**Prologue:
Beginning of the End**
During the decades after Discord’s defeat by the Elements of Harmony Equestria had begun to advance technologically. Oil had been found by miners searching for gold in the mountains, and had soon had been discovered to be a new fuel source. Earth pony engineers went to work discovering new uses for the new found resource.
Soon carts and wagons pulled by ponies had been replaced by automobiles powered by fuel engines. Oil could be used in anything from heating to lighting. More and more once manual tasks had been replaced by machinery and Equestria’s economy was booming and small towns like Ponyville had become hubs of trade growing bigger by the day.
Not only did Equestria’s technology improve but so did its society and government. Now instead of just being ruled by the Alicorn sisters Celestia and Luna There was the Equestrian Council as well. The sisters were still important figures in Equestria but had little say in its government matters.
As for the Ponies living in Equestria life had never been better. Hard tasks were now mere flips of a switch and there was more time for recreational activities. With so many factories and machinery being built everyone had a job to support them and their families.
As decades passed more and more oil was needed to power ever advancing technology. The Equestrians began to search far and wide for more of the new fuel they had become so dependent on.
Eventually it was discovered that Equestria’s neighbors the Griffons had discovered oil as well and had technology similar to Equestria’s. The Equestrian Council decided to send a small group of Pegasi scouts to spy on the advancement of the Griffons. When they returned a few weeks later they in informed the Council that the Griffon lands appeared to have far more oil than Equestria did.
The Council came to the conclusion that it would be in Equestria’s best interests to purchase land from the Griffons. Eventually when a deal was struck the amount bought was disappointing to the Equestrian Council. If the Equestrians were to continue using oil as power they would need more. They began devising a plan to invade from the sky, land and water in a massive assault and take as much of the Griffon land as possible.
While Equestria trained and equipped its soldiers the environment was fighting a battle of its own. The Ponies greedy usage of oil had begun to have an adverse effect on the land slightly increasing temperatures and making it harder for some plants to grow thus making it harder for herbivorous animals to get food and begin to grow weaker.
Equestria’s top engineers devised an array of deadly weaponry for the coming war. Guns, devastating weapons witch fired metal at high speeds piercing armor and killing or grievously wounding enemies. Grenades, metal casings filled with gun powder that when lit and thrown explode causing massive damage to anything within a small area and throwing shards of metal to wound and kill even more. They designed flying machines to carry non Pegasi and drop them by parachute into enemy territory. They created these and many more all for one purpose to destroy the griffons.
After months of preparation the day of invasion had come. Equestria’s military once consisting of a few thousand royal guards was now hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers armed with the best weapons Equestrian engineers could think up.
When hundreds of ships and flying machines were seen converging upon their cities the Griffons were anything but prepared. Citizens ran in panic as armed ponies exchanged shots with Griffon guards. Fierce bloody melees broke out in the cramped alleys, buildings and streets of cities across the coast of the Griffon kingdom.
The unprepared Griffons fought bravely but were outnumbered and outgunned by the Equestrian military. Most of the Guards were captured or wounded and some even both. In places the Griffons had small victories and even managed to hold a few of the coastal cities but overall lost the day.
Many of Equestria`s soldiers had never fought in anything more than a skirmish with fellow recruits and practice weapons until that day and had definitely never seen such violent death and fighting. This was a jarring experience for all those who signed up even those who had seen fighting before. Many pondered why all this had to be done but continued fighting anyway.
With the war raging on Equestria was using oil at an all-time high. This began to have a worsening effect on the environment causing slowly increasing temperatures and more types of plants to become rarer and eventually disappear altogether. This in turn caused animals to starve and die.
Equestria`s advance into the Griffon kingdom was beginning to slow as the Griffons began a more organized defence. The surprise from the initial attack had worn off and now the Equestrians had to fight enemies that were ready for them and angry at the loss of comrades and family. Squadrons of Pegasi began to drop larger versions of the grenades called bombs onto the Griffon fortifications to soften them up before the initial assaults making it easier for the ground troops.
As the war dragged on and on, year after year, Equestria`s condition worsened the heat had begun to increase exponentially and water began to dry up making it harder to grow crops and tend sick and wounded Ponies. It rained less and with less force, summers were long and hot and winter came late and ended early. Winter wrap up was a dying holiday as winter seemed not to snow much anyway.
The war was entering its third decade and the Griffons were ready to give up. They had fought valiantly against the seemingly unprovoked pony assault but they had neither the resources nor bodies to keep fighting. In the closing months of the nineteenth year of war the Griffons surrendered to the Ponies.
Finally the war was over and the Equestrian Council was content. No matter how many Ponies and Griffons were killed or hurt they didn’t care, all they cared about was the bits they were making off the new oil coming in to the country. They had destroyed a nation and damaged their own all for money and personal gain.
In the following years the veterans of the war never recovered. They had fought the bloodiest conflict in all Equestrian history and won. They had parades and parties and won medals but nothing could wash away the horrors that they had seen. The thing they saw and did changed them drastically.
The increasing heat eventually made winter disappear completely meaning every year was an endless summer hotter than any had ever been before. Ponies that were very old or young began to succumb to the year round heat. Water had become the main concern. It was evaporating fast and there was not enough for agriculture, bathing and drinking. Life was hell and if you died you were lucky.
Princess Celestia fell ill with an unknown disease witch killed her soon after leaving her younger sister Luna as the sole Princess. With Celestia gone the country was in anarchy. Some Ponies believed this was Discord`s revenge on Ponykind for imprisoning him once again but all knew that there were tough times ahead.
In a mere two more decades things went from hell to mega hell. Water was rarer than a needle in a hay stack. Ponies began to steal it from each other killing for even a small glass. More and more died every day from the heat, thirst and starvation. The council had disbanded and Luna had disappeared leaving no one in charge. All of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony had died except for Twilight Sparkle whose now matured dragon assistant Spike had taken her away from the chaos to his home high in the mountains.
Despite the once beautiful Equestria now being a barren wasteland and many of its inhabitants being bloodthirsty bandits some Ponies did maintain a glimmer of civilization. They built towns and villages re purposed oil machines to find water and more. These survivors managed to keep Equestria alive. This is the story of one of these Ponies surviving in these scorched lands.
Chapter 1:
Steelheart
It was my seventh birthday today. I was happy, a rare feeling living in such a barren land. My mother was placing a freshly baked pastry on a clean white plate onto our kitchen table while my father carried two items wrapped in dusty, stained festive paper from the time my grandpa had told me about when things weren’t so bad.
He had passed away a couple of days before my sixth birthday so I wasn’t nearly as happy about that as I was about this one. My mother had been a beige Pegasus with a chocolate brown mane while my father was a Unicorn who had steel grey fur and a black mane. I was like my father, grey with black hair but had my mother`s green eyes. I was a unicorn like my dad was but sometimes I saw mom soaring through the air and wished I knew what it was like up there.
My Dad`s cutie mark was a hammer and saw crossed because he was really good at building stuff. My mother had a mixing bowl filled with batter with a stirring spoon in it as hers. I was a blank flank meaning I hadn’t found my special talent yet but I was pretty good at helping my Parents with their household jobs.
My name is Steelheart. My parents said it was because I was going to have to be very brave to live in this world. I liked my name it was pretty cool sounding and sometimes I could pretend I was a hero, Captain Steel defender of the world. I would run around with a costume my Mom made for me on my fifth birthday. I didn’t know my Parents names to me they were just mom and dad.
While I had been thinking my Dad had placed a lit candle on my birthday pastry. We all sang happy birthday like we did every year. I wondered what I should wish for this year. The song eventually came to an end and luckily I had decided what to wish for. I took a deep breath and blew out the candle in a short puff of air.
Just as the candle flickered out someone knocked on our front door loudly. My father trotted over and opened it. The instant he opened the door a loud noise rang out. My father fell to the ground as my mother screamed I screamed to I was startled by the noise and my mother screaming.
Several mean looking ponies stepped through the door holding big sticks with metal ends one was smoking from the end. The Ponies reminded me of one of the pictures from my story book Daring Do and the Sea Serpent. She had encountered Pirate Ponies and they fought with shiny swords. I wondered briefly why Pirate Ponies had come into my house but stopped when I heard another loud bang.
I saw my Mother fall to the floor. I began to cry loudly and rushed to her side. She looked like she was sleeping but I couldn’t hear her breathing. I kept yelling for her to wake up. “Wake up Mommy! Wake up please!” I screamed.
I heard laughing coming from the Pirates I couldn’t understand why they were laughing. There was something wrong with my Parents and they were laughing at me. Why? I screamed at the pirates to stop but they only laughed harder.
I sat shaking my mother’s unresponsive hoof sobbing loudly. Suddenly there was another loud bang and a sharp pain in my back. It felt like I had been punched hard and all the air was knocked out of my lungs. When I regained the ability to breath I found I couldn’t draw breath. Everything began to lose color and grow cold I heard another bang and more pain this time in my left hoof. Eventually I couldn’t feel anything witch was good because my hand and chest really hurt and I didn’t know why.
I was thinking really slowly and stuff was getting really hard to see and hear. Eventually everything went black and I slumped over unconscious…
…
The little colt slumped over on to the bloodstained floor as me and my companions continued laughing at his pathetic last moments. He was really young probably only seven or eight years old. The fact he didn’t have a cutie mark confirmed this. Mine was fitting it was a cracked skull. I was very good at smashing them after all.
One of my crew an Earth Pony named Shank yelled out to me. “Hey boss check this out I think it was the foal’s birthday!” he called. If I was a normal Pony I would be sad that a colt had been killed on his birthday right after seeing his Parents die. However I didn’t give a shit, I just laughed harder at this. I was a Pony who killed others for fun. I was born into a tribe of raiders and I was proclaimed leader after murdering my own father, who was chieftain, with a rock.
I remember that day clear as ever. It was the dead of night as I stepped into his tent with a sizeable rock. I stepped over to the form of my sleeping father and dropped it on his head. It exploded like an overripe gourd. Afterwards I made a necklace with his teeth. This was normal for our tribe for in order to ascend to leader you had to kill the current one first. I knew that one day one of my sons would poison my stew or slip a knife in between my ribs.
…
My wings flapped as I flew lazily through the air. I remembered the war it ended 87 years ago. I remembered the times before that predominantly memories of my childhood friend rainbow dash. We were in the Junior Speedsters together. In my old age I couldn’t remember the ridiculous chant that Dash made my sing once when we were grown up.
That was before the war though. And our friendship had been broken long before those cursed years when then damned Ponies attacked unprovoked. She had chosen to fight against them and in the end had to nearly kill her old friend but spared her because of their previous friendship.
While remembering all the memories of her life she suddenly heard several shots ring out. She turned and flew in the direction of the noise. She eventually came into view of a small house along one of the old highways there was something off about this house and for the first time in almost her entire life, Gilda stopped to help somepony.
…
My tribe mates had managed to find a good deal of bits in this house along with other things that would be useful like food and water. I suddenly heard some blood curdling screaming.
I and the rest of the bandits turned the corner of the house to see an elderly griffon standing over the Bloodied, slightly twitching Shank. His face had been disfigured by the griffon`s talons and now it seemed those talons had a new target. The elderly griffon moved much quicker than me and my group would have thought and had already taken Titus and Bones down.
That left only me and a yellow mare left. She screamed and threw her gun down causing it to fire sending hot lead tearing through my leg. She ran off down the road screaming leaving me here with the enraged griffon.
The old griffon stood above me as I groped for the Mare`s discarded weapon. A taloned foot came crashing down onto my leg pinning it down. I look up to the figure looming above me. I looked into her cold unforgiving eyes. For once in my life I was terrified. I had killed countless Ponies just because and now I was going to pay. The griffons head moved quickly and I began to scream.
…
Fresh blood dripped slowly from her beak as she entered the house. Her eyes beheld a new seen of blood and death. A family of ponies had been killed by the raiders. The father was laying right by the door, the mother by the table and a small colt by her side. All was quiet in the home except for barely audible breathing.
The breathing was ragged and irregular. I walked through the room until I had found that the colt was not dead. Tears streaked his face and he lay in a pool of his and his mother`s drying blood. He had two wounds, a gunshot through his back and out his chest and another bullet wound to his left leg.
I picked up the small colt and began to walk out the door with him slung over my back. I took off into the air towards the town I lived outside that had a doctor that could save this foal`s life.
