We suppose you've all heard the story before. The tale of how the once glorious and magnificent world fell into the darkness because of the greedy and selfish transgressions of ponykind. True, the war that devastated the world was nothing short of a disaster, yet such a thing had always been waiting to happen. Ponies were made that way; their every drive, no matter how friendly and caring on the surface, was set towards the betterment of themselves through whatever means necessary. No matter how cruel and barbaric those means may have been.

We should know this better than anyone by now, living in the scorched and barren world ponykind left behind. It has taught us more than enough about pain and cruelty. Yet what they failed to realize all those decades ago–in fact, what all ponies who ever graced the world failed to realize, was the fact that there is a reason for ponykind being the way that they are.

There are things in the world which far exceed the darkness of war, even putting to shame the inherent shadows within the hearts of every pony ever to draw breath. For the ways of the ponies who survived the apocalypse, could not have happened by sheer chance. No, the universe does not work upon such precise rules, it does not simply create such a turbulent mix of traits within one being randomly. For such a thing to be so perfectly specified and displayed within something, it must be designed and controlled with the utmost care and accuracy. That was just another thing that ponykind failed to see though, we suppose.

Nopony would have guessed that their lives were never truly their own–especially when countless of them were sacrificed in the name of a war that, in the end, was utterly pointless. In the same way, everything in their history was pointless. In truth, we wish we didn't know these things. We wish we'd never been born the key to everything ponykind has stood for. We only wish we had been born a normal foal. For the totality of our accumulated knowledge makes the world seem like such a small and fragile place.

What we know reduces the very harshness of the wasteland itself from a worrying and fearful experience to an aloof and analytical logistical problem. For we know how all things will finally come to an end. It was always intended to be this way before even the first foal took its initial breath of fresh air. There is a purpose to everything ponies know, even their very existence. It is the greatest secret that has ever been kept from them, and it is their most fatal truth.

But if we are to tell the story of our life, how we ended up where we are with the knowledge we possess, we must start with the tale of somepony else. A pony whose mind and memories are now our own. We say this now as if we were her, such a thing is the least we can offer after all she did for us, all the pain and suffering she endured to make sure we survived. We only wish we could have known the real her more. Ultimately, she was a pony no different from any other in the post-apocalyptic ruin of the once majestic world, a pony who’d soon become the key to everything that has ever been.

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