Equestria: Fabrication

It's all over.

The young mare paused as her eyes locked firmly on those of the young, scraggly yak before her whilst her body slouched slightly. He, too, frowned through his thick, knotted fur; as she looked around, she was surprised to see the exact same expression on the faces of every warrior on this battlefield. Both the ponies and the yaks stared up at the sky in complete and utter shock, unable to comprehend the joyous news that they had all just heard.

The mare joined both her comrades and her enemies in looking up and she waited quietly. In the silence of the battleground, not heard for three years, a rough voice then sounded.

"Yaks have taken care of pony princesses.

"Ponies have lost. Yaks have won."

A gasp resounded across the battlefield as ponies froze and whimpered, eyes widened and pupils the size of pinpricks. Simultaneously a low chorus of grunts came from the victorious yaks, though it was unenthusiastic at best; it was no surprise. The yaks, unlike their prince, had surely not wanted war—they were only playing their part in society and protecting their own. The young male before the mare, especially, seemed far from patriotic; in fact, his expression had hardly changed at all. There was relief, yes, but she could see no hint of real joy through his thick fur.

They were enemies, the yaks and her, but they weren't so different when it came to it.

"Yaks are kind. Yaks no take ponies' land. But ponies... Ponies remember yaks are stronger."

It was true, the mare supposed. She was, naturally, a powerful specimen of pony; she was an earth mare, after all. But even she—or anyone of her race, for that matter—was too weak to take on yaks in a hoof-to-hoof brawl. And even with the help of equine magic, the ponies had still lost.

Because the princesses had been... dealt with.

The mare whimpered and stepped backwards, unsure of what to do. The yak, however, acted first; with a somewhat shaky hoof he reached out to shake hers, a small smile visible under his matted fur. "War is over," he grunted with a glance up to the sky and a sigh. "We no fight more. We make peace... Uh, your name what?"

She gave a weak smile as she extended her own hoof to meet the yak's. It was puny in comparison. "Oh, Klip. Well, Klipspringer, but I like Klip more."

The yak scrunched up his muzzle and looked at her; a frown graced his face, though it was hard to see as he spoke. "Klip... sprin... ger," he repeated and scratched behind his ear with a furry hoof. He then gave a quiet chuckle. "Okay. Good luck... Pony. I go now, I go home."

Klip gave an unenthusiastic laugh, her heart heavy. She then gave the yak a short wave and turned around sluggishly, her eyes pointed towards home—and then she froze once again.

For Equestria, a once beautiful kingdom, was a wasteland.

Everything was gone.

It was a fact which had, when the war ended all those weeks ago, hit everypony hard. They had grieved for their country and for their princesses, lost to the chaos; they mourned over their fallen comrades and relatives, confused as to what they died for.

Because this new land wasn't worth all the death and bloodshed that had occurred over the years.

Klip was well aware of that fact. It was at times like these—which was, she realised with an utter lack of enthusiasm, all the time—that she could really appreciate just how futile and pointless life was. Her brother had died in the fighting, but for what? All that was left was the broken buildings, victims of the yaks' catapult bombardement over the years, that reminded the survivors of the wonderful world they had lost.

Why? Because the prince of Yakyakistan had a temper tantrum.

It was a well known fact that the Yaks were sticklers for detail, but the prince was an extreme case. Indeed, none of his soldiers had seemed to know why a missed detail was enough to start a war. Most had been more put out at the imperfection of his excuse as opposed to the supposed insult to their race and customs.

With a shake of her head, Klip rose slowly to her hooves and looked about groggily. It was a decent day, she supposed; though the dust was thick (as it always seemed to be) the sky was clear at least. Even better was the fact that the late autumn sun was reasonably not-cold (for to call it warm would have been slightly too generous). A slight breeze blew through admittedly, but if one was careful to shelter behind rubble—Faust knows it wasn't hard to find some, anyway—it wasn't too much of a hindrance.

As she began to make her way down the crumbling paved road of her village—no, her old village, for she could never call this bomb site home—she let her mind wander as it always did. She peered in through the window of old Mrs Clippy's house, let her ears droop more at the sight of the mare's skeletal remains which lay scattered about the lounge. A small meow made her keep moving on, though; she didn't tread any faster—she had all the time in the world, so what point was there in rushing?—but she made sure to get out of the vicinity before her allergies flared up.

That would just be the cherry on the cake.

The ownership of the next house that she peered into was hard to determine. A few years ago, it hard been a pleasant little cottage; now it was, quite literally, a graveyard. Of all the homes, it had the most well kept walls; Klip had, over days of meaningless and uninterested consideration, come to the conclusion that its relatively concealed nature had been a good way to hide the bodies of the dead so that, it a country already ravaged by war, there wasn't another blatantly obvious reminder of death. It looked like just a standard cottage on the outside; even if one knew the truth it made it easier to take than if the bodies had been buried in the cemetery.

On which note, the church was gone as well. Shards of stained glass, decorated with murals of great feats of pony bravery, could be found littered among the pre-war graves; more than one long dead pony, lucky enough not to have seen the war in their time, had been unearthed and flung about, exposed to the elements so that their dusty bones could finally decompose properly.

The first night had been tough. Paranoia flared up in everypony; groups huddled together in shells of their former homes for warmth and protection from the ominous, horror-movie esque scene. But, after the initial dread of a zombie apocalypse and the like, the terror gave way for disinterest which, within a mare week, snowballed into a population of depressed equines.

But the world, not content with its torture of ponies, seemed unwilling to leave them to their moping. Because on that day, exactly three weeks after the war had ended, the Prince of Chaos himself appeared in the sky before them—or a projection of his face did, at least.

"Hello, ponies!" Discord's voice called out, overly happy. No pony would deny that he was just trying to mask his own terror and discontentedness. He had to, of course; he was the leader of the once glorious population of ragtag, gloomy survivors without the will to live. "I do hope you are making the most of this decent day! But I just wanted to say, don't you worry your pretty little faces-" Klip didn't miss the little sniffle which interrupted his speech there. "-because I've got everything under control!"

Klip frowned at that statement and, as she watched an elderly couple limp out from their remains of a home, she sent a shrug in their direction. They were equally perplexed, by the looks of it, but far from curious.

Curiosity didn't exist in a land of depression.

There was no time for Klip to consider that fact, however, as an earth shuddering boom sounded when Discord clicked his claws. She gasped as her mouth was jerked wide open—as were the muzzles of the elderly couple—and something small and bitter was forced down her throat by some unknown force. For just a moment, everything went slow; her breaths were tagged and stolen and her legs gave way as she fell to the floor, her vision black—and then, only a moment later, everything was back to normal.

But it wasn't normal. Everything appeared brighter and warmer than it had before and, though she wasn't aware of the fact, Klip didn't pick up on the point that the whole street was in a state of ruin. In her eyes, it looked just fine, though that wasn't to say she couldn't see the half torn down buildings; she just thought nothing of it. One thing she did think of, though, was how amazing the new telephone box emblazoned with the words, "Rainbow pill dispensary" looked.

Discord gave a short and much too loud chortle of laughter as he clapped his claws and paw together. His final words before his face vanished from the sky were, "I'll keep you safe until your princesses are back. In the meantime... Just keep taking rainbow pills. And I promise you, everything'll be just great!"