Anarchy

I woke up when the morning sunbeams assaulted my eyelids and forced me from my sleep. I really wish whoever was rising the sun now would get the timing right. It feels like it shouldn’t be up for another hour. Or maybe I just wanted more sleep. I don’t know what Celestia’s schedule was for raising the sun. Whoever was raising it probably did though.

I guess I should explain just what the buck I’m talking about. Well, it started a year ago when the unthinkable happened: Princess Celestia died. I know, I’m just as surprised as you are. And here’s the crazy part: nopony knows how she died. It was a complete mystery. All anypony knew is that one night, after she traded places with Luna, she went in her bedchambers and was found in there dead the next morning. It couldn’t have been old age because Alicorns live forever. She wasn’t stabbed or harmed in any way because her body was in perfect condition. The most popular theory seems to be that somepony had poisoned her. But Alicorns have a super immune system that makes most poisons useless on them. And the few that were effective, the princesses had destroyed all the necessary ingredients used for them centuries ago. Though poisoning is the biggest theory, nopony could confirm it. Nopony would let (or even wanted) an autopsy to be conducted on the princess. They wanted her to be buried unscarred.

When she was buried everypony in Equestria came. Canterlot was flooded with ponies who came to pay their respects to the princess. You couldn’t walk a single step without bumping into somepony. My friends and I were lucky since we were the elements of harmony; so we were able to stand close and actually get to see the princess be buried, unlike most other ponies who were almost a mile away.

For weeks Equestria was in a state of sorrow. Every day when you woke up you'd instantly become depressed because of how glum everypony was. But the sorrow eventually passed and ponies realized that they needed somepony to blame for Celestia’s murder. Hooves were immediately pointed at Discord. But my friends and I knew better; Discord has grown to love the princess as much as any pony did. Besides, I don’t think he had it in him to kill anypony. Drive them crazy, sure, but not kill. Then some ponies got the crazy notion that it was Luna who did it. Most ponies immediately called bullshit on this. Luna loved her sister more than all of the ponies in Equestria put together. But those accusing Luna of the murder kept trying to prove it, and they grew in numbers at an alarmingly fast rate.

Their numbers grew so large that they formed an entire organization dubbed "The Celestial Avengers". They did everything in their power to convince ponies that they were correct and Luna was indeed Celestia’s murderer. Luna became scared of this group and what they could do. She did the only thing she could think to do: ban any and all activities of, and relating to, The Celestial Avengers. But this only served to draw further suspicion at Luna and fueled the group’s ideals more. Things got out of hoof after that. Riots and protest began to break out. Harsh insults were shouted at Luna. Ponies even went as far as plotting to destroy the moon.

Then the day everypony in Equestria would remember came. The entire city of Canterlot had broken out into a riot and had advanced to the royal palace. They shouted for Luna to be dethroned and executed. Luna came out of the palace to try her best to stop the madness. But when she spoke to address the rioters she was only met with more yelling and harsher insults. Not even her Equestrian Voice could stop the crowd. Then one of the rioters pushed his way passed the guards and rushed at Luna. The princess was so surprised and unprepared for this that she acted on instinct. Without thinking she instantly struck her attacker down. For an instant, everything stood still. Everypony was silent and stared at the scene in horror. Then the rioting started up again, stronger than ever before. The ponies broke the guards’ defenses and all rushed at Luna. She fled from the palace; and nopony ever saw her again.

That was it; Equestria was finished. It now had no governing body to rule it. Celestia was dead and Luna was sent into a forced exile. Twilight and Cadence tried to step forth and take the throne; but nopony would accept them as their rulers. Equestria fell into a state of complete and total anarchy. Nothing was the same after that. You’d think that lawlessness wouldn’t affect ponies that much; you’d think you could have a little more faith in them. But that sadly wasn’t the case. The crime rates all over Equestria shot up after that day. Stores and homes were robbed all over the place. The nicest, sweetest ponies you knew were now forced to be tough and ready for a fight at any time. And ponies started to be murdered left and right.

My friends and I knew that we had to stick together; but that sadly wasn’t what happened. You see, we got into this argument over our priorities. Twilight said that we needed to go to Canterlot and work on establishing a new government. But Applejack wasn’t going to leave Ponyville or her farm. She said she needed to stay and keep her family safe. Pinkie Pie only wanted to end the chaos that was now our world and make everypony happy again. Rarity said we all needed to leave Ponyville and start our own town and build it up into its own kingdom. I said we needed to forget about all of that and just focus on keeping ourselves and everypony we care about safe. Our conflicting ideals quickly broke into a full scaled agreement that nopony could have resolved. Fluttershy tried her best to stop us, but she eventually gave up and crept away. I haven’t seen her since.

We all went our separate ways after that. Now a year later, I’m the only one that’s left in Ponyville. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m the only pony in Ponyville at all. Everypony else had fled the town. But I didn’t want to move, I just wanted to stay here and live the rest of my live in as much peace as I could. Do I wish things could go back to the way they used to be? Buck yeah, I do. But let’s face it, that’s impossible. Everypony knew it was. Without Celestia, Equestria would be forever in a state of chaos and anarchy. And we all knew that there was no way that Celestia could come back.

But there’s this little part of me that’s been saying otherwise lately. It’s probably just my sense of hope trying to find some way for me to be optimistic. But the more I think about it, the stronger this feeling gets. It’s getting hard for me to tell myself that Celestia coming back was impossible. I keep getting this thought in my head that maybe, just maybe, there’s some way that we could set everything right again and bring the world back to the way it was.

I couldn’t take it any longer. I emerged from the ruins of my cloud house and flew down to the now barren streets of Ponyville. I could have just flown to where I wanted to go, but I felt like taking a walk. I passed Sugar Cube Corner. The windows were all broken and graffiti was sprayed all over the walls. I thought of the treats that were once baked here. I thought of the parties that used to be thrown here. I wanted them back so badly. Carousel Boutique was in a much similar state. The only times I ever went in there was when Rarity had dragged me in there to be a model for one of her dresses. She would force me into tight and itchy clothes as she told me about some rich ponies that had come into her shop the previous day. As much as I hated it, I still missed it.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally reached my destination: Twilight’s Library. The tree it was in was now starting to decay. All of its windows were reduced to broken piles of glass. The inside wasn’t any better. The once neat library run by a pony with OCD now looked like it had been a war zone. Books were thrown off their shelves and had pages torn out of them; probably to be used to fuel fires. The book shelves were overturned and broken along with other furniture. I walked upstairs to Twilight’s room. There were a handful of books that she had kept off the library shelves for her own personal use. These books were kept in a locked chest under her bed; so I knew they would be safe from looters. Unlike looters, I knew were Twilight’s key was hidden. I went to her desk and pulled out a quill. I took the chest and inserted the quill into the lock and it opened.

There were only a couple books in here, but that included the one I was looking for. After Twilight had become an Alicorn, Princess Celestia had provided her with a book that gave her a detailed description about them. I thought that maybe, just maybe, this book could hold the answers I was looking for. When I opened the book I cursed at my luck. The entire book was written in Old Equestrian. I quickly ran downstairs and searched the mess of destroyed books. I let out a sigh of relief when I found an Old to Modern Equestrian dictionary. The book was heavily damaged and a good portion of it wasn’t readable. But from what I could get out of the book, I was able to find a heading that filled me with hope: Alicorn Anatomy.

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up because it was highly unlikely that this would contain anything that would bring Celestia back, but it was the only lead I had in my seemingly impossible quest. I needed to find somepony that could translate the rest of this book for me. As far as I knew, there were only three ponies alive that knew Old Equestrian. Nopony knows where Princess Luna is and Princess Cadence keeps the Crystal Kingdom in complete and total isolation. That only left one pony: Twilight. I had to find her.