Wake up.

He woke up with a start. Around him stood trees and lush green mountains. There was no homes, no cities, no life.

Where am I?

The man wore a teal shirt and jeans. His hair was brown and dirty. His face was hardened and mousy. His features were blocky and he felt like a square. He began to build a shelter.

He looked at his wooden house with a sense of awe and power.

There must be more that I can do.

He found a cave and began to dig…dig…and dig. He collected dirt, he collected rock. He found coal, and he found iron. He learned to build a furnace and fire pit.

Then the night came.

A ghoulish scream and the man stood still.

Huh?

Another scream.

What?

The man ran for his house and when he got there, he saw…himself.

Well not exactly himself, but a distorted copy indeed. He ran away only to run into other versions similar to him. These creatures though had no skin and were walking piles of bones, carrying arrows.

There was a howl and the man saw a green stalk rise from the vegetation. It had a truly monstrous face. Soon, dark 8 legged spiders began to crawl down from the trees and towards him.

The man was now hyper-ventilating as he ran to the house. One of the green stalks hobbled its way into the man.

BOOM!

The man fell back. He looked and saw the front of his house turned into a crater. He turned to see other creatures making their way towards him.

He buried himself in a hold to hide for the night.

Daytime

The man got out of his temporary shelter and began to build again. He fortified his walls with stone and started to search again in the caves.

There were more monsters now in the caves. He had tried again and again to stop the horde, but they kept growing.

Then one day…he fell in a crevice near the cave wall.

Inside, was a cage that had flaming tongues licking and slithering around it like some slimy animal. A poof of smoke and a monster came out.

The man had a torch in his hand and without thinking he placed it. The flames died down. The monsters stopped spawning.

With the new light, the man saw a chest he never made and a room composed of stone he never placed. He crept to the chest.

Inside, he found iron and apples, coca and a disc. He didn’t know what to do with it, as it was damaged, but he decided to keep it.

-

Days turned to months and months into years.

The man learned a lot about survival and food. His house was now a mansion and his garden was decorated with sculptures he made. He was his own world and his own leader.

One day, while looking in his many chests, the man saw a disc. His mind traveled back to the time he had discovered that strange, stone structure.

He found a jukebox and placed it in.

It was a recording of someone else like him. Yet the person appeared to have been chased by some sort of monster. He had been panting and coughing when suddenly the creature picked up scent and gave chase. The recording ended that way.

That next night, the world the man knew grew less and less. The trees were no longer their luscious green. The hills now were grey and brown, with large scars jutting out of every direction.

The man felt sad. He remembered when the world was simple and luscious with vegetation. So one day, his sadness made him leave his home and go on an adventure.

The adventure took the man to many sights and biomes. Then, beyond the horizon, stood a patch of wooden buildings.

The man felt joy knowing he was not alone anymore. He ran to the village only to find the inhabitants nothing like him.

They were bald and had large noses. If anything could describe them, the man thought that they reminded him of the mollusks he often saw in his lake.

He tried to talk, but he was met with silence.

The man sighed, and dragged himself out of the village and onto his way home.

The man was too sad to see the large split in the field.

He fell.

And darkness overtook him.

The man woke up to see a structure he had only heard about in distant memories. Two wooden poles supported a larger wooden block that was held against the ceiling of stone. A distorted track lay ahead of him.

The man followed it. He had a few torches and soon, he couldn’t find his way back. The place was a maze of wood and cave ins. Once or twice, he had met a spider or two and had nearly ran into a nest.

Then he saw the wood change to stone and he found himself staring at a fountain of water. The stone that supported it was old and had moss on it. It wasn’t cobble, but rather fine stone blocks. A tiny light peaked over the corridor ahead.

The man ventured forward. The room before him had three pools of lava, two on the side and one large one in the center.

The man saw a little flaming cage and immediately placed a torch to stop anything from spawning. He then noticed that a stone platform stood on top of the lava pit.

He stepped forward. The sight before him was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was a black colored portal, but not like the ones he had discovered in caves before. It wasn’t purple or made of obsidian. The rock surrounding the portal had a yellow color with a green top.

He didn’t want to step in but as he turned around, he tripped.

And he fell.

The man woke up in a new place. Darkness hung onto everything and the man saw millions of strange, tall, black shadows stare at him. Their eyes were glowing purple and their ghastly jaws vented out smoke. A large roar made them all vanish.

The source of the roar landed right next to the man. It was a large beast, with an armored tail and spike jutting out from its back. Its color and looks were similar to the shadows the man had seen earlier. Yet, the most terrifying thing about it were its wings, which were large fans that gleamed like obsidian.

It regarded him with its purple eyes and, without thinking,the man reached out and touched its forehead.

A kaleidoscope of colors shined around him and he saw an age of history flash before him.

The dragon was a baby, hatching from his egg to see a purple unicorn looking at him with excitement in her eyes.

He was now sorting books in what looked like a large tree while that same unicorn was reading over a table.

He was asleep in a small basket and that same unicorn came and placed a blanket over him.

He was now in a colorful shop of clothing designed for four-legged horses or ponies. A bright white unicorn was asking him to hand her something. She had a mark on her flank. It was a trio of diamonds.

He was with the purple unicorn, who also had a mark, which showed a star like those that shined in the night sky.

He was outside, holding a device with some sort of lens in his hands as he counted down. The device was pointed at a group of ponies. There was a pink one, the purple one, the white one, a yellow one, an orange one with a hat, and the cyan one with the rainbow mane.

They all looked so happy.

The man fell back but them felt himself get pulled back in.

There was a group of men dressed in armor. One of them unsheathed his sword.

There was a scream in the dark. The dragon felt himself cuddle next to the unicorn, who he felt was his mother.

There was a sound of thunder and a clash of hooves.

There was the purple unicorn, so sweet and innocent and smart, lying in a white bed, tubes running through her body like some sort of twisted vine.

There was a grave.

There were six graves

There were no graves.

There was a man who stood on a pedestal and was giving a speech.

“The fact that they died to our diseases shows that we are the cause of the deaths of…”

There was an uproar from the crowd.

There was a pleasant village in the meadow.

There was an uprooted tree that bled books and paper.

There was a mine and there were men working in the mine.

There was a city of silver and gold, with buildings that seemed to scrape the sky itself.

There was a man who stood over a sleeping dragon, his sword dripping in blood.

There was a court, a jury, and a man pointing his finger at the dragon, blurting out words of madness and insanity.

There was a portal in a stone temple.

There was a push.

Then there was darkness.

The man looked at the dragon and felt himself become overwhelmed with a feeling he couldn’t control. He saw his race, but then he saw something else. He knew about ponies from some sort of prior knowledge that he had been born with.

“Tell me,” he pleaded, “why?”

A flash of light and the man saw himself in a vast city. He was in a chamber that had many beds. None of them were occupied but the stranger at the counter said that the man could sleep here.

The man had nowhere else to go. His family left him. He lost his job and house. He was in the streets and despite his reputation as a survivor man, he knew nothing about surviving in a concrete jungle. He gladly took the chance to be inside instead of out in the cold.

The man saw himself go to sleep.

Time flashed forward by a few days.

There was uproar and an infection spread across the world like wildfire.

There were bodies and corpses walking the streets. There were iron barred fences and there was fear in people’s eyes.

A man was on the screen of some sort of box… it was a …a TV.

“The disease we thought only killed the Equestrians are now killing us. Mutating the immune into these mindless corpses…”

There was scream and a man fell.

There was a village in the meadow that was set ablaze.

There was a man on the TV saying, “We have no choice. Maybe some of us will live. Yet they will not escape having a few mutations done to themselves as well.”

There was the man in his bed, safe and sound in a bunker.

There was a rocket that propelled into the air.

There was a city of silver and gold that collapsed under a mushroom cloud.

There was a plant that woke up with hatred towards man.

And a mutation that allowed it to explode in its fury.

-

-----

There was the man who woke up and saw a beach ahead of him.
There was a man who cried.
There was a man who drank something to forget what was once there.

Then the man woke up with a start. Around him stood trees and lush green mountains.

Where am I?

The light flashed and he was back to staring at the dragon.

The dragon’s eyes seemed to speak in a voice of thunderous fury.

He was speaking out loud.

“For years, your kind has come here to slay me and when you slayed yourselves, I was alone in this world. I made myself companions, but they shy away from me all the time. They are my version of you. You, who brought the end to me and all I cared for. You, who robbed the land of her riches to use for yourself. You, who call the monsters outside monsters when you haven’t even taken a good look at yourself. What do you have to say?”

The man was silent. He had only spoken a few times, and that was to himself. He thought of the monsters he had seen and how in the darkest moments of his life, he had found a way to make it through. He felt all his memories that lay dormant in his mind erupt.

The man spoke.

“I don’t know why it happened and how it happened. But for all of us and from one ancient to another, I want to say I’m sorry. Sorry for what happened. Sorry for letting it happen. Sorry for making it happen. Sorry for not doing anything after it happened.”

The dragon looked at the man with eyes that showed a millennia of secrets and wisdom. It pulled out an egg magically out of its clawed hands.

“Take it. I found it before your kind destroyed my city. Use it to start the cycle again. Maybe when we die and regenerate in the future, we will meet not as enemies but as friends…”

The man found himself levitating before he was pulled into the portal.

He was on the path that he built to his house. The sun was shinning. The man walked towards his house.

Somewhere below the rotting earth, a dragon was watching his realm collapse. When it did, the darkness would destroy the world before him. The dragon wasn’t scared.

He didn’t know why, but he had some sort of feeling that in the End, everything was going to be all right.

A few days later…

The man was back home. He was in his bed and he was staring at his fireplace. His house looked untouched. It was normal and just as cozy.

The man turned around to see the egg.

It was speckled and blue, the life inside it pulsing through the living network of energy that held the shell together.

The man reached out and touched it.

There would be an end to this current world.

There would be a dragon that came from this egg.

There would be a tribe that came from this dragon.

There would be a new world.

There would be a land of magical ponies

There would be a voyage led by a group of foolhardy men and women.

There would be a man and a purple unicorn making a cure for some sort of disease.

There would be a boy, dragon, and filly playing together by a beach, picturing before them a floating city of gold and silver.

There would be a city of gold and silver.

There would be a man who never lost his family.

A dragon who never lost his friends.

A unicorn who never lost her life.

A plant who would never explode.

The man woke up. He saw the world before him, scarred and old. He looked down to see the egg clutched in his arms. He laid the egg by the fire and tended to it.

A new world.

A new life.

Now the egg was in an obsidian shelter below the earth, safe and sound and ready to hatch at the right time.

He wouldn’t be there to see it.

He relished in his memories before going to his bed.

He slept.

Knowing he would just wake up.

Wake up.