It has been over one thousand years since the alicorns went extinct. Well, not truly extinct.
The centaur known as Tirek was led to Skyros by the Alicorn of Fire, and soon, Skyros fell, and with it, all of the alicorns within.
One alicorn who escaped hid himself from the world. He believed all of his fellow alicorns save for Opaline to be dead. Only now is he visited by a stranger who will prove him wrong. One who knows far more than she should.
TW: major character death
For the New Blood contest
“From the beginning, you know the end.”
“The main character’s name and identity are never mentioned.”
There’s a concept that is somewhat important to this story that I couldn’t find a good place to insert, so I’ll just explain the concept here:
Once every few generations, a special unicorn is born. These unicorns are called “Flares” for the tendency for their magic to flare up randomly as they grow up. While other unicorn foals can have magic flares (like Pumpkin Cake for example), a true flare is marked by magical power that flares up and stays up once they get their cutie mark.
During times leading up to great strife, the gaps between the births of flares would close. In fact, if threat was great enough, the gap between the births of unicorn flares could be as little as one year. If you were to measure the gaps between flare births, you could pretty accurately predict when the next threat is to occur (although Celestia, was really the only one paying attention and already knew about the return of Nightmare Moon)
Over the course of G4, we’ve become aware of not one, not two, but six unicorn flares: Twilight Sparkle, Starswirl the Bearded, Clover the Clever, Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, and Luster Dawn.
And there are equivalents for pegasi and earth ponies, but they are much rarer