Overture

“As long as Hope lives in our hearts, darkness shall never prevail.”

-Earth Pony maxim

Daylight rose from over the Western mountains. As the light slid across the fields and uninhabited spaces, farmers and wild things began their days. Closer to cities, the factories had already been running full-tilt for hours. Another day, just like any other, had dawned upon Queen Chromia’s empire.

High in a tower in the shining city of Canterlot, a young mare had been awake long before the sun rose. Shafts of light illuminated artifacts and strewn papers. A madmare dashed about, rambling and haphazardly tossing annotated maps and books with already broken spines.She was a tan pegasus whose mane evoked the colors of a moonbow: gradients of white, grey, and black cut in a rakish style that her Mother hated and her sister admired.

She didn’t look up from her instruments and maps spread across a low table, when her sister, a pale grey pegasus with a bright blonde mane and eyes threw open the door and sighed at the mess her beloved sister had made of their library. She dutifully set down an engraved silver tray bearing a tea service of the same metal, pouring out a cup that she set beside her older sister. The tan-pelted pegasus didn’t notice, or didn’t care, having pulled down a book and begun studiously examining the contents of a single page. She didn’t respond as her sister practically shouted her name until she shoved the book aside and screamed in her face.

“Derringer Eskarina! Mother would have a fit if she knew you’d been locked in here for three full days. She’s starting to worry.”

The elder sister turned to the younger, taking in a deep breath before letting it out. “I’m close, Ditsy, I can smell it.” She cast aside the book she was reading and pointed up at a map tacked to the wall above her desk, carefully annotated with the knowledge of a thousand books, the travel paths of Cloudsdale, Fillysburg, and Canterlot itself marked out. “I left just yesterday. I went Below. I found a little shop I hadn’t seen before. Oh, Ditsy, you wouldn’t believe the things he had there. So many things I would have given my left hoof to own- but he said they were all meant for another collector. Except these two books,” she tapped the book she’d been reading and another set beside it, “and this map.”

“Derringer… Derry, please remember, Mother is very ill. It’s very important that we pay proper due to her and follow our lessons. These, fancies of yours, they were fine when we were fillies, but you must remember that you are a lady and a representative of the house of Doo.”

“I know that. I just want to do something with my title. I’m sure Mother would grow to like her little Derringer being an adventuring archaeologist.” Derring grinned and rubbed the back of her head. “Besides, you know I only get this excited when it’s real. Like when I swore up and down the first floor broom cupboard held a secret passage, or when we found that bootlegger’s stash in our new summer home.”

The younger mare, Ditsy, pulled off her glasses and rubbed her forehead. “I’ll bite if it will get you to behave for a little. What’s your big lead this time?”

She immediately regretted her decision when her elder sister thunked down an aged and, most importantly, thick volume from the stack at the edge of her desk, the same that had been shoved aside from her nose. “A first-edition volume of Prediktionf and Profecief  from the third century, well before the Purge. At first, I treated it like a curiosity, until I read this passage.”

‘Fire shall reign, and destruction shall follow, but the hearts of ponies shall stand strong. With hope in their hearts, they shall weather the coming storms.

The dreams of a foal lie shattered, broken

And from the shards she builds a token

Sword of steel and magic primeval

Justice in her heart shall conquer evil.

Westward bound but not for home

Compassion rules at the cross of roads

In the heart of the forest shall she make a choice

Guiding with love and knowledge from tome.

The least-loved of a great house shall become a clown

A joyous soul to dispel the gloom

Bravery is also hers, in the face of danger does she laugh

Lifting the hearts of her friends to overcome their trials.

Hopeless and lost does one ponder

To a fire from the dark does she wander

Inspiration she shall find and foster

Protecting the helpless with her pen.

From tin to gold to steel

A mare does make her meal

Tall and strong she shall grow

Everything she performs ‘always just so’.

From these five a sixth

The strength to endure

The heart to temper the sword

The joy to dispel the dark

Sharing their misery and their triumphs

Standing stalwart, to their own hearts true

Hope.”

When Derring finished the passage and looked up, she looked upon her sister’s face with a bright grin. She’d felt something tug in her heart after reading the words, like something bright was in the future of her homeland.

Her sister, however, was staring out the window over Derring’s shoulder. She tapped her sister and frowned, pointing at what she was watching.

In the world below, a bright light was swelling, a cloud of smoke and debris rising up into the heavens and rolling at its top, producing a mushroom above the flash. They watched as it seemed a great wind expanded outward from the point in the midst of the Whitetail Woods, knocking aside huge trees like matchsticks.

In the midst of a noise so intense that it wasn’t audible, the wave crossed Canterlot, the blast force jostling it in its place suspended in the air. The two sisters screamed as the wall fell in, shards of glass and masonry recoiling off a pink hemisphere mere inches from their noses.

They held one another as the ground shook and the sound increased in volume, shutting their eyes against the cataclysm erupting around them and burying noses in each other’s necks, folding wings together for safety.

When they stood again and opened their eyes, they found that the library had been blown apart. One wall was fully collapsed, and books littered the ground, the debris forming a perfect circle around the two. Ditzy tapped her sister’s shoulder and pointed again-- at the map hung to the wall.

Right in the midst of modern-day Saddle Arabia, in the Valley of Pony Kings, a letter opener with a bright jewel in the hilt had been slammed through the map and the wall itself.

“Is that a sign, like the book talked about?”