The Last Equestrian War

+CHAPTER IV+

The Trinity of Heirs

You walk around Ponyville to see if you see any life in the deserted city. After Twilight Sparkle's words, you feel a little hopeful and determined that you might find some life out there. After all, death could be lingering in every corner, but that doesn't means that it would be your only company in this land. Equestria was the land of one the finest type of beings in existence, ponies of every kind existed, bad ones and good ones. In your mind, you expect ponies from all kinds to come, you get worried for the situation of the good ones, but you also feel terrified for the power of evil ones and their intentions. You go back to the house of Applebloom, wondering who stays with her. She helped you, yet you gave her nothing in return. You could at least get to know her family a little more, know who are her friends and family and get to know more about them as well. Walking towards her home, you see the chimney still burns strongly as ever, you knock on the door as an orange Pegasus opens the door, she looks up to you.

----+----

Scootaloo:

“Ahem” She clears her throat. “You’re from around? I don’t remember you being here last time… Anyways, come in, one movement and we kill you…” She opens the door fully, revealing a smiting workshop. You see the yellow pony that greeted you before as she smiles when she sees you. Once Scootaloo finds out that you are indeed acquainted to Applebloom, she shows to be much more receptive to you. “Ah, sorry, it’s just that we’re always on edge because of this damn curse.”  She picks a smiting hammer and sits on front of one of the two anvils that was around. “Well, you should know that we, the living ponies are a lot more violent now due to this curse… Not that we want to be violent, but because we need to be just to survive… I’m sorry for the death threat… ” You nod to her and say it was nothing, she smiles and picks an iron ore, smiting it right away to re-form it into a refined iron ingot. “Well, Applebloom and I are blacksmiths; we sell our weapons to travelers nearby.” Her saying leaves you a bit stunned, you can’t imagine the little yellow mare handling a huge hammer and smiting down some iron ingots into huge dual-handling broadswords very well, but since she’s one living in this house, you start taking that image as true, as crazy it may be. You look to Scootaloo and ask of Applebloom’s parents, or her sister, none of them is around, and that bothers you quite a lot. “Oh...” She fumbles in silence for a second, looking over the doorway for a second. “Her parents were long dead when she was a little filly… Her older brother sought for a cure of the curse, but has not returned ever since... And her sister serves in the Moon Herald’s main line of defense. She fights like a master. Their love is very strong, but after the loss of her older brother, their love got even stronger, even with this distance, they are now better than ever.” Scootaloo smiles as she goes on to smite some more. You look down as you feel how much this curse has taken from that young pony. You then remember what you wanted to give to Applebloom, you look and then you ask to Scootaloo about her and her life. Silence greets the room for some seconds. She then looks to you and stands up. “Can we go out for a walk, then?”

----+----

Walking outside, accompanied by Scootaloo, you follow her around to wherever she wants to go, soon enough, you end up at what seems a home in the clouds, wondering how you are going to get on there, you look around the house, seeing its majestic design, seeing countless marks of a rainbow thunder coming out of a cloud. Scootaloo smiles to you and gives you a precious possession of hers:

----+----

Scootaloo:

“This is a bottled cloud… It will propel you into the air… high enough to reach as up as that house is… Come on, let’s go!” She looks up and flies up to the house with no problem.

----+----

You focus on the bottled cloud as it does just as she told you, you get sky-rocketed, getting jumped higher than the trees, you hold on the house’s entrance floor, getting up and looking to Scootaloo, you admire her item and thank her, trying to give it back:

----+----

Scootaloo:

“Not needed, I won’t need it anymore, now that I can fly for real, this can be passed on to someone that can really use this… You will surely use this more than me.” She smiled to you as you both enter the cloud house. Inside it, a lot of rusted trophies and pictures of Scootaloo and a cyan colored Pegasus. “Dashie… If only you could see my new friend…” Scootaloo held one picture close to her chest as she smiled, you see a tear escape her eye. Soon after, you question her about the Cyan pony. “Rainbow Dash, the fastest pony to ever live. She was so quick; she could even pass a thunder!” Her eyes flashed with emotion. “A pony with so much awesomeness; she rocked out, saved everyone when they needed her!!” She was speaking all good things about this Cyan pony, tears flew from her eyes. Then she stopped, the curse’s reminder bringing the bad memories to her again. “But even being the most awesome pony, she wasn’t immortal… She… When she heard of the curse, she was the first to take action at it… Armed herself, she went to battle. Fought with all she could. Battled and ravaged all the cursed ponies that she could. Those that were tarnished enough to turn themselves away from the kingdom fought against Rainbow Dash, but they never matched her, that was until a giant came to battle, a pony that was so big, it outmatched her just by his size… It grabbed Rainbow Dash by her leg; he crushed her on the walls and on the ground. She didn’t survive; the wounds blew all of her organs. As her last wish, she left me her most precious thing... Her soul...” She looks down. “I took her living as mine, only because she allowed me to… All the ponies that she killed came to me as well… I have a lot to thank her for… I never really met my parents… I always was cared by Rainbow Dash… So she was a mother to me… And that is why I praised her like a goddess.” Scootaloo looked down, sad with the telling of her story.

----+----

As you are coming back with Scootaloo, you are thinking of something to do to her, in a manner to say that you just respect her story of loss. Without an option of much to say, you just put a hoof on her back and look in her eyes, you tell her that she’ll be ok, and that her step mother was a beautiful mare, she gives you a gleeful smile, before walking with you back to their workshop, inside it, a white mare worked on a hammer with magic, enchanting it as she looked up to the two of you when you both arrived:

----+----

Sweetie Belle:

“Ah, you are the pony that Applebloom told to be with us today?” Sweetie Belle spoke, a smile on her face, her looks of an innocently happy mare. “Welcome to our humble place, I am Sweetie Belle; I am the Magic Mare of this place.” She smiles as she makes the acquaintance with you. “So you came to this land because of the story that my friend Twilight knows? That story is a lot scary…” You are looking into her eyes, you both talk a long time, friend talking do come into you, you discover that she really was found of cupcakes, and many other activities was her favorites, including finding what her cutie-mark was about. Those many facts make you see how different life was before this dark curse hit this land. Then, she delves into a deep subject for her, when the curse hit. “When it happened, I was in a picnic with my family... The curse was taking over slowly and we weren’t caring over the facts… Since it started slowly, who were us to care? We were just a family of unicorn ponies living. That was until 2 months after… A wyvern! A source of this power just created a fully-fledged wyvern!! And it was wreaking havoc next to my house… How could we escape that beast’s embrace?! There was no way… All the ponies that could do something where out on the lines of defense, fighting against the first signs of cursed ponies, they moved in small armies and the defense lines held well against these monsters… But we, the civilians, were unprotected against these beasts. My sister Rarity was in town, preparing to be in the lines. She was still untrained, but she came to help us, I watched her battle in worry, I wanted to do something to assist my sister like I always did, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything. So I trusted that my sister would be able to do something.” Sweetie Belle then gasped and put her hoof in her mouth, a tear escaping her eye. “I’m sorry… She… Got dilacerated… The dragon torn her apart after minutes of fighting… She was so brave… Who came to her aid later was a young dragon… Spike, he seemed devastated by the scene, when he saw Rarity destroyed, he shouted in anger, it is true that a dragon of his size couldn’t beat a Wyvern already grown, but he managed to… He tore the beast in two in mere seconds…” She looked down. “He left me with no words on how easy he did that.” She smiled. “It was funny, we always joked that he had a crush on Rarity, and whether it was true or not… But… My Celestia, it was really true…” She was tearing through her eyes, she looks up. ”I’m sorry for crying, I was so sad for remembering this story, I lost my sister, someone so close to me, and it really hurts me deep… I lost my parents too, because they couldn’t take the pain of losing Rarity… But I feel more hurt for Spike… How hurt can he be that he lost his loved one? I feel… So destroyed for him… I lost everyone, and I feel bad for it, but I feel worse for someone else other than me…” She then looks to you. “Does that make me somepony bad?” You look to her and then give her a hug. You smile and reassure her that she is a wonderful pony, even having a terrible loss; she is capable of being careful to those around her. She smiles and hugs you back, happy that she knows she met someone nice.

----+----

You let go of Sweetie Belle and stand up as you decide to go outside to have a breath of fresh air, after all, a lot of stories were heard today. Once you go out, though, there is a new face in town, though. A pony holding a mallet, his eyes showing a sinister look, he looks to everyone that appears on his sight, Spike comes out of the library with a face of wonder, he looks to the pony as he stands by your side, he warns you to stay on your guard. Sweetie Belle appears by her doorway.

----+----

“What can we do for you, stranger pony?!” Spike shouts.

“…I come for the head of the Herald.” The pony speaks in a calm voice.

“WHAT?!” Spike shouts angrily.

“Defy me and die; you will suffer the consequences if you face me.” The pony grabbed his mallet.

Spike threw himself at the pony with raging fury, swinging his axe; the pony dodged and hit Spike right in his chest with the mallet, sending him flying right to a wall.

“SPIKE!!!” Sweetie Belle shouted as she ran towards Spike, kneeling by his side.

The pony with the mallet turns to you:

“And what about you? Do you dare defy me as well, you pitiful being?” He speaks, laughing and walking towards you.

[TO BE CONTINUED]