Author's Note

4/4/2023 This story was one of my first & is defunct. I'm working on a new fic to replace this.

1 | Prologue

'War. War never changes.'

'Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there was an era when the ideals of friendship gave way to greed, selfishness, paranoia and a jealous reaping of dwindling space and natural resources. Lands took up arms against their neighbors, like we still tend to do today. The end of the world occurred much as we had predicted -- the world was plunged into an abyss of balefire and dark magic. The reasons, as always, purely our own. The world was nearly wiped clean of life. A great cleansing; a magical spark struck by pony hooves that quickly raged out of control. Megaspells, rained from the skies. Entire lands were swallowed in flames and fell beneath the boiling oceans. Ponykind was almost extinguished, their spirits becoming part of the ambient radiation that blanketed the lands. A quiet darkness fell across the world.'

'But it was not, as some had predicted, the end of the world. Instead, the apocalypse was simply the prologue for another bloody chapter in pony history. In the early days, thousands were spared the horrors of the holocaust by taking refuge in enormous underground shelters known as Stables. But when they emerged, they had only the hell of the wastes to greet them. When they opened, their inhabitants set out across ruins of the old world to build new societies, establish new villages, forming tribes.'

'Under the vast expanse of Equestria, will the ponies of this land be able to overcome the trials of the Wasteland or will they succumb to the swallowing strength and the vices the Wasteland contains?'

Y’know, I once heard that art imitates life and vice versa. Though how fucked up must you be to predict this fucking wasteland coming true? I am surely no optimist in a world filled with death, lies and the endless wanting of home. I am no messiah amongst sinners. I may, or may not, be unique. But in this world of fire and brimstone, I am what I am and make myself by my actions and my speech. I am certainly no king nor am I exalted amongst ponies.

And now I sit here, writing every thought into a journal just before I go on a job in Manehattan. I'll be meeting with an old acquaintance, I wonder what she'll have for me. I guess we’ll all see what the future has in-store for me now. I guess I could make this a book and call it my story. If only life was that easy. If only...