Name: Princess Twilight Sparkle
Year:14 LC
Location: Friendship Castle Bunker
I'm going to be recording current events and the events that have lead us here. Please note: I have no ability to erase ~~errirs~~ errors in these records, as you can see.
Where did ~~thi5s~~ this start and how did I get here? I've asked myself so many times, I can only imagine it started with the new Weather Machines in Cloudsdale. The Pegasi were not happy, imagine an Earth pony making a machine for weather!? But it happened, ~~igt~~it was amazing, the brand new Cloud Cover worked wonders. However, it also put ponies out of work, work their culture had been doing since the Three Tribes had come together. There of course were protesters, but it was too efficient for anyone to really bother with listening to them.
Cloud Cover machines were soon shared with our allies, to give them the same kind of control we ponies had, it was a huge move for peace between our subjects. We the Princesses were praised, and ~~hayed~~ hated in equal measure.
But that seemed to start a frenzy, new bright inventors of all races rushing to make new things. Things that, they said, would make life easier for everyone. Especially those not gifted with magic. “Look, now you don't need magic!” It made me very uneasy, but Celestia assured me that it was for the best, that all beings deserved the chance to grow, change, to advance.
~~Well, Princess, that was a mistake, wasn't it?~~
I'm sorry, I digress.
Before I really noticed the world had changed so much. Small towns replaced with working ones, for industry. For factories. And our ponies began to obtain new Cutie Marks to ~~gi~~ go with them.
Then came New Horizon, the first line of personal airships. Mail Ponies, like the Weather ones before them, were phased out. Once again the Pegasi were furious, but again it was ignored.
And then… and then came machines that did not make life easier, or better, they were made to conquer, they were made for one thing: War.
And that's what they brought. We were less than unprepared, Trottingham fell first. The devastation it was… I can still taste the ash in the back of my throat, it burns, and just under it… the smell of burning fur…
I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't write anymore today.
Princess Twilight Sparkle
Name: Princess Twilight Sparkle
Year: 14 LC
Location: Friendship Castle Bunker
Good morning, if it is really morning..
I see I left off at ~~Tro~~ the start of the War. The truth is, we have no idea who started it all, and we had no idea how to react either. Relief and rebuilding efforts were made but in the end the damage was far too great, we left the city as it was, a gaping wound within our boarders. The citizens were moved to New Hayven, a place that had room to grow and was still fairly new at the time.
It was decided to hold a Summit between all nations, to curb this before it got any worse. Luna insisted on going ahead, herself and her guard more well trained in combat than Celestia or myself. I never should have agreed. It was a trap you see? Before we could leave our airship needed repairing, and just as we had made the choice to fly ourselves we were sent a…message. It was armor, Luna’s armor, twisted and covered in blood. I think Celestia died that day. Though we all mourned, and we vowed vengeance, I don't think her heart was truly in anything after…
I went to work on defenses, with Shining Armor’s help. The idea was to create a Super Barrier and close Equestria off from the rest of the world. Perhaps it sounds like cowardice, perhaps it was, but I could not take the idea of another Fallen City. I couldn't..
The work was slow, infuriatingly slow actually. By the time I even got it to work on a City wide scale we lost Las Pegasus and Appleloosa. Half of the Apple family went with it. I remember an intense sadness, anger, in the beginning. But by the time Cloudsdale fell I think I had gone numb.
I moved my friends and their remaining family to Canterlot, which had its own Barrier by then.
The next year was a chaos not even the likes of Discord could revel in, the peace I had sought to build with my School dissolved in the wake of fire, smoke, and death.
I thought, at the time, surely with my Barriers in place we could finally be safe. We would get through this, we would survive, rebuild, life was not over. But I was naïve, I did not account well enough for internal disaster. A plague began to spread amongst the crops within the Barriers. Our only choice was to burn the fields out. We began to give out rations until a solution could be found. There was only one, set up Barriers outside the cities, allow ponies to farm within, and transport the food.
There were many, many failures. Between our neighbors stuck in war, ponies who still wandered, raided, killed, and Barrier failure we lost 500 ponies. Applejack lost her leg during a Raid, I remember. ~~Applejack…are you even alive now?~~
As far as my own knowledge, this is still the state of things.
Tomorrow I will continue,
Princess Twilight Sparkle
Name: Princess Twilight Sparkle
Year: 14 LC
Location: Friendship Castle Bunker
Hello again, I think we have finally come to me.
You see, I have decided that I cannot be like Celestia or Cadence, I love them dearly, but nothing will change if we hide within our walls.
I left Canterlot, I wanted to see what this world had become. I don't know how long I've been gone, how far I have flown. It all bleeds together after a while. But what I can tell you is, this is not what I imagined as a filly. Of all the things that could have been this was not even a remote thought in my darkest hourd hours.
Wasteland, as far as the eye can see at first. Scorched earth, dead trees, fallow fields. Silence so thick it pounds in your ears, not a bird, rabbit, nor even insects.
Further still there are were creatures you could have called ponies. They looked like ponies, they had Cutie Marks, and spoke Equish. But the things they were doing… Keeping others in chains, of all races, ~~using foals, children for entertainment and the racks they had those poor mares strapped in the skulls of starved foals gleaming in the light of a barn worn mares begging for death the smell dear Equis the smell of death and defecation and and~~
They aren't there anymore. I made sure of it.
Some towns survive along our boarders, they aren't very nice places but it's good to see that cooperation isn't dead and gone. There is food, shelter, even children at play.
Beyond Equestria however, is more of the same death and destruction, for what had to be miles. I made sightings of settlements but I did not land to see closer. I cannot assume what they are like within.
As I turned back I felt haunted, the world is rotting, and no one seems to have the will to change it. Not Celestia, not Cadence, nor any of the other so-called most powerful. They are content to let it decay under their hooves!
I am not.
I will not return to Canterlot, I will not let this continue, I will not cower as a Princess locked away within a tower! I am the Element of Magic!
Ahem, I apologize, where was I? Oh oh yes, that's right.
I wanted to go home, just one last time… I had intended to return to Canterlot I really did but.. When I came to the Castle, my Castle and saw it intact I had a better idea.
If no one else will change the world, I will. This is just the beginning.
I am Twilight Sparkle of Equestria, and it's time to change the world.
If you feel the same, come to the newly opened Starfall Castle.
Change Begins With You,
General Twilight Sparkle
Author's Note
So this will probably stay as a one shot, though I guess if you're interested in more let me know. I'm just starting to publish my hobby writing so constructive crit is welcome.
Anyway I hope you enjoy,
LS