I woke up to the smell of smoke, the sound of fire all around me. I dare not open my eyes, dull flashes breaking past my eyelids and burning my retinas. Then, just as sudden as my waking, a silhouette cut the light, "Benjamin, Wesk, Count of our land in the two thousands year of our fall. Four years before our rise, or, perhaps our deaths." the voice was in Thestrali, but not with the familiar dialect of the bat ponies.

I popped my eyes open, spotting a man with jet black hair and a grey leather coat. He sauntered over, boots clicking against the stone floor we were both seated on. The man ducked down next to me, tips of his boots bending as he crouched. The man turned his head to the side, "...Ben...how are you?" he asked, cracking a soft smile, "You look worried."

I felt my heart speed up. "What the fuck?" I asked, trying to get to my feet. "What is this!?"

The mimic clapped his hands together, "Two Counts atop a tower, over a burning city." He stood up, holding his hand low to help me up, "What does it look like?"

I took my clone's hand, getting to my feet. I stared at the other Ben's face. "Uh...it looks like I got starved."

He rubbed his chin, "We are a little gaunt...could be worse though." He started walking over to the edge of the round stone platform we were standing on, "We could be down there." He pointed off the edge, prompting me to walk over and join him.

I looked over the edge. "Holy shit...." I muttered, finding us in an old city, clinging to the top of a tower, the city ablaze, the horizon speckled with distant fires and the sky turned obsidian with smoke. "What the fuck is this?!" I screamed, turning to my mimic, "What is this!?"

The other me just stood there, smiling calmly, "This? It's war...but not war, it's battle without a fight, it's something that will repeat itself without your intervention." His smile faded. his voice turning from English to Thestrali, "A long war, our homes lost, pushed from the shores to the mountains, our homes turned to those that eat grass, those that fly with feathers, and those that glow." He let out a rough cough and switched back to English, "It's...from a very, very old book, you know the one...the one about how they lost it all."

I racked my brain, somehow a passage came to mind, "They came fleeing the cold, they came for a new home, but this was our land, we were not meant to share it with others. Our modest holdings, our culture, our lives were not meant to mingle without concession, and they would have only total victory."

My clone turned to me with a smile, "And one by one, our homes fell. Overtaken by the tide of ponies. First fell Manxer, the port of hope. Then fell Baxton, village of growth."

I swallowed hard, "Then fell Highrock, the once great mountain."

My mimic pointed at me, smiling wide, "But one did not fall, our death's halted by the one. The one named Luna."

I rubbed my face, the growing sense of dread flooding my guts. "But banished to our final home, a castle town, a land kept ruined and weak to quell our spirits."

My clone smiled wide, wider than ever before. "You know...you could still make all this happen." He pointed out over the vista once again. The scene suddenly different, brighter. The once dull grey stone that built up the old city was gone, replaced by a bright visage of Canterlot Castle. "We could be king, we could give them back everything. No more inequality, no more confinement, a return to what's natural."

I looked out over the burning Canterlot. "...I still don't understand...what is--"

"Oh Ben, really?" The clone put his hand on my shoulder, "One town? One single secluded town. You think that's all the Thestrals could have built? You think their xenophobia isn't earned? You think they are feared for no reason?"

I swallowed hard, "So...this...all this is supposed to happen?" I pointed out over Canterlot, the spire crumbling. "This is going to happen?"

My clone sighed, "No...it's really up to you. But before you decide let me ask you this. You've seen real Thestrals, you know what they're like. You've seen ponies, and they wrote the history books. Do you really think it's fair to them to just be brushed aside?"

"They're not brushed aside!" I screamed, a loud whistle cutting through the air. "This isn't--"

"Ben...it's a reservation." My clone stated, growing rather dour and holding me in place. "You think time makes it better? Look at the Iroquois, look at the Cree, time really has been great to them!"

I rubbed my face, the fire starting to get closer. "So it makes it okay to start a war!?"

My clone looked off to the side. "...A couple thousand years ago, this was theirs, and now they have a chance to take it back. Are you really going to deny them that?" He turned to me with a fiery gaze, "Your wife, your daughter, your family, the nobles. You could create something so much greater if you just focused on the positive."

I shook my head hard. "No. I can't let this-" I swung my hand out over the burning Equestria, "-happen! It's not right, it's not fair--"

"Fair!? Ben, me, Count Wesk, was it fair to take it to begin with?" my clone asked, striking a defensive pose. "Four thousand years doesn't make it right, and Celestia was there...she'll tell you it was a hard choice, but it wasn't! They came because they ruined their land with disharmony and violence, they froze it with their greed! So all that makes it okay to just take everything the Thestrals spent eons making, the lives they'd worked their lives for, and smashing it to build some gaudy castle!?"

I stared into my clone's eyes. "I don't care what it takes...there will be no war...but I will see them prosper damn it!"

My clone dropped his eyes to the ground, "...Always the idealist, even when fucked up on life altering drugs...that's why I like you, and...I mean, one and the same, gotta love yourself."

I shook my head, another loud whistling shrieking through the air. "You're not me...not anymore."

The clone's smile hardened into an extreme frown. But a thud kept him from speaking. A thud followed by an ear shattering crumble. And then, falling, then nothing.

My eyes shot open once again, finding myself in a dank stone tome, a book laid across my chest. I knew what book it was, my brain calling up on knowledge I had no idea I even knew. Something was wrong, even aside from my apparent burial. That pony with the changing eyes, they'd done something more than just help me clear my mind, or maybe it was by adding something, that I could gain some clarity.

I looked at the cover of the book. The Rending, a war journal. A story of a war between the Thestrals and the ponies. The ponies coming to find a new land, a new home to sustain themselves, and the Thestrals fighting to preserve everything they once had.

It was a real history, the history so many like to bury. The inconvenient history, the genocide, the conquering, all the painful truths that could tear a nation apart if ever released. A history that, if ever released, could spark a bloody war of reclamation. It was a tinderbox, waiting for a spark.

I leaned back in my stone coffin. My mind raced with everything I could do, everything the bat ponies could do. The towns they could build, the lives they could lead, the land the would have. But beyond that, the blood it would take, the innocent ponies that would have to suffer for their ancestors choices.

I couldn't let it happen. No matter how deserved the Thestrals retribution would be, it was not worth the price of blood.

And as my musings faded away, the stone covering slid away, revealing a single green colt with ever shifting eyes. "Count Wesk...welcome back."