On Hiatus, pending rewrite

Hope.

They say that if all else is lost, but even a glimmer of hope remains,  life can persist. Hope is the spark needed to reignite the fire of life.

But hope had long since vanished from this once colored land. Amidst piles of slag and refuse, walk the living, who wish themselves to be dead. Our lives, our dreams, our hopes... shattered. Like our homes. Our faces, gray and weathered, like our surroundings.

For countless millennia, we had kept to themselves, oblivious to all things outside of our peaceful little blue marble in the vastness of space, living peacefully and with great prosperity, under four soft, gentle and radiant rulers. One who had represented the sun and its life-giving warmth. One who had embodied the moon and its gentle, peaceful glow. One who spread the magic of friendship to all corners of the land. And one who taught the power of love to all. Under the four great ones, all the creatures of Equestria grew together, in harmony and in bliss.

But fate conspired against our delicate system. An alien race of immense intelligence rudely entered their world. A race of aliens whose savagery and greed knew no bounds. They felt no compassion towards us ponies, nor any of the other creatures living on this planet. They killed without thought, they exploited our lands, they reaped our resources and they put one of their own to rule over all who still lived on this cursed planet. These savages drained the land of its magic, and harvested its energy for their own use. The four great ones stood up to them for us all, but alas, were left defeated, humiliated, and powerless. As a message to all, and to discourage further resistance, they sent the four far, far away, to Tartarus. Now, we were left at their mercy. Under the shadows of the giants.

*CLINK* *CLINK* *CLINK*

My sole purpose is to break the massive hunks of Tungsten ore, so that it can be processed in the massive metal foundries near the mines where I work. It's backbreaking work, really. But what am I supposed to do about it?

*CLINK* *CLINK* *CLINK*

The labor is hard, unvarying, and soul-destroying. Bring sledgehammer up. Bring sledgehammer down. Bring up. Bring down. Until the Wolframite in front of me has been reduced to small chunks. Then, I dump it into a bucket, and move on to the next piece. Place ore down. Bring up. Bring down. Up. Down. For sixteen hours a day. Sharp fragments of rock cut through my skin and symbolically chip away at my soul. It seems as though our story has ended. The grand history of Equestria. Brought about to an abrupt end by an intergalactic invasion. Cool for the history books, I guess. The invasion was so long ago... I certainly have no recollection of it. I was brought into this world after the new world order so to speak had already been established. I have known nothing but misery in my short twenty winters alive.