Chapters 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.
On Hiatus, pending rewrite
One
After sixteen hours of this dreadful labor, the working day is finally over. The sound of the whistle blown to dismiss us from this arduous work is met with great relief by all the workers here at this mine. I place my hammer down at my station and merge into the stream of equally tired and disgruntled miners headed back towards the township. What a pitiful sight we were. Mere husks of living things. Subjugated, oppressed, defeated.
Slowly and gradually, the stream begins to thin out as ponies walk off towards their respective residences and look for solace in the night. I approach my own home. A tin shack, like all of the other shacks in the town. Walking in, I am greeted by possibly the only other living thing I care about. My dear May Flower. A beautiful, shining gem in this world of gray. She smiles as my weary face pokes through the doorway and pulls me in for a warm embrace.
"Thunder Hoof, my dear... you look exhausted."
I try my best to smile and appear fine, but there is no way to hide it. "I am, May. I am."
She caresses my face. "Come on, sweetheart. I have dinner ready. The overlords have allowed us access to hot water tonight, so we can get a good wash."
May wraps one of her soft, pink wings around me and gently walks me towards the small kitchen/dining room. I sit down in a creaky, old chair and she brings out some dense, dark bread to go with the hot soup on the table. I stare at the pegasus. Even in times as deplorable as this, she still manages to find a way to make me feel warm inside. Placing the tray of bread down, she rolls her eyes at me playfully and giggles.
"Stop staring, I'm already your marefriend. Hurry and eat!"
I can't help but smile. "Alright, I will."
From the dining room window, I can see far out into the night. The lights of Canterlot shine with extraordinary brightness, in contrast to the darkness of the sky. The overlords -the aliens, the humans- had taken the city for themselves. The stories some have told about that city are truly wonderful. They say that Canterlot always has running water and electricity, that Canterlot's streets are clean and all paved with the highest quality stone and marble, that the building are adorned with gold but most astonishingly, none of its residents have to ever worry about hunger... Quite different from the world I live in. May must have caught me staring, because her voice pulls me back to reality.
"Hey, Thunder. The soup is going to get cold. Don't think about what you will never be. It'll only make our situation hurt more. Make the best of what you have, Thunder. We will be fine if you do."
On Hiatus, pending rewrite
Two
Another day, another long day of work, for meager compensation. I left work slightly earlier than usual, feigning injury, but in reality, I was just sick of it all. But today, something peculiar was unfolding in the town center. As I approached, I saw the shape of a pony, standing slightly above a small crowd. The pony appeared to be speaking to the crowd, evidenced by the cheers occasionally erupting from the mob, but I was a bit too far away from the orator to really hear what he or she was talking about. Curiosity got the better of me, and I was drawn towards the speaker.
As I approached, his figure began to become more easily discernible. A stout, strong-looking Earth pony, ragged features, weathered face, and of course, like the rest of us, no Cutie Mark, a side effect of the land losing its magic. He spoke passionately and the response from the crowd was overwhelming.
"... THEY TAKE FROM US ALL THAT WE HAD OR WILL HAVE, AND GIVE NOTHING TO US! LOOK AT THE PRINCESSES! THEY HAVE MANAGED TO EVEN TAKE THEM AWAY FROM US!"
A roar rises from the mob surrounding you.
"WHAT IS TO SAY THAT IF WE DO NOT ACT, WE WILL NOT SHARE A SIMILAR FATE?"
The crowd answers back. "YEAH!"
"WE HAVE NUMBERS, WE HAVE WILLPOWER, WE HAVE EVERYTHING TO FIGHT FOR!"
This guys is crazy! This is... Open treason! No nut-job would be stupid enough to do something like this, in a public place, no less. Sure, the square was devoid of Human soldiers, but they make their rounds through the city and a crowd of this size is SURE to draw their attention. But the stallion, who must surely not be completely ignorant to these assumptions, continues.
"WE MUST RISE UP, MY FELLOW CHILDREN OF THE EARTH! WE MUST RECLAIM WHAT IS OURS!"
I start to back up. I really, REALLY, don't want to get caught mingling with the wrong crowd. As I start to inch my way out of the gaggle of ponies, I hear the sound of boots. And then gunfire.
"YOU! STOP! IN THE CENTER!"
A platoon of human soldiers, armed and clad in body armor, throws the gathering into chaos. I flee the scene in the ensuing confusion, but I steal a couple of glances back as I run.
"SEDITION! TREASON! INSTIGATING REVOLUTION! TAKE HIM!" the humans cry. More gun shots. The screams of the crowd now drown out the yells of the humans. I watch in abject horror as the overlord troops start to gun down the gatherers. A couple of soldiers work together to pull the speaker out from the crowd, the stallion fighting desperately to break free, at least until one of the humans brings down his weapon onto the stallion's head in one terrific blow. The rest of the crowd has been dispersed or killed by now. A newly formed ring of human soldiers completely blocks out my view of the scene as I continue to hurry back home. All the way back, a thousand thoughts run through my head at the same time. 'What is this going to mean for us?' 'Are the overlords going to lash out at us?' 'Is the revolutionary fervor an isolated thing?' Panic sweeps through my body. A sense of dread soon takes over. The overlords are brutal. They are going to do something to pull us back in line. They are going to do something to make sure all traces of revolutionary thought are stamped out from our society. But at the same time, it all seems rather exciting and even.... Hopeful. If someone was brave enough to speak out against the overlords, what's not to say that there are not more who are willing to do the same?
