Author's Note

I was thinking about posting Chapter 1, which was written with this prologue in mind, and being lazy and rewriting the original prologue later, but I decided against it because even though it has some continuity with the original, it'd come off very confusing. So yeah, here's the new, longer prologue.

The old version will stay up for a few days, and when it's removed, Chapter 1 will be posted.

Criticism is welcomed and appreciated.

Prologue - The Burnt Man

Warning: Graphic descriptions of a car accident below. The gore tag is applied for a reason.

Ponyville, Equestria

For the many merchants of the small town of Ponyville, sundown means closing time. Trades were finalized, merchants packed up, and the marketplace was being vacated. Ponies wanted to get home and see their family and have dinner. It was a routine trading day coming to a close, until a tremor rocked the village. The tremor was brief, lasting not even a second, but it drew attention from many ponies. Hundreds of eyes were looking everywhere to try and check for damage and find whatever the cause may be, but to no avail. Expressions of confusions were exchanged and conversations resumed.

A mile away in a crystal tree, a princess was looking over some documents in her personal quarters, until the same tremor broke her focus. In Equestria, there's never been an earthquake. In fact, they don't happen. The only way a vibration that size could've occurred is if something really bad had just happened. After checking herself and her surroundings, she moved towards the balcony and looked around. In the distance, smoke could be seen rising in the White Tail Woods.

With a flap of her wings, she shot off at high speeds to help, and get help.

Pain brought me back to the conscious world with a scream. Immediately, I began hacking and coughing from the intake of something that wasn't quite air. The taste of iron filled my mouth, and when I tried to spit it out, pain tore through the left side of my face. I tried to open my eyes, but I was met with a grainy, stinging pain. Okay, there's smoke, but why? I cracked my eyes open as much as I could to look around and found carnage around me. Apparently, I was in a car crash and I'm trapped in the wreckage. But how? The last thing I remember was..

Wait, why can't I remember anything? Was there anything to remember?

Is this how I am born? Burnt, broken and bloodied? But newborns don't have any memory - so I must have been alive before this.. but right now, there are more pressing matters, namely the fact that I'm trapped and there's smoke rising from somewhere - and when there's smoke, there's fire.

Analyzing the damage around me, I deduce that I must have rolled, hard. The passenger side is crushed completely, and when it rolled onto the left, the driver side window shattered into the left side of my face and the impact with the ground crushed the top and slammed my left side. My head feels terrible, and something in my left arm is absolutely destroyed.. because I can't even feel it. So the worst damage is to my face and my left side. I can still feel my legs, which is good, even though my left leg is very sore.

The first thing I do is unlatch the seat belt to let myself move. Then, I try to use my left leg to gently push myself to the side, but then I'm met with another blast of pain. So something in my leg is broken too, how wonderful. I use my right arm to grab onto the passenger seat and pull myself away, and my leg erupts in pain again. Every second, it's getting harder to breathe with the smoke blasting in my face, so I pick up the pace. I manage to get to the door which opens and I pull myself onto the ground.

Fresh air flows onto my face and I take in heaping gulps and let out hacking coughs. I can see the smoke coming out as I cough. Using my right arm for balance, I pull my right leg under me and push myself up. Taking in my surroundings, all I see are trees. The car's driver side is slammed against a tree, and trees surround me on all sides. How did it even get in here? I don't see any-

Before I'm able to finish my thought, the sound of someone slamming a brick on metal and burning heat erupts from behind me. The noise and the heat is so sudden, that I lose my balance and fall forward, barely catching myself. I roll onto my back to see the front of the cab in flames. I barely made it out alive...

I push myself further away from the flaming wreckage, and once I reach a reasonably safe distance, I settle myself in fallen leaves against a tree. Thankfully, there's still some light, so I'm able to see the damage to myself.

My left arm is mangled and swollen purple and black, my shoulder either dislocated or broken, and with shards of glass stuck throughout my upper arm. There are scratches down to my elbow, where it then is bent inwards and my hand has two compound fractures.. Good god, I don't know whether I should be glad or terrified that I can't feel it. My side is bruised and my left leg is swollen near the middle of my shin, a bone must be broken there too. Using my good arm, I feel up to my face carefully and feel dried blood and glass in my cheek and up near my eye. It's a miracle, if you believe in that stuff, that I haven't lost my eye. I feel around with my tongue and flinch as I run over a few shards of glass.

A ragged sigh escapes me. What did I do to deserve this?

Right then, the universe decided to shit on me again. Time slowed down. I was looking at the burning wreckage of the car. Then the car exploded. Shrapnel was flying outwards, and in my weakened state, reflexes were not on my side. I didn't even have enough time to react before an elongated and warped fragment was flying right at my face. I moved to the left to dodge, but the piece was faster.

It ripped across my right cheek and went up across the lowest part of my ear. I screamed and fell onto my left side.. and right onto my bad arm. I wasn't in much pain before, but now I was. I raised my good hand to the wound to try and give myself comfort, but that effort was futile from the start. It was only moments later that I passed out.

The purple princess burst through the doors of the fire station. The stallions resting on the couches were startled by this, but startled even more so by seeing that it was their resident princess that burst through the doors. With her wings still spread, the only words that were uttered that mattered to the fireponies were "fire in the White Tail Woods". Instantly, the room sprung into action as the stallions and mares donned their firefighting equipment and sent out a call to all local pegasi. The princess was out the door as quick as she came, and already saw hundreds of pegasi in the air, creating dark, heavy rain clouds and pushing them out of the small town.

Twilight dashed off towards the burning forest, careening towards it at high speeds. With a spell already charged, she unleashed a torrent of water right as she pushed through the first few trees. It helped, but there was much more ground to cover. She set down in the middle of a small clearing with a bubble of fresh air contained by her magic. Thick smoke filled the air around the bubble, giving little to no visibility. She continued to throw off waves and waves of magically conjured water that put out fires here and there, but the fire continued to grow.

Through the smoke, Twilight saw a large object spewing flames and leaning against a burning tree. Could this have been what started it? She approached it and let off another wave of water at it. Although it put most of the fire out, there was some remaining on the inside of the object, and she was about to put it out but her eye caught sight of indentations in the ground. Tracks, that lead straight away from it. After putting some thought into it, she decided that the fireponies would be better fit to put put the fire, not her. Instead, she could follow these tracks and find what might have started the fire.

It was only a short while before the tracks let up, and what Twilight found shocked her.

A large, bipedal being that was covered in ash was crumpled on it's side clutching it's face. She could see red blood streaming down it's face and a gory slash being the cause. It laid on it's arm, which was bent in all the wrong angles, and it showed. She felt nauseous seeing such brutal wounds, but then the being's right eye slowly opened. She gasped and backpedaled a bit, as she thought it was dead. She could barely hear what it croaked out.

"Please.. help."

She was surprised it could speak, and that he knew Old Equestrian. "How? What, no, who is this?" She then tried to grasp him with her magic, only to find that it wouldn't work. She tried as hard as she could, yet she couldn't latch onto him at all. That's impossible.. But she couldn't contemplate why magic wouldn't work on him, she had a life to save. She then resorted to trying to have him stand, with her as support. He used her to pull himself up, and it was then that his full size was evident. Twilight, horn excluded, barely came up to his midsection.

She began to walk forward with haste, as her air bubble was stretched thin to support the strange being's oxygen usage, and it was running out at double the rate. Thankfully, they weren't very far into the forest, so they would reach the fields outside of Ponyville soon.

What... is.. this thing?

I was more in shock than pain at the moment, as I was trying to figure out just what the hell is saving me. A small, purple horse. No, that's not right, it's got too big a head to be a horse. And those eyes. Way too big. It's also got wings and a horn. A pegacorn? Am I going mad?

No, I'm just hallucinating because of smoke inhalation. Yeah, that's right.

My musing was cut short by the loud sounds of splitting wood. The pegacorn-illucination heard it too. I couldn't see much because of this strange bubble around me, yet another hallucination I'm sure, but I heard it. A tree was falling, and it was only a matter of time before I.. we.. found out where. The pegacorn's face turned into one of urgency, and she moved faster. I was trying to keep up, but my limp was making it hard. Behind us, I heard a slam and felt a shockwave, and I heard the sounds of another tree cracking ahead of us.

"Es vahna! We nat pora krom til! (Run faster! We don't have much time!)"

... the fuck?

Did it speak?

I'm going fucking nuts, I swear.

Regardless, I picked up my pace, even though my left leg was on fire. Figuratively, of course, but I'm pretty sure it could actually be on fire too. Two seconds later, I felt scratching at my back, and the loud sound of a slam and a shockwave knocked me off my feet. My vision turned back into smoke as the bubble pulled away from me and subsequently vanished. Immediately, the pegacorn stopped and ran back to me and another bubble appeared, and somewhat clear vision was mine once again. "Ganya ra feetra te pora, we zen er benyna! (I can't completely filter the air, we need to hurry!)"

As the pegacorn helped me to my feet again, I loudly muttered "What the hell are you saying?" and surprisingly enough, as we hobbled along, it replied back to me in broken English.

"You say aged Equestrian, me say new Equestrian."

Baffled at the fact that it could actually speak English, or even speak at all, I felt the need to correct it. "Not Equestrian, English."

"Inglesh?"

Before I could bicker with it about what I said as we hobbled along, I remembered our life-or-death situation as another tree fell behind us and the heat raged on. The air in the bubble was rapidly getting thinner, and I could notice she could feel it too.

It was just as I could almost no longer draw breath that we pushed aside some bushes and tumbled into a grassy field. The bubble faded and we both began coughing. Turning my head, I could see many more small horses moving to and fro. Since I landed face-up, I looked into the sky and saw more of them.. flying, and.. pushing clouds? "Where in the hell am I...?"

Exhaustion was setting in rapidly, and my injuries were burning like lava. I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. The pegacorn turned around to me then and rushed over. "No! Awake! Awake!"

I coughed once more, and spat out some blood. "Sorry horsey," I croaked, "the consciousness train is leaving the station.."

The last thing I heard before I passed out was a cry.