The Last Light

Fifteen years had passed since the last time Equestria was a land of happiness and harmony.

No one knew how it happened, not even the princesses had the slightest idea. All that was known was that one day a virus mutated, infecting ponies, and transforming them into hideous creatures thirsty for flesh and immune to conventional magic. And along with them too had appeared a strange mist, seemingly harmless at first, but what it hid inside was almost as horrible as the ponies that had been infected.

Horrific creatures that nopony or anyone else had ever seen or even conceived in their imagination, huge and insatiably hungry, had attacked and devoured them without mercy. Magic had not been able to do much against them. The mist that was their habitat overrode the conventional powers of unicorns, pegasus, and ground ponies. Neither the alicorn magic of the princesses, nor the chaos magic of Discord had managed to stop the invasion of monsters and infected that ravaged the vast lands of Equestria, ancient center of peace and harmony.

They had been practically helpless.

However, one of the princesses had survived and had carried out a plan to ensure that the deadly mist that had covered her land was dispelled.

Princess Twilight had created a spell that would help them, ten years after that moment. She had no one else, her whole family had perished but she still had a small light left to fight for.

Unfortunately, the spell had consumed too much of her life force. She had used all of her magic, and finally the core of the power she had contained within had been extinguished without a single trace. Her very existence had disappeared from this world.

But her efforts had not been in vain. The spell had worked in a certain way, but not as the princess had planned. Her magic had permanently isolated several disjointed areas of Equestria, like flashing domes that stretched for hundreds of miles around, ridding them of mist and monsters, but not of the infected.

The few ponies who had survived the last dusk of their land had to manage without any help, without any guide to lead them in a world devastated by an apocalypse that no one had foreseen. They were blindly in a hostile, withered land.

And there was nothing they could do to change that.

The little pony knew this very well. She had been born almost two years after the mist fell on her land. In all her thirteen years of life, hiding from ponies and the infected, staying away from areas where the mist began, and learning to control the magic her parents had bequeathed to her were the only things she had practically known.

So that story, in a certain way hopeless that his father had always told her, had never moved too many convictions inside her.

She wasn't sure if her father had wanted to warn her, frighten her, or get her to be cautious in her actions. She suspected it and sensed it, although she was not absolutely certain. After all, everypony in that new world knew that placing their trust in someone unknown was an almost certain sentence of a miserable life alongside the new chiefs that land had created.

Ultimately, death was the least of the problems.

The little pony thought about it as she flipped through one of the books she had between her hooves again. Her magic lit up the sheet with a faint white, almost transparent glow, and she turned the page to the next text, full of written spells that she was soon to put into practice. She was so engrossed in her reading that she hardly heard the noise that knocked on the door of her cabin.

Her ears suddenly pricked up, and she looked up from the book as the knock was heard louder than before. She frowned suspiciously and cautiously, pushing the book out of her sight and rising from the place where she had been sitting. The sound of her hooves echoed softly in the wood.

"Dad?" She called in a low, cautious voice, as she walked somewhat slowly towards the front door of her home.

Nopony answered her call.

The little pony's frown deepened, so distrust began to arise inside her. She knew that her father had left a few hours before and was not going to return until night was about to fall. It was his routine from time to time.

But neither could it be someone alien and unknown. Nopony knew how to get around the traps they had set around their home, and the alarm spells were always activated, neither had gone off at that moment. The forest also protected them.

The pony stood away as she opened the door with her magic, in a tense, cautious pose that foresaw any imminent danger. However, there was nothing behind it. Nothing assaulted her or surprised her.

However, that feeling that something wasn't right still lingered within her. She was sure that something had knocked on the door, it was simply impossible for anything to be found behind it. But her father had not yet appeared, and the forest was still as still as it had been minutes before.

Just to make sure, she decided to get a little closer and let her magic run free once more. Her horn was re-ignited with another spell, but she also couldn't detect anything near her surroundings except the normal little life that dwelt inside the forest. The only thing that stood out was a piece of paper thrown in front of her home. She approached, without leaving her misgivings, and took it very carefully, hoping that it would react in some way to her magic. That didn't either.

The paper was blank.

"Dad."

Her voice came out in a worried murmur, and she went back into her home while waiting for the prompt arrival of the pony that had also given her life.

However, her father never returned.