This is a tale nearly lost to the ages.

A tale of a pony without peer.

~~~

Long ago, before Equestria was born, in a valley without a name, lived a village of earth ponies. Their home was beautiful and bountiful, but their prosperity was prevented by invaders from the outside world who sought the valley's riches.

One day, a strange pony unlike any the villagers had ever seen arrived in the valley, injured and exhausted. And although the valley ponies distrusted her, fearing that she was just another invader, they decided to show her kindness and generosity by taking her in and tending to her wounds.

No sooner had the stranger regained her health than did the invaders attack the valley again, and in greater numbers than ever before. The villagers feared it would be their last day, but the stranger they had saved repaid them with gratitude in spare – and with her mighty wings and astounding magic, she vanquished the invaders easily.

The valley ponies greeted their new savior with praise and celebration, which the stranger accepted graciously. That day, she swore an oath to always aide the valley and its ponies as they had aided her.

The stranger settled down in the valley with her new friends, and quickly came to call it home. Over time the valley flourished under her protection, as she vanquished foe after foe without ever faltering. She became renowned throughout the world, both for her unmatched power and for the boundless sense of duty in her heart – every promise she kept, and every deed she repaid.

But time passes quickly, and the earth ponies of the valley soon discovered that while they grew and aged and finally passed, their savior did not. Years became generations, and while the stranger still saw the villagers as her many good friends they instead came to see her as the guardian spirit of their land.

Slowly, reverence turned into worship. Though the stranger was confused, she gave no complaint – these were her dear friends that she'd sworn an oath to aide, who was she to decide how they show their gratitude?

More time passed, and with the stranger's power and reputation so fierce the valley experienced a golden age of peace like none other. And with little to protect the ponies and the valley from... the stranger became comfortable and complacent. While neither her body nor her heart waned, her mind soon became lax and prideful under the constant worship of the villagers.

Until one day, when tragedy struck. Invaders returned to the valley once again, and the villagers called for the aide of their guardian spirit – their savior. But the invaders did not fall as easily as they had in ages past, and the now-prideful stranger became anxious and fearful as she was repeatedly forced back.

Then she did the unthinkable, and fled the home she'd had for thousands of years. Without their savior to protect them the valley was finally overrun, and the earth ponies that lived there cried out in fear and confusion. They begged their savior to come and fulfill her promise to them, just as she had sworn to so long ago.

But those pleas soon turned to curses as the dying ponies realized their savior had abandoned them. With their last breaths they dubbed her 'Oathbreaker', and the name was carried across the world by the four winds.

Eventually, the Oathbreaker returned to find her beloved home in ruins, a cursed shell of its former prosperity. Her body and heart and mind all filled with grief for what she'd allowed to come to pass, and she used her powerful magic to sink into the earth, never to be seen again.

~ ~ ~

This is a tale nearly lost to the ages.

Few remain who know its truth.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The sound of water hitting water echoed through the cavern, leading back to a large pool carved deep into the limestone. Crystal clear and surrounded almost entirely by high walls, the water gave off a soft and ethereal glow – a light without source, but with unmistakable presence. And in the center of the pool, a single spire of rock rising as high as the walls but precariously thin, nearly the width of a quill at its thinnest point.

Drip.

The ripples from the droplet did not fade, but grew stronger – as did the light of the pool itself.

And slowly, something began to rise up from the water at the center of the unending ripples. It moved towards the edge of the pool, towards one of the few low ledges along its rim, bringing the ripples along with it. It kept rising, and so did the light, until all at once a form dripping with water pulled itself out onto drier land.

The water drained away from it with a supernatural quickness, flowing back into the pool and leaving behind a single dry earth pony – a grown mare, her coat a cold white and her mane and tail a dull black. Her expression was entirely bare, and so was her flank.

Drip.

The light faded again, and the mare slowly closed her eyes. She remained like that for some time, her stillness only broken by the occasional twitch – first her nose, then her ears, then her tail, and then each leg in turn.

Drip.

She opened her eyes again, and slowly turned her impassive gaze back to her flank – which was now marked by a trio of plain black dots, arranged in an upright triangle. She gave no reaction to the mark, simply turning her head to examine her surroundings – the ledge she was on sloped up shortly to a series of other ledges positioned close enough together to provide a path out of the high-walled pool.

Her first step was slow and tentative, but those that followed became less and less so. Soon enough she had climbed up to the open cavern that the pool had been cut into, and again stopped to silently examine her surroundings. Several paths seemed to lead away into the darkness, but she quickly fixated on one. She raised a hoof to take a step...

Drip.

...then hesitated. She turned to look back at the pool, and the precarious pillar at its center. There, on the very top at a level even with the rest of the cavern's floor, was an almost life-like stone statue of an alicorn. It was lying down, wings folded and neck turned to the side, an expression of pure sadness etched into its features.

Though the pillar was much wider at the top than at its middle, the statue was larger still such that several of its features extended past the pillar's edges. And thus it was that the water that welled up from the statue's eyes rolled down its cheeks and fell like tears to the pool below.

Drip.

Drip.

The mare blinked, then turned and walked away into the darkness of the cavern.

Author's Notes:

Hi all, I hope you enjoyed this first little bit of what's to come. Including this prologue there's gonna be 9 chapters in total, released basically when I'm done with them. Alongside this story are gonna be a series of oneshots set in the Equestria Girls world, with a new oneshot coming out basically with each new chapter of this. And once all of that is done...well, we'll see once we get there.

I'm also going to be posting all this stuff to fanfiction.net. As is probably obvious this is my first time working with fimfiction, so please bare with me as I figure things out.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the prologue and are looking forward to what comes next!