//------------------------------//
// Introduction 
// Story: A Continuous Cycle 
// by thephantur 
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War is what drives man towards creation. The more advanced man becomes, the further, and faster, he adapts and changes. Yet, creation is, also, the folly of man; a path that will lead to nothing but destruction. War has been a part of mankind, a distinguishing point for our species. Where we follow, so does ruin and waste. Only two beings are foolish enough to wage such wanton destruction: man and ant. And, like the ant is to man, man is to the world. They will grow, they will live, and they will die, and the world will forget.

Our intelligence can be traced back to the very first war; where the first men found rocks to be more effective than fists, where tempered blades trumped stick and stone. Man progressed from apes, to prehistoric men fighting with rocks, to polished steel, to blinding lights, fire, and nothingness. And the cycle continues, with new players but the same rules.
The year was 2012: the pinnacle of modern man’s achievements, our glory, our Athens. Before this age, war had always left man weak, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, man rose, more powerful, and more narrow-sighted. This time man wasn’t so lucky. An argument broke out, mistakes were made, orders were given, but nothing could be taken back. Scores of blinding lights, a hundred nations set on fire, a thousand years of nothingness.

Then, something rose.

From the ashes of the dead, rose a new master race, a new intelligent creation to build from the last, with nothing but the notes of the civilization before them warning them of the future to come. This new race came together, once a populous of slaves, now rulers, and formed a country; the mother of, hopefully, an empire. An empire forged, once more, upon the bodies and blood of its people. From the language borrowed from a dead people, a name was created: Equestria.

Evolution that should have taken millions of years, finished in only a few hundred. Radiation, thick and heavy in the atmosphere, initiated startling transformations upon the remaining members of Earth. As radiation is wont to do, it changed the residences. Hooves were replaced with cartilage backed hands, resembling those of their predecessors, a grazing race no longer as both flesh and vegetation made up their diet, and elongated faces shortened, resembling a cross between man and equine.

From fiction came reality. This new race of pony expanded into three. The original, Earthbound, the Pegasus, winged beings with the blessings of flight and speed, and the Unicorn, Earthbound with unusual powers.
To no one’s surprise, war erupted. Three sides clashed and three sides fell. Only through joining together could they survive; and survive they did. Within a hundred years the great war, followed by lingering peace, had advanced the race forward a thousand years. They were now in the age the humans had once referred to as the dark ages. For man it was an age where nothing happened, no art, no advancement; for the Equines, it was an age painted dark with blood. The lingering peace had broken, war had once again visited the country of Equestria.