Autumn Mist is not your average twelve-year-old unicorn. She has recently been accepted into the most advanced magic school in Equestria, located in Littlehorn Valley.
Misty's thoughts are on an Equestrian hero this day. She shares with her friends her own hopes and dreams of one day being just like her idol. As doubt creeps into her mind, Misty must reconsider her concept of what being a hero truly means.
When tragedy strikes at the school, how will this affect Misty’s view of her heroine? Is a pony still a hero even if they can’t be there to save everyone?
Editing and review credit goes to my development team:
Pawz, onlyanorthernsong, DuvetofReason, TundraStanza
Last-minute feedback credit goes to:
Windmill 7, Between Lines, Bad Dragon, PrinceUniversa, Jordan179, and Fervidor.
Original credit for Nyx and the Littlehorn event itself go to Pen Stroke and Kkat respectively.
Aw... I should have looked through again... unless the permanent switch from Autumn Mist to Misty partway through was intentional (It looks like as soon as the character is referred to as "Misty", the name "Autumn" completely vanishes from the rest). In which case, never mind.
You used all the standard in-story signs to indicate that these characters were going to be important and have an involved and interesting future ... and then they were slaughtered. And this is brave, because you obviously cared for them when you created them, and they were likeable to the audience, and what you showed is that, in violent situations, sometimes good and likeable characters with potential simply die, which is in point of fact why war is terrible.
The convention that the doomed characters do not get developed, or are Asshole Victims who deserve their terrible fate, and the loveable clever kid who the audience sympathizes with survives everything? That's lazy writing and it's soft-pedaling the horror or a bad situation. If you look at any situation of mass death and destruction, there are people who die or suffer, sometimes very terribly, who are innocent victims. Including children, who never really had the chance to live and were just starting to flower into their potentials.
So what you did in this story was really great, and commendable, and you wrote it powerfully, and it touched me.
6620345 Huzzah, then we have succeeded! Whoops, did I caught you off guard? My bad
In any case I was one of the reviewers of this story and I pretty much agree with everything you said. I really don't have to explain how much I managed to connect with them even though I only learned about them, it made me sad to see them fall so short in their life
But it's also a good thing that you liked the story here!
Your book has been advertised on the new facebook group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/foebooks/ :)
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Indeed, I changed the protagonist's name to Autumn Mist on the day before publishing. She is casually referred to as Misty except in a few places where "full name" is more contextually appropriate. I think it worked out better than my original, in fact. It has kind of grown on me.
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Thank you so much for this. I'm humbled! It's so good to hear that my story has had the effect I hoped it would!
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I'm glad you enjoyed the story too. I just updated the description to mention the six people such as yourself who contributed last-minute feedback on the story! Thanks for your thoughts. Though, I would be careful with that 'we' if I were you.
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Wow, thanks! That's very kind.
6620555 Hehe! Ah, I'm just being me is all...
Probably was channeling Luna there for a sec with the royal we there 
Thank you though for adding me, I feel proud to assist an author in anyway possible 
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That's okay - it's just a touch awkward cause I ask a whole bunch of people for a few paragraphs of general thoughts once the story is 98% done, but usually none of them start talking like they helped develop the story. I've got a private forum where the core team does quite a bit of deep conceptual talking, even debating and a little heated arguing (ask onlyanorthernsong), which is the meat of how stuff like this gets edited. I keep the group hidden cause it's simply rife with spoilers for the main story.
6620608 Better keep the knowledge to self then let it be revealed until the time is right correct? Haha, well can't wait to see the main story completed, that's for certain. Considering that Pen Stroke favorite Nightmare Nyx: Protector of Ponies (Though you probably already know this), I'd be betting he's somewhat curious how this will turn out. Can't fail an author of his caliber right?
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For all things related to the main story (or the universe both these stories exist in) I recommend joining the Nightmare Nyx Stories group. I will be posting chapter drafts there as they are ready for review.
6620631 I'd be delighted to join in the group
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This story touched me, also. That coming from a heartless son of a bitch that I am, it means something.
Good job, Recon777!
I am so happy to see this up.
This actually began life as the " prologue" of Nightmare Nyx: protector of ponies. It was then decided that another scene made for a better prologue because if a certain something wasn't explained the disappearance of the Crystal Empire , which is itself refrenced in this story from the word go, then that would cause more structural problems with Protector of ponies.
Thus the " littlehorn scene" got demoted to the second chapter.
To put it bluntly i basically threw a fit over in the development group, because i thought the "Littlehorn Scene" was the perfect introduction to the story and to Recon's style and themes. And I was very very disappointed to see this brilliant concept relegated to the backburner.
So I was overjoyed when Recon decided to make " the littlehorn scene" its own story. Which not only means it got published before the prologue, (which made me happy in the selfish sense since it was presented to the audience in the order I preferred) but, more importantly the " littlehorn scene" was now able to truly breathe and expand. So the "littlehorn scene" roughly doubled in size with much more character development added in. Turning the "littlehorn scene" into its own stand alone story was definitely the right call.
All of this is a really long and roundabout way of telling you, if you liked this story you will really really really like protector of ponies. I am of the opinion that this story is just about the best introduction possible to that world ( and it is a world; Recon and those of us who have been impressed by Recon's vision and ambition have been working on it for over a year)
So please go give Protector of ponies a whirl! You will not regret it. Just to let you know: what is up as of now is but the tiniest whiff of Recon's jaw dropping ambition. The ride is just beginning.
6623105
You know... this means
I'mreallygoing to have to go back and edit the first three chapters ASAP to match the changes we've made to the universe over the last four months, eh?[edit] already done and it turned out great!
I think, if anything, this image best describes the state of Protector of Ponies at the moment...
wired.com/images_blogs/design/2013/12/Disintegrating-02-lr-copy-2.jpg
Oh, and he's right; he really did throw a fit over it. Our development group is nothing if not lively.
6623159 6623105 Haha, I would agree with the both of you on the case of the story here. Makes me kind of sad that I did not join in on your editings, I would have loved to help out on the story at hand
Also, onlyanorthernsong, what kind of fit did you threw to cause this? I'd say honestly am very much happy you threw that angry fit but goodness gracious... 
derpicdn.net/img/2012/8/23/81010/large.png
Well done.
So sad.
Great story, hope you keep it up!
Good job,you made me tear up I haven't teared up on a fanfic since I read An Alchemists Heart last year.
Good job
By dying horribly, of course!
Poor attempts at comedy aside, you've managed to blend the FO:E setting with Past Sins incredibly well, given the differences in tone. This was an emotional punch in the gut, as befitting FO:E, and the vain hope for a hero to arrive and save everyone only made it worse...better? Uh, more emotional.
Of course, this would feel pretty odd without Protector of Ponies to act as context. It works well as a supplemental though, especially as it is referenced in chapter 2 - good work
A very good and well written fic. I hope the other FoE fics that I'm going to read are as good.
Well, I finally read it. You never told me it was related to your other story. <.< Finish that one.
As for this, Littlehorn is such an important event in the FoE universe that I think it needs a slightly different approach to be told well. Autumn Mist was not a great POV character, and everything felt like you were trying to increase the tragedy. But Littlehorn was already a tragedy. It didn't have the earth-shattering impact that it really should have, I think.
I deleted the comment( mine own of course) below this one because it was pointed out to me that Recon explained the same things I did to presentperfect in an IM. Given the inevitably spolierrific nature of those explanations i have concluded that is a safer method of communication and have deleted the below post in the hopes that no future readers of Nitemare Nyx : protector of ponies accidentally made those black bars banish and were thus exposed to spoilers.
Add the tragedy tag
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From the Fimfiction Tag FAQ:
I originally had the Tragedy tag for this story, but I had misunderstood what a literary tragedy was. This story doesn't qualify as a literary tragedy because Misty does not fail in her aspiration to be a hero.
I reviewed this fic for this week's review.
Review
Damn. I read the original Fo:E........ War sucks man.....
Reviewed and Accepted into The Goodfic Bin.
9753607
Well, this was unexpected.
Many thanks!
To answer a muse you voiced in your review: 100% of the characters in this story are OCs. Not one is in any other story, apart from Nyx, who is only referenced here and not an actual character. Likewise, Misty is referenced in Black Feather, as her father is a character there.
This story finds itself in a peculiar situation because it was written at a time when Black Feather was part of the Fo:E narrative. When I broke away from Fallout entirely, I decided to leave this story as-is, however I plan on writing a second story depicting an entirely different tragedy that will be canon to the Harmony Universe and serve its narrative, rather than Fo:E.
I see a statue of Twilight, and I am afraid-
*checks tags*
Whew,not Twilight, it's an OC.
Wait.
Nyx?!
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Nah that's the statue at the school. Not of anyone in particular.
I actually got it from the "Children of the Night" video. Photoshopped the tear red and placed it in the foreground of the "Brony U" image from John DeLancie's Brony documentary.
Featured tale in August for The Goodfic Bin
Dude, this story was… intense, to say the least. You did a good job at portraying how terrible war is, especially with a certain conflict in the Middle East that is going on right now…
Also, while I’m kind of sad that you and your team dropped Fallout: Equestria years ago, I’m also happy y’all did, considering the pre-Noah’s Flood-esque immorality of the Equestrian Wasteland.
May God bless you!
-Davidtin, user of Fimfiction
Day-um that was wow...I know this story is more than a few years old but the seemingly senseless deaths after building up the eager bright young lives and the crippling pain of pink cloud exposure. Definitely saving this story.
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Hey new readers of my old story!
Glad you've been able to experience this rather difficult story. I choked up more than a few times while writing it, I remember that much.
While this story is no longer canon to our universe (Equinox) we do have a similar school tragedy that is referenced several times in my current story, Black Feather. So the context given here, with Misty, is going to bring a whole other level of impact to a scene in chapter five of Black Feather.
Thank you both for checking it out! Sorry to put you through the pain of it. But as you've noticed, sometimes... we just need to know how bad things can be. Then we can appreciate how good things can be.
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I know the feeling. I don't have much published here storywise, but I do dabble when the muse comes a callin'. I've got a few historical fiction stories that have "emotional strangulation" scenes in them.