Once upon a time I heard that war never changes, maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not.
All I know is that war changes the lands it touches.
Two centuries ago, Equestria was a thriving, peaceful land ruled over gracefully by a leader we once thought to be immortal and saw as a goddess.

Now? Now she’s dead, and the lands too are dead. Radiation from the balefire bombs made sure of that. Most of the Equestrian wasteland wouldn’t grow food for another century at the very least, leaving most communities with no choice but to scavenge or die.
Though even in a world where the ground we walk on and the air we breathe is poisonous, some of us refused to give in, for such is the nature of life.

Trying to contain my anger as I stared at the fucker, this was finally going to be it. It was finally going to be over. The suffering and horror of an entire city would end tonight, and it would be by my gun. The bastard in charge would would die.
Snarling at my foe, I asked him one final question. “Got any famous last words to share before I end you?”

Standing there with his back against the glass, he looked at me in fright. Sweat worked its way down his brow, his eyes straining as he gulped in apprehension of the coming moment.
“You’re a fucking fool. Everything we’ve done... it’s all been ruined! For what? So you can be in charge? Ha! Good luck.”

Everything they’ve done? All they had done was to be oppressing an entire city, made slaves of the people and raid the surrounding settlements. I couldn’t help but laugh through the anger I felt from his statement. “Everything you’ve done huh.”

There was no need to go further, he knew exactly how I felt. Now he looked at me, his lips trembling as he looked away momentarily before looking at me with a strange sense of calmness. “You don’t know what this will do, but go ahead and kill me. You deserve everything you’ve brought upon yourself. May they burn you alive, scum.”

Really? Everything I’ve brought upon myself? There was no sense in waiting any longer. In time with the flash of lightning behind him, I pulled the trigger. The sound of breaking glass was covered by the thunder, his body falling through the gap, a collision course with the ground imminent as he fell through the night sky.

With their leader now dead, It was over. The bastard in charge of everything was finally dead and the city could begin to rebuild itself.
Of course, there was still work to be done in cleaning out the rogue elements, but that wasn’t my job. My job was elsewhere, back home. I still had a task to do, that one initial task that had taken me this far in the first place.

As I turned around and began to walk away from the scene, a voice came from behind me asking one question. “Why?”

I didn’t care to answer that, there was no need. My actions were justified and I could never need to explain them.

As I stepped through the door, she spoke again. “Why did you come here in the first place?”

Now that was a question worth answering. Turning my head, I looked at the shaken mare. Her lavender face was now pale, drained of colour and exaggerated by the red velvet sofa she hid behind. “That would require telling you who I am first of all, so you might understand my reasons.”

Life in Stable 58 was peaceful, or at least, suitably stable. My worries were few and even with my daily duties, there was nothing that made me wish for anything different.
My days filled with small things like learning how to be a good leader, going through rigorous speech tests and learning how to appease everypony else without losing any benefit myself.
Who am I and how was that important to me? My name is Crimson Wings, and I am the son of the Overmare.

What filled my time mostly was the meetings. Every day I would have to meet somepony different, speak to them about their issues and act as their delegate to speak to my mother about the surrounding communities and the Stable itself. There always seemed to be somepony with an issue and it always came down to me to decide who to tell, the Overmare or the head of maintenance.

Atop of that, the clouds wouldn’t milk themselves for rain when we needed it, so my job as the one and only pegasus in the community was to occasionally bring down the rain. Oh, what fun it was to fly free and do as I like in the sky. Controlling the weather felt all too natural to me.

How did I get to be doing these jobs though? Well, that all happened after my twenty first birthday. The day after my party my mother came into my room, waking me up from my hungover stupor and throwing out the flavour of the night before so that she could speak to me personally.
“Crimson, you’re a grown buck now. You’ve been taking lessons on leadership since I considered you ready for them and now your job really begins. I want you to be the communities go-to pony, somepony they can speak to when there’s an issue. You’ll continue your weather duties and your classes as well as this. All it really means is you have to be available to talk to others and decide how pressing their issue is. Oh, and for Celestia’s sake, take a shower and clean up, you look like hell.”

I still remember the look on her face when she said that. I loved my mum, she was amazing.
Even more so when she turned around and spoke once more as she left the room.
“Huh, future leader of Stable 58 and thus Four Ridges by proxy, yet he can’t even get himself groomed.”

My ears perked up as she said those words. Me, the next leader of Four Ridges. Life was sweet being the leaders son.

A year passed without issue, or at least, nothing serious happening. Occasionally there would be minor issues with things involving traders from the outside, though usually after speaking to me the traders would see reason and accept that their differences with us were either minute enough to simply stop caring or a simple misunderstanding.
Every once in a while things would get out of hand, someone would get into a fight and be arrested for violence. With things like that, I was brought in to represent the authority of the Stable.

Life was easy for me, too easy perhaps.
Though that was all changed come that fateful day when the bad news was brought to me.

Every story has it’s beginning, this is where mine began.

Author's Notes:

The prologue has been rewritten and updated since the 28th of February 2013.
Great thanks go out to Joey for being a good friend and giving me suggestions on how to improve it here and there and also thanks to everyone else who had any other comments on it all.
I'll begin rewriting the rest of the story ASAP.

If you need explaining as to what's going on in the prologue, it begins by taking place after the beginning chapters of Broken Bonds and moves back in time to try and explain a small portion of who Crimson is. Thank you for taking the time to have read it!

Much appreciation goes out to anyone who rates, comments or favourites my story! If you have any suggestions on how to improve any of it, let me know!