by the end of a-autumn, or else,” she whimpered, “or else they’ll send the guards to s-s-s-s-slaughter half of our population. Then they said, ‘It’s not like it ma-matters. You p-ponies won’t m-make it anyw-w-way.’”
Once she was done, she cried and hugged me. I only remained silent. This is my fault. If only I kept quiet we would’ve had a chance and now we have…no! No! I won’t give up. I consoled, “Don’t cry, Princess Luna. They’re only saying that to make us give up hope, but don’t fret. I have a plan.”
