Prologue: Fall of the Solar Ponies

Ignis, Magus Firus and leader of the tribe of Solar Ponies, was dying. While the rest of his kind was short-lived like a warm summer's day, his magical potency had extended his life far beyond it's natural limits. Now, he must choose a new apprentice to take under his instruction in order to pass on both his powers and his wisdom and preserve the balance of the four tribes.

Today was the day of the First Tournament of the Sun. On this day, hundreds of colts and mares from all the solar clans would face each other on the dueling field, testing their prowess in various magics such as healing and manipulating fire. There was no doubt that each one of them was within their own right an accomplished fire shaman. All solar ponies were. With the shortness of their lives came great power, as each stallion or mare possessed innate power over fire and took energy from the sun. It is perhaps why their lives could be described as a burning candle: always flaring bright, to peter out in the slightest wind.

However, nothing could explain the catastrophe that was to occur that day. It had started out as a normal summers morning in the prairie lands, the sun not yet beating down mercilessly on it's inhabitants. It was cloudless, and a rare cool breeze was blowing, slightly bending the tall wild grass surrounding a village of wooden huts. In otherwords, it was a perfectly beautiful day. Ignis was to have none of it, however. He sighed, wistfully glancing out the window of his room from time to time. As Magus Firus and tribe leader, he held a certain number of administrative duties that frustrated him to no end. One of these included organizing the events for the upcoming Tournament of the Sun, a daunting task that should have been handled by at least twenty ponies. Unfortunately, he had sent his trusted warrior chieftains to the dueling grounds in order to supervise the young flame shamans before the start of the tournament, meaning he had to complete the task alone. In hindsight, he should have forced them to stay behind in order to make the work go by quicker, but despite his exterior Ignis was a kind pony at heart. The fact that he had often bathed in the blood of his enemies in the past made no difference of that fact. He couldn't allow his advisors to miss one of the most exciting days of their lives, seeing as how their lives were short enough as it is. On average, a solar pony lived to the age of 23 before finally losing the ability to draw energy from the sun and dissipating into the air. Ignis had been an exception because, despite his age of 86, he forced his body to continue aborbing the sun's rays through sheer willpower. It was also possibly the fact that he held more power over fire than any other pony in his tribe, which could have sustained him well beyond his natural years.

Sighing, Ignis looked ruefully at the tasks he still needed to complete. Despite himself, he started to wonder the wisdom of his decision. "After all, I'm not getting any younger either wasting away in this room," he said, imagining his younger days as a war chieftain when he lead his stallions against raiding diamond dogs (or ghuuls, as they called themselves) and  predatory griffins. Those days were long past him, however. Nowadays, he could hardly walk straight without the aid of a cane and the support of a virile young colt.

Suddenly, a searing sensation exploded at the back of Ignis' head. His legs buckling under the intensity of the pain, Ignis struggled to move towards the door when a flash of light appeared on the edge of the horizon where the dueling grounds were supposed to be, followed by the screams of hundreds of ponies as they suddenly and painfully died.

"No. No!" Forgetting his age and ignoring the protests of his weakened body, Ignis summoned a mini-cyclone of fire that speeded him towards the dueling grounds. What he saw there would haunt him forever, even beyond death.

The dueling grounds, once a magnificent expanse of pure white sand, were darkened as if blasted by a sudden intense moment of heat. Ash hung thickly in the air around him, causing him to choke and dry-retch at the thought of him breathing in the remains of his dead brethren. As he moved forward onto the grounds, bits of glass crunched and cut at his hooves, threatening to cut him to ribbons if he didn't move carefully. Ignis stared in horror. Out of the hundreds of tribesmen that had gathered here today, not a single one lived. They had all been destroyed, their lives extinguished as if flames before the mighty sandstorm.

A sense of despair grew from the pits of Ignis' stomach, threatening to swallow him whole before he forced himself to be calm at least for the moment. He continued walking through the grounds, grasping onto the stray hope that there might be a survivor of... what? What could have possibly wiped out a tribe as powerful as the solar ponies in the blink of an eye?

Hearing a rustling noise behind him, Ignis quickly turned only to find it was the same wind he had wished he was enjoying just hours before. Now, he found it a brutal reminder of what today was supposed to be. And with this realization, he came upon an even darker thought. "There is nopony left to carry on our legacy... I am the sole survivor of the tribe, and there are no apprentices that I can pass my knowledge to before I follow my brethren into the void."

Ignis, Firus Magus, sole survivor of "The Day of Ash", broke down weeping in the desolate prairies he once called home.

"Gone? What do you mean, gone!?" Avalanche bellowed out, slamming the table with a firm hoof. Despite his oncoming years, he still displayed the same vitality and strength of his younger days when he had been a simple farm pony. The others of the council merely kept silent, unable to fully comprehend the stark reality of what had just occurred.

"Exactly what I meant, Magus Terrus." Ignis spoke, barely breaking a whisper. "They're all gone. I used all the magic I dared to conjure flame spirits that flew off to every clan village in the prairie. They're gone, Avalanche." Tears came to his eyes as his emotions threatened to overtake him, but he forced them down with an iron resolve. Tears would not help his brethren. Tears would only stop him from finding the cause of this terrible fate, something that he could ill afford to do.

Lunestra shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I am... sorry to hear your loss, Ignis. No doubt it is impossible for me to understand your pain, but at least let me try to appease it a little." Concentrating her magical energy, she summoned a burst of healing music that soothed Ignis' soul and caused him to calm down enough to think rationally.

"Thank you, Lunestra," Ignis said weakly, offering her a small smile.

"Forgive me for sounding forward, Ignis, but we have bigger problems to worry about at the moment!" Avalanche thundered forth once more, his voice a mixture of confusion, fear, and a need to protect his ponies. "We need to figure out who- or what- is responsible for this, this "Day of Ash" and put a stop to it before they harm the rest of our pony folk!"

"We will hardly resolve the issue by raising our voices needlessly, Magus Terrus." Sonus spoke in a quiet, lilting voice that spoke of hours of quiet meditation and guidance by her mother before her, Clover the Clever. "Please, calm yourself. We are among friends here. We are safe."

"Yes, 'we' are safe while my people are endangered by a threat we neither know of or see!" Avalanche roared. "How in all of Equestria can you possibly expect me to remain calm, 'Magus' Aquus" He spat. "We are a tribe of farm folk! My people know not the terrors of magic like the unicorns, pegasi, and solar ponies do! Our geomancers are spread far and few, each one a rare jewel to be protected and polished to perfection! And yet, in the face of some 'thing' that wiped out the most magically potent tribe in all of Equestria, you EXPECT ME TO BE CALM?" Finally giving vent to his frustration, Avalanche fumed.

"Yes, now please shut up and let us speak reasonably about this. Or perhaps you'd like to test your luck against the strongest watermolder the Unicorns have to offer?" Sonus' voice betrayed not a single emotion, but there was a fire in her eyes that spoke volumes about the magnitude of her anger.

"Please, friends, let us not fight! We must stand together in our hour of need!" Lunestra pleaded, her eyes begging each party to stand down.

"Stay out of this, Magus Ventus." Slowly moving out of his chair, Avalanche glared at Sonus from across the table. "You want to rumble, you old wench?"

Sonus smirked in an act of uncharacteristic arrogance. "Bring it, you sack of bones." Magic charged the air surrounding her as she delved deep into her power, slowly forming globules of water in the air around her the size of pearls. Avalanche snarled and brought out his pouch of rare gems that would aid him in his earth magic. Placing them in a circle on the floor, he conjured a wave of rock ready to crush whatever stood in it's way. Both ponies looked ready to murder each other until Ignis lashed out with a blanket of flame, vaporizing the globules and melting the rock to magma.

"ENOUGH!" Ignis bellowed at the top of his lungs, getting the attention of the opposing parties. "Can we stop squabbling like foals for one Faust-damned moment and actually use our heads for once!? The Council of Magi is no place for you to settle your petty disputes, so settle down!" Sternly staring down both Sonus and Avalanche, they hastily returned to their seats looking appropriately chastened. Satisfied that a crisis had been averted, Ignis allowed his weariness to show through to his face once more. "Now then, what we are going to do is continue holding the tournaments to decide the successors."

Three faces stared at him from all around the table, their faces slack-jawed from incomprehension. "But Ignis, what of the threat? What are we to do if it comes to each of our own homelands?" Lunestra seemed afraid. She did not wish for her pegasi to be caught in the crossfire of what could quite possibly a vendetta of the gods against ponykind.

"Regardless of the danger, it is imperative that you each acquire a new apprentice in which to pass on your powers to at once. Without their raw magical energy, we might not be enough to face the disaster," Artemis spoke softly, silently appealing to each of his comrades. "The solar ponies are finished, yes, but the Council of Magi must be continued if we are to continue building our country. Now go."

Realizing the logic of his statement, each clan leader nodded in turn and swiftly left the room, save for Lunestra. She approached Ignis carefully, as if he himself might burst into ash at any moment. "But what about you, Ignis? What will become of the Magus Firus?"

Ignis looked into her eyes, his own becoming deep wells of sorrow. "Magus Firus is finished. As am I and my people. Equestria must live on without us." Breaking away from her gaze, he slowly walked out of the room, a broken pony alone in a broken life.

The Day of Ash was soon recorded in the Equestrian Annals as one of the most catastrophic events to ever occur to ponykind. All the world watched as the prairies to the south  choked on the ashes of the dead, becoming a desolate wasteland that modern ponies would refer to as "the Badlands". Ignis, feeling his days drawing ever so closer to and end and wracked with pain from his immense loss, took the only action available to him in order to preserve his legacy for future generations. He wrought his most powerful sun magic yet, encasing his entire body in a stasis of light that would preserve him for centuries to come, waiting for a successor to once again wield the fiery power of the solar ponies.

His hope would be unanswered for several centuries until a unicorn, blessed by the embodiment of the sun, would wake him from his slumber.