Hyperbole walked alone down the cobblestone road. The rhythmic clippity-clop of his hooves was muted by the torrential downpour. He had been on his way to fix a tear in his saddlebag when the rain had started. The pitter-patter that soon changed to a waterfall; the waterfall that mercilessly soaked all he was carrying.

"But really, should I expect anything else?," Hyperbole grumbled to himself. “I never seem to have any luck when I actually need it."

He harrumphed once through his nostrils before making a sharp left turn and approaching his house. It was a mangy looking thing, with its upper windows boarded up and the lower ones all dusty. The decrepit outside was not preferred by the stallion, however, it was all he could afford at the moment.

Pointlessly, he brushed his hooves on the faded 'welcome' mat and opened the front door. He was met by a gloomy interior, furnished with a tatty looking, overstuffed couch, a dusty countertop, and a battered study-desk. Throwing his saddlebag to the ground, he opened the flaps with a minor levitation spell and pulled out its contents.

As he assessed the damage that had been done, he let out a slight breath of relief. Most of the water had been absorbed by his handkerchief, leaving the history book, his treasured fountain pen, and his writer’s journal mostly unscathed. After placing his handkerchief on a nearby dish-rack to dry, he proceeded to float the rest of the items to his study-desk.

With that out of the way he cantered over to the mostly-empty liquor fridge and pulled out some cheap brandy. Not minding to take a glass, the unicorn brought the whole bottle over and placed it beside him as he sat down with a grunt at his desk chair. He picked up his favourite pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and then placed the loaded writing utensil to a fresh piece of paper.

Instead of writing, however, he simply stared blankly out the window, as if searching for inspiration somewhere along the grimy peaks of the neighbouring, whitewashed houses. Slowly, any amount of anticipation he might’ve had faded. He took a long swig from the bottle of brandy and sighed as the liquid burnt the back of his throat. Was this all his life was going to be composed of? Rainy days, cheap alcohol, and fading inspiration? Yes. With a disappointed shake of his head, he leaned back and stared at the ceiling. His reflection was caught in the skylight; a hollow shadow stared back.

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...This might as well be the last thing I write...

Princess Twilight Sparkle wrote, her graceful pen-strokes filling the room with a symphony of scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch.

...I have decided to create an almanac of sorts on the Elements of Harmony. I believe that by writing this, I am insuring a more secure, peaceful future for Equestria. Now that my dearest friends have passed on, I have realized that once again the empire is at the mercy of any prior villains, and new ones. Without a strong structure, a credo, per-say, to maintain the harmonic foundations of Equestria, I fear that things will revert back to how they were when Starswirl the Bearded first quested to find the Elements. I am already seeing the beginning of that dastardly spiral. However, I digress, simply due to the lack of time I am confronted with. I will attempt to share everything I have come to learn about harmony and maintaining peace, but know for certain that I will not be able to publish, as the rioters outside are keeping all communications severed. No one leaves, no one enters- but at least I have Spike. He will be sending you this letter, and if possible, my almanac. Again, I am very sceptical about actually finishing the thing, but if I do, I beg of you to publish my document and reestablish the balance that had tipped when the last of the element holders passed on.

Thank you,

Forever your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle

With an exasperated sigh, Twilight dropped the pen and handed the parchment to Spike. The letter had taken far more effort to write down than she had expected. From outside, the dim roaring of the angry mob came to the despairing princess. They were getting closer, but she still had at least a full day to make as much leeway as she could before...

"Twilight?" A cautious voice saved the princess from imagining her impending doom.

"Yes, Spike?" she responded, her jaw clenching at the injustice of it all.

He didn't deserve this, he should have never been dragged into her world of abhorrence.

"What's going on?" A good question, Twilights expression grew stoic.

"It's the circle, Spike, it's completing itself." She turned away from the dragon to look out her window. The heavy rain had done little to deter the rioters. "And all we are, are simple pawns in this perpetual game."

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“...The world be bigger, now that I seen it with me own two eyes. Beyond those loomin’ mounts, a world be waitin for the eager traveler, as I was in me wee years. I ventured forth not in search of a solution to the problems we was sick with, but for the knowledge that rested in a tome yonder horizon line..."

The wizened elder said to his audience, the fire casting deep, dramatic shadows across his weathered features and long, white beard.

"...Because any half-wit knows that readin’ be a pillar of our very soul. We always needen’ stories to keep us kickin’, and it be through those stories that our future be modelled after.”

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To see a friend being flogged by one of the Masters was always a trying experience, but to be the victim was one-hundred times worse. Zerum was tied tightly by his wings to the flogging pole, and a Master was positioned behind him, ready to begin. From somewhere else, a rough voice was announcing to the assembled audience, the reasons why Zerum in particular was due for punishment. Though he could hardly understand the language, he made out some of the crier’s sentence.

'Escape. Bad. Master. Flogging. Griffer.' He hated the ‘G’ word almost as much as he feared his impending punishment.

Before Zerum could even say sorry, the first whip came down on his back, making him wince. He gritted his beak as he felt the feathers at the point of impact ripped off. Again the whip sung, and this time, it left a deep laceration across his shoulder. Pain flared behind his temple and he uttered another grunt. At three strikes, he began to lose his composure. At four, hot tears began to collect in the corner of his eyes. Five and six left a steady stream of blood to sully what feathers remained on his backside, and seven made him bite down hard enough on his tongue to make it bleed. How many more would he be given? He hadn't even been a bad cub as of late. All he had done was leave his cell during visiting hours to tell his story to one of the younger slaves... so why was he being beaten so savagely?

At the tenth strike, a momentary lull in the beating allowed Zerum to open his eyes. Blinking through the tears, he scanned the audience. Many of the other slaves he recognized were in the assembly, but one individual in particular stood out to him. She was a pony, but she didn't look like a Master. She was wearing a latex dress that seemed horribly out of place in the Underbelly, and she held a grim look on her muzzle.

When the flogging started up again, Zerum found that if he focused on her eyes-surprisingly colourful-and yet again out of place in the gray Underbelly, his ruthless punishment for simply being a griffon wouldn't hurt so much.

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Novus sat in the privacy of his room reading a letter from ancient times. When he had found it in the basement of the library he worked at, curiosity had gotten the best of him. Thankfully, somepony at one point in time had taken the liberty to preserve the document by laminating it. It carried an interesting message, and though he had no clue of who the writer-this Twilight Sparkle-was he had been irrevocably interested in what it was about ever since he had first laid his hooves on it.

He scanned over the delicate horn-writing again, his eyes resting on a few peculiar areas. In this letter, the writer had mentioned something about an almanac on the Elements of Harmony. At least that's what he thought it said, as the edges of the letter were faded and stained, leaving whatever was written on the fringes up to interpretation. While the section about some sort of riot was a practical gateway to endless daydreaming, the more pressing detail came at the very beginning of the letter; it was signed off to none other than Princess Celestia herself.

Novus had heard about the twisted monarch Celestia, they had a whole unit on her fall in history class, but to be holding in his hooves a letter signed off to her?! He should be sending it over to the Manehattan museum, and yet he had the impulse to keep it for himself. He would find this almanac, and learn about what the tome held in its pages. Next Chapter: Storytellers of Past and Future Estimated time remaining: 17 Minutes