What lives in the wreckage.
Everything starts going wrong
Emerald Shadow had no idea what was going on, the scouting party he was the captain of had been traveling just fine in the wasteland that Celestia had sent them to explore. They had been traveling along just fine when they had seen a strange building in the distance. This in itself was odd as the wasteland had beaten down all structures and anything that tried to grow more than a few feet high.
The grass throughout the place was dead and grey, it crumpled underhoof and turned to a powder. The wasteland had nothing living in it after what Celestia referred to as The Disaster. But here it was anyway, this whitewashed building standing in the middle of nowhere.
The moment the scouting party had gotten within range of the building things had started to go wrong, The unicorns reported being unable to use more than the most basic magic and the majority of the pegasi had fallen out of the sky and been unable to return to it. In fact the only one who remained unaffected was the new recruit CloudChaser, who continued to fly around despite the fact that all the other pegasi appeared to be unable.
There was one entrance that appeared quite undefended. It was simply a rectangular hole in the side of the building. Emerald gathered 6 ponies at random from the scouting party and got his lead Unicorn, Song, Song was a taller unicorn who was very adept in detection magic, he had a silvery coat and a lighter blue mane. The guard had recruited him when he had saved his classmates from a trap during a field trip to the zebra kingdom, a mad zebra had planted a talisman that was meant to curse everyone who passed over it, but during an accidental casting Song had managed to find the talisman and alert his teacher to its presence.
“I want you all to scout out that building, only go inside if you’re sure it’s safe,” Emerald told them, looking at Song “I want you to make sure that there are no magical traps around the entrance.”
“Yes Sir!” They all replied before heading out to do his bidding. After they had departed, Emerald went about the process of setting up camp, which was much more difficult with only one pegasi who was able to fly. ‘I’m going to need the unicorns to inspect CloudChaser and find out why she is the only one who can fly.’ Emerald mused to himself.
The 7 ponies who had been sent to explore the building were nearing the entrance and were beginning to slow so that they could keep a lookout for traps.
“Song are you getting anything?” one of the earth ponies nervously asked.
“I don’t know, theres just... it’s like magic doesn't exist at all near this...” Song replied perplexed. Normally everything in equestria had at least some traces of magic in it, but this building, in fact the very air around it, was completely impossible. Every single trace of magic that got anywhere near it just ceased to exist, which would explain why the pegasi couldn’t fly as they required this magic to be able to stay airborne. Song tried casting a simple detection spell on the doorway to no avail, the same affect happened. The magic just went away.
“Well judging by the fact that there appears to be no form of magic anywhere near this building there can’t be any magical traps hidden here” Song said to the group, so they proceeded to enter the building. As they entered the surprisingly large hallway and ambient light appeared causing the entire hallway to light with hundreds of disembodied shadows. They had all finally stepped inside the building when Song collapsed. Running up to their fallen leader a pegasus guard asked,
“Song what is it?” before promptly collapsing into unconsciousness, the rest of the squad proceeded to pass out.
Song awoke lying on some form of table, it was a raised metal slab lined up next to 3 others just like it with other ponies lying on them, Song recognized the others he had brought with him. Song looked around the dim room that he found himself in. The left side of the room was filled by bookshelves. The bookshelves contained many different kinds of books along with what appeared to be scrolls, Song couldn’t make out the posters from where he was lying.
On the other side of the room, the side closer to him, were tables that were lined with different kinds of tools, he could see some saws and different cutting implements, but even more worrisome was the fact that there were some kinds of runic and magical tools that appeared to be made to do many different things, none of them good.
He couldn’t look back far enough to see behind him but out of the corner of his eye he could see tanks that appeared to contain... It couldn’t be, who would even... No it wasn’t possible there were only 2 alicorns currently alive, well that was still true but, the tanks appeared to contain corpses of alicorns. Song wasn’t close enough to see more than that as the tanks were not lit up. Song didn’t have anymore time to as a silhouette of a pegasus was approaching him.
“I see you’ve woken up early,” the silhouette said to him.
“What are you doing?” Song asked the strange figure.
“Nothing that your feeble mind could imagine” the figure replied before stepping into the light. The stallion was a slightly smaller pegasus with a dark blue mane and a very light blue coat... as if it had been bleached lighter, which made sense because of where he lived. His cutie mark appeared to be a dark tornado with lightning running around it.
“I’m pretty sure you can at least try to explain” Song said trying to buy for time.
“I guess I could try to explain while I prepare” the pony said moving over to the the table and picking up tools to check them over. “Back in the day before this place became a wasteland it was inhabited by many many Alicorns, They used to rule over all the surrounding land till an accident occurred. About 3,000 years ago the rulers you currently know where born, a prophecy was told that they would be the last of the great Alicorn race.
The parents would not stand for this and had every possible defence built around their citadel. It was a great city, the largest and most populated ever seen” the pony stopped to pick up one of the implements off the table, he pointed one end of it as a beaker and muttered something, light poured out of the end and lit up the entire room, the beaker melted into the table it was sitting on, just as if it was falling into the table before becoming solid again as the light stopped. “anyway,” the pony said setting down the instrument,
“the alicorns were prepared for all except one thing, and of course that one thing is what happened. A being that dwells within all worlds know as discord was awoken, the alicorns could not defend against something that altered reality and physics at will. Discord, the being swept the land with disease and ruin, Crops ceased growing and burned instead, water became rock hard and undrinkable.
The world of the Alicorns collapsed, until the 2 sisters took the artifacts known as the Elements of Harmony and used them to stabilize the world around them, but it was not in time, The Elements did not have enough energy to drive away Discord alone, as he had had a very long time to ruin harmony. The Elements had to drain the energy that was left out of the landscape in order to save the world, the Elements, the thing that all would think to be the perfect solution created this, the wasteland we stand in was created by the Elements.
Seeing what they had done the sisters took the Elements and flew elsewhere to rebuild the kingdom” The pony stopped and looked over at Song “But you know this don’t you?” Song remained silent. “You don’t do you!” the pony gasped, “The princesses haven't shared with you the reason why this wasteland you were sent to explore exists. Well anyway, the point of this is that it is true, the princesses are the last of the Alicorns.... for now” The pony ceased talking and picked up a knife before walking over to Song.
“What do you mean ‘for now’?” Song asked already guessing at what the pony planned to do.
“You might find out very soon,” The pony responded before putting the knife up to Song’s side...
