Running From Time

by C_F_G

Rating: teen
Tags: Death, Alternate Universe, Princess Luna, Drama, Original Character, Starswirl the Bearded, Random, Violence, Princess Celestia, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark
Length: 7680

The unification of the pony tribes, as it is taught, is a fiction. Ponies raised in Time swiftly grew to forget the truth, forget the subservience of the unicorn. But not every mage surrendered- some broke away.

Exhibit 36, Museum of the Tyrant, Freecove.

The items are approximately two hooves tall, and one and a half hoof wide. The item, one of the oldest and most important in our Museum, harkens back to just after the founding of Freecove. Written by the hoof of Cicerone the Guiding Light in her final days of rule, the sheaf of loose parchment forms a detailed recounting of the events of the Tyrants and the invaders which forced Unicorn kind from our home. In this memoir, addressed to her granddaughter prior to her crowning as the Second Queen of Freecove, Cicerone lays bare her hope for our ponies. For hundreds of years, each Royal has passed this tome to their successor, that the memory and mission of our foreponies burns strong in their hearts.

For the first time ever, on the dawn of our 200th Selection, the Crown Princess has elected to display this account to the public. Please turn your attention to the screens behind you to find a full transcription, from the First Queen's hoof, of our escape from Equestria.

Published 2019-08-01 13:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-08-01 13:20:01 UTC

1 Dearest Holy Light,

26 Winter 67AE.

I was old enough to convince myself that I was no longer a little kid, but I was still just a filly then. Like everypony else, I rejoiced as the Windigos were routed. I stood eagerly by my father’s side, head bobbing wildly, hardly able to manage to my own hoots and cheers as the village crowd erupted at his every declaration.

I eagerly ate up every word he cast. ‘Unification’, he preached. 'Friendship'. 'Equality'. The end of our struggles, a coming together with our neighbors. God Herself had seen our fatal plight, the desperation of our race. She had heard our prayers, and delivered to us the salvation of not just unicorns but all ponykind. She had tasked to our beloved Princess a sacred quest, and dear Platinum had returned to the world bearing two Emissaries, unending apostles of Her light, who would guide us through to the end of all things.

Empowered by the holy friendship sparked by our Princess joining with the other two, they had already cast away the Chilled Demons. Ponies no longer needed to fear the unknown, the powerful, the monstrous. Discord himself, should he return, would pose no threat against the embodiment of God.

Our aging Princess would not leave yet another gruesome succession battle in her wake. She instead delivered the promise of eons of stable rule, readily embraced even by those as close to the throne as the Crown Prince.

No longer content to stand firm I joined the chorus of applause and my face split into a youthful grin. Of course my father was right. Of course I believed him. My mother stood behind, her smile tight but genuine, her form ladylike and restrained.

Even as we moved, my excitement didn’t fade. I was no stranger to travel- the Church frequently shifted us across the land, as vacancies opened in smaller Chambers or an uninitiated village was uncovered.

Dad, of course, was never forced to go. He was a Deacon, after all, and a married one at that. However, his Deaconship could have granted him a fair degree of freedom in his assignments- within a given region, he virtually had the pick of the litter when it came time to assign each Deacon their hoof-full of Chambers. And given his family, he would never be made to move.

But Dad loved his work. He loved ponies. He loved teaching The Word and spreading
Friendship across the land. He would sometimes take rolls typically designated for a simple
priest, a position a step below his own. Mother was co-operative. I was enthralled.

Given Dad’s devotion to Friendship, I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when he told us where we would immigrate next. Truly, I thought it was a miracle. Perhaps even the will of God Herself. After the awakening of Her Emissaries, the whole Church was in a scuffle. Every servant, from the lowly pulpitcolt to the eldest of cardinals, fought for a place in the growing city beyond the Everfree.

The Council of Three made no attempt to determine placement. Such important positions must
go only to those ordained by God. So into a pit each hopeful cast their name, and a small number were randomly pulled.

I, of course, was elated. Not only was I going to get to live in the Capital, but I thought I’d even get the chance to meet the aged Princess herself. Maybe even the other two- the inevitable leaders of our new land. If I was really lucky, if God saw fit, perhaps I would even get to meet the Sisters. I had already taken, like many in the church had, to calling them the Two Angels.
______________________________________________________________________________

It was only a few years later that our beloved Platinum died. Every unicorn who had known life beneath her mourned. The Capital, as well as any city with a unicorn majority, ground to a halt for several cycles. Three days later, following a somber and silent procession to the Council’s Own cemetery, Platinum was buried. I stood, quietly crying, against Dad. I had only spoken to her a few times, but I loved her as I would family. The wet eyes across the tens of thousands of unicorns gathered betrayed that many felt the same.

The first day, the other races were sympathetic. By the burial, most had already forgotten. Their gaze was set on the future, after all- not on the deceased Princess their kind had been set against for centuries. Hurricane and Puddinghead worked diligently, preparing ponykind for an unprecedented change.

The following day, the Diarchy took to the balcony of their new castle, and gazed upon their subjects for the first time. Though still youths themselves, the eldest bore an almost perfect regality. The younger stood impressive as well; only the most dutiful observers noticed as her gaze flitted occasionally to her sister. Her stance would shift, and her slight grin would return.

With Hurricane and Puddinghead standing behind and their newly formed Board to the side, the sisters closed their eyes and strained in concentration. Their horns lit, sputtered, solidified. With a faint shudder, the sun fell and the moon took its place in the sky. The crowd roared, and the sisters grinned.

I was stunned.

The feat, of course was impressive. Nothing could more definitively prove these ponies divine right to rule than the power to control the very heavens. Even at so tender an age, I had proven to be quite adept at magic. Though not taught by Platinum before she passed, one of Starswirl’s assistants had seen me practicing in an orchard a year or two before and had taken me as his student.

No, the feat hadn’t caught my attention. The technique had. No experienced spellcaster would experience such sputter. Especially in something planned, something safe. A sputter was caused by a failure to prepare a mana-channelling route for high-flow spells. These Princess’s clearly had power, but they hadn’t yet mastered the skill.
______________________________________________________________________________

I lived through Equestria’s creation. I saw it’s transition to Diarchy.

It was anything but peaceful.
______________________________________________________________________________

Our families position fell as the Church weakened. The Sister’s themselves were not exceptional fans of the institution- their reluctance to publicly support saw younger unicorns, those born after Unification, those who hadn’t grown up with the Church, to fall from the roster. The Church’s market tripled, with no such increase in available funds. The other races, despite the talk of a ‘unified equine nation’, displayed no interest in worshipping the Great Unicorn.

As dues fell and expenses climbed, lower level servants were forced to survive off their own meager earnings. My father was driven from the home provided to him by the Church, and we rented a room in a tenement downtown. Dad’s stipend from the Church couldn’t quite make up rent so Mom began working with a seamstress, magically weaving fabric to her specifications. I took up work in Starswirl's lab, transcribing his notes and organizing his books. Together, we were able to scrape by.

Working for Starswirl, I had even managed to meet with the Princesses on occasion. I learned a bit of their history, and suddenly many things were made clear. Of course they had struggled with magic fundamentals- the eldest had ascended from a pegasus. And while the younger had been a unicorn, she had truly been nothing more than a filly, and had done little more than insignificant levitation and mild light spells.

It was then that many of my delusions about them began to crack. Even as our world crumbled from beneath us, my dad kept the faith. Worse, he managed to convince himself that the growing troubles of the unicorn was God's punishment, a balancing of the scales, lowering ourselves while raising others. The Sisters and their every action was divine, and unquestionable.

Holding in my excitement was no longer an issue when father preached.

It wasn't my limited interactions with the Crown that began to craft my resentment.

It was in school that my eagerness fell away.

It all started with Magical Studies. The Princesses declared that a key part of unification required every public school to be equally applicable to every race. Magic Studies, once a key foundation for post-Mark students, was stripped of its essence, instead focusing on the broad discussion of Friendship Magic and a few weeks of review for each race. I wasn't hit hard by the change. With my tutelage, I was already well beyond the mandatory classes. Every day, though, I watched as my classmate's magical capabilities drained away.

Earthponies and pegasi surged forward, while my ponies fell behind. Earth pony magic, and to a lesser extent Pegasus magic, is almost entirely inherent. Earth ponies require no instruction on anything that doesn't relate to their specific talent. Strength, dexterity, extended lifespans- all happen automatically, their bodies passively channeling and adapting to the flow of magic around them. Pegasi do require a level of training to safely become competent fliers, but basic cloud manipulation and hovering is inherent.

Of course, the pegasis didn't have to integrate their schools. When the pegasus were concerned, no insane adjustments to incompatible ponies was required.

Of course, there was no way that Celestia's pre-ascension status as an upper-crust pegasus had anything to do with that. I had hoped that Luna would interceed- as a born unicorn, whose parents had wisely secreted her to unicorn territory to be raised with her own kind, surely she understood the values that her sister had destroyed.

But she hadn't. Princess Luna was simply too devoted. She was obsessed with family- with connecting to her sister, from whom she had endured a lifetime of separation. She was younger, less powerful. Even had she born the will to help preserve unicorns, she lacked the ability to act.

By the time I finally left school, I could barely recognize the town. Massive sections of the city, places my friends had played in for years, swarmed with the others; not a unicorn in sight. The other races had driven them from their homes. Sometimes literally. Needing housing and desperate to project to the races that the location of the new capital was not reflective of a unicorn bias, the Diarchy began a system of forcible removal. Eminent domain was declared throughout the city.

Unicorns whose families had built this city, who had roots to their homes and lands that spanned generations, were suddenly sent packing, a small sack of bits (value evaluated by the Earth-pony run Administrative Division) their only recompense. Areas once orderly, ancient homes of unicorns, were quickly filled with the other races. Key areas of the city fell under the jurisdiction of the others- the Great Library lay squarely in what quickly became Earthtown.

As with most things, the Princess had issued to her government a broad declaration of her will, and Administration did whatever it desired to realize that will. Whether the Princess’ failure of oversight was a result of their age, their inexperience, or a lack of interest, I will never know.

Any unicorn who refused to comply with Puddinghead's demands were visited by the Guard. Our small apartment grew quite full near the end of my schooling since Auntie Silversprout and her family lived with us while her leg healed. Being propelled from a third story balcony will do that to a pony. After she healed, the family only stuck around for a few weeks. As soon as they realized the futility of trying to find a place in a unicorn town that they could afford, they fled the city.

You never met them- I looked, but couldn't find them in time.

In the following year, the situation degraded.

My tutor vanished one day. The last anyone knew, he was travelling to the caves just south of the city to look for a certain type of jewel. The woodland in that area was perfectly safe- it was virtually on top of a large Guard outpost. But his travel across the urban hellscape took him through the worst parts of Earthtown. What had once been low-incoming housing for the poorest of unicorns had become essentially free housing for the poorest of earth ponies.

I could never prove it- the Guard never even tried.

In any case, I kept up my work. One day, Starswirl desperately needed a test subject for a new spell; after this long, I can't recall the purpose. I do remember the roiling flames that singed my coat when the spell went wrong. By the time the smoke cleared, Starswirl had the largest grin I had ever seen a pony wear, totally uncaring that his test had failed. He was so taken by my brush with death that he finally made me his assistant, and by default, his direct student.

In a split second, I stumbled into inventing a new spell- while you would likely have to scrape your memory to dredge up such an elementary mechanism, you learned to cast the Sphere of Total Protection a few years after Kindergarten.

Over the next year and a half, I learned magic faster than I had ever thought possible. As Starswirl slunk into reclusivity, I became his public voice. I was kept so busy either learning from or doing things for Starswirl that for a brief time the rate of my disillusionment slowed.

The open war against our ponies, the desperate struggle for our survival in the face of the hateful Mud and opportunist Pegasi, began on a crisp August evening. You should be well familiar with this treacherous day- the history books we wrote ensured its emphasis. But I still believe you will find value in my own firsthand recollections.
______________________________________________________________________________

The imperfect arc of Luna's moon slowly saw the mass ascend into the sky, her sister's dim sun fading as it slunk nearer to the horizon. A crowd of ponies had gathered around an opulent mansion on the outskirts of the Unicorn district and gawked at the spectacle taking place on the street ahead.

That day had run long- my mane was frazzled and burnt, and I undoubtedly smelled filthy. All I wanted was a bath and Mom's cooking. I made a right turn at the burnt-down shell of the old Magic Emporium store, as I usually did, and found my route home interrupted by this throng of tumultus citizens. I didn't notice it at the time, but the crowd was almost entirely local unicorns, many of whom had been displaced by the forced buyout and had moved to Uptown to live with family.

Guardsponies had quarantined off the entrance to an older house- it was large, not necessarily a mansion, but it was clear that the building held a lot of history within its walls.

Curious, I joined the crowd. With how aggressive the Guard had been, mass public events were a very rare occurrence. I picked up on most of the stories from the murmurs of the crowd- the stallion of the house had refused to surrender his families home for the paltry sum offered. Nothing too unusual. But when the Guard told him to pound sand, he snapped. He bucked the guard in the barrel, bolted back through his doorway, and erected a magic barrier. Guardsponies swarmed, and the standoff began.

As I watched, the desperate unicorn poked his head through an open window and let off a string of energy spells. The crackling power of the green bolts blackened the ground near the Guard's commander. Surprise ran across his face as he stumbled behind a nearby tree, and began shouting orders. Pegasi began to pepper the window he had chosen with crossbow bolts. A few enterprising Guards lit their bolt from the street torches. As the return fire from the unicorn petered out, a stray bolt tangled in the fabrics near the window. The telltale orange glow of flames erupted into the street, and smoke began to poor from the open window.

A few Guards chuckled and jeered, elated at their victory. Those guarding the perimeter hardened their glares and stiffened their stance against the gathered unicorns, who had began muttering hatefully at the armor-clad agents.

The attention of those assembled was ripped back towards the burning house. The front door had drifted open, and a form filled the hazy air. An Earth guard spun and buried his spear deep into the rushing form. The jagged tip tore its bloody path through an older mare. Her form crumpled, wrenching the sooty pony to the ground as she died. Her eyes froze wide, her last moments evidently a slurry of terror and desperation, driven to escape the smoke and tongues of flame.

Her colt, whom she had carted from the inferno clasped between her jaws as a cat carries a kitten, was thrown from his mother’s mouth. A loud crack rang out from the street as his young skull bounced on the soil.

The crowd became a living being- a single mass, straining forward. Unicorns yelled in anger, howled abuse at the guards. Armored faces once stony and uncaring quickly became a mask of fear, sweat rolling down their brows as they struggled to contain the angry crowd. While they battled to control the scene, the child began to wail, his shrill shrieks overbearing.

Frustrated, a guard stomped over to where his little body lay, lifted him from the ground, and deposited him like a sack of garbage into the barred section of a nearby Guard carriage.

Watching the young unicorn discarded in such a fashion was all it took to tip the balance in the crowd. With a single enraged roar, the unicorns surged forward. The site guards fought desperately to control the crowd, but against the fury of over a hundred unicorns, they stood little chance. A pegasus guard was caught unawares when as a large stallions hoove collided with his muzzle. His buddy panicked as her partner disappeared beneath the hooves of the enraged crowd, and fired his crossbow without thought into the sea.

As one of their own fell, the depression and rage of the assembled reached its peak, and ponies began casting spells.

I slunk away as the riot began- I knew that, though I was certainly had the talents to help beat down the guard, even I couldn't take on the Equestrian government. It was far too vast to consider fighting. Spearheaded by two naive quasi-gods, active resistance would be futile. My cloaks fluttered around my hindquarters as I quickly ducked into an ally and crossed over to the next way.

The sounds of battle, magical charging, explosions. Shouts of pain and anger filled the night. The beautiful sunset, which had painted my way home only minutes before, was blotted out by a great column of black smoke climbing above the city.
______________________________________________________________________________

You should have learned of this night in school. I wanted you to know what it was like to see it- what I felt then. I hadn't birthed your father yet- he was among the first of our kind. I am one of the only elders that remember that night.Most of those who were around to witness the vicious executions didn't make it out, and those that participated in the riot vanished into imprisonment in the following weeks. It is crucial to me that you hear about this firsthand, that you understand the core of the other's cruelty, the necessity of our purpose.

That cold night was the official start of a crucial series of events that would forever shape our world.
______________________________________________________________________________

I dragged myself to the gates of the Castle of the Two Sisters. My eyes were red, pitch circles beneath and a scratchy mane betraying my total lack of sleep. I had spent the night tossing and turning, scared for what I had seen. I didn't know what would happen tomorrow; didn't know if anyone saw me, if I would be roped in. Halfway through the night, staring out my bedroom window at the flickering glow a few blocks down, I erected a barricade in front of my door, surrounded myself with mana-boosting charms, and kept a restless vigil throughout the night.

A blaring proclamation sounded as Celestia's sun rose. The Princess would make a statement on recent events. Attendance was not required, but strongly encouraged. I grumbled, pulled myself from my shell, and moved my wardrobe from where it blocked my egress.

I watched as Celestia took the podium. Much of the city had crammed into the public space, unicorns and the other races separating themselves, each trading a suspicious glance at the other. After all these years, I can't recall every part of Celestia's speech. It did wonder who had written it for her- the prose sounded as though they were written by one much further along in years. The key elements of this decree will be familiar to you- when we wrote the curriculums we made sure to include as much as we could remember of the Articles of Oppression.

Should you elect to have this published and a studious young unicorn one day finds it in their hooves, I shall recount the most basic tenets of these articles.

Unicorn magic, a clear and present danger to others, will be subject to strict regulation.

All magic not related to essential life functions or mark-specific trades would be banned from instruction. All materials related to these arts would be confiscated.

All magic artifacts would be seized. If they are deemed to have significant monetary value, a degree of compensation would be provided. (Of course, very few artifacts were declared valuable.)

Even on what magic was deemed legal, strict limitations would be placed on permissible mana draw.

Celestia believed that magic was the primary cause of strife between her ponies. As such, any steps necessary to heal this divide would fall under her purview to protect and expand the Magic of Friendship.

A monitoring system would be maintained by the Guard. In every outpost, an artifact would be planted which could measure and pinpoint mana pull in the area.

As each new restriction was announced, the others hooted and cheered. The unicorns in the crowd stood stunned, shooting looks of disbelief towards each other. A few weak mutters of protest drifted from our ranks, quickly stifled by a sharp look from the Princess and the menacing half-step of a nearby guard. The greatest insult, though, wasn't the laws, the discrimination. The greatest insult came at her conclusion.

The Princess decried that this would not be permanent control- that many artifacts seized would be returned, magic pacified, as relics or heirlooms. She promised that the measure was an emergency- that in the future, artifacts and spells would be reevaluated. They weren't out to limit the rights of unicorns- they simply needed to take unnecessary and dangerous tools from their hooves. When did she promise that these limits would rescind? When we unicorns, who were so used to our privileged society and the only race still entrenched in bigotry, finally learned to shed our vile and backward unicorn ways and adopt the correct mindset of the Equestrian.

It was as though I was in a daze, almost a coma. The meaning of her words didn't really sink in until some time later. Celestia had deigned UNICORNS the aggressors, the problems, the threat to be addressed. Unicorns were driven from their lands; unicorns were ripped from their homes. Unicorn culture was attacked, our education collapsed, our abilities denied. We had become a minority in our own great cities, with institutions that our ancestors built crumbling daily, surrounded by hoards of ponies that either hated us or sought to spring above us. Crimes against us went unreported; attempts to protect ourselves when we were forced to go through the other race's Burroughs saw us arrested. Our spokesponies in government had disappeared- our rulers were at best ignorant, and at worst actively conspiring against us. None of the other ponies faced these problems. The mass farmlands kept their Earth majority. No efforts were made to push pegasus cloud communities towards integration- the magic existed; Starswirl had proved that it was possible.

And there Celestia stood. Young, childlike. Telling the world that our once great community was vile, wrong- even evil. With that one speech, she explicitly endorsed the policies the Guard and Administration had implemented against us. Not only could the Guard discriminate openly against us, they had been given the power to assault our homes at any hour of the day for little to no reason. Any unicorn trying to protect themselves from the hateful gangs that would harass them could no longer defend themselves- any magic which may save them had been banned outright. Given how lax the Diarchies oversight had been to that point, it came as no surprise when Administration took their most extreme steps.

Why wouldn't they? The Magic of Friendship was the highest value- even with the Church nearly extinct, many ponies still held to this concept as an aspect of divinity. To stand in the way of ‘Friendship’ was to defy the will of the Creator herself, and the two ascended children were the final word on what was deemed friendship.

That announcement was the beginning of the end for our kind on Equus. Evidently, I don't know how all the others fared. We can't know.

But given the drive of our escape, I hold little hope for them. I have always assumed that we would be responsible for the total restoration of our kind back home. You may disagree- take my outlook as you will. But you must remember what happened after, what compelled our escape.
______________________________________________________________________________
I watched my flank carefully as I made my way into work the following day. I had spent a sleepness night, this time deep within the Everfree, burying my personal artifacts. My saddlebags were bulging with heavy spellbooks. It was a terrifying trip- not only was I eager to avoid any roving bands of mudhorses, but I needed to keep well away from any guards. I hoped to bury these deep within Starswirl's library- I still held on to a naive hope that his things would pass unmolested.

After swiftly shovelling the books into the rear of one of his vast bookshelves, I expelled an audible sigh of relief. I plodded towards Starswirl's office, ready to hear how we would approach the coming months.

He wasn't there- this wasn't unusual, but at his desk lay two scrolls. I approached, and very carefully grasped the one addressed to me between my teeth. A faint field detected my magical signature, and its slight haze dispelled into the stuffy air. I read his letter- I won't recount it word for word, you can go see it in the archives if you desire. He had left, in search of "something to help us". He had left behind a second scroll, signed and waiting for me to add in a date, informing the Princesses that he had gone off on a quest three days prior and he didn't know when he would be back. When he wrote next is what set me on my path, what led to our salvation, what will lead to our return.

Starswirl ordered that I slowly begin moving artifacts and books from his study to the furroughs beneath a certain ancient tree deep in the thick of the Everfree, far from the prying eyes and wandering hooves of the ponies in town. He warned me to lay low- to be sure not to slip up, not to use my magic. No matter what, the Guard must have no reason to remove me. Most important, he said, was that I prepare ponies. That I keep track of the other unicorns- especially those around my age or slightly older, who knew a time before the Princesses and may have had training before the neutering of our schools. I was to try to contact other unicorn families, to help them secret their books and artifacts. I knew I wouldn't able to get everything. I knew most would be lost. I knew that some things from Starswirls lab would be too dangerous, too powerful, or too large to try to move. But the more we could get out, the better. I swore that I would devote myself wholly to this purpose. I was distraught that the most incredible of Starswirl’s inventions would eventually wind up in Equestrian clutches.

But I forced myself to accept that inevitability. I went house to house in the night, trying to stay ahead of the Guard's inspection, gathering what I could from unicorn families. Each pickup broke my heart- every pickup left families sobbing, histories broken. Worse, I often had to turn items away. At least for some families, they knew their treasure would continue, and could hold to the hope that one day their line would reconnect with their history. I could only imagine how crushing it was to those I had to deny- items that were too large for me to secret out had to stay behind, knowing that nothing could be done to protect their heirlooms from the glistening thugs that would come in time.

I caught hardly a wink of sleep over the rest of the season. I was lucky if I managed more than an hour or two a night. My mane grew frazzled, my eyes glossy. I began to have trouble focusing. My eyes began to hollow, heavy bags and dark shadows betraying my second life. I caught several ponies I knew shoot me scrutinizing looks as I passed through halls. In the few moments I was forced to dart around the Castle, I watched the occasional guard stare intently at me before ducking away when he thought I wasn't watching.

I saw a Ruler once during that time. When I heard that the crown needed a meeting with Starswirl, I nearly vomited. I still don't know how I would have reacted if I was forced to stand, subservient, before Celestia. As it was, the meeting had been terrible. I could hardly restrain myself as I read from a large book, forced to report to the Crown the families in the area known to have extensive magical histories.

I was physically shaking as I crept from the throne room. Only later did my guilt slightly fade- I heard from several of the families that after I warned them, they resigned themselves to their fate. Some avoided the raids by surrendering their belongings to a local guard station. While this discovery would normally bar a family from citizenship, I kept that list. You ought to be able to find it preserved in the earliest sections of law in the New Central Library. Should anyone be outed as the descendent of a conspirator, check their lineage with that list. If they stem from those ponies, issue a full and immediate pardon. They complied not by their own will but by our family’s failings.
______________________________________________________________________________

It was a sudden thing, the order to leave. I hadn’t even known what Starswirl was planning, hadn’t even seen him for months, when I received the order.

Our connection to our home was finally severed in the Great Riot on the Night of the Flame. My own recollection is inadequate- I wasn’t present for the instigating event, only glimpsed the fallout from the window of Starswirl’s study. My good friend and current Education Minister was present, though, and published the following in his “Book of our Heroes”, Volume 1.

"The tears spilling from his cheeks left a glittering trail through the streets as he meandered towards his home. He had just watched his sister slain. By them. The crown, the mudhorses, the country. Everyone. And he knew he would be next. He knew that all our times would come, eventually. He gave a startled whinny as he rounded onto his road, head stinging from the pebble that a gang of post-mark adolescents had thrown at him. His eyes glazed over, his vision waning as his heart thundered in his chest.

A coursing rage swelled as he wrenched open a locked drawer in his room, and slipped the ancient heirloom over his head. Every member of his family, generations past, knew that this heirloom was theirs to protect, never to use. It had given their family its start, secured for them their position. It had driven their patriarch mad, leading him to attempt to establish a citystate ruled beneath his iron hoof, in open defiance of Princess Platinum’s great-great grandmother.

By time the royals finally killed him, he had born a daughter. She took it upon herself to guard her father’s most beloved possession. She would ensure that the families curse was never used- but she would not allow such power to fall to the Crown.

The cold silver slipped over his horn. The ruby eyes of the teasing mare dangling from his chest took on a slight glow, the simple shimmer seeming to animate the ancient amulet. The sculpture wasn’t perfect, of course. While the craftponyship was flawless, the result of countless hours wrapped in the magic of the most talented mageforger around, the features, proportions, they were all just slightly off. When it was crafted, Alicorns were still myth- no more real than ‘humaans’ or the God that father praised.

The stallion felt power coursing through his veins, mana condensing around his horn. All logical thoughts ceased, as his anger was amplified. He bolted back through the door, ran through the streets, finally finding the group of earth youths. They once again cackled. “What, back for more?” They bucked another rock- larger this time. He grasped it in his magic before crushing it into shards and letting them clatter to the dirt. He stared for a moment, unblinking, unfocused. The youths began to shove each other, the jeers still drifting across the way even as they began to nervously step back.

By time the guard arrived, the youths were dead. By time backup arrived, so too were the guard. It took the direct intervention of the Sun, along with Starswirl, to bring the stallion down. And when the amulet was removed and his blood began to cool, he stared at his hooves. He declared that he regretted nothing, insisted that he would do it again. Called upon his brother's and sister's to follow him in his rage.

Even as they led him to the gallows, he ranted and raved, a misguided patriot of our cause even to the bitter end. But in striving for our kind he made himself a tool of our enemies. His rash action gave the Crown all the excuse it needed. His one stallion show brought the full might of the state against our race."

The trial, the execution… none of it mattered. In celebration of his execution, the other races whipped themselves into a hate-fueled frenzy, and once again began rioting in Unicorn streets. Unicorn shops were looted, homes invaded, books torched. An entire block of apartments was put to the flame, the whole city bathed in a dancing orange glow as the night wore on, not even the whistle of a Guard predicating an end to the bloodshed.

Starswirl suddenly bounded down his own door, grasped me by the shoulders. Told me to gather everyone I could, and meet at the tree. He scooped a bag I had never seen before from what seemed to be thin air atop an empty bookshelf, and burst out towards the forest.

I draped my bag over my neck, tied a damp cloth across my muzzle, and galloped into the raging night. I went to the first unicorn house I could find, and then went to ten more, trying until I found someone willing to answer their door. Spread the word, I told them. Starswirl’s got a plan, I said. Meet in the woods, I declared.

The family nodded, took a deep breath, and scurried into the billowing smoke to hunt for their neighbors and friends. I repeated this routine, all while working myself towards the treeline desperate to stay ahead of the fire rapidly leaping from building to building, trying to get to Starswirl before our city turned to ash.

I found him besides the tree, books strewn all around as he frantically scratched arcane runes into the soil. I only glanced at his spellwork- layers upon layers of spells, each minutely interwoven with the next. Even with his notes, it would take me generations to even begin trying to piece it together.

He barely looked up when I approached, only gesturing towards the staggering pile of metal and crystal and parchment that was the fruit of my labor. “Every pony across carries something”; I remember him saying that to me as if it were yesterday.

He went back to his frantic work, and the first huddled figures crept into the clearing. Their eyes ran and swelled, their lungs hacked, heart pumping to beat back the crippling smoke. Some bore bruises and cuts, evidence of run ins with rioting enemies. Some dragged against a friend, too feeble to walk, while others were carried. As the crowd swelled I shot a look towards Starswirl and he nodded.

For the first time in weeks my horn lit, and I felt magic weave through my body as I effortlessly levitated a small pile of things onto the first ponies back. In the same instant, I felt a powerful wave of mana rush over me. Starswirl floated in the air, held aloft by the pure surge of his spells. A crackling filled the forest air as a single point in the empty atmosphere ripped open, a bright winding tunnel forming with evident depth on a plane above a small shrub.

As I ushered that first pony through, I wrenched my front legs to protect my eyes. The incredible magical pull of whatever Starswirl had done blew past legal levels. A shrill, rupture-inducing sound rippled from the center of the city, a tiny beacon of light rising high above the billowing ash. As soon as it had gained enough altitude, a blinding slice of holy sunlight was ejected from the Allfree Monitor, painting our chunk of the forest in the light of the sun itself.

With eyes half lidded, I began physically thrusting ponies through the gash. One after the next, hundreds of ponies, thousands of items slipped through. Soon enough, though, we could hear the thundering of armored hooves against cobble streets. A final few stragglers came galloping towards our tree, panting, to tell us of the column that rapidly approached.

The remaining tens of ponies battled with my magic to get across the warp, my focus now on reducing the dwindling pile. I indiscriminately shovelled stacks of whatever my magic seized across the gate. Finally my magic gave out. I ignored my exhaustion, and held books two or three at a time in my hoof, slinging them across the portal. The clattering of gold grew closer, individual steps distinctive now, commands to surrender already being shouted as the Guard entered the treeline.

Starswirl told me to go, told me he’d be right along. I plunged through the portal, my whole world shifting in a fraction of a second that felt like hours. On the other side, I peered back at a blurry mirror of what I had already seen. The first glinting helm shone in the flamelight and Starswirl sent a burst in it’s direction, its owner sent tumbling back down the incline.

He muttered a final incantation, set his journal ablaze, and turned to cross the gate. Behind him, the intricate maze of runes glowed, the great tree withering and rotting away.

Transporting through his gate only took fractions of a second.

It wasn’t enough time.

The few unicorn traitors in the Guard lit their horns and poured fire on the portal. The magics mixed, Starswirl’s complex weave crumbling at the foreign energy as bolts of death whistled into the gate. A buzzing hum swelled and popped, the gate vanished and the tunnel collapsed, Starswirl still trapped between points.

At the same instant, a great wall of blue caught my eye. Without the whirling intrusion of the portal, all I could make out was the endless sea. A great whummph blasted and each of us was pressed to the ground by the shockwave of Starswirl’s final spell. A shimmering golden disk expanded far in the sky, racing outwards and curving down, sending up a brilliant spray of water as it crushed into the sea a mile out. From the glistening of the sunlight cutting through the waves, a golden glimmer beneath the surface showed the arc of the orb’s walls, presumably slicing down into the seabed and join together somewhere beneath our hooves.

A steady whine filled our ears, growing louder and louder, as the whole world began to shake.

As quickly as the maelstrom began, everything cut out. The world beyond the sphere faded away, and we were alone. I can only imagine the impression of our escape on any observing from the distant shores of the continent. On one hoof, the idea of the tyrant witnessing our liberation fills me with glee. On the other, I hope none were present in our most desperate time. I pray to a god I no longer believe exists that we slipped away, none the wiser where we went, none the wiser when we return.

From here, you should know the story. It is our history- it is our world. When that ethereal dome sealed, it and everything was whisked away, suspended in a void not unlike the center of gate, though we are sheltered from its pull by the ever present orb. Nopony knows how long it will be maintained, how long time passes back there. A day could have passed, or an hour, or hundreds of years. We will only know when we return.

Because as the sea must have thundered in to fill the miles wide hole our departure left, we will return. We will flood back into Equestria whenever Starswirl’s spell falters, or we gain the power to shut it down. We will take back our homeland, secure the future of our kind.

To this end, you must continue my work. Selection has been held every decade since our first structures clambered from the dirt and sand, each pool of children reaped for their most skilled to study under our greatest minds. First mine, then your mothers, and now yours. Starswirl’s library at our disposal and the artifacts I could save preserved, I foresee an incredible force of magical research, snowballing generation after generation, our power growing greater.

I wouldn’t dare to guess when, but eventually, we will succeed in the impossible. A feat only accomplished by strange magics of our long dead Princess and our bearded savior. Before our re-entry into “Equestria”, we must ascend one of these gifted young foals into our own beacon of hope. Not a pushover like the Moon, ours will be a scion of our kind.

We have built a nation, revived our culture. We are free to study magic, to revolutionize it. We can embrace our gifts, love our kind, unshackled by the heavy chains ‘unification’ brought down on us. With our ascended, we will protect our ponies. We will storm our homelands, liberate the millions we left behind, reclaim our birthright. We will pacify the pegasus, dominate the mudhorse, and smite the griffin.

We must secure our rightful place not as equals or slaves, but as rulers.

I beseech you- please pass along this memoir. I am not long left for this sphere- soon enough, you shall wear the crown. And after you comes another, and another. Each ruler of our ponies must understand what it was like, what was done to us, what was stolen from us. The heart of all must burn with the hatred I bear for the tyrants and their ilk. Perhaps my struggle will help spark the passion that drives our filly to ascend.

But most importantly, never forget what they’ve taken from you.

2 A Note From Management

Dear Patrons,

We apologize for the inconvenience, but after nearly 300 years of preservation, the Diary of The Guiding Light Exhibit is currently unavailable. In light of the astounding 235th Selection, the document has, for the first time since its loan, been removed from the Museum by the Crown. We have been informed that it shall be returned at the Selected’s earliest possible convenience. In the meantime, replicas of the ancient tome and many of our other displays can be purchased in the gift shop once you have completed your visit.

-Management, Museum of the Tyrants.

Author's Note

I hope somebody liked this- I think it is going to be the start of my own 'verse' that I see so many authors create. Having this parallel society opens up many avenues for interesting stories, not to mention my plans for the eventual reintroduction of Freecove to the world.

Of mild note- the Alternate Universe tag is clear. However, as far as the canon of the show goes, nothing changes until season three at the earliest. I don't know if I'll dive into it later, but the story of unification and the defeat of the windigo's that Twilight knows, that is told to the viewer early on, is a fiction. "The winner writes the history books" and all that. Whether or not Celestia remembers what actually happened is another subject entirely that I won't get into here, but suffice it to say that the version of events presented in the show is a staggering example of revisionist history.

Please, I'm struggling to improve. Leave any comments, compliments, critiques, tips, abuse, anything in the comments. I'll be updating the description of this story as the verse expands but for now it's a standalone.

Thanks for reading!